Since I had already cleaned my room, we decided to test the Amazing Mess-Pusher in Molly's room.
We used it to push everything on the floor under Molly's bed.
"Hey," said Molly, looking around her empty floor.
"It really works, Iggy!"
"Yeah, your room looks nice and neat," I said.
That night I went to bed feeling happy about my new invention.
I could help kids everywhere with their messy rooms!
Maybe soon I'd also think of a new idea to help Molly with her monster problem.
The next day Mrs. Romano asked us to take out our story ideas.
"Tomorrow you will start writing your books," she said.
"Make sure you have a really good plot idea."
"Uh-oh," said Molly, rummaging through her backpack.
"I think I left our list of plot ideas in my room."
When we got home from school, Molly and I looked for our list in her room.
But we couldn't find it.
"I bet it got pushed under my bed with the Amazing Mess-Pusher," said Molly.
Molly peered under her bed.
"Oh no!" she cried.
"What's the matter?" I asked.
"There's nothing under my bed," said Molly.
"Everything is gone!"
"I wonder what happened," I said.
"Maybe Caswell knows," said Molly.
We went out to the living room, where Caswell and Lucy were watching another episode of Monster Madness.
"Caswell," Molly said, trying not to look at the TV.
"Did you take anything out of my room?"
"Grr!" said Caswell, growling like the monster.
But he shook his head to tell Molly "no."
Lucy didn't know anything about the stuff under the bed either.
We were still looking for our list when Molly's mom came home.
"Mom, do you know what happened to the stuff under my bed?" asked Molly.
"I cleaned the apartment this morning," said Mrs. O'Donnell.
"I cleaned under your bed too."
"Did you see a list?" Molly asked.
Mrs. O'Donnell shrugged.
"There was lots of stuff under your bed, Molly, including crumpled paper.
I just threw everything out."
So that was the end of our list of plot ideas.
And that was the reason Molly and I had to start all over again.
At school the next morning, everyone was complaining about how hard it was to think of plots for their stories.
Mrs. Romano said Gina and Jake's story was missing a middle.
"You only have a beginning and an end," Mrs. Romano explained.
"How do you write a middle?" asked Jake.
"Something has to go wrong," explained Mrs. Romano.
"That gives a story suspense."
Something definitely went wrong when I got home from school that day.
There, in the middle of my room, was a garbage bag.
On it was a note from Tate.
"Dear Piggy, I found more junk in my closet.
You can use your Amazing Mess-Pusher to clean it up.
Just don't push any stuff under my bed! Tate."
I'm normally a calm person.
But at that moment I blew up.
Everything was going wrong!
My Amazing Mess-Pusher had caused our plot list to get thrown out.
Molly was still not sleeping.
And Tate was being mean and driving me crazy!
"I can't stand it!" I yelled. "Nothing is going right!"
Then I kicked the garbage bag as hard as I could.