Cleo ran and gave Caylee a huger-than-normal Bug-a-Hug, as if they’d been apart for months. (A Bug-a-Hug was a hug they’d invented that was so tight it practically made your eyes bug out.)
“Nice outfit!” Cleo stood back so she could admire Caylee’s clothes.
Her turquoise T-shirt came down over the hips of her cuffed jeans, which had hearts and flowers stitched on the legs. Over her shirt, she had on a totally adorable purple bolero sweater. And on her feet, purple Mary Jane shoes.
“My dad took me back-to-school shopping.”
Cleo’s striped, too-tight, button-up blouse suddenly seemed faded. The sleeves felt a little too short and the hole in her leggings felt gaping. Her family hadn’t gone back-to-school shopping this year.
Caylee’s chin-length, straight black hair was held back on either side by funky felt hair clips — a paintbrush on one side and an artist’s palette on the other.
“Did he buy you these cool clips too?” Cleo reached out to touch the palette.
“I made them, actually.”
Cleo’s eyes bugged without the hug. “Wow! They’re great! You could sell these.”
“Thanks.” Caylee slipped her arm through Cleo’s and they walked toward the painted line on the playground outside their classroom. They reached their door — the only ones in line.
“Where were you last night? I sent Barkley over.”
Last spring, when she’d been grounded from the phone for a month for calling an 888 fortune-teller number, she had created a message capsule that attached to her dog’s collar with Velcro — Cleo’s Canine Carrier Capsule™. Then she trained Barkley to take messages back and forth between the Ortegas’ and her house, and — voilà! — Barkley the Carrier Dog! The night before, he’d come back with her message still in the capsule.
“I got home late from my dad’s.”
“Did you swim? I can’t wait to go with you. I’d be in the pool the whole time!”
Caylee looked at her feet. She was suddenly very quiet. “I didn’t really feel like swimming.” She kept her head down for so long that Cleo looked too, thinking maybe she’d seen something interesting like an un-chewed piece of bubblegum or a lost earring. “He’s got this new girlfriend . . . They were always going off places and leaving me and E.J. behind.”
The whistle to line up shrilled.
A girlfriend? Something just didn’t seem right about a dad having a girlfriend.
Cleo was about to say so when she heard Lexie Lewis’s mocking voice. “Hey, LeSnore, how was your summer? Much more LeBoring than mine, I’m sure.”
Cleo stood as straight and tall as she could, but Lexie still looked down on her. She wore a fur-lined, hooded vest. A gold purse covered in rhinestone flowers hung by her side. Who brought a purse to school? Lexie Lewis, that’s who.
“I see you’re still wearing braids.” Lexie’s hair was pressed and sleek, all the way down to her shoulders.
“I see you’re still at New Heights.”
Lexie always bragged that her parents planned to put her and her brother, Cole, in private school. If only they would, Cleo thought. Her life would be so much easier.
“Did you think I wouldn’t be?”
Hoped was more like it. “What about private school?”
“We’re applying for middle schools now. Elementary doesn’t really matter, anyway.” Her eyelids fluttered. “How are your dolls?”
Cleo clenched her teeth. “I don’t play with dolls.”
“You did last year.”
“Well, I don’t anymore. I’m too busy running my businesses.”
“Oh, like selling doll rugs?”
“No. Avocados.”
Lexie sputtered. “Avocados?”
“Yep. Made thirty-three dollars yesterday.”
“Wow, Cleo,” Caylee said. “That’s a lot!”
Cleo could tell Lexie didn’t want to look too impressed. “Not nearly enough to buy this.” She held up the purse. “If you’re wondering, yes, it’s a real Trudy Ferretti.” She admired her own handbag.
“Tooty-Fruity?” Caylee said, her nose wrinkled. “Isn’t that an ice cream flavor?”
Cleo cracked up.
Lexie Lewis just cracked. At least it looked like her long, skinny face had. “I said, ‘Trudy Ferretti.’ But, of course, you two wouldn’t know.”
Cleo knew, actually. Fortune loved Trudy Ferretti shoes and handbags.
“She’s only the hottest designer of the decade!” Lexie crowed.
