The sound of buttons being tapped rippled down toward them. Mattie shuddered. She’s going to fire the Weather-matic again!
“Delia!” Mattie shouted again. The tarnished candelabras trembled. Bits of glass and plaster started to fall. “You don’t want to do this!”
“Oh, yes she does,” Caroline said.
Eliot leaned closer to Mattie. “You still haven’t told us what you’re going to do.” Mattie frowned. The color drained from Eliot’s face. “I thought you knew what you were doing!”
Mattie stood up. Plaster crunched beneath his sneakers. “I have an idea. It just might not be a good one.” He faced the Weather-matic and cleared his throat. “Delia,” Mattie said in his deepest voice, the one he thought made him sound a little like Mr. Larimore right before he made an employee cry. “That’s enough. Come down here right now.”
Delia peered at Mattie from over the Weather-matic’s top. For a second, she seemed to consider coming down. For a second, she seemed to agree it had been enough.
But it was only for a second.
Delia aimed the Weather-matic straight at Mattie and fired.
THE GYM WENT BRIGHT, BRIGHT, bright. The floor shook. Mattie squeezed his eyes shut and waited to be blown into a bazillion pieces.
Mattie waited…and waited.
Nothing’s happening.
He opened his eyes and looked around. The gym was still standing, the Weather-matic was still running, and Delia was…standing under a rain cloud?
She glared up at it. “Get them!” Delia pointed in Mattie’s direction. “Zap him!”
The pony-size cloud rumbled.
“Uh-oh,” Mattie breathed.
The cloud crackled. Tiny forks of lightning shot up as rain dripped down. Delia shielded her hair. “Not me! Them!”
BOOM! Thunder rolled across the gym and—WHOOSH!—more rain coursed down, soaking Delia.
“Stop yelling at it!” Mattie cried. “You’re only making it worse!”
Behind him, Caroline made a disgusted noise. “Like she’ll be able to stop. Shutting up is Delia’s kryptonite. She’ll keep going until it drowns her.”
“That’s not how kryptonite works.”
“Look at that and tell me it’s not working.” Caroline pointed to the cloud and Mattie had to admit: yes, indeed, it was working. Delia was yelling. The cloud was raining. Things were not working out the way Mattie’s archnemesis had planned.
“I don’t get it,” Eliot said. “Is the Weather-matic broken?”
Mattie shook his head. “If the original crystal made the weather go away from the Weather-matic’s user, the cloned crystal must make it return to the user!” Mattie sagged with relief. He almost laughed. Almost. “She’s using the wrong crystal!”
“Delia is doomed.” Eliot was pretty much entirely correct. The cloud billowed around Delia’s head, going pink and orange with lightning. Delia ducked. The cloud followed.
Caroline laughed. “Sorry,” she said to Mattie. Caroline wasn’t really sorry. She was cracking up, and in her defense, it was rather funny. Or really funny. Take your pick.
In my personal, highly educated opinion, though, it will always be amusing to watch angry purple clouds follow someone around. Especially when that person is Delia Dane. And especially when Delia Dane has told your publishers that you might not know as much as you think you do.
I’m petty like that. Plus, Delia’s wrong. I know loads—like, for instance, I know at this moment, she’s never been so wet.
Delia whapped the machine with her hand, shivering. “Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!”
Mattie straightened. “Someone better go get a teacher.”
BOOM!
Delia’s thundercloud rippled with lightning.
Mattie paled. “Like now!”
Caroline jumped to her feet, ready to dash for the hole. But because this is Munchem, things always get worse. Delia’s cloud rained harder and swirled faster and grew longer and—
“It’s forming a funnel,” Mattie breathed, barely able to force out the words.
The cloud reached toward the once-gilded ceiling and pushed down toward the floor. It snaked left and then right and then left again, spiraling around and around Delia so she couldn’t escape.
“Tornado!” Mattie yelled, wind buffeting him from all sides.
Eliot ducked as a tarnished candelabra plunged from the ceiling. “What do we do?”
“Nothing! You stay right there, Eliot Spencer!”
Professor Shelley scaled the rubble, her black cardigan flapping like a cape. Her eyes were pinned on Delia. Mattie couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Professor Shelley was going to save Delia. Even after Delia blackmailed her. Even after Delia was…well, Delia.
