Don't Call Me Christina Kringle (17 page)

Unfortunately, the early morning blast of pixie dust didn't take care of all the greedy shopkeepers in town.

After Christina had all the brownies safely secured in the shoe-shop cellar and had given them all their breakfast cream and cake, she came upstairs to find Grandpa glued to the TV set.

“Uh-oh,” he said. “This don't look no good.”

Tony Scungilli, the toy king, was holding a press conference with the mayor and the chief of police. Ms. Delores Dingler and a pastry chef in a poofy white hat were standing in the crowd behind the group clustered in front of the microphones. The mayor was speaking and held up a Dumping Dino.

“We confiscated this counterfeit merchandise from the Engine Company 23 firehouse last night. As you can plainly see, there is no Toy Castle logo stamped here on the dinosaur's, eh, er, posterior.”

He pointed at the plastic dinosaur's big green butt.

“All genuine Dumping Dinos carry a trademark, eh, back here.”

“Gustav and Gizmo made that for me,” said Christina. “They donated it for the kids.”

On the TV, Tony Scungilli stepped up to the microphones.

“Who would steal intellectual property from Santa's number one helper?” he asked, choking back some crocodile tears. “Who would steal from me? Whoever you are, may Santa put a lump of coal in your stocking!”

“Given these developments,” said the mayor, “and the fact that we found several other counterfeit toys at the firehouse …”

Uh-oh,
Christina thought.
The two toy-maker brownies made us some “fake” Wetty Betties and Bopping Beanos, too.

“… I, as mayor, have no choice but to cancel the traditional Christmas Eve gift-delivery activities at Engine 23 until we conclude our ongoing investigation. I have instructed the chief of police to confiscate all the toys that have been ‘donated' to the firehouse.”

The reporters groaned.

The mayor held up his hands. “Now, now. I'm not a Scrooge, people. We hope to deliver any toys that prove to be legitimate donations and not stolen property sometime before Valentine's Day.”

Brokenhearted, Christina snapped off the TV.

“Christina?”

She turned around. Nails, Professor Pencilneck, Trixie, and Flixie were standing at the top of the basement stairs.

“Did that guy just cancel Christmas?” asked Nails, propping his hands gallantly on his hips.

“Just for the kids who need it most.” She shook her head in disbelief. “Man …”

“We know, we know,” said Giuseppe.

“That is precisely why you hate Christmas,” said the professor.

“Christmas stinks,” Trixie and Flixie said in two-part harmony.

Christina grabbed her backpack.

“Nails? Professor? Hop in. We've got some unfinished business to finish.”

“Oh, dear,” Pencilneck said apprehensively. “Are we going to get in trouble again?”

“I sure hope so!” said Nails, eagerly rubbing his hands together.

“Just hop in,” said Christina.

They did and she slung the backpack over her shoulders.

Grandpa held up a hand as Christina tugged down hard on the book bag's straps like a commando about to parachute behind enemy lines. “Christina?”

“Yes, Grandpa?”

“Be careful, dear.”

“Don't worry. I won't do anything my dad wouldn't do.”

And that made Grandpa worry even more.

Christina could not believe her eyes as she turned the corner and headed down the sidewalk to the firehouse.

The crowded sidewalk.

People carrying unwrapped toys were lined up around the block waiting their turn to drop off a present for the Christmas Eve run of Engine 23!

“Look at this, you guys,” she whispered over her shoulder to her backpack.

“We see it,” said Professor Pencilneck.

“We're peeking through the zipper slit,” added Nails.

It was absolutely incredible. As Christina walked down the line, she saw all kinds of people carrying all kinds of wonderful Christmas gifts. Shopping bags crammed with board games. A young girl clutching an oversized, brand-new stuffed monkey with a tag flapping off its ear. One woman balanced a stack of doll boxes under her chin. A man had a grocery sack filled with fleecy gloves and hats.

And everybody in line was laughing and chatting with those around them, overwhelmed with the good feeling that comes from doing something for someone other than yourself.

“So who does the mayor think he is?” said one woman with a laugh. “Stealing Christmas from needy kids? Next year, we should steal the election from him!”