The whistle sounded again. “Too bad we’re not in the same class this year, LeSnore. I could have taught you some things about fashion.” She looked Cleo up and down. “I’ll give you a quick tip now. Get rid of the religious leggings.”
Cleo looked at her, confused. Religious leggings?
Lexie pointed at Cleo’s knee. “They’re holey.” She laughed. As if she were funny.
Cleo stuffed her fists into the crooks of her arms and made her eyes into slits. If Lexie Lewis wasn’t careful she was going to get herself a knuckle sandwich before this year was over.
“See you around!” The Tooty-Fruity purse swung out to the side as she swiveled and flounced toward the other fifth-grade line.
“For your information, my middle name isn’t Lenore anymore!” Cleo called after her. “It’s Edison!”
Lexie ignored her.
“She’s horriful,” Caylee said, using one of their favorite made-up words. The opposite of horriful was splendarvelous.
They both giggled, and Cleo’s fists relaxed. The door to their classroom opened and a tall, skinny man in a red-blue-and-green Hawaiian shirt came out. “Hello, Room Number Fourteen Fifth-Graders! Do I have some big plans for you!” He high-fived Cleo, Caylee, and a few other kids at the front of the line.
Cleo wished she had some big plans for how to deal with Lexie Lewis. She glanced at Lexie’s purse, glinting in the sun, and told herself she could care less if Lexie Lewis owned a Trudy Ferretti — even if the designer label was Fortune’s favorite.
Cleo found her desk close to the door they’d just come in. It was pulled together with three others, same as all the desks in the room. She checked the folded-paper name tents in her group.
Nuts and Nintendo! Caylee wasn’t one of her table buddies.
Instead, Cleo would be sitting next to none other than Cole Lewis, Mr. BMOC — Big Man of the Classroom. Cole was working the room, giving fancy handshakes and fist bumps to his buddies. Everyone loved Cole . . . including Caylee. Cleo was not as impressed. The fact that he was Lexie Lewis’s twin probably didn’t help.
Caylee was one table over, on the other side of where Cole would be, when he finally stopped chatting it up. Caylee was changing her first name from MICHAELA to CAYLEE on her name tent. She and Cleo had come up with the nickname in second grade so that they could have the same first and last initials.
Cleo grabbed her name tent, pulled her favorite purple pen from her backpack, and wrote EDISON in cramped, sloping letters between CLEOPATRA and OLIVER. Then she added a comma and CEO to the end.
Lucky Caylee . . . she was sitting across from sophisticated and stylish Amelie Martinet, a girl with beautiful, long, reddish-brown hair who spoke three languages and whose family vacationed in faraway places like France and the Cape Verde Islands. Sitting across from Cleo was Micah Mitchell, who had a reputation for armpit-farting and breaking into song at totally inappropriate times.
The fourth seat belonged to Anusha Chatterjee. With that last name, you might have thought she was born to talk (like Cole Lewis apparently had been), but she was the quietest girl in the whole school. Cleo would bring her out of her shell. That’s probably why Mr. Boring had put them together.
“Hi, Anusha! Did you have a good summer?”
“Yes.” Anusha bent over to put her things in her desk, and that was the end of the conversation. Ah well. All worthy projects took time.
Cole’s rear end finall
y made touchdown. He reached out and nudged Cleo’s arm. “Hey, Cleo. What’s up?”
“Fortune Enterprises stock,” she said with satisfaction. She had looked online that morning. One day soon, she would be a shareholder herself.
Cole gave her a funny look. He turned to Micah. “How you doin’, table buddy?” They slapped a high five.
You can think I’m strange all you want, Cole Lewis. I’ll be laughing all the way to the bank.
Mr. Boring blew into a small wooden thing. It looked like the carved handle of a crank, or the top of a candlestick, but it quacked like a duck! Quack! Quack-quack! The ridiculous sound definitely got their attention. It also made everyone laugh. Cleo liked Mr. Boring already.
Once everyone quieted down, Mr. Boring did not do the usual boring thing of calling roll. Instead, he announced in a TV game show voice, “It’s time for The Name Game!” Cleo felt a rush of energy. She loved games.
