Chapter 14: Pointing Fingers
"I thought she was not going to let us take these," Rez said to Elli and Nathan.
They had decided to meet at one of the benches in the main park after school. In their hands, they held the two magazines and newspaper clipping.
"Maybe she thinks she's won in dashing our hopes for gaining more information on recent events in the world above and didn't see the harm in letting us borrow the items," Nathan guessed.
He noticed the kids' magazine had the same black marker lines running through every page except for the article on the Smiling Critters cartoon. It briefly mentioned the toys that would be sold the same day the cartoon premiered. But mostly, the article focused on the cartoon's creators and Playtime's goal of making similar cartoons depending on the success of the Smiling Critter toys.
"What should we do?" Elli asked. "These are useless to us!"
"Not if we look at these items carefully," Rez claimed.
"How? The mail-order magazine story and newspaper article didn't tell us much. And I don't think the kids' magazine story is going to be much help either."
"Do you remember that lesson Miss Delight taught in Reading where she told us to 'read between the lines'?"
"Barely," replied Elli.
"Same here," Nathan said. "I passed the lesson, but all I took from it was that words might have more meaning than they appear to."
"Exactly," Rez confirmed. But while Nathan and Elli were still confused, he explained, "Miss Delight wanted us to understand what the person writing the words was trying to say beyond what was written down."
"You mean, there's more to what a person is writing about? Like a hidden meaning?" Elli looked back at the mail-order magazine in her hand. "But what does that have to do with these items?"
"What I'm saying is we need to read the stories and try to figure out what they're saying beneath the printed words," Rez said. "In other words, what did the people who wrote these stories want to tell us?"
A loud thud caused the kids to flinch. They looked up and saw a large pink toy standing in front of them.
"Kissy Missy!" Elli exclaimed. "W-Where did you come from?"
Using one of her floppy limbs, Kissy pointed to the statue at the center of Playcare.
"You were up there?" Rez guessed.
In response, Kissy nodded.
"For how long?" Nathan asked.
Kissy's eyes drifted up toward the setting light, and she used her right hand to trace a path from where the light was to the school.
"Since school ended?" When Kissy nodded again, Nathan figured, "Then you weren't on top of the statue for too long."
When Kissy nodded a third time, she pointed at the Home Sweet Home house.
"You want us to come with you back to the house?" Elli stood up. "We were just on our way there. Right, boys?"
"Yeah," Rez and Nathan said together.
This satisfied Kissy as she walked along the path around the park, glancing back every once in a while to make sure Elli, Rez, and Nathan were following her. At the entrance to the house, Mommy greeted them and led them into the dining hall for dinner with the other kids.
"I was worried when you three didn't show up at the house right away," Gaby said.
"So she told Mommy, who told Kissy to bring you guys here," added Dale. Then he noticed what Nathan, Elli, and Rez were holding. "Where did you get those?"
"From the library," Elli answered, covering the mail-order magazine with her hands. "Is there a problem with that?"
"Nothing!" Dale insisted. "But I've never seen you guys check anything out from the library before, unless it was an assigned book."
"True," Gaby recalled. She adjusted her glasses as she looked at the items the three were carrying. "So what have you got there?"
"Just a couple of magazines and a newspaper article," Nathan said.
"A newspaper article?" Mommy's hand stretched down and grabbed the newspaper clipping from Rez's hand. "Since when did you three become interested in these?"
"Miss Delight gave the newspaper clipping to me," Nathan lied.
"Why would she do that?" Mommy's neck stretched to where her face was inches from Nathan's. "You'd better not be lying to Mommy."
"I'm not lying!"
"He wanted to know more recent history, and Miss Delight told him about the newspaper article," Elli said.
"Did she now?" Mommy seemed intrigued. "But that doesn't explain Nathan's interest in recent history, does it?"
"Honestly, it was my idea," Rez claimed. "My last history test score wasn't the greatest, so I thought if I did a report about recent toys such as you and the Smiling Critters it would make up for that."
"So that's why you have magazines about me and the Smiling Critters cartoon," Mommy realized, looking at the items Rez and Elli had. "But that doesn't explain the newspaper article about Huggy and Kissy."
"Because my report was going to be about how Huggy and Kissy saved Playtime, Co.'s sales leading to other successful toys like—
"You know about sales?" Mommy stretched her head from Nathan over to Rez. "Who told you about them?"
"Um, Miss Delight did," Rez said, piggybacking off Nathan's earlier lie.
"Which class was it?" Mommy asked.
"I think it was Math. Right, Elli?"
"Yeah, she mentioned them in Math," Elli nodded.
Mommy looked between all three kids and a large grin creeped across her face.
"Next week is Parent-Teacher Conference Day," Mommy realized. "This will give Mommy the chance to meet with Miss Delight and her sisters to see how each of you are doing in school. Maybe Mommy can get to the bottom of what kinds of things Miss Delight is teaching you kids."
From there, dinner was unnervingly quiet while Elli, Rez, and Nathan weren't sure what to think.
"Do you think Mommy took the bait?" Elli whispered to Nathan.
"You wanted to steer Mommy's attention away from what we got from the library by making it seem like Miss Delight was to blame for giving them to us, right?" Rez assumed.
"That's precisely what I had in mind," Nathan said. "Plus, that Parent-Teacher Conference will keep Mommy distracted long enough for two of us to sneak into that locked room in the library."
Elli was surprised to hear this. "Why do you want us to go in there?"
"I thought you wanted to break into the Counselor's Office," Rez said. "Did you change your mind about that?"
To be continued…
