Toys Come Home by Emily Jenkins Read Free Book Online Page B

you stop eating when you’re full? My hippo was full a long time ago.”
    “More marbles are best because it’s winning,” answers StingRay.
    “Is it winning, though, if my hippo overeats and gets a tummyache?”
    “Hippos don’t get tummyaches,” says StingRay. “Hippos think more is better because it’s winning.”
    “My hippo is feeling sick!” says Lumphy, crossly.
    Feet sound on the stairs and StingRay and Lumphy stop playing and lie cutely on the floor. The toys can hardly believe it, but nearly a year has passed since Lumphy’s arrival and today is the Girl’s birthday party. She is old enough now that her party is at a bowling alley (whatever that is), and when she comes in she’s wearing a special dress with ruffly lace at the bottom. She putters around the room, putting barrettes in her hair and looking at herself in the mirror.
    Lumphy wants to go to the party. He has never been to a party before, and he thinks it sounds like something he would like a lot. He wonders if there will be dancing.
    StingRay wants to go to the party, too. She wonders if there will be ruffly lace for her to wear.
    “Honey!” the mommy calls up the stairs. “Time to go!”
    The Girl grabs StingRay and Lumphy and shoves them into the backpack. It smells like—like what?
    StingRay thinks it smells like sour milk. Lumphy thinks it smells like pencil shavings.
    “Sour milk.”
    “No, pencil shavings.”
    “Sour milk.”
    “No, pencil shavings.”
    Lumphy nips StingRay’s plush flipper with his buffalo teeth.
    StingRay pokes Lumphy in the eye with the tip of her tail.
    Buh-buh bump! The backpack goes down the stairs.
    Whoosh! It swings out the door, and—
    Plunk! Drops into the trunk of the car.
    “Maybe we shouldn’t play that hippo game together anymore,” says Lumphy, feeling sorry and sick to his stomach. “I think it makes me cranky.”
    “I think it makes you cranky, too.”
    “Bowling will be better.”
    “We should definitely bowl.”
    Their quarrel over, StingRay wraps her tail around Lumphy’s middle. They wait out the car ride together.
    “Hey,” says Lumphy, as the car engine turns off. “What’s bowling again?”
    “Bowling is …” StingRay pauses for a moment because she wants to give Lumphy an answer, wants to feel important and helpful, but doesn’t actually know. “Bowling is when everybody drinks ginger ale from bowls instead of cups,” she says, eventually. “And wears bowls on their heads, kind of like hats,
    and has their hair cut in the shapes of the bowls!
    They all play drums with chopsticks on the bowls on each other’s heads.
    Bowling is also when there are especially big bowls filled with warm soapy water,
    and people wash their feet in them,
    which is a good thing to do at birthday
    parties because then everybody has really clean feet after,
    plus new haircuts,
    so they all feel fresh,
    and nobody is ever thirsty because of all the bowls of ginger ale.”
    “Okay,” says Lumphy. “Let’s definitely do that.”
    “Definitely.”
    “Although, not the washing part.”
    “No,” says StingRay.
    “Or the haircuts.”
    “Not the haircuts, either. Just the hats and the drumming.”
    “Exactly,” says Lumphy.
    . . . . .
    At the bowling alley, the Girl opens the backpack and swings Lumphy and StingRay by their tails as the parents greet guests. When everyone is there, the children all change shoes and take turns standing in front of a long wooden pathway, rolling heavy round objects, kind of like giant marbles, toward groups of wooden bottles.
    The adults yell “Strike!” and “Spare!” and “Not the gutter, not the gutter!”
    A few of the children cry.
    Lumphy and StingRay sit on the pile of jackets and watch. Lumphy wonders where the bowls of warm soapy water and ginger ale are, but he doesn’t say anything. Instead he asks, in a whisper: “What is the point? With the round things and the bottles. What’s the point?”
    “Winning,” says