J Is For Miles

• Paloma Vazquez, Grade 6
• Short Story
• 2016

J is for Miles

Miles is a diminutive grey toy elephant loved into oblivion. The fur on his little grey face was blunt with years of love and snot from the faces of toddlers. Young J was devoted to her favourite plush toy as most three year olds are and was a little crying creature when he got tragically mislaid. The poor thing wails whenever you even mention his name. Mum thinks he most likely fell out of the car door when it was opened or shut. We lost him in Grafton somewhere near the pond and the two storey fancy looking Macdonald's (how is Maccas fancy?). Who knows what happened to Miles the elephant?

He could have gotten a job at the service station at the interchange or been picked up by another child. He could of been brought to the Golden Arches and appointed the chief mascot or grew wings and flew away. He could have even joined a bikie gang and is travelling across Australia. But wherever Miles is he needs to know that there is a little girl out there who misses him and her teddy who would quite like a friend, elephantine preferred. Me, as being a supportive older sister, has scoured the Internet for little Miles but has never found a match to the once loved little elephant.

But I have a niggling feeling in the back of my brain that Miles is gone. After all it has been seven years since he has been lost. He's possibly floating in landfill somewhere enjoying the life of sun and dirty water or run over by a car and is now a pile of soggy stuffing, crawling with mildew sitting in a drain on the side of a road. It feels horrible that I could even think these things to myself and the only thing that this talk about closure is doing is bringing me down further in to the Worry. But even though, J is for Miles.

J is all grown up now and has a new teddy in her life to cuddle and tatter. I really feel sorry for all those stuffed animals around the world who get lost, ripped or used as an infant's hanky. But they all get loved I suppose. Every time I go to Grafton I still look for Miles, whilst wishing that I could find him there on the footpath, but what should I expect? Him sitting on a lilo in the stormwater drain wearing sunglasses and drinking a Piña Colada? Maybe skydiving off the top of a phone box, who knows? There's alway a chance. But as always Miles is here in my brain actively doing silly things and he isn't even my teddy. But he is forevermore welcome home if he gets tired.