CHAPTER 9

Isabella

Isabella was very strong. Not normal strong, like kids who like to play outside or exercise. I mean action-hero strong. I suppose that’s what happens when you spend all your free time at the stables, wrangling wild horses and riding bulls.

“I want to be a pro wrestler,” Isabella told Lucy.

“I like it! Girl power!” Lucy said. “Have you thought of what your wrestler name will be?”

“They’ll call me DIZZABELLA—because I’ll hit you so hard, I’ll make you DIZZY!”

“All right! Time to wrestle some money into my bank account!” Lucy said before quickly correcting herself. “I mean, your bank account! We’re doing this for you. Um, let’s go!”

To protect her identity (and hide the fact that she was a minor), Isabella wore a luchador mask—a colorful disguise made famous by wrestlers in Mexico and other Spanish-speaking countries.

The Ace Agent Agency arranged Dizzabella’s first match against Body Slam Sam. When Dizzabella entered the ring, people laughed at her small size. Body Slam Sam was more than five times bigger than her.

But once the bell rang, it didn’t matter. Dizzabella slapped Sam silly and then body-slammed him so hard, he farted a hole right through his wrestling shorts. The crowd was now chortling at him.

When the bell rang, Dizzabella could hardly believe she’d beaten the farts out of a three-hundred-pound muscleman.

“Wow, that was… easy,” she told the TV cameras.

“You heard it here first, folks!” the ringside reporter told TV viewers. “Dizzabella says destroying Body Slam Sam was easy!”

After her surprise win, the Pro Wrestling Association invited Dizzabella to compete in the championship match against undefeated champ Dr. Dynamite, the circuit’s baddest bad boy. The match took place in Las Vegas, in an arena of fifty thousand wrestling fans—and eleven people who just happened to be there for the all-you-can-eat pancake buffet.

When she heard the bell, Dizzabella charged. She went with the Mongolian forehead chop. It barely grazed Dr. Dynamite, yet he crashed to the ground. “Please don’t hurt me anymore, Dizzabella! Please!” he begged.

Dizzabella looked at her hands. Was she that strong? She paused for a moment, thinking of how odd it all was. This weakling is the world champ, she thought. Earl the Hamster is tougher than this clown.

Wrestler after wrestler, she defeated with ease. But with each win, she began to suspect something wasn’t right—she just couldn’t place her finger on it.

Before she knew it, the title bout was down to Dizzabella and her personal wrestling hero, Mountain Man Maniac McGee. There was no way she could take him down. He was a giant!

But Dizzabella had her eyes on the prize: the golden championship belt. If she wanted to wear it, she knew she had to keep fighting.

As soon as the bell rang, Dizzabella used the ropes like a slingshot to fling herself forward. She missed Maniac McGee on the first pass, but she climbed the ropes, did a corkscrew shooting star press, and knocked him so hard that he spun over the ropes and crashed facedown into the maple syrup bucket at the buffet line. He was knocked out cold.

The entire audience stood and cheered. Except for the eleven people who were just there for the pancakes. They were upset about the spilled syrup.

The announcer held Dizzabella’s arm up in the air and proclaimed, “Your new heavyweight champion of the worrrrrrld: DIZZABELLA!!”

They gave her the giant gold belt. It was the happiest moment of her life. So why was something bothering her?

Lucy pulled her backstage. “You did great, kid! We have endorsements coming out the wazoo!”

“I can’t believe it was so easy to beat Maniac McGee,” Dizzabella said.

“I can,” Lucy said. “It’s all fake! There was no way you were going to lose!”

“WHAT?!”

“All that body-slamming and kicking? Fake. The tension between rivals? Fake. Heck, even this gold belt? Fake! The winners are all decided beforehand. Good thing they picked you to win, huh?”

Isabella couldn’t believe the whole thing was staged. She felt like such a fraud. She wanted to win for real, not for fake.

So she body-slammed Lucy. For real.