In Todd We Trust Page 3

  He just shrugged and took another swig of chocolate milk. “I’ll figure something out.”

  Our conversation was cut short by a ruckus over at the eighth graders’ tables. A food fight was in full force. I stopped chewing my chicken wad to watch.

  “Miss it?” Duddy asked quietly.

  I thought back to those few glorious days when I was part of the Zoo Crew, Max’s gang of cool kids, wildly slinging Ring Dings as Max’s right-hand man. It had been nice … but it had nearly cost me my best friend, and the Toddlians.

  “Naw,” I said. Even Max wasn’t allowed to sit with the Zoo Crew anymore. Ever since the Toddlians had humiliated him on my skateboard, Max ate his lunch a couple of tables away with Hank Fiddlehead and Joey Dupree, two lower-level sixth grade bullies from Newton Elementary.

  When I looked back up at the Zoo Crew table, Charity was sashaying past. The tot tossing stopped while those guys called to Charity, trying to charm her into sitting with them. She paused like she was thinking about it.

  Okay, so maybe there was something to being popular.

  But then she kept moving, walking by Max, Hank, and Joey. Max shoved a guy over and motioned for Charity to sit by him, but she shook her head and kept walking.

  Right. Toward. Me.

  I couldn’t believe it. Her tight smile burst into a gleaming grin as she nodded at me again and crossed the cafeteria. The whole thing seemed to be happening in slow motion, her golden-brown hair swishing around her shoulders, her ocean-blue eyes locked onto mine … shoot, even the veggie burger on her tray looked edible in her reflected glory.

  It was exactly like the scene where Varusa, the Lizard Queen, emerges slowly out of the Pool of Secrets. In fact, I thought I heard the beautiful violin melody that the show used as Varusa’s theme music.

  I came crashing back to reality when Charity stopped beside me and said, “Hey! So you and your friend watch Dragon Sensei?”

  My mouth opened but no sound came out. It didn’t matter, because Duddy started talking enough for the both of us. “Watch it? We’re the founders of the Koi Boy Karate Choppers, and we basically role-play nonstop. You should see our costumes! Todd’s Oora robe actually has Boom Shrooms that blow green smoke and—”

  “Shuddup!” Max bellowed behind Charity. I hadn’t noticed him trailing her from his table. She set her tray down and sat on my left. Sweet heat shot through me. Charity was so close I could smell the coconuts in her shampoo. If she even noticed Max was there, she didn’t show it.

  “Hey!” Max protested. “You don’t want to sit with these losers. They’re first-class dorks, let me tell you. They waste all their time pretending to be bees or something.” He leaned into her. “Can you believe that?”

  Charity turned to me. “Does he mean Vespa the Vengeful, Hornet of Hate?”

  Ohmygosh. She knew!

  Good thing Duddy answered her, because there was a watermelon-sized lump in my throat. “You should see our friend Lucy’s Vespa costume. It’s got hologram wings and a neon stinger and everything.”

  She smiled at Duddy. “Vespa’s too spiteful for my taste. Personally, I prefer to play the Lizard Queen. Varusa’s my favorite Fernsopian female.”

  I couldn’t speak. Is this really happening?

  Max snorted incredulously, shook his head, and walked away.

  Charity turned back to me and smiled. “You know, we absolutely have to get together and have a Dragon Sensei battle jam.”

  I think I died inside. But what a delicious death it was.

  I must have gone to heaven because Charity reached over and squeezed my arm. “Let’s make plans soon.”

  CHAPTER 4

  PERSEPHONE

  It weren’t long after the Red Thing Fiasco that I shimmied up to Mount Bambino’s summit, where Lewis was waiting to powwow. He stopped muttering to himself when he saw me, and I plopped my patootie down next to his.

  “Thanks for meeting me here, Persephone,” he said.

  “Sure shootin’,” I replied. “Whatcha doin’ with that paper? More of Todd’s schoolin’, I reckon?”

  Lewis shook his head and forked over the circles of paper he’d snatched from the funny thing Todd called a hole punch. They said:

  Oh, Great Todd live forever etc. We, your loyal subjects, are aware that you have many kingdoms to rule: Middle School, The Mall, Fernsopi, and Toddlandia. We also realize that you must manage your odious homework when all the while defending yourself against eighth graders. (Mention ever-present evil of The Adorable One They Call Daisy and her frequent raids on his room. Do not mention your affection for her or the art lessons.) But if you could spare a few moments of precious time for your humble servant Lewis—

  I couldn’t tolerate it. I grabbed the papers and wadded them up, shaking my fist. “What kind of pig swill is this, Lew? You gonna lick the dirt off his shoes while yer at it? Have a mite of self-respect, hombre! You’re not figurin’ on reading that to him, are you?”

