by R. L. Stine
“Shut up, you groober! You know we have to do it today. Now, hurry up or I’ll test it on you. Then you’ll know how your human friends feel when we use it on them!”
The shink was what they used on humans? What kind of machine was it? What could it do to me? I didn’t want to find out. But I had to follow Chad-Two to the yard or he’d get suspicious.
I flipped out of bed and put on my regular shoes. I caught up with Chad-Two as he strolled across the backyard. “First we need to collect a test specimen,” Chad-Two said.
He led me past the mushroom shed. And into a tangle of trees behind it.
“Catch anything you see,” Chad-Two told me.
Catch anything? How?
“There!” he urged, pointing up into a tree.
A crow sat on a low branch, glaring down at us. How was I supposed to catch a crow?
I snuck closer, then jumped as high as I could, grabbing for the bird.
It flew away, cawing.
“You dummy! What are you doing? Where’s your merister?” He pulled a little metal tube from his pocket.
What was a merister? “I left it in my other pants,” I said.
“You spidunk!” He tapped the tube on a little black spot, and it got bigger. Whoa! It looked like a ray gun from those space-alien movies.
“Turn over that log,” he ordered.
I crossed to the log. I pushed it and it rolled over.
A big black rat the size of a small cat raced out from under the log! I jumped back.
Chad-Two aimed his merister at it, and a web shot out of the barrel. It caught the rat and yanked it back to Chad-Two. “This should do nicely,” he declared, holding up the net. I could see the rat struggling inside.
He tapped the merister a few times, and it folded up into a little metal lump.
Chad-Two led the way back to the silver puffball shed. Once we were inside, he set the net with the rat in it in the middle of a big yellow circle on the floor.
He picked up a little yellow box with black patches on it.
One of the sides of the box was fuzzy. Chad-Two turned the fuzzy side toward the rat, then he pressed the big black patches—two taps on the big square patch, three on the smaller round patch, then another two on the big square patch.
The rat shrieked! It was a horrible, ear-piercing sound!
When I saw what was happening, I wanted to scream, too.
I watched as the terrified rat began to shrink.
Shrink!
From rat-size to mouse-size to marble-size to pea-size!
Chad-Two chuckled to himself. It was an evil, awful sound. Then he turned to me and said, “That’s what I’ll do to any slimy human that finds out about us!”
12
I swallowed hard. That’s what Chad-Two would do to humans like me.
I stared at the tiny rat. Chad-Two picked it up. It was frozen as stiff as a statue and about the size of a BB pellet.
For a second I couldn’t even move, I was so scared. This was much worse than mind-tailoring!
I would have to be extremely careful. I could never let him know I was a human!
I caught my breath. “P-p-perfect,” I stammered.
He handed me the tiny rat.
It was as hard as a rock! I held it up to look at it. It was like a teeny-tiny statue of a rat.
Oh, man! This could be me!
Chad-Two took the rat back and tossed it over his shoulder. Then he glared down at his human hands. “There’s only one worthwhile thing on this whole planet,” he said.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Slinkies! I’ve never seen them anywhere else,” Chad-Two continued. “They fascinate me, the way they move, the circles, the spirals, constantly shifting. The way they compress and expand, and move down inclines by themselves. They’re so beautiful! In fact, I want to go look at Slinkies right now!”
I followed him into the house and up to the pink room upstairs. Then we wiggled through a long tunnel into a workroom full of books. It was full of sunlight that streamed in through three oval-shaped windows.
“You forgot to write down your impressions of the school day yesterday,” Chad-Two said. He pointed toward the notebooks. I grabbed one of them.
I picked a pen up off the table and pretended to write.
While I wrote, Chad-Two pressed a green touch pad on the wall and a drawer flipped open. He took out two big metal Slinkies.
He touched something else on the wall and four things like steps slid out, each one lower and larger than the last.
He started the Slinkies going down the stairs.
He sat on the floor and watched the Slinkies going end over end until they wound up on the floor.
He was so fascinated, he wasn’t watching me anymore.
Maybe I could sneak out of the house while he was distracted!
I put the pen down and stood up as quietly as I could.
I made it all the way to the door.
When it whooshed open, Chad-Two looked up. His eyes widened. “Where are you going? Are you done already?”
“Just thought I’d get a snack,” I said. “You want anything?”
“No eating between meals, Chad-One. You are so polluted from spending time with those humans!” His face looked cold and mean. He pointed at the desk.
I thought of the rat after he used the shink on it.
I shuddered!
I sat down and picked up the pen again.
* * *
After dinner Chad-Two and I went back upstairs. Chad-Two quickly shut the door to his chamber and went to sleep.
My heart started to beat faster. This was my chance. No Chad-Two spying on me! Maybe now I could get away!
I peered down the stairs.
Mom and Dad were still in the living room just below me.
They appeared to be watching TV.
At least, that’s what you would think if you saw them through the front window.
But the last I saw, they had been playing with little metal machines in their laps, making them transform, then using the machines for things I didn’t understand.
I can’t get past Mom and Dad. So how do I get out?
I glanced at the boots lined up by the touch pad.
