Emily Jenkins: Toy Dance Party

“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

The next morning, when the family is downstairs in the kitchen, Plastic rolls over to where Lumphy and StingRay are still drying on the radiator.

“I didn’t know the toy mice had names,” she whispers to her friends. “Did you?”

Lumphy didn’t.

“I’ve been calling them Mice. Or just Mouse if there was only one,” says Plastic.

“Me too,” confesses Lumphy. “Just ‘Hey there, Mouse. Come here, Mice.’ Like that.”

“Do you think they’re mad?” worries Plastic.

“How could they be?” sniffs StingRay. “They’re only mice.”

“But we didn’t know their names!” cries Plastic.

“Speak for yourself.” StingRay flips over to get the warm radiator heat on her back. “I knew.”

“You did? Did you know what their names were ?”

“Um …” StingRay wavers. “Not exactly. But I knew they had nice mouselike names, just like they do. Like Bonko. That’s precisely the kind of name I thought she’d have.”

“Ahem,” coughs Plastic.

“What ahem?”

“Bonk ers, ” corrects Plastic. “It’s Bonk ers. Not Bonko.”

“Whatever,” sniffs StingRay. “I knew she had a name, is what I’m saying.”

“He,” says Plastic.

“What?”

“That plump mouse Bonkers is a he.”