‘That’s right, Basil. It’s SOUFFLÉ DAY.’

  A curtain rises at the back of the stage, and reveals a huge pantry stocked with every kind of food imaginable. There’s fruit and chocolate and meat and fish and about fifty kinds of cheese.

  AND EGGS.

  Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of eggs.

  And right in the middle, I spot one egg that has a face.

  ‘Our bakers will each bake a perfect fLUffY SOUffLÉ from scratch. They can use any kind of filling they like, using their own personal recipes,’ Basil says.

  ‘They have TWO HOURS on the clock, and time starts...NOW!’ Rosemary says.

  She gestures to the pantry at the back and five of the contestants dash towards it, but Willow seems FROZEN, on her box, staring at us.

  We wave our hands and gesture towards the pantry, trying to mouth IT’S IN THERE.

  One of the clipboard – people gives us a stern glare.

  Willow finally seems to get the message, and SPRiNGS into action. But she forgets she’s standing on a box, and tumbles to the floor. A camera zooms over to her, and Rosemary Bao sprints to her side.

  ‘A BIG TUMBLE there from our youngest contestant, Willow Cole. Willow, how are you feeling right now?’

  Willow gets to her feet. ‘Err,’ she says. ‘I feel ... like I want to go to the pantry and get my egg.’

  Rosemary Bao turns to the camera, a big smile on her face. ‘So young, yet so determined!’

  By the time Willow finally makes it over to the pantry, half the eggs have already gone. She turns to us with a miserable expression on her face.

  SOMEONE HAS ALREADY TAKEN HER EGG!

  ‘We need to help her,’ Arabella-Rose whispers to me and Zayn.

  I nod.

  ‘A diversion?’ suggests Zayn.

  Arabella-Rose’s face looks thoughtful. ‘Okay,’ she says. ‘I understand how these sorts of shows work, so I’ll be the director. Zayn, you’ll be in charge of throwing and catching. Hodgepodge can do smells, and Flummox will make sounds.’

  ‘WHAT ABOUT ME?’ I ask.

  Arabella-Rose thinks about it. ‘What are you good at?’ she asks.

  ‘Science,’ I tell her. ‘And being really careful.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Arabella-Rose frowns. ‘Maybe you can be the assistant director.’

  I’m not really sure what an assistant director does, but I nod and listen as Arabella-Rose outlines the plan, and then we sneakily open our backpacks to let the monsters out.

  On the stage, Willow returns to her station with a basket containing five eggs, a block of chocolate and a wedge of cheese.

  ‘Interesting choices there from Willow Cole,’ Basil Cobb says. ‘I CAN’T WAIT to see what she comes up with.’

  The first contestant cracks an egg into a bowl, and we all wince. But it just seems to be an ordinary egg.

  ‘Okay,’ whispers Arabella-Rose. ‘Action!’

  Willow has cracked one of her not-monster eggs into a bowl, and is staring at it, disgusted. Willow HATES eggs.

  Arabella-Rose waves to get Willow’s attention, and points to the workstation that is closest to her. The contestant at the workstation is a short, jolly-looking man wearing a bow tie.

  Willow spreads her hands helplessly – how can she just go over and start pawing through the jolly man’s eggs?

  Arabella-Rose winks, and signals to Flummox, who has crept over to the jolly man. I hear a pinging noise – like a mobile phone makes when a text message arrives.

  ‘I thought we said phones turned off!’ hisses a clipboard-person, looking fURiOUS.

  The pinging noise sounds again, and the jolly man’s cheeks go bright red and he starts hunting around for the source of the noise. But it keeps moving, because of course the sound isn’t coming from a mobile phone.

  It’s coming from FLUMMOX, who is very good at hiding and being sneaky.

  Willow is just standing there, staring at the jolly man who is frantically opening drawers and looking in canisters.

  ‘What can I do to help?’ I ask Arabella-Rose, who ignores me.

  ‘Go! Go!’ she whispers to Willow, and gets another stern glare from a clipboard-person.

  Willow dashes over to the jolly man’s workstation and rummages through his eggs. She turns to us and shakes her head, before dashing back to her own workstation, just as Basil Cobb comes over to inspect her progress.

  ‘I see you’re taking your time here, young Ms Cole,’ he says. ‘Tell us all about your egg-separation process. What’s your strategy?’

