She had just climbed to the top when their neighbor across the street, Ms. Chu, came outside in gardening gloves. Ms. Chu waved her little shovel in the air. “Cleo! That’s too high! You’re going to hurt yourself!”
“Ni hao, Ms. Chu!” This summer, Cleo had asked Ms. Chu to teach her Mandarin Chinese, the future language of businesspeople everywhere. “Want to mai some avocados today?” Cleo raised an avocado to show Ms. Chu. The ladder wobbled. Her heart did a double flip, but she kept her cool. CLEO’S AWESOME AVOCADOS was back in business!
“Just get down from there!” she said. “I’ll get you the money. How much?”
“A dollar each!” Cleo had never done a business transaction from this far away. Or from a ladder. But so what? A sale was a sale!
“I pay the same at the store. What happened to the ‘blowout sale’?” Ms. Chu never accepted full price.
“That was yesterday! But for you, I’ll make it four for three dollars! Deal?”
“Deal! Now, you get down before you break your neck!”
Cleo was going to get down. Really she was.
And then she saw the roof.
And it was only a step away. A big step, but she knew she could do it. And if she could do it, then she had to do it. It was a law of the universe.
She plucked four avocados, then hurried down and dragged the ladder closer to the house, which was single-story in the front, double-story in the back, where they’d added on bedrooms.
She climbed to the top of the ladder again and pulled herself onto the roof, trying not to make noise. If Mom found her, she would have a cow. Not just a cow. A bull with horns. This was the kind of thing that would have her yelling Cleo’s whole entire name to the whole entire neighborhood. Cleopatra Lenore Oliver!!! Get down from there right now!
But she didn’t want to get down. She was a Capricorn, after all. Part mountain goat, according to Fortune. Always climbing. Never satisfied until they reached the top. Cleo scrambled up the short slope to the pointy part in the middle.
She looked down on the roof of Miss Jean’s chicken coop. Gloria, Alice, and Susan B pecked and scratched in the dirt yard. Big Betty was probably chilling out in the coop. Miss Jean had paid Cleo to chicken-sit a few times. Easy money. On the other side of Miss Jean’s was the Williamses’. Cleo giggled at the underwear drying on a line in their backyard. It looked big enough to fit a giant panda.
Beyond the Williamses’ single-story was Caylee’s palace of a house. It was pink — which Caylee thought was horriful, but Cleo thought was splendarvelous — with red Spanish tiles on the roof and a side balcony just right for sipping their Tangy Tangerine Tonic™, which they’d made from the Ortegas’ tangerine trees and sold earlier in the summer. The Ortegas’ house stood out on their street like a flamingo in a flock of pigeons. It was exactly the kind of house Cleo would like to live in.
Caylee’s bedroom window was open. Should she yell? She might get caught, but on the other hand, if her best friend was home she would see her on top of her house.
She cupped her hands around her mouth. “Ca-a-a-y-l-e-e-e!” Caylee’s gauzy blue curtains fluttered in her window. “Ca-a-a-y-l-e-e-e!”
Caylee didn’t appear, but crouching there, on the pinnacle of the roof, Cleo suddenly felt on top of the world.
She put her feet on either side of the peak and stood straight up. Wow-ee! The view was amazing! She could see all the way to Audubon High School, where Dad taught computers and history. Dull, meaningless history. It was much more important to look ahead, to the future.
And she knew what the future held for her: more businesses. Because she was an entrepreneur. Just like Fortune. Probably like lots of people in her birth family.
An idea struck her so hard it practically knocked her from her perch.
She would start a business at school!!!
She could see it all now. Her desk would become her executive office, the nerve center of Cleopatra Enterprises, Inc. Caylee would be her COO — Chief Operating Officer — since she was the most organized person on the planet.
Just then, the sky exploded with noise and the whoosh of beating wings. A hundred wild parrots (she wasn’t exaggerating, really, even though she had been known to, on occasion) landed in the camphor trees that towered over her house. They had been there before. They came and went around the neighborhood — a big, noisy, extended bird family. The fact that they had chosen to land right there, at the very moment she had this great thought . . . it was a sign! She just knew it was!
