The End of the World Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2013 by Michael Rex

  Photo on this page courtesy of John Rader

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  Random House and the colophon are registered trademarks and A Stepping Stone Book and the colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Rex, Michael.

  The end of the world / written and illustrated by Michael Rex.

  p. cm. — (Icky Ricky; #2)

  “A Stepping Stone book.”

  Summary: “Icky Ricky is up to his eyeballs in trouble and in ick—giving a funeral for a pizza, dealing with a one-eyed squirrel, and dressing up as Bigfoot.” —Provided by publisher.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-97539-3

  [1. Behavior—Fiction. 2. Humorous stories.] I. Title.

  PZ7.R32875En 2013

  [E]—dc23 2012033884

  Random House Children’s Books supports

  the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.1

  To Sam, for teaching me about funny

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1. The Egyptian Pizza Funeral! (Part 1)

  2. The Egyptian Pizza Funeral! (Part 2)

  3. The Most Awesomely Perfect Bigfoot Plan (Part 1)

  4. The Greatest Cleanup Day Ever

  5. The Most Awesomely Perfect Bigfoot Plan (Part 2)

  “Ricky!” Ricky’s mom shouted as she pulled into the driveway of their house. “Why in the world are you having a mud fight in my old dress?”

  “Because the one-eyed squirrel stole the Palooka Pops!” said Ricky.

  “Oh, Ricky … please tell the story from the beginning.” She didn’t bother to get out of the car.

  It all started when Gus and Stew and I were at home playing our game called Coach Jackson. Our baseball coach, Mr. Jackson, says one thing over and over. He says, “See the ball! Hit the ball!” That’s how he teaches you to hit home runs. Anyway, we were in my room. I had a toy baseball bat, and Stew would throw stuff at me and Gus would be Coach.

  Gus would say, “See the sock! Hit the sock!” And Stew would pitch the sock, and I’d hit it.

  Gus would say, “See the toothbrush! Hit the toothbrush!” And Stew would throw the toothbrush, and I’d hit it.

  Then he started throwing stuffed animals.

  “See the penguin! Hit the penguin!” And I was like, wham!

  “See the moose! Hit the moose!” And I was like, wham!

  Then Stew chucked a juice box!

  Gus shouted, “See the juice box! Hit the juice box!” And I nailed it across the room! A real frozen rope! It exploded all over my wall.

  The doorbell rang. I ran down to answer it, and it was a pizza delivery guy. He handed me a pizza. I told him I didn’t have any money, but he said it had been paid for already. He was talking on his phone, and he ran back to his car. Gus and Stew were like, “All right! Pizza!” But I told them that I didn’t order a pizza.

  We opened it, and it looked awesome. Pepperoni and meatballs! Extra cheese, too! I thought that maybe Dad ordered it, so I shouted, “Dad! Did you order a pizza?”

  He was in the garage working, and he said, “No!”

  I noticed a piece of paper taped to the pizza box. It read “220 Longview Road.” I live at 220 Fairview Road. Gus figured that the delivery guy had brought the pizza to the wrong address.

  Then Gus asked, “What if the person who ordered it comes looking for it, and he’s like a big biker or something?”

  And Stew said, “Yeah! And he just got out of prison and he hasn’t had pizza in thirty years!”

  I was like, “Yeah! Maybe he went to prison because he’s a pizza nut and stole tons of pizzas!”

  I said I knew where 220 Longview Road was, and that we should deliver this pizza to the person who had bought it.

  Gus was like, “Yeah. Cool.” And Stew said that maybe the biker dude would be so happy that he would share it with us and let us ride his motorcycle. We grabbed the pizza and ran out of the house.

  It was a bit dark and cloudy, but it wasn’t raining. We started running down the street, but Gus said he didn’t like passing the house with the freaky man-dog. It’s a dog that lost some fur around his eyes, so it’s kind of skin-colored there, and he looks like a man wearing a dog mask.

  We turned around and went the other way. But Stew said he didn’t like going that way because of the one-eyed squirrel. There really is a one-eyed squirrel that lives in a tree or something, and it’s the meanest squirrel ever. Once I saw it snatch a cookie right out of a kid’s hand!

  We ended up taking a small path that leads between the houses. We followed the little stream back there, and finally came out on the next block. We had about six blocks to go when we saw some lightning, and then, boom! There was this huge thunder explosion! It started raining like crazy. I held the pizza box over my head so I could stay dry. We ran to find someplace to get out of the rain.

  Gus screamed, “One-eyed squirrel!” And he pointed to something in the trees.

  Then I shouted that we were going the wrong way, so we turned around. But that didn’t seem right, so we went another way.

  I was getting all confused, when Stew slipped on some mud. I tripped on Stew and fell on the pizza, and Gus landed on top of me.

  The box got all bent up. The thunder kept going. Boom! Boom! Boom!

  We got up and ran toward Silvey Park. I held the pizza box under my arm. We ran until we got to a picnic table and crowded under it.

  We opened the box and looked at the pizza.