  “Well, no, not read it, exactly. These are just talking points to use as a guide. I’ll speak straight from my heart.” Lewis shot me that goldurn darlin’ lopsided grin of his and put on his puppy-dog eyes. “I had hoped you would accompany me to ‘palaver’ with His Toddness.”

  Blast it all! I never could say nay when he asked like that. “Sure, Lew, I’ll be your pardner.” Make ya stick to yer guns, too, iffen ya start to turn lily-livered! Not that I believed for a second that Todd would comprendo what Lewis was aiming at. Or even give a plug nickel.

  I was still hotter than grease on a griddle about the rotten Red Thing and its creepy critter. Todd had made it clear as water in a rain barrel what he thought of us by leavin’ the nasty rotten mess to skeer us half to death.

  What had we done to deserve to be treated like we were lower than dirt? Not one dadgum thing. The thought of it boiled me over so bad I blurted out, “Don’t know why we’re wastin’ our time on this sorry excuse for a god.”

  Lewis gasped. “Persephone, I beg you—”

  But I wasn’t ready to stop. “I’m sick as a sow’s ear of your kowtowin’ to Todd and getting nothin’ for it but a smackdown.”

  “Blasphemy!” Lewis hissed, clapping a hand over my mouth. “I beseech you, stop this sacrilegious talk! Do you want to incur more of his wrath?”

  He was shaking so much that I let it ride with “All righty, no need to get yer bloomers in a bundle! It’s not like he can hear us. Cool yer heels, for cryin’ out loud.”

  I said no more about it then, but the notion of a new leader gnawed at my mind aplenty.

  When it was high time for Todd to be home, Lewis and I parked our patooties on top of his laptop computer—the one spot we knew he’d see us. But when he came in, Todd headed right to his desk and started riflin’ around on the shelf above it.

  “GREAT TODD, MAY YOU LIVE FOREVER!” Lewis stood and hollered. “May we have a word with you?”

  “Just a minute, Lewis,” Todd muttered. “I need to bone up on my Dragon Sensei this afternoon.” He started layin’ his fool dolls on the desk right next to us. “Koi Boy, Mongee-Poo … how’d these get out of order? Oora should be right here,” he insisted. “Wait, where’s Oora—AAAAHHH! WHO DID THIS TO OORA?!” He slammed the doll against the desk, causin’ an earthquake that knocked Lewis clean over. I saw right away what had him all hopped up. The thing was missin’ a leg.

  Todd started foaming at the mouth like a rabid dog as he found another one of his figure thingies one-legged. He sank into his chair and plopped his noggin right on top of the computer—we jumped clear jest before his head hit, barely escaping with our hides!

  “I don’t believe this,” Todd cried. “Is nothing safe?”

  Lewis hustled up onto Todd’s hand and made a beeline for his shoulder.

  “Great Todd live forever,” he began into Todd’s ear. “I know you are busy, but might you spare a few seconds of your precious time—”

  Todd lifted his head and grabbed the micro-glasses that Lucy had made,
allowin’ him to see us more clearly. He slid them on and waved at his dollies, moaning, “Have you guys seen these? How can I show my Dragon Sensei collection to Charity at school tomorrow when Saki and Oora are missing legs? I mean, sure, they regenerate limbs on TV, but this is real life, and I’m just … I can’t …”

  Lewis patted Todd on the cheek. “I am sorry, Your Greatness. Perhaps Persephone and I could help you look for the missing appendages, and then we could discuss—”

  “But you must have seen who did this!” Todd said, wild-eyed. “Maybe Herman needed them for some invention, or the little Toddlians decided they wanted some slides for their playground …” He pointed his trigger finger at me. “Or you—you totally messed up my Lego set that one time. Did you turn them into jumps for cricket training?”

  I pointed right back at him. “Before you go gettin’ a burr under yer blanket, why don’t you try talkin’ to Daisy? That young Houdini’s the real whodunit in this here situation!”

  Todd threw his head back and howled, “DAAAISY!!!” without so much as a “sorry I acted like a ninny” to us.