The birds squawked and flapped their wings as if they were cheering and clapping just for her.
Barkley ran outside, barking and jumping up on one of the giant trees. Josh ran after him. Cleo ducked.
“Mom! Mom! Cleo’s on the roof!”
Corn dogs and Costco.
Ms. Chu came out on her front porch. She started waving and shouting too.
Between the parrots screeching, Barkley barking, Josh tattling, and Ms. Chu yelling, the corner of their street was louder than the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
It was almost loud enough to drown out the sound of Mom yelling her whole entire name to the whole entire neighborhood.
Wednesday, Caylee was missing from school, which was a real bummer because Cleo was dying to tell her about the business she planned to start at New Heights — once she thought of one. Cleo had called her as soon as she could that afternoon, but Mrs. Ortega said Caylee wasn’t feeling well and couldn’t come to the phone.
Caylee was late to school on Thursday, but not too late to hear Mr. Boring make an incredible announcement: They would NOT be doing the usual fifth-grade Family Tree Project!
Cleo couldn’t believe it. Mr. Boring had just become her favorite teacher ever.
“Raise your hands, please. What does it mean to have a passion for something?” He wrote the word passion on the board.
Cleo’s hand shot into the air. Fortune was always talking about passion! It was Fortune Principle Number One: Passion is purpose.
“Cleo.”
“A passion is something you love to do. It’s how you know your purpose in life.”
“Wow. Purpose in life. Yes. Great. Something that fires you up, that you like learning about or doing so much that you could learn about or do it all day long.”
“Like robots?” Quentin asked. He’d been known around school as Computer-Head Quentin ever since he’d coded his own software in fourth grade.
“Sure! Robots could be a person’s passion.”
“My mom says hers is chocolate,” Cole said.
“That could be a dangerous one, but yes, for some people I suppose food is a passion.” He looked around the room. “What about you? What’s your passion?”
Cleo’s mind was whirling.
“Nothing wrong with family trees, but I’ve got to make sure I don’t live up to my boring name, so this year, in this class, we’ll be doing Passion Projects.”
Ooo . . . a Passion Project! Cleo loved the sound of that.
“This is your assignment . . .”
Ugh. There it was again. That word. Mr. Boring had gone the whole first two days of school without using it once. But she kept listening, because at least this time the assignment was connected to something that sounded splendarvelous!
In their projects, he went on to explain, they would prepare up-front presentations to give their classmates an experience of their passion.
She couldn’t believe how perfect this was. Of course she would make the focus of her project the business that she planned to start at school! She straightened her name tent on her desk. Cleopatra Edison Oliver, CEO, was going to rock this assignment! All she needed now was a business idea.
Mr. Boring asked them to get out their journals and spend a few minutes listing their passions. After that, they would choose one and spend a few more minutes writing about that particular passion. They were “brainstorming,” he said.
Cle
o could brainstorm later. Right then, she needed to tell Caylee, her future COO, her plan.
She quietly ripped a page out of her journal and wrote:
She folded the paper about sixteen times. On her way to sharpening her pencil, she quickly dropped the note into Caylee’s lap. She watched from her place in line behind Computer-Head Quentin. Caylee read the note, then turned over the paper and scribbled a reply.
On Cleo’s way back to her seat, they did another handoff. Fortunately, Mr. Boring was too busy asking Micah to stop singing to notice. She slipped into her chair, waited for her teacher to go back to his writing, and read Caylee’s response:
She was so happy that Caylee Ortega was her friend. She found everything about her completely adorable, including the fact that she thought P.S.S. was the correct way to spell a second P.S. Cleo would convince Caylee about selling her clips, eventually. If she could make a paintbrush and palette, she could make anything. They would personalize them based on people’s interests and hobbies! Done and done.
In the lunchroom, Cleo tried to avoid seeing Lexie Lewis but she was hard not to notice in her spangled, tiger-striped hoodie. As Cleo passed Lexie’s class table, Lexie said something about a modeling shoot after school, in a super-loud voice.
Cleo barely noticed. Her mind was on more important matters: coming up with a new business.
