Screwball sighed. “Chucky, I’m sorry. Sorry that you are clearly colorblind and don’t know the first thing about perspective or three-dimensional drafting. I’m sorry your work is bad, but mostly I feel sorry for me, as I’m the only one who cares enough about you to tell you that you are terrible and should stop painting. You should go back to being a pyromaniac and stop victimizing the world with your art.”

Dr. Sontag’s face puckered with impatience. She took a deep breath and appeared to be mouthing numbers to calm herself. When she finished, she turned to Screwball.

“OK, Heathcliff. Show us what you have made.”

“Dr. Sontag, I have asked you to call me Screwball.”

Sontag sighed with exhaustion. “Screwball, show us what you created.”

Screwball held his work out proudly. It was a triptych—a three-paneled painting—featuring images of great destruction made from dried vegetables. The panel on the left showed little snow-pea people running and screaming as a giant turnip robot stomped down the street after them. The panel on the right featured a sea of green-bean prisoners marching across a field of flames with armed guards eyeing their every step. In the center panel there was a baby carrot and pearl onion depiction of Heathcliff himself, sitting upon a gigantic throne that was crushing planet Earth.

Dr. Sontag sighed again. “Everyone, how does this make you feel?”

Dr. Trouble slowly raised his hand and Dr. Sontag called on him. “Yes, Dr. Trouble? Does Heathcliff … I mean, Screwball’s work make you feel anything?”

“Sad … scared.”

“It made me wet my pants,” Chucky said.

Screwball smiled proudly. “See, Chucky, good art creates emotional responses in the audience. I wanted you to wet yourself and you did! And now I’d like to tell you how it makes me feel. This work is important because it is more than a piece made from dried produce; it’s a glimpse of your unavoidable future. You’ll notice I used lentils to indicate despair on the faces of my victims. And my self-portrait looks good enough to eat. Bow before my artistic genius!”

“Everyone, I think we can call it a day,” Dr. Sontag said. “I need to talk to my boss about being reassigned, anyway.”

The doors to the room opened and several huge guards entered. Screwball ignored them and carefully set aside his masterpiece. Peas and carrots were very delicate and he wanted to preserve the triptych. Someday, when he was running things, the masses would want to see his early work as an artist.

“Pssss,” he heard. Screwball turned to one of the guards and snarled. Then he realized the man was not another one of the muscle-bound fools that tormented him daily but, instead, his very own goon!

“Old friend! How did you get in here?” he whispered back.

“I knocked out the guard and took his uniform. He’s sleeping in the Dumpster, safe and sound. I wanted to give you an update. Mathlete has built her machine. She’s opening rifts everywhere she goes.”

“Are there side effects?” Heathcliff said.

The goon nodded. “The government is trying to keep it quiet, but an alligator as big as a dump truck was captured in Topeka, Kansas. Plus they’re missing a few cement mixers in Minneapolis and an entire library disappeared in St. Louis.”

“That’s excellent news,” Screwball said.

“Even better news,” the goon said. “I can get you out of here.”

“No need, my friend,” Screwball said.

The goon was visibly surprised. “Have they finally made you lose your mind? Why do you want to stay?”

“Because it will be so much more satisfying when my bitterest enemies come and release me! They will have no choice but to unlock the doors and let me out.”

“Your enemies?”

Screwball nodded, then practiced his evil laugh. “Yes, NERDS will be pounding on the door of this hospital to free me before you know it.”

Matilda hefted her duffel bag and climbed aboard the bus to cheerleading camp. Inside, she faced a gang of dazzlingly pretty girls with the most sour, pouty looks she had ever seen. They eyed her up and down the way someone might look at a public toilet.

“Hold it right there,” one girl said. She was blonde and blue-eyed and would have been pretty if not for her expression of disgust. “Don’t think that just ’cause you’re on Team Strikeforce that you are on Team Strikeforce. You’re not actually one of us until I say you are, and right now I’m saying you’re not.”

“Yeah,” the others chimed.

Matilda laughed. She knew these girls, or at least their type. They were bullies. Nathan Hale Elementary was full of them. Luckily, after putting up with their torment for years, she knew exactly how to handle bullies.

“What’s your name?”

“Tiffany,” the blonde girl said, scowling.

“So, you’re in charge, huh? I can tell by the way these brainless morons worship you.”

The other girls bristled.

“That’s not true at all!” a pretty redhead snapped as she texted furiously on her phone. “I’m so posting how rude you are!”

Tiffany flashed the redhead an ugly look. “Actually, that’s exactly how it is! Shut up, McKenna!” She turned back to Matilda, but before she could say anything a horrible sneeze flew out of Matilda’s nose.

“Wheezer, can you hear me?” Brand blared through Matilda’s comlink. His voice was so loud it rattled her brain. She wished she could shut it off, but no amount of squeezing her nose could stop her shaking eardrums.

“Turn it down a notch!” she cried.

After a second she realized everyone on the bus was looking at her as if she had lost her mind. Tiffany laughed, and the others echoed her.

“She’s already snapping under the pressure, girls!” Tiffany crowed. “I suggest you get off the bus and go home, ’cause it isn’t going to get any easier.”

“I’m staying,” Matilda said.

“I am not sitting with the crazy girl,” McKenna declared as the girls settled into the farthest reaches of the bus, leaving Matilda alone at the front.

“What do you want?” she mumbled.

Brand’s voice crackled to life. “Wheezer, I’ve been waiting for a report. I thought you might be in trouble.”

“A little busy being bullied by the other girls on the bus, boss,” Matilda said. “None of them look like Gerdie Baker. If she’s here, she’s had a lot of plastic surgery. Listen, I’ll check in when I get a moment to myself. There’s not a lot of room on this bus.”

“Understood,” Brand said.

The bus pulled into a sprawling campground surrounded by acres and acres of dense woods. There was a pond with a dock, a half-dozen wooden cabins, a small administrative building, and a handful of picnic tables around a big green practice yard. When they got off the bus, Matilda and the girls met representatives of the NCA, much older but just as peppy as the rest of the cheerleaders. They assigned everyone a cabin and told the girls when to expect breakfast, lunch, and dinner. They also told the girls there were only two rules at the camp: one, don’t wander around in the woods, and two, have a “cheer-tastic time.”

Matilda circled until she found her cabin, but since she was the last one through the door, she was left with the worst bunk—a moth-eaten mattress with a paper-thin pillow.

Tiffany and McKenna sneered at her as she dumped her duffel bag on the bed.

“I can’t believe they stuck her in here with us!” McKenna grumbled to Tiffany. Then they ran off, leaving Matilda alone.