Toy Dance Party (4 page)

StingRay nods. Then her face crumples and her mouth turns down and her eyes squinch—and she would be crying tears if she could, and anyway, she
is
crying, just without the tears.

Frrrrrr, frrrrrr.

There is no Lumphy here to tell her not to panic.

. . . . .

Lumphy has hardly ever been in the grown-up bedroom before. The bed is lower than Honey’s but so wide it takes up almost the whole room. The closet is enormous, and through another door is a bathroom inhabited by purple towels whom Lumphy doesn’t know very well. Two tall dressers loom at the far end, and in between them is a low wooden chair with a basket on it. There are no toys, and nothing underneath the bed except a mom-sock and a cookbook.

Lumphy stomps in furious circles under the bed for several minutes. Then he emerges and begins kicking the wooden chair with his left hind leg.

That StingRay! Lumphy kicks again.

She always has to be the important one.

She always wants to make the rules.

“Hitting me with her tail,” he mutters to himself. “As if a tail is so useful. As if a tail is such a great thing to have.”

Another kick.

“I don’t know why Honey took
her
to the movies, anyway,” Lumphy grunts. “
I
would have liked to see a movie.
I
would have liked it as much as StingRay. I would have liked it
more,
actually.”

Another kick. Harder, this time, and ooohhh, the chair wobbles and—the basket on it tips. The stuff in the basket tumbles out: yarn and thread and needles and fabric. It is a craft basket, and several balls of rainbow yarn land on top of Lumphy. He jerks his head around, but that only serves to stick his horns tight into an acrylic-blend ball. He rolls on his back,

and around some more, trying to get out from under. Soon, poor Lumphy is tangled in rainbow yarn, and he can’t seem to
un
tangle, no matter how he rolls, and without thinking, he cries out, “StingRay, help!”

But no StingRay helps, this time.

And he knows: no StingRay is coming.

StingRay is wounded. Her flipper has a hole in it, made by buffalo teeth and horns.

Lumphy lies on his side, tangled in yarn.

For a long while.

Finally, when he hears the sound of the family car pulling into the driveway, Lumphy struggles to his feet. He takes something from the craft basket in his mouth and shuffles underneath the grown-up bed, his feet jumbled in yarn and his head bowed with the weight of a ball of rainbow acrylic on his horns.

. . . . .

“As soon as Honey sees me, she’ll have me mended,” StingRay tells Plastic. “She’ll be so mad that Lumphy made a hole in me, she’ll take care of it right away. Then she’ll punish Lumphy really bad.”

This idea makes Plastic nervous. “Punish him how?”

“Oh, she’ll spank him with dry spaghetti

or maybe make him drink nasty fruit-punch-tasting

medicine.

Or she’ll give him sixty-eight time-outs

where he has to sit in a bucket by himself in the hallway,” says StingRay, as if she knows.

But when Honey comes in, smelling of toothpaste and strawberry soap, she takes StingRay to bed as usual—
without noticing the hole.

How can Honey not see that there is a gaping hole in StingRay’s flipper, with stuffing peeking out? Exactly where there was no hole at all when they went to the movies and had all that specialness together?

Honey goes to sleep after ten pages of the story about the mouse in the dungeon, but StingRay lies there, awake, long after eight-thirty, patting her own wounded flipper in the dark and saying, “There, there, it’ll be okay,” because nobody else is around to say it.

. . . . .

It is midnight by the time the grown-ups fall asleep. The house is dark, and from his hiding place under the parents’ bed, Lumphy can hear the toy mice giggling. It sounds as if Highlander and Sheep are having a conversation and Plastic is in the bathroom, bouncing around. Lumphy can hear her showing off for TukTuk. Still trailing yarn, with a ball of rainbow acrylic on his head, and holding the something he got from the craft basket between his teeth, Lumphy limps to Honey’s room. It is slow going, as his feet are tangled and his head woefully heavy, but Lumphy gets there and asks the toy mice to untangle his legs and pull the ball of yarn off his horns.