“My kid's got too much stuff,” said a man with an unwrapped iPod. “Me, too! It's time to give some of it away!”

“Merry Christmas, sir,” Christina said with a soft smile.

“Let's hope it will be for whoever gets the iPod I was going to give myself!” He roared with laughter.

“Better to give than to receive,” said another woman. “That's what I always say!”

And then, the whole line started singing Christmas carols and showing each other what they had brought to give away and passing around plastic tubs of Christmas cookies. They weren't sprinkled with pixie dust but they sure seemed to make everyone feel warm and happy, just the same. Strangers were quickly becoming friends.

“So,” whispered Nails from the backpack. “You still hate Christmas, kid?”

“Not so much,” said Christina. “Not today.”

She made it to the firehouse doors and saw Captain Dave shaking hands and thanking people for dropping toys into what had been, just an hour earlier, an empty foil-wrapped bin.

“Merry Christmas, Christina Kringle!” he said when he saw her.

“Yeah,” she said, the nickname not bothering her at all. “It just might be!”

The cardboard box was overflowing with unwrapped toys. A couple of firefighters, wearing red-and-white Santa hats, emptied the first batch of toys into big black sacks to make room for more.

“This has been goin' on ever since the mayor went on TV,” said Captain Dave. “In under an hour, we collected more toys than ever before!”

“This is awesome! I wish my dad were here to see it!”

Captain Dave placed his hand on her shoulder. “You know what? I'll bet he is.”

“Yeah. So, how can I help?”

“Well, we need someone inside to separate the boy gifts from the girl gifts.”

“I'm all over it!”

She was about to head into the firehouse to sort the toys when a police car, its siren whoop-whoop-whooping, crawled around the corner and drove up to the firehouse doors.

The Chief of Police, whom Christina had seen on TV, stepped out of the police cruiser.

“Dave,” he said, smoothing out all the ribbons and medals on his dress uniform.

“Chief Farnsworth.”

“What's going on here?”

“A Christmas miracle, sir. Since we can't deliver the gifts you guys impounded last night, these good citizens have brought us all sorts of new toys to put on the truck. The Christmas Eve Run is on!”

The chief shook his head. “Sorry, lieutenant. That's not going to happen.”

“What?”

“Malloy? Reed?” The chief gestured toward the fire truck and two armed cops marched into the garage to guard it.

“What's going on, Chief?”

“We're impounding your truck.” He handed Captain Dave a sheet of paper. “Orders from upstairs. The mayor does not want that piece of municipal property going anywhere tonight.”

“You're kidding. What if there's a fire?”

“Engine 74 can handle it. We're shutting you down, Lieutenant, effective immediately. You should go home. Spend the holidays with your family. That fire truck? It's going nowhere tonight.”

“So, tell me, chief: Exactly how much did Tony Scungilli contribute to the mayor's re-election campaign.”

The police chief squinted hard. Didn't answer.

He didn't have to.

Because now a long stretch limousine pulled up to the curb.

Tony Scungilli stepped out.

“You impounded their delivery vehicle?” he asked.

“Yeah,” said the chief of police.

“Good. That fire truck is going nowhere until we apprehend the thief who stole my intellectual property.”

He gave Christina a sinister sneer.

“And all her little accomplices!”

That night, Christmas Eve, as if on cue, snow started to fall, turning the whole city into a gently shaken snow globe.

Inside Giuseppe's shoe shop, Christina paced back and forth in front of the counter, trying to think of a way to save Christmas for the kids who needed Christmas most. Her grandfather was back at the apartment, theoretically wrapping presents. In truth, he was probably sleeping.

It's what Christina's grandfather did when he didn't know what else to do.

Professor Pencilneck and Nails stood on the countertop, watching Christina walk back and forth, waiting desperately for inspiration to hit.

It didn't.

“Those kids are counting on us!” she muttered. “We've got to do something.” She looked up to the ceiling. “Come on, Dad. Help me out here. Show me what to do!”

“Perhaps,” suggested the professor, “your friend, Captain Dave, can borrow someone else's fire truck.”

