by Ali Sparkes
They both shuddered with relief as they flew down over the fence around the park.
“We’ve got to get to Petty. We can’t risk any more stops,” said Josh. He looked left and right as they glided low across the grass. “It’s not safe down there!”
VROOOOOM! Danny ducked in the air. He swooped sideways as a dark shadow flitted past him. “It’s not safe up here, either!” he yelled. He looked up to see a dark flash of feathers and claws zooming around in a circle above them. A starling. Its sleek oil-colored feathers glinted in the sun. It turned back to have another try at pecking him out of the air.
“DOWN!” shrieked Josh. He dropped like a stone into the grass. Danny followed. Two thuds later, they were hidden in a thicket of green that rose just above their heads. Breathlessly they crouched and waited. “Don’t move!” whispered Josh. “It will only see us if we move.” The starling swooped low over the grass. It made an ear-splitting screechy noise and then flew away.
“It didn’t see us!” gasped Danny. “It couldn’t make us out. Look! We’re exactly the same color as the grass!”
“Camouflage,” said Josh. His feelers quivered with shock. “We’re meadow grasshoppers. Designed to look nearly invisible in grass.”
“OK, so we’re quite safe here then,” sighed Danny. “But how are we ever going to find Petty Potts if we can’t leap up and look around? And what time is it? We’ll be late back to school, and then we’ll be in trouble. Oh—this is so not good! I thought we might get to have a bit of fun for a change. But oh no, we’re just fast food with feelers, as usual.” He spat out another blob of brown goo. “Sorry.”
Petty Potts was annoyed. She’d managed to entice three or four squirrels over to her bench in the last hour. Each of them had scampered off with her special peanuts.
She knew, obviously, that there wasn’t much point in trying to get a squirrel to swig a bit of strange-looking potion out of a plastic bottle. No, she had brought a tin cup along in her bag. She’d put a little of the potion into it. Then she dropped some peanuts in it and made them good and S.W.I.T.C.H.y. Then she set the peanuts down, one by one, at the far end of the wooden park bench. She waited for the bold squirrels to show up and steal them. She had been careful to wear disposable plastic gloves. She had no intention of S.W.I.T.C.H.ing herself! One day she might, but she was quite old and might not recover from it.
Petty dug deep into her coat pocket. She pulled out a little green velvet box. Opening it up, she gazed wistfully at the two shining glass cubes inside it. She picked up one of them. She held it up to the light. It sparkled in the sun. The hologram of a tiny lizard could be clearly seen inside it.
“One out of six!” she sighed. She put the cube back in the box, next to the other cube. It had a slightly different hologram inside it. She sighed. “Two out of six. Which adds up to one-third of the formula to make REPTOSWITCH. Well, I’m glad to have you two,” she murmured at the cubes. “But what about the other four, eh? Where did I hide the others? If only that scurrilous waste of space Victor Crouch hadn’t burnt out my memory, I would know! I’d have the bug formula and the reptile formula. There might even be mammal or bird formula one day, for all I know! But if Josh and Danny don’t find the rest of your little cube family, I may never know!”
Nobody was nearby to hear Petty talking to herself. That was probably just as well. Petty talked to herself quite a lot. She found it was the only way to get an intelligent answer.
“Of course, they don’t understand how important this is. I am changing the world! But all they’re worried about is getting to school on time. Honestly! Children today have no sense of adventure.”
Petty snapped the little green box shut and put it on her lap. She trained her binoculars back onto the little family of four squirrels. They were running around a warm patch of grass beneath the oak trees. Still no change. Obviously the potion wasn’t working as well as the spray. Those squirrels should be hopping about looking very green and confused by now. They should be getting panicky about their sudden lack of bushy tails.
If only she could see just one grasshopper! “AARRGH!” Suddenly a huge grasshopper loomed in front of her. It took a second or two of frantic flapping around her head before Petty realized she was still looking through the binoculars. The grasshopper was right on the lens.
“You crazy old baggage!” she scolded herself. She turned the binoculars around to peer at the insect on the lens. Maybe the potion had worked after all! But…no…all four squirrels were still racing around the grass.
