Lunch Money Read Free Page A

144 miniature troll dolls, tiny plastic creatures with big eyes and long, bright hair—blue, red, orange, and green. Then Greg paid his mom $12.00 in cash to cover the cost of the credit-card order—$10.50 for the trolls, and $1.50 for the shipping costs.
    The little trolls were a huge hit at school, an instant fad. Greg sold all 144 of them in three days for a quarter each, taking in a total of thirty-six dollars—and twenty-four dollars of that money was pure profit.

    But Greg didn’t call it profit. He liked to think of it as “new money.”
    Greg had taken twelve dollars he already had—that was the old money—and he had used his oldmoney to buy 144 trolls for about eight cents apiece. Then he’d sold each one for twenty-five cents. So he had made back all twelve dollars of his old money, plus twenty-four dollars of new money.
    And what did Greg do with his new money? He used it to place another, bigger order with the NicNac Novelty Company: 48 more trolls, 48 miniature superballs, 24 small jack-and-ball sets, 48 sticky-stretchy spiders, and 36 plastic rings—12 for boys and 24 for girls.
    But the new items hadn’t sold so well. After two weeks only about two thirds of the second order was gone. Kids had started to get bored with his products, and so had Greg. And there was another problem.
    During third-period language arts one morning, he’d been called to the school office. And then he’d been shown into the principal’s office.
    The first thing Greg noticed was the toys on her desk. Mrs. Davenport followed his eyes and nodded at the four mini-superballs and the wad of sticky-stretchy spiders. She said, “I got the superballs from Ms. Kensing. She caught Eddie Connors and Hector Vega bouncingthem up and hitting the lights on the ceiling of the gym. And I got the spiders from Mr. Percy, the custodian. He says these things have left oily marks on almost every window in the school. And Mr. Percy tells me that all the kids he asked said they bought them from you. Is that true?”
    Greg nodded.
    â€œWhy are you selling toys at school?” she asked.
    Greg shrugged. “To make some money. And because they’re fun.”
    Mrs. Davenport said, “Those tiny trolls I saw all over the school a few weeks ago—were you the one selling those, too?”
    Greg nodded.
    The principal said, “Well, I admire your initiative, but starting right now, you may not sell any more toys at school. The boys and girls already bring plenty of other nuisance items to school, and they do not need extra help from you. Is that clear?”
    Greg nodded and said, “Yes.”
    â€œVery well. You may return to your class now. Ask Mrs. Ogden for a pass.”
    Walking back to language arts that day, Greghadn’t been discouraged. He wasn’t even unhappy. He faced the fact that his novelty toy business had been doomed from the start. For one thing, kids usually get tired of toys quickly. And Greg also realized it was amazing that his toy sales hadn’t been shut down even sooner. If you sell toys to kids at school, that’s where the kids will play with them. And toys and school are a bad mix. Still, even though he hadn’t sold all the toys from the second order, he’d made a small profit.
    Greg carefully reviewed what the principal had said to him. And again, he saw the bright side. Because Mrs. Davenport had not said that he had to stop selling things at school. She had just said he had to stop selling toys.
    So all he needed was something else he could sell at school, something that wouldn’t upset the teachers or Mrs. Davenport. Or the custodian. Even better, it would be great to sell something they would actually approve of. But what? What?
    The answer came to Greg as the first few days of summer began turning fifth grade into a fading memory. The answer was so simple, and it seemed absolutely foolproof. It wouldtake some hard work if