The Final Exam

  “Guys, unless you want Sylvie and her friend to join your little conversation about zombies, I think we better get back inside the fortress,” Lulu said patronizingly, shaking her head at the boys.

  “Not to nitpick, Lulu, but how are we going to get in? The drawbridge is up,” Theo said perceptively.

  “No worries—we’ll just dig a tunnel!” Fitzy announced excitedly with a fist pump.

  “Yeah!” Bard and Herman seconded before following Fitzy a few feet away to begin digging a tunnel… with their hands.

  “I think we can all agree that the Contrarians’ plan is fanciful at best,” Madeleine determined, watching the boys dig most incompetently. “So, back to Theo’s surprisingly astute question: How are we going to get in?”

  “Maddie, why are you so surprised that I asked a good question? I have tons of good questions! For example, just off the top of my head, why isn’t there any good Mexican food in New York City? Do airlines really wash the blankets after each flight? Why isn’t Washington, D.C., a state?”

  “Theo, there is a lot to be said for quitting while you’re ahead. Consider that the first of many Luluisms I will be imparting to you between now and the start of high school,” Lulu said with a smirk.

  “No! No! No!” The man again screamed, his voice violently bouncing off the trees.

  “Quick, let’s go inside; I don’t want to come face-to-face with Sylvie again,” Hyacinth whimpered. “I don’t trust myself around that lady; her nose can get anything out of me!”

  “What? You don’t think the tunneling is going to work?” Lulu asked sarcastically, looking over at the Contrarians, who were a mere two inches into their project.

  “I’ve got it!” Theo said in his most macho voice before cracking his knuckles. “Schmidty, lower the drawbridge! We’re stuck outside!”

  “Why did you need to crack your knuckles before screaming?” Garrison asked Theo.

  “Gary, Gary, Gary,” Theo said, then paused. “I have absolutely no idea.”

  “Mister Theo?” Schmidty called out from inside the fortress. “Mister Theo? Was that you?”

  “Yes! I need a sandwich, stat!”

  “Priorities!” Garrison chastised the endlessly hungry boy.

  “I meant, lower the drawbridge, and then make me a sandwich!”

  “Doesn’t anyone else think it’s odd that Sylvie has yet to appear? After all, she’s been stalking us for days, and we just heard her talking to someone, and yet, she still hasn’t presented herself. Something’s not right,” Madeleine observed.

  “Yeah, why hasn’t Sylvie come running after us? She’s desperate to get a quote for the story,” Lulu concurred.

  “Would everyone please stop talking about her?” Hyacinth pleaded. “I’m feeling super nervous, like I might start yelling secrets… just exploding information!”

  “Honestly, Hyacinth, you’re worse than WikiLeaks!”

  “Is that some sort of boring British cartoon?” Hyacinth asked Madeleine sincerely.

  “WikiLeaks is an organization that publishes loads of top secret documents—just plunks them out there without any thought of consequences, kind of like you!”

  “Schmidty?” Theo called out. “How’s that sandwich… I mean drawbridge coming?”

  “Maybe it’s not a big deal that we haven’t seen Sylvie. She could be off somewhere, licking her wounds after the row with the editor,” Madeleine surmised unconvincingly as the soft creaks of the rickety wooden drawbridge filled the air.

  “I tried licking a wound once; what a mistake that was! Blood tastes terrible; it gave me a whole new respect for vampires,” Theo muttered.

  Five feet away Fitzy, Bard, and Herman continued their exercise in futility, also known as digging a tunnel with their hands.

  “Come on, guys, let’s go,” Lulu called out to the Contrarians as the drawbridge slammed loudly into place.

  “Wait!” Fitzy responded eagerly. “We found a buried treasure!”

  “Gold!” Bard and Herman screamed simultaneously.

  “Never mind, it’s just a hard clump of dirt,” Fitzy said with visible disappointment. “Guess I’m going to have to wait and get rich the old-fashioned way.”

  “Don’t worry, Fitzy; hard work is underrated,” Madeleine offered with a smile.

  “Who said anything about hard work? I was talking about lottery tickets.”

  “Of course you were,” Madeleine replied wryly as the Contrarians started across the bridge.

