The Toy Store | Teen Ink

The Toy Store

December 8, 2014
By annalisajackson BRONZE, Stockton, California
annalisajackson BRONZE, Stockton, California
1 article 0 photos 0 comments

The toys all stopped what they were doing to look up at the huge clock that had just struck seven. Benjy the bear let out a breath and turned to the rest of the toys.
“Seven o’clock”, he called out, “which means exactly two hours left!” After being reassured of the time, the groups of toys continued on with they had been doing. Hot Rod and Speedy were racing around the store for the eighth time while the circle of Barbie dolls chattered on and on about the new dollhouse that had just arrived. The Lego action figures were putting the finishing touches on the lego structures that they’d spent all night building, only to have to demolish by morning. Benjy the bear and the other plush toys were telling jokes. G.I. Joe and the rest of the army men stood on their shelf, watching the toys laugh, talk and fool around. Time passed and eventually, there was only twenty minutes left until Mr. Duncan would arrive at the toy store and begin setting up for business. Most of the toys were now back on their assigned shelves, socializing amongst their own sections. G.I. Joe stared coldly at Speedy and Hot Rod, who continued to fool around near the front of the store, Sure, they were only on the bottom shelf, but they still needed to be prepared for Mr. Duncan's arrival. The clock now read: 8:54 and the two racecars were still not where they needed to be. Instead,  they were arguing about who the winner of the last race was and in the process, did not hear Mr. Duncan unlock the front door and swing it open. The toys all froze in shock as Speedy and Hot Rod desperately zoomed to their spot on Shelf 1A, hoping the old store owner wouldn’t notice. With no such luck, Mr. Duncan stood with his mouth open, his eyes darting back and forth from where the cars had been to where they currently were. Then, he sighed, removed his glasses, and rubbed his eyes.
            “For goodness sake, Charlie”, he mumbled to himself as he made his way to the back room, “get a decent amount of sleep.” When the door had closed, the toys erupted in whispers, scolding the two racecars.
            “What were you thinking?”
            “How could you be so reckless!”
            “You better hope that -”
But they were all cut off by G.I. Joe, who spoke in his full voice.
            “You two will be more efficient next time. Because we do not need careless behavior in this store.” Before either of the two had time to respond, Mr. Duncan returned and began pleasantly getting everything prepared for the boys and girls who’d be running in and out all day. He turned on the flat screen television, which was usually playing some kind of Disney movie, near the front of the store. But rather than Frozen or The Lion King appearing on the screen, an image of a news reporter came into view. She was interviewing Helen Porter, owner of Climb the Stacks, a book store on the other side of town. Helen Porter rambled to the interviewer.
            “I would have never, never imagined that somebody would actually break in. And for them to get away with almost half of my inventory, it’s terrible. Shay Hills is so nice and I just, I just-” The store owner put her face in her hands and began to sob. “Can’t believe this,” she mumbled.
The news reporter patted the store owner on the back and looked into the camera.
            “None of us can. More updates on the investigation will be available at nine tonight. Jim, back to you.”
Mr. Duncan shook his head. “So sad what’s going on these days.” He walked over to the flat screen and put in Cinderella. Just as he hit play, the front door burst open. Two little girls ran in, followed by their mothers. The girls were awestruck as they took in their surroundings.
Mr. Duncan smiled at them. “Welcome to Duncan's Toy Store.”

