Samantha and Nipper burst into the building.
“Watch out for the SUN!” Nipper screamed.
Rubber pancakes and candy peanuts rained in behind them.
Buffy stood backstage, surrounded by her cast and crew. She was dressed like a weird combination of a princess, an elf, a lighthouse, and an Egyptian royal court jester. She was busy whining at the cast and crew about unicorns.
“Buffy!” Samantha yelled, as she and Nipper pushed through a line of extremely fake-looking giraffes. “Call the cops!”
Everyone turned to see what was happening, without Buffy’s permission.
Clowns poured in through the open door.
“Get the girl!” someone screamed.
“Get that boy, too,” shouted someone else. “He’s so annoying!”
Everyone was confused. The giraffes craned their necks, as the people inside struggled to see what was going on. A human pyramid of bagpipe players began to play. Confusion turned to panic.
Ka-snappp!
A black balloon whipped one of the fake giraffes on its rump.
From inside the costume, someone howled in pain.
All the fake giraffes started to stampede in a way that was very realistic.
“Call the cops!” Samantha shouted again.
“Breeep!” screeched a monkey.
Swi-thunk!
A johnnycake sailed past Samantha’s nose and sliced into a mermaid cave made of mattresses.
Samantha grabbed her brother’s hand again and ran for one of the stage wings. Ahead, she saw a narrow spiral staircase leading up to the rigging.
All of the SUN was backstage now. As Samantha and Nipper reached the base of the staircase, several clowns pointed at them.
“SUN-burst!” barked the clown in the top hat. “Round up everyone in this theater and—”
“I said NOT TONIGHT!” Buffy screamed at the top of her lungs.
Everyone froze.
Buffy began pointing at everyone with two fingers. Samantha recognized it as the same two-finger point their mother used to calm down rodents, lizards, and children.
“Musicians. Start your fog machines,” her sister shouted. “Grab your instruments. Get in the pit and play!” she yelled. “Mermaids. Turn on the lights on your fins and go…to…your…cave!”
Everyone in the production shuffled away quickly and quietly.
With both hands, Buffy pointed to the crowd of stunned clowns.
“All of you,” she said. “Stay out of my way…until you get…a makeover!”
She walked to the curtain, slipped under it, and disappeared.
The orchestra began to play.
“Did she go to get the cops?” Nipper asked.
“I don’t think so,” said Samantha.
The drone of bagpipes drifted from beyond the curtain.
“Who saved room for pie?” a chorus of voices rang out.
In a V formation, seven pie clowns skipped toward Samantha and Nipper, pans of goo held high.
“Start climbing,” Samantha told Nipper. “I’ll catch up.”
Nipper raced up the staircase and Samantha reached for a large power switch dangling near the wall.
“Order up!” croaked the seven clowns in unison.
Samantha flipped the switch. An engine roared to life.
The pie clowns let loose their volley of greasy pies.
Samantha aimed the wind machine and a great gust caught the horrible desserts, flinging them back at the clowns and splattering them with oily muck.
Samantha turned up the dial on the mighty fan. The clowns sailed across the floor, tumbling under the curtain and onto the stage.
Over the roar of the machine, Samantha heard screaming clowns and wailing bagpipes. Then: Smack! Smack! Smack!
From the opposite side of the theater, a dozen clowns flung rubber pancakes at Samantha. She ducked and dodged to avoid the barrage.
“Batter up!” a clown hollered.
Another swarm of fake flapjacks sailed overhead.
Low to the floor, she noticed smoke seeping under the curtain from the stage.
Fire? Samantha wondered.
She sniffed. It wasn’t smoke. It was artificial fog. She spotted one of the big black barrels of fog-machine juice from the loading dock at Buffy’s apartment.
Smack! Smack! Smack!
Another storm of pancakes sailed past, inches from her head.
Samantha reached forward and grabbed a thick rope hanging from the ceiling. Hand over hand, she pulled, raising the curtain. A dense fog bank billowed in from the stage. It swirled around Samantha.
The pancakes came again, but this time they were way off target.
“No fair!” a clown shouted.
A loud horn honked. Two beams of light cut through the fog. A clown car! Samantha sprinted for the spiral staircase as the tiny car drew near.
A truck engine roared, and a monster truck appeared, emerging from the fog.
“I said NOT TONIGHT!” Buffy yelled from behind the wheel, aiming straight for the clowns.
There was an incredibly loud crunch as she rolled the massive pickup truck over the hood of the tiny car, flattening the engine and pinning it to the floor. The clowns seemed okay, but the squashed front kept the car doors from opening. Trapped inside, they pounded on the windows angrily, shouting.
