The Mystery of the Mystery Meat (11 page)

Even if it killed her!

“You needing cell phone,” Pretty chastised Freekin the next day as he got ready to leave for school. “Pretty and Scary spying, ‘Hello, Freekin! Waddup, dude!’”

“Yes, it would be easier if you could call me up to tell me what you’ve discovered while you’re checking out the town,” he translated. “But I don’t have one.”

“Me buying you,” she informed him. She tottered over
to her little ruffled purse and dragged it behind herself on the floor as if it weighed as much as a bowling ball. She had decorated it with stickers of skulls and roses. Bending down, she unzipped it, and glittering silver coins spilled out.

He shook his head. “Did you take those from the fountain again?”

Pretty nodded.

“Are there any left?”

“No,” she said proudly.

“Okay, well, be careful. Don’t let anybody see you spying,” he told her. “We’ll meet here after school.”

“Okeydoke. Me so extra-special helper.” She fluttered her lashes at him. “Extra-super-duper!”

“You are. Scary too,” Freekin said, smiling at the little phantom. “Later.”

As the days passed, Freekin prepared for his fight against the Snickerings. He took Pretty’s money and bought himself a cell phone. He silently observed the rising excitement swirling around him at school. Something needed to be done sooner rather than later. The illegal flyers were everywhere—sticking out of lockers, wadded up in the trash cans, fluttering along in the wintry breeze. Even his friends were curious about joining Generation ?

Freekin called another meeting at lunch. Aware that
Principal Lugosi might be lingering nearby, he had brought a clipboard and some paper so that he wouldn’t have to talk. He wrote down his first sentence and handed the clipboard to Lilly to read it aloud.

Lilly cleared her throat and began.

The Mystery Meat people are trying to lure kids into asking questions so they’ll be Curious.

“They want to help us,” Lilly said, looking up from the clipboard. She handed it back to Freekin. “Snickering Willows is behind the times. We have to catch up to the rest of the world.”

Freekin shook his head, wrote something else, and handed it back to her.

No. It’s because Curiosity is the Ultra Top Secret Ingredient in Mystery Meat.

He gazed at their blank expressions.

“I don’t understand,” Lilly said. “Curiosity isn’t an ingredient in anything.
People
are Curious, not…cows or chickens or…
oh, no
.”

Lilly sat down hard on the grass as if her legs had turned to rubber. She gazed up in horror at Freekin. “You can’t mean that they’re turning
people
into Mystery Meat.”

Yes. That’s exactly what I mean. After Curious people die, they become the number one Ultra Top Secret Ingredient.

There was a long, dead silence as everyone processed
that. One by one, looking green and panicky, the others joined Lilly on the grass.

“I
knew
I should have stayed a vegetarian,” Lilly whispered hoarsely.

“You have to be wrong,” Steve insisted. “That’s just way too gross to be true. You must have read a hoax off the Internet or something.”

Freekin hesitated. Then he wrote again.

I overheard a secret meeting Henrietta Snickering was having with some of the big shots from the Mystery Meat factory. They’re the ones behind this “secret movement” to get people to ask questions. They want people to get Curious again. Because Curiosity is dying out.

“And it’s dying out because we don’t ask questions anymore,” Tuberculosis said.

Right. That’s why everyone got sick from eating Neapolitan Nacho. Because it was made from the ground-up corpse of some kid named Sweeny Burton, who didn’t have a Curious bone in his body.

“I don’t remember a kid named Sweeny Burton,” Tuberculosis said.

“Sweeny Burton,” Steve said, looking ill. “
I
remember him. He never did any homework. He never participated in class. His parents started home-schooling him about three years ago. I thought they moved.”

“I guess the home-schooling didn’t work for him, either,” Lilly said weakly.

“There must be a plan to counteract this foul scheme,” Raven insisted, doubling his fists and pressing his black lips together. “We stand at the ready to carry it out, pale wanderer.”