All day, hundreds of children bustled in and out of the toy store. Toys were constantly being grabbed off the shelves and new ones were always replacing them. Time passed quickly and pretty soon, it was closing hour. The toys waited for Mr. Duncan to leave, but he never did. Usually, the man left at 5:30, but it was now 6:08 and he was still there. Then, new voices arose and three men walked in. Two of the men carried boxes while the third simply held car keys.
“Sorry pops,” said the man with the keys, “traffic was crazy.” Instead of responding, Mr. Duncan embraced the man in a warm hug. His son smiled back and then began helping his partners, who were unboxing the packages. After about two hours, the men were finally done with their task and Mr. Duncan beamed. There were now security cameras both in and outside of the store. The toys were not able to see the two outside, but they could see the four new cameras that now shone inside.
“Come on dad.” Mr. Duncan's son said, patting him on the back. “I’ll show you how you can see the footage.” All four men walked into the back room. The toys all looked at one another, excitement in their eyes. Finally, Mr. Duncan closed up shop and the toys were alone. Conversations began immediately. They were all curious about the new security, but once they figured out how to work the monitors, they turned off the cameras. Of course the ones outside had remained on, but everyone felt a mutual agreement that keeping the inside cameras on, was a bit unnecessary.
G.I. Joe made a comment saying, “Well the cameras are there for a reason. Are we sure it’s best for everyone if we disable them?” The toys all shook him off saying that it was fine. At the hour before Mr. Duncan arrived, the toys turned turned all of the cameras back on. The day went like any other and pretty soon, Mr. Duncan was preparing to leave. As soon as he was gone, the toys launched themselves into the routine of chitchat and games. A group of Lego figures were making their way to the back room when G.I. Joe stopped them.
“Hold on!” he yelled, running toward them. “We can’t turn off the cameras tonight.”
“Why?”, asked Lenny, a cowboy figurine.
“Because,” G.I. Joe started dramatically, “the front door is unlocked.”
The band of lego men suddenly became confused.
Lenny eyed G.I. Joe, uncertainly. “Mr. Duncan has never once left this store unlocked. You must be mistaken.”
“Or lying,” chimed in Hot Rod, just arriving at the conversation.
G.I. Joe went stiff. “Why don’t you go see for yourself.”
Sure enough, when the toys went to investigate, the door was not properly locked.
“I could’ve sworn it was bolted shut like half an hour ago,” Hot Rod muttered.
G.I. Joe stepped forward. “Well,” he clasped his hands, “I suppose now you see why keeping the cameras on wouldn’t be so bad.” He looked around as if to ask, Any objections? No toys said anything and soon, everyone had moved on. Several toys were in the back room that night, watching through monitors, all of the nonsense that went on throughout the store. That morning, ignoring what he was told, Hot Rod returned to his shelf at the last minute. G.I. Joe glared but did not say a word. It wasn’t until later, that the soldier cornered the racecar and said, “That is the last time you do something like that.” Hot Rod did not take most things seriously, this being no exception.
Though he didn’t make any comments on what he’d just been told, he did talk to a group of stuffed panda bears about his opinions in regard to the new security. “I really don’t get why they’re even on. I mean why are we listening to Lieutenant Know-it-All? Shouldn’t we all, like, vote or something?” The panda bears didn’t really reply, but only nodded and murmured “mmhmm’s” and “sure, sure’s”. When the toys were making their way to their shelves that morning, Hot Rod didn’t even bother going to Shelf 1A. Instead, he made a point of joining some motorcycles that were on display. Mr. Duncan did not notice , but G.I. Joe sure did. That night, worry spread filled the toy store. It had been an hour, and no one was able to find Hot Rod. The other vehicles swore that they’d seen him around the time shop had closed. The toys went to the back room, where G.I. Joe and the army men were casually watching the security monitors.
“G.I. Joe, have you seen Hot Rod?” cried Speedy.
“I did, actually.” He stood up. “When Mr. Duncan was leaving, he noticed that Hot Rod had some kind of , ah, glitch.”
“Glitch?” asked Speedy.
“That’s right. He said that he couldn’t very well keep a defective toy.” The toys were flabbergasted. They’d never heard of something like this happening before.“You can’t blame him,” said G.I. Joe and sat back down. Everyone in the store felt uncertain that night. The story of Hot Rod quickly spread throughout the store, which was quieter than usual. Everyone was on their shelf five minutes early that next morning.

