Toy Dance Party (2 page)

“Maybe she went to a place that was good for Barbies,” says Plastic. “Some kind of special Barbie place, where stingrays would get bored.”

“Oh yeah?” StingRay throws herself on the carpet in distress. “And she needs her paint box there?

“She’s coming back,” says Plastic. “She’s coming back on Saturday.” She doesn’t tell StingRay what Lumphy told her—that maybe Saturday is already over.

“By Saturday she’ll have forgotten all about us!” cries StingRay. Now she is twisting over and back on the carpet, gasping and sobbing.

And sobbing some more.

And even more sobbing.

This can’t go on, thinks Lumphy. He has to do something.

He galumphs down the hall to the bathroom and grabs TukTuk, the faded yellow towel that hangs over the rack. Holding her corner in his mouth, he drags her as fast as he can into the Girl’s bedroom, where StingRay is tossing and flopping. With one big motion, Lumphy throws TukTuk on top of StingRay, covering her eyes, her flippers, her whole body.

“Where are the lights?” StingRay yells.

StingRay is still twisting and crying, but the weight of TukTuk is such that she can no longer flip over. Lumphy backs up a couple of feet, and—rumpa lumpa, rumpa lumpa—jumps heavily onto TukTuk.

“Oh, umph!” cries StingRay. “You’re on me, someone.

Lumphy sits. He sits on TukTuk, who lies on StingRay, and together they calm her down, resting on her so she feels their weight.

The sobbing stops.

She is barely moving now. One flipper is just thumping up and down.

Finally, StingRay is peaceful.

Lumphy climbs down from her broad plush back and pulls TukTuk behind him. “The Girl still loves us,” he says.

“Okay,” says StingRay meekly. “I just got concerned for a minute.”

. . . . .

Half an hour later, all three toys are sitting on the windowsill in the living room. The snow is still coming down. Plastic is reading about cheese some more. StingRay is drawing shapes in the frost on the windowpane. And Lumphy is worrying.

“The Girl hasn’t been here for a really, really long time,” he says, breaking the silence.

“Where is she, again?” asks Plastic.

“Bolling. They said they were going to Bolling to see the grandpa.”

“But where is Bolling?”

Lumphy does not answer.

“And
what
is Bolling?” wonders Plastic. “Is it a town, a hotel, a magical land, or what?”

Lumphy doesn’t answer, because he doesn’t know. “It has been more than five days,” he says. “In fact, it has been
way
more than five days, and when it is more days than it is supposed to be, that means maybe the people are lost.”

“Oh oh oh!” cries StingRay, suddenly afraid. “She loves us but she’s lost!”

“Maybe everything is fine,” Plastic says. “The Girl is just having fun in Bolling.”

“We can
not
panic.” Lumphy looks pointedly at StingRay. “And we cannot pretend anymore.” Looking now at Plastic: “I think something has gone wrong. I think the Girl is lost.”

StingRay tries not to panic and makes a small noise like this: Frrrrrr, frrrrrr.

“I have to go outside and look for her,” announces Lumphy. “The Girl needs me.”

“Is that a good idea?” asks StingRay. Frrrrrr, frrrrrr.

“Yes,” says Lumphy. “I have to be tough and brave. We
all
have to be tough and brave.”

Plastic bounces softly and whispers, “Brave, brave, brave!” to herself. Lumphy jumps off the windowsill and scurries to the kitchen. Plastic and StingRay follow more slowly.

“If I were lost, I know she would look for me,” Lumphy tells them.

“Hello,” says StingRay, following Lumphy to a cupboard, which he begins to pry open. “They went in the
car.
Bolling might be really far away.”

“But they
could
be nearby,” answers Lumphy.

“Won’t we get wet?” StingRay is dry clean only. “Snow looks very wet.” Frrrrrr, frrrrrr.

