Being the Adventures of a Knowledgeable Stingray, a Toughy Little Buffalo, and Someone Called Plastic (3 page)

On the fifth night, Plastic remembers TukTuk. The towel knows about dental floss and fingernail clippers. Maybe she knows about plastics, too.

Plastic has only met TukTuk once before, and she feels embarrassed as she creeps down the hall and stops outside the bathroom door. Maybe TukTuk will not want a visit from a small, confused plastic. After all, she is used to large and furry friends like Lumphy.

But Plastic can’t go on anymore, staring out the window, doing nothing all night.

Slowly, she enters the bathroom.

TukTuk is lying in a pile. The night-light in the bathroom glows a comforting pink, and the air is still warm from the Little Girl’s bath.

“Excuse my appearance,” says TukTuk, who can’t get around on her own. “Plastic, isn’t it? I’m always like this after the bath. Damp. On the floor. I’d like an iron and a fold, but this disarray is all that can be managed. Glad to see you nonetheless.”

Plastic begins to cry. TukTuk seems like everything a towel should be. So nice, so floppy, and just so … so very towelly.

“Oh, Plastic!” soothes TukTuk. “There, there. Come, wipe yourself on my corner. I don’t mind.”

Plastic has a good long cry, and feels a little better. “I’m a rotten plastic,” she sniffs to TukTuk. “I’ve lost my fur. I don’t know my habitat, or my eating habits, or
whether I build a nest or run in a herd. I’m not even sure I like what plastics
are,
anyway.”

A big tear rolls onto the bathroom tile, and she begins mumbling about Fake, Artificial, and polymeri-something-or-other.

“Oh, my dear,” comforts TukTuk. “You’re upset about nothing.”

“It’s not nothing! It’s plastic-ness!”

“Listen. I have something to tell you.”

“You do?”

“It’s important. Are you ready?”

Plastic thinks she is.

“You are not a plastic.”

“I’m not?” Plastic isn’t sure if she is happy or un-.

“Plastic is just your name,” says TukTuk. “It’s obvious, to anyone who knows anything, precisely what you are.”

“It is?”

“Of course. You are a rubber ball.”

“I am?”

“I’ve seen balls before you, I’ll see balls after you. A ball is what you are,” says TukTuk. “Tell me, do you bounce?”

“Yes!” cries Plastic. “I do!” And she bounces once, very high, for show.

“And do you roll?”

“Yes!” Plastic rolls around the bathroom until she crashes into the base of the toilet.

“And have you got front legs and back legs?”

“Um, not exactly,” says Plastic, who most certainly doesn’t have any.

“And no fur whatsoever?”

“No.”

“That’s normal for a ball, you know.”

“What about how I don’t have very much nose?”

“You mean, how you don’t have
any
nose?”

“Um … yes,” says Plastic.

“That’s normal, too,” explains TukTuk.

Plastic feels relieved.

“I have been around a long time,” says TukTuk. “And I have never seen a ball with fur, or legs, or a nose. You’re a ball, Plastic,” says the towel, wrapping her terry-cloth corners around her friend. “Don’t let anyone tell you different.”

“I’m a ball!” cries Plastic. “A ball, ball, ball!”

Suddenly, she feels bouncy again. Really, really bouncy. She jumps in the tub and rolls around super-fast. She bounces herself so high she hits the ceiling. “A ball!”

“Enough, now. I need a rest,” says TukTuk.

“All right.” Plastic stops bouncing for a second and gives the towel a kiss.

Then she goes rolling,
bouncing,
rolling,
bouncing,
bounce, bounce, bouncing
down the hall to the bedroom.

CHAPTER THREE
The Terrifying Bigness of the Washing Machine

L
umphy has peanut butter on him. Here is how it happened.

He went on a picnic! The Little Girl and her father walked to a park, where there was a big pond and lots of grass and sunshine. The Girl carried Lumphy all the way there, holding on to his tail (it didn’t hurt), and then they all three sat on a patchwork blanket and
ate peanut butter and jam sandwiches, round green apples, and dried pineapple. They threw rocks into the pond.

Then the sky turned dark and it started to rain. The Girl and her father ran home as fast as they could, with Lumphy in the picnic basket.

The lid of the peanut butter jar was not on tight. Lumphy jounced and joggled and got goo all across his face and front legs. It was very greasy. When they arrived home, the Girl wiped him with a paper napkin, but he is still a very peanut-buttery buffalo.

The father says Lumphy will have to be washed.

“I don’t see what the problem is,” says Lumphy to StingRay, later that evening. The Little Girl is out for Chinese food with her parents, and the two of them are building block towers on the shaggy rug.

“You’re dirty,” says StingRay, placing a block on top of her pile.

“It’s not dirt. It’s food.”

“Food
is
dirt when it’s mashed in your fur.”

“No it isn’t. It’s food. Why would it be dirt in your fur, but nice and tasty anywhere else?”

“It would be dirt if it was on the rug,” says StingRay. “Or on the sofa.”

“Food isn’t dirty, or you wouldn’t eat it. I have some nice clean food on me. I don’t see that it’s a problem that needs washing.”

“If people think it’s dirty, then it is,” StingRay claims.

Plastic rolls by on her way to visit the rocking horse in the corner. “People bigger than you,” she chimes in. “If people bigger than you think it’s dirty—that’s when it is.”

“Clean is better than dirty,” explains StingRay. “Like neat is better than messy,

“I like orange,” mutters Lumphy.

“Some people do,” allows StingRay, lining up her blocks in a neat row. “But blue is better.”