Personally, I would’ve left her, but Professor Shelley didn’t. She charged past the wreckage, leaned into the wind, and grabbed for Delia’s legs as the tornado sucked her into the air.
Taking Professor Shelley with it.
“Aiiieee!”
Delia and Professor Shelley screamed as the tornado sucked them higher.
“Stop the Weather-matic!” Mattie yelled, running toward the machine. The Spencers were right behind him. Eliot grabbed the keyboard and tentatively pressed a few buttons. Delia and Professor Shelley went higher.
“Whoops,” Eliot muttered, pressing a few more. “Tell me what’s happening. I can’t watch!”
Mattie and Caroline couldn’t look away. Delia and Professor Shelley swirled higher and higher. It isn’t working. Mattie panicked. We have to do something!
But what? Mattie looked from the Weather-matic to Eliot to the floor to the soggy diaper lying on the floor.
Soggy diaper?! It was the Aluminum Falcon! Mattie leaped for it, grabbing its coffee can–size engines with both hands.
“Is that the Falcon?” Caroline cried, shielding Beezus from the flying bits of ballroom. “What are you doing?”
Mattie wasn’t sure. The Aluminum Falcon hadn’t worked that great even before it was sodden from the sprinkler system, but after stabbing a few buttons (okay, fine, he stabbed all the buttons), it sputtered to life, hovering over Mattie’s lap.
He tugged at the concrete gray fabric. If Delia and Professor Shelley grabbed the Falcon, would it hold? What if he—
“Aiiieee!” Professor Shelley and Delia screamed. They were almost at the ceiling. They were almost through the ceiling!
“The crystal!” Eliot yelled, clinging to the Weather-matic’s side as the wind buffeted him. “If we break the machine’s connection with the crystal, it will lose power!”
And that was when Mattie got a better idea. Eliot was right: the Weather-matic channeled its power through the crystal. If Mattie could interrupt that with something—something like an Aluminum Falcon—maybe they could stop the funnel.
“I really hope this works,” Mattie muttered, programming in the coordinates just like he’d watched Lem do all those months before. The Falcon sputtered. The Falcon sparked. The Falcon took off!
The wind spun it in circles, and dipped it up and down, but the Falcon chugged on. It flew alongside the Weather-matic’s cherry red potbelly, it putt-putted past the brackets holding the crystal, and then—
PLOP!
The Falcon smothered the crystal in its wet, diapery folds. The Weather-matic chugged twice. Its potbelly began to dim. The wind swirled harder, and then slowed.
And stopped.
And Professor Shelley and Delia plummeted.
“Aaaaaaaahhhhh!”
They’re going to splatter! Mattie thought. They’re going to—
ZING!
Professor Shelley caught the Weather-matic’s crooked antenna with one hand and grabbed Delia with the other. They twisted slowly back and forth as the wind died. Professor Shelley looked furious. Delia also looked furious.
They also looked like they’d fallen out of an airplane. Professor Shelley’s hair stuck straight up and Delia’s Power Hair was no more.
Delia glared down
at Mattie and shook her fist. “I’ll get you for this, Mattie Larimore! It isn’t over!”
“Delia?” Mattie said. “I think you need to know when you’re beaten.”
AND THAT IS HOW MATHIAS Littleton Larimore saved the world from Delia Dane and a dangerous Weather-matic and helped re-tank a genetically modified shark—okay, technically that came later, but at the moment, victory was sweet.
And also a bit smoky, Mattie thought, coughing. He waved one hand in front of his face as a piece of once-gilded ballroom ceiling crashed to the floor. “I can’t believe the Falcon was finally useful.”
“No kidding,” someone said. Everyone turned to see Lem shuffling toward them. “I’m so glad you three are okay. I’m not happy you ran in here, but I am happy it worked out.” Lem looked down at Mattie like he was seeing him for the first time. “I had no idea you had it in you, Mattie.”
“No one ever does,” Caroline said, wiping ash from Beezus’s coat.
Maybe she’s right? Mattie thought. This whole semester everyone had been trying to make Mattie into something else. His dad wanted a good kid, Carter wanted a bad brother, and Mattie wanted…well, he wasn’t sure. He wanted to do the right thing, but sometimes that broke some rules.