  Lewis picked hisself up from where he’d crashed onto the desk again and cleared his throat. “Great Todd, may I say in Daisy’s defense that she only wanted the legs for artistic purposes? She meant nothing nefarious, I am sure of it. And I think even you would agree that her interpretation of ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ is a beautiful collage, much enhanced by the geometric angles of shapely salamander legs.” Lew tried his lopsided grin on His Greatness, but it didn’t work.

  “You let her do it?” Todd asked, all stupefied. “You, my own people, who are supposed to protect my possessions when I’m not here, let that demented toddler waltz right in and wreck my favorite Dragon Sensei figures?” He shook his head and gave us the double stinkeye. “I thought you were my friends.”

  I slung my arm around Lewis to support him as Todd kicked his chair back, ripped off the glasses, and stomped outta there, hollerin’ “DAAAISY!” loud enough to wake a dead rattlesnake.

  Lewis looked at me with soggy eyes. I was plumb torn in two, between feelin’ his pain and wantin’ to sic Duddy’s ants on Todd in his sleep. “Never you mind,” I said, wipin’ a stray tear from Lewis’s cheek. “You showed gumption and gave it a go. He’ll most likely simmer down once he gets those legs back.”

  Lewis hiccupped. “And if he doesn’t?”

  I shrugged. “We’ll have to break that bronc when we get to it.” I didn’t bring up gettin’ ourselves a better god again. Not with Lew this low.

  CHAPTER 5

  DAAAISY, WHERE ARE YOU!” I yelled as I entered the nursery. Daisy stood at her light-up music table with her back to me. She had “Old MacDonald” cranked to an ear-bloodying pitch. I was pretty sure she’d hacked the toy to make it demonically annoying, like herself. My sister might look like the angel Lewis depicted her as in the painting on my ceiling, but I knew that under those blond curls lurked the devious mind of an evil genius.

  I hopped carefully through the minefield of blocks and baby Legos that she’d scattered across her floor, no doubt to cripple unwanted intruders. Squatting down beside her, I took a deep breath and tried to sweet-talk her, the way Mom did.

  “Daisy,” I said over the hideous high-pitched music. “Look at Toddy for a second.”

  Daisy turned and stared right at me, blinked twice, then very slowly and deliberately punched the duck button on top of her toy table. She then ignored me and wiggled her little hiney to the beat. “WITH A QUACK-QUACK HERE AND A QUACK-QUACK THERE …”

  I wasn’t giving up that easy. I waved the action figures in front of her face. “Toddy’s dollies. See?”

  Daisy ignored me, so I picked up Becky Burps-A-Lot and handed it to her. “This is Daisy’s dolly.” She grabbed the doll by the foot and flung it over her shoulder so hard it crashed against the opposite wall with a defeated BUUURRP! Grinning at me, she gleefully punched the cow button.

  “EE-I-EE-I-OOOO! AND ON THAT FARM HE HAD A—”

  “DAISY!” I barked, starting to lose it. “You are in big trouble, kiddo. LOOK AT ME, DAISY. WOULD YOU JUST SHUT THAT THING OFF FOR A SECOND AND LOOK AT ME?”

  She jabbed the duck button. “WITH A QUACK-QUACK HERE AND A QUACK-QUACK THERE …”

  “HAVE YOU SEEN THE LEGS TO THESE?” I shook Oora and Saki right in front of Daisy’s nose, hard enough to send her little blond curl waving in the breeze. “TODD’S TOYS! NOT DAISY’S TOYS!”

  Pig button. “WITH AN OINK-OINK HERE …”

  The “OINK OINK”s finally sent me over the edge. I jumped up and threw my hands in the air. “You know what? You win!” I squealed, my voice as high as the pig’s in the sadistic singing. “You win again! That’s right! Just go into my room whenever you want, destroy my stuff, and because you’re ‘only a baby,’ don’t worry about ever getting punished.”

  Daisy blinked at me, as if to say, You done? Then she jabbed the horse button.

  I felt something inside me break. “YOU KNOW WHAT THE WORST THING IS? I don’t even get the satisfaction of chewing you out about it because YOU DON’T EVEN UNDERSTAND WHAT I’M SAYING!”

  Daisy narrowed her eyes at me. “NEIGH-NEIGH HERE AND A NEIGH-NEIGH THERE—” She nodded her head in time to the music, still wiggling her rear end. Then she plugged the Binky into her mouth and noshed furiously. “Nom nom nom nom.”

  I shook my head and said what I’d heard Mom exclaim a million times: “I GIVE UP!”

