“He’s not real.” 

And with those three words, one Danny Scott became an exile and a pariah in the second grade class at his own elementary school. 

How dare he claim that Santa didn’t exist! 

After all, at age four, he should have been right in the center of the Santa-believing wheelhouse. And his classmates, who were all three years older than the gifted Danny, were coming to the end of believing but many of them had elected to hang on for just a little while longer, at least until the current holiday season had concluded, despite growing skepticism. But to have that little kid smash their own suspensions of disbelief and convert them all to just so many psychic smithereens? That was all too much. They couldn’t even hedge their bets with their elders by pretending to still believe. 

He was rejected by everyone in class, even the weird Enolian kid who ate paste and the Kreetassan girl who often broke wind at the most inappropriate times, including the most recent spelling bee. They had been his ragtag posse, and they had abandoned him once he’d made his smug revelation. 

The kids in his class didn’t even want to hear how he’d made his determination.  He had devised a foolproof Santa-exposing plan. There were chemicals at school. They were generally harmless, mainly designed to make certain things change color as a test of pH or even just to showcase basic concepts in creating compounds. 

He came across a recipe for a universal pH indicator, and mixed it up, with lavish praise from the Xyrillian science teacher as he combined Thymol Blue, Methyl Red, Bromothymol Blue and Phenolphthalein. He then proceeded to secretly coat the door to the present closet – a place he’d discovered the previous year, when the school had held a holiday party with small gifts for all – with sodium carbonate, a known base. He then reprogrammed the closest replicator to provide indicator solution rather than water, but only if someone was asking for a means of cleaning their hands. For anyone requesting a drink from the replicator, the device would correctly provide water. 

He then waited, and his patience was duly rewarded, when a Denobulan history teacher apparently touched the present closet, had his hands coated with a bit of soda ash – the aforementioned sodium carbonate – and then proceeded to attempt to wash up. The universal indicator solution dutifully turned the history teacher’s hands a lovely shade of purple, thereby rather neatly exposing the presence of the soda ash, which clocked in at an impressive pH of 10. 

Yet not even his posse had wanted to hear about that. They had wanted to continue believing, for just a little while longer, and he’d blown it for them. 

And so he hit upon his next idea, a foolproof Santa confirmation plan. He would have to do a 180 and prove that Santa existed. And, once he had done that, he figured, he’d be golden again, at least with his small posse. 

As December went on, though, and the day of all days drew ever closer, his hopes began to fade. His plan would require the services of an adult, and the closest person, the one who would be far more convincing as Santa than anyone else, that was the person whose hands he’d turned purple. It was a seeming dead end for Danny, and his plan seemed destined to fail. 

The twenty-fourth finally rolled around, and time was critical as the second grade class’s little holiday party was that very afternoon. Danny made an executive decision, and got to a replicator in an empty classroom. “One red suit with white fake fur trim,” he commanded the machine, “with black boots, a matching red hat and a big black belt. Make it too big for me and add stuffing. Oh, and throw in a fake white beard.” 

The machine dutifully spat out the requested articles. Before he put them on, he remembered one more thing. He tapped out a note on his PADD. 

Please excoose Danny Scott from the holiday party. He has a cold and has a doctors pointmint. 

He sent the note and figured he was covered. He put on the articles. 

So disguised, he headed to the end of year holiday party. There were cupcakes in every flavor Danny could imagine, and all sorts of symbols of faith and spirituality, including the Vulcan IDIC symbol, a menorah and a lovely ceremonial cloth with Imvari pictographs on it that said something like with the dark of the seasons comes charity. 

The history teacher spotted him first, and the sight of a Santa Claus who was a lot closer in size to an elf was momentarily amusing. He approached Danny. “Good choice,” he said under his breath, and dragged a pair of chairs to the center of the room. “Children! Santa Clause is here! But you won’t be able to sit on his lap as he’s had to come in an elf disguise. He did this because he’s really supposed to be at the Earth North Pole in order to finish getting his sleigh ready. You might say that Santa is goofing off just a little bit in order to join us today, and you’d be right.” He turned to Danny and winked. “So Santa will sit here and you can come over and sit beside him and tell him all about what you’d like for your holiday gift. And I know Santa will try very hard. He’s done his level best to be here, and I, for one, believe in him.”

The entire second grade class came over and obediently made their wishes known. Danny didn’t really know what to say to some of them, and he couldn’t exactly make any promises, but he did say that he would communicate their wishes to his agents on Earth and Tellar and all of the many other worlds in the galaxy. The last two on the line were his old posse. “We know it’s you, Danny,” said the Enolian paste-eater. 

“But that was really sweet,” added the inconveniently flatulent Kreetassan girl. 

“How do you know I’m not really Santa?” Danny asked. “Maybe when I dress like Danny Scott, maybe that’s the real disguise.”