The queen’s tarts? Huh?
“These aren’t the queen’s tarts,” I say. “There must be a misunderstanding. These are the rabbit’s pies.”
“They most certainly are not,” the Three of Clubs scoffs. “They are definitely the queen’s. And you ate them! Do you know what she does to thieves? She beheads them!”
“She can’t behead me!” Penny whispers. “I have such pretty hair!”
“You are eating the queen’s tarts!” the Three of Clubs repeats in a screech.
“But … but … but …” I contemplate denying it, but I’m covered in tart crumbs.
“We’ll just explain we only took one bite each,” Robin says. “Maybe she’ll forgive us —”
Six other card-people appear from behind the Three of Clubs. All of them look angry. All of them are holding clubs in scary positions. Now some of the spade cards are here, too. And they’re holding spades. Large metal spades.
“Thieves!” the Five of Clubs shouts as he charges toward us.
“Off with their heads!” yells the Six.
“Penny! Robin!” I whisper-yell. “Run!”
I’m kind of amazed at how fast the cards can run, considering that they’re flat and made of cardboard.
“They look really, really mad,” Robin says, her cheeks red from running.
“We can’t let them catch us!” Penny cries.
We have to hide! But where?
I look around. There’s nothing but rosebushes, grass, benches, hedges, and trees.
“There!” I say, pointing at a ditch covered in ivy.
Robin, Penny, and I go leaping into the ditch and grab the ivy to cover us.
“Where are those terrible thieves?” we hear the girl guard-card ask.
“They probably went that way,” another guard-card says.
We hear footsteps pounding away. Phew. “I think they’re gone,” I say.
“I’ve never been chased by playing cards,” Robin says, out of breath. “How fab was that?”
“Not the slightest bit fab,” Penny seethes. “If they catch us, they’ll take us before the queen and she’ll order our heads chopped off! Didn’t you hear them? Heads! Chopped! Off! I like my head just where it is, thank you very much.”
Robin rolls her eyes. “You are really grumpy in Wonderland.”
Penny frowns.
I’ve never heard Robin criticize Penny before. I like it.
“I want to go home,” Penny says, her voice shaking. “This place is weird. I miss … I miss …”
I expect her to say her house. Or her parents.
“… my trophies.”
Seriously? “We can’t go home without Frankie,” I say.
“You can’t. I can. I’m not even friends with Frankie!”
“But we are,” I huff. “And I’m not leaving her.”
“I’m not leaving her, either,” Robin says. She rolls up the sleeves of her orange shirt. “And anyway, why would I want to leave? This place is … balloons!”
“It’s balloons?” Penny asks. “What does that even mean?”
“It means look!” Robin says, pointing to the sky. “Balloons!”
Sure enough, about a hundred red balloons float by. And then disappear into the clouds. All right, then.
“Balloons,” Robin repeats. “Out of nowhere. I love this place. It’s fun. No, it’s balloons.”
I laugh. “It really is.”
Penny looks at Robin like she’s crazy, and then she turns back to me. “How do we know Frankie didn’t leave Wonderland already? She doesn’t even know we came after her. She could have figured out her way back to Smithville. She’s probably back at my house right now, wondering where we are! Meanwhile, I’m worrying about getting my head chopped off.”
Penny has a point.
I don’t want my head chopped off, either. But I’m not leaving without knowing that Frankie is safe.
And who knows if Frankie can even get back without me? It might be the stone piece of my mirror frame that got us here. It has to be, right?
No matter what, we need to be careful.
When I’m sure the guard-cards are long gone, I get out of the ditch and look around. Robin leaps out, too. Penny stays in the ditch, covered by the long vines of ivy.
I wonder where the rabbit went. And why would he tell us he made the tarts when the queen made them? Was he trying to get us in trouble? And if so, why? Now that I think about it, he did have a strange glint in his eye. Was he lying about seeing Frankie, too?
Penny screams, breaking my train of thought. “Look over there!” she cries. I follow where she’s pointing.
Lying down on an incredibly thin tree branch, leaning on one elbow, is a large brown-and-gray-and-white-striped cat.
