Once that was finished, he went over to something that had caught his eye. It was a sketchbook, and beside it on the 'coffee table' was a bag of colored pencils, permanent markers, pens, and regular pencils, along with two or three erasers. It was the sketchbook he was most interested in, and, glancing back at Foxy to be sure that she wouldn't wake up, he opened the book to a random page. His eyes widened in amazement, and a quiet 'Ohh' of surprise escaped him before he could help it.
It was him on the page, and from the looks of it, he was rounding the turn at Willy's Butte. The picture was incredibly detailed, and astoundingly well-drawn, heck, it was perfect. The shading along his side and the ground underneath him was so smooth, how had she done it? And the clouds of dirt that his wheels were kicking up were subtly lined with the precise shade of orange, not too much orange, but just enough to give it a lifelike, yet faded appearance, as though the color was drained from most of the picture. And his expression-was that really the face he made when he rounded the turn? He looked like he was fighting a battle, what with his teeth bared and his eyes narrowed!
He flipped back a page, and found Doc. The drawing was so like Doc that Lightning instantly began to feel guilty for something that he hadn't done, so strong was the likeness to his mentor. He chuckled to himself as he took a closer look of the drawn Hornet's expression-confusion. 'Foxy must've told him to look at her, then not move.'
He flipped back another page, and found Strip. It looked like he was laughing at some joke, and again the shading was perfect, like the other two had been.
He continued flipping through the book, glancing back at Foxy every so often to make sure that she hadn't woken up, although most of his attention was on her sketchbook.
She had pictures of nearly everyone, and even some of the buildings or landscapes.
He found himself grinning as he looked at the picture she had drawn of Mater. What that crazy tow truck had been doing, he didn't know, but somehow, Mater appeared to be flying along the highway, with his tongue trailing out of his mouth and along his side, a look of intense excitement on the tow truck's features. He spotted something scribbled in one of the bottom corners, and peered closer.
'He tried chasing after a bunny, but the second he stopped it turned around and began hopping towards him. I think it wanted to be friends. He thinks it wanted to eat him.' was written there.
Lightning quickly put a tire over his bumper to keep himself from laughing aloud and waking Foxy up, but he still continued to look through the book.
He paused at another picture, where she had drawn Harry, but there was something peculiar about it. Did he have the picture upside down? He tried rotating the sketchbook so it would face the right way, but it didn't look right. He rotated it back the other way, and his eyes widened. The sketchbook wasn't what was upside down, Harry was what was upside down! It was obvious now that he looked at it that Harry had rolled himself over because of something that he found hysterical, given the little car's large grin and tightly shut eyelids. Foxy must've gotten down on the same level, and drawn it, in order to get the entire thing right.
He found another picture that was labeled 'Paul' in one bottom corner, and he chuckled, seeing the haughty stance, and cocky, slightly-crooked grin of the little hyperactive car. It seemed that Paul was the only one who was honestly posing for his drawing, as all the other ones that he had seen were of the others with varying expressions of joy, confusion and in his case, concentration.
He flipped the page, and his eyes widened considerably. The picture was of him and Sally, and he could tell because it was the only colored one out of all her drawings. The two were parked at Flo's, that much was obvious. The picture was so detailed, it was incredible. There was a ray of sunlight pooling on his hood from an unseen sunset in the picture, and Sally was snuggled up against what would've been his left fender. She was asleep, as was he. There was one thing that he didn't get, and that was the brown object down by the bottom right of his bumper. His confusion was quickly obliterated, as he noticed a lumpy brown object at his side. Thunder. He smiled at the thought of the large brown dog, and looked at the picture. Surely it was a photograph. It had to be. It was too incredible, too… perfect to be a drawing. The serenity on each of their faces, Ramone's body shop and the other buildings behind them, the shadows from the awning, it was all like looking into a camera viewfinder.
He perused through the rest of the book, only to find more drawings of the others. On the two last pages was a jumble of little doodles, and he scanned through them, grinning from time to time. The first one he saw was Thunder, dressed up as a lion.
The next one his eyes darted to was one of Doc, and he chuckled quietly. She had drawn him with a Santa hat, but he was apparently speeding on some sort of surface, because the hat was being blown backwards by the invisible wind.
