“What could it hurt?” asked Mrs. Pule. “We don’t have to take his advice. Besides, at this point we’ve really got nothing to lose.”
“And what if we do take his advice and it still doesn’t work?” asked Mr. Pule.
“Then the wool will keep us warm.”
I do not like thee, Dr. Fell,
With pop advice and books to sell.
Though you may make our daughter well
I do not like thee, Dr. Fell.
Chapter 3
Finding a babysitter for their daughter was never easy for Mr. and Mrs. Pule. It had to be someone new to the area, a person unfamiliar with Elspeth’s temperament. It also had to be someone with very good medical insurance.
Luckily, the teenage daughter of one of Mrs. Pule’s new accounting clients was in need of some extra cash, so the Pules were able to sneak off to see the celebrated Dr. Fell, telling Elspeth only that they had a medical appointment.
When Mr. and Mrs. Pule were called into the office by Dr. Fell’s assistant, the doctor directed them to sit in a pair of matching chairs that were as uncomfortable as they were stylish. Fell sat opposite them in a chair that looked to have three or four times the padding. On the wall behind him hung several diplomas, certificates, and awards, along with framed photographs of himself standing next to celebrities. His chin sported a goatee, and a small diamond stud adorned his left earlobe.
“Now,” he said, flipping a tablet of paper over to a blank page. “I understand you’re having some trouble with your four-year-old son.”
“Uh . . . eleven-year-old daughter,” Mr. Pule corrected.
“They grow up so fast, don’t they?” Dr. Fell replied. “Now, why don’t you tell me a little bit about what’s going on?”
Mrs. Pule took the lead, explaining to the doctor that their daughter, despite the fact that they had tried to be the best parents possible, had become an insufferable tyrant. As she spoke, Dr. Fell did a great deal of scribbling on his pad.
“And so you see,” Mr. Pule said in summation, “we really have no choice but to give in to her demands.”
Dr. Fell scoffed at this, partly because when it came to scoffing, he was one of the best. “Of course you have a choice,” he said.
“You don’t understand,” Mr. Pule interjected. “If she doesn’t get her way, she holds her breath.”
“And?” said Dr. Fell, entirely unimpressed.
“And she keeps holding her breath,” added Mrs. Pule. “If we don’t give her what she wants, we’re afraid she could die.”
Dr. Fell flipped the notebook to a fresh page and wrote something, then tore it out. “The next time your daughter threatens you by holding her breath, try this.” He handed the paper to Mr. Pule, who read it aloud.
“Ignore her?”
“Yes,” said Dr. Fell. “Ignore her and let her hold her breath for as long as she likes.”
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” said Mr. Pule, rising to his feet. “And what happens when she dies from lack of oxygen?”
“She won’t die,” said Dr. Fell with a condescending chuckle. “The worst that will happen is that she will pass out, and when she does, her body will naturally start breathing again. The important thing is to make sure she doesn’t hit her head on anything on the way to the floor.”
By the time the elevator reached the lobby of the building, Mr. Pule was still fuming. “‘Make sure she doesn’t hit her head on the way to the floor’? How could someone be so callous toward a mere child?”
“I know you’re upset, dear,” said Mrs. Pule, walking out into the parking lot.
“Upset?” Mr. Pule practically shouted. “We just paid that idiot four hundred dollars to tell us that we should just sit back and watch our daughter hold her breath until she passes out. You’re darned right I’m upset.”
While Mrs. Pule muttered some words of support, Dr. Fell’s words were playing over and over in her head. The important thing is to make sure she doesn’t hit her head on anything on the way to the floor.
Mrs. Pule took advantage of the twenty-minute ride home to convince her husband that giving Dr. Fell’s advice a shot was really their only choice.
“Okay, okay,” he finally agreed. “We’ll try it. Once. But I just want to go on record as saying I am deeply opposed to it.”
When they arrived back home, where Elspeth and the babysitter had been alone together for almost two hours, they found her locked in the closet. Not Elspeth—the babysitter.
