Rohan pushed open the garage door and peered into the dusty toy box. Buried beneath a pile of wooden blocks, something bright yellow peeked out at him.
He pulled out the rubber chicken and squeezed it. SQUEAK! The sound was so loud and sudden that Rohan fell backward onto his bottom and burst into giggles. He scrambled to his feet, tucked the chicken into his pocket, and ran out the front door.
In the garden next door, a woman watered her roses. Rohan crept closer and gave the chicken a squeeze right near her face. It let out a sad, breathy squeak. 'How amusing, Rohan,' she said politely, and turned back to her petunias.
He tried the chicken on the twins zooming down the street on their bikes — a squeeze, a wheeze, nothing. He tried it on a man reading the newspaper on his porch — harder this time, but still only a tired little squeak. Rohan walked home with the chicken dangling from his fingers and his shoulders slumped low.
Rohan paused at the edge of his driveway. He looked at the chicken. It looked back with its little painted eyes, unimpressed. 'Okay,' he whispered. 'One more try.'
Rohan squeezed the chicken with all his might. Instead of a squeak, out came a ridiculous, wheezing QUACK-SQUEAK — and it sounded exactly like a dog barking. Across the street, a man dropped his newspaper and burst into laughter.
The twins skidded to a stop, pointing and howling with laughter. Even the man at number twelve peeked over his fence with a grumpy face that slowly, slowly, began to crack.
Soon the whole street came out. The elderly woman with the rose garden clapped her watering can. The man with the newspaper folded it up and did a silly dance right there on his porch.
The grumpy man at number twelve stepped out from behind his fence, and even he was grinning. Rohan squeezed the chicken again and again, and the street filled with squeaks, barks, and the kind of loud, sparkling laughter that made the sun feel even brighter.
Rohan squeezed the chicken one more time. SQUEAK! And everyone laughed — the whole street, the whole neighborhood, the whole world, as if the rubber chicken had somehow managed to squeeze laughter out of everything.
That evening, Rohan placed the rubber chicken on his bedside table. It sat there in the moonlight, quiet and content, as if it knew it had just saved the neighborhood.
And if you walked down that street the next day, you might see the rubber chicken sitting on the porch of number twelve — because Mrs. Gupta had asked very nicely if it could keep watch over her petunias.