“Just a regular grasshopper,” she muttered. She flicked it away. It landed with a small click, by her left shoe. Then it started to disco dance. Another grasshopper hopped along and joined it. They shimmied left and then right. They whirled their feelers in the air as if they were auditioning for High School Musical.
Unfortunately, Petty wasn’t looking. She was examining the S.W.I.T.C.H. potion bottle more closely. Suddenly she slapped her palm against her forehead. “You lunatic!” she said, crossly, to herself. “You pudding-brained clod! This is the antidote! Not the potion.” Now she began to rummage in her bag. “Where did I put the potion? And why did I use two of the same kind of bottle? Tsk! Oh, how annoying! The potion bottle must have fallen out in the car.”
“It’s not working,” said Josh. He gave up on the disco dance routine. “She’s not looking. We’ll have to jump up on her knee. If we don’t get that antidote soon we might never get back to school—or home—again!”
“Won’t we just change back again anyway, after it’s worn off?” said Danny. “We did last time.”
“I don’t know,” said Josh. “This is the potion version, remember, not the spray. We’ve never drunk it before. It might last forever for all we know! But if we stay out here much longer, we’ll just get eaten anyway. Oh will you stop that?”
“Sorry,” said Danny. He kicked away another brown blob of panic goo.
“Come on—onto her knee!” said Josh. He was just about to jump when a shadow fell across them. He looked up and saw the vast bulk of another human. “Oh no! Someone’s come and sat on the bench with her! We can’t change back in front of someone else. Even if we do get to the antidote!”
“Morning, Miss Potts,” shouted Mr. Grant. He lived around the corner.
Petty sighed. “Hello, Mr. Grant.” The last thing she needed was some nosy neighbor interfering in her experiment. She put the bottle back into her bag.
“We have to get Petty to notice us!” insisted Danny. He glanced around nervously and gulped. “I don’t care who sees! I’m not staying here to get eaten.”
“Nice place to sit and watch the world go by, isn’t it?” yelled Mr. Grant. He was a bit deaf. He didn’t seem to realize that not everybody else was too.
“Hmm,” said Petty. She tried not to wrinkle her nose. Mr. Grant smelled of stale coffee and unwashed socks. He had liked her for years.
“What’s this then?” shouted Mr. Grant. He suddenly picked the little green box up from the bench where it had slid from Petty’s lap. He flipped it open without even asking. He peered at the two glass cubes. “Oh! Very pretty!” he grinned, showing off his dark yellow teeth.
“Do you mind?” Petty wrestled the box from him. She jammed it deep down into her coat pocket.
“I’ve got one of those on my mantelpiece,” belted out Mr. Grant.
“I very much doubt it,” said Petty, crisply.
“Found it in a bird’s nest!” he bawled on. “A year ago, when I was cutting down my old hedge. Some magpie had got it. Gave it a wash and put it next to my clock, I did.”
Petty stared at him, her mouth open.
“Nice to find someone to share a bench with,” Mr. Grant shouted, romantically. “Especially at this time of day! When there are no screaming kids about. They should keep ’em all in school a bit longer, I say. Getting out at three? Nonsense. Lock ’em up with their teachers until six o’clock. Give us oldies a chance to have a park bench to ourselves, eh? Ha-ha-
ha!”
Petty was still trying to figure out whether she had really heard Mr. Grant say he had a S.W.I.T.C.H. cube on his mantelpiece. Then two grasshoppers jumped up onto her knee and began to wave. Petty blinked. Then her eyes stretched wide, but she didn’t say anything.
“Don’t you think?” barked Mr. Grant.
“Oh no,” said Petty. She stared at her knee. She suddenly realized where the missing S.W.I.T.C.H. potion must have ended up. “It’s Josh and Danny!”
“Don’t you?” screamed Mr. Grant. “Don’t you think it’s nice here? No annoying kids. Just you and me! Ha-ha-ha!” And he slapped his hand down on her knee.
Petty shrieked.
“Oh come on!” roared Mr. Grant. “I’m only being friendly!”
But Petty was staring in horror at her knee. Only seconds before, Josh and Danny had been waving at her there. That idiot Grant had surely just splatted them across her skirt.
