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Nicola had been outraged. "I did not say that!" Unfortunately nobody believed her because everybody knew that phenomenal was the sort of word only Nicola would say. She couldn't help it. She liked her long, fancy words.
"Come on, Nicola!" called out Georgio. "Give it a go!"
Nicola took a deep breath and carefully placed one palm and then the other down next to her feet as if the ground were there.
And to her immense surprise, her legs swung around in a smooth, perfect arc!
"I did it!"
"That was excellent." Georgio floated beside her and gave her a wink. "Phenomenal."
Nicola looked at him suspiciously. She'd noticed that Georgio sometimes seemed able to read her mind.
"Try a backflip," he suggested.
She did, and it was easy! She did a double backflip, a triple backflip, and a quadruple backflip!
Georgio looked at his watch regretfully. "Well, as much as I'd like to cloud-swim all day, we really should be on our way. Are you feeling more relaxed now?"
Nicola did a quick front-flip, backflip, and cartwheel. "Much more relaxed!"
"Good. After all, every single person on Earth is depending on you not to fail this mission!"
Nicola watched Georgio swim through the air toward the hovering helicopter.
Every person on Earth was depending on her? Her mom and dad, Sean, her nana and pop, her great-aunt Annie, her friends, like Katie and Tyler, the nice lady at the corner shop down the road, her tennis coach, her piano teacher, famous people, poor people, people in other countries she'd never met--they were all depending on her?
Now the thought of doing one of Mrs. Zucchini's horrendous math tests seemed as easy as pie.
How on Earth was Nicola Berry going to save the Earth?
CHAPTER 8
"You took long enough! Now don't drip cloud all over my helicopter, please!" said Plum over her shoulder as Georgio and Nicola hauled themselves back in.
"Certainly not," said Georgio. He handed Nicola an enormous fluffy red towel that was as large as a tablecloth. Nicola wrapped it around herself and began to dab at the bits of cloud clinging to her dress, but to her surprise the towel ripped itself out of her hands and began to vibrate in the air, rubbing itself briskly all over her.
"It's an electric towel," explained Georgio, who was standing motionless while his own towel flew up and down and around his body. "Surely you're not still using those old manual towels, are you?"
"Ow!" cried Nicola as the towel wrapped itself tightly around her hair and kneaded her head. "We only have electric toothbrushes--not electric towels!"
"I'm sorry," said Georgio sympathetically. "How tactless of me. I do forget sometimes just how tragically backward you are!"
"Tragically backward?" said Nicola, feeling quite defensive about poor old Earth. She was relieved when the towel stopped rubbing. It had reminded her of the brisk, rather rough way her mother used to dry her after her bath when she was little and would have much preferred to just sit around and drip-dry.
"No offense, Nicola!" Georgio buckled himself back into his seat on the helicopter. "You're hardly responsible for your whole planet, are you?" He raised an eyebrow and gave a little chuckle. "Although, right now, you actually are responsible for your whole planet! Oh, speaking of which, I've got two very important things to give you."
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He searched in his pocket and pulled out a thick gold card. It looked like a fancy wedding invitation. It seemed quite small in Georgio's hand, but when he handed it to Nicola, it was as big as a hula hoop.
"Thank you." Nicola held the heavy gold card in front of her awkwardly with both hands. It said:
CONFIRMATION OF APPOINTMENT WITH
PRINCESS PETRONELLA AT TEN O'CLOCK SHARP,
TOMORROW MORNING AT THE RAINBOW PALACE.