  ‘Err,’ says Willow. ‘I ... don’t like to be separated from my egg.’

  Basil Cobb laughs heartily. ‘Of course you don’t!’ he says. ‘Who does?’

  ‘Okay, I’m ready to help with the next one,’ I tell Arabella-Rose.

  But she doesn’t respond. Instead she signals to HODGEPODGE, who is waiting by the second workstation. This contestant is a woman wearing a stripy cardigan. She cracks an egg, and suddenly makes a face like she’s just smelled the most disgusting smell you can possibly imagine.

  ‘ROTTEN!’ she shrieks. ‘I’ve got a rotten egg!’

  The other contestants also screw up their faces as the rotten egg smell reaches them. A moment later, I smell it too.

  It really is the most REVOLTiNG SMELL I have EVER encountered.

  I catch a glimpse of Hodgepodge, hiding near the stripy-cardigan contestant and looking very proud of himself.

  ‘GET IT OUT OF HERE!’ yells Basil Cobb.

  The stripy-cardigan contestant picks up her bowl and dashes off the stage and out the door.

  Willow hurries over and looks through the eggs, but shakes her head again.

  Meanwhile, the other contestants are cracking eggs one by one. With every one, I half-expect a monster to come bursting out. But so far they are all just eggs.

  Hodgepodge comes galloping back, holding something in his paw. I lean forward to take it, but he goes right past me and gives the thing to Zayn. It’s... an egg, but not a monster-egg.

  I feel a bit hurt. I know Zayn is extremely cool, but Hodgepodge is my monster. Why didn’t he give the egg to me?

  Arabella-Rose nods to Zayn, and he carefully takes aim and then THROWS the egg. It lands precisely in the path of the third contestant - a woman with a tattoo of an ice-cream cone on her arm - who is walking over to the oven with her soufflé.

  She slips, and raw egg and cheese go FLYING EVERYWHERE.

  ‘Goodness!’ says Rosemary Bao as clipboard-people swarm in to clean it up. ‘This sure is a lively competition.’

  Willow sneaks past her to inspect ice-cream-tattoo’s workstation, but her egg isn’t there either.

  There are only two workstations left.

  ‘ERR,’ says Arabella-Rose.

  ‘Do you need my help?’ I ask.

  She shakes her head, and signals to both Flummox and Hodgepodge. She looks like an orchestra conductor, waving her arms around as she directs them over to the fourth workstation.

  This contestant is an old man with wispy hair and thick glasses. He’s just put his soufflé in the oven – very, very slowly, with WOBBLiNG HANDS. He straightens back up again and just as he does, he sniffs the air.

  ‘Can anyone else smell smoke?’ he asks.

  Suddenly there’s a HIGH-PITCHED BEEPING NOISE, like a fire alarm. And it’s coming from the old man’s oven!

  ‘MY SOUFFLé!’ he yelps, and slowly starts to bend back down again to inspect the oven.

  ‘YES!’ shouts Arabella-Rose, and turns to HIGH-FIVE Zayn.

  A clipboard-person starts making their way over to us with a fURiOUS EXPRESSiON on their face.

  Willow dashes over to inspect the old man’s eggs, but I can tell from her expression that her monster egg isn’t there.

  The final contestant – a woman with blue hair and lots of earrings – picks up an egg.

  AN EGG WITH A FACE.

  ‘She’s going to crack it!’ whispers Zayn. ‘What’s the next distraction?’

  Hodgepodge and Flummox both look urgently up at Arabella-Rose, waiting for their instructions.

  Arabella-Rose opens her mouth, but nothing comes out. ‘I DON’T KNOW!’ she says. ‘I’M OUT OF IDEAS!’

  Basil Cobb is talking to the blue-haired woman, who is still holding Willow’s egg.

  ‘I’m doing a bit of an EXPERIMENT with my soufflé,’ the woman is saying. ‘I’m going to make a blue heaven one, to match my hair!’

  Basil Cobb looks unimpressed. ‘That sounds... brave.’

  Willow has noticed the egg, and starts to run over to the blue-haired woman. A clipboard-person stops her. ‘Basil and Rosemary are on camera,’ he warns. ‘You have to stay out of shot.’

  ‘BUT THAT’S MY EGG! I NEED TO GET IT BACK!’