“We can’t just stay home and not try to save her.” Lumphy is determined. He gets a laminated place mat from the low cupboard. It has a baby stegosaurus on it. “I am a buffalo! I have thick woolly fur!” He stands on his hind legs and waves the place mat heroically over his head. “
You
don’t have to get wet.
I
can save the Girl.”

“How will you save her with woolly fur and a baby stegosaurus place mat?” asks StingRay.

Lumphy returns to the sill and opens the window with his forepaws. Icy air gusts into the room. Lumphy drops the place mat out the window onto a drift of snow and leaps after it. “It’s a sled!” he calls as he lands squarely on the place mat and zips down the drift into the yard. “Wheee!”

Plastic and StingRay are watching him from the sill. A few feet from the house, the place mat comes to a stop.

“Now what?” calls Plastic.

“I’m going to try to find her!” says Lumphy, his voice sounding small in the blizzard.

“Go, go, go!” yells Plastic.

Lumphy wags his tail stump bravely. (He had a tail once, a good-looking chocolate-colored one; but now there is only a stump.) He squints his eyes against the storm and jumps off the place mat.

Slurrsh! He sinks into more than a foot of snow.

It is so, so cold. Lumphy did not realize it would be this cold.

It is colder, even, than the time that toddler came over and put Lumphy in the fridge for two hours.

Lumphy scrambles around with his forelegs and kicks with his back legs, reaching for the baby stegosaurus place mat and desperately trying to pull himself out of the hole. But the snow is soft and he digs himself down deeper, until his tail stump feels the hard dirt of the frozen lawn beneath it.

“I knew you shouldn’t go outside like that!” calls StingRay from the window. “I told you it was a bad idea.”

Lumphy struggles some more, but his paws can’t grasp the now slippery baby stegosaurus place mat. “I’m stuck!” he cries.

“Don’t panic!” yells Plastic, remembering what Lumphy himself told StingRay.

“I need to rescue the Girl!” cries Lumphy, frantic at the thought of his own failure. The snow is drifting down and flakes are melting on his woolly buffalo fur.

“We’re getting a spatula!” yells Plastic. Then, to StingRay: “Get a spatula.”

“How are you going to save him with a spatula?” asks StingRay.

“Yeah, how?” moans Lumphy from his hole of snow. “And what about the Girl? She needs me!” He is still trying to climb out.

“
I’m
not saving him with a spatula,” Plastic tells StingRay. “
You
are.” StingRay has never heard Plastic talk like this before. It is very bossy, and StingRay is not sure she likes to be bossed. But Lumphy is her best friend, so she follows Plastic to the kitchen. Together, they push a chair over to the counter. StingRay climbs the chair, heaves herself onto the tile, and looks at the jar full of wooden spoons, whisks, and spatulas.

“The kind of spatula for flipping pancakes, or the kind of spatula for scraping bowls?” she asks Plastic.

“Bowls!” says Plastic, bouncing high once to see what StingRay is talking about.

StingRay seizes a bowl-scraping spatula and leaps off the counter to the floor. “Now what?”

“Now you ride on the diplodocus place mat, then dig him out with the spatula,” says Plastic, rolling over to the cupboard where the place mats are kept.

Fear crests over StingRay. “But I’m dry clean only,” she says. Frrrrrr, frrrrrr.

“Dig, dig, dig!” cries Plastic.

“Can’t
you
go out?” asks StingRay. “You’re rubber. You like to get wet.”

Plastic looks at StingRay, hard. Even though she doesn’t have eyes. “I can’t hold the spatula,” she finally says.

It takes StingRay some effort to get the spatula and the diplodocus place mat up to the windowsill, and when she does, she is startled to see that quite a lot of snow has blown into the living room, through the open window. Night is falling, and the yard outside looks bleak and gray.

“StingRay, help!” cries Lumphy.

“She’s coming, Lumphy!” yells Plastic. “She’s coming with a spatula!”