  “Uh-oh,” I said. It was a mess. The box had been bent in half and squished, so all of the cheese was stuck to the cardboard. And the box was so wet that the cardboard started to get little soggy holes in it.

  “Guys, we destroyed the pizza,” Gus said. “It’s the worst pizza ever. We can’t deliver this.”

  Stew said, “What should we do?”

  I said when it stopped raining, we should go back to my house, fix the pizza and the box, and then try delivering it again. Pretty soon the rain stopped, so we got out from under the picnic table. The bottom fell out of the soggy box and the pizza fell on the ground.

  We picked up as much of the box as we could because we don’t believe in littering. And we scooped up the pizza and stuffed it in our pockets and carried it home. Some grass and mud had gotten mixed up in it. We kept dropping things, like the pepperonis and the meatballs.

  When we got back to my house, there wasn’t much pizza left. We emptied our pockets and put it all on the kitchen counter. Stuff that was already in our pockets had gotten all mixed up with the pizza parts. Mine had an eraser stuck in them. Stew had a dollar stuck in his, and Gus found out he had a hole in his pocket and almost all the pizza parts had fallen out.

  “Wow,” I said. “This pizza really needs some work. But we can do it!”

  “Yeah!” said Gus. “You’re the best pizza doctor in the world, and it’s time to operate!”

  I put on my mom’s rubber dish-washing gloves and hung a paper napkin over my mouth like a doctor’s mask. My face was still wet so it stuck easily. Ste
w and Gus put napkins on their faces, too.

  The first thing we did was push and shove the pizza back into a circle. But it was lumpy and not flat like a pizza should be. I picked out some pieces of grass. Then I got out a rolling pin and rolled it over the pizza. But it all stuck to the roller. We scraped that off and still had a big, messy pile of cheese and crust.

  “Excuse me, Doctor,” said Gus. “Maybe if the pizza was hot, it wouldn’t be so lumpy.”

  “Good idea, Assistant Pizza Doctor,” I said.

  We dropped the junked-up pizza on a plate and stuck it in the microwave. I put it on high for five minutes. But after about a minute, it started to pop and make all sorts of noise, so I took it out.

  It was really hot and steamy. I rolled it again, and again it just stuck to the rolling pin.

  “Maybe we should add stuff to make it more pizza-ish,” suggested Stew.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  Now, I had made dough in school when I was in kindergarten, so I knew we needed flour. We poured that on. We needed more cheese, too, so we looked in the fridge but only found a can of Cheese-in-a-Can. We sprayed that onto the pizza. We couldn’t find any tomato sauce, so we squeezed a bottle of ketchup onto the pizza.

  We microwaved the pizza again. Then we rolled it again. It still stuck to the rolling pin.

  I took the blob in my hands and smushed it all together into one big ball.

  “There!” I said. “It’s a new invention! People around the world will no longer eat pizza pies. They will eat pizza balls!”

  Gus and Stew looked at the pizza carefully, then looked at me.

  “No they won’t,” they said at the same time.

  I looked at the pizza, too. Without saying anything, we all stuck our fingers in it and tasted it. It was awful.

  “Doctors,” I said, “I think our operation has failed. I think we’ve lost it.”

  “Lost what?” asked Stew.

  “The pizza,” I said. “It’s dead. We killed it.”

  ICKY RICKY’S TIP FOR NEVER BEING BORED! #1

  I’m never bored. Never. It’s because I have a lot of different interests. One of my favorite things to do is collect stuff. Lots of kids collect game cards or action figures or toy cars, but those can be expensive.

  I like collecting stuff I can get for free, like my toenail clippings.

  I’ve been keeping my toenail clippings for as long as I can remember. I also have toenails from my friends, some from my grandma, some dog toenail clippings, and I even have one that I found when my family was staying in a hotel!

  You might be saying, “But I have a collection. Now what do I do with it?”

  Organize it! I organize mine in many different categories.

  I also like to figure out different ways to display my collection. Right now I have all the clippings taped to a piece of fancy paper. In fact, it looks so great I’m going to hang it in the living room!

  “But I don’t understand why you’re wearing my old dress, Ricky,” said Ricky’s mom, still sitting in the car.

  So we were all looking at the dead pizza, and then we hung our heads for a moment until I had my best idea of the day.

  “Hey!” I said. “Let’s give it a funeral!”

  “Yeah!” said Gus. “A pizza funeral!”

  Then Stew asked, “Where are we going to bury it?”

  “In the backyard!” I said as I ran out the back door. Gus and Stew came with me. We looked around and decided on a good spot near the fence. I found a shovel and dug a small hole. The dirt was soft from the rain.

  “Hey,” said Gus, “maybe we should do it like the Egyptians and bury the pizza with stuff it needs in the afterlife.”

  I was like, “Wow! That’s an awesome idea.” We had been studying Egypt in school. When their kings died, they put all this crazy stuff in their tombs for their next life. Like chairs and boats and gold. They even had the dead guy’s guts put in jars so he could keep them!

  “Hmmm,” Gus said. “What does a pizza need?”

  “Um … a plate! And a knife?” said Stew.