  Suddenly the doorbell rang, and my heart jumped up in my chest. Was it Charity? Had Duddy told her where I lived?

  I picked my way as quickly as I could across the death trap that was Daisy’s carpet. BUUUUUUUURP went the Becky doll as I stepped on her stomach in my hurry to get out of there. I flung myself at the door and pulled it open. It wasn’t Charity.

  Max Loving leaned against the doorframe.

  • • •

  A few minutes later I sat in the living room directly across from my mother’s new piano student.

  “Isn’t it great, Todd?” my mom said. “Your friend Max was so inspired by Lucy’s playing the last time he was over that he’s decided to take piano lessons himself.”

  I nodded, trying to swallow the scream that was lodged in my throat.

  “I told you I was coming to collect,” Max mouthed.

  That’s when I spotted my mom’s demon dog, Princess VanderPuff, nosing around her empty food dish. While my mom chatted Max up about his music preferences, I grabbed a cracker with peanut butter off the tray my mom had set out “for our guest” and held it down near my chair, smiling and trying to act natural. VanderPuff was on a diet and not supposed to have any human food (meaning food for humans, not food made of humans; she sure still enjoyed biting the heck out of ankles), but I needed to create a distraction so that I could leave the room and get to the Toddlians without Max noticing.

  Demon Dog delicately sniffed the air and then locked eyes with me. I shook the cracker and then tossed it right between Max’s huge sneakers. I turned back to my mom and Max, smiling as VanderPuff suddenly shot across the kitchen and launched herself at Max’s feet. Startled, Max let out a yelp, shielding his feet with his meaty hands. Unsurprisingly, Demon Dog didn’t like being separated from her cracker at all, so she sprung at Max and latched onto his calf like a bear trap.

  Mua ha ha ha, I thought, glowing with satisfaction. Success!

  “YOWCH!” Max was hollering, shaking his leg while Mom tried to pry the poodle loose.

  “Help me, Todd!” Mom begged through gritted teeth.

  “Bad dog,” I said, arms crossed. I made a mental note to slip the beast my bacon tomorrow morning as I stood and muttered something about going to find one of VanderPuff’s toys.

  As soon as I was out of the kitchen, I escaped down the hallway to my room. I had to figure out somewhere to hide the tiny guys, quick!

  I searched under my bed. There was a shoebox full of baseball cards. I dumped them onto my desk and threw open my
closet door, then got on my knees and turned the box on its side. “Everyone get in!” I commanded. “Now!” But there was no movement. Where were they? I darted to the desk and grabbed the micro-glasses, then knelt down over Toddlandia, looking for signs of life.

  The slipper they slept on, margarine tub they swam in, and playground they played in were each empty. Maybe they were all stuffing themselves on Mount Gym Clothes? Wait a minute! Mount Gym Clothes was missing too!

  Oh, yeah. That one was on me. I felt a little pang of guilt as I realized I’d forgotten to bring my gym clothes home this week to feed them.

  Still, the Toddlians had to be around somewhere. I’d just talked to Lewis and Persephone only a few minutes ago.

  Out in the living room, Max was slaughtering a C major scale, which was one of the last things Mom taught new kids on their first lesson. She must have had all she could stand and was cutting it extra short.

  Where were they?

  I flopped on my stomach and eyeballed every inch of Toddlandia. There was a light coming from the meeting hut, but I couldn’t tell who was in there. Now that I was closer I understood why they hadn’t heard me. The Toddlians were too busy yelling at each other. I’d never heard them fight before … what was going on? I shook my head. No time to worry about that now.

  “All of you, come out here now!” I said, louder. I was sure Max wouldn’t hear me over his meaty fingers banging out wrong notes.

  The Toddlians started spilling out of the hut and assembling on the pink bed slipper. “Wait, what happened, Herman?” I asked the limping Toddlian being helped along by Lewis and Persephone.

  “I will explain, Your Greatness,” he replied. “Pitiful sight that I am.”

  The piano went silent. “Oh, well … Get into this box right now!” I commanded.

  “Why in tarnation should we?” Persephone huffed.

  “Don’t have time to explain! Just trust me! Hurry!” Some of the Toddlians on the slipper began to slowly creep toward the box. “No time for that!” I muttered, picking up the slipper, screaming Toddlians and all, and setting it in the box. The Toddlians were calling on me to be merciful, but I’d have to explain later that I was acting for their own safety.