“Said you gotta meet them at the mall. Something about a trap,” Irvin said.
“The mall? Not the Toy Box? Wait, when did they call??” Oscar demanded, which got Irvin’s attention.
“Well, let me just check the messaging service,” he said, reaching for an imaginary memo pad.
“Sorry, it’s just—”
“Ten minutes maybe,” Irvin said, softening.
Ten minutes. If it took him twenty on the bus, another ten to walk from the bus stop to the mall, there might still be time to get there before they close.
“I gotta go!”
“Have fun … meh, whatever,” Irvin said as he pulled his headphones back over his ears, the doors already swishing closed behind Oscar.
Oscar danced around the bus stop like he had to pee, leaning off the sidewalk into the street to see if he could spot the marquee on every passing bus. Drivers honked him out of the way, but he barely noticed them.
Finally, the number 56 bus arrived, slowing to an agonizingly long stop and sighing down to meet the curb. It was standing room only, and Oscar felt irrational fury toward anyone who dared to pull the stop cord. It seemed there wasn’t a two-block stretch where they didn’t stop to let someone on or off, and Oscar was about to burst with impatience.
When the mall stop finally came, he was so eager to get off, he nearly forgot to pull the cord for himself.
“Whoa whoa, here!” he yelled up to the driver, who grumbled something about not being his personal chauffer. Oscar hollered a quick apology over his shoulder as he booked it through the thick grove of eucalyptus trees that were definitely someone’s private property to get to the mall’s east entrance, the closest one to the Emporium.
The Emporium had nearly closed three different times, always on the verge of bankruptcy, always rescued at the last minute by some mystery financier who, according to chipper new anchors on the evening broadcast, couldn’t bear to see another independent business succumb to one of the big chain toy stores. It might have been an act of charity if the Emporium hadn’t been so gross.
Oscar was pretty sure the place had never been mopped. Mystery splatters lined the baseboards all around the cavernous store, not a single stain ever moving from where it had made its home. Oscar himself had made one of those stains when he was eleven, puking up an entire Radiation Green Big Slurp right in front of the beach ball display. Though he tried not to look, every time he went into the Emporium, he saw the telltale green flecks that had never been thoroughly scrubbed from the back wall.
The store seemed to always be half lit, the fluorescent lights high above buzzing and flickering like they resented being on. But maybe the most depressing part of the Emporium was its perpetually unstocked shelves. They’d carry maybe a handful of the really good toys everyone was clamoring for that year, but the rest of the cavernous store was occupied by half-emptied displays of dusty generic dolls, action figures, and play sets that the parents who were too late or too broke had to resort to. Oscar knew for a fact his mom had stopped into the Emporium more than a few times, always at the end of her nightly shift, looking for the closest facsimile to a brand-name toy her small paycheck could buy. Oscar never let her see his disappointment.
But the Emporium was the only toy shop located in the mall; all the rest in town were the big stand-alone stores. If Isaac was telling him to meet them there, they must know something that everyone else in the entire town didn’t.
Only that didn’t seem to be the case once Oscar opened the door to the east entrance. Even from far away, he could see a squirming line of people trying to squeeze into the Emporium. It was more foot traffic than the store probably saw in a year.
Oscar slowed to a walk as he approached the crowd with caution, so unnerved by the sight of that many people pushing to get into the Emporium of all places.
Sure enough, there at the register by the door, a single petrified teenager was failing spectacularly at urging people to be patient. Poor guy probably had zero idea of what he was walking into that day for his shift.
“Oscar!”
Oscar searched for Isaac in the crowd, but as Irvin had reminded him less than an hour before, Isaac was the short one. He was hard enough to find in a crowd half this size.
“Over here!”
That time, it was Raj, and finally, after sweeping the jostling crowd three times, Oscar spotted his friend jumping above the surrounding heads. He wasn’t all that far from the front of the line, which had to mean they somehow got the inside track on the inventory.
Oscar squeezed his way past a gaggle of angry customers.
