Chapter 6

• By noon, Jennah was ready to go home and hide under the covers. Either her speech was garbled, or every person she’d talked to wasn’t hearing the words she was saying. The shoplifter had been more difficult than she had anticipated, but not nearly as frustrating as it had been trying to make Mrs. Claus understand what was wrong with walking around in a fluffy red teddy that didn’t cover anything.
• When Jason and Scott, two of the other officers, had finally made it to the office, they’d brought with them three more cases to be processed. On a normal day, they’d do it themselves, but this wasn’t a normal day, and the phone had rung before they’d even had the chance to take off their jackets. The saddest part in all of this was it was only going to get worse the closer it got to Christmas.
• She was taking refuge in the lunchroom and wishing the people waiting to state their case would just go away. She played in the yogurt with her spoon. Tomorrow she had the day off and she wasn’t leaving the house. She’d stop and pick up anything she needed on the way home later, and then she was going to hide in her tiny space and pretend the rest of the town was gone.