In The Name Game, each person would have a turn to tell the rest of the class about his or her name: where it came from, what it meant, why their parents chose it. The one rule was that there were to be no interruptions while the person was sharing. And absolutely no poking fun.
If a person did interrupt, Mr. Boring’s Three Strikes and You’re IN policy would take effect.
“Three strikes and you’ll be inside for recess. And there’s no way you want to spend your recess with me. My name is Mr. Boring, after all.” His eyes roamed the room. He was serious, but clearly not boring.
Then he made them all raise their right hands and swear on their parents’ good reputations that they would not interrupt — no way, no how.
“No way, no how!” they repeated enthusiastically.
“Now that we have the formalities out of the way, let’s . . . play the game!”
Cleo was disappointed that this game didn’t have a winner, and even more disappointed when Mr. Boring started on the opposite side of the room — she was bursting with things to say! — but still, it would be fun to learn about people’s names and how they got them. More fun than doing some time-wasting assignment, that was for sure. She listened, more or less, to her classmates, all the while crafting what she would say about herself.
Steffy Lee had been named after the midwife who delivered her. Tessa Hutchfield was named after her grandma. Amelie’s parents had just liked the sound of the name — it was musical — which was fitting, because so was Amelie. She had the best singing voice of anyone at New Heights Elementary.
Caylee — Michaela — had been named after an archangel!
“Is an archangel like an archenemy?” Quentin McDonnell asked. He’d gotten his name, which meant five, from being the fifth kid in his family.
“Not exactly,” Mr. Boring said. “Although they have this prefix in common, don’t they?” He wrote the words on the board and underlined the arch part on both. “Arch means chief, so an archangel would be top dog in a company of angels. And an archenemy would be someone’s chief nemesis — his or her number one enemy.”
Cleo imagined Lexie Lewis’s smug face.
Caylee, on the other hand, had been her archfriend since second grade. How had Cleo never known that her best friend was named after the top dog of a company?! No wonder they had always gotten along so well.
Finally, they got to Cleo’s table. Cleo was about to raise her hand, but Mr. Boring called on Anusha first. She spoke so quietly Mr. Boring had to ask her to repeat herself. Her name came from an Indian word that meant beautiful morning star. Everyone thought that was really cool.
Cleo wondered if her name had a meaning. She’d have to look into that. She started to raise her hand again, but Cole got to go next. She had had butterflies in her stomach earlier, but not anymore. Now she had bats. This waiting was killing her!
Cole was named after a famous singer, Nat King Cole. He started impersonating the man’s singing. “ ‘Unforgettable, that’s what you are . . .’ ” He was so cheesy. Cleo looked at Caylee, planning to roll her eyes, but Caylee’s gaze was fixed on the singing fool. Why did her face look so dreamy? Oh, Caylee.
Mr. Boring asked Cole if his twin sister was also named after someone famous.
“She’s named after a car.” Cole snickered. “Our mom always wanted to have a Lexus. Alexis. Get it?” Now he laughed loud, like a donkey. Maybe Cole Lewis wasn’t so bad, after all — if he could laugh at his sister.
Hmmm . . . Lexie Lewis had been named after a car. Cleo would keep the info in her back pocket . . . just in case.
Finally, Mr. Boring called on her. “And how about you, Cleopatra?” She liked the way he said her name, long and drawn out, with a trill on the r, like an actor in one of those Shakespeare plays. “I’m extremely curious to know how you got your intriguing name.”
Intriguing! He hadn’t called any of the other kids’ names that.
Cleo’s heart hammered. Her mouth went dry. She was still eager to share, but she was also crazy nervous, she realized. “I got it from my birth mom,” she began proudly.
“Your what?” It was Rowdy Jimmy Ryerson.
Mr. Boring made a whistling sound and held up his hands in a T.
“Time out,” he said. “Jimmy, that’s Strike One.” Jimmy’s name was the first to go on the board. Mr. Boring put a mark next to it. “Please, continue. The floor’s all” — his eyes roamed the room — “yours.”
Cleo liked the sound of that. She swallowed and kept going. “My birth mom is the lady who gave birth to me” — she looked at Jimmy — “obviously. Before I was adopted.” She had no problem with telling people she was adopted. It wasn’t a big secret. “She named me Cleopatra because Cleopatra was a powerful and smart woman, and also a very beautiful African queen, and my birth mom wanted me to know that I’m these things too.”