Buffy hopped out of the cab of the truck, walked over to the screaming clowns, and gave them a double-triple super frown. They all went silent. Then she walked to the side of the stage and tugged the rope. The curtain between Buffy and backstage dropped. She was back in front of the audience and out of sight.
Samantha looked at the tiny car. The clowns—at least five of them—started banging on the windows and screaming again. They were stuck for now. She let out a sigh of relief. Then she started up the staircase to find Nipper.
She climbed the spiral stairs so quickly she felt dizzy. At the top, she looked around as she caught her breath. A catwalk stretched across the theater from where she stood. It was a narrow bridge about two feet wide. A few lights hung from it, along with a massive wooden model of the Temple of Horus.
From her perch, Samantha had a view of Buffy’s whole show. The stage set featured a gleaming white three-story obelisk. It would have been a very convincing scaled-down replica of Cleopatra’s Needle—if neon-pink pyramids, a glittering gold sphinx, and a trio of mermaids dancing around a glowing cave didn’t surround it.
She could also see dozens of SUN clowns running around backstage, yelling at one another and pointing up at her.
Nipper stood at the far end of the catwalk. For the first time in Samantha’s life, her brother was the least ridiculous person around her.
“Over here, Sam!” he called.
She looked at the catwalk again—wooden planks separated by two-inch gaps. There were no handrails. Samantha took a deep breath. She was afraid to cross. Then she remembered looking down at the mountains around Machu Picchu and realized in an instant that this was nothing. She let out her breath and started to walk.
Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack!
Four peanut clowns stood below her, firing their guns.
Cra-tack!
A candy peanut hit one of the planks in front of Samantha, blasting it away.
Cra-tack!
Another candy peanut hit the bridge and another plank came loose. It dropped to the stage below and banged against something.
“Hey!” shouted a voice. “I’m getting battered!”
Samantha was sure the person was one of the pancake clowns she’d seen in Mali. She kept moving along the catwalk. She passed the model of the Temple of Horus, dangling from the bridge beneath her.
“You forgot to say duck!”
Cra-tack!
“Ouchie!” cried another clown.
Cra-tack!
“Wahoo! That hurt!” cried another.
Cra-tack!
“Wagga Wagga!” wailed another clown. “My noggin!”
As scared as Samantha felt, she still took a moment to reflect on the absurdity of these clowns.
Cra-tack! Cra-tack!
The bridge planks were disappearing, and she was only halfway to the other side. In front of her, Nipper watched with a terrified expression. She gritted her teeth and kept walking, taking extra-long steps to avoid missing-plank spaces. More clowns gathered on the floor, thirty feet below Samantha and the disintegrating catwalk. They grinned up at her as they eagerly awaited her doom.
Cra-tack! Cra-tack!
Planks, splinters, and candy peanuts flew by. Even more clowns came to watch.
“Hey, girl,” a clown shouted. “Drop by anytime!”
The clown standing beside him laughed as if this was the funniest joke in the history of the world.
Cra-tack!
Samantha stopped walking. The bridge had become unstable. It wobbled each time a plank flew away.
Samantha thought of the tongue depressor suspension bridge her dad had helped her build. The one that the chinchillas chewed. How many more planks could the catwalk lose before it came crashing down?
She knew the entire SUN stood below wondering the same thing.
Samantha looked over at her brother. And smiled.
“Nipper!” she called. “There’s a New York Yankees logo on the bottom of your slush cup!”
“What?” Nipper called back. “There is?”
He flipped over his plastic cup and inspected the bottom.
“Liar!” he shouted.
The top came loose. An almost-full bottle of super-hot cinnamon syrup fell thirty feet into the center of the SUN.
The cinnamon explosion sent bright red droplets in every direction, splattering the clowns. Cinnamon mist mixed with artificial fog, forming a spicy crimson tornado. A hot red cloud rolled across the floor.
No red ball nose filter has ever been invented that can withstand contact with a double-triple super-hot cinnamon cloud.
The clowns wheezed. They sneezed and coughed. Some dropped to their knees. Others fell, face-first, on the floor. They rolled, moaned, and whimpered. None remained standing.
Samantha started moving across the catwalk.
“Turn back, Sam,” Nipper yelled. “This is a dead end!”
Samantha stopped. “Seriously?” she replied. “You couldn’t tell me that before I walked halfway across this death bridge?”
“Which one of us told a big fat lie about the Yankees logo on a cup?”
Samantha held out her hand. Carefully, Nipper crossed to Samantha. When he got to her side, she helped him step over the gaps in the catwalk and they slowly made their way back to the spiral staircase. Before they reached the end of the bridge, they both stopped and looked down. They took a moment to glance at the SUN, still on the floor below.
Quack-quack!