The Creeps had been watching Ollie even before he had been named a favorite. They had suspected that he would become a “fave.” And the park was where the Creeps intended to toynap Ollie. The Creeps were stunted, scroungy creatures assembled from faded and rusty bits of machines, wires, garbage, and torn-up toys. They weren’t much larger than kittens, but they more than lived up to their name: they were deeply creepy, indeed.
The Creeps usually went on their missions in units of five, and each Creep had a specific task.
Creep 1 kept a constant eye on the favorited toy. They were missioned to “secure and deliver” any favorite toy, which in Creep speak was called “a Fave.”
Creep 2 was always on the lookout for anyone or anything that might see them. Dogs were a major problem. Unlike adult humans, dogs paid close attention to the world around them. If a dog heard, or saw, or smelled the Creeps and came to investigate, Creep 2 would whisper “Ruff-Ruff coming!” and they’d get ready to run and hide, or drive the dog away with tiny stink bombs, which every Creep carried for defense.
Creeps 3 and 4 were in charge of capturing and carrying away the Fave. They were armed with a variety of nets, hooks, and strings for binding.
Creep 5 was the leader and was called “the Super Creep” or just “the Super.”
The Creeps were extremely good at blending in. They always traveled in shady parts of yards and parks, or in street drains and pipes. If they ever came close to being seen by a human, they would collapse on the ground and lie very still. To anyone who noticed, they looked just like little clutters of trash.
Billy and Ollie were totally oblivious to the Creeps. They had no idea that every time they left the house, the Creeps were following them. They had no idea that when they went to the park, the Creeps stealthily watched their every move. And when Billy and Ollie settled into a good game, the Creeps were never very far away, spying and plotting.
And so it was that on this particular day Billy had decided the swing sets would be a good place to start their huge A-venture. Ollie was hanging out of Billy’s backpack as they swung. They were in dinosaur times. Billy and Ollie were pterodactyls swooping through prehistoric skies. Just a couple of trees away, in a bank of thick shrubs, the Creeps were keenly observing. They spoke in gargly whispers:
Creep 1: Now they swing on the sets. the Billy boy has the fave in a pack-’n-the-back-back-back.
Creep 3: We can shoot down from the tree limb low, the limb ’bove the swing.
Creep 4: Yeah! And share the pack-’n-the-back! pull it up and take the fave already inside!
Super Creep: Don’t be a dip! too many ways to get glimpsed! there’s mummies and dads by the skads. they’d be freakin’ and screamin’ and chasin’ and grabbin’ at us in half a dash.
Creep 2: The Super is right. we got parentals front, back, and both sides. and six Ruff-Ruffs. two on leash and four roamin’.
Super Creep: See! not enough stink bombs to deal with that pack, so we keep watchin’. we takes some time. plays it SMART. then nab the Fave and makes our way back to the boss, quick as whistlin’.
The other four Creeps nodded in agreement and settled in. It might take days, even weeks, but stealing favorites was what they did. And they were good at it. Their boss would accept nothing less.
7
An Old Friend
Once the carnival ground began to sink, Zozo lived for some years in a topsy-turvy version of his old home: an underground maze of drainage tunnels that had been beneath the grounds of the amusement park. Many of the old booths and rides had washed down and settled in these damp, dark tunnels.
This vast underground world was a sad, haunted space. Zozo’s heart, which he’d grown so many years before when his fellow toys had believed in him, was now broken. When he lost the dancer, he was so filled with hurt that though he could, like all toys, move when no one was looking, he lay moldering for months in the wet, mildewing wreckage of his old booth, never so much as blinking, for his sorrow left him as blank and lifeless as a plank of wood.
But then his sorrow began to decay into something else, something worse. Anger simmered. Then hate—first a flicker—began to burn. He thought over and over of the last words the little girl had said to the dancer as she took her away: You will be my favorite. Those words charred deeper into his darkening soul. Then he thought of a way to avenge his hurt, and that is when Zozo finally stirred.
