To those of you who care, Happy Christmas! To those of you who don't, I present Susie Lee Hummel.

Walking the fine line between voice and grammar in this chapter really drove me a bit crazy, but I hope you like it.

When Susie first woke up she couldn't remember why she was so excited. And then it hit her.

It was Christmas!

With a quiet squeal, Susie threw her covers off and jumped out of bed, using the railing Dad had installed to make sure she didn't fall out of bed in the night to launch herself across the room. She could get almost halfway across the room doing that now, which was really impressive.

She landed with a satisfying thud and ran across the hall to Finn's room, almost running headlong into his door but she didn't cause he never shut it properly. Not like Kurt and Blaine did when they were home.

"Finny!"

There was a lump on Finn's bed where Finn was s'posed to be, so Susie took a flying leap at it and landed in its middle. It made a pained "Ugh!" sound, so Susie knew it was her brother and not some monster that had eaten him cause he let his arms hang over the sides of the bed when he slept. Everybody knew the monsters would get you if you let any part of you hang over the edge of the bed. Maybe they just left Finn alone cause he was so big.

"Finny, it's Christmas!"

The lump groaned at her and Susie moved off it so she could better jump on the bed.

"Finny!"

"I heard you. Go 'way."

"But it's Christmas!"

"Okay, okay, it's Christmas. Stop jumping on my bed."

Susie giggled and jumped a few more times before using the bed like the diving board at the pool that the bigger kids got to jump off of. She landed on her feet like a cat and ran out of the room, leaving the door gaping wide behind her when she left.

Next Susie decided to play the creeping game so her next victims wouldn't know she was coming. Very carefully, she tip-toed down the hall like she saw the Grinch do in that movie and then flattened herself to the wall to look both ways like a spy. No one had seen her.

Susie threw open the door to Kurt and Blaine's room, but this time instead of an unrecognizable lump on the bed, Susie could see Blaine on top of Kurt and Kurt's hands in Blaine's hair and they were kissing.

"Kurt, Blaine, stop kissing. It's Christmas!"

She scared Blaine so hard he practically jumped off Kurt and Kurt screamed and threw a pillow at her in revenge. Susie giggled.

"Susie! Knock before you enter a room!"

"But it's Christmas! There are presents!"

Kurt growled at her, only stopping when Blaine put a hand on his arm. They both had red faces.

"We'll be down in a minute, SuLee. Why don't you go wake up Mom and Dad?" Blaine was always nice to her.

Kurt growled again. Susie took another look at Kurt's angry face and backed out of the doorway.

"Okay. But you have to open my present first."

"Deal," Blaine smiled, though it wasn't as big as usual. Susie saw him bury his head in Kurt's shoulder as she closed the door behind her.

That was weird. Kurt didn't usually snap at her like that when she hadn't done something wrong. Not even when she walked in on him kissing Blaine in the kitchen or the living room or something.

Maybe it was cause they weren't wearing shirts.

Susie gasped, stopping dead at the top of the stairs. Maybe they weren't just kissing, maybe they were having sex.

Susie knew about sex. Maggie Jay at daycare knew everything there was to know about sex cause she'd walked in on her mom and dad doing it once and they'd talked about it with her and then she'd told everybody in secret what it meant.

If Susie really had just walked in on Kurt and Blaine having sex then maybe it was okay that Kurt had yelled at her cause sex was supposed to be for adults, not kids. Plus it sounded gross.

But if Kurt and Blaine were having sex then Susie was confused, cause Maggie Jay said that her parents said that sex was something boy and girl adults did when they loved each other a special way. Kurt and Blaine were both boys.

Susie sat down on the top step and put her chin on her fist like that thinking guy she saw a picture of once.

Kurt and Blaine were both boys, but Susie knew they loved each other the way Mom and Dad loved each other and the way Finn said he loved that Amanda girl who gave Susie the ladybug backpack last summer but who she hadn't met except over the computer. And they'd all loved each other for forever. Like since before Susie was even born. Maybe if Kurt and Blaine could love each other like that for so long then that meant they could have sex too. Which meant that Susie knew something about sex that Maggie Jay didn't know.

Susie liked being smarter than Maggie Jay.

Grinning manically, Susie skipped down the stairs and knocked her special knock on Mom and Dad's door. She didn't want to walk in on them having sex too.

Dad growled his sleepy growl and Susie took that to mean it was safe. She threw open the door and galloped over to Mom and Dad's bed, leaping on the bench at the foot of it and throwing herself onto the comforter with a thwap. It kinda hurt but it was lots of fun.

"IT'S CHRISTMAS!" she yelled.