Hmmmmm.
Would they only stick to the sleep-chamber ceiling?
I rushed over and put the boots on. I stamped the touch pad. Then I lifted a foot and stamped it on the curving pink wall. But the boot didn’t stick to it. Maybe the pink wall was too slippery or was coated with special nonstick wallpaper.
I snuck back into the workroom. The minute I stepped over the threshold, my boots stuck to the floor as if they had Super Glue on the bottoms.
I couldn’t get them to let go!
Frantically I jiggled the boots sideways. Three jiggles, and they popped loose!
I grabbed my sneakers from my sleep chamber, then carried the boots and sneakers over to the window.
Sitting on the windowsill, I tied the sneakers together by the laces and looped them around my neck. I put on the boots.
This had to work!
I swung my booted feet outside and stamped the boots to the outside of the house.
They stuck!
I let go of the windowsill. The boots held me up!
I could feel gravity trying to pull me to the ground two stories below. But the boots didn’t let me go!
Now came the tricky part. I jiggled one foot three times, and the boot came loose!
I stamped it farther down the side of the house, and it stuck again. I jiggled the other one loose, and stamped it lower on the side of the house.
I was walking down a wall! Spider-Man had days like this! Only he could go lots faster because he didn’t have to jiggle between each step.
I was sweating by the time I reached the ground, but I sure felt happy. I was almost out of there!
I jiggled the boots loose of the wall and stepped onto the grass. I sat on the lawn and took them off. I pulled the tennis sho
es from around my neck and untied them.
Then I froze.
Something stepped out of the shadows.
Not something. Someone.
“Chad-One, what are you doing out of bed?” Mom demanded.
For once, she wasn’t smiling.
13
“Aaaaaahhhhh!” I screamed and dropped my tennis shoes.
She had caught me! I was done for! She would guess I was trying to escape!
They would shrink me down to the size of an acorn, and my body would be hard as a rock!
Or maybe they would just tailor my mind. . . .
I screamed again.
“What’s the matter with you?” Mom scolded. “Stop making all that noise! You’ll wake the neighbors!”
I shut up.
“Chad-One? Chad-One, I am waiting for an answer.”
What was the question?
I was so scared I couldn’t think straight!
Oh, yeah. What was the matter with me?
“I—I had a nightmare,” I stammered. Then I panicked. Oh, no! What if aliens didn’t have nightmares? My whole body trembled. I was getting dizzy. My stomach twisted five directions at once.
“What?” Mom was staring at me.
“I had a horrible nightmare!” That was my story. I had to stick to it. Okay, make this good! “I dreamed that slimy humans found out about us and they were coming to kill us! I had to get away. Then I woke up and I was walking down the side of the house! It scared me! I managed to get to the ground. Then you startled me. I’m sorry I screamed.”
Did it work? Did she believe me?
“It’s all right.” She patted my shoulder like a good sitcom mom. “Don’t worry, Chad-One. Those nasty old humans won’t come after us. And if they ever do, we’ll just shink them, or evaporate them, or something. No human can ever hurt you.”
She bought it! I was so relieved, I almost kissed her.
Almost.
“Come inside. You need some tickeree, Chad-One,” Mom said soothingly. “That’ll help you sleep.”
Luckily she didn’t notice the sneakers. If she had seen them she might have realized I had planned ahead on my sleepwalk. I left them on the lawn. I would worry about them later.
We went into the house and into the kitchen, where she heated water and mixed it with these worms with gigantic eyes.
I drank it. It tasted like hot Tang. And it did make me sleepy.
* * *
When I finally woke up, it was noon on Sunday. That tickeree stuff had really knocked me out. I breathed a sigh of relief. I made it through another night. Even if I hadn’t escaped, at least no one suspected that I was a human!
I wanted to call Chad and make sure we both knew the plan for tonight. I was counting the seconds until switch-time!
I had seen a phone downstairs in the kitchen. I hadn’t noticed anything resembling a phone up here, or anywhere else in the house.
I flipped out of my chamber to check on Chad-Two. He was already out of bed. I crept over to the workroom. Bingo! There he was, playing with his Slinkies.
I crept down the stairs, hoping not to attract attention.
Mom sat by the front door, playing with some weird machine that spun stuff out into the air like spiderwebs. She smiled at me. “Hi, sleepyhead,” she said in her best sitcom tone.
“Hi, Mom,” I answered and headed for the kitchen.
Dad was by the back door, studying something with a glowing screen. He glanced up and smiled at me, too.
I approached the phone. It was sitting on a counter near me. Okay, I told myself. Be calm.
I waved to Dad, turned my back to him, and picked up the cordless phone. My body covered my move as I slipped the phone into my shirt. Yes! I thought. I did it!
I bounded up the stairs and ducked into my sleep chamber.
I dialed my home number.
“Kennedy residence,” a voice answered.
Just my luck. Pepper.
“Hi, Pepper. It’s me.”
“Me who?”
“Me. Will.”
“Who is this? What kind of game are you trying to play? Will’s right in the other room, watching cartoons! You don’t even sound like Will!”