“Hey, there’s a system here, kid,” one guy growled, and Oscar had to hide his laugh because … really? This was a system?
Oscar ducked a couple more grumbles before finally reaching Raj and Isaac, the latter on tiptoe trying to see how far they were to the front.
“Dude, we tried the Toy Box, Marbles, and that place on Twenty-Third and San Juan,” said Raj, skipping right to the point.
“We even went to that weird organic place on Fifth Street that only sells wooden toys,” said Isaac.
“If they ever had it at all, they sold out in like five minutes,” said Raj.
“But the Emporium has them?” Oscar asked, still in disbelief. He hadn’t actually seen anyone leave with one, and seeing was believing.
“Not on the shelves,” Raj said, getting to the good part. “We saw Thad outside of Rockets, and he was holding this big Emporium bag, so we knew something had to be up. He didn’t want to, but he showed us.”
“Well, he showed us the top of the box, but he definitely had one. He was all smug about it,” said Isaac. “I guess his sister’s dating the assistant manager here, and he said they got a small stock of ’em, but the manager wasn’t putting them on the shelf.”
“Probably wanted to sell them himself online,” Raj said. “Jerk.”
“Guess word got out,” Oscar said, watching the crowd watch everyone else. No one wanted to be the first in line to hear “We just sold the last one.”
The crowd surged suddenly, knocking the entire quasi-line forward, and a general rumble of protest burbled from the customers.
Isaac fell against Oscar, who fell against the lady in front of him, who complained louder than the rest.
“Excuse me,” she said, only half turning to shoot Oscar a dirty look.
The secretary. Ms. Beastly. The one with five nephews.
“Oh no,” Oscar whispered. “She’s gonna clean them out!” he hissed to Raj and Isaac.
“She can’t. Limit’s one per customer,” said Raj. “Don’t worry, I’ve got a good feeling.”
“Oh well, if you have a feeling,” Oscar rolled his eyes, but secretly he was grateful for Raj’s optimism. It’s not like Oscar had any of his own to offer. Mr. Devereaux’s pep talk about harvesting was a distant memory.
After an entire eon had passed, the line crawled forward, and the secretary from the boys’ school was next.
“What do you mean limit one per person?”
“Sorry, ma’am, that’s the rule,” said the clerk, looking like he was maybe seconds from a meltdown.
“Whose rule?”
“My manager’s, ma’am,” he said, and the line behind them sighed loudly.
“Haven’t you been listening, lady? He’s said it a hundred times already,” groaned one guy unlucky enough to still be squeezed against the shelf closest to the door.
“Well, what am I supposed to tell my nephews?” Ms. Beastly asked, matching the guy’s grumpiness.
“How about you tell them, oh, I don’t know, that the limit was one per person!” the guy said, and Oscar had to admire his spunk. No one at school dared to talk to the secretary that way.
“Ma’am,” the clerk interrupted, “I can sell you one, but you’ll have to move along.”
The secretary gave him a look that Oscar was pretty sure could melt human brains.
“I mean, uh, if it’s okay?” he said, but it
was too late. He was already liquefying.
Ms. Beastly slammed her giant purse on the counter and huffed her way through counting out her cash, then exchanged it for one glorious Plushtrap Chaser.
It was the first time Oscar had actually seen one in the flesh … or stuffing, or whatever.
Even from behind the cellophane window of the box, the thing looked perfectly terrifying. Its plastic eyes bulged from even wider eye sockets, making the face look skeletal. The mouth hung open to reveal lines of unsettlingly pointed canine-looking teeth. With the toy standing almost three feet tall, the clerk had to stand on tiptoe to get the box over the counter and into the secretary’s grasping hands, and she shooed away the plastic bag he offered, decidedly done with this entire transaction. She walked away in a huff, dozens of eyes following her purchase out the door before returning their attention to the keeper of the treasure.
The crowd surged forward, but it wasn’t necessary. Oscar, Raj, and Isaac were practically crawling over the counter.