She and Caylee sat across from Tessa and Steffy. Tessa greeted them with her big grin. “Steffy and I are doing gymnastics at recess. Want to come?”
“We can show you front handsprings,” Steffy said. “We learned how this summer.”
Cleo shook her head. “Thanks, but Caylee and I have an important meeting.”
“We do?” Caylee’s forehead wrinkled.
“For Cleopatra Enterprises, Inc.”
“Oh. Okay.” She shrugged. “I guess I’m busy.”
“Maybe tomorrow?” Tessa bit on her bottom lip.
Tessa’s big front teeth made Cleo think of a rabbit, which made her think of the carrots she wanted to trade. She scanned Tessa’s lunch, spread out in front of her. And what a lunch it was! Mac and cheese. Mandarin oranges. A pudding pack.
Pudding! Cleo loved pudding. And it was chocolate, her favorite. But carrots, even with ranch dressing, wouldn’t be enough to get a pudding. She’d have to throw in at least one sandwich cookie. She tried anyway.
“Hey, Tess, I’ll trade you carrots and ranch dressing for your pudding.”
Tessa shook her head. Cleo expected to hear, No way! Instead, Tessa said, “I can’t eat carrots.”
“You can’t eat carrots?” Cleo wasn’t a big carrot fan herself, but she had never heard of anyone having a carrot allergy.
“She means she can’t eat carrots right now,” Steffy said. “Her canine’s loose.”
“Huh?” Cleo was seriously confused. “Your dog ran away so you can’t eat carrots?”
Everyone laughed. Even Caylee. Cleo chuckled a little, just so she wouldn’t be the only one not laughing. “Not her dog, goofball,” Steffy said. “Her tooth.”
Cleo forced a little air out of her mouth — puh! — like, Du-uh. “I knew that. I was just making a joke.” She forced a laugh, then got serious again. “Why don’t you just use the other side?”
“They’re loose on both sides,” Tessa said. “I’m afraid of them coming out. It’s going to hurt.” No wonder her lunch foods were all so soft.
“I keep telling her they’ve got to come out eventually,” Steffy said. “So why not just get it over with?”
“Seriously. That’s what I’ve been telling my brother Josh.”
“Plus, her Tooth Fairy pays a lot of money.”
Cleo perked up. “How much?” she asked.
Tessa looked a little embarrassed. “Five dollars.”
“A tooth?” Cleo shouted. Tessa nodded. Cleo made some quick calculations. “That means your mouth is worth one hundred bucks! More if you get your wisdom teeth out.”
Cleo did a survey around the table. It was the same for Steffy, Amelie, Quentin, Noah . . . even Caylee! Kids got dollars, not cents, for their teeth these days. Cole said he and Lexie got anywhere from five to ten dollars a tooth, depending on how generous the Tooth Fairy felt that day, or “whether she got a bonus in her paycheck that month.”
At first, Cleo was miffed that all she got was a goofy poem about her latest lost tooth, two shiny new quarters, and a pack of sugar-free gum, but that didn’t last for long because suddenly, as she looked out across the cafeteria, watching kids biting into their pizza and their celery sticks, she didn’t see teeth. She saw a business opportunity.
Cleo crunched on a carrot. Yes, she had planned to trade, but she’d just been given some incredible information. This was big. Way bigger than carrot sticks. It wouldn’t make her a multimillionaire, but a ready-made audience sat all around her.
She had gotten her next business idea!
At recess, Cleo and Caylee ran to their spot on the grassy hillside. “I now call to order the first official executive meeting of Cleopatra Enterprises, Inc.!” Cleo opened her notebook.
“Agenda Item Number One.” She planned to launch right into her business proposal, but Caylee was staring out at the field, not paying attention at all. “Earth to Jelly — come in, Jelly.”
“Oh, sorry. Did you say something?”
“Not really. Not yet. Just starting our meeting.” She paused. She was dying to get to her latest business idea. “Why weren’t you at school yesterday? I tried to call you. Is something wrong?”
Caylee shrugged. She picked at the grass around her shoes. “Just my dad . . .”