Slowly, over time, Zozo assembled a warped and mournful world of fun-house mirrors, snarls of roller coaster track, giant teacups and swan seats—all sheared from their rides, grounded forever. This place, located at the center of all the drainpipes, became a kind of laboratory where Zozo began to work his vengeance.
He had always been a keen observer. Through the years he had watched the inventor who had made him tinker with various machines and gadgets. Zozo had learned much in those years, and now he poured that knowledge into an increasingly elaborate plan. For after he’d completed his underground world, he began to create its inhabitants.
An army! He built an army of small creatures, cobbled together from the crumbling leftover toys of the Bonk-a-Zozo game, and bits of wire and metal and rags. Each was given a drop of the rust and oil, the foul liquid that corroded inside his mechanical workings that seeped from his chest. These creatures soon forgot their innocent toy beginnings and became things of ill will and mean spirit, a vast regiment of small but efficient mercenaries he christened “the Creeps,” who he meticulously trained and then sent out into the human world with very specific orders—to bring back what Zozo could not abide: favorite toys.
8
Cool, We’re Going to a Wedding! What’s a Wedding?
Of all the huge A-ventures Billy and Ollie have had, the Wedding was shaping up to be the scariest yet.
At first it sounded great. It was a party, and there would be a gigantic cake. That was all Billy needed to hear. But then his parents began to explain all the things that he’d “have to.”
You have to “dress up.” Not in a costume, like on Halloween—that would have definitely been fun—but no. For the Wedding you have to “put on a Suit.” Dad occasionally wore a suit, and Billy never thought it looked very comfortable. Or fun. Just . . . grown-up. So Billy had to go to a store and “try on” about ten different suits. There were other kids at the store, and none of them liked this whole business of going into a “dressing room” and changing—getting undressed and dressed and coming out and having the salesperson say, “Oh, that looks adorable,” no matter how stupid the suit looked.
Ollie stayed in Billy’s backpack for all of this, but he was watching and wondering what this weirdness meant. A suit actually had several different parts to it: pants, of course, but also a jacket and a thing like a jacket that had no arms, called a vest. Plus, you have to wear a superclean white shirt that had to stay tucked into the pants, and black socks.
When they got home from the store, Billy and Ollie sat on Billy’s bed and looked at all the pieces of this suit.
“I kind of like this skinny scarf thing,” said Ollie. “It looks like my scarf, just fancy-nicer.”
“They call it a Tie,” said Billy, who then flung it around his neck just like it was a scarf. “But it’s better as a scarf.”
“Yeeeep,” said Ollie. “Plus, you look like me when you do that!”
“Yep!” said Billy, and he grabbed Ollie and held him out like he was flying. Then Billy ran through the house making airplane sounds until his mom made him stop and put the Tie away because it was “not a toy.” After that, Billy hated the Tie.
“Do I really have to wear the Tie?” Billy asked his mom for about the hundredth time on the morning of the Wedding.
“Yes,” his mom answered patiently.
“Why?”
“Because it’s what boys wear to a wedding.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re supposed to dress up.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s a special occas
ion. And”—Billy’s mom quickly continued before her son could get in another “why”—“because you look so handsome!” And she kissed his cheek.
Billy scowled. He didn’t think he looked handsome. He thought he looked like an alien. Billy but not Billy. Especially after his mom combed his hair over to one side—he never wore it that way—and after he crammed his feet into the Nice Shoes, which were so very Not Nice but MISERABLE IN EVERY WAY. They were hard—no, almost impossible—to put on. Once Billy was finally able to get his feet into them, his “nice socks” were all pushed up at the heels, and this made his toes scrunch up. The shoes themselves were as heavy and unbendable as concrete. And they were hot. And they hurt. And Billy despised them.
“I can’t even run in these,” Billy complained to Ollie.
“I guess that’s the point,” Ollie replied.
