Toys Come Home Read Online Free PDF

supposed to feel, but fear washes over her instead. Fear, like a cold wave that creeps up her tail and across her belly. Frrrrrr, Frrrrrr.
    Because now StingRay knows something she really and truly did not know before. A life can be over.
    “Was he your friend?” asks TukTuk gently. “I’m very sorry.”
    “No,” says StingRay, truthfully. “But he was the Girl’s friend.”
    . . . . .
    The other toys take the shredding of Bobby Dot very calmly. “Too bad, too bad. But no one lasts forever,” squeaks one toy mouse, and the others take up her cry: “No one lasts forever! No one lasts forever!” until one of them spots a Cheerio dropped on the rug and scoots over to practice chewing it. The others follow to lend encouragement.
    The rocking horse just nods seriously when StingRay tells him. And Sheep opens one eye from her slumber to ask, “Bobby who?”
    “The walrus.”
    “The walrus who used to be here a long time ago?”
    “He was here yesterday morning.”
    Sheep squints. “I thought it was a long time ago. What did you say happened with him?”
    StingRay can’t face explaining it again. She changes the subject.
    The toys don’t care much, but the Girl is bereft. When her parents tell her what happened to Bobby Dot, her face swells with all the crying. She whimpers “Walrus, walrus” before bed each night, and starts the morning with a solemn look on her face. Even after her health improves, she looks wan.
    On the third day of this grief, the Girl picks up StingRay at bedtime and takes her to the high bed. She sobs a bit—“Walrus, walrus”—but snuggles her damp face against StingRay’s soft plush body and seems consoled.
    The high bed! Specialness!
    The Girl! Wants StingRay!
    On the high bed!
    Oh, specialness, specialness!
    Being up there, cuddling and falling asleep, is the best feeling StingRay has ever had in her short life.
    And yet, she wakes up in the middle of the night. Thinking about Bobby Dot. Thinking about how, now that he’s gone, she feels as if she’s supposed to have liked him. As if she should remember nice things about the departed.
    Only, she didn’t like him.
    Sometimes, she even wished he would disappear so she could sleep on the high bed instead of him.
    And now he has.
    Now StingRay—who thought Bobby Dot so horrid for saying “Better her than me” when Sheep was being thrown across the yard—now StingRay herself is thinking: “Better him than me.” Thinking it quite a lot, actually.
    It is a bad thought.
    But sleeping on the high bed is good.
    Now, while the Girl is sad, StingRay is happy.
    Does that make StingRay a bad person?
    The joy, the guilt, the loss, and the relief: all these feelings toss around inside her in the night, while StingRay stares at the ceiling, cozy under the heavy arm of the sleeping Girl.

CHAPTER FOUR

You Can Puke on Me
    T he Girl’s next birthday is six weeks after the end of Bobby Dot.
    Or maybe eight or nine weeks.
    Or possibly four.
    StingRay is not very good at measuring time. Though she wouldn’t want to admit that out loud.
    “It’s been a bunch of weeks, anyway,” she thinks to herself. “I know it’s been a bunch of weeks.”
    As a birthday surprise, the Girl’s parents buy her a new walrus—exactly the same model as before. It arrives in a cloud of pink tissue paper on the morning that is both the party and the Actual Day of Birth. The walrus is fat and walnut brown, just like Bobby Dot was, but its eyes have a flat unfocused look that make it seem more like furniture than someone to care about.
    The Girl tries to love the new walrus. When she first receives it, she gives it a big hug, and in the days after, StingRay sees her cuddle it and talk to it and put necklaces on it, but never for very long. Always, after a couple of minutes, the walrus is flung to the floor in favor of something else. The Girl can’t even think of a name for it—just calls it No-Name Walrus.
    Even when the toys are alone, No-Name Walrus