As the buffalo did before her, StingRay drops her place mat onto the pile of snow at the edge of the house, then hurls herself out to land on it, squeezing the spatula under one flipper.

Zzzzuuushh! The diplodocus place mat skids through the yard toward the hole where Lumphy is stuck. StingRay is lucky and arrives quite near Lumphy, so she is able to poke her nose into the hole and see how he is doing.

Lumphy is very, very cold and sick to his stomach, but as soon as he sees his friend he stretches his body to touch his buffalo nose to hers.

“I am not panicking,” says StingRay proudly. “I am being tough and brave!”

“That’s good,” says Lumphy. “Because
my
tough and brave turned out dumb.”

StingRay brandishes her spatula. “I’m digging you out!” She rears up on her tail and jumps off the diplodocus place mat so she can dig.

Slurrsh!

She sinks.

She turns and tries to launch herself back onto the place mat, realizing her mistake, but the mat is slick with snow, and she can’t get onto it. She flails around with the spatula, but that only makes her hole bigger.

“Help! Help! Oh!” she sobs. “I’m panicking now! I can’t help it!” She struggles until the snow on one side of her hole collapses into Lumphy’s hole and the two of them are together, surrounded by walls of powdery white.

There is nothing for them to do. Nothing they
can
do.

They will have to wait until the storm ends and the snow melts.

Frrrrrr, frrrrrr.

When her panicky feeling calms down, StingRay puts her flipper across Lumphy’s cold back. The two of them hold on to each other in the snow.

Plastic watches from the window. There is no one else who can help. Sheep is on wheels, the toy mice are too small, and the rocking horse in the corner can’t move around. Plastic stands watch for many hours as the snow floats into the hole where her friends are. At some point, she remembers that the lights are supposed to go off and bounces sadly at all the light switches until the house is once again in darkness.

. . . . .

Late that night, a car pulls into the driveway. Plastic hears a shuffling sound outside the front door. Then the voice of the Girl’s dad. A jingle of keys. The porch light goes on.

The door opens, and the dad walks in, dragging a duffel bag. He shuts the open window, knocking Plastic to the floor, where she rolls until she bangs into the coffee table.

The people are home.

It is Saturday! The toys haven’t missed it after all. Plastic can hardly keep herself from bouncing with relief.

The mom comes inside, too—but the Girl stops in the driveway and looks into the yard. There is a spatula there, in the light from the porch. And two dinosaur place mats. Seconds later, she is lifting StingRay and Lumphy into her warm arms.

“Lumphy! You sweetie buffalo!” she cries. “Are you okay?” And “StingRay, you’re all soggy! Did you fall out of my bag when we left the house? Let me take you inside.”

She runs indoors with them, scooping up Plastic on the way to the bedroom. She rubs a frozen Lumphy and a soggy StingRay with TukTuk and sets them on the warming-up radiator to dry overnight, clucking and
tsk
ing and being a good doctor. She makes sure they are safe, then goes over to give the rocking horse in the corner a kiss on the forehead. She squeezes Plastic and lies on her stomach to see the smaller toys, who are huddled together on a low shelf. “Hello, Sheep! Hello, Bonkers and Millie.” She picks up each toy mouse in turn. “Hello, Brownie. Oh, and hello, Rocky. Can’t forget
you
!”

On top of the radiator, Lumphy nudges StingRay. “You okay?”

“I’m okay,” she whispers.

He waits for her to ask if
he’s
okay, but she doesn’t. That is StingRay’s way. Finally, he says: “That was a dumb idea to go outside, huh?”

“Probably.”

“I’m a dumb buffalo.”

“You’re a tough and brave buffalo,” says StingRay. “It’s just, that blizzard was so, so big.”

“You think so?” he asks. “You think I’m brave?”

“I do,” she tells him.

And everything is good again, because the Girl has come home.

CHAPTER TWO
 
 In Which There Are Wonderful Costumes and Violence Occurs