  We ran back into the kitchen for a plate and a knife. What else did it need? I looked around the house. “What about a pencil and paper?” I said. “So it can draw if it’s bored?” We grabbed a pencil and a sheet of paper.

  “What about a ball for playing games?” said Gus. We grabbed a tennis ball.

  “What about a hat if it gets cold?” said Stew. We found one of my old baseball hats and took that.

  We tried to lift the pizza blob off the counter, but it kept falling apart. I grabbed an old doughnut box from the recycling bin and pushed the blob off the counter right into it.

  “Gus, look!” I said. “A sarcopha-GUS!” We all started cracking up, and then we scooped up the stuff that fell on the floor and put it in an empty can that we found in the recycling.

  “That’s his guts,” I said. “He needs them in the afterlife.” I carried the box out to the hole and dropped it in. We put the pizza guts can in, then the plate, the knife, the hat, the ball, and the paper and pencil.

  “Wait!” said Gus. “It needs a dessert!”

  “Pizza doesn’t eat dessert,” I said.

  “Well, it might need a snack in the afterlife,” he said.

  We ran back inside to the kitchen. In one of the lower cabinets, I found my bag of leftover Halloween candy. It was all the crummy candy that no one really eats, like Coconut Waltz bars and Walnut Crunchability bars and those little stupid lollipops called Palooka Pops that are kinda white and all taste the same.

  We took the candy and tossed it in the hole, too, and then we piled dirt on top.

  “We need a tombstone,” said Gus.

  We got what was left of the pizza box and stood it up behind the mound of dirt. I found a marker and wrote “R.I.P.” on the box.

  “What does that mean?” asked Stew.

  “Rest in Peace,” said Gus.

  The tombstone looked pretty good.

  Then Stew was like, “So, what do we do at a funeral?”

  “We wear black and say nice things about the pizza while crying,” I said.

  We ran back in the house and went to the basement. I opened up a trunk of old clothes. I gave Stew my dad’s black jacket and pants. I found this old black dress, and Gus got my old black shorts and a black sweatshirt that said “Whazzup?” on it.

  We went back outside. It was starting to rain again. It was perfect for a funeral.

  “Dearly beloved,” I started. I had heard people say that in movies. “Today we are here to bury our best friend, Pizza. He was a good, kind pizza. He had lots of friends and he had lots of pepperoni. He will be missed.” I started to fake-sniffle.

  Then Stew sniffled and said, “He always helped me when I had a problem. He helped with my homework once. I will miss Pizza.”

  “I will miss Pizza, too,” said Gus. “He helped me fix my bike and took me out to get ice cream.” He started to fake-cry and blew his nose on his arm.

  “He bought me a race car,” I said, starting to fake-cry really hard.

  “He bought me a rocket, and we went to the moon,” said Gus, fake-crying.

  “He bought me a time machine, and we went to the end of the world,” said Stew. He blew his nose on his arm, too.

  I started weeping really hard and said, “He bought me a sock.”

  “Just one?” asked Gus.

  “Yeah,” I said. “He was a cheap pizza.” I blew my nose on my arm, too.

  We all started cracking up.

  The thunder crashed again, and a flash of lightning startled us. Then something amazing happened! The one-eyed squirrel dropped out of a tree and started digging away at the pizza grave. We all jumped up and screamed and ran around!

  Then I noticed the squirrel didn’t want the pizza. It took the crummy Palooka Pops and ran off.

  I bumped into Stew, and we fell over, and then Gus fell over, and we got all covered in mud. And then I shouted,

  We started beanin
g each other with mud. I was like, “See the Gus! Hit the Gus!” And he was like, “See the Stew! Hit the Stew!” And Stew was like, “See the Ricky! Hit the Ricky!”

  “See, Mom?” said Ricky. “It makes total sense.”

  “Well, I guess so,” said Ricky’s mom. “You did the right thing trying to deliver the pizza.”

  “But I feel kinda bad about the guy who didn’t get his pizza,” said Ricky.

  “Yeah,” said Gus. “Even if he was a pizza thief.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Ricky’s mom. “When the pizza guy delivers to the wrong house, he has to bring another pizza to the right house. It was his mistake. Now, let’s get you cleaned up and ready for dinner.”

  “Great!” said Ricky. “What are we having?”

  ICKY RICKY’S TIP FOR NEVER BEING BORED! #2

  Staying home sick from school can either be really boring or really fun. You just have to be creative with what’s around you, even if you are stuck in bed.

  Make art! If you have a pile of sticky boogie tissues, squish them together to make a sculpture. Remember, it doesn’t have to look real to be good art.

  You can also use a bunch of boogie tissues to make a Santa Claus beard. Ho! Ho! Ho!

  Organize and display your boogie tissues. Biggest! Wettest! Stickiest! Greenest! (See? Anything can be a collection.)

  If you’re lucky, your friend is home sick, too, and you can video chat. You can even share your works of art, beards, or collections with each other. However, if you are going to sneeze, aim your nose away from the screen.

  “Who are you?” asked the woman with the flashlight. “And why do you look like a pile of mud?” She was standing in a very dark backyard.