“I had no choice,” said Elspeth, once the babysitter had been paid, consoled, and sent on her way. “Her behavior was atrocious. She had the nerve to try to deny Dolly Dew Eyes a second bowl of ice cream. Have you ever heard of such rudeness?”
Mr. and Mrs. Pule were indeed familiar with rudeness on that level and beyond.
“Elspeth, dear,” her mother said. “Your father and I need to have a little talk with you. Perhaps you’d like to have a seat on the sofa. The nice, soft sofa.”
“What is it?” asked Elspeth, picking up on the concern in her mother’s voice. She knew they had just returned from a doctor’s appointment. Perhaps one of them was gravely ill. Or was it something worse? Maybe her mother was pregnant. The thought of some wrinkly, screaming baby getting spit all over her belongings was something Elspeth could not bear to consider. And if she thought that her parents ignored her now, just how little attention would she get once a newborn arrived? “Is something wrong?”
“Good question,” said Mr. Pule, chuckling nervously as Elspeth lowered herself cautiously to the sofa while clutching Dolly Dew Eyes tightly to her chest. “It seems that we do have a slight . . . situation, I’m afraid.”
As someone who had been placed in both advanced English and math, Elspeth was certainly smart enough to know that when someone said they had a situation, it was never a positive thing.
“We had a visit from Mr. Droughns the other day,” said Mrs. Pule.
“Does he still have those horrible hair plugs?” asked Elspeth with pantomimed vomiting for effect.
“Yes, dear,” said Mrs. Pule.
“I hope you told him how ridiculous they look.”
While other hairless dolls might have taken offense to this, Dolly Dew Eyes said nothing and stared off into space with those expressionless blue-gray eyes.
“I was really in no position to insult the man,” said Mrs. Pule. “He was quite angry as it was. In fact, he threatened us with eviction over the noise complaints.”
“I haven’t made any noise complaints,” Elspeth protested.
“No,” said Mrs. Pule. “Complaints made by the neighbors about noise coming from our place.”
“I see,” said Elspeth. “I guess you’ll just have to learn to go about your chores more quietly.”
Mr. and Mrs. Pule gave each other a look. “It’s not the chores,” said Mrs. Pule, exhaling deeply. She rubbed her hands together and realized her palms were wet with nervous perspiration. “It’s . . . you.”
The confusion on Elspeth’s face was absolutely sincere. “Me? What do you mean, me?”
“Your tantrums have disturbed the other tenants to the point that they have asked the landlord to kick us out.”
“Ha! Good luck with that,” said Elspeth with a laugh of disdain. “I’m sure they’ll forget all about their little threats once I sic my alpaca on them.”
And there it was: the perfect segue into the next topic at hand. “Yes, about that,” began Mrs. Pule. “I’m sorry to say that, upon further reflection, we can’t let you bring an alpaca into the apartment.”
Elspeth sprang to her feet and punched at the air with an accusatory finger. “I knew it! I knew you’d go back on your promise! You are the worst parents in the entire world!”
Then, for a solid three minutes, Elspeth tossed out every nasty word she could think of toward her loving mother and father, and she could think of nearly all of them. Then she moved on from hurling words to hurling solid objects. With Dolly
Dew Eyes in her left hand, she used her right to throw toys, books, shoes, the phone, and Mr. Comfy, who did not, it seemed, fully appreciate the convenience of air travel. He yowled as he was tossed across the room and did not stop yowling even when he came to rest on Mrs. Pule’s head.
Mrs. Pule screamed and tore the terrified animal away, losing a good deal of her cotton-candy hair in the process. Still, Elspeth’s parents did not waver from their anti-alpaca position.
When throwing the family cat at one’s mother proves ineffective, it’s time to pull out the big guns. Elspeth spouted her famous line. “Fine!” she said, folding her arms across her chest with Dolly Dew Eyes clutched between her arms and her aquamarine T-shirt. Elspeth then drew in a deep breath—deeper than usual, for she sensed that this time it wouldn’t be easy.