  ‘You can’t interfere with someone else’s dish,’ the clipboard-person says. ‘It’s against the rules.’

  ‘I DON’T CARE ABOUT THE RULES!’ Willow hisses.

  But the clipboard-person blocks her way.

  IT’S UP TO US.

  Arabella-Rose looks like she’s going to cry.

  Zayn is shaking his head.

  Flummox and Hodgepodge are waiting.

  It’s up to me.

  I’m not good at directing, or throwing, or making sounds or smells. But there’s ONE THING I am good at.

  ‘Hodgepodge,’ I whisper. ‘Do you see that blue canister over there on the blue-haired lady’s workbench? I need you to go and knock it over.’

  Hodgepodge nods, and scurries off.

  ‘And Flummox, you need to tip over that bottle there. The one with the green lid.’

  Flummox whisks away.

  ‘What are you doing?’ hisses Arabella-Rose.

  I grin. ‘SCIENCE.’

  ‘I’m using French vanilla and blueberry flavouring,’ the blue-haired lady is saying. ‘I’m really excited to see how it will turn out.’

  Basil Cobb doesn’t look like he’s very excited at all.

  He doesn’t notice a little green paw reach up and push over a big blue canister labelled BAKING SODA.

  ‘Oh!’ says the blue-haired lady. ‘How did that happen?’

  Rosemary Bao comes over to see what is happening. ‘Bit of a messy workstation here, don’t you think?’ she says. ‘And...what’s that smell?’

  She looks at Basil Cobb with her nose screwed up, like he’s just done a very stinky fart.

  While her head is turned, Flummox leaps onto the workbench and starts pushing at the bottle marked VINEGAR. But it’s big and heavy, and she can’t move it on her own. Her little feet are pedalling on the bench, and she accidentally knocks over a bottle of blue food-colouring.

  The blue-haired lady taps the monster egg once against the benchtop.

  SHE IS GOING TO CRACK IT!

  ‘Hodgepodge!’ I shout.

  A clipboard-person looms over us.

  ‘Right, you lot. OUT.’ She points to the door.

  But then she stops, because Basil Cobb lets out a high-pitched screech.

  Hodgepodge has climbed up onto the bench, RIGHT IN FRONT OF BASIL COBB AND ROSEMARY BAO AND THE BLUE-HAIRED CONTESTANT. They stare at him.

  Hodgepodge grins at them, does a little wave, and then pushes the bottle of vinegar over, so it spills all over the piles of baking soda.

  Because I know about science, I know that when the hydrogen ions in the vinegar meet the sodium and bicarbonate ions in the baking soda, a CHEMICAL REACTION takes place. This chemical reaction forms two new chemicals - carbonic acid and sodium acetate.

  And even if they don’t know what all the chemicals are called, everybody knows that something has happened.

  It’s pretty hard to miss.

  A HUGE BLUE FOAMING MASS rises up from the kitchen bench, spilling over the sides as it keeps growing and growing like a VOLCANO.

  It’s very impressive.

  Basil Cobb is still screeching.

  Rosemary Bao is standing there with her mouth hanging open.

  The blue-haired contestant is trying to scoop the foam away from the bowl with her soufflé ingredients in it, but she’s just mixing more bicarb and vinegar together and making the blue volcano BIGGER and BIGGER.

  Clipboard-people are frozen to the spot, unsure of what to do.

  In all the chaos, Hodgepodge and Flummox slip away out of sight.

  Willow dashes forward and plucks the egg from the blue-haired lady’s hand.

  We all cheer.

  But Willow doesn’t look happy.

  She holds up the egg and we see that it has a BIG CRACK along one side.

  As we’re looking, the egg WOBBLES, and the crack gets bigger.

  Then all the lights go out.

  It’s very dark, and everyone is yelling.

  I can hear clipboard-people trying to restore order.

  Basil Cobb is shouting something about a monster in a very loud voice, and Rosemary Bao keeps saying, ‘HELP! HELP!’ over and over.

  I hear one of the contestants - I think it’s the woman with the ice-cream tattoo - yell that her oven has turned off, and that her soufflé is going to fail.

  I hear a shriek and a slippery thump, which I’m pretty sure is the blue-haired lady falling over into the baking soda and vinegar that spilled onto the floor.

  ‘Artie? Zayn? Is everyone okay?’ That’s Arabella-Ross.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say. I’m fine. What happened?