Quietly, he climbs onto the high bed, where StingRay and Honey are sleeping. He taps StingRay’s tail, hoping to wake her up.

She doesn’t move.

“Psst. StingRay,” whispers Lumphy. “Look what I brought.”

She doesn’t wake.

Carefully, Lumphy takes the something in his paws. It is a needle, already threaded with blue thread. Lumphy pokes it into the edge of StingRay’s wound with his front feet, then pulls it through the other side with his buffalo teeth. Holding a bit of thread down with one foot, he loops the needle through and pulls it tight to make a knot. Then he sews up StingRay’s hole in neat stitches, pushing in with the forefeet and pulling out with the teeth, until it’s time to make another knot. He bites the thread so as not to leave any of it trailing, and scurries back to the grown-up bedroom to return his supplies to the craft basket, which Honey’s mom has straightened up.

. . . . .

StingRay wakes at five in the morning.

Her flipper feels different. Feels better. She twists her head to look at it and sees a lovely row of royal blue stitches, almost invisible unless you were looking for them. She is fixed. She is good as new!

At first she thinks Honey must have done it, but Honey is sound asleep with her mouth slightly open, and StingRay has to admit that Honey never wakes at night unless she has a nightmare.

StingRay moves to the edge of the bed and peeks over to see if any toys are awake. Nobody is. Sheep is tipped over beneath Highlander and the mice are cuddled together under the toy box where they like to hide.

Lumphy has returned. He’s asleep in his favorite spot on the fringed pillow on the floor.

But what’s that? StingRay leaps down and scoots over to look more closely. A piece of royal blue thread trails from Lumphy’s mouth. It is the same thread as StingRay’s stitches.

Now StingRay understands. Lumphy must have done it.

StingRay doesn’t know how he managed, but Lumphy must have sewed her up.

With blue.

A beautiful, wonderful color of blue, which is already the best color of all the colors there are in the world.

If that isn’t an apology, StingRay decides, it is something awfully close.

Maybe it is even something better.

CHAPTER THREE
 
 The Garbage-Eating Shark (Which Is Not the Same as the Possible Shark)

O
ne evening, Lumphy, Plastic, StingRay, and Sheep are watching a documentary about beagle dogs on television. Honey and her parents are out at a nighttime party.

During the commercials, Sheep has been telling everyone all about the time she went outdoors and there was actual grass and she chewed it when nobody was looking.

Sheep tells this story a lot. She doesn’t seem to remember that everyone has heard it before.

Plastic isn’t paying attention. She is wondering why beagle dogs seem familiar, even though she doesn’t think she has ever seen a beagle dog.

When the show is over, there comes a documentary called
Great White Sharks: Fearsome Fiends of the Briny Deep.

“Shark! Shark!” cries Plastic, bouncing vigorously. “I got eaten by a shark once!”

“Oh no,” mumbles StingRay. She is afraid of sharks. In particular, she is afraid of the kind that is so big it could eat garbage. Or a plush stingray. And not even notice that it wasn’t eating food.

“I mean,” says Plastic, correcting herself, “I
nearly
got eaten by a shark.”

“You did?” asks Lumphy. Because Plastic has never said a word until now.

“Well, a possible shark. A garbage-eating, ball-eating possible shark. Yes!” cries Plastic. “At the beach one time. I know all about these guys.”

She is excited to see what they look like on TV, because the one that carried her around in its mouth at the beach was not anything she got an especially good look at.

StingRay announces she is going upstairs. “It’s eight o’clock,” she says, over her shoulder. “And since eight-thirty is when I always go to sleep with Honey, I should start getting ready for bed.”

“But she’s not here. She’s at a nighttime party,” notes Lumphy.

“I don’t want to be off-schedule tomorrow,” StingRay demurs.

“Won’t you stay and watch the sharks?” asks Plastic, twirling. “The sharks are going to eat stuff with their big big teeth!”

“I wish I could, but it’s my bedtime,” says StingRay. “You have your fun.” She lurches up the steps.

On the television, an enormous fish with teeth charges through the water to eat a piece of meat that is hanging off the back of a boat.

