Toy Dance Party: being the further adventures of a bossy-boots stingray, a courageous buffalo, and a hopeful round someone called Plastic

CHAPTER ONE

The Toys Are Left In

Lumphy, the stuffed buffalo, did not go with the Girl on winter vacation.

StingRay did not go, either. She thought she would. The Girl even told her she would, because she and StingRay sleep together, every single night, on the high bed with the fluffy pillows. But in the end, when the suitcases were packed and the car loaded, the Girl and her parents drove away—and StingRay was left behind.

Plastic, being only a ball, had not expected to go on the trip. No one plays with balls in snowy weather. She is here with StingRay and Lumphy in the empty house, finding it strange to have days go by without the good-natured ruckus of the people who live there. No alarm clocks, no morning bustle, no baths, no cooking smells. No laughter, no arguments, no stories read aloud.

The house is cold.

For several days—they are not sure how many—Lumphy, StingRay, and Plastic play checkers and Hungry Hungry Hippos with the toy mice and the one-eared sheep. They chat with the rocking horse in the corner and with TukTuk, the old yellow towel in the hallway bathroom. They watch television. But the hours go by much more slowly than usual. There is always the feeling of someone missing. The Girl they love.

“When is she coming back, again?” Plastic wonders one afternoon. She and Lumphy are on the windowsill, downstairs in the living room. Lumphy is watching the snow falling outside, and Plastic has been reading a book about cheese—kinds of cheese, where it comes from, and how it’s made. She is flipping the pages herself with a rolling technique she’s invented.

“The Saturday before school starts again, is what they said,” Lumphy answers. He feels sick to his stomach when he thinks about how the Girl isn’t here.

“What Saturday is that?” Plastic asks.

“I don’t know. A week is how long they’ll be gone.”

“But how long is a week?” Plastic persists.

“StingRay says five days.”

“What day is it now?” wonders Plastic. “Is it Tuesday? I think it’s maybe Tuesday.” She rocks anxiously from side to side.

“Urmph,” mumbles Lumphy. He is counting in his head.

“What are the days besides Tuesday, anyhow?” continues Plastic. “Does it go Onesday, Tuesday, Threesday, Foursday?”

“I think they have already been gone more than five days,” announces Lumphy.

“You mean we already had Tuesday?”

“I mean we already had Saturday,” says Lumphy. “I mean, the week is up.”

Fwap! Gobble-a gobble-a.

Fwap! Gobble-a gobble-a.

They are interrupted.

Fwap! Gobble-a gobble-a.

StingRay is falling down the stairs. Flipper over plush flipper, bouncing first off the wall, then off the posts beneath the banister.

Fwap! Gobble-a gobble-a.

Fwap! Gobble-a gobble-a. And then eventually: Bonk!

She lands at the bottom.

Lumphy climbs gingerly off the windowsill while Plastic bounces over to StingRay. “Are you okay?”

StingRay is lying on her back, and her head hurts where she banged it on a post, but she quickly turns over on her tummy and brushes her eye with her left flipper. “What do you mean?”

“You fell down the stairs.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I come down that way all the time on purpose.” StingRay changes the subject. “What have you been doing?”

“I was reading!” Plastic tells her. “Did you know cheese is made in caves? Because it is! You put milk in a cave and out comes cheese!”

“Of course I knew that,” says StingRay, although she didn’t. “Listen. Do you know where the playing cards are? I can’t find them anywhere and I want to play Fish.”

Plastic and Lumphy agree to help look for the cards. They search the downstairs, checking bookshelves and the drawers of the coffee table—but the cards are not there. They go upstairs: Lumphy climbing, StingRay lurching up each step with a strong push of her tail, and Plastic bouncing easily, five stairs at a time.

They look through the Girl’s bedroom again. Search under the high bed. Look behind the box that holds the board games.

Then they realize: the Girl has packed the cards. She has taken them with her on vacation, where she has not taken Lumphy, or Plastic, or StingRay.

“What else has she packed?” cries StingRay, frantic. She flops herself across the bedroom carpet. “Did she pack that book about the mouse in the dungeon?”

Plastic takes a high bounce to look on the bedside table. “It’s not here.”

“Now we’ll never find out what happens!” moans StingRay. “What else did she pack?”

Their survey reveals that the Girl has packed not only the book about the mouse in the dungeon and the deck of cards but

a box of dominoes,

a carton of LEGOs,

a paint box and a pad of art paper,

a jigsaw puzzle of a triceratops,

two Barbie dolls that don’t talk and

never have,

and a vinyl box of Barbie outfits.

“Oh no!” StingRay cries when Plastic and Lumphy present her with the total. “Why did she take all the second-rate toys and leave us?”

“There, there,” says Plastic. “She just …”

“She just what? She just forgot us, that’s what! Forgot us and took those Barbie dolls who don’t even say anything at all!”

“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?

And her dominoes?

She hardly even likes the dominoes.

She never does puzzles!

She doesn’t love me!

She’s left me!”

“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.

It’s all yellow in here!

I’m going blind.

I’ll never see another sunrise.

Lumphy will have to lead me around

so I don’t bump into furniture!”

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.

Someone’s on me!

Someone heavy!

Oh heavens!

I knew it would come to this, some horrible day.

No one loves me!

I’m being squished!

I’m blind and my friends are squishing me!”

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 tsking 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.