The Top Secret Toys Read online

  “Yes. I met everyone at the funeral,” Stella said sadly as she looked down at the floor.

  “Ah, yes. Well, come on in, you two, and have a seat. We were just about to brainstorm new toy ideas. And, if everyone will remember, the first rule of brainstorming is that there are no wrong ideas.” Mr. Dennis turned around and wrote LOG-JACK on a large whiteboard. “We’ll have plenty of time to judge later. So shake off the negativity for now.” Mr. Dennis’s hands were a blur as he shook them in the air. “Come on, everyone, shake it off.”

  Stella’s ring flew across the room as she shook her hands.

  “Great. Let’s start out slow. For now, let’s just brainstorm until we come up with ten ideas. No matter how crazy they are, just throw ’em out there.”

  Royal started. “All right. I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again—I think it would be fun if we had an action figure with a super-long and super-sticky tongue. You would squeeze him and this thirty- or forty-foot tongue would shoot out. You could use the tongue to swing from buildings. Or capture bad guys. I could create a comic to go with it and we could call it Mr. Sticky and his Supersonic Tongue,” Royal said.

  Earl groaned.

  “Good, good.” Mr. Dennis wrote MR. STICKY AND HIS SUPERSONIC TONGUE on the whiteboard.

  “Now, let’s go with that. What else could we do with a supersonic tongue or something sticky?”

  “We could make the tongue out of fruit snacks,” Earl suggested. “And the little guy could actually be a fruit snack dispenser. Whenever you get hungry, you just grab the little guy, rip off a nice big piece of tongue, and enjoy.” Earl stuck his tongue out at Royal.

  “Good.” TONGUE CANDY DISPENSER Mr. Dennis wrote, not realizing it was a joke. “Good. This is a great way to brainstorm. Keep working off each other’s ideas. What else could we do?”

  “We could maybe create super sticky foam balls? You could shoot the balls at someone and they would stick when they hit them,” Stella offered.

  “GREAT, Stella.” Mr. Dennis was jumping up and down as he wrote SUPER GLUE BALLS on the board. “What else?”

  “What if we take the little guy with the tongue,” Fayman said. “But we make the tongue out of rubber. The guy would have this really long, fat rubber tongue hanging out of his mouth. And when you pull it—he burps. The harder the pull… the bigger the belch!”

  “Yes!” Earl jumped up. “We would call them Belcher Bob!”

  “Right on, right on. Now you got it. Keep going, keep going,” said Mr. Dennis.

  “Or maybe we call them Loud Mouths,” Stella suggested. “You pull their tongues and they scream really loud. I mean REALLY REALLY loud. People would hear it twelve blocks away!”

  “Or, what if you put the fake tongue in your mouth, but it was really a straw? You could stick this long fake tongue into a glass and drink through it,” Earl suggested.

  “Oh, hey, better yet. Instead of a tongue straw, what if we make vampire teeth straws? ‘I want to suck your fruit juice,’ ” Fayman said in his best vampire accent.

  “Okay, okay. This is good,” Mr. Dennis said, trying to keep up with the ideas. “Let’s move away from tongues for a moment. What else can we do? Vincent, we haven’t heard from you yet. What great idea is simmering in that brain of yours? Give us a chance to play off one of your brilliant ideas, Vincent.”

  “Ah, how about the Pump-Up Pickup?” Vincent said.

  “Oh, yes! Tell everyone about the Pump-Up Pickup,” Mr. Dennis said while he wrote on the board.

  “It’s a truck with pumps that let you inflate the tires and turn the truck into a giant monster truck built in to the hubcaps.” Vincent hoped Danger Boy hadn’t already shown the idea on TV.

  “Cool,” Earl said.

  “Hey, that’s way cool,” Royal agreed. “Maybe we could also build a line of monster trucks that have heat-seeking devices in them? They would attack you as soon as you took them out of the box.”

  “Wonderful! Look at that,” Mr. Dennis added up the ideas on the whiteboard. “We had ten ideas in less than ten minutes.” He was sweating.

  “I really love your idea, Vincent. If you don’t mind, I’m going to get started building the pickup,” Fayman said.

  “Great. One down and only thirty-nine more to go.” Earl said.

