The 117-Story Treehouse Read online

  Our horse falls apart, and we land on our backs in the sawdust. The tiny horses scatter in all directions.

  We hear the Story Police siren.

  “Oh no!” says Terry. “Here come the Story Police!”

  The clown car screeches to a stop beside us and all the clowns pile out.

  “Here,” says a clown. “Take our car. We’ll hold them off with our confetti cannon while you escape. We don’t like the Story Police any more than you do—they’re even worse than the Fun Police!”

  “Thanks!” I say. We jump into the car. I grab the wheel and rev the engine.

  As we speed out of the tent, we hear the boom of the confetti cannon and the roar of the crowd behind us.

  CHAPTER 6

  DRIVE! WAIT!

  We drive out of the tent, down the branch, past the photo-bombing booth, and straight into the traffic school.

  I look behind me. The Story Police are hot on our trail.

  “Faster, Andy!” says Jill. “They’re gaining on us!”

  “Okay, hold tight!” I say. “I may have to break a few traffic-school rules.”

  I wrench the wheel and pull out into the lane of traffic coming the other way.

  “Watch out for that bus full of rabbits!” shouts Terry.

  I swerve back into our lane. The rabbit bus zooms past and then I swerve back out again.

  “Look out!” says Jill. “There’s a duck crossing ahead—and a whole family of ducks are crossing right now!”

  “Hold on to your hats,” I say.

  “We’re going off-road!”

  I swerve off the road and the

  clown car skids …

  and plummets right off the edge of

  the traffic-school level.

  We fall and fall and fall until …

  we crash through the roof of the waiting room and come to a stop.

  “Get out of that car at once!” shouts the receptionist. “This is a waiting room, not a driving room!”

  “Sorry,” I say.

  We get out of the car and run across the room toward the exit.

  “STOP!” says the receptionist. “You have to wait until your names are called.”

  “But we don’t have time to wait,” I explain.

  “Then you shouldn’t have come in here!” she says.

  “We couldn’t help it,” I say. “We’re being chased by the Story Police. They’ll be here any minute!”

  “Well, they will just have to wait, too,” she says. “No exceptions!”

  Sure enough, the police arrive within moments. “Stop right there!” says the police chief. “You’re all under arrest!”

  “Nobody is placing anybody under arrest!” says the receptionist sternly.

  “But these people are dangerous criminals!” says the chief.

  “That may be the case,” says the receptionist, “but this isn’t an arresting room—it’s a waiting room, and you have to wait until your name is called. That’s the rule, and I would think that you, a member of the police force, would want to set a good example.”

  “Oh, all right then,” grumbles the chief. “We’ll wait.”

  We wait …

  and we wait …

  and we wait …

  and we wait.

  We wait high.

  We wait low.

  We wait fast.

  We wait slow.

  We don’t go …

  and we don’t go …

  and we don’t go …

  and we don’t go.

  “Andy, Terry, and Jill?” says the receptionist.

  We all jump up.

  “Yes, that’s us!” I say.

  “You may leave,” she says. “Thank you for waiting.”

  “No!” says the police chief, jumping to his feet. “Don’t let them get away!”

  “Please sit down and wait your turn,” says the receptionist. “You know very well they were here before you.”

  “But—” splutters the chief.

  “No exceptions!” says the receptionist. “You know the rule.”

  We run out of the waiting room and down a branch toward … the Door of Doom!

  Terry reaches for the handle.

  “No, Terry,” I say, “don’t open it!”

  “Why not?” he says.

  “Because it’s the Door of Doom, that’s why not!” I say. “You’ll be doomed if you go in there!”

  “But if we stay here we’ll be even more doomed—the Story Police will catch us,” says Terry. “Come on!”

  He opens the door and runs through.

  The door slams shut behind him with a resounding clang of doom.

  Jill and I look at each other in shock.

  “I can’t believe he did that!” I say. “I told him never to open the Door of Doom, and now he’s gone and done it!”

  We hear loud footsteps and whistles. The Story Police are coming!

  Jill reaches for the handle.

  “What are you doing?” I say.

  “Going in, of course,” she says.

  “But it’s the Door of DOOM!” I say.

  “I know,” says Jill, “but Terry has already gone in. I figure if we’re going to be doomed, we may as well all be doomed together. Come on, let’s go.”

  She has a point, I guess. It is the Door of Doom, but then Terry and Jill are my friends.

  Jill opens the door and steps through.

  I take a deep breath … and follow her—

  CHAPTER 7

  STORYTELLING JAIL

  into a jail cell!

  The Door of Doom clangs shut behind us.

  “Andy! Jill!” says Terry, rushing toward us. “I’m so glad you’re here! I thought I was doomed to be locked up alone forever!”

  “But you’ve only been here for a few seconds,” I say.

  “Really?” says Terry. “It felt much longer.”

  “Keep quiet in there!” says a voice through the gloom on the other side of the bars.

  “Who said that?” says Jill.

  “I did,” says the chief of the Story Police, stepping up close to our cell. “Thought you could get away, did you? Well, we’ve got you now!”

