The Pizza Palace Problem
Starring Elsie Twirl, Mei-Lan, Lulu Cruststep
Elsie Twirl, Mei-Lan, and Lulu Cruststep stumble upon a glittering Pizza Palace hidden behind a row of dandelions, but the moment they step inside, every pizza disappears. Lulu's curious secret about the pizza smell following her everywhere turns out to be the key to the mystery, though sharing it proves harder than she expected. The three friends discover that the heaviest secret is the one that keeps you from getting help when you need it most. The story ends not with a speech, but with three girls sitting on the floor, each tasting a different slice, as the dandelions outside the window sway.
Lulu Cruststep was tiptoeing down Clover Lane when the air turned warm and doughy and absolutely wonderful. She knew exactly why, but she pressed her lips together and whispered the reason into the nearest dandelion. "Shh," she told it. "Not yet." Elsie Twirl and Mei-Lan were right behind her, noses twitching.
Around the bend, tucked between two very ordinary bushes, stood a building with a sign shaped exactly like a pizza slice. "Pizza Palace," read Elsie, running her finger along the chunky golden letters. Mei-Lan grabbed Elsie's sleeve. "I wished for this," she whispered fiercely, "twice to the moon, last Tuesday." Lulu said nothing, but she held her dandelion a little tighter.
They pushed open the heavy door and stepped inside. The room smelled of warm cheese and toasted crust, and round mirrors on the brick walls reflected their amazed faces back at them. But every single pizza counter was bare. Not one slice, not one crumb, not even a tomato-sauce smudge.
"I will find out what happened," Elsie said, sure as anything. She had guided lost mittens and lost beetles home before, so a lost pizza seemed perfectly manageable. She listened carefully to the empty room, the way she always did. But the room stayed quiet. Not one lost thing whispered a single word.
Elsie stood up and shook her head slowly. "Nothing," she said, and that was a word she had never said before about a mystery. Mei-Lan squeezed both hands under her chin. "Maybe my wish went wrong. Maybe I said it three times instead of twice and made too much magic." She looked ready to cry. Lulu shuffled her feet and stared very hard at the checkered floor.
Lulu looked at the dandelion in her arms. One small puff of seeds drifted off, and she did not stop it. "It is me," she said, her voice very small. "The pizza smell follows me everywhere I tiptoe. I was too scared to say it out loud because secrets get heavier when you say them, except..." She paused. "Except I think I had that backwards." Elsie and Mei-Lan looked at each other.
Lulu set the dandelion on the windowsill and started to tiptoe in a slow circle around the empty room. The air thickened with the smell of warm dough and bubbling cheese, and then, one by one, pizzas rose up through the countertops as if they had simply been waiting below for exactly this. Mei-Lan grabbed Elsie's arm. Elsie grabbed Mei-Lan's arm right back.
The three of them sat cross-legged on the checkered floor, each with a different slice: Elsie's had tiny black olives, Mei-Lan's had sweet corn, and Lulu's was plain cheese, still warm from wherever it had been hiding. Outside the window, the dandelion on the sill swayed, shedding one more seed into the afternoon air.
