Toy Dance Party (8 page)

“I know,” says Frank. “That’s how this life is.”

. . . . .

Lumphy hangs on a clothesline in the bright spring air of the backyard, where he watches Honey and her mother plant petunias. When he is dry, Honey takes him down and brings him indoors. “We’re going on a sleepover,” she tells him.

She shoves Lumphy in her backpack along with Plastic, StingRay, a box of glitter makeup, clean clothes, a toothbrush, and a pair of pajamas. Quite a tight fit indeed. Lumphy’s hind end is squashed to one side and the toothbrush is poking him in the stomach, while StingRay’s left flipper is twisted behind her back and her nose is jammed up against a button.

“Sleepover! Sleepover!” whispers Plastic, joyfully, when the zipper is shut.

“What is it, anyhow?” Lumphy wants to know.

Plastic has no idea.

“A sleepover is when you build a loft,” says StingRay. “It’s way high in the air, up in a tree,

“Hooray!” says Plastic. “I can’t wait.”

“I wish we didn’t have to go in this backpack,” complains Lumphy. “It’s too small, too dark, and it smells like permanent marker.”

Just then, Honey unzips the backpack and takes StingRay out. “I forgot, you don’t like the backpack, do you?” she says, giving StingRay a kiss where StingRay’s cheeks would be if she had cheeks. “I’ll carry you in my arms.”

Specialness! Specialness forever and ever! StingRay can’t help smiling as Honey zips the backpack closed.

Lumphy and Plastic are in the dark. “How come she remembers that StingRay doesn’t like the backpack, but she doesn’t remember that
I
don’t like the backpack?” mutters Lumphy.

Plastic doesn’t know. She doesn’t like the backpack, either.

. . . . .

The sleepover is not like StingRay said it would be. It is at Honey’s friend Shay’s house, in Shay’s bedroom. Shay’s bedroom is not
over
anything. Actually, it is on the ground floor.

Honey is sleeping over
night
at Shay’s.

“Now I get it. This is the indoor over
night
kind of sleepover,” says StingRay while the girls are in the kitchen eating dinner. “You know, she didn’t say it was
that
kind. If she’d said it was
that
kind, I would have explained it to you.”

“That’s okay,” says Plastic. But she is disappointed.

The toys are sitting on a blow-up mattress on Shay’s floor. When the girls finish eating, they come in and play Clue until Shay discovers it was Colonel Mustard in the conservatory with the lead pipe. Then they put glitter makeup on each other. Shay also puts glitter makeup on her stuffed duck while Honey tries on dress-up clothes.

StingRay would really like some glitter makeup.

Plastic would really like some glitter makeup, too.

Even Lumphy would not mind some glitter makeup, so long as he could wash it off, later.

But Honey isn’t playing with them, checking on them, or even talking about them. She is
pulling her Barbie box
out of a plastic shopping bag. She brought that stupid box and those silent Barbies along on the sleepover!

Finally, they pack up and it seems as if maybe they’re going to do something with Lumphy, StingRay, and Plastic—but instead, they jump on the blow-up bed and perform a circus extravaganza for Shay’s mom, complete with capes, a clown wig, tumbling, and faux-tightrope walking.

Plastic likes the circus, because it’s very bouncy. She wishes she could perform in it—but she isn’t invited. Lumphy and StingRay can’t even see it. They have fallen off the bed, what with all the jumping, and are lying on the floor—upside down in a pile of dress-up clothes—and missing the entire extravaganza.

Frankly, the whole sleepover is pretty boring and sometimes upsetting.

The girls put on nightgowns and wash themselves in the bathroom, then come back and lie in bed with the lights out, whispering. Whispering so much, StingRay doesn’t even get much of a cuddle.

It is very late indeed before their talk dwindles. StingRay, used to going to bed with Honey every night at eight-thirty, sulks herself to sleep long before Lumphy and Plastic deem the house quiet enough to begin moving around.

“Did you see that upside-down spinny thing they did in the circus extravaganza?” asks Plastic, giving a bounce. “I wonder if I could do that.”

“I couldn’t see,” sighs Lumphy. “I was underneath a cape.”

“I saw it,” pipes up Shay’s duck with the glitter makeup. “It’s called a handstand forward roll.”

“Then I would probably need hands for it, huh?” Plastic rolls over to the duck.

“Probably.”

“How do you do?” says Plastic. “I’m a ball.”

“I can tell,” says the duck. “My name is Buttermilk.”

Introductions are made, and Buttermilk explains that all the other toys who talk are in the basement playroom, not the ground-floor bedroom. Shay sleeps with Buttermilk, so the duck almost never gets to talk to anybody unless she navigates the stairs, which is hard to do without legs or sizable flippers. But Shay is kind to her. It is not a bad life, even though Buttermilk is lonely.

“You look excellent with all that makeup on,” says Plastic. “I wish I had some. I could be a glitter ball!”

“I think they’re going to have to wash me,” says the duck, nervously.

“Don’t be scared,” says Lumphy. “I’ve been in a washing machine lots of times, and it’s not bad at all. In fact, it’s—” He breaks off, thinking of Frank and the Dryer.

“What?” asks Buttermilk.

“I have a friend,” says Lumphy. “She’s having repairs. I don’t know if she’ll get better.”

“Who’s having repairs?” asks Plastic.

“The Dryer.”

“Oh dearie,” says Plastic, and falls silent.

“She was all pulled from the wall with wires showing,” Lumphy continues. “Frank is really upset.”

“Isn’t there something you can do?” asks Buttermilk.

