Flushing out the game!
In the end, Timmy decided to make like a lion and roar.
It was a little roar, though. He couldn’t be really loud; and he couldn’t roar right at the elf, either. Timmy knew that if he did, the elf would freak out in front of everybody, and that would be bad. But if he roared a little, at somebody who couldn’t hear him anyway? Yeah, that might make the elf run.
The trick was, finding somebody to roar at, close enough to the elf to spook it but not close enough that the elf could see who was roaring. Timmy picked a girl, close enough to his own age. She was with both her parents, trying not to listen as they yelled at each other the way adults do when they don’t want people to see them yelling. Timmy sighed. Some people just didn’t have any Christmas spirit.