“Hm,” says Plastic.

Now another enormous fish swims past the camera, then eats a baby seal.

“Hm,” says Plastic again.

“What?” asks Lumphy.

“I don’t want to say,” says Plastic.

“You can’t say ‘hm’ over and over without saying what you mean.”

“It’s just … it’s not the same kind of shark, I guess,” says Plastic.

“That ate you?”

“Mine had fur,” says Plastic. “And went on four legs. And it was spotty, like the beagle dogs.”

“It was furry?” asks Sheep.

“Yes. And it made that same barky noise, like the beagle dogs do.”

“Then it wasn’t a shark,” says Sheep.

“It wasn’t?”

“Sharks are fish,” explains Sheep. “I thought everybody knew that.”

They watch for a few minutes as a scientist explains that sharks
do
eat garbage by mistake sometimes, and that dead sharks have been found with license plates, tires, and hunks of wood inside their stomachs.

“Hm,” says Plastic.

“What?” Lumphy wants to know. “What ‘hm’?”

“I think I was eaten by a beagle dog, then,” says Plastic. “Not a shark.”

“Being eaten by a beagle dog is still scary,” says Lumphy, comfortingly.

. . . . .

Two days later, Honey comes upstairs after school holding a large package that has arrived in the mail. It is a cardboard box. The return address reads “Grandpa” and then a street name and number.

StingRay is watching from on top of the high bed with the fluffy pillows. Lumphy and Plastic are watching from a shelf. Honey plonks the box on the carpet beside her bed and kneels down to rip the tape off the outside.

Inside the box is something wrapped in bubble wrap and surrounded by small pieces of Styrofoam. Honey looks at the present but doesn’t bother to take it out right away. Instead, she grabs the top piece of bubble wrap and begins popping the bubbles with sharp snaps.

“Honey?” her mom calls up the stairs. “Shay’s dad is on the phone. He wants to know if we’d all like to go over there for the afternoon.”

Honey drops her bubble wrap, grabs her box of Barbie dolls and clothes, and runs downstairs. “Taking the silent Barbies again,” mutters StingRay.

There is a sudden movement on the floor.

The cardboard box is rocking from side to side.

It is actually hopping and jerking across the carpet like a fish out of water. And it is making a noise.

Grunk! Gru-GRUNK!

Grunk! Gru-GRUNK!

The thing that’s wrapped in bubble wrap wants to get out.

Plastic and Lumphy leap onto the high bed and cuddle up to StingRay.

Grunk! Gru-GRUNK! goes the cardboard box.

It scoots across the floor, rocking and jerking.

Grunk! Gru-GRUNK!

They can hear Styrofoam peanuts crunching and the bubbles of the bubble wrap popping.

Pippity-pop, gru-GRUNK!

Pippity-pop, gru-GRUNK!

Finally, a voice like a bugle yells from inside the box. “I got my head out. The head is out, people!”

The toys look at one another.

The voice continues: “Anyone here with hands or teeth? Hands or teeth, anyone?”

Lumphy has teeth. But he doesn’t mention them. He is not feeling very tough and brave, somehow.

StingRay can do a lot with her flippers; they are almost like hands—but she doesn’t mention them, either.

The bugle voice comes again. “The kid left me tied up in here.”

Silence.

Plastic is relieved that she doesn’t have any hands or teeth like the cardboard box is asking for.

“I don’t think they’re supposed to do that, are they?” the voice goes on. “They usually take you out and play with you, right?”

The one-eared sheep rolls across the carpet and sniffs the box. “Did you say something about teeth?” she asks, dimly.

“Teeth! Yeah. Anyone with teeth?”

“I don’t hear very well,” explains Sheep. “It’s my ear, you see. I lost it.”

“I can’t see your missing ear. I can’t see jack!” yells the thing in the box.

“I have teeth,” Sheep tells it. “Once, I went outside and there was actual grass and I chewed it when Honey wasn’t looking. I even got some clover, I think. Actual grass, can you believe it?”