  “Thirty-eight more to go,” Royal interjected. “Don’t forget about Mr. Sticky and his tongue.”

  “That was kind of fun,” Stella said as she and Vincent stepped onto the elevator. Vincent pushed the button for the sixth floor.

  “You should be a toy inventor, Stella. You’re really creative.”

  “No. I’m going to live in Paris and write bestselling, critically acclaimed novels that get translated into dozens of languages and are enjoyed by millions of people around the world.”

  “Oh. Well, if that doesn’t work out, I’m sure Mr. D would hire you here.”

  “No, that’s your thing, Vincent. Hey, why did Earl say ‘Just thirty-nine more to go’?”

  “That’s how many new inventions they need for a Wondrous Whizzer Wishbook. Without thirty-nine more ideas, there probably won’t be a Wishbook… or a Whizzer Toy Company.”

  “You probably have thirty-nine ideas in your old lab, Vincent. Why don’t we just go talk to Mr. Spinowski and tell him that Danger Boy stole your toy ideas?”

  “You met Spinowski. And you saw what he did to my kite. There is no way he’s going to give us those ideas back. Especially to help Whizzer Toys stay in business. Besides, without the notebooks, how would we even prove the inventions were mine?”

  “Well, let’s go talk to Danger Boy, then. We can get the notebooks back and get him to admit he stole them.”

  “How?”

  “He’s a little kid. We’ll scare it out of him,” Stella said, sounding defeated. “I’ll scare it out of him. Come on Vincent, it’s not right. You have to do something.”

  The elevator door opened and they stepped off onto the sixth floor.

  “This way,” Vincent said, pointing down the long hall.

  “Whoa, look at all the ties.”

  Vincent spotted a tie with a kite painted on it. “Hey, that’s the tie Mr. Whiz was wearing the night I met him!”

  “This is amazing,” Stella said. “What are they going to do with all of these?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Vincent noticed one of the doors in the hallway was open a crack. He stopped and slowly pushed open the door.

  “Is this the way to the birds?” Stella asked.

  “Not exactly.”

  “Vincent, we’re just supposed to feed the birds. We could get in trouble.”

  “Relax, Stella. We should look around a little bit. What if Mr. Whiz had other pets that need feeding?”

  A wall of floor-to-ceiling windows filled the room with light. There was a drafting table and a cart full of paints in front of the windows and a small bed in the corner.

  “This must have been his bedroom,” Stella said.

  Vincent walked up to the closet and slid the door open. Dozens of white suits hung neatly on hangers.

  “What are you looking for?” Stella asked.

  “I don’t know,” Vincent replied.

  Vincent noticed a tie on the drafting table. “That was the tie Howard was wearing the day he died.” He picked up the tie. “Wonder why he painted the Eiffel Tower on it?”

  “Maybe he was planning a trip to Paris.”

  “Maybe. Tesla lived in Paris before coming to America. Maybe he was going to look for more Tesla stuff.”

  Stella reached out and grabbed the tie from Vincent. “That’s not the Eiffel Tower. The Eiffel Tower doesn’t have a big ball on top of it like this.” Stella pointed to a large hemisphere painted onto the tower’s trusses.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Trust me,” Stella said. “I’ve dreamed of Paris my entire life.”

  Vincent took the tie and shoved it in his pocket.

  “What are you doing? You
can’t just take that.”

  “I’m just going to borrow it for a bit. Look.” Vincent pointed to the twenty thousand ties that lined the walls of the hallway. “No one is going to miss one tie, Stella.”

  “Ah, there you are. Great job today. Great job, you two,” Mr. Dennis said, walking into the bedroom. “I think it was fate that brought you here, Vincent. Absolute fate. You’re a young Howard Whiz. That toy idea was brilliant. Just brilliant. A few more of those and we’ll be well on our way.”

  “Yeah. Ah, Mr. D? We have a problem. My dad is taking us back to Minnesota at the end of the week.”

  “What? Oh, no.” Mr. Dennis sat down on Howard’s bed. “Well, I guess that is a problem. But it does give us a couple more days. Maybe if we all work at it, we can come up with enough ideas before you two leave. Or at least get close. We shouldn’t waste a moment, then.” Mr. Dennis stood up. “Are you ready to go back downstairs and dream up some more toys?”

