I Shrank My Teacher

by Bruce Coville

  “Don’t mind her,” said Tim. “She always thinks it’s time to go to the mall.”

  Watching physical education, I learned that Earthlings have a special sport called gymnastics, which involves a lot of bending and bouncing of the body. Linnsy told me that our school has a team for it. “I’m on it,” she said proudly. “So are Misty and Rafaella. And Ms. Weintraub is our coach.”

  “Ms. Weintraub?” I asked in surprise.

  “She was a national competitor when she was in high school,” said Misty. “Almost made it to the Olympics!”

  * * *

  Alas, after two good days Wednesday arrived, and with it the event Tim and I had been dreading.

  Jordan Lynch returned to school.

  Despite my hopes, my new look was not enough to shield me from his poisonous tongue. The first afternoon he approached me on the playground. Brad Kent, the kid Tim always calls Jordan’s “second-in-command,” was tagging along behind him.

  They stopped in front of me. Jordan looked me up and down for a minute, then said, “Nice outfit, Plesk-o.”

  “Thank you, Jordan,” I replied, feeling slightly surprised.

  “I was wondering,” he continued. “Do you really think jeans and a T-shirt can turn you into an Earthling?”

  The tone of Jordan’s voice was almost friendly. Even so, his words cut like a knife. Not because I want to be an Earthling, but because they were meant to use my differentness against me.

  “You think anything could turn you into a human being?” replied Tim.

  Jordan rolled his eyes. “Worms should not speak unless spoken to.” He turned and walked away. “Second-in-command” trotted after him, patting him on the back and telling him how brilliant he was.

  I was so unhappy about having to deal with Jordan that I actually went to Ms. Buttsman for advice, figuring that manners and protocol are her specialty.

  Though she seemed happy to be consulted, her advice (“Smile politely, tell him that what he said was inappropriate, and ask him not to repeat the offense”) was not really effective.

  To be more precise, when I tried it, it caused Jordan to burst into uncontrollable laughter.

  Then, to make things even worse, on Thursday afternoon I got… The Note.

  CHAPTER 10 [TIM]

  ALIEN BIOLOGY

  As we were leaving the classroom for recess on Thursday, Pleskit sidled over to me and said, “Tim! I must speak to you on a matter of great urgency.”

  “Cool,” I said, wondering if some interplanetary crisis had come up.

  It was a crisis all right, but not interplanetary. Leading me to a secluded spot, he pulled a folded piece of paper from his jeans and said, “Read this.”

  I looked at the note. It was written on lavender paper. It said, “Dear Pleskit: I think purple is a hot color. I also think you are a very cute boy.”

  It was signed, “Love, Misty.” She had used a little heart to dot the i in her name.

  “Uh-oh,” I said. “You’re in trouble, buddy.”

  He groaned. “That is what I feared. What should I do?”

  “Geez, don’t ask me. I never got a note like that. I know! Let’s talk to Linnsy. She understands this kind of thing.”

  I went looking for Linnsy, and dragged her back to where Pleskit was waiting.

  Fingers trembling, he handed her the letter. “Look!” he said, sounding pitiful.

  Linnsy glanced at it, then shrugged. “You aren’t surprised, are you?”

  “Of course I am surprised! I am…” Pleskit paused and rolled his eyes up, as if he was looking for a word somewhere inside his brain. “I am flabbergasted!”

  Linnsy laughed and shook her head. “I can’t believe how clueless you two are! Honestly, if it was up to guys, the species would probably die out completely.”

  “I am not part of this species,” said Pleskit reasonably.

  “Well, how do they do things on your planet?” asked Linnsy.

  “Before or after the egg?”

  “You guys come out of eggs?” I yelped. “That is so neat!”

  “Well, not entirely,” said Pleskit. “The shells create quite a mess.”

  I sighed. “I don’t mean neat as in tidy. I mean neat as in… cool!”

  “Don’t start in on cool again!” cried Pleskit. “I already have enough to think about!”