  While the Fearians were most relieved to have Toothpaste in their sights, they couldn’t shake their concern over Sylvie’s absence. She was a most tenacious snoop and would never forgo an opportunity to interview the children without a great reason. But what was the reason? And, more to the point, how damaging would it prove to School of Fear?

  EVERYONE’S AFRAID OF SOMETHING:

  Necrophobia is the fear

  of dead things.

  Contestants! Contestants! Where is the bird?” Mrs. Wellington cried. “Have you any idea how antsy that half-mustached man is? He’s following me around the house threatening to shave my left eyebrow! I’m already bald, with a botched wig! I can’t lose an eyebrow!”

  “Calm down, Mrs. Wellington,” Lulu said. “We’re going to deal with it right now. The bird will be in our hands in five minutes.”

  “Five minutes, Lulu, five minutes,” Mrs. Wellington repeated gravely. “If I spend the rest of my life drawing on an eyebrow, that’s on your shoulders.”

  Already burdened by the weight of the mission, Lulu now had to worry about Mrs. Wellington’s eyebrow as well. In truth, if the old woman weren’t already so weird-looking, Lulu would hardly care. But the loss of an eyebrow just might push her into the freak category.

  The School of Fearians found the Contrarians using the hose as a substitute shower. Still wearing their clothes, Bard, Herman, and Fitzy took turns spraying one another with the ice-cold water.

  “Hey, guys, do you know how to turn the hot water on?” Fitzy asked.

  “It’s a hose; there is no hot water,” Garrison replied.

  “Oh,” Fitzy replied with genuine surprise. “I thought this was the shower.”

  “I’m frightened to ask what he thinks the toilet is,” Theo mumbled under his breath.

  “We need Toothpaste, now,” Lulu stated firmly as thoughts of a one-browed Wellington flashed through her mind.

  “Ah, Toothpaste,” Fitzy said, breaking into a mischievous smile. “Can we talk about him later?”

  “No way,” Lulu replied. “We want the bird now.”

  “Later…”

  “Boys, need I remind you that we have a legally binding verbal agreement, which explicitly states that you are to hand over Toothpaste after the completion of our moat dive?” Madeleine asked in her most litigious tone of voice.

  “You’re still going to have to wait,” Fitzy responded nonchalantly.

  “Excuse me?” Lulu said, brimming with indignation. “You guys might be crazy, but trust me, we are way crazier! You do not want to mess with us! Now give us back the bird!”

  “We can’t,” Fitzy answered quietly.

  “I knew you were dumb and really bad dressers, but I never would have guessed you were liars,” Theo said with unmistakable disgust.

  “This behavior is absolutely abominable, even for people of your great intellectual shortcomings!” Madeleine huffed angrily.

  “You guys are such… such…” Lulu yelled heatedly as she searched her mind for the right word, “jerks!”

  “She called us jerks,” Fitzy babbled proudly to Bard and Herman, who then both repeated, “Jerks! Jerks!”

  “Do you even realize what you’re doing to us? To our school?” Garrison asked the Contrarians as Hyacinth whispered into Celery’s ear.

  As Garrison continued his verbal attack on the Contrarians, the furry little animal ran down Hyacinth’s body, across the ground, and straight up Bard’s leg. Then, with the skill of a covert spy who also happens to be
a rodent, Celery grabbed Petey with her mouth and removed him from Bard’s pocket. So deft was Celery’s theft that she was halfway back to Hyacinth before Bard even realized what had happened. And by the time his brain told his body to go after Petey, the stuffed snake was firmly in Hyacinth’s hands.

  “Petey!” Bard yelled emotionally, staring at the taxidermied reptile held tightly in Hyacinth’s grasp.

  Relishing her newly acquired sense of power, Hyacinth smiled mischievously. There was a great deal of pleasure to be had in tormenting the Contrarians.

  “First things first: you are no longer my besties; effective immediately, that title has been revoked,” Hyacinth announced seriously. “Now, on to your snake.”

  “Please don’t hurt him!”

  “Um, Bard? Petey’s already dead,” Theo reminded him. “What could she possibly do to him?”

  Madeleine elbowed Theo, warning him to stop his inadvertent weakening of Hyacinth’s position. A threat to the well-being of the snake was all they had to offer, so ignoring his deceased status was absolutely necessary.

  “If you ever want to see Petey again, you need to give us the bird,” Hyacinth declared ferociously.