She held up her name tent and pointed to where she’d added her new middle name. “My middle name is Edison, which is my mom’s unmarried name. My mom who adopted me, I mean. We are definitely related to the genius inventor and entrepreneur Thomas Edison, but don’t ask me how, because I don’t remember.”
“But you’re not really related if you’re adopted, are you?” Jimmy blurted.
Mr. Boring eyed him, then added a second mark. “Did I mention that the three strikes program lasts all day long? There’s a lot of day left, Jimmy.”
“In conclusion” — Cleo pressed ahead with her prepared remarks, in spite of the warmth in her cheeks and the shakiness that had come over her — “my name is Cleopatra Edison Oliver, president of Cleopatra Enterprises, Inc.!” She ran her hand under her name tent with a flourish. “But you can just call me Cleo.” She folded her hands on her desk and flashed them her best CEO smile. A few kids laughed, which was fine. She had meant for her audience to be entertained.
Jimmy raised his hand. Mr. Boring hesitated. “Yes, Jimmy?”
“Why did that woman want you to think you’re a queen? You can’t be a queen unless you’re from a royal family.”
Cleo scowled. Now she was getting mad.
“In her birth mom’s eyes, I’m sure Cleo will always be a queen,” Mr. Boring interjected.
A pain shot through her chest, as if her heart were a peeled orange and someone had stuck in their thumbs and pulled it into two sections.
Mr. Boring smiled at her. A nice smile.
Heat rushed to her face. Cleo blinked away the tears that had sprung to her eyes in a surprise attack.
“Thank you for sharing, Cleo. Micah?”
Cleo didn’t hear anything of what Micah said. The Name Game had turned out to be The Lame Game. And a little bit The Shame Game. Anyway, it was a real stinker.
After school, Cleo and Josh walked home. Normally, Caylee would join them, but that day, her mom picked her up for some kind of appointment.
In the kitchen, Mom was making something again. Bags of ingredients, messy bowls, measuring cups, and eggshells littered the counter. The Longevity Lollipops hadn’t gone over so wel
l. Cleo’s had gotten stuck in her throat and practically choked her to death.
Mom turned off the mixer and gave them both kisses. “How was school?”
JayJay ran in and threw his arms around Cleo’s waist. “Cleo!” It was nice to come home to an adoring fan. She hugged him back and he headed for Josh.
“Mom! Guess what?” Josh said. “Emilio’s in my class!” He opened the pantry door, scavenging for a snack.
“That’s great!”
“What are you making this time?” Cleo eyed the gritty batter suspiciously. It looked a little too much like something that had been digested once already.
“Quinoa Cupcakes!”
“Keen-what?”
Mom held up a bag of birdseed. “Keen-wha. It’s a miracle grain. Full of protein. You can try one when they’re done!”
“No thanks. I’ll just have one of these.” She grabbed a chocolate chip protein bar from the pantry and peeled back the wrapper. “Can I open my avocado stand today?”
“What about homework?”
“Our teacher doesn’t believe in giving a lot of homework.”
Mom eyed her skeptically. “Oh, really?”
“I’ve just got a little reading. I can do it in between customers.”
“Okay, but you have to answer my question first. How was school?”
“Fine.” Except for dumb Jimmy Ryerson asking her questions about her birth mom. She’d thought she’d gotten over it, but there it was again, making her feel weird, like she didn’t belong. “I like Mr. Boring.”
“He does seem like a good guy.”
“You’ve met him?”
“I emailed your teachers last week. Just to introduce myself — and our family. Like I do every year.” Of course. Cleo wished she wouldn’t make such a big deal out of it, but Mom had made educating others about adoption one of her main missions in life.
“Well, I’ve got a business to run.” Cleo started toward the family room, where she’d stashed all her business stuff. “You know where to find me.”
Outside, the avocados on the ground were all half eaten. Barkley. He had ruined ten dollars’ worth of product! The remaining avocados were high up in the branches. She got the ladder from their detached garage and set it up next to a tree.
Cleo Edison Oliver, Playground Millionaire Page 3