  Vincent looked at Stella and then back at Mr. Dennis.

  “There is another problem.”

  “What is it, Vincent?” Mr. Dennis sat back down.

  Vincent paused. “Mr. D, I can’t control my ideas. I don’t really know how, or even where, my ideas come from. They just come. Bam! Whenever they want to—but lately, not so much.”

  “Oh, Mr. Shadow! You had me worried for a minute. Well, that’s no problem. No problem at all. That just gives me a chance to do what I do best. Teach! Inspiration is all around you. You just have to look. Come on, let’s get out of here.” Mr. Dennis stood up and walked out of Howard’s bedroom.

  “Where are we going?” Stella asked.

  “To cook up some creativity!”

  Mr. Dennis was digging through the Carlisle kitchen cupboards.

  “What are we doing in here, Mr. D?” Vincent asked.

  “We are going to create a recipe for great toy inventions, Mr. Shadow. That’s what we’re doing. Just as soon as I can find some things for us to work with.”

  “Okay.” Vincent looked at Stella and shrugged.

  Mr. Dennis jumped up on the counter and opened a door revealing an entire cupboard of cinnamon-flavored Pop-Tarts. Hundreds of boxes of Pop-Tarts.

  “Ah, yes. I see Howard and Calli were still enjoying their morning Pop-Tarts.”

  “I love Pop-Tarts,” Stella said.

  “All right, then we’ll use Pop-Tarts. Catch!” Mr. Dennis threw several boxes over his shoulder. He jumped off the counter. The smell of cinnamon filled the room as he ripped open the boxes.

  “You see, Vincent? You can control your creativity. You just need someone to show you how. Let’s start with a simple exercise.” Mr. Dennis set a single Pop-Tart on the marble countertop.

  “What is it?” Mr. Dennis asked.

  Vincent looked at the Pop-Tart. He knew Mr. Dennis. He knew there was no way the answer would be “Pop-Tart.”

  “It’s a Pop-Tart,” Stella said.

  “Right!”

  Vincent was shocked.

  “Right. It’s indeed a Pop-Tart. Now, what else is it?”

  “What do you mean?” Stella asked.

  “I mean it is all in the way you look at it, you see.”

  Stella tilted her head. “I don’t know. Still looks like a Pop-Tart, Mr. D.”

  “Yes, the kind people at the breakfast company decided to call it a Pop-Tart. And then it became a Pop-Tart. But it is more than that. Much more.”

  “It’s delicious,” Stella said.

  Mr. Dennis picked it up and took a big bite of the breakfast bar. “Umm, yes. Yes, it is delicious.” Several large crumbs fell from his mouth and stuck to his shirt. He threw more Pop-Tarts on the counter. “Now, what else are these things? Look at it differently. Remember, there are many right answers.”

  Vincent looked at the Pop-Tarts and then ripped open a box. He started building a house out of Pop-Tarts. “They’re walls for building,” he said. “And this”—Vincent pulled a pouch of frosting from the box—“this is the glue.”

  “YES! YES! An edible building set. That’s exactly right.” Mr. Dennis set a frosting pouch on the counter, looked around the room, and then grabbed a giant cookbook.

  SMACK.

  The frosting shot across the room as he hit the pouch with the book.

  “It’s a cannon,” he declared.

  Stella picked up the cookbook. She opened the book and placed a Pop-Tart between pages 253 and 254 and slammed it shut.

  “It’s a bookmark!”

  “RIGHT! RIGHT! It is indeed a bookmark!” Mr. Dennis said as a large chunk of Pop-Tart fell to the floor. “Well done.”

  Mr. Dennis spread frosting on top of a Pop-Tart, walked across the kitchen, and stuck it to the wall.

  “It’s art,” he declared.

  Vincent pounded several Pop-Tarts into a ball.

  “It’s food for dangerous animals. You know, when you can’t get too close, you can just throw it to them,” Vincent said as he threw the dangerous animal food ball across the kitchen. It flew over the counter and past the pantry, and reached the doorway at the exact same moment that Fayman entered the kitchen. And the dangerous animal food ball exploded on Fayman’s forehead.

  No one said a word as Fayman wiped cinnamon from his eyebrows.

  “Okay,” he said, looking at Vincent. “We’re even.” He turned around and walked out.