"All right, all right, squirt. We get it," Dad said. Susie giggled. Dad was fun when he was all sleepy-growly in the morning.

Mom stretched and moaned a yawn, smiling at Susie when she was done and swinging her feet off the side of the bed. Susie cheered.

"I suppose seven is an improvement on last year," Mom said. Dad just groaned and tried to bury his head under his pillow. Mom picked up the remote and poked him with it.

Susie giggled.

"Come on, little girl," Mom said. "Let's go heat up that leftover hot chocolate from last night. Do you think it's still any good?"

Susie cheered again. Mom always made too much hot chocolate on Christmas Eve, so Christmas morning was the earliest Susie got to drink hot chocolate all year. Every other day she had to have milk or juice with breakfast.

Leaping off the bed – which was always a little scary with Mom and Dad's bed – Susie galloped out into the kitchen where Finn was already looting the fridge for food. Susie giggled when she saw he had two different-looking socks on his feet.

"Mom said hot cocoa!"

Finn grunted and took the ceramic pot thing that had last night's cocoa in it out of the fridge, putting it back into its heater thing and turning the knob to make it hot.

Susie danced in place watching it while Mom came in and started making something they could eat while they opened presents. Susie gasped.

Presents!

Running past Mom, Susie darted into the living room only to see Kurt and Blaine settling in on the couch, small presents already in hand. Kurt avoided her eyes as soon as he noticed her and Susie felt bad, but mostly she felt annoyed.

"You can't start until everybody's here!"

"These are our presents to each other, SuLee. We just wanted to make sure we each got them. We won't open them yet, I promise."

"You're s'posed to open mine first," Susie pouted. "You promised."

"We will," Blaine said. "Tell you what, how about you help me divide out the presents so that way when everybody else gets in here we can open them as soon as possible. We'll even make sure to put your presents to everyone on top of their piles so they can all open yours first."

Susie thought about it. She still couldn't really read very well, but Blaine always got really happy whenever she tried to read with him, even if it was one of those big boring doctor books Finn always made fun of that had the pictures of weird stripy people in them. And she did really want to open her presents.

"Mm, okay. But my pile is closest to the tree."

"Great!" Blaine gave the present in his hand back to Kurt and kneeled down on the floor with her, asking her for help reading all the tags. Almost all of them said Susie. She liked that.

When everybody finally came in to open presents and Susie drank her cocoa too fast and then got almost everything she wanted including fuzzy socks she didn't ask Santa for but really secretly liked, Susie found herself kind of sad.

Christmas was supposed to be a happy time when people got the stuff they wanted, but Kurt and Blaine and Finn were still going back to college instead of staying home with her and neither of the small presents Kurt and Blaine opened from each other had a ring inside. Susie saw people in love do that in a movie Mom watched with her a few days ago and thought it was super romantic. Weren't people in love s'posed to give each other sparkly rings and get married? Mom and Dad were married and two nights ago Susie overheard Finn talking to Dad about maybe marrying that Amanda girl at some point. Why didn't Kurt and Blaine want to give each other sparkly rings and get married?

Susie watched everybody talking animatedly. Finn was making fun of Blaine again for willingly staying in school for longer than he had to because being a composter wasn't enough, he had to go and be a doctor too. Susie didn't really understand what they were talking about, she longed for the day she'd finally be able to go to school all day like the big kids. Plus, if Blaine became a doctor, maybe she could go to him instead of the weird old dude Mom took her to who made her get shots with the big scary needle. Blaine was nice; he wouldn't make her get stuck with a needle.

But even if Blaine did become her doctor, he probably still wouldn't marry Kurt and they probably still wouldn't move home to be with her for always like Mom and Dad were.

Suddenly Susie realized what she did wrong. She had talked to mom about it! Everybody knew you weren't supposed to tell other people what your wishes were cause otherwise they wouldn't come true. Susie hadn't realized that that was her deepest most big wish when she talked about it to Mom, so she hoped that maybe she could start over and wish it again. In fact, she was gonna wish it every time she made a wish from now on. She'd wish it on a star and on her eyelashes and she'd even use her most special birthday wish to wish it. Maybe then it would come true.

Susie got up and plopped herself down in front of the big window in the living room. She was gonna wish on the first star she saw starting tonight. And she was determined not to move until she did.

I'm afraid I might have written Susie a bit old in this (she's supposed to be less than a month shy of four), but I already had it half-written when I paused to do the math and it was too cute to change. If she does seem a bit too old, let's just call her precocious and leave it at that. Or maybe you can pretend I skipped a year. Whatever.

Let me know what you think!