How big was it going to get?
“Oh, wow! This is awesome!” Kermit declared.
The dough shimmered higher. Wider.
It rose up high over the bowl. It overflowed the sides.
Bigger. Bigger. It started to look like an enormous hot air balloon.
“It’s taller than me!” Kermit declared. His voice had changed. He didn’t sound excited now. He was beginning to sound frightened.
“We’d better stop it, I think,” he murmured.
“How?” Andy asked. She stepped out from behind the lab table and joined Evan on the other side.
Andy grinned at Evan. She was enjoying the expression of fear on Kermit’s face. Evan had to admit he enjoyed it, too.
The ball of yellow dough shimmered and shook, growing bigger every second. It bubbled up faster and faster, pressing Kermit back against the basement wall.
“Hey—help!” he sputtered.
Andy’s grin grew wider. “He’s terrified now,” she whispered to Evan.
Evan nodded. He knew he was supposed to enjoy this. It was supposed to be sweet revenge.
But Evan was terrified, too.
How much bigger would the huge yellow blob grow? Could they stop it? Or would it grow and grow and grow until it filled the entire basement?
“Evan—help me!” Kermit cried. “I’m trapped back here!”
The dough began to shake harder. It bobbed up against the basement ceiling.
Evan glanced down and realized he was still holding a chunk of candy bar in his hand. The chocolate had started to melt.
Evan started to pop the candy into his mouth—just as the giant dough ball exploded with a deafening roar.
“ULP!”
Evan swallowed hard as the doughy goop exploded. The force of the blast sent the candy chunk flying down his throat.
He started to cough and choke.
With a hard splat, globs of sticky dough hit him in the face. The yellow goo spread over his hair and covered his eyes.
“Hey!” Evan choked out. He frantically wiped the dough from his eyes, blinking hard.
He could taste it on his tongue. “Yuck!” He spit it out and rubbed the sticky stuff off his lips. Then he pulled thick wads of goo off his face.
“It’s stuck to my hair!” Andy wailed.
“Help me! Help me!” Kermit’s cries sounded as if they were coming from far away. Evan quickly saw why. Kermit was buried under a big heap of yellow goop.
Pulling dough from his hair, Evan hurried behind the lab table. He reached down with both hands and tugged Kermit up from under the dough.
“Wow. I’m kind of dizzy!” Kermit cried. He leaned heavily against the lab table. His hands slid in the yellow goo that covered the table.
“I’ll never get it out of my hair!” Andy wailed, tugging at her hair with both hands. “Never!” She turned to Evan. “It wasn’t supposed to explode. Just get big. I guess something in the dough made it blow up.”
Wiping dough off the front of his T-shirt, Evan gazed around the basement. The yellow dough had splattered over everything. Now it dripped down the walls, making soft plopping sounds as it hit the floor.
“That was an awesome explosion!” Kermit declared. His eyeglasses were covered with yellow goop. He pulled them off and squinted around the room.
He turned to Andy. “Did you put something in the bowl?”
“Never mind,” Andy replied, still pulling sticky yellow globs from her hair.
Kermit tugged her arm. “What was it? What did you put in my mixture?”
“Why do you want to know?” Andy demanded.
“So we can do that again!” Kermit declared gleefully. “It was so awesome!”
“No way we’re doing it again!” Evan moaned.
Their revenge on Kermit hadn’t exactly worked out, Evan realized bitterly. Kermit should be in tears by now. Or he should be quivering in fear and terror.
