11 MAYBE THE BAKED GOODS ARE BAKED BADS

CHAPTER ELEVEN MAYBE THE BAKED GOODS ARE BAKED BADS The next day at school there was nobody at the bake sale table. There weren't even any kids in the hallways or classrooms, either. "Did I accidentally show up here on a Saturday again?" Franny asked herself. "No. This is something stranger than that. I wish Igor was here to help me."

She pulled her burp-sniffing robot out of her backpack. "I'll bet I can modify this to sniff out other things," she said, and with a few little adjustments, a couple rubber bands, and a handful of paper clips, she finished it. "Find Igor," she told it. "Should be easy; he kind of smells like a burp." And it started sniffing its way down the hall. The robot stopped in front of the door to the school basement and beeped.

"Down there?" she asked it, and it beeped again. "I wonder what he's doing down there," she said, and slowly walked down the stairs. As she headed downward, she heard the sounds of people working and she started to smell the muffins baking. "Maybe the Muffin Man has seen Igor," she said as she came around the corner and saw exactly what was going on.

Long tables lined the basement with kids mixing ingredients and pouring them into muffin pans. Igor was loading the pans into one of the brand- new ovens along the wall. If this wasn't odd enough, everybody also seemed almost half asleep. "Oh, hi, Franny," the Muffin Man said cheerfully. "Isn't this great? Do you want to help?" "What are you doing?" she demanded. "We're making muffins," he said. "And not just for the kids at this school. We're making them for everybody, everywhere. Soon, the whole world will get to enjoy my wonderful muffins."

Franny shook Mona's shoulder. "Mona! Why are you doing this?" Mona looked at her and smiled weakly. "He pays us in muffins, Franny. If we help, we can have all the muffins we want."

"These were just supposed to be for the bake sale," Franny said. "To raise money for art supplies and musical instruments." Mona shrugged. "The muffins are the only thing we care about now, Franny." "Well, I'm shutting this thing down," Franny said. "Right this minute. No more muffins." The kids stopped what they were doing and looked at her angrily. Even Igor growled at her. "You don't understand, Franny," the Muffin Man said. "I used to just be the furnace here at the school."