  “Ignore Tim,” said Linnsy. “He’s just here for background noise. I still want to know about dating and stuff on your planet.”

  “Well, it’s mostly handled by the feebrix,” said Pleskit.

  “The what?” I asked.

  “The feebrix is the being that connects a Fatherly One with a Motherly One.”

  “Sort of like a dating service?” asked Linnsy.

  Pleskit paused to consider this. “No, the feebrix is more like a six-legged treesnake that—”

  “Stop right there!” cried Linnsy. “I don’t think I want to know about this after all. Let’s just try to deal with this letter.” She looked at it again, and furrowed her brow suspiciously. “Hmmm. There’s something weird about this. Pleskit, how do you feel about Misty?”

  “I like her.”

  “Wait, Pleskit,” I said warningly. “I don’t think you entirely understand the question. Linnsy means do you like Misty… well, you know. The way she likes you.”

  Pleskit blinked, and a smell something like rotten eggs mixed with strawberry jam came out of his sphen-gnut-ksher. It was so strong that Linnsy and I started to cough.

  “Sorry,” he said. “That is the odor of extreme alarm. No, I do not like Misty that way. I cannot! It is forbidden! The Fatherly One would sprindle a glixxit if he even thought I was considering such a thing.”

  “Well, I guess that clarifies things,” I said.

  “Not really,” said Linnsy. “Look, I’ve got a bad feeling about this letter. It’s a good thing you asked me for advice. I’ll talk to Misty myself and report back to you later.”

  She turned to go—and bumped right into Jordan Lynch.

  It really bugs me that someone as skeezy as Jordan is so tall and good looking. Why couldn’t his face reflect his personality? (Well, I know the answer to that, actually. You can’t put the face of a weasel on the body of a human being.)

  “Where did you come from?” sputtered Linnsy.

  Jordan shrugged. “I noticed the meeting of the nerd pack and wondered what was going on. You looked upset.”

  “As if that would bother you,” I sneered.

  Jordan put his hand on his heart. “Tim, you wound me. Of course I care. Why, think what it would mean if—for example—someone in class was in love with Pleskit and he didn’t know what to do about it.” He began to snicker.

  “Jordan!” cried Pleskit. “Have you been reading my mail?”

  Jordan laughed. “And do you believe everything you read, Pleskit? Like a love letter from Misty? As if! Sorry if I disturbed you, Ples; this has actually been part of a scientific study. I was checking to see how gullible aliens really are. The answer seems to be—extremely!”

  Still laughing, he started to walk away. Suddenly he turned back and said, “Hey, Linnsy—keep hanging around with losers like Tim and Purplebutt and people are going to start thinking you might be a nerd, too.”

  “Why don’t you go back to your slime pit before you dry out and your skin starts to split,” said Linnsy.

  Jordan raised his eyebrows in mock surprise, then turned and wandered off, still chuckling to himself.

  “He is in desperate need of an attitude readjustment,” said Pleskit. Then, looking worried, he added, “Are there many people on your planet like him?”

  “Enough,” said Linnsy.

  Pleskit frowned. “That is a very alarming thought!”

  * * *

  Jordan didn’t let up, of course. Except that on Friday he directed his nastiness more at me than at Pleskit.

  “Hey, Tompkins,” he said as we were walking into the building that morning. “You think you’re really
a big deal because you hang around with that purple kid, don’t you?”

  I shrugged. “Not really.”

  Jordan snorted. “Yeah, not really. Well, don’t let it go to your head. You could spend the day in a refrigerator and you still wouldn’t be cool.”

  By the time the day was over, Jordan had managed to get three major laughs at my expense.

  Pleskit was furious. “Do you know why he’s picking on you so much?” he asked me that day at recess.

  “Habit, probably. He’s been doing it since he moved here two years ago.”

  “That may be part of it. But I think it’s even worse than usual right now because Ms. Weintraub has told him not to talk to me. That is good for me, but bad for you. Therefore, I think we should do something about it.”

  “I’ve wanted to do something about it for two years. Got any great ideas?”

