December 19th: Presents!

After the big party at the Wheel Well the night before, the RS gang and their guests all parked at Flo's, trying to recover with varying success.

"What a great party", Flo commented.

"Yeah, must've been", Lightning laughed softly, still trying to nurse his pounding hoodache.

"Looks like a lot of people brought presents", Sally observed gratefully, eyeing the much larger stack that had been placed under the tree. "That was nice of them."

Just then, alarm bells went off inside Fudge's head (and, being autistic, she didn't like those kinds of noises). Presents! She didn't have anything for anybody! And Christmas was only a few days away!

"Fudgie?" Luigi ventured worriedly. "Is everything okay?"

"I need to go home! There's something important I have to do! By myself", she added.

So, Luigi took her home without asking any questions. He had a suspicion what she needed to do. While she was far too young to be home alone, he promised that he would stay out of her way. He stated that he would be in his office, doing paperwork, should she need him.

Alone at last, Fudge dove for her piggybank, which she'd gotten for Christmas last year. (It was one you could pant yourself. She remembered that she'd had so much fun painting it with Ramone, but now, all of the colours were mixed together in a gross brownish mess.) When she opened it, a single dime rolled out.

Oh, no! How was she supposed to get thirteen gifts with just a dime?! That was less than a penny per person. What was she going to do?

Wait a sec! Didn't everyone love her drawings? So, surely, they would make excellent presents, right?

Fudge got straight to work. Okay, so what did everyone like? Well, Lightning, Doc, Papà and Babbo were easy: racing! Quickly as she could, she created four drawings of cars racing around on a track. One of the racers had a human rider, resembling Fudge herself.

Now, what about everyone else? Let's see... Well, Ramone liked painting, so that took care of that. Sally liked cones. Mater liked tractor tipping. Lizzie liked Stanley. Red liked flowers...

One by one, Fudge drew a picture for each member of her family. Some took much more thought than others (for example, the human girl wasn't exactly sure what Sheriff liked because she didn't even think that she had ever been alone with him). Finally, though, she had thirteen drawings and she was proud of every last one.

After asking her papà where the envelopes were, she grabbed thirteen and popped each drawing into one. Then she wrote a name on each one. Now, she was ready to return to Flo's, so she could put them under the tree.

So, she did just that.

"Hey, sweetie! What have you got there?" Sally wanted to know.

"Christmas presents!" the six-year-old answered importantly. "You can't open them till Christmas!"

"Well, it's not long now, kiddo", Sheriff pointed out. "It's less than a week until Christmas."

"Whee-hoo!" Mater cheered. "Dad-gum! I can't wait for y'all to see what I got you!"

"It must be killing him to keep it a secret", Sarge whispered to Ramone.

Ramone snickered and nodded in agreement. It was no secret that Mater couldn't keep a secret!

"I can't wait for you all to see my presents either!" Fudge put in. "And I can't wait to open my presents!" She waved a hand towards the huge pile.

"Now, Fudge, Christmas is about giving, not receiving", Fillmore reminded her gently.

"I know", she assured him. "I'm just excited!"

Fillmore couldn't help smiling. "So am I, man. So am I."