Of course. What a dumb question. A lot was wrong in Caylee’s world. Mr. Ortega had left his family four months ago. How could a parent just walk out like that? “He could come back.” She didn’t sound very convincing, even to herself.
Caylee picked a clover and flopped onto her back. “He opened a new car lot in Palm Springs. He bought another house.” She rolled onto her side. “He has a girlfriend.”
It was true. It didn’t look good. Cleo thought of Nana’s pet name for Pops. “What a nincompoop.”
Caylee giggled. Cleo laughed too. She always laughed at that word. She said it over and over, sliding her voice up and down, stretching out one syllable and then another — “Your dad is a niiiiiiiin-com-poop! Nin-com-POOOOOP!” — until her stomach ached from laughing and Caylee was spread-eagle on the grass and wiping tears from her eyes.
Caylee let out a big breath. “So, what are we meeting about, anyway?”
“I’ve got an idea for a new business — something we can do while I wait for you to make a bunch of barrettes.” She grinned. “Teeth!”
Caylee’s eyebrows pulled together. “Huh?”
“A tooth-pulling business! Tessa — and lots of others, even you — you all get plenty of money for your baby teeth, right?”
“Ri-i-i-ght . . .”
“So, we’re going to pull out loose teeth for a small percentage of people’s Tooth Fairy money!”
Caylee thought for a moment. “But why would people pay you when they can do it themselves? Or maybe go to a dentist?”
“Dentists are expensive. And you heard Tessa. She’s afraid of it hurting.” Cleo looked out onto the field where Tessa was doing a backhand walkover. Steffy was trying to help Mia Jeffers, but Mia was stuck in the backbend part. Lexie Lewis stood nearby, shouting, “Just flip your legs over!” As if she were the expert. Cleo would like to see her try.
Caylee still looked skeptical. “So you’re going to find a way to pull teeth without it hurting?”
“Possibly . . . How do you do it?”
“What?”
“Pull out your loose teeth?”
Caylee’s eyes looked one way and her mouth scrunched to the other. “I guess I just wait a super-long time until they’re really loose, and then it doesn’t hurt so bad. But it still hurts. It always hurts.”
Cle
o thought about her own teeth that had come out. “Okay, maybe you’re right. But I still think we can make it work. So, are you with me?”
“I don’t know . . .”
“Come on, Cay-Cay!” Cleo shook Caylee’s arm. “You’ve got to believe in yourself!”
Caylee squinted. Her squished face made it look as if she had just tasted something rotten.
Cleo jumped to her feet, pulling Caylee up with her. “As Fortune Principle Number Three says” — she punched her fist in the air — “ ‘Doubt is more deadly than failure!’ ”
Before parting ways in front of Cleo’s house, Cleo charged Caylee with the task of thinking up quick and painless ways to pull teeth.
“It won’t be painless. It’s never painless,” Caylee reminded her.
“Right. Quick, then. The quicker the better. And creative. Kids might want to try it just for the experience if we make it crazy enough.”
“Crazy is your department. But I’ll try. See you tomorrow.” Caylee hitched her backpack onto her shoulders and walked toward her house.
Inside, Cleo headed straight for her room. She had to go through the kitchen.
Mom was running the mixer again, stirring up some more batter. Tuesday’s creation, the Quinoa Cupcakes, had tasted disgusting. Cleo had told her it’d be false advertising to call them cupcakes, which were, by definition, delicious.
“Hello to you too!” Mom called, but Cleo was already halfway up the stairs. Barkley barked from below. Poor dog, he’d gotten so fat he didn’t even want to try climbing. She came back down and kissed the top of his head. “Sorry, Barks. I need to focus right now.”
“Everything okay?” Mom asked.
“Fantastic, actually. Mr. Boring isn’t making us do that dumb family tree project!”
Mom looked surprised. “Really? Wow. Okay. I guess you’re glad, huh?”
“Yes, I’m glad. How was I supposed to do a family tree?”
Mom’s eyelids fluttered. Her voice stutter-stepped before continuing. “Well, we talked about that, remember? We decided you would put me and your dad, and Nana and Pops, and Gran and Grandpa Edison, and your brothers —”
Cleo Edison Oliver, Playground Millionaire Page 4