  “But you can’t just put people in jail for no reason!” I say.

  “Oh, we’ve got our reasons,” says the chief, “and plenty of them. You are hereby charged with crimes against good and proper storytelling, including the use of outlandish plots, ridiculous characters, silly names, needless repetition—

  I repeat, needless repetition—too much detail in some places and not enough in others, lack of worthy life lessons, poor dietary habits, unlikely escapes, gratuitous violence, time-wasting chases, and, worst of all, clichéd endings, such as it was all just a dream … Need I go on?”

  “I can explain!” I say.

  “Don’t explain it to me,” says the chief. “Explain it to the judge.”

  The chief opens the cell door …

  marches us to a courtroom …

  and puts us on the stand.

  “Order in the court!” says the bailiff. “This court is now in session. Judge Pumpkin Scones presiding.”

  “I object!” says Terry.

  “To what?” says Judge Pumpkin Scones. “The trial hasn’t even begun.”

  “That’s what I object to,” says Terry. “I don’t want the trial to begin.”

  “Well you should have thought about that before you broke so many storytelling rules in your terrible books,” says the judge. “What do you have to say in your defense?”

  “They are not terrible books,” says Jill.

  “I’ll be the judge of that,” says the judge, “and I say they are. Case closed. I sentence you all to a BILLION years in prison! Take the prisoners away!”

  Judge Pumpkin Scones bangs her gavel. “Court dismissed.”

  We are marched back to our prison cell.

  The chief pushes us inside, locks the door, and throws the key out the window. “See you in a billion years,” he sa
ys, laughing as he walks away.

  “How much is a billion years?” I say. “It seems like a long time.”

  “It’s a very long time,” says Terry. “It’s a million million years.”

  “Actually,” says Jill, “I think you’ll find that a billion is a thousand million, not a million million.”

  “Oh, well, that doesn’t seem so bad then,” I say. “I don’t know much about math, but I do know that a thousand is a lot less than a million!”

  “Yes, but we’re talking about YEARS!” says Terry. “It’s still a THOUSAND MILLION YEARS and a THOUSAND MILLION YEARS is a long, long time. I’VE GOTTA GET OUT OF HERE, I’M GOING CRAZY! I CAN’T STAND BEING LOCKED UP LIKE THIS!”

  “Calm down,” I say. “We have to think our way out of this—not panic.”

  “Maybe we could tunnel our way out?” says Jill.

  “Well, we could,” says Terry, “but we don’t have anything to dig with.”

  “What about your spooncil, Terry?” says Jill. “Do you have it with you?”

  “Yes,” says Terry. “It’s up my nose, where I always keep it, but it’s pretty high up. I need to sneeze to get it out. Has anybody got any pepper?”

  I look around. “Yes,” I say. “There’s a pile of pepper over here.”

  I grab a handful and blow it into Terry’s face.

  Terry throws his head back. “Ah … ah … ah … ACHOO!”

  The spooncil flies out of Terry’s left nostril and into his hand. He immediately drops to his knees and begins scraping at the stone floor with the spoon end of the spooncil.

  “How’s the tunnel going?” I say. “Is it finished yet?”

  “Not quite,” says Terry. “But it’s deep enough to get a little bit of my finger in. See?”

  “That’s good,” I say. “Keep going!”

  “Are you finished yet?” I say.

  Not quite,’ says Terry. “But the hole’s getting deeper. I can get almost half my finger in now!”

  “Great scraping, Terry!” says Jill. “Keep going!”

  “Are you finished yet?” I say.

  “Not quite,” says Terry, “but I can practically get my whole finger in now.”

  “It’s no use!” I yell. “This is going to take at least a billion years … possibly even a billion billion, and we’ve only got a thousand million! I’VE GOTTA GET OUT OF HERE, I’M GOING CRAZY! I CAN’T STAND BEING LOCKED UP LIKE THIS!”

  Terry studies his spooncil. “I think I’ve got a better idea,” he says. “We could use a dot.”

  “Oh no,” I say. “Not more dots! That’s what started all this trouble in the first place.”

  “Let’s at least hear his idea,” says Jill. “I don’t want to be stuck in here any more than you two do. I’VE GOTTA GET OUT OF HERE, I’M GOING CRAZY! I CAN’T STAND BEING LOCKED UP LIKE THIS!”

  “It’s okay, Jill,” says Terry. He turns his spooncil around the other way and uses the pencil to draw a really big dot on the ground.

  “How is that going to help?” I say.

  “It’s an escape hatch,” says Terry, drawing a handle on top of the dot. He pulls the handle up to reveal a hole with a ladder going down into the darkness.

  “But where does it go?” I say.

  “Away from here,” says Terry, already standing on the ladder, “and that’s all I care about.”

  “Me too,” says Jill, climbing down after him.

  I shrug and follow them, closing the hatch behind me.

  We climb down the ladder and come to a tunnel. Then we get down on our hands and knees and start crawling.

  CHAPTER 8

  THE TALE OF LITTLE PETER POOPYPANTS

  We crawl and we crawl and we crawl and we crawl.

