19 The Beastly Duo

The Beastly Duo Bethany woke up early the following morning, determined to get her revenge ready as quickly as possible. There was no sign of Claudette in her room, so she went downstairs. Claudette wasn't in the kitchen, either, so Bethany was forced to make her own breakfast for the first time in weeks. She switched on the radio and started beating up some muffins.

She usually loved making squashed-muffin sandwiches, but today she found that they reminded her too much of Ebenezer. As she beat up the muffins, she imagined she was beating him up—she even told the muffins that they were morons for sending her away from the fifteen-story house. Ebenezer's rejection hurt the most because he had been her very first friend. Bethany still wasn't sure how friendship was supposed to work, but she thought they'd been doing a pretty okay job of it, until he had disappeared without so much as a See ya! Clearly, she had gotten it wrong—like she'd gotten so many things wrong recently. After breakfast, she turned her attention to the rats and spent a couple of hours getting her head around the overly wordy manual—

figuring out how to load the pods without causing any of the odious odors to leak out. In addition to her own hoatzin feather and elephant poop concoctions, she inspected the scents that had been provided by Jared Kettlefletch. These ranged from the sort of smelly Antique Banana to the thoroughly offensive Dead Badger's Fart. She spent another hour or so picking out various horrible scents for people. "Geoffrey's getting a rat for each eye. Serves him right for pretending to be my friend," she said to herself. "Lizard lady's definitely gonna get elephant pooped.… Ooh, and this dead badger one will be perfect for the bird-keeper.…" She had also decided that she was going to put a few of the hoatzin ones on a general

setting, so that no one in the theater would be able to avoid her stinky wrath. The only person left unaccounted for was Miss Muddle. Miss Muddle was already going to get superstinkratted at the theater, but Bethany felt that the sweet-maker deserved something even better… well… much, much worse, because she had given Bethany hope and then taken it away. "Health inspector!" she said to herself. She ran over to the phone book. She tore out the page that had the numbers of the health inspectors in the area and shoved it into the front pocket of her backpack. Bethany had expected to feel guilt, or some unpleasantness, as she prepared the pranks, but no such emotions had presented

themselves. She didn't just feel marvelous; she felt moreish. She had learned that revenge is the drink that leaves you thirsty, and she was just thinking of what she would do after the show was over when she heard the front door being opened. "Claudette!" shouted Bethany as she ran into the hallway. "Where have you—" Bethany was silenced by the sight of Claudette. The beast had bent her beak so that it was askew, and it had left dark rings of purple around her eyes. "What happened?" asked Bethany, horrified. The beast was holding a freshly vomited- out silver rope in Claudette's talons. It pretended to limp as it approached Bethany.

"Gloria Cussock happened," said the beast. It spoke the lie it had been practicing all day. "I was just flying around—doing a few final bits and bobs for the show—when she got me. She said she wanted to be the star of the show, and then she did this to me—so I wouldn't be able to perform. She even tried strangling me with this silver rope!" Bethany's face fired up with fury. She didn't like Gloria, but she couldn't believe that she was capable of such brutality. "I'm gonna get her. Three rats in the eye for her—three rats for each eye!" she said, pacing up and down the hallway. "Actually, nah. She deserves much worse than that." "Oh, bother, I don't know about that," said the beast. It treaded carefully because it knew