“I know, I know. But, Mom, listen, instead of the family tree, we get to do Passion Projects! Just like Fortune: ‘Passion is purpose!’ I can’t wait! I’m going to focus on starting a business. And I already have my next idea!”
“Which is?” Mom tasted her batter. “Mmm . . . not bad.”
“Can I tell you later? Please? I need to brainstorm — and write a paragraph describing my project. It’s our homework.” That was the magic word with Mom.
“Don’t let me stop you.”
Cleo clambered back upstairs and closed the door behind her. Time to get to work.
She faced her brainstorming easel. Mr. Boring had taught them a creative-thinking technique called webbing and this was the perfect opportunity to use it. She wrote the words loose teeth in red pen on the white board and circled them. Whatever the word (or words) in the circle made you think, you wrote it down. Then you circled the new word and connected it with a line to the word that made you think it. Doing this helped dislodge ideas that were stuck in your brain. Free associating, Mr. Boring had called it.
She wrote pull in a bubble and connected it to loose teeth. That made her think of taffy, which she’d seen being pulled and stretched on a machine in a candy store once. Maybe she could sell kids taffy and they would bite into it, and voilà! — their teeth would come out in the taffy! It had potential. But it wasn’t surefire.
What tool would basically guarantee success each and every time? She wrote tool on her board and connected it to pull.
Pliers?
Too scary.
Hammer?
Too violent.
She was critiquing. She wasn’t supposed to be critiquing. Mr. Boring had told them to spend at least ten minutes free associating and to save the critiquing for later.
Downstairs, Josh started screaming. Julian was wailing. Mom was shouting. How was she supposed to come up with an inspired idea with all this racket? Her brainstorm was quickly becoming a brain drizzle.
Teeth. Teeth. How had she gotten hers out? By twisting, she realized. She drew another line from loose teeth and wrote twist in a bubble. That made her think of twirl, which made her think of Mom’s beaters twirling around and around.
Wait a minute . . . what if she connected a loose tooth to an electric mixer with a piece of string and turned the mixer on? That tooth would go flying out of the person’s mouth! She wrote mixer and connected it to twirl. Now she was getting somewhere!
“Cleo!” Mom’s voice interrupted her moment of inspiration. “Cleo!!”
She opened her door. “What?” she shouted back.
“Come down here, please!”
“I’m still doing my homework!”
“Just come down here. Now!”
Cleo huffed and plodded downstairs. Josh was nowhere in sight. Jay’s arms were draped over Mom’s shoulders and his face was buried in her neck. “Would you keep them entertained for a little bit? Please, sweetie? You’re so good at it.”
This was the not-so-great thing about having lots of great ideas — or little brothers, for that matter. She got called on, often, to keep Josh and Jay out of trouble. “But I’m working!”
“I just need to get these in the oven. Half hour, at the most.”
“Why are you doing all this baking, anyway?” Cleo asked.
“Actually, I’m trying to come up with something original to sell —”
“Sell? Where? I could help you!”
“At the farmer’s market, and I’m sure you could. But first I need your help with the boys. So . . . could you?” She set Julian down. He ran to the family room.
“Oh-kay.”
Mom kissed her forehead. “Thank you. I’ll get Josh out of time-out.”
Cleo found JayJay standing over the wreckage of what likely had been a LEGO building. His shoestring arms were tied across his chest, his fists little knots at the ends. “Josh messed up my fort.”
Pieces and soldiers lay scattered everywhere. “Yeah. I can see that.”
Mom came back. “Josh is going to read. You two go on.”
Cleo scooped up a handful of soldiers, suddenly energized. “Come on, JayJay. I’ve got an idea!”
They lined up plastic soldiers on the boys’ bedroom windowsill and took turns shooting them down with Josh’s Nerf gun missiles. Then they made parachutes by taping dental floss to Kleenexes, tied the soldiers to the missiles, and shot the soldiers from the top bunk like paratroopers, except that they more just dive-bombed to the floor because the Kleenexes weren’t strong enough. Or the missiles were too heavy. Cleo didn’t know, and she didn’t really care. Science wasn’t her thing.