He’s smiling really big and has pointy white teeth.
“He won’t bite,” I say to Penny. “Don’t be such a scaredy-cat.” Ha, ha, ha.
Penny shoots darts at me with her eyes.
“The Cheshire Cat!” Robin cries. “It’s the Cheshire Cat! I love Wonderland!”
Oh, right. I’ve definitely heard of the creepy grinning cat.
“He’s one of my favorite movie cats!” she adds.
“Who are your other favorites?” I can’t help but ask.
“Garfield and the Cat in the Hat. But Cheshire is definitely in my top three. He might be my favorite now that I’ve met him in person.” Robin rushes over to him. “It’s so nice to meet you in person! You’re my new favorite cat!”
“I know you are, but what am I?” the cat responds.
Robin laughs. “You’re the Cheshire Cat!”
The cat keeps smiling. “If you say I am, I must be.”
“Great,” Penny says, still in the ditch. “A cat who speaks in riddles. Could anything be more annoying?”
Robin rolls her eyes.
Hah!
“Do you like living in Wonderland?” Robin asks the cat.
“Wonderland is where I live and live I like,” the cat answers.
Robin nods. “I get it. I totally get it!”
She does? Can she explain it to me?
“Have you seen our friend Frankie?” I ask the cat. “Our age, dark hair, red glasses. She’s wearing a red T-shirt?”
“I see everything,” he says. “Everything is seen by me.”
“Great. So can you tell us where she is?” I ask impatiently.
Penny pulls herself out of the ditch and inspects her jeans for grass stains. “And can you tell us how to get home?”
“You may have fallen through the crack,” the cat answers. “But a swallow taken will bring you back.”
And then he smiles another TOTALLY CREEPY SMILE and disappears. I shudder. Robin claps her hands in glee.
“Where did he go?” I ask, looking all around.
“That was so cool,” Robin says dreamily.
“That was so creepy,” Penny says.
I kind of agree with Penny. Not that I’ll admit it. “He didn’t tell us where Frankie is,” I say.
“He told us how to get home, though,” Penny says. “So I was right. Frankie must already BE home.”
Not if she needs my mirror piece. “But I wonder what he meant,” I say. “A swallow taken? Are we supposed to swallow something?”
“Obviously!” Penny says, clucking her tongue. “We have to swallow something to go home. We put something magical in our mouths. We chew. We swallow. Boom, we go home.”
“But what?” I ask. “We’ve already swallowed two things and they haven’t taken us home.”
“The shrinking potion and the queen’s tarts,” Robin says, nodding.
“Right,” I say. “So next steps are to find Frankie and also figure out what else in the story there is to swallow.” Now it’s my turn to swallow. My pride. I have to ask Penny for help. Ugh. I hate asking Penny for help. But I have no other choice. “Penny, I need you to tell us the rest of the story.”
“You do, do you?” she asks.
I
hang my head in defeat. “I do.”
“So once again, you’re asking me for help,” she says, her voice sounding awfully smug.
“Yes, Penny. Once again I am asking you for help.”
“But you forgot to say ‘please,’” she says.
“Penny, can you please tell me the rest of the story?” I grumble.
“Sorry, I couldn’t hear you. Can you speak up?”
I am going to kill her. I raise my voice. “Please, Penny, pretty please with a cherry on top, can you tell me the rest of the story?”
“You don’t have to shout,” she says, batting her eyelashes.
“Penny, stop it,” Robin says, hands on her hips. “Enough. You have to help us find Frankie.”
Penny lowers her eyes. “Sorry,” she says, her cheeks bright red. “Um. Well, the thing is …”
“Yes?” I say.
She flushes. “I kind of skipped a lot of the book. Since it was so boring.”
“You skipped it?” I ask. I don’t believe it. “But you won the read-a-thon because of how much money you made for reading that one book!”
“I know I did. I just didn’t read every single word. It was super confusing and I had no idea what was going on. I looked at the pictures!”
“But! But!” I cry. “You won the read-a-thon! You’re a total scammer!”
Penny crosses her arms. “I am not! I read the first few chapters. I can tell you what happens in those.”