Christina shook her head. “It's not just the truck. It's the toys. The mayor won't allow any firefighters to ‘abandon their duties' or ‘directly violate orders from their superior officers' to deliver them. If they do, they could lose their jobs.”

The string of jingle bells over the front door tinkled merrily.

Nails and Professor Pencilneck dove for cover and hid behind the cash register.

A huge biker with a big, bushy beard strode into the shop. He was dressed in a black leather jacket, fringed leather leggings, and hand-tooled cowboy boots. He carried his motorcycle helmet tucked under his arm.

“Excuse me, little lady,” he said to Christina, lifting up a leg and showing her his foot. “Do you dudes do boots? I totally snagged the left one on my muffler.”

He gestured toward a chrome-plated motorcycle parked outside on the street. It was a big bike, what they called a hog or a chopper, with leather saddlebags and an attached sidecar.

Saddlebags big enough to hold a bunch of toys.

Christina smiled.

She wouldn't rush home and tell Grandpa, but she had just figured out what she wanted for Christmas: a motorcycle with a sidecar!

Christina rolled the motorcycle around to the alley so Gustav and Gizmo could “customize” it for her late night ride.

She, Nails, and Professor Pencilneck watched while the two toymaker brownies tinkered with wires, the throttle, brake cables, and the steering column. Since Christina was too young to actually drive a motorcycle, Nails and the professor would ride in the sidecar and do the driving for her.

“We put in remote-controlled servos,” said Gustav.

“You can accelerate, brake, and steer it with this,” added Gizmo, handing Nails a radio controller with a long antenna, which, apparently, had originally been designed for a remote-controlled toy race car.

“Use the two joysticks,” said Gustav. “Left, gas. Right, steering.”

“Thanks, guys,” said Nails.

“You sure you wouldn't rather I were at the wheel?” said the professor, tapping his fingertips together nervously.

“Nope. Nothing personal, pal, but you drive too slow.”

“No. I drive safely.”

“Whatever. We're up against a deadline here. It won't be Christmas Eve much longer! Come on!”

Both Nails and Professor Pencilneck strapped on the helmets Bobbin, Spindle, and Spool had made them out of fuzzy yellow tennis balls cut in half. Christina slid on the biker's crash helmet. It was a little on the large side for her head, which is why Nails had quickly rigged up a new interlaced liner with strips of leather from a discarded pair of flip-flops.

She was also wearing the biker's recently size-reduced black leather pants and motorcycle jacket. The seamstress brownies made all those alterations, too, taking seven inches off the sleeves and inseam, thirty inches out of the waist.

“Drive carefully!” said Gizmo.

“Roger,” said Nails, fiddling with the joysticks. “How do I start this thing?”

“Red button,” said Gustav.

“In the middle,” said Gizmo.

Christina straddled the scooped seat and grabbed hold of the handlebars.

“You ready to rock?” she said to her co-pilots in the sidecar.

“Standing by for instructions, Captain,” said the professor, adding a crisp salute.

“First stop, the firehouse!”

The professor, who would serve as the Christmas crew's navigator, checked his folded-over map. “West 58
^th
Street. See it, Nails?”

“Yeah.”

“You're not looking at the map.”

“Don't need to. We were just there.”

“Honestly, Nails. If I'm going to be the navigator, you must allow me to …”

Christina didn't hear what the professor said after that.

Nails thumbed the red button.

The motorcycle roared to life.

“Blast off!” she shouted.

Nails flipped the controllers. The chopper popped a wheelie and blasted up the alleyway.

“You're going the wrong way!” shouted the professor.

So Nails worked the joysticks and spun them into a 180-degree, gravel-spitting, snow-blowing turn. The motorcycle was flying like a rocket.

“Whoo-hoo!” shouted Christina. “Santa Claus is coming to town!”

Now she knew how Jolly Old Saint Nick must feel soaring through the night sky behind eight turbo-charged reindeer!

Man, tonight, Christina Lucci
loved
Christmas!

Meanwhile, in the back room of the shoe shop, Trixie and Flixie were feeding sparkling sugar cookies to the biker who sat on the workbench stool in his underwear, a glazed and happy look on his face.