by Bill Doyle
She was in one piece!
“You did it, Patsy!” Karl let out a howl for his friend. As the Scream Team rushed to her, he glanced up at the crowd. They were already getting ready for the award ceremony and weren’t cheering.
“Fourth place,” Alphonse said. “Big deal.”
“It is a big deal,” Maxwell said, and wrapped Patsy in a mummy hug.
“I just thought about how the Scream Team stays together, no matter what,” she said. “And I decided I could get my body to do the same!”
“Only losers would be so excited about losing,” Alphonse joked.
Meanwhile, the Scream Team dumped a cooler full of boiling slime over the Conundrums. Dr. Neuron walked out to the podium.
“That was quite a race!” he said. “But the Sea Monsters are on top of the podium here, with their gold medals, and they are the winners of the Conundrum Cup. The silver goes to the Werewolves, and the bronze to Frankenstein’s Monsters.”
Dr. Neuron placed all the medals around the necks of the other teams, even the Werewolves, who cringed when the silver touched their fur. Using his tentacles, he extinguished the flame. “I call this year’s JCML Deadcathlon to an end.”
Dr. Neuron started to hurry off the stage, but Pervis held up his hand to stop him. “Wait!” he called. “You didn’t award the winners of the Monster Relay Race!”
“Oh,” Dr. Neuron said slyly. “I think we should talk about something else. Did you hear what the Conundrums just said about you, Pervis?”
“What did they say?” Pervis went into a daze.
Karl said. “No!”
“He’s right,” Pervis said, shaking himself back to reality. “No more tricks, Dr. Neuron. We’re done being fooled by you. Be careful before someone drops a Spin on you.”
“Fine,” Dr. Neuron finally said. He went back up to the podium and tossed out a few medals to the Sea Monsters and the Werewolves.
“And that zombie from the Scream Team has. . . oh, this is ridiculous,” he said, and walked away from the microphone. Something clanged to the ground as he hurried off to his waiting limo.
“It’s the lead medal!” Karl trotted onto the stage and picked it up. He handed it to Pervis, who placed the medal around Patsy’s neck.
The Scream Team members hooted and cheered, but they were alone. The Werewolves and the other teams were already packing up their gear and leaving the stadium.
As the medal slid on, Patsy’s head popped off. The few monsters left in the crowd laughed, but Patsy didn’t care.
She laughed along with them. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t fall to pieces every now and then, especially when I’m really happy, like right now!” she said.
The monsters on the team were a laughing, howling, cheering mob of blob, fur, fangs, wings, claws, and wrapping. Karl was glad for Patsy.
But it was hard to see the Sea Monsters carrying the Conundrum Cup away. The smallest one of them did a little dive into it and then leapt into the squirting slime in the air.
There goes the chance I had to make the Conundrums get along again, Karl thought glumly.
“What’s the problem, Karl?” Virgil Conundrum asked. Karl turned around and saw that Wyatt and Virgil were standing right behind him.
Karl shrugged. “I thought winning that finally would have made you two happy.”
“Thanks, dude,” Virgil said.
“It would have been great to win the Conundrum Cup,” Wyatt said, not able to help looking cranky. “But a cup or trophy or any kind of thing isn’t going to change who we are.”
“We’d still be the same, with or without it,” Virgil said. “Only we can decide to make a change. And I like who we are!”
Karl agreed. “I like who we are, too!”
As if the moment were too happy for him, Wyatt held out the empty cup of slime he’d been drinking from. “Here’s a Conundrum Cup for you, Karl.”
“Monstrous!” Karl said, laughing. He tugged the Conundrums over to the Scream Team pile and they dove in!
e-ISBN 978-0-545-51043-1
Text copyright © 2013 by Bill Doyle
Illustrations copyright © 2013 by Jared D. Lee Studio, Inc.
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc.
SCHOLASTIC and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc. All rights reserved.
First Scholastic printing, February 2013
Cover design by Jennifer Rinaldi Windau
Cover art by Jared Lee
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