As she launched another paratrooper, a phrase appeared on the white board of her mind. Nerf gun. Of course. It was the perfect tool for tooth pulling! And she wouldn’t need to convince Mom to let her borrow the mixer, which would be impossible, anyway.
She had found the answer. She would shoot people’s teeth out. All she needed was to test her method, and the perfect guinea pig was right downstairs, reading a book.
“Josh! Josh! You’ve got to see this!” Cleo bounded into the living room. JayJay slid on the wood floor and crashed into her.
Josh didn’t take his eyes off his book. “What?”
“You’ll see.” She grabbed his arm. “Let’s just say it involves your Nerf gun and flying teeth.”
Josh’s head snapped up. “You never asked if you could use my Nerf gun.”
“May I use your Nerf gun? Come on, you’ll think this is so cool!”
Josh shut his book and stomped behind them through the kitchen.
“Everything all right?” Mom asked, pulling a pan of lumpy cookies from the oven. Cookies that looked like they could choke a yak.
“Great!” Cleo said, zipping past before Mom could ask if she wanted to try one. Did Mom realize customers liked lollipops, cupcakes, and cookies to taste good?
“You sure?” Mom’s eyes had a What are you up to now? look in them. Cleo leaped up the stairs before she could ask more questions.
“Sure!”
As soon as they got to the boys’ room, Cleo hit Josh with her sales pitch. She kept her voice low. “You want your loose tooth out, right?”
He squinted one eye and looked at her warily — like a fish eyeing a shark. “I don’t know. Why?”
“What if I told you you could have it out today? That you could get your quarters and gum this very night.”
His lips pooched out, and the space between his eyebrows got all wrinkly. He thought she was trying to pull a fast one.
“I’m not trying to trick you, Josh. I’m letting you be my first customer! I’ll even make this first time on the house.”
“You’re not supposed to go on the house anymore.” Julian looked up from his plastic-soldier battle. “Mom said.”
“ ‘On the house’ means for free, JayJay. I’m going to let Josh be my first customer for free.” She grinned.
“What do you mean ‘customer’?” Josh said. “What’s that got to do with my tooth?”
“What’s a customer?” Julian asked.
Oh, man. JayJay had so much to learn. “A customer is someone who buys a product or a service from someone else — like the people who bought our avocados.” She spoke to Josh again. “In this case, you would be buying the service of me taking out your tooth. Except I’m not going to charge you — this time.”
Josh’s eyes got huge. “You? Unh-unh. No way.”
“Please, Josh. It’ll be so fast you probably won’t even feel it.”
He narrowed his eyes. “You’ll probably make it hurt on purpose.”
That stung, but she brushed it off. She had a business transaction to complete. “Actually . . . I won’t be doing it. Your Nerf gun will.”
Josh’s forehead bunched again, and his lips were all stitched up. “What do you mean?”
Cleo held up the floss she’d nabbed from the bathroom. “I’ll take a pi
ece of this, tie one end around the Nerf missile and the other end around your loose tooth. Then I pull the trigger, and — shazam! — your tooth is soaring through the air.”
“Like a paratrooper?” he said slowly.
“Just like a paratrooper,” Cleo said.
A smile spread across his face.
She got another flash of inspiration. “I’ll be right back. Don’t try to do it while I’m gone!” She rushed out of the room.
Mom talked on the phone downstairs. “I wonder if we could work out a deal, Jean. I need cage-free eggs for my products. You have cage-free chickens.”
Miss Jean. Perfect. Mom would be on the phone for a while. Miss Jean liked to talk.
Cleo headed to the room at the end of the hall to find Dad’s new tablet. Getting sent to her room for taking Mom’s knife tickled the edges of her memory, but she swept the thought aside and kept on going.
She found the tablet in its drawer. She stared at it. Should she? Her parents had made it absolutely clear that she was not to use it without permission. If only she’d realized the can of Pepsi had tipped over on the last one. Unfortunately, she’d been horsing around with JayJay and left the tablet marinating in soda.