  We crawl fast.

  We crawl slow.

  We crawl high.

  We crawl low.

  We go and we go and we go and we go … until we see a glimmer of light.

  “At last!” I say. “Freedom!”

  We crawl out of the tunnel into the middle of a vegetable patch.

  A little rabbit dressed in a blue jacket and a pair of brown pants hops toward us. “Quick!” he says. “Follow me or Farmer McRabbit-Grabber will get you!”

  “Who’s Farmer McRabbit-Grabber?” says Terry.

  The little rabbit points to an angry, red-faced farmer running toward us. “He is!”

  “Just wait until I get my rabbit-grabbing hands on you, Little Peter Poopypants!” booms the man. “Then you’ll be sorry!”

  We run after the little rabbit as fast as we can.

  “Quick, hide in here!” says the rabbit, hopping into a large barrel.

  We dive in after him.

  “Shhhh!” he says, putting a paw to his lips. “Don’t make a sound.”

  We hear the angry farmer go stomping past.

  The rabbit pokes his head up out of the barrel. “He’s gone,” he says, “but we should stay in here a little longer … just in case.”

  “Why is he so angry at you?” whispers Jill. “How could anybody be mad at such an adorable little rabbit?”

  “I guess you haven’t read the book,” says the rabbit.

  “What book?” says Jill.

  “This one.” He takes a book out of his jacket pocket and hands it to Jill.

  Jill laughs. “Oh, I’ve read that book!” she says. “So you’re that Little Peter Poopypants. No wonder Farmer McRabbit-Grabber is angry with you.”

  “Why, what happened?” I say.

  “How about I read the book to you?” says Jill. “It’s pretty funny and it will explain everything.”

  “Oh, goody, I love funny stories that explain everything,” says Terry.

  “And that’s why Farmer McRabbit-Grabber hates me!” says Little Peter Poopypants. “Because I’m cleverer and smarterer than he is.”

  “And because you made him eat a great big poopy pie!” shouts Terry, laughing.

  “Quiet, Terry,” I say. “Farmer McRabbit-Grabber might hear you and then he’ll bake us all into a pie!”

  “Too late!” says Jill. “I think he’s already heard us. Here he comes!”

  We hear heavy footsteps stomping toward the barrel.

  “Aha!” says Farmer McRabbit-Grabber, peering down at us. “Four little rabbits for my dinner!”

  He picks up the barrel and tips us into his sack.

  “No, you’re making a big mistake!” says Terry as we tumble in. “We’re not rabbits!”

  “What’s this?” says Farmer McRabbit-Grabber. “Not rabbits?” He peers into the sack. “I know who you are. You’re worse than rabbits—you’re criminals! I saw your WANTED poster in the post office this morning.”

  “This must be my lucky day!” says Farmer McRabbit-Grabber. “A $117 million billion reward and rabbit pie for dinner! I’ll go and notify the Story Police right now. And, in the meantime, I’ll hang the sack up on this hook to make sure none of you escape.”

  Farmer McRabbit-Grabber ties the end of the sack shut and we feel ourselves being lifted high up into the air.

  “Oh no!” I say. “It’s just like in Little Peter Poopypants’s story!”

  “Why don’t we call Thomasina Tittle-Tattle and ask her to gnaw a hole in the sack for us?” says Jill.

  “It’s no use calling Thomasina Tittle-Tattle,” says Little Peter Poopypants. “She was eaten by Katy Kitten-Whiskers just last week.”

  “Oh, that’s very sad,” says Jill.

  “Not for Katy Kitten-Whiskers, it wasn’t,” says Little Peter Poopypants. “She said Thomasina Tittle-Tattle was delicious!”

  “We don’t need Thomasina Tittle-Tattle,” says Terry. “I can draw a dot that will make a perfect hole for us to escape through.”

  Terry uses the pencil end of his spooncil to draw a dot at the bottom of the sack.

  Jill, Little Peter Poopypants, and I all squeeze through it and lower ourselves to the ground. Terry comes last, peeling the dot off the bottom of the sack as he exits.

&nbs
p; “Farmer McRabbit-Grabber will never figure out how we got out of there,” says Little Peter Poopypants.

  “But what if he reads our book?” I say.

  “We haven’t even written our book yet,” says Terry. “And by the time we do, we’ll be safely back in the treehouse. Look, I’ve drawn another dot—and this one can fly! Jump on, everybody.”

  “Wow, this is just like a magic flying carpet,” says Jill, “except it’s a magic flying DOT!”

  “Can you drop me off at my burrow?” says Little Peter Poopypants. “It’s just down there, near that big tree.”

  We fly down and hover while Little Peter Poopypants hops off the dot.

  “Thanks for the ride,” he says. “And thanks for helping me escape from Farmer McRabbit-Grabber!”

  “It was our pleasure,” I say. “And when we get home I’ll send you a pair of emergency anti-pooping pull-ups from our Underpants Museum. Then you will be able to visit Farmer McRabbit-Grabber’s garden any time you want and he’ll never know you’ve been there!”