Chapter 13: Redaction

"We're fine, Miss Delight," Elli lied.

"Yeah, there's nothing wrong with us!" added Rez.

Miss Delight tilted her head sideways. "Are you sure?"

"Actually, we were wondering if you had anything on recent history," Nathan said.

Elli and Rez glanced at Nathan with fearful anxiety, wondering why he was being so honest.

In response, Miss Delight said, "How 'recent' are we talking about?"

"Oh, maybe the past…five years or so," replied Nathan.

"Let me check the catalogue," said Miss Delight.

Turning around, she looked through a series of index cards inside a drawer.

"Sorry, kids," Miss Delight apologized after she finished looking through the catalogue. "There's nothing in our library that is newer than ten years old."

"Okay, well what do you have from that time?" asked Nathan.

"Just a newspaper article about Huggy Wuggy and—oh! I just remembered! There's a mail-order magazine with a story about Mommy Long Legs' debut as a playable toy from four years ago. Would you like to look at that as well?"

"Yeah, sure," Nathan shrugged.

After getting the two things from Miss Delight, the three went to one of the small tables scattered around the library and examined them.

"Looks like this was clipped from a newspaper," Rez noticed, looking at the thin piece of paper in his hand that had the whole article printed on it.

Elli flipped through the mail-order magazine that had Mommy's face on the cover and found a story about a smaller version of Mommy that kids could play with. "Weird…."

"What's weird?" Nathan asked.

"All the pages in this magazine have black lines running through them, except for the story on the smaller Mommy toy," Elli said.

Unconvinced, Nathan looked at the magazine himself. Indeed all the other stories in the magazine had black marker lines covering the words. The only thing that wasn't covered was the date on the magazine, which was 1991.

"So why did Miss Delight claim she didn't have anything more recent than ten years ago when she had this?" Rez wondered as he flipped through the magazine.

"I'm guessing she either genuinely forgot, or purposely withheld the magazine before offering it to us to get our hopes up," Nathan assumed. "But her real intention was to dash them with all this redaction."

"'Redaction'?" Elli had never heard that word before. "What does that mean?"

"After Miss Delight didn't tell me what 'opium' was, I found a dictionary in the library," Nathan explained. "But when I tried to look up the word, the entry for it was covered by the same black marker that's in this magazine. So I asked Miss Delight about it, and she said the dictionary had been 'redacted,' meaning it had been altered from its original published form."

"But why was the dictionary altered? And who did it?" asked Elli.

"Miss Delight claimed the factory workers were concerned about our safety if we knew about 'inappropriate' subjects, or things we didn't need to know. So they changed the dictionary by removing certain words they considered 'inappropriate' for us."

"To me, it sounds like they were more concerned about words they didn't want us to know rather than stuff we didn't need to know," Rez speculated. "And maybe that's why this magazine is redacted: to keep us from learning about what's actually going on in the world above."

Elli glanced over at Miss Delight, who had a sly grin. That made Elli realize Nathan was right in assuming Miss Delight had intentionally sabotaged them and wanted to rub it in without telling them herself.

Unnerved, she looked back at Rez. "Is there anything useful in that magazine? Or the article?"

"Not really," Rez said. "The article talks about 'rising sales' of the smaller Huggy Wuggy and Kissy Missy toys, even though Playtime had been losing something called 'stock.'"

"Gaby looked up that word one time, and she didn't get it," Elli said. "Apparently it's something companies gain which has to do with money."

"So Playtime could have been losing money before Huggy and Kissy came into the picture," Nathan speculated.

"Possibly," Rez said. "The word 'stock' also appeared in the magazine story. But it sounded like Playtime was gaining it instead of losing it."

"Hold on!" Elli said abruptly. "If Mommy being sold as a smaller toy helped Playtime gain more money, then why was Boogie Bot not popular?"

"Let's ask Miss Delight," Nathan said.

"But why?" Rez didn't like this plan. "She clearly can't be trusted. And you said yourself that we can't trust any of the toys."

"If she doesn't tell us anything, it proves my point," Nathan responded and got up from the table.

He approached Miss Delight with a confident stride.

"Excuse me. Do you have any information on Boogie Bot?"

"I'm afraid not, Nathan," Miss Delight answered.

Nathan faked a disappointed frown. "Not a thing?"

"Sadly, yes," said Miss Delight. "Would you like to know about any other toys?"

"Do you have anything about the Smiling Critters?"

"I have a children's magazine that talks about the debut of the Smiling Critters cartoon."

"And the toys?"

"That information is classified."

"What does that mean?"

"Only factory workers and scientists are allowed to access the information we have on the Smiling Critter toys, not kids like you."

Looking past Miss Delight's shoulder, Nathan saw a locked room with a bunch of cabinets and books on a small shelf. He figured the 'classified' information was in there, but hid that knowledge with an innocent smile.

"You've been very helpful, Miss Delight," Nathan complemented. "I'll take the kids' magazine on the Smiling Critters cartoon, please!"

"Of course, Nathan!" Miss Delight's grin grew uncomfortably wider. "And I'll tell my sisters about how kind you were so you can get extra credit."

"Really? Thank you so much!"

As the bell to signify the end of recess rang, Nathan took the kids' magazine from Miss Delight which had the Smiling Critter characters prominently featured on the cover like the mail-order magazine about the Mommy toys. He then picked up the mail-order magazine and newspaper clipping, giving one each to Rez and Elli respectively.

"Mind if we borrow these items for the day, Miss Delight?" Nathan asked the blonde-haired doll.

"Not at all!" Miss Delight said. "Just remember to bring them back tomorrow before class."

"We won't forget," Nathan assured. "Right, guys?"

"Oh, yeah!" Rez gave a thumbs-up.

"Definitely!" added Elli.

"Have a good rest of the day, kids!" Miss Delight said as the three left the library.

"Thanks, Miss Delight!" replied Rez, Nathan, and Elli in unison.

Outside the library, the three breathed a sigh of relief.

To be continued…