She needed to record this momentous event. The opportunity to capture her tooth-pulling method on video might not come again for weeks or even months. And she would be careful. Super-duper careful. No electronic devices would be harmed in the making of this film! She grabbed it and ran back to the boys’ room, closing the door behind her.
Julian was dropping plastic soldiers off the top bunk, making explosion sounds when they hit the ground. Barkley — Yay, Barkley! He’d actually made it up the stairs — stood below, trying to catch them in midair. He snatched one in his mouth, lay down, and went to town on it.
“No, Barkley!” Josh yanked the soldier from Barkley’s stinky mouth and wiped the slobbery toy on his pants. “What are you doing with that?” He watched Cleo turn on the tablet. “Aren’t you supposed to —”
“I’m going to record your paratrooper tooth!”
His eyes lit up. “Cool! Then I’ll be able to watch it.”
You and a whole lot of other people, Cleo thought. Her marketing plan was taking shape even as she loaded her tooth-pulling instrument.
Her extractor.
No. Her Extractor Extraordinaire!™
She tied a long piece of floss to the missile. Julian climbed down the ladder. “You gonna hurt Joshy?”
She took the loose end of the floss. “No. I’m helping him. Aren’t I, Josh?” She smiled, thinking about all the dangly toothed kids at New Heights Elementary.
Josh suddenly looked unsure. Time to take charge. It was Fortune Principle Number Four: Confidence inspires confidence. And right then, Cleo’s young followers needed to believe that she knew what she was doing, even if she wasn’t one hundred percent sure herself.
“It’s going to be great. Think of the story that you can tell at school. And you won’t have to go to sleep terrified you’re going to swallow your tooth again.”
Josh nodded, but his eyebrows were still pulled together.
Cleo forged ahead. She made a slipknot at the end of the floss, put it around Josh’s tooth, and cinched it tight.
“Is it going to hurt? It’s going to hurt.” Josh shook his head. “I don’t want to! I changed my mind!” He’d been a chicken about the other teeth too.
She handed him the Extractor. “Here. You can even pull the trigger.” She put the tablet in camera mode and held it up.
“But —” Josh protested.
“I want to take a picture!” Julian shouted. Barkley started barking. JayJay jumped onto her arm, jostling the tablet. Cleo sucked in her breath as it slipped through her hands. She bobbled it a couple times but grabbed it before it hit the ground.
“Dummy, you almost made me drop it!”
JayJay’s bottom lip started to do its Jell-O Jigglers thing. His big brown eyes watered.
Barkley was still barking. “Quiet, Barks!” She didn’t need Mom coming to investigate. “I’m sorry, JayJay. I shouldn’t have called you that. You can take a picture after me. Promise.” She put her arm around him, feeling bad for making him cry. “I just need you to watch for now, okay?”
“Okay.” He sat on his bed. Barkley sat on the floor with his chin on JayJay’s knee.
One brother down. One to go.
“Do this, Josh, and you’ll be able to tell Emilio. He’ll think it’s super cool. I bet all the boys will think it’s cool.”
He looked from the Nerf gun to the tablet and back to the Nerf gun. “Okay . . . I’ll try it.”
Bingo!
She pushed the RECORD button. “Say hello to Joshua Myron Oliver, client of Cleo’s Quick and Painless Tooth Removal Service.” Josh stood there, staring like a dummy. “Wave to the viewers, please.”
Josh raised his hand, but his smile looked pasted on. Better than nothing.
Cleo turned the camera on herself. “Here at Cleo’s Quick and Painless Tooth Removal Service” — an important rule of any advertisement was that it should repeat the name of the company at least three times — “we let the customer be in control.” She put the camera back on Josh. “Whenever you’re ready, Mr. Oliver, just pull the trigger.”
Barkley started barking again.
“Barkley! Quiet!”
Josh shook his head. He was wimping out. “I dohn wah doo,” he said with his mouth open. Drool spilled over his lip.
Great. Nothing like a little drool to win over the customers.
“Of course, we understand at Cleo’s Quick and Painless Tooth Removal Service that not everyone is excited to say good-bye to their teeth —” Cleo lunged for the Nerf gun.
