Stink called Riley and told her all about the Juice Box Incident of 1500 hours. He told her all about having to keep Mr. McGoo outside, and he told her that he wasn’t allowed to have a slimeover.
“Don’t worry,” Riley said. “Tons of slime molds grow outside. Hey, you want to build a slime house tomorrow? You know, like a dog house, but for slime.”
“A dog-vomit house,” said Stink, cracking himself up. “Cool! But you have to promise, no cheese-sneezing.”
“Cross my heart and hope to slime,” said Riley.
Upstairs in his room, Stink curled up in the window seat and gazed out at Mr. McGoo until he fell asleep.
Brring! Ding-ding-ding! Stink woke up. What was that noise? Doorbell! He peeked out the window to see who was at the front door.
Riley Rottenberger!
Stink opened the door. “What are you doing here?”
Riley pointed to Stink’s sticky-up hair. “Ha, ha! Bed head!”
“What time is it, anyway?” asked Stink.
“Time to start building a slime house!” said Riley, holding up a pink hammer.
Slime house? Mr. McGoo! Stink had almost forgotten about him! He ran out to the kiddie pool in his pajamas and bare feet. Riley hurried after him.
Holy elbow macaroni!
There was no tablecloth over the kiddie pool anymore! Stink peered inside.
No. Way. No. How. Mr. McGoo was G-O-N-E gone.
Stink turned to Riley in a panic. “Where could he be? He was right here. I put him here myself. I covered him with a tablecloth to stay warm.”
“Slime molds can crawl, you know,” said Riley. “Maybe he got lonely and joined up with some other slime molds and they all crawled away like one big slime sausage.”
Stink looked under the deck. He looked beneath the old swing set. He looked in the sandbox. Mr. McGoo was nowhere to be found. The slime sausage was nowhere. . . .
“What if Bigfoot came through here last night and thought Mr. McGoo was peanut butter . . . and ate him?”
Riley rolled her eyes.
“Or what if aliens landed in the backyard and thought he was an alien life-form and took him back to outer space?”
Riley rolled her eyes again.
“Or, what if a meteorite fell on him and —”
“Get real, Stink,” said Riley. All of a sudden Riley pointed up at a tree. In the branches. A tablecloth!
“Or,” she said, “what if the wind blew off the tablecloth, Mr. McGoo got too cold, and he shriveled up to nothing and disappeared?”
“That, too,” said Stink with a sigh.
Stink felt sad. Like the time he buried his goldfish under the rosebush. And the time his millipede croaked. This time around, he couldn’t even have a slime-mold funeral.
“Mr. McGoo was the best,” said Stink.
“He was the best dog vomit around,” Riley agreed.
“Remember when Mrs. Soso thought he was refrigerator mold?”
“No,” said Riley.
“Remember when Missy the dog almost ate him?”
“Nope,” said Riley.
“Remember when I got scared and thought he was Frankenslime?”
“Nuh-uh,” said Riley. “Sorry. Wasn’t there.”
“Remember when we read to him and sang ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Slime’?”
“That I remember!” said Riley.
“We should have a moment of silence,” said Stink.
Stink and Riley stood silently, gazing at the kiddie pool, remembering for a moment all the fun times they’d had with Mr. McGoo.
“You could always grow another slime mold,” said Riley.
Stink shook his head. “It wouldn’t be the same.”
“You can come to my house to visit Princess Slime Mold anytime,” said Riley.
“Thanks,” said Stink. “Can you help me put the pool back in the shed?”
“Sure,” said Riley. They each grabbed an end and dragged it across the yard to the toolshed.
“Want to stay for pancakes?” asked Stink. “My dad makes killer silver-dollar pancakes. Mr. McGoo loved them.”
“Why not?” asked Riley.
On the way back inside, Stink noticed something about the grass where the kiddie pool had been. “Hey, look! I think maybe it’s a crop circle! Or a fairy ring! Wait till I tell Sophie of the Elves!”
“The grass is just smooshed from where the kiddie pool was sitting,” said Riley.
“I don’t know,” said Stink, looking a little closer.
“What’s this?” he asked, pointing to a jellylike lump of goo in the grass.
Riley took a look. “Is it an . . . organism?”
“An organism from outer space!” said Stink.
“Outer-space slime!” said Riley.
“No, wait,” said Stink. “I bet it’s a silver-dollar pancake . . . from Mars! A Martian pancake!”
“That’s no pancake, Stink. Not even Martians would eat that,” said Riley. “It looks more like an inside-out frog. Frog guts! Cool!”
“It’s too big for frog guts. Maybe it’s the guts of a giant amphibian, like some prehistoric tetrapod or something.”
Stink studied the new goo some more. It looked like . . . an alien booger. It looked like an alien jellyfish. It looked like . . .
Wait just an outer-space second! Stink had an idea. Might it be, could it be? Now he knelt down, leaned over, and took a super sniff with his super sniffer. The goo smelled like rotten eggs, all right. Eureka!
“I think I know what it is,” said Stink in awe. He could barely breathe the words. “I think it’s star jelly.”
“Star jelly?” whispered Riley.
“Star jelly is like a blob of slime that’s left after a meteor shower,” said Stink. “It’s way rare.”
“Really?” asked Riley.
“No lie,” said Stink. “Just think. Alien star jelly right here in my very own backyard.”
“Wow,” said Riley in a hushed voice.
Stink put his face right up to the new blob of goo.
“Riley,” he said. “Say hello to Mr. McGoo Two!”
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2016 by Megan McDonald
Illustrations copyright © 2016 by Peter H. Reynolds
Stink®. Stink is a registered trademark of Candlewick Press, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.
First electronic edition 2016
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 2015937112
The illustrations in this book were created digitally.
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Stink and the Attack of the Slime Mold Page 3