“You already told us that,” I say angrily. “We need to find Frankie. She probably read the whole thing.”
“Everyone calm down,” Robin says, hands still on her hips. “Frankie would probably go to the coolest parts of the story, right? And those must be in the movies! The movies wouldn’t leave them out.”
“I guess,” I say. That makes sense. “So what are those?”
“Well, the coolest part of the story includes lots of stuff to swallow,” Robin says. “So we should go there. And hopefully kill two birds with one stone.”
“Where’s there?” I ask, sounding a bit too much like the Cheshire Cat for my liking.
Robin grins. “The Mad Hatter’s tea party!”
You can’t just crash a tea party,” Penny says as the three of us walk through the forest. She pulls her ponytail tighter. “You need an invitation. My grandmother used to take me to tea at a fancy hotel. We wore frilly dresses and hats.”
I glance down at our outfits. Hoodies. Shirts. Jeans. Sneakers. Definitely no fancy dresses or hats.
Robin shrugs. “Oh, don’t worry. The rules are different in Wonderland.”
“I guess you’re right. There don’t seem to be any rules in Wonderland at all.” Penny wrinkles her nose. “Does anyone smell that?”
“Smell what?” Robin asks.
Blech. Now I smell it. What is it? I cough and wave the air around my face. It smells like fire. Is something burning? I look around at the trees, but all I see are leaves. Leaves that don’t look like leaves. Sure, they’re green, but they are shaped like squares.
Yep. Wonderland has square leaves.
“Yuck, is someone smoking?” Penny asks, looking all around. “It smells like my great-uncle’s gross tobacco pipe.”
“I’ll never quit,” a scratchy voice says.
Robin, Penny, and I stare at one another. Um, who said that?
“Who are youuuu?” the scratchy voice says again.
I look toward where the voice came from. Whoa. No, it can’t be.
I see a caterpillar. A long, fuzzy, greenish caterpillar. He’s about our size and is perched on top of a giant mushroom. Or maybe it’s a normal-sized mushroom since we’re all small.
Also, he’s smoking a pipe.
“Don’t you know that smoking is really bad for you?” Penny asks the caterpillar.
“Yeeees,” the caterpillar says slowly, and blows letters into the air with the smoke. The letters spell out: B-A-D-F-O-R-M-E.
“Seems he’s aware,” Penny says, with a cough.
“It’s the smoking caterpillar!” Robin gushes. “Yay! I remember him from the movie. I can’t believe I don’t have my autograph book with me. I would get so many cool signatures.”
“I’m not sure caterpillars have signatures,” Penny says. “Or fingers. He’d better have something for us to swallow.”
“We’re not going home yet,” I say in a rush. “We haven’t found Frankie.”
Penny raises her nose. “You can stay as long as you’d like. I’m out of here. What can I swallow?”
“In the movies, Alice eats the mushroom and gets bigger,” Robin says, pointing to the mushroom cap.
“You’d probably know that if you’d actually read the book,” I grumble to Penny.
“You’d probably also know that if you’d read the book,” Penny snaps back at me.
Fair point.
Penny squares her shoulders. “I’m going to try the mushroom,” she says.
“You want to get bigger?” the caterpillar asks. “Why would youuuu want to do that?”
“She doesn’t want to get bigger,” I say. “She just wants to eat your mushroom.”
“Oh, suuuure,” he says, exhaling a trail of smoke. “Use me for my mushroom.”
“I’m hoping your mushroom is the swallow that will take me back to Smithville,” Penny explains. “And I do want to get bigger, too. I definitely don’t want to stay this size forever. I’m taking a bite.”
“Excuuuuuuse me?” the caterpillar asks, blowing smoke directly in Penny’s face. “You need to ask me for my permission first.”
“I can’t believe I have to ask a caterpillar for permission before eating a mushroom,” Penny huffs. “This place is bonkers.”
“Yeeees,” he says.
Penny crosses her arms. “Can I take a bite or what?”
“I did not hear a pleeeease,” the caterpillar says, lifting one of his many hands to his left ear. “Did anyone hear a pleeeease?”