The next one he found, he had to work to keep his laughter down. It looked like a little cartoon that she had drawn, and it started out with him and Strip arguing about how much racing mattered, along with speed. After they had argued for a few panels, a whooshing noise looked like it appeared over their roofs, and the drawing-Lightning looked up to find a massive racing jet. 'He's right you know. Speed and racing isn't everything. Although, if you don't believe him, maybe you would believe me. After all, I can fly at the speed of sound without breaking a sweat.'
The panel with the jet talking moved on to the next one, where his doodled self was looking out at him, a hysterically panicked expression on his doodled doppelganger's expression. It ended after that, and he continued perusing through the doodles she had, until finally, he decided to set the book back on the coffee table and leave her sleep. He looked over at her and smiled gently before leaving her room and heading back upstairs to the living room.
"There ya are. Where've ya been?"
"Just looking through a book."
"I thought ya didn't read?"
"Not that kind of book, a sketchbook. For drawing?"
"Where'd ya find somethin' like that?"
"It's Foxy's. She had it setting out on the table in her room." Lightning replied guiltily, sinking to the floor.
"I never knew that she was into that sorta thing."
"She's got a whole book full of these pictures of us, and they're the most amazing thing I've ever seen! They don't even look like drawings, they look more like photos."
"Maybe they are."
Lightning shook his hood. "They're not. They're all shaded with pencil, and drawn with permanent marker, and there's just tiny lines of color, it's incredible."
"That's besides the point. Ya shouldn'ta been snoopin'. That's her private business, an' there's a reason that she ain't shown us it yet."
"Sheriff, c'mon. I just saw it when I was setting her on the bed. I was curious."
Sheriff sighed and rolled his eyes. After Lightning's comment about finding the sketchbook, Luigi and Guido had began talking between themselves in low Italian. Presently, Luigi looked over at the two, his hood tilted slightly.
"Is it-a possible that she is... afraid of what-a we will think? And this-a is why we have not-a seen them?"
"Why would she think that, Luigi? They're all really amazing."
"She might-a not think that we will think so, and will-a want to keep them hidden."
"You mean that she's embarrassed over them, because she thinks that they're not good enough to show us?"
Luigi nodded with a small sigh. "Si. I have-a heard of many cars who have-a kept some of their best paintings in their basement, because they thought they were-a completely worthless."
"That's crazy…"
"Then again, there-a is always the few who cannot draw, and-a proudly display all of their 'masterpieces' for all of those-a who will pay to see it." His little speech over, Luigi rolled out of the chair he had been sitting in, bid them a goodnight, and headed down the ramp to his bedroom, Guido following along behind him to go to his own room. All that remained were Sheriff and Lightning, and Sheriff chuckled quietly before rolling down the ramp. Lightning sighed, turned the lights and tv off, then headed for his own bedroom.
The next morning, he awoke to sunlight pooling on his hood, and was instantly reminded of Foxy's picture that she had drawn. He smiled to himself as he rolled out of bed and out of the room, and blinked in surprise as he discovered Foxy curled up on the couch, the quiet tones of music coming from somewhere. Whatever she was doing, she didn't seem to hear him as he rolled up to her side. He discovered that she was drawing, and mouthing the words to the song, which was coming from her phone. "Morning, Foxy." He gave her a smile, and cringed as she gasped, afraid that he'd made her mess up.
"Lightning you scared me!" She hissed frantically, her eyes wide with panic.
"I'm sorry. I thought you heard me. I didn't mess it up, did I?"
"Mess what up?"
"You're drawing."
"No, not too much. How'd you know I was drawing? How'd you know that I even draw in the first place?"
His hood lowered, and he explained. "You're not mad at me, are you?"
"Nah. I just don't understand how you're not mad at me for drawing this crap."
"Foxy, it isn't crap. It's really good." He nudged her foot, but still she shook her head.
"I never should've brought it along, especially since they're all crap. I should've known that one of you guys would've found it sooner or later. I'm sorry."
"For what? And will you stop saying that they're awful? They're awesome. Perfect, actually."
She was silent for a few minutes, and he nudged her foot again, getting onto the couch beside her. "What were you drawing this time?"