“One Plushtrap Chaser, please!” Oscar said breathlessly. “If there’s only one left, we can split it.” The boys shoved their hands into their pockets to pool their money, a compromise they hadn’t even needed to discuss. If one Plushtrap was all they could get, then they’d just have to share it—all for one and all that. They understood how scarcity worked.
“Sorry,” the guy behind the counter said, but he didn’t look sorry so much as terrified.
“What do you mean ‘sorry’? ” Oscar said, but on some level he already knew.
“No … nonononononono,” Isaac shook his head. “Don’t say it.”
The clerk swallowed, his Adam’s apple traveling up and down his neck.
“We’re … sold out.”
The crowd erupted in protest, and whether it was conscious or not, the clerk gripped the counter like he expected the floor to fall out from under him.
“It can’t be,” Raj said, but Oscar could barely hear him over the roar of angry customers. He looked at Oscar like he was begging him to lie and tell him it was all just a joke. There was enough for them. They wouldn’t walk away empty-handed.
It couldn’t possibly be that Oscar had come so far for another almost.
But Oscar looked at the petrified face of the clerk. What reason would he have for lying now? More than that, what reason would he have for angering a crowd already on the brink of revolt?
The seed of disappointment was sprouting its roots in Oscar’s stomach as the scene before him played out in slow motion. He pictured himself walking away with Raj and Isaac, circling the mall and dragging their feet back to the bus stop, unable to find the words to express this particular brand of letdown. Unable to describe how it wasn’t the Plushtrap Chaser, not really. It was the confirmation that people like him weren’t meant to hope for things.
While the clerk stood with his hands up, like his trembling palms could somehow comfort the angry masses, Oscar drifted to the side of the counter and tried to process yet another disappointment. He felt cut off from the scene around him … until a few intriguing words lured his attention away from the crowd’s raucous protests and the clerk’s weak responses.
“… call … police,” a woman’s voice said.
“Who … processed … return?” a gruff man’s voice demanded.
“… real,” a squeaky teenager’s voice said.
“… human?” the woman asked.
Oscar inched past the counter and peered around a few stacks of cardboard boxes. Just beyond the boxes, three employees clustered around something Oscar couldn’t see.
Though their backs were mostly to Oscar, he was far enough from the crowd now that he could hear the employees discussing whatever it was they were looking at.
“No doubt about it. They look … real,” said a teenaged staffer as he hunched over the thing.
“They’re sure not from the manufacturer,” said a man gruffly, who Oscar guessed to be the greedy manager, judging by his authoritative tone.
“How do you know?” asked a third employee, her low ponytail slung over her shoulder as she knelt beside the teenagers. “Did anyone look at this one before it was sold?”
“Someone would have noticed, wouldn’t they?” the teenager asked.
“I still think we should call the police,” the woman in the ponytail said, her voice lowering so that Oscar had to strain to hear her.
“And say what?” said the teenager. “ ‘Hey, we think we’ve got a situation here. See, someone returned a toy and, funny story, now the toy looks too lifelike! Help, officer, help!’ ”
“Keep your voice down!” scolded the maybe-manager.
“I mean, they can’t actually be real, can they?” the woman asked.
The other two said nothing, and as though on cue, all three stepped away from the thing they were crowding around, and Oscar could finally see what they were examining.
There, on top of a small worktable, sat a mangled box that looked like it had been rescued from a trash compactor. Its cellophane window was dingy, with white crease marks spread like veins across the front. The corners of the box were soft and worn, and the top flap was held together by a fuzzy strip of packing tape. But even through all this damage, Oscar could see a green head and bulging eyes.
A Plushtrap Chaser!
Beyond Oscar, the crowd’s unhappiness crescendoed into a roar, and the clerk suddenly appeared behind the boxes. He didn’t notice Oscar. He was too panicked.
“Help!” the clerk shouted at the other employees. “They’re about to revolt!”
Before they turned, Oscar slipped back around the boxes. No longer eavesdropping on the employees, he ran to his friends, who were still pressed against the counter.