  Pleskit looked from side to side. “Can you come home with me this afternoon?”

  “Should be okay, as long as I let Mom know where I’m going to be. She doesn’t get home from work until about six anyway.”

  “We can call her from the limousine,” said Pleskit. “If she says no, we will just drive you home instead. But I hope she says yes. I’ve decided that we should have a talk with the Grandfatherly One.”

  Pleskit’s Grandfatherly One actually died quite a while ago, but they kept his brain so that they can consult him on difficult matters. At least, that was the plan. But the first time I met him, he was pretty cranky about the fact that Pleskit’s Fatherly One pretty much ignores him. I got the impression he was actually happy to have us ask him questions, just because it gave him someone to talk to.

  “What are we going to talk to him about?” I asked.

  “I want the Grandfatherly One to advise us on dealing with Jordan.”

  “Your Grandfatherly One has lived all over the galaxy. He’s a mighty brain. Why would he bother with something like this?”

  “Because he’s bored. Also, he hates bullies.”

  So we went to visit the brain of Pleskit’s Grandfatherly One.

  And Pleskit was right.

  He gave us a truly cool suggestion.

  Who would have guessed it would end up getting us in so much trouble?

  CHAPTER 11 [PLESKIT]

  BRAINSTORM

  To visit the Grandfatherly One, we moved very quietly and took a couple of smaller hallways that go around the side of the embassy. The reason for this was simple: We did not want to run into Ms. Buttsman. Life was just easier if we could avoid her.

  The Grandfatherly One lives in a large liquid-filled tank that has a viewing device and speakers on the side. Because the Fatherly One has ordered all of us in the embassy to speak the language of our host country as long as we are here, the tank’s computer has been programmed so that the words of the Grandfatherly One come out in English.

  “Been wondering what was up with you two,” he said when we entered. “I’ve been pretty bored for the last couple of days.”

  I realized, with a good deal of guilt, that I had not filled him in on what had happened to us since the last time we visited him. So Tim and I quickly told the story of how Mikta-makta-mookta had nearly sucked our brains out, and how we had escaped and unmasked both her and the traitor Harr-giss.

  “Well done!” he said when we were finished. “Now, I suppose the fact that you’ve come to see me again means you have another problem. You know, thoughtless youngling, it would be nice if you came to visit sometimes just to see me, or because you wanted to lessen the terrible burden of my loneliness.”

  The first part of his request was valid. The second part was right over the top. “Please, O Venerated One,” I replied, “do not play guilt games with my mind.”

  This caused him to chuckle. “You’re learning, sprout. But my point remains valid. Simple respect and kindness should drive you here to visit me more often.”

  “I will try to improve in that regard, Grandfatherly One. However, in the meantime, you are correct—we do have another problem.”

  Quickly Tim and I outlined what it was like having Jordan back in class.

  “I know the type,” said the Grandfatherly One. “Believe it or not, with proper direction he could become a strong and positive adult being. Left uncorrected…”

  The Grandfatherly One let the sentence hang in the air until Tim finally cried, “What? What?”

  “He has the potential to become a force of evil—small evil if he does not advance in the world, great evil if he rises to power. It would be good to cut him down to size a bit—not only for your sake, but for his own sake, and the sake of the future of this world.”

  “I always knew Jordan was more dangerous than my mother would admit,” said Tim, sounding satisfied.

  “If you are agreed that he is a danger, then how do you suggest we deal with him?” I asked the Grandfatherly One.

  “You must learn to pay more attention, Pleskit. I have already answered that question.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Think about it,” said the Grandfatherly One. Then he pulled in his visual unit and shut down his speaker.

  “Is he all right?” asked Tim in alarm.

  “He is fine,” I replied.

  “Well, what happened?”

  “He is pretending to be asleep. That means he is done talking to us and wants me to figure out what he meant on my own. It’s an old trick of his.” I turned back to the bottle. “Good-bye, Grandfatherly One. I shall go and contemplate your wisdom.”

  He did not answer.