“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Billy admitted. Because it was true that his parents had already warned him that there would be No Running, No Playing, No Shouting whatsoever at the Wedding. Billy would have to sit quietly for a long, long time, and even when he didn’t have to be totally quiet anymore, he would still have to be on his best behavior, which definitely meant No Running. This wedding cake sure better be GREAT, thought Billy.
The absolute worst thing about the Wedding, though—beyond the Suit and the Nice Shoes and the No Running—was that for some reason Billy’s parents wanted him to leave Ollie at home.
“Why would I leave Ollie at home?” Billy asked in surprise.
“Well, weddings are a grown-up thing,” Billy’s mom explained.
“And you’re getting to be so grown-up yourself,” Billy’s dad added. “Maybe it’s time to give Ollie a break and leave him at home.”
Billy looked at Ollie, and Ollie looked back. But neither said a word until after the parents had left the room to finish getting dressed themselves.
“I won’t go on any huge A-ventures without you, especially not to some stupid wedding,” Billy grumbled.
Ollie didn’t respond at first. What Billy’s mom and dad said had confused him.
“Why do they think I need a break?” Ollie asked finally.
From the years he had been with Billy, he knew that a break didn’t actually mean breaking him in two, which would be hard to do, since he was a plush toy. He knew a break meant something like a nap or a time-out. But usually Ollie only did these things when Billy did them.
“I don’t know,” Billy said with a sigh. “I guess it’s because I’m getting older.”
“So?”
“So, when you get older, I guess you leave your toys at home sometimes.”
“Why would you do that?” Ollie asked, his turn to be surprised.
“I dunno,” Billy said in a quiet voice. “But I never see any grown-ups with toys.”
“Yer right,” said Ollie.
“And everybody grows up,” said Billy, even more quietly. They both sat in confused silence for what seemed like the slowest time they had ever felt.
“Where are your parents’ toys?” The question just popped out. It suddenly occurred to Ollie that he’d never seen even one of Billy’s parents’ toys except in photographs in the Photo Album, which was this big fat book with little square pictures that were pasted onto heavy black pages. At the front of the album book, the pictures were from olden times, when cars looked funny and different and everybody wore nutty clothes. These people in this part of the book were called grands and greats and cousins and stuff, but Ollie hadn’t met many of them. On one of these pages was a picture of Billy’s mom when she was a kid. And this picture was very strange because in it the kid of Mom looked sorta like Billy and sort of like the GROWN-UP of Mom. And this really confused Ollie. That a kid would become this other thing. A GROWN-UP.
And Billy couldn’t really figure it out either. He just knew that it happened on a “someday” that was a long, long time from now. And he would be getting bigger every day and then finally he wouldn’t get any taller and that was kind of when he would be done upping his growth, and therefore be GROWN UP.
But there, in this picture of his mom from back in her kid days, she was holding a toy. A doll. A dancer. Her name was Nina. Mom always said she loved Nina to pieces. And if Billy asked where the doll was, she would point to her chest and say, “Right here.”
* * *
“I don’t know where their toys went,” Billy admitted, answering Ollie’s question at last.
“So what happened to them?”
“I don’t know,” Billy said again, frowning. “It’s kinda like they go invisible. Or just go away . . . I mean, I don’t think Dad remembers his toys.”
Ollie was so shocked, he could not say another word. Finally, Billy broke the silence.
“I’ll never forget you, Ollie,” he said, bringing his favorite close. “No matter how grown-up I get.”
“Promise?” Ollie whispered.
“Promise,” Billy replied.
But Ollie felt like the security of his blanket called “belonging” had just been torn apart.
9
A Million Gazillion People
After that conversation Billy was determined. He would not go anywhere without Ollie, especially not to the Wedding.
Billy prepared his Getting to Bring Ollie to the Wedding speech with considerable skill. He had put Ollie in his backpack, which was on his shoulder. So when his parents were standing at the front door—ready to leave and saying loudly, “Come on, Billy. Let’s go! We’re going to be late!”—Billy walked toward them and began his “explaineration.”