Lumphy does not want to be washed, especially after what TukTuk told him earlier about the bumpity washing machine in the basement—how you go round and round in soapy water, and how it makes you dizzy and sick to your stomach.

Lumphy asks StingRay if she knows anything about washing machines.

“Not from personal experience,” StingRay admits. She is “dry clean only” and has never gotten wet. But she has a lot to say about basements. “They are dark and full of rats,” she explains. “And there are spiders in the corners with fifty-eight legs,

I don’t know why you would go to a basement to get clean,” muses StingRay. “Because basements are dirty places.”

… …

That night, Lumphy tells Plastic and StingRay he’ll be going away for a while. He keeps his planned hiding place top-secret, even from his friends. He doesn’t want to take any chances of being discovered.

Then he creeps into the closet, squeezing himself back behind a shoe box on the floor. He figures that if the Little Girl doesn’t see him for a few weeks, she’ll forget all about washing him. When he emerges from the closet he’ll still be greasy—but she’ll think that’s just the way he is, not anything that needs to change.

“I am a greasy buffalo,” he says to himself, and it sounds pretty tough.

For three days, he waits in the closet with only dust and socks for company. He hopes his peanutty smell doesn’t give him away.

He waits …

He does not come out, even when the Little Girl is at school or asleep, because what if she came home early or woke up from a nightmare? He can’t risk it.

He is lonely, all by himself in the closet.

One day, the Little Girl is searching for a particular pair of socks. She opens the door and begins rummaging right near where Lumphy is hiding. She’s moving shoes and boxes and other bits of clutter. “Peanut butter,” she says to her mother. “What smells like peanut butter?”

Lumphy dives headfirst into a soccer shoe. It is muddy from the Girl’s practice the day before. He’s too big for it,
and has to scrunch his head all the way down into the toe in order to hide. Even then, his bottom is sticking out pretty far, and he is so worried about being found that his tail wags back and forth without him doing it on purpose. He holds his breath and tries to stop his tail. It won’t stop.

He tries to squeeze his bottom in, so it won’t be sticking out.

It won’t squeeze.

He tries not to smell like peanut butter. But he stinks.

The Little Girl roots around in the closet for eight days. Well, it is really eight minutes, but it

Finally, finally, finally, the Girl finds her particular sock and goes away.

Lumphy tries to get out.

He wiggles. He woggles.

He grunts, and humphs, and pushes.

But he’s still in the shoe, with his bottom sticking out.

“Help!” he yells, but he is too deep in for anyone to hear him.

It is a long day. And a long night. Stuck in the shoe.

Around 4 a.m., the one-eared sheep wanders into the closet, following an interesting smell that she smells. Lumphy can tell it is her, because she makes a snorty noise when she walks. “What are you doing in there?” Sheep wants to know.

“Hrmmphle wurrffle,” says Lumphy.

“Come out. I can’t hear you.”

“Wurrffle wummpffle!”

“What? Sorry,” says the sheep. “It’s my ear. I’ve lost it.”

“Wurrffle wummpffle purrmple!”

Sheep doesn’t understand. She is distracted by the tasty-looking lace of the soccer shoe. It’s not grass, and it’s not clover, but it looks pretty chewable to the sheep.

She settles down next to the shoe and has herself a lovely munch, pulling the lace out bit by bit. She hears a Wurrffle Wummmpffle noise, and it’s irritating, but she doesn’t let it bother her. Pretty soon the sound quiets down to nothing.

When she is done chewing the lace, Sheep is mildly surprised to find herself in the closet. She burps and goes out to play pick-up sticks with the toy mice.

… …

Two hours later, Lumphy (who fell asleep wedged in the dampness of the soccer shoe) wakes up to find he can
lift his head. The lace has been chewed into fourteen small pieces, and without it, the shoe flops open. Lumphy waggles his shoulders and stands up. Then he steps gingerly out, and creeps into the bedroom to find the one-eared sheep dozing on the rug.

“Thanks,” he whispers, nuzzling her woolly face. “You’re a true friend.”

Sheep has no idea what he is talking about.

Just then, the Little Girl rolls over and makes a mumbly noise. She is waking up!

Rumpa lumpa, rumpa lumpa—Lumphy gallops at top speed and dives behind the rocking horse in the corner.

The Girl stands and puts on her clothes. Then she begins looking around—under the bed, behind the bookshelf, even in the back of the closet, where Lumphy used to be hiding!

She’s searching the room as if she’s lost something,
rooting through the toy shelf, tossing whirly tops and colored markers and board games and mice every which way.

Then Lumphy hears a sad sound. He has heard it before, but not often. The Little Girl is crying. “He’s not here!” she wails. “I need him!”

Lumphy peeks through the legs of the rocking horse so he can see the Girl’s face. Her cheeks are wet.

“Lumphy, Lumphy!” The Girl throws herself on the bed, buries her face in the pillow, and weeps.

She misses me,
Lumphy realizes.
She thinks I’m gone forever.

The idea had never occurred to him.

He rushes out from behind the horse.

Ag! He remembers the washing machine and runs back behind the horse’s legs.

Ag! The Little Girl is
crying!
Out again.

Ag! The washer. Back behind the legs.

Crying!

Out.

Washer!

Back.

Cry!

Wash!

Out!

Back!

Ag!

Lumphy cannot stand it anymore. He loves the Little Girl and he hates to make her cry. So although he is desperately afraid of the washing machine—and of the deep, dark basement with its ghosts, and rats, and axe murderers—he creeps out from behind the horse while the Little Girl is sobbing into her pillow.