  “I am really starting to like you,” Lulu said with a strange mix of pride and astonishment over the young girl’s bold behavior.

  “Oh my gosh! Lulu and I are super besties!” Hyacinth squealed with delight as she broke into a celebratory dance.

  “Maybe now isn’t the best time to dance over our friendship, seeing as you’re in the middle of blackmailing the Contrarians…”

  “Petey!” Bard wailed, releasing an animalistic scream.

  “How can you do this to your friend?” Garrison asked Fitzy with visible disgust. “What kind of a person are you?”

  Fitzy looked at Bard’s tormented expression and grunted loudly. Unsure what to do, he bit his lip and closed his eyes. Oddly, the boy remained in this state for nearly thirty seconds.

  “Is he meditating?” Theo whispered to Madeleine. “I wouldn’t have guessed he was the metaphysical type.”

  “I believe this is something commonly referred to as stalling,” Madeleine answered.

  “Oh, come on already! Just spit it out!” Lulu snapped, forcing Fitzy to open his eyes.

  “We don’t have Toothpaste,” he finally said.

  “Did you eat him?” Theo asked before covering his mouth dramatically with his hand.

  “No! What kind of crazies do you take us for?” Fitzy replied, clearly offended by the insinuation.

  “Big ones,” Theo replied earnestly. “Big, crazy, mentally imbalanced lunatics.”

  “So, the thing is, we kind of don’t have a clue where Toothpaste is,” Fitzy said softly, wincing in anticipation of their response.

  “You kind of don’t have a clue where Toothpaste is? What does that even mean?” Garrison asked suspiciously.

  “We don’t know where the bird is… at all…”

  “What kind of incompetent birdnappers lose the bird? It’s deplorable how bad you lot are!” Madeleine huffed angrily. “If you’re going to be criminals, the least you could do is be good ones!”

  “I have half a mind to report you to the Better Business Bureau! This kind of shoddy criminal activity will not be tolerated!” Theo hollered nonsensically.

  “You guys don’t understand; we never planned on kidnapping Toothpaste. It was an accident,” Fitzy mumbled, his moon-shaped face now cherry red. “We were trying to fly with these cool wings we built, and we wanted to see how a bird flapped up close. So we brought him into the yard to do a few laps, only he flew away immediately. And that was the last we saw of Toothpaste.”

  “This is just a wild guess, but the wings didn’t work, did they?” Lulu commented dryly.

  “It ended pretty much like the jet packs, only with feathers,” Fitzy admitted.

  As the rest of the group fell silent, Bard’s whimpering grew more and more pathetic, until finally Hyacinth could take it no more. Desperate to alleviate the boy’s pain, she returned her now worthless bargaining chip.

  “I really hope Toothpaste isn’t agoraphobic,” Theo said with sudden concern for the canary’s mental health.

  “A bird that’s afraid of open spaces? I don’t think so,” Lulu countered.

  “Animals have phobias, too! Some of them even have psychiatrists!”

  “To be honest, Toothpaste looked kind of relieved to escape. I mean, Basmati did shave the bird’s right eyebrow off,” Fitzy said, playing with his messy red hair.

  “But birds don’t even have eyebrows,” Madeleine responded, proudly recalling the ornithology section of her biology class.

  “All I can tell you is that the bird has a big bald spot above his right eye,” Fitzy told her.

  “Petey,” Bard whimpered, happily hugging his stuffed red snake.

  “That’s sweet; he seems like a really good dead-pet owner,” Theo said matter-of-factly.

  “There’s just one thing I don’t understand: If you never had Toothpaste, why does Basmati think you’re holding him hostage?” Lulu inquired intelligently.

  “We may not be birdnappers, but we’re not dumb—”

  “That is highly debatable,” Theo interrupted under his breath.

  “We realized Basmati would leave us alone if he thought we had Toothpaste. You guys have to understand, he’s really weird. After he caught us lighting our shoes on fire, he tried to marry us off to an alpaca.”

  “All three of you to one alpaca?” Theo muttered, “Talk about crowded.”

  “Contestants!” Mrs. Wellington shouted hysterically from the house. “Contestants! We haven’t much time! This man is going bananas! Where is the bird?”

  “Abernathy!” Basmati cried out boldly. “Bring me Abernathy!”