“Yes,” Lilly said. “Tell us what to do, Freekin.”

His love for Lilly filled his chest, almost like oxygen. Admiration pulsed through his withered circulation system. She was so brave. She knew what was at steak—er,
stake
—and she was still willing to get involved. They all were.

He took the clipboard back and wrote in very large letters:

You do nothing.

“No way,” Steve insisted. “We’re going to help you.”

He looked at his best friends. Correction: his best
human
friends.

Just act normal. Act like you don’t know any of this. I’ve got some…help. Secret help. My secret helpers and I will deal with this. Just don’t ask any questions…so to speak, until this is over.

“You’re crazy,” Steve said. At shushes from the others, he lowered his voice. “You don’t have any ‘secret helpers.’ You’re just trying to keep us out of this.
We’re
your friends.
We can’t stand back and let you risk your…unlife…without helping you!”

This time, Freekin didn’t write down what he wanted to say. He had to make sure they were listening to him.

“The best thing you can do to help me is to stay out of my way. Just let me handle it,” Freekin whispered. “And take my cell phone number just in case.”

He recited his number to his friends. They all looked back at him, stone-faced. Finally Steve nodded. Then Raven and Tuberculosis, and finally Lilly.

“Thanks, guys,” he said, but he had a feeling that things were going to get worse before they got better.

And so did Lilly.

She thought Freekin was really cool, but she also thought he was wrong. She knew he didn’t have any “secret friends” to help him fight the Mystery Meat people. He was just saying that to keep her and his other friends from trying to help him—because he wanted to keep them safe. As usual, he wasn’t thinking about himself. But what kind of a friend—a girlfriend—would she be if she didn’t help?

So even though she had agreed to back off, she didn’t. She had a great plan. By calling the number on the flyer and following the directions to keep calling back at
different times, she had discovered the location where the seminar was to be held. It was at nine o’clock that very night—a week after she had found the first flyer in her locker.

It was going to be held in the basement of the Horatio Snickering Memorial Library. And she was going to go. Then, just before the seminar started, she was going to stand up and tell everybody exactly what was going on. Then they would leave, of course. She, Lilly, would save the day!

As a chilly breeze whipped Lilly’s ponytail against her cheek, she saw her best friend, Deirdre, hurrying toward the basement entrance of the Horatio Snickering Memorial Library. It was five to nine and, under cover of darkness, kids were swarming inside. Lilly saw Molly and Janeece, two of the other cheerleaders on the squad, as well as football players Brian Vernia, Sam Sontgerath, and Jesse Greenfield.

“Hey, wait up,” Lilly cried, rushing up to Deirdre.

“Wow,” Deirdre breathed. “Everyone is here.”

“Good,” Lilly said, half to herself. Kids swarmed around them through the door, which was propped open. “Listen, Deirdre, I’ve been trying to call you—”

“I know. I’m sorry I didn’t get back to you. I’ve been
calling number after number to find out where the seminar was going to be held.”

“I wanted to warn you that this is a trick,” Lilly continued.

“Tish!” Deirdre cried, waving her hands above her head. “Look, there’s Tish!”

Halfway down the stairs, Tish stopped and waved.

Lilly realized there was no way she could get through to anyone right now. She’d have to wait until they sat down and calmed down.

So she went inside.

Her eyes widened and her mouth formed a perfect O. In the far corner, a portable stage had been erected, with rows and rows of chairs lined up before it. An overhead sign read
WELCOME TO THE ? GENERATION!

A very skinny, very old lady wearing a black cape was standing on the stage behind a lectern. A handwritten sign on the front of the lectern said,
CURIOSITY IS GOOD
. A goggle-eyed hunchbacked man stood in front of a whiteboard with a pointer laid across his chest. And on the other side of the whiteboard there was a life-size cardboard cutout of Freekin! It was labeled
FRANKLIN RIPP: OUR GLORIOUS FOUNDER.