She wasn’t sure who actually pulled the trigger. The missile rocketed toward the window. Josh screamed bloody murder and clutched his mouth. JayJay jumped up and down, shrieking. Barkley barked like mad.
Cleo ran to pick up the missile and held it out in front of the tablet. Dangling from the end of the floss was one beautiful baby tooth. Ka-ching!
Josh rushed for his tooth. “Give that to me. That’s worth money!”
She handed it to him, still attached to the missile. “Smile for the camera!”
He smiled for real this time, showing off a nice big gap where his top front tooth had been. “It worked!” he shouted.
She zoomed in on his mouth. “So, folks, as you can see, this is one satisfied customer!”
The doorknob turned. Mom! Cleo slung the tablet along the floor. It zipped across the carpet and disappeared under the bunk bed.
“What in the world?” Mom said, stepping into the room. “What’s going on in here?”
“My tooth came out! My tooth came out! We did it with my Nerf gun!” Josh held up the missile. The tooth swung on the floss.
“Your Nerf gun?” Mom’s jaw dropped.
“We even got it on —”
“On the first try!” Cleo said before Josh could finish, just in case he’d been about to say they’d recorded it — on the tablet she didn’t have permission to use.
“Yeah! Isn’t that so cool, Mom?” He ran to Cleo and threw his arms around her. “Thanks, Cleo!”
Her heart suddenly felt all soft like room-temperature butter. “You’re welcome.” She squeezed back.
Mom put her hand on Josh’s head. “I guess Mr. Tooth Fairy will be making a visit to our house tonight.” He nodded excitedly.
“It’s my turn to take a picture!” JayJay tugged on Cleo’s arm.
Mom looked at JayJay, then at Cleo. The questioning look was back on her face.
“Uh . . . I told him he could use my camera.”
Julian kept tugging. “But —”
“Come on, JayJay. Let’s go get it.” She took his hand. She needed to get him out of here pronto, before he spilled the beans.
Mom asked to see the tooth. She held the missile, laughing. “Cleo, how
do you come up with this stuff?”
Cleo smiled. What could she say? She was inspired. With a little luck and some word-of-Josh’s-mouth advertising, she would be turning a profit in no time.
The next morning, Cleo was up and ready to go a half hour early. She’d gone to Caylee’s right after Fortune with Dad’s tablet stashed in her backpack and asked Caylee’s older brother, Ernie Junior, to upload the video of Josh onto YouTube. He’d gone above and beyond, even adding a slow-motion replay of the tooth shooting from Josh’s mouth. It was awesome. And hilarious. Hilarisome. Hopefully, Mom and Dad would agree . . . once she told them about it.
Now the tablet was safely back in its drawer, Josh was parading around the house with his sugar-free gum and fifty cents, and Cleo had a stack of advertisements in her backpack, ready to hand out at school. Cleo pulled out a copy of the ad and read it over one more time.
Caylee had suggested that they add the “nearly” before “PAINLESS.” She’d also talked Cleo out of trying to operate this particular business on school grounds. All guns, including toy ones, were completely off-limits and could even get a kid suspended. It had happened to Ronnie Tipton just last year.
Cleo still thought Caylee needed to take more risks, but this time she knew Caylee was right. They would offer their service at Wilson Park, not far from the school.
Cleo lay on her bed, talking to Fortune about her latest venture. “I’m giving away twenty percent this time — because of what I saw on your show yesterday, about socially conscious being the new business model.” She would show how unselfish she could be.
Fortune’s eyes stayed put, her arms still frozen in that almost-hug.
“Because running businesses isn’t only about making money. It’s about making the world better for people, right?”
Cleo was sure Fortune’s sparkly eyes were saying, “Absolutely! Girl, you’ve got it!”
Had she received Cleo’s letter yet? Cleo realized with a start that it had been four days! The thought filled her with hope. Fortune might be holding Cleo’s stationery at that very moment.
Cleo stood on the bed. She pressed her palms against Fortune’s outstretched hands. Looked deep into her Magic 8 Ball eyes. And wished she could be Fortune’s daughter.
Cleo Edison Oliver, Playground Millionaire Page 5