  “Schmidty, hide him!” Mrs. Wellington hollered frantically. “Contestants, hurry!”

  As the hysterical voices of Mrs. Wellington, Basmati, Schmidty, and Abernathy carried on, the Fearians looked to one another, unsure of their next step. Sensing an opportunity to escape, the Contrarians slinked off. Knowing that Basmati would soon be looking for them, the trio went in search of a foolproof hiding spot.

  “What are we going to do?” Garrison asked, his mouth suddenly parched from fear.

  “If someone can find a picture of Toothpaste, some nontoxic paint, and another bird about his size, I think I can handle this,” Theo said hysterically.

  “Get a grip! That will never work!” Lulu scolded Theo.

  “Abernathy! Come here!” Basmati’s voice reverberated through the yard.

  “Well, we can’t just stand here! We have to do something! Think!” Madeleine panicked as tears welled in her eyes.

  EVERYONE’S AFRAID OF SOMETHING:

  Arsonphobia is the fear

  of fire.

  Chaos, like fire, spreads at an alarmingly fast rate. Having realized that Mrs. Wellington was unable to produce Toothpaste, Basmati flew into a hysterical rage. The man screamed, threatened the life of the old woman’s left eyebrow, and demanded to speak to Abernathy. Believing that Mrs. Wellington had reneged on their deal, Basmati was determined to stop her from reaping the rewards of his hard work.

  Under Schmidty’s diligent guidance, Abernathy had retreated to the topiary garden and was hiding discreetly beneath a well-sculpted hedge. Nearby, Mrs. Wellington desperately attempted to reason with Basmati as he exited the Contrary Conservatory in search of her stepson.

  “Please, Basmati! You can’t do this to me!” Mrs. Wellington pleaded with the crazy-eyed man. “You must leave Abernathy alone! He’s already been through so much!”

  “You tricked me—you never had any intention of finding Toothpaste!”

  “No! How can you even think that? Why would I do such a thing?”

  “Because you’ve always been jealous of me!”

  “Of you? Have you looked in the mirror recently? It looks like a lawn mower rolled over half your face!”

  “Abernathy! Where are yo
u? I must speak to you immediately!” Basmati bellowed as the School of Fearians created a human barricade in front of the contrary man.

  “Why don’t you forget about Toothpaste? I can teach Celery to disagree with everything you say,” Hyacinth offered perkily.

  “Yeah,” Theo agreed, “you can even dress her up as a bird and keep her in a cage!”

  At this, Hyacinth and Celery, who was seated atop her shoulder, exchanged worried glances.

  “Basmati, you need to believe us; we did everything to find Toothpaste. But the Contrarians don’t have him. They never did,” Garrison explained.

  “I won’t listen to your excuses! Abernathy!” Basmati screamed as the School of Fearians continued to block his path.

  “Well, well, well,” a gruff and gravelly voice declared triumphantly from behind the battling group. “Look who I found!”

  The sight of Sylvie Montgomery’s shimmering pink skin, much like neon Pepto-Bismol, shocked the group nearly as much as did her presence inside the wall. The nosy reporter tended to grow rather fluorescent when excited, and having finally found her way into the Contrary Conservatory, she was downright elated.

  “What did I tell you about letting reporters in, Edith Wellington?” Basmati snapped viciously, still encircled by the School of Fearians.

  “How did you get in here, Sylvie?” Mrs. Wellington queried with palpable horror. “I do not believe that you were able to lug that ample derriere of yours over the wall!”

  “The drawbridge is still up,” Lulu whispered to Mrs. Wellington after straining to see the entrance to the gardens.

  “I didn’t know pigs knew how to burrow!” Mrs. Wellington said with contempt.

  “Are you implying that I am a pig?” Sylvie barked as she grunted and groaned, sniffing the air.

  “Implying? No. I am stating that you’re a pig.”

  “Something tells me you won’t be so bold tomorrow, when my article runs. Now, seeing as I’m about to tell the world your deepest, darkest secrets, I thought I’d offer you each the opportunity to go on the record, to tell me your side of things.”

  “I’m sorry to interrupt, especially when you are so generously offering to let us explain the secrets you are planning to share with the world,” Lulu said sarcastically, “but I really need to know: How did you get in here?”