  Vincent and Stella opened Aunt Bonnie’s kitchen cupboard, looked around, and grabbed a box of spaghetti noodles and a jar of olives. Vincent closed the cupboard, pulled a handful of noodles out of the box, and placed them on the kitchen table. “Okay,” he said, “What else can this be?”

  Stella stuck a noodle into an olive. “It could be a miniature flagpole.”

  “Yeah,” Vincent said, sticking several more noodles into the olive. “Or a satellite.”

  Vincent pushed the satellite to the middle of the table and put his head down. “This is pointless.”

  “What’s pointless?” Stella asked.

  “This,” Vincent said, pointing to the olive. “Trying to save Whizzer Toys. All of it. It’s just pointless. We can’t save a major toy company with—with an olive satellite.”

  “You’re right.”

  Vincent lifted his head. He had expected one of Stella’s pep talks.

  “You’re absolutely right, Vincent. That’s why we need to go get your toys back. You’ve got enough toys to save the company. I don’t get it.”

  “But who’s going to believe they’re mine?”

  “We’ll go over there with Mr. D. How else would you know about the secret attic lab if it wasn’t yours?”

  “That’s true.”

  “And besides, you put your initials on every drawing!”

  “Yeah, I did.” Vincent rubbed his eyes. “Okay. We’ll talk to Mr. D tomorrow.”

  “Now you’re talking!” Stella said.

  “Talking about what?” Gwen asked as she walked into the kitchen.

  “Talking about dinner,” Stella answered. “What’s for dinner?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m starving.” Gwen opened the refrigerator, looked in, and closed it. “MOM! What’s for dinner? I’m starving.”

  “You may be hungry, but you are not starving,” Vibs said, walking into the kitchen. “Vincent, what are you doing? Clean up this mess before your Aunt Bonnie gets home.”

  “Oh, hey. Can I have that?” Gwen asked, pointing to the olive.

  “Sure.”

  Gwen popped the satellite in her mouth and took a bite of the uncooked noodle. “Tasty,” she said.

  “Norton, honey?” Vibs yelled. “What do you want to do about dinner?”

  “Oh, no dinner for me, hon. I actually have a meeting up at MOMA in twenty minutes.”

  “MOMA?” Vibs asked.

  “The Museum of Modern Art. They may be interested in the Tesla collection.”

  “Hey.” Vincent ran into the living room. “Can I go with you, Dad?”

  “Sure, sport. Get you
r shoes on.”

  Norton stood on the curb with his hand in the air, trying to hail a taxicab. Vincent missed taxis. He hadn’t seen a taxi the entire time he was in Minnesota.

  “Here we go,” Norton said as a yellow-and-black taxi pulled up to the curb. Norton opened the door for Vincent.

  Vincent slid across the seat and looked out the window. Norton climbed in and closed the door.

  “The Museum of Modern Art, please,” Norton said to the cabdriver. He turned to Vincent. “How was everyone at Whizzer Toys today? Are they doing okay?”

  “Yeah, I guess so. We tried to do some brainstorming today.”

  “Well, that must have been fun. That’s right up your alley.”

  “Yeah? I don’t know. I didn’t have much. Stella was good, though.”

  “Oh, come on, champ,” Norton said. “You’re being too hard on yourself. You’re always filling those notebooks with ideas and drawings. I’m sure you were fine.”

  “I don’t know,” Vincent said.

  “Anyway, that happens to all great artists and writers,” Norton said. “Sometimes you’re going to get writer’s block. Or, um, inventor’s block… as it were.” Norton paused. “It even happened to your mom from time to time.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure. I remember she went three months once without working on a single project. And I’m not just talking paintings. I mean no sketches, no drawings, nothing.” Norton chuckled. “And you know how your mother was. That was not normal for her. She was always creating something or another.”

  Vincent smiled.

  “Hey, you know what she used to do when she was stuck for ideas?”

  “No, what?”

  “She always consulted Dalí.”

  “Dalí?”

  “Yeah. Salvador Dalí. She would sit in front of a Dalí painting for hours. It was almost like they spoke to her.” Vincent noticed his dad’s eyes watering. “And I think they did—speak to her.” Norton wiped his eyes and smiled. “She would joke that she saw things differently after spending time with Dalí.”