She smacked his hand away. She gasped with relief. There was no sign of splatted insect. A chirruping noise made her look down at the little tin cup on the bit of bench between her and her nasty neighbor. Inside the cup there was still a puddle of antidote (which she had mistaken for potion). It was leftover from the peanut dunking. Two grasshoppers were wallowing about in it.
“No need to be hoity-toity!” Mr. Grant was shouting. “I was only saying how nice it was to be here all on our own. Without any irritating, snotty-nosed schoolkids taking up all the benches and—DOOF!” Mr. Grant was abruptly shoved sideways as two schoolkids appeared out of thin air on the bench between him and Petty Potts.
Petty hooted with laughter. Mr. Grant fainted. By the time he’d regained his senses, he was alone. He took himself off to see the doctor.
“Sorry the boys are late,” smiled Petty. She put her head around the classroom door. Josh and Danny sidled back to their desks. “I had a bit of an emergency. They were helping me.”
“Oh,” said Miss Mellor, checking her watch. “Well, it’s only ten minutes. I suppose I don’t have to mark it down. What kind of emergency?”
“They had to save me from something creepy-crawly! You know how good Josh is with that kind of thing,” said Petty. She did her best “nice old dear” face. She pushed the S.W.I.T.C.H. potion bottle deep into her straw bag. Josh had run into the bathroom to get it for her just before they came back into class.
“See you at dismissal, boys,” said Petty. She hurried out of the classroom.
“You didn’t eat lunch, either of you!” scolded Miss Mellor. “Your lunch boxes are still out on your desks!”
“It’s OK, Miss Mellor,” Danny grinned. “We had a lot of salad stuff while we were out. Couldn’t eat another thing!”
“Really? Sounds very healthy,” said Miss Mellor, looking suspicious.
“It was!” said Josh. “And we’re going to eat more leaves when we get home. Even more than Claudia! We’re going to snarf a whole hedge. It tastes great!”
“You must be joking!” Danny held up his hands and shook his head. “No way!”
“But you promised you’d help me!” insisted Petty. “You said you would help me get back all my REPTOSWITCH cubes! Remember—you said you wanted to try out being a python one day. Or a lizard—or an alligator!”
“We didn’t say that! You did!” argued Josh.
“Oh nonsense!” Petty slammed the green velvet box down on her kitchen table. She had lured Josh and Danny in, as they arrived home from school. She used the pretense that she was worried about them after yesterday’s grasshopper adventure. “I know you want to be an alligator, Josh! You’re an eight-year-old boy, for heaven’s sake. There would be something seriously wrong with you if you didn’t!”
Josh looked at Danny. Petty was right. He did want to try out the REPTOSWITCH one day. Who wouldn’t? Danny bit his lip. Josh knew his twin wanted to try it too.
Petty flicked open the box. She pointed to the four empty dents where the missing S.W.I.T.C.H. cubes belonged. She fixed them with a fanatical stare. “One more of these will mean we are halfway there! Halfway toward being able to switch humans into reptiles! Imagine what we could do with that! It’s fantastic enough being able to switch you into insects and spiders. But imagine what you could do in reptile form!”
“OK—we said we’d help you look,” said Josh. “And we have been helping. We’ve been all over your garden and our yard. And we always check out anything we see in the street that shines a bit like glass. But this is different. You’re asking us to be burglars!”
“Oh, pee, pickle, and poo!” snorted Petty. “I’m just asking you to take one teensy-weensy sip of potion. Just pop back to being a grasshopper and jump through Mr. Grant’s mailbox. Then collect my S.W.I.T.C.H. cube from his mantelpiece and come out with it. No harm done. He won’t even notice.”
Josh and Danny looked at each other. There was only the slightest hint on their faces that maybe they might possibly think about Petty’s plan. She spotted it and immediately held up a tiny glass dropper. It was already filled with S.W.I.T.C.H. potion. “I’ve measured it out exactly for your height and weight and body mass,” she said. “It will last precisely ten minutes. Long enough for me to get you to the house. Then five minutes to get inside to find the cube and change back to your human form. Then get the cube back to me. Mr. Grant’s out. Wednesday afternoon he always goes to the casino.”
Josh and Danny looked at each other again. Danny shrugged. “Sounds simple enough.”
“EXCELLENT!” said Petty, holding up the dropper. “TONGUES OUT!”