He talked very fast. “I have to bring Ollie ’cause he really wants to see a wedding and he’d be too lonely if we left him here and I’ve got him in my backpack, which I need to bring anyway because I just wanna bring home a hunk of the giant wedding cake and no one will see Ollie or anything and it’ll help me stay still and not run and all the other ‘nots’ I’m not supposed to do at this Wedding. . . .”
Billy hadn’t even finished and his parents had given up and opened the door and were walking him toward the car. Billy didn’t understand many things about grown-ups, but he had developed a sense of how his parents would respond in certain situations. For instance, when they were in a hurry, it was much easier for Billy to get his way if he explained to them exactly why he wanted to do something they did not want him to do. Crying to get his way made his parents cranky. Yelling made them angry. But explaining seemed to confuse them, and it took time, which, when you’re a grown-up in a hurry, is the one thing you don’t want to have taken.
As they drove to the Wedding, his parents made Billy promise to keep Ollie safe inside the backpack at all times. They said that since he was older now, it was Billy’s responsibility to keep track of the backpack so that Ollie would not get lost.
Billy agreed to all the terms just as they pulled up at the Wedding.
“Victory, Ollie,” whispered Billy.
“Ditto,” Ollie whispered back.
* * *
When they got to the Wedding, it was a little overwhelming because there were so many people, and Billy wanted to run and jump and shout immediately because it felt like his whole body was going to explode out of the Suit and the Nice Shoes, and the Tie was driving him out of his mind. But he knew he couldn’t do any of those things, so instead he talked to Ollie, giving a constant (but quiet) play-by-play of the goings-on in a sportscaster voice.
“About a million gazillion people are here,” Billy told Ollie. “Lotta suits. Lotta grown-ups. Lotta fancy dresses. Lotta weird hair.”
“Why do grown-ups do weird stuff to their hair?” asked Ollie.
“Beats me,” said Billy. “The older the ladies get, the bigger the hair.”
Later, after they sat down on long, hard benches and Billy had tucked the backpack at his feet because an old lady was squished up on one side of him and his mom was on the other, Billy (quietly) kept up the commentary:
“Nothing’s happening, we’re all ju
st sitting here. . . . Wait . . . wait. Now a bunch of guys in suits are standing up in front and they are waiting for something. . . . One guy has a flower on his suit! Now everybody’s standing up again. . . . Is it over? No, not over. A line of ladies is coming down the middle. They’re wearing really nice dresses. But one lady is wearing a really, really nice dress. Big. Puffy. White. That lady is smiling. . . . No, hold on a minute, she’s crying. . . . No, she’s smiling again. Okay, we’re sitting down.”
The sitting down went on for some time. Billy didn’t have to say anything because a man in a long black coat was talking in a booming voice, and Billy knew Ollie could hear that, and then someone else was singing a song, and then someone else was reading a poem, and this seemed to go on forEVER, and Billy started to get superbored and kinda sleepy.
After a while the main lady in the big, puffy, white dress was talking, and then the man with the flower on his suit beside her was talking. Then the lady in the dress was smiling and crying, and the man in the suit with her was holding her hand and he was smiling and looking like he was gonna cry. But then other people were smiling and crying too. When Billy looked around it seemed like lots of folks were smile-crying—including the old lady beside him and his own mom!
“Grown-ups crying like babies everywhere,” Billy whispered to Ollie. “This is soooo weird.”
But then suddenly the lady and man up front were kissing.
“Whoa, lots of slobber,” Billy informed Ollie, ducking his head when it continued on and on. “Major slobber alert.”
And then music started playing and everyone was standing up and cheering and clapping—and sorta shouting and talking, which Billy had thought was a huge no-no—and the next thing he knew he was being swept up into a whirl of people. Billy kept talking, kept relaying to Ollie all the strange things going on around him, never knowing that his words had stopped reaching Ollie, that his words were, in fact, falling on an empty backpack.