We waited. And waited. And kept waiting.
Ben checked his watch. “Should it be taking this long?”
“I don’t know,” Aretha said. “I’ve never tried exploding waffles before.”
Just when I thought nothing was going to happen, three things happened at the same time:
1. Killer burst through the front door, pulling Evan Forbes along with him.
2. Mrs. Klausenheimer snored the loudest snore ever recorded in human history. In fact, it was so loud that Killer started barking like crazy, Evan yelled like somebody had tackled him from behind, and Ben jumped a mile high and dropped his camera.
3. Which is too bad, because approximately two seconds later, the waffles exploded.
You know that thing I said before about putting newspapers on the counters and the floor?
Well, we didn’t actually do that.
Which was too bad, because exploding waffles make a humongous mess.
Maybe you’re imagining waffles exploding sort of being like popcorn popping. That’s the wrong thing to imagine. First of all, exploding waffles don’t wait until they’re fully baked to explode. Exploding waffles are half-baked waffles. Another word for half-baked waffles is lava waffles. Okay, “lava waffles” is two words, but you get my point. Visualize lava pouring out of a volcano. It flows like a river. It flows over everything. It covers the floor.
That’s your exploding waffle in a nutshell.
Here’s something interesting I learned today: German shepherds love exploding green waffles. How did I learn this?
Guess.
When we saw what a mess the exploding waffles were making, everybody started yelling, “Get the paper towels!” and “Get a mop!” What we should have been yelling was “Get Killer!”
As soon as he sniffed that something was up, Killer was in the kitchen. From the look in his eyes, you would have sworn he’d spent all his life dreaming of the day he’d find a kitchen filled with green, half-baked waffle batter. You could practically see him licking his lips.
And then he was licking waffle batter. He licked it off the floor and then he stood up on his hind legs and was licking it off the counters. By this time, Ben had picked up his camera, so of course he was filming. “This is definitely going on YouTube!” he kept yelling. “It’s gonna go viral!”
Evan stood in the kitchen doorway and said, “If this is what’s for dinner, I’m going to McDonald’s.”
Aretha was grinning from ear to ear. “The Girl Scouts will never forget this. I’m going to be a legend.”
“Maybe you should only double the baking powder when you do this for your troop,” I suggested.
“Are you kidding? I’m going to quadruple it! I’m going to make waffles that fly out the windows.”
After Killer had filled up on exploded green waffles, everybody cleaned up what was left, even Evan.
I think Killer was having a good influence on him.
Sarah Fortemeyer came at five to give me and Aretha a ride home. After she dropped off Aretha, Sarah looked at me and asked, “Are you feeling okay?”
“I feel great,” I told her. “We just did an amazing experiment. The cool thing is, I came up with a hypothesis—that tripling the amount of baking powder in the waffle batter would make the waffles explode—and I was totally right. That’s a really big deal for a scientist.”
“That’s great, Mac,” Sarah said. “Only, you’re looking a little green.”
I looked green for the next three days.
Nobody teased me, though.
Evan Forbes wouldn’t let them.
It’s been weird having Evan Forbes for a friend, but it’s not all bad. First of all, Ben and I are training him not to throw his milk cartons at people’s heads at lunch, so we’re practically the most popular kids in the fourth grade. Secondly, if you need someone to test out brownie recipes on, Evan is definitely your man. He can eat two dozen without even blinking. Or burping, which is even more impressive.
The day before the recipe contest deadline, me, Ben, Aretha, and Evan had a vote. It was between pizza brownies made with maraschino cherries, marshmallows, and M&M’s, and frosted brownies sprinkled with bacon and chocolate chips.
The bacon and chocolate chips won hands down.
Unfortunately, our recipe didn’t.
Ben was bummed, but he got over it. For one thing, his exploding waffles video has gotten forty-nine hits on YouTube, which is forty-eight more than his last video did. For another thing, he’s gained five pounds from eating brownies.
In Ben’s opinion, genius artists should be on the chubby side.
Speaking of five pounds, my mom has lost five pounds since I started cooking. I guess I could take that as an insult, except she eats everything I put in front of her. Now that we only have pizza once a week, she eats a lot more baked chicken and salad.
Okay, and the occasional bowl of Cheerios.
Hey, I’m a scientist. I can’t be cooking up huge feasts all the time.
I’ve got work to do.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The author would like to thank the most fabulous Caitlyn Dlouhy and the most marvelous Ariel Colletti for being utterly fabulous and marvelous, and she wants to give a big tip of the hat to Lyn Streck, science teacher extraordinaire. Thanks to Kaitlin Severini, pretty much the best copy editor ever, and to Sonia Chaghatzbanian, the most marvelous book designer. Thank you to the fantastic Laura Ferguson for all of her fantastic work, and lots of love and gratitude to the usual gang of family and friends who keep the author centered and sane, which is no easy job.
Frances O’Roark Dowell is the bestselling and critically acclaimed author of Dovey Coe, The Second Life of Abigail Walker, Chicken Boy, Falling In, Where I’d Like to Be, The Secret Language of Girls, and, of course, the Phineas L. MacGuire series. She lives with her husband and two sons in Durham, North Carolina. Connect with Frances online at FrancesDowell.com, and learn more about Phineas at GoPhineas.com.
Preston McDaniels is the illustrator of all four of the Phineas L. MacGuire books and Cynthia Rylant’s Lighthouse Family series. He lives in Aurora, Nebraska.
More molecular mischief!
Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Simon & Schuster • New York
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Also by Frances O’Roark Dowell
Chicken Boy
Dovey Coe
Falling In
The Kind of Friends We Used to Be
Phineas L. MacGuire . . . Blasts Off!
Phineas L. MacGuire . . . Erupts!
Phineas L. MacGuire . . . Gets Slimed!
The Second Life of Abigail Walker
The Secret Language of Girls
Shooting the Moon
The Sound of Your Voice, Only Really Far Away
Ten Miles Past Normal
Where I’d Like to Be
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ATHENEUM BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS • An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division • 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020 • www.SimonandSchuster.com • This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. • Text copyright © 2014 by Frances O’Roark Dowell •
Illustrations copyright © 2014 by Preston McDaniels • Jacket design by Sonia Chaghatzbanian • Jacket illustrations copyright © 2014 by Preston McDaniels • All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. • ATHENEUM BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS is a registered trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc. • Atheneum logo is a trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc. • The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event, contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com. • Book design by Sonia Chaghatzbanian • The text for this book is set in Garth Graphic. • The illustrations for this book are rendered in pencil. • Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data • Dowell, Frances O’Roark. • Phineas L. MacGuire . . . gets cooking! / Frances O’Roark Dowell; illustrated by Preston McDaniels.—First edition. • p. cm.—(From the highly scientific notebooks of Phineas L. MacGuire) • Summary: “Phineas has a new chore of cooking dinner every night, but his kitchen experiments take a turn for the worse when the school bully takes a huge liking to Phineas’s brownies”—Provided by publisher. • ISBN 978-1-4814-0099-2 (hc.)—ISBN 978-1-4814-0101-2 (eBook) • [1. Cooking—Fiction. 2. Science—Experiments—Fiction. 3. Bullying—Fiction. 4. Schools—Fiction. 5. Friendship—Fiction.] I. McDaniels, Preston, illustrator. II. Title. • PZ7.D75455Phg 2014 • [Fic]—dc23 • 2014008463
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