The woman appeared beside the register and the panicked clerk. Her name tag said she was “Tonya, Assistant Manager.”
“I’m very sorry,” Tonya called out, “but the Plushtrap toy is now out of stock.”
“No, it isn’t,” Oscar said, too quietly at first, and he was impossible to hear over the tumultuous crowd.
When Tonya didn’t respond, he shouted, “Hey!”
She turned to him, her dark eyes intense. “What?” she snapped.
“You have one back there,” Oscar said. Maybe he accused. He pointed to where he knew the Plushtrap Chaser was behind the stacks of boxes.
Tonya shot another look at the crowd, then glanced in the direction Oscar was pointing. She stared that way a little too long, then looked at Oscar like they were suddenly the only two people in the store.
“That one’s damaged,” she said.
“It looks fine to me,” Oscar lied, pressing his luck. He wasn’t sure what Tonya and the other employees had been talking about, but he was smart enough to know something weird happened to the returned Plushtrap Chaser. He didn’t care, though. His need for the toy was all-consuming.
“It’s not fine, kid. It’s … um, defective,” Tonya crossed her arms. “Trust me, you don’t want that one.”
“But—”
“It’s not for sale!” Tonya said through gritted teeth before yelling into the crowd, “Folks, I’m sorry, okay? I’m sure we’ll get some more at some point!”
Then she grumbled to himself, “We’d better.”
“When will that be?” demanded a woman in a shirt that said KEEP CALM AND DANCE ON.
“I don’t—”
“What am I supposed to tell my daughter?” a guy in a suit and tie asked.
“Sir, you must—”
“Your clerk said you had Plushtraps for everyone!” hollered a lady so close to Oscar, his ear rang with her shrill echo.
“I doubt he said—”
The crowd was on the verge of mutiny, but Oscar barely registered them.
“Dude, we’d better get out of here,” Isaac said.
“No joke,” said Raj. “My mom dragged me to some sale on bedsheets once. When they ran out, I actually saw this one lady bite someone. They were out for blood.”
But Oscar was still only half listening.
“I don’t care if it’s damaged. I’ll buy it anyway,” he said to Tonya, but the crowd was too loud for her to hear him. She was unwinding the cord on the intercom.
“People, please calm down!” she yelled into the microphone as feedback pierced the air, making everyone pause for a moment to cover their ears. But that only seemed to rile them up more, and soon customers were shoving and flooding the store, tearing toys off the shelves as they looked for hidden Plushtrap Chasers like they were on some sort of demented Easter egg hunt.
“That’s it. I’m calling security,” Tonya yelled, then traded the microphone for the tan receiver under the cash register. “I don’t get paid enough for this.”
“C’mon, let us just buy the one you have back there,” Oscar persisted. It was too much, the thought of leaving after coming this close. He couldn’t bear it.
“Get lost, kid!” Tonya yelled over her shoulder before pressing the receiver to her ear. “Where’s Mr. Stanley? Tell him I need some help over here,” she said into the phone.
Then Tonya turned her back on the counter.
Oscar didn’t think.
If he’d been thinking, he never would have run around the counter and behind the stacks of boxes. He never would have shoved aside the teenage employee and the maybe-manager who stood gaping at the crumpled three-foot box standing between them. He sure wouldn’t have grabbed the box. He wouldn’t have hoisted it up, accidentally clipping the teenaged staffer in the chin while the clerk and Tonya yelled for Oscar to stop, to wait, to put it down. If he’d been thinking, Oscar would have answered Raj and Isaac when they suddenly appeared beside him, asking him what the heck he was doing.
In that moment, the only thing bouncing around Oscar’s head were Mr. Devereaux’s words: The point is, quit tilling. It’s time to pick.
Oscar slammed their pile of pooled cash on top of the worktable. He clutched the long, narrow box to his chest, turned, and ran around the counter. Then he dropped his shoulder to plow through the crowd that barely took notice of him, so invested they were in their own mayhem.
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