“I didn’t,” I chirp. Serves Penny right after what she put me through before when I asked her to tell me the story. And she didn’t even read the whole book! What a liar!
Penny narrows her eyes. “Can I pleeeeeease take a bite of your mushroom? Mr. Caterpillar? Sir? Pretty please? With a mushroom on top?”
I will not laugh that she said mushroom on top. I will not. I will just pretend it wasn’t funny.
“Sure,” he says, blowing smoke directly into our faces. Ugh. I cough. “Go ahead.”
Penny tears off a tiny piece of mushroom from the left side. “If I see Frankie back at home, I’ll tell her that you’re looking for her,” she tells me and Robin.
“Gee, thanks,” I say.
Penny bites into the mushroom piece, and makes a face as she chews. “This is disgusting.”
As the words leave her mouth, I realize that she’s getting smaller. And smaller. And smaller. Until she’s the size of my leg.
“Crumbs,” she says.
Crumbs? That’s MY word! Penny just stole my word!
“I didn’t go home!” Extra Tiny Penny cries.
“Nope,” I say.
“And I’m even smaller than before! How do I get bigger?” she asks the caterpillar.
He blows a smoke circle right at her that is bigger than her entire body. She coughs extra loudly.
“How do I get bigger, please, Mr. Caterpillar, sir?”
“Eat from the right side. It’ll make you biiigger,” he drawls.
Penny jumps on her tiptoes. “Can’t reach!”
“I’ll get it,” I say, snapping a piece of the mushroom off and handing it to her.
“This better work.” She pops the piece of mushroom in her mouth like a piece of candy. She chews and swallows. Then she starts growing back to the size she was before. And then she starts growing bigger. And then it’s just her neck that’s growing. And growing. Oh, wow, she’s like a giraffe. Her neck is ginormous.
“Uh-oh,” Robin says, peering up past the branches. “I can’t even see her he
ad anymore!”
It’s true. All we can see is Penny’s long, stretched-out neck reaching into the trees.
“Guys!” Penny’s voice comes from way above us. “You’re not going to believe it!”
“What?” Robin calls.
“You should eat the mushroom!” she calls out.
“But what if we can’t shrink back?” I yell up to her.
“The other side will shrink you back,” the caterpillar says. “It’s not like you’re normal-sized now anyway, are youuuu?”
Right.
“I can see all of Wonderland!” Giant-Necked Penny shouts. “Come on!”
Robin and I glance at each other, and then we reach for pieces of mushroom from the right side.
I take a small bite.
Yuck. Slimy. It tastes like dirt and —
“Ahhhh!” I shriek as I feel my neck start to stretch like a piece of chewing gum. It’s getting longer and longer. Now I can’t even see my shoulders. Or my arms or hands. I’m all neck and head.
I try to look out for the branches as my neck races up in the air through the trees, forcing more than one squirrel to leap away. Robin’s neck is growing big on the other side of me, and her giant ear almost knocks me into a branch.
Finally, our necks stop growing when we reach Penny. The three of us are right beside one another, all giant heads and SUPER-long necks.
Agh!
“Hi there,” Penny says. “You made it. Isn’t this incredible?” She slithers her neck through the leaves.
“My neck is so long I can twist around in any direction,” Robin cries. “Fab!”
I’m not shocked Robin is having fun, but I can’t believe Penny brought us up here. Our heads are stuck in trees! A very angry-looking orange bird with extremely ruffled feathers is glaring at us.
“My neck was perfectly fine down there, attached to my shoulders,” I say.
“It’s still attached,” Penny says.
The bird takes a step closer to us. It looks like a pigeon. An orange one.
“Hello,” Penny says cheerfully to the bird.
The pigeon’s eyes widen and the next thing I know its beak is poking at my cheek, and the bird is shrieking, “Get lost! Get out of here!”
“Hey! Stop it!” I cry, trying to protect my face with my hands but realizing that my hands are nowhere in sight since they’re near the ground with the rest of my body. Instead, I bob my head back and forth, trying to protect myself. She’s aiming for my eyes!
Abby in Wonderland (Special Edition) Page 5