Sometimes it broke a lot of rules. Another piece of ceiling whumped to the ground and Mattie toed it. Maybe he was going to have to figure out what was right for him. Maybe that was the real trick to everything.
“Glad I could help,” Mattie said finally. Lem nodded, staring from the Weather-matic (smoking) to the Aluminum Falcon (also smoking) to Mattie and the Spencers.
“Your father’s going to fire both of us for this,” he said at last, his attention straying to Professor Shelley, who was currently telling the police all about why she’d tied up Delia and Dr. Hoo. “This is a disaster, an utter failure—”
“A great opportunity,” Mattie said.
Lem’s face scrunched up. “Did you hit your head again?”
Mattie looked around. Parts of the gym floor were smoldering, several inventions had melted, and bits of slimy somethings were hanging from the ceiling. The Munchem-ballroom-turned-Munchem-gym had turned to a Munchem disaster area.
“You haven’t failed,” Mattie said at last. “You found a way to make personal weather machines.”
Lem went still.
“Think about it,” Mattie continued, lowering his voice to sound like a television announcer. “Do you get hot? Cold? Do you enjoy your showers au naturel? Then you need the Weather-matic!”
Lem backed up a step and took a deep breath. “Finally,” Lem boomed, turning his own voice into something suitably announcer-like. “You can have weather that reflects your mood, not the world’s!”
“Exactly!” Mattie agreed. “But Lem? You probably want to do something about those crystals. The real one, and the, uh, cloned one.”
“Cloned one?”
“It’s a long story,” Mattie said.
“Huh. Well, don’t worry. Professor Shelley and I are going to take special care of any and all crystals. In the meantime”—Lem’s eyes went bright—“who cares if it rains on your vacation? Who cares if it’s cloudy? Because for you, it will always be sunny!”
Mattie laughed. “Tell my dad exactly that.”
Which, of course, was precisely what Lem did. The Larimore Corporation made millions, Lem got a promotion, Dr. Hoo got fired, and Professor Shelley still got to keep her job because she had an idea for an even bigger and better computer.
It was almost as good as when Mattie realized the Clones were shadowing the Reals. “I’ve always wanted my own person,” Clone Doyle told Mattie as he hugged Real Doyle. Real Doyle’s eyes were huge.
“You’ll get used to it,” Mattie assured him.
“And just think! You can be good from now on!” Clone Doyle continued, hugging Real Doyle harder. “We can be good together!”
“Yippee?” Real Doyle ventured.
“Who would’ve thought everything would turn out this well?” Mattie asked the Spencers as they walked to study hall weeks later. The sun was shining, the stone angel was upright and lipstick-free, and Delia Dane was far, far away.
“Maybe things can get better at Munchem,” Mattie said. Caroline and Eliot nodded. It seemed like Mattie was right.
Personally though I knew he was wrong—because Miss Maple was still out there, and Delia Dane still wanted revenge, and there was still a tiny carload of clowns in Mattie’s future. Honestly, the burden of always being this knowledgeable weighs on me sometimes.
“Yep,” Mattie said, opening one of Munchem’s heavy oak doors. “We have nothing left to worry about.”
Which of course everyone knows isn’t remotely true, but that’s another story.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Although it will shock his fans around the world, the Commander knows he wouldn’t be the Commander without his team at Disney • Hyperion, and he especially wouldn’t be the Commander without his long-suffering editor, Tracey Keevan, and his equally long-suffering Wonder Agent, Sarah Davies. The Commander salutes you, ladies. Thank you for everything.
For technical research, support, and saucy running commentary, the Commander owes his sidekick, Boy Genius, many medals of service.
And, finally, innumerable thanks go to the Commander’s parents; he wouldn’t have pulled this off without you.
COMMANDER S.T. BOLIVAR III knows his brilliance cannot be adequately expressed in a biography. However, when forced to do so, he emphasizes his criminal mind expertise, his attention to detail, and indeed, his brilliance. The Commander has written all the books you’ve ever loved and a few you’ve hated. He is a paper-cut survivor and harsh critic of hashtags and tiny dogs that fit into tiny purses. The Commander lost the hat from this picture, but he remembers it fondly. If found, please contact him immediately. #BrilliantHeadMissingHat
The Girl Who Knew Even More Page 19
