46

NOT THE SOLUTION I WOULD
HAVE CHOSEN, BUT IT WORKED.

When it finally sunk in what was happening, Bitsie was furious. Way madder than I was. It was like he’d been betrayed or something.

He couldn’t believe he fell for it. He pulled a puppet out of the stack and exploded. “Gary Gecko! No…no! It can’t be true. I’m trapped in a room with the so-called star of Library Lizards’! He was acting like he thought he should have been on the double-A soccer team and instead got stuck playing with the girls under six. I got the feeling he wasn’t upset about being locked up. He was upset about who he was locked up with. Typical Bitsie.

He yanked out another puppet. “Cleo-cat-ra!” he screamed and dropped it as if it was covered in kitty litter or something.

It was the same for every one of the puppets he looked at. Mr. Raging TV Addict knew them all. “Bathtub Buddies!—I’d rather hang out with shower scum. At least it has some personality!” “Math Mice—Get me the rat poison!”

“Happy, Nappy, Pappy and Joe—or should I say Crappy, Crappy, Crappy and Schmoe?”

“Giggly Geese.”

“Eartha and the Dirt Movers.”

“Sinus and the Flu Bugs.”

From what I could gather, it was like every puppet from every crummy cancelled show ever made was stuffed there in that room.

My guess was Arnold hadn’t had much luck in the television game, and it dawned on me that Bitsie would look pretty good to a desperate man. I wondered what Arnold would be ready to do for a hit series. I didn’t want to stick around to find out. That orange suit of his was enough to convince me that we were not dealing with a rational mind.

We had to get out of there.

I needed a plan.

I looked around. There was the door that I’d already tried. There was one of those vent things in the floor that was too little even for Bitsie to get through. And there was the window.

It was high up and it was small but it was our only hope. I stacked Mavor, Gary, Eartha and Cleo-cat-ra on top of each other and climbed up. The crunching sound was pretty gross, but it got me where I had to go. I could just reach the ledge. The window must have been painted shut when Arnold could still afford paint because it wasn’t moving. I picked and I pried and I broke all my nails, and after a really long time I managed to slide it open about ten centimeters.

The squeak of the window actually made Bitsie look up.

He was so busy screaming at Bradley Broccoli for having the nerve to make a kids’ show about vegetables that he hadn’t even noticed what I was doing until then.

“Hey! Good idea!” he said.

Here Bitsie was finally giving me a compliment and I had to tell him to shut up. I didn’t want Arnold to get suspicious.

I climbed back down and whispered to Bitsie as fast as I could. “You’ve got to get out this window, sneak in the house, open the door and get me out.” Okay, so it was a little short on details, but it was a plan. And anyway, Bitsie hardly needed tips from me on sneaking around. He was the expert at it.

I made Bitsie a rope out of tied-together puppet clothes and attached it to his waist. He was going to need it to get down to the ground. Then I picked him up and was about to shove him through the window when I heard Arnold coming.

“Excuse me,” he said. “Why so quiet in there all of a sudden?”

“I’m putting Bitsie to sleep,” I said. “He was up really late last night.” I figured if it worked for Arnold, it would work for me.

And can you believe it? He swallowed it. His own stupid excuse!

“Oh. Okay. Good,” he went. “Bitsie’s going to need his energy. I’ve got a big day planned for him tomorrow.”

I bet he did.

I waited until I heard Arnold leave, then I stepped back up on Cleo-cat-ra and shoved Bitsie through the window.

Or at least I tried to. No matter which way I pushed him, his beak stopped us every time. “You’re going to have to squish me,” he whispered.

I know this sounds really terrible because it’s easy to forget that he doesn’t feel anything, but I put Bitsie on the floor and walked back and forth across his head. I even jumped a bit on the beaky part.

It was no good. His eyes seemed a bit farther apart and his head seemed a little squarer than before, but that beak of his was still not going to go through the window.

I sat down to think. I closed my eyes and rubbed my forehead. How was I going to get Bitsie out of there?

I heard a weird, blubbery sound and I opened my eyes. Bitsie had torn his beak off.

“Okay,” he whispered. “Let’s try it again.”