Then she waited. And waited. For that look. Her eyes darted back and forth between her father and her mother, searching for a sign that one or both of them were about to crack. Then something strange happened—something that had never occurred before. Mr. and Mrs. Pule calmly settled back into their chairs and began what appeared to be a casual conversation, though Elspeth could not hear what they were saying. By now so much blood was rushing to her brain in an attempt to deliver oxygen that it thundered past her eardrums, drowning out every sound in the room.
If it wasn’t infuriating enough that her parents would ignore her in this time of severe oxygen deprivation, they now had the audacity to become blurry. How dare they mock her by distorting their own images, thought Elspeth. And now, what was this? Were they dimming the lights? Of all the nerve. And was the room spinning, or had the rug beneath Elspeth’s feet become a swirling eddy of doom with the power to pull her under? It certainly sounded like a cyclone, as the pressure in her head built until it felt as though her ears might go shooting off in opposite directions.
And then, just like that, the room went completely dark.
Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Eggplants are purple,
And Elspeth is too.
Chapter 4
Elspeth found herself immersed in complete blackness and utter confusion. The only thing she knew for certain was that she was lying flat on her back. When she opened her eyes, the first thing she noticed was that her parents were nowhere to be found. Had they been so callous as to walk away, leaving her alone on the living room floor? The second thing she noticed was that the living room was also nowhere to be found. The ceiling had been replaced by a soft light, twinkling through a canopy of translucent green leaves, shuddering in a soft breeze.
For a moment, she was afraid to move. Her hands at her sides, her fingers probed what she would have expected to be the shag carpeting but felt a lot more like moss and dirt. Bringing her fingers close to her face, she noticed the rich, dark soil beneath her nails.
Slowly, she sat up to find herself in the middle of a thick forest. She wanted to call out but was fearful of who or what her cries might summon. Elspeth had grown up in the city, and other than a handful of trips to visit mean old Grandma Wanda in the country, she had never been outside it. A forest was something she had seen only in movies, and she’d never had the desire to visit one in person. It was her understanding that the so-called great outdoors generally lacked things like indoor plumbing, television, and Internet access. This might be acceptable to wild animals and bugs, but for humans it seemed a barbaric place at best.
Still, she had to admit it smelled rather nice. It was the unfamiliar sounds that gave her discomfort—the squawking and chirping of what she assumed (and hoped) were birds and the rustling of trees in the wind.
“What is this?” Elspeth whispered. “Where am I?”
“I think you mean,” came a strong voice from very nearby, “where are we?”
With the quickness of Mr. Comfy dodging a commemorative plate, Elspeth rolled to her hands and knees and scanned the area with nervous eyes. “Who said that?” she demanded in a shaky voice. “Who’s there?”
“Why it’s me, of course,” the voice answered.
When Elspeth looked down she saw Dolly Dew Eyes with eyes no longer absent and plastic body no longer stiff and motionless. The doll was standing and, with very real and supple palms, brushing dirt and pine needles from her fashionable but badly frayed blue cocktail dress.
“Look at this mess. I hope the next time you decide to keel over you’ll have the courtesy to put me down first.”
“You . . . you can talk,” gasped Elspeth.
“Yes, I can,” agreed Dolly Dew Eyes, almost as surprised as Elspeth at her newfound vocal abilities. “Well, what do you know?”
“But . . . I don’t understand. Why are you talking like that? In that voice?”
“What’s wrong with my voice?” asked the doll while smacking her dirty palms together.
“Well,” said Elspeth, “for one thing, you sound so much older than you are.”
“And how old do you think I am?” asked the doll.
“I got you for my third birthday,” Elspeth replied. “And I’m almost twelve, which means you couldn’t be more than nine in toy years.”
“You assume,” said the doll, “that I was brand-new at the time. Fact is that I’m twenty-seven.”
Elspeth was thankful to still be sitting on the ground, otherwise these words might have knocked her right off her feet. “You mean . . . are you saying . . . my parents bought you . . . used?”
“Garage sale,” said the doll. “Fifty cents, if you can believe that. Imagine what that did for my self-esteem. And then, on top of that, you go and cut off all my hair. Thanks a lot.”
“You know, I think I liked you better when you couldn’t talk, Dolly Dew Eyes,” said Elspeth.
“Oh, I’m sure you did,” said the doll. “That way you could go on, day after day, convinced that I actually like you. And by the way, please do not refer to me by the awful name Dolly Dew Eyes. Good grief.”
“I was only three when I named you,” Elspeth reminded the doll.
“The other girl was three when she got me and still had the good taste to call me Fashion Farrah, which is the name on the box and is what I prefer to be called.”
Elspeth suddenly realized something. “Wait a minute,” she said. “I’m sure it’s probably a simple misunderstanding, but did you just imply that you don’t like me?”
“Let’s face it, you’re not a very likeable person, are you?” the doll answered. “Always putting words in my mouth. Not to mention all the yelling and throwing whenever you don’t get your way. It’s embarrassing, really.”
Elspeth was unaware that her mouth now hung wide open and her bottom lip had started to quiver. The very idea that her beloved doll could have such negative feelings toward her was too much for Elspeth to bear, and she began to do something she had not done in a very long time. She began to cry. It started out as a whimper then quickly morphed into that type of full-on crying you see in the movies when someone is trying very hard to win an Academy Award.
The blubbering went on for a very uncomfortable few minutes and might have continued much longer had Elspeth not made a very determined effort to force those sobs and her sorrow back from where they had come.
“No,” she said, mopping up the tears with her shirtsleeve. She stood and wiped her nose with that same sleeve and then stamped her foot. “This is nothing to cry about. You’re just a stupid old doll.”
“Excuse me,” said Farrah. “I am not stupid.”
“You are if you think you’re going to find your way back home without my help, so I suggest you start being nicer to me.”
“Home?” said the doll. “Why would I want to go back there? All I do is sit in your silly purple room all day. I never get to leave the house because you’re too embarrassed to be seen with me.”
“That’s not true,” Elspeth protested. “It’s lavender, not purple.”
“Aha! So you are ashamed of me.” The doll jabbed its tiny finger in Elspeth’s direction. “Just
admit it already.”
“Well,” said Elspeth, stalling while trying to think of how to put it diplomatically. “Just . . . look at your hair. I mean, seriously.”
“There you go,” said the doll, her hands on her hips and her painted-on eyebrows turned downward in a fierce scowl. “If I had any doubt that you were a horrible person before, I certainly don’t now.”
“You listen to me, you little plastic runt,” said Elspeth, while fighting off the urge to punt the doll into the surrounding greenery. “I will not stand here and be lectured by some two-bit garage sale item.”
“First of all, fifty cents is four bits,” said the doll. “And I may be a garage sale item but I have something you’ll never have: self-respect. I’ll bet your parents are sorry they ever . . .” The doll cut herself off in midsentence.
“What?” Elspeth demanded. “Sorry they ever did what?”
“Nothing,” the doll insisted. “I started to say something, but . . . it’s none of my business. It’s between you and them, and I’ll leave it at that. Have a nice life.”
The doll turned on her plastic heel and huffed off into the shadows of the trees.
“Wait!” Elspeth called out. “Don’t leave me here alone.” The girl’s plea went unanswered. Elspeth thought of what might make Dolly Dew Eyes change her mind. “I could get you a wig!” she shouted through cupped hands.
Elspeth stood and watched as her once favorite toy disappeared behind a large fern. She was now all alone, officially friendless and miserable, in a strange forest, far from home.
A tisket, a tasket,
A doll that’s made of plastic.
I held it tightly in my arms
And on the way I dropped it.
I dropped it,
I dropped it,
And on the way I dropped it.
It wandered off into the woods
And now I fear I’ve lost it.
Chapter 5
Elspeth cautioned herself not to panic. There must be a simple explanation for how she ended up in this forest and an equally simple way of getting home. When she turned a slow and complete circle, it was what she didn’t see that confused her most. Other than a set of tiny ones made by Dolly Dew Eyes on her way into the forest, there were no footprints. Nor were there any tire tracks. So how did she get here if not by foot or by car? Though it seemed an extreme improbability, Elspeth quickly checked to see whether she might be wearing a parachute. Nope. No parachute, so she hadn’t been dropped from an airplane.
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