Lumphy shakes his head. “I don’t think so. I tried to think of a get-well present, but it’s hard to find a present for a dryer. She doesn’t play games or wear clothes or eat or read. She can’t even talk right now.”

“Oh.” Buttermilk is on Shay’s bed, and she waddles around Shay’s sleeping body to the windowsill. “Look outside,” she says.

Plastic and Lumphy join her.

“You can wish on a star,” says Buttermilk as they gaze at the sky. “That’s what I do when there’s nothing else.”

“That’s what StingRay said you could do at sleepovers!” cries Plastic. “Make wishes on stars!”

“Sometimes my wishes come true,” offers Buttermilk.

“What do you wish for?” Lumphy asks.

“One time I wished for visitors,” says the duck. “And now you’re here.”

“We’re here! We’re here!” Plastic spins herself in a circle.

“I also wished for new books, and Shay got a library card.”

“Ooh!” Plastic likes that idea.

“And I wished for Shay to stop snoring.”

“So let’s wish,” says Plastic. “We’ll pick three different stars and all wish for the Dryer to get better.”

“But she might not, anyway,” Lumphy worries.

“They don’t always come true,” concedes Buttermilk as Shay rolls over in her sleep and begins to snore.

“Yes, but then we know we
tried
to get her better,” says Plastic. “Then at least we
did
something.”

So Lumphy picks a star to the right, and Buttermilk picks a star to the left, and Plastic picks one high up near the moon. And they all wish.

. . . . .

“A sleepover is fun for kids,” announces StingRay to Spark and Sheep when Honey brings them home. “However, it is not fun for buffaloes and stingrays and balls, because all they get to do is

“Plus you have to go in the backpack to get to it,” adds Lumphy. “And there’s a new weird smell in there.”

“I made a friend!” cries Plastic. “Her name is Buttermilk. We wished on stars!”

“Was there grass?” wonders Sheep, hopefully. “Or maybe clover?”

Plastic shakes her head. Or rather, she shakes her whole self. “There were handstand forward rolls,” she says. But neither Spark nor Sheep is particularly interested.

. . . . .

On Wednesday afternoon, Honey and Lumphy are watching television in the living room when the workman comes again for the Dryer. He goes down to the basement with a toolbox and a new part.

Lumphy is thinking so much about Frank and the Dryer, he cannot concentrate on the TV. The show is about some kids who drink pink milk, and Lumphy does not wonder why the milk is pink, or how it got pink, or why they like it pink—the way he would ordinarily. He is strategizing how he can get to the basement without waiting until everyone in the house has gone to sleep.

What can he do?

There is nothing sticky nearby that he can get on his fur.

And he cannot move in front of Honey.

Luckily, Honey decides she wants to make pink milk. She turns off the TV and brings Lumphy to the kitchen. Her mother is in the basement, watching the workman, and her father is not home from work yet. Honey opens the fridge. And the freezer. And two cupboards.

Honey puts all these ingredients on the table and begins mixing them in a bowl. She mashes up the strawberries with her fingers and scoops in most of the ice cream from the carton. Then she adds milk and a big squirt of ketchup. Some of the ketchup gets on the table.

A chance! As Honey searches for a whisk, Lumphy tips himself into the puddle of condiment.

“Not again,” Honey scolds when she sees him. “You are the messiest buffalo.”

But—she doesn’t bring Lumphy to the basement. Instead, she wets a dishrag and wipes the ketchup from his body. “You didn’t get any in your woolly front fur,” she tells him. “So I think we can just wipe it off.”

That was not supposed to happen. Lumphy needs to get to the basement as soon as possible. An operation is going on down there!

Honey picks up the half tomato and squeezes the juice into her bowl. Then chili sauce and a few shakes of barbecue. She adds some yogurt and a handful of flour. Her experiment is only a light pink color. She whisks and whisks.

Now she adds frozen raspberries. These make the milky mixture quite a bit pinker, but now it is lumpy. She adds pimientos. Now it is
very
lumpy.

“I need a sieve,” Honey says to herself, and rummages for one in a low cupboard. She finds it, gets a large mug, and begins to strain the pink milk.

Lumphy sees his opportunity. The sieve is an inch away from his nose, and Honey is holding it with one hand and pouring with the other—but she is not holding the mug. He takes a risk, while she is concentrating, and—

Bonk!

Lumphy bangs his nose into the sieve and tips the mug over. The pink milk spills across the table, under Lumphy’s buffalo belly, and over the edge to the floor. Honey drops the sieve and knocks Lumphy into the puddle of milk. She runs for the dishrag and some paper towels. “Mom!”

Lumphy lies there, triumphant, letting the pink disgustingness soak into his fur.

Any minute now he’ll be in the basement.

. . . . .

When Lumphy arrives, the Dryer is still pulled out from the wall, her front door completely off. The workman has a collection of tools spread across the floor, but he is sitting on a plastic lawn chair with a tired expression on his face.

It doesn’t look good.

Honey’s mother shoves Lumphy into Frank’s washtub and grabs TukTuk and some Girl-clothes out of the full laundry basket. She loads the washer and goes back upstairs to deal with the pink milk problem.

The cycle begins. When the water rushes in, Lumphy can no longer hear what’s going on in the basement. And he can’t talk to Frank, because Frank won’t answer with the repairman in the room.

“Hi,” Lumphy whispers to TukTuk. “Do you know what’s happening with the Dryer?”

“Why would I know?” says TukTuk.

“You were in the laundry basket. Maybe you heard something.”

“I don’t hear about anything that goes on in this house,” fusses TukTuk. “Not that you would care.”

“I care,” says Lumphy, surprised. He has never known TukTuk to be anything but kind and calm.