Ollie had been running from Zozo for a pretty long time. He’d run through the Dark Carnival without even noticing what a bizarre place it was. He did not think of going right or left or “patchpaw” or “the other way.” He just ran as fast as was possible for a toy who was a little over a foot high, with legs less than six inches long. He knew he was being chased by the Creeps, and he knew they were sneaky, fast, and probably very good at following and catching toys who made “a break for it.” So, he just went blind crazy fast as he could. He tore through mud and ditches and weeds and sticker bushes so quickly that even when a piece of him snagged on a twig or a thorn, he ripped himself loose and kept going.
And as time passed and he still wasn’t caught, he slowed but only slightly, just enough so that he could think more clearly. I should try not to leave tracks they can follow, he told himself. I should not let my scarf unravel on a sticker bush. They will find the thread and know where I’ve been. And these thoughts calmed him, and he began to run and jump and dodge with a confidence he had never felt before. He was like Super Ollie, his scarf flapping behind him like a cape. He began to hold his arms out in front of him, like all superheroes do when they fly, and for a moment he actually wondered if he could, in fact, fly.
He had flown many times when pretending with Billy, and pretending felt real, but he knew it was different. Pretending was something he and Billy did together. Pretending was like a strange and wonderful place where things happened the way they wished them to. It was Real Life Plus with spaceships and dinosaurs and monsters and powers so super that you could always get out of trouble and save the day. Ollie liked pretending almost more than anything. So, on this crazy night of real life, he pretended that he could fly. Fly over the ground and trees and straight to Billy. And for a few moments he felt the great power of his own hopes as he believed that he was flying, and in his pretend he flew into the window of Billy’s room and landed on the pillow where he always slept with his boy Billy.
But suddenly, he was jerked into the air. For a moment, just a moment, Ollie thought he had pretended so hard that he had broken through to real life! But then he realized the truth: he had been plucked up into the mouth of a large black dog, and the dog was running very fast. So fast that to Ollie, it did feel like flying.
Ollie must have been so lost in pretending that he hadn’t heard the dog coming, but now he heard the dog’s coarse huffing as they galloped from the trees and toward a street lined with parked cars.
Ollie’s experience with dogs was very limited. Billy’s family didn’t have one, but Ollie had watched dogs in the park with their people. Dogs seemed to belong to people the way toys belonged to kids. He saw that people talked to dogs, and though dogs didn’t exactly talk back, they did seem to understand. Sort of. Dogs didn’t always do what their people told them to do, which Ollie found odd. Dogs would just run off, and then their person would yell things, like “Come back, Rex! I mean it right now you bad dog come here I said COME HERE.”
Ollie didn’t think the dogs were actually “bad.” It seemed to him they were just distracted by the general funness of the world. The same way Billy would sometimes get, and then he and Billy would break a few laws when no grown-ups were watching. So, Ollie assumed that this dog was doing the same thing, but then he remembered that pretending was sometimes quite loud, especially when flying, and that perhaps he had been making super flying sounds, so maybe, just maybe, the dog heard Ollie’s pretending and was trying to help him.
“Ummm. Hi, Mr. Dog Person,” Ollie began. “Thank you for giving me a ride. I guess you would know where Billy is?”
The dog didn’t answer; he just continued to run and was now on the street. Though he did glance down at Ollie, as if surprised the toy was talking.