"I was trying to draw Sheriff, but it didn't come out very good." She turned her sketchbook around and showed him a picture of something so vastly different then the others he had seen.
There were lots of straight lines around the darker ones he guessed were going to be the main lines for the picture. There were oddly-shaped squares, that looked almost 3-D. There was what appeared to be something akin to a satellite in the center of the page, heading towards the top right. There was a messy scribble in the bottom right corner that he could just barely read as 'Sheriff&Dirt', and there were doodles in the top left of what appeared to be windshields showing different emotions. The entire page was overall disarray, and he blinked in surprise.
"Is this how you usually start a drawing?"
She nodded, and he looked at it again. "I don't know how you can tell what all those marks mean." He replied softly, shaking his hood.
"It's really simple. See these?" She pointed to the oddly shaped 3-D squares. He nodded, and she smiled. "Imagine they're tires, positioned so you can see the front and the side. And this?" She gestured to the thing that looked like a satellite. "This is where I'm going to draw Sheriff. It's going up because it's farther away from whoever is looking at it."
His bumper fell open in wonder, his hood tilted in concentration as he looked at it. "That's so cool."
"What?"
"How you can make those little lines look like a car. The Doc one was one of my favorites."
She blushed, and he chuckled.
"When do you draw all of these? And how? Do they just come from your brain, do you get a picture of them, what?"
With a timid smile, she pulled up an album on her phone titled Potential Drawings. She showed him one that looked like the picture of Doc, yet so different.
For one thing, Doc was wearing his racing decals, something he wasn't doing in her drawing. Another thing that was different was the weather. It was raining in the picture, but in her drawing the sky was completely clear. It was also at an entirely different location! "Look familiar?"
"A little bit… why does it look like a race that got rained out?"
"That's where I took it. I called for Doc, he turned to look, and I snapped a picture."
"But the drawing looks so different!"
"I know. I'll show you the background." She looked through her folder again, and rotated her phone so he could see.
He blinked in surprise at the nearly-bare expanse of desert landscape she had captured. The sky was clear, the area was bright, and there was a tumbleweed close to the camera casting a shadow in the same spot as Doc's from the drawing. "That's incredible… What about the Strip one? Is that one two pictures?"
"Nope. It only exists as a drawing."
"So you mean that you just had this image in your head, and you drew it out?"
"Yeah."
"What about the one of me? That's my number one favorite."
"You really like it?"
"Of course I do. It's just so… real, and the tiny bits of color that you put in just make the entire thing so unusual, and awesome."
She flipped to the picture, and he grinned, seeing it again. "I really like this one." He gave her a look and a smile, and she blushed. "Is there a picture with this one, too?"
"There's two, actually." She showed him the first one, which was of him flying around the turn, churning up clouds of dirt, like in the picture. The only thing that was different was his expression. She swiped a finger across the screen, and there was another picture, with less dirt, and not exactly at the same point as the first.
There was, however, the expression from the drawing.
"So I do make that face." He snickered, and Foxy smiled.
"Yeah, you did it a lot when I was watching you, but none of the other ones got good enough for me to use them."
"What about the one of me and Sally?"
"You found that?" She sighed, and he nudged her foot.
"What's wrong?"
"That was supposed to be your birthday present!"
"Ohhh…I'm sorry, I didn't know!"
Foxy shook her head, and set her hand on his hood. "It's fine. I'll give it to Sally, and I'll draw you a new one, if you want…"
"I'll try and not ruin the surprise this time." He grinned guiltily, and she giggled.
Hi, everyone! :) What a day... I've got frozen fingers, a babysitting job lined up, and multiple stories lying around half-written. XD No joke, one of them is so big my internet freezes up from time to time. XD
Annnyyyy ways... I'm glad you guys that read my most recent chapter have been sending in questions! It really makes me happy to know that you guys wanna know more about Foxy and my other characters. I'm considering putting a biography up on my profile of all my main characters, that way everyone knows about Foxy, and Max, and Jimi and Lily, and Thunder, and Mariana, and Jack(Who's a girl, BTW. She's a tomboy with the first name of Jacqueline). XD
Now, about this chappie... Foxy is an artist! And Lightning found his birthday present... although we still don't know the date she would've presented him with it. XD