  * * *

  We went to my room to jump on the bed while I thought about the riddle posed by the Grandfatherly One.

  “Okay, let’s see if we can remember exactly what he said,” suggested Tim.

  “No need to remember it,” I said. “I can simply replay it.”

  “Is this place bugged?” asked Tim. He looked alarmed.

  “We have no insects that I know of,” I replied. “Why do you ask?”

  “Well, how are you going to replay what your Grandfatherly One said to us if you didn’t record it somehow?” Then he blinked and smiled. “Oh, I’ve got it! You use your sphen-gnut-ksher, right? I forgot about that.”

  “Yes, exactly. Come on—let’s go see if we can figure this out.”

  I bounced off the bed and went to my desk. The Veeblax was sitting next to my download box, and it had inflated itself enough to do a nearly perfect imitation of the black cube. It took me a minute to figure out which was which; once I had it, I picked up the wrong one, as if by accident. The Veeblax chuckled and switched back to its basic form. I jumped and pretended it had fooled me, which made it chuckle even harder.

  “That thing could be dangerous,” said Tim nervously.

  “All things are dangerous, if you know how to use them properly,” I replied. I picked up the download box, adjusted the appropriate dial so that it would record only the events of the last hour, then inserted my sphen-gnut-ksher. Once I had it comfortably in place, I pushed the Start button.

  The box hummed and grew warm as memories poured into the holding tank.

  When the box beeped twice to indicate that it was done, I pulled out my sphen-gnut-ksher and put the box into the playback device. Then I put on my goggles to review the conversation with the Grandfatherly One. When I was done I handed the goggles to Tim and let him watch, too.

  “That is extremely freaky,” he said when he removed the goggles.

  I was offended by these words, until I realized that since Tim is basically nice, this was more likely another strange use of language, and not him trying to insult me.

  “I do not care if it is… freaky,” I said. “I just care that we figure out what the Grandfatherly One was suggesting.”

  “I don’t know,” said Tim. “The only thing he actually said we should do to Jordan was cut him down to size.”

  “Of course!” I cried. “That’s it! Why didn’t I realize it to begin with?”

&nbs
p; CHAPTER 12 [TIM]

  DESK TOYS OF MASS DESTRUCTION

  “What?” I cried. “What’s it?”

  “The Grandfatherly One said we should cut Jordan down to size.”

  “Yeah? So are we going to slice off his legs at the knees or something?”

  Pleskit looked shocked. “That would be barbaric! No, we’re simply going to shrink him.”

  I tried to keep my eyes from bugging out. “How are we going to do that?”

  Pleskit’s face turned serious. From his sphen-gnut-ksher came that faint smell of fish that I have come to realize means that he is thinking. “Hmmm. That is a matter for some consideration. The shrinking ray is a fairly simple device. On the other hand, it is kept on the desk of the Fatherly One—it’s one of his toys.”

  “A toy?” I asked in surprise.

  “The job of the Fatherly One carries great responsibility. He needs ways to relieve the tensions.”

  Ignoring the fact that this “toy” was something most Earth scientists would gladly sacrifice a body part in order to examine, I said, “Do you suppose he’ll let us use it?”

  Pleskit shook his head glumly. “That is about as likely as my being invited back to Geembol Seven.”

  This sort of irritated me, because I know that something awful happened on that planet, but he won’t tell me what.

  “Well,” I said, “that means we’re right back where we started.”

  Pleskit smiled. “I said I did not think he would loan it to us. But one of the earliest things the Fatherly One taught me was that it is easier to get forgiveness than it is to get permission.”

  “That’s a weird thing for a parent to tell you,” I said.

  “The Fatherly One wants me to become an effective adult. He thinks Earthlings are very odd in this regard. Many of the traits that you admire in grown-ups, such as standing up for yourself, or speaking your own mind, are things that people really dislike in kids. He is very interested in trying to figure out how any of you survive your childhoods. Anyway, since the Grandfatherly One has suggested it, I think we should simply borrow the shrinking device.”