Suddenly I really wanted her to know it was me. Maybe if she believed me she would help me. I really wanted someone to help me.
“Listen, Pep. You remember that episode of the Judo-Jabbing Coyotes called ‘The Imposter Syndrome,’ where the High Muckety sent in a fake Newton that looked just like the real Newton, and he really messed everybody up? Copernicus, Galileo, and Einstein didn’t know what hit them!”
“Yeah. So?”
“Don’t you think Will has been acting strange since Friday?”
She was silent for a while. “He hasn’t tripped over anything or spilled anything,” she said slowly, “and he can catch the Frisbee without fumbling it, and he runs real good, and he’s way too polite.”
“I bet he doesn’t call you Buckethead.”
“Nope. Not that I miss it!”
“I bet he doesn’t know your birthday is May eleventh.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m Will. I know it’s hard to believe, Pep. But it’s true! I switched bodies with that guy Chad. That was me on the front porch yesterday. I can prove it to you. Ask me anything!”
“What’s my favorite color?”
“Red.”
“How would you know? I never told Will my favorite color!”
“That’s what color notebook you buy for school every year. That’s what color shirt you always buy, if Mom lets you. What else?”
She was quiet for a long time.
At last she said, “Tell me something only Will could know.”
“I drew a mustache on your Cabbage Patch doll with Magic Marker when you were five.”
“What?” she yelled. “That was you? You rat! You total rat! I knew you did it! I hate you!”
Then she hung up!
I dialed again.
“Hello?” a voice answered. My voice.
“Chad?” I yelped. “Chad, I don’t know if I can wait until tonight. Can’t you come over now?”
“No, I can’t come over now. Or later.”
“What do you mean?” I asked nervously.
I heard his mean laugh cackle over the phone lines.
“Give it up, Will. I’m never giving you your body back. Never.”
14
The phone went dead.
I stared at the cordless in my hand.
Never!
He was never going to switch back!
I was stuck with these aliens, and they were sure to find out I was human!
The shink was out in the shed, waiting for me to make one more little goof! And I, Will Kennedy, had a lifelong history of horrible goofs!
No way! I wouldn’t let it happen.
I would force Chad back here. That’s what I would do. I’d get him back into the shed—somehow.
I went into the workroom and found Chad-Two still sitting there. A bunch of weird equipment was spread on the floor.
If I was going to get Chad over here, I needed some help.
“Where’s my merister?” I asked Chad-Two, remembering his net gun from the day before. It might be helpful in getting Chad to cooperate.
“Check your other pants,” Chad-Two responded, pointing to a door. I opened it and saw a closet full of Chad’s clothes.
I checked through the pockets of the pants hanging there and found several strange objects.
One of them was a merister, just like the net gun Chad-Two used on the rat the day before. I stashed it in my pocket.
Then I checked out another gunlike object. It had a clear ball the size of a big marble on the end of its barrel and two touch pads, one blue and one pink. I held it up to look at it.
“You found your lifter!” Chad-Two said, noticing the object in my hands. “Good! Let me see if it’s still charged.” He took it from me.
He tapped a touch p
ad high on the wall. A drawer the size of a piano opened, making a deep grinding sound as it slid across the floor. It sounded really heavy.
Chad-Two pushed the round ball against the drawer and pressed the blue button twice. Then he raised the gun. The big drawer rose up in the air! And Chad wasn’t straining at all!
He put the lump back down, tapped the pink button twice, and the ball came loose. “Works fine,” he announced.
“Yeah,” I said.
He tossed the lifter to me.
I wondered if it would lift cars! Or, say, that big bully Eric Rice in Miss Scott’s class.
Or Chad-Two?
I put the lifter in my pocket.
“Chad-One! Chad-Two!” Dad yelled up the stairs.
“Yeah, Dad?” Chad-Two shouted back.
“Time for that test drive!”
“Come on, ooligooch!” Chad-Two said, punching my arm. I followed him down the stairs and through the kitchen. I managed to sneak the phone back onto its base.
Mom and Dad came into the kitchen. Chad-Two and I followed them through a side door I had never seen opened before.
The door led to the garage.
There was nothing else in the whole garage but this huge round metal thing with an opening in it. The aliens’ spaceship!
Dad ducked and crawled into the opening. Chad-Two shoved me, so I followed Dad into the ship.
Chad-Two and Mom crawled in behind me.
We crawled through a narrow dark tunnel for a while. All I could see were Dad’s feet ahead of me, and the slick shiny walls. Little lights ran across the walls like fireworks. The floor was damp and spongy.
Then the tunnel opened out into a round room and we could stand up. There were pools of bubbling liquid on the floor, and spiky bad-smelling plants grew from the walls and the ceiling.
When we got to the other side of the room, Dad ducked and crawled into another dark tunnel.
I felt like toothpaste being squeezed out of a tube by the time we got to the other end!
Finally we ended up in a round room with a big console like the Starship Enterprise. It had four sets of touch pads on it.
Mom went to one of the center sets and put her hands on two big gray touch pads.
Dad stood beside her and put his hands on matching gray pads in his set.