Any Way You Slice It Read Online Free Page A

the door. There stood Suzanne, holding a plastic horn. She smiled as the attention focused on her.
    “Forget that Joker,” she told the crowd. “Here’s your true champion! Kevin ‘Tomato Man’ Camilleri!”
    Kevin walked in. Unlike George, he seemed embarrassed by all the attention. Maybe that was because of the outfit Suzanne had forced him to wear. He had on red shorts, a red shirt, red knee-socks, and a red hat with a small green felt stem sticking up on the top. He looked like a walking tomato!
    Cameras flashed in Kevin’s face. His face blushed redder than any tomato.

    “Hey, Louie, aren’t you going to start the contest?” Ian Camilleri shouted out. “My brother looks awfully hungry.”
    “So does George,” Becky assured Ian. She waved her pom-poms in the air. “Jeremy didn’t let him eat a thing for breakfast. Wasn’t that smart?” She smiled at Jeremy.
    “Can we start the contest, Louie?” Jeremy asked, turning away from Becky.
    Katie walked over to the oven, opened the door, and carefully slipped one of the giant pies onto a huge metal spatula, just the way she’d seen Louie do it.
    The pizza was heavier than she’d expected. It was big, too. Katie had never held a whole pie before. Whoa! The pizza was sliding off the spatula. Katie shifted her weight and quickly slid it onto one of the big metal pizza trays on the counter.
    “That was a close one, Louie,” one of the kids in the audience said, laughing.
    Katie blushed.
    “Boy, that oven must be extra hot today,” one of the adults said aloud. “Look how red Louie’s face is.”
    “Come on, Louie, let’s get going!” Suzanne pleaded. “Kevin is so ready.”
    “So’s George,” Jeremy added.
    Working near the big hot pizza oven made Katie very nervous. She wasn’t supposed to use any oven without a grown-up. Her mother had made that rule very clear. But she had to break her mother’s rule—just this one time.
    Katie used a pizza cutter to divide each of the four cooked pies into slices. The ten runners grabbed slices and raced them over to the contestants. As they ate, Katie slid four more of Louie’s pre-made pies into the oven.
    The contest had begun!

Chapter 10
    “Send another one this way, Louie,” Jake Lawrence, a teenager who was one of the contestants, called out. Jake had ten empty plates stacked beside him. That meant he’d eaten ten whole slices of pizza. So far, he’d eaten the most.
    But Carolyn Evans, a tall thin blond woman, wasn’t far behind. She’d eaten nine slices. And Neal Flemming and Bryan Sander had each eaten seven.
    “Another slice for my man Kevin, please,” Suzanne called out as she patted Tomato Man on the back, and counted the empty plates beside him. Wow! Kevin had eaten six slices.
    “Suzanne, I don’t think I can eat any more,” Kevin groaned.
    Suzanne looked at the next table, where George was scarfing down his seventh slice of pizza. “Yes, you can,” she said. “You don’t want Jeremy . . . I mean, George to beat us, do you?”
    “Us?” Kevin asked. “Just how much pizza have you eaten?”
    “You know what I mean,” Suzanne told him.
    “All I know is that if I eat another bite, I’m going to explode.” He turned toward where Katie was standing. “Count me out, Louie,” he told her.
    Katie nodded. She reached over and took away his plates.
    The contest had been going on for a while now. Kevin was the fifth contestant to drop out. Jeremy smiled as Kevin waddled away from the table. “Another one down, George,” he happily told his client.
    George didn’t answer. He just kept chewing. But he was slowing down. Finally, he looked up at Jeremy. “I’m sorry,” he said, his face turning green. “I think I’m going to be sick!” He jumped up and ran toward the bathroom.
    “I’m not feeling too well, either,” Bryan Sander added, after taking just one bite of his eighth slice. “I’m done.”
    “It’s down to three!” someone in the crowd shouted out.
    Katie