  ‘I think ... all the electricity in the studio has gone off’.

  Someone reaches out and grabs my hand, VERY tightly.

  ‘Zayn?’ I say. ‘Is that you?’

  Zayn squeezes my hand in reply.

  ‘Are you okay?’ I ask.

  ‘I-I-I DON’T LIKE THE D-D-DARK.’

  So I was right. I guess everyone is scared of something, even extremely cool people like Zayn. Even Willow is scared of heights.

  ‘Darkness doesn’t really exist, you know.’ I say. Scientific explanations always make me feel better, and I’m sure that will help Zayn too. ‘We see things when light bounces off an object and reflects into our eyes. When there’s no light, we have no vision. But the stuff is all still there. All the same things are still in this TV studio, but we just can’t see them any longer.’

  ‘Okay,’ says Zayn in a very small voice.

  I hear a soft, sympathetic fART from near my feet, and smell the comforting smeel of freshly baked cookies.

  ‘Thanks, Hodge,’ I say.’

  I think about how interested Zayn was when he first met Hodgepodge and Flummox.

  ‘YOU’RE NOT SCARED OF MONSTERS,’ I say. ‘So what is it about the dark that scares you?’

  I hear Zayn take a deep breath. ‘I have this nightmare,’ he says, ‘that a spooky hand reaches out in the dark and grabs me.’

  That does sound pretty scary.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I tell him. ‘I promise a spooky hand won’t reach out and—’

  Just then, a spooky hand reaches out and grabs me. And by the shriek that comes from Zayn, I think one has grabbed him too.

  ‘WHAT’S HAPPENING?’ asks Arabella-Rose, her voice all high and frightened.

  It turns out I don’t love the dark, either.

  ‘Shhh!’ says a voice. ‘It’s just me.’

  It’s Willow.

  ‘Come on,’ she says. ‘Follow me.’

  We stumble after Willow in the darkness.

  It is not easy to walk through a TV studio in the dark. I keep tripping over cables and bumping into chairs and clipboard-people and cameras. The floor is slippery from the baking soda explosion, and everyone is still SHOUTING.

  I reach out in front of me to check for obstacles, and put my hand in something slimy which I think is an uncooked soufflé.

  EW.

  Then I step on something hard that CRUMBLES under my foot with a loud CRUNCH. I’m pretty sure it was an egg, and I really, really hope it wasn’t Willow’s egg.

  Eventually Willow guides us into a room and I hear her shut the door.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Arabella-Rose asks.

  ‘THIS,’ says Willow, and all of a sudden the lights come back on again.

  We’re in a room full of shelves stocked high with more ingredients for Whole Lotta Loaf. Hodgepodge lets out a squeak of joy and leaps into a big tub of apples.

  Willow is holding something in her hand.

  It’s not an egg.

  IT’S A MONSTER.

  The new monster does look quite a lot like a DRAGON. But it’s the tiniest dragon I’ve ever seen.

  ‘ISN’T HE BEAUTIFUL?’ Willow asks.

  She reaches out a finger to gently touch its nose, and the tiny dragon snaps its jaws at her and flaps its little wings.

  ‘He’s very fierce,’ Willow says proudly. ‘I’m calling him SMITE.’

  ‘Smite?’ says Arabella-Rose. ‘He looks more like a SMIDGEN.’

  Willow doesn’t reply. She’s too busy staring adoringly at her monster.

  ‘Yeah,’ Zayn agrees. ‘Smidgen suits him better.’

  ‘Okay,’ says Willow dreamily. ‘SMIDGEN.’

  I am quite shocked. Willow doesn’t usually agree with people about ... well, anything.

  Hodgepodge and Flummox approach Smidgen cautiously. Smidgen flaps his tiny leathery wings and scowls at them.

  He looks...a bit like Willow.

  Flummox takes a step back and clucks nervously. Hodgepodge lets out a friendly APPLE-fART.

  At the sound of the fart, Smidgen starts, and snaps his jaws. I see a tiny spark emerge from his mouth and...

  All the lights go out again.

  Zayn yelps in terror behind me.

  ‘Oh yeah,’ says Willow out of the darkness. ‘Smidgen’s MONSTER POWER is really cool. It’s okay, Smidgen. You can turn the lights back on now.’

 

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