“Why can’t we see the monitors?” asked the cowboy lego figurine, Lenny.
“It’s for your safety,” said the army man who was standing with the other army men, all of them blocking the toys from entering the back room.
Lenny crossed him arms. “Okay. Can I talk to G.I. Joe then?”
The army man disappeared inside of the back room and a few minutes later, G.I. Joe came outside. “Hello, Lenny.”
“What’s this talk about not being able to go into the back room?”
“It’s for your safety, for everyone’s actually. The army men and I will be the only ones in here from now on. You just never know who might take advantage of the kind of situation.”
Lenny just stood in shock, not knowing what to do. Then, he stormed off and spent the night trying to convince the toys that they should all speak to G.I. Joe about the new rule. The majority, such as the Barbie dolls and stuffed animals, just changed the subject, but a few, like the racecars, agreed. Coincidentally, Lenny also had a glitch, which Mr. Duncan found out the next day, when he got rid of him. G.I. Joe told all of this to the toys, being as he personally saw Mr. Duncan take Lenny out of the store with him. Every toy looked as if they wanted to say something, but no one spoke a word. 
“By the way, I’d like it if ,every morning,we could all  be on our assigned shelf by five a.m.”
This time, someone did speak up.
“But that’s a whole five hours before Duncan’ll even arrive!” cried a helicopter named Jake.
“Yes, but we can’t risk him seeing us and thinking we all have glitches, now could we? This is a precaution we are taking, just in case.” The toys didn't do much that night. It was only a few lego figures, who were halfheartedly building a small lego house, that even got off their shelf. Most just talked in hushed tones, and by five a.m., not a toy was out of place.
The following day, Mr. Duncan turned to the news, like he had before. This time, it revealed that the other toy shop in town, Playground, had been broken into. And for that reason exactly, G.I. Joe decided to make anywhere near the front door off limits. 
“You never know. These thieves will swoop you up first if you’re so close to that door. It’s better if we all just stay on our shelves.”
Again, only several toys dared to take part in much activity at night. It was only Jake the helicopter who left his assigned shelf. Though this time, he returned to his spot a couple of minutes after five o’clock. Turns out, he was defective, too.

There were four cameras in the store. Two were toward the front and the others, in the main two aisles. This left the far right side and left side of the store unmonitored. G.I. Joe explained this to the toys while telling them what his new plans were.
“We can use the video cameras to make sure nothing out of the ordinary is going on where the cameras are unable to see. It’s for the safety of everyone in here.” He was referring to the video cameras that were now available for children to buy. No voices spoke against it and just like that, four new cameras were now on both sides of the store. After they were proven to be successful -they discovered that toys were trying to secretly visit other toys on their shelves- G.I. Joe decided to add recorders to the mix. These recorders allowed children to record their voices. They became even more useful when they picked up a conversation between a motorcycle and ,to everyone’s surprise, a Barbie doll.
“It’s okay,” murmured the motorcycle, who was trying to soothe the Barbie doll, Leila. “We just have to steer clear of G.I. Joe, ya know, come up with some way of getting him out of here, and everything will be okay. I promise.”
Her voice was shaking, but Leila managed to whisper, “He scares me. Wh- why is he doing this?”
“I’ve heard rumors that other toys have been known to act like this in the past. They do it, they do it for the pow-” But the motorcycle’s voice was cut short when G.I. Joe turned the recorder off and looked at the crowd of toys who’d been told to gather in the middle of the store.
“This is the kind of thing that brings down the entire structure of cooperation in this store. We should not have to tolerate toys who are selfish and who think of no one but themselves.We have an ideal community here, where we do what is best for all and therefore, we should not and will not jeopardize our system of peace. That is why we are lucky that Mr. Duncan discovered that Leila and her friend, Mr. Motorcycle, were no longer helping this store, but in fact, hurting it.”
Apparently, the conversation that the recorders were able to get hold of was not enough to prevent toys from breaking the rules. That week, even more toys had been caught having secret conversations in the middle of the night -all of which had to do with G.I. Joe. Every toy that was found doing something wrong had to have a talk with G.I. Joe in the back room. Most of those toys ended up having glitches, little of them went back to normal, and some broke after accidentally falling off their shelves. It took a few weeks, but eventually, no suspicious action was discovered by cameras or recorders. Every couple of months, some toy would be seen getting near the front door or trying to knock out a video camera, but they’d be gone soon enough and peace would return to the store. Over the next few years, the nights at the toy store remained silent and without movement. Now and then, G.I. Joe would come out of the back room and update the toys on what he’d heard Mr. Duncan say that day. In each new update, the soldier explained how robberies were becoming more and more frequent around their neighborhood. It was a good thing these toys were being protected, just in case somebody ever broke in.

And every week, Mr. Duncan would pick up a newspaper and smile. He was happy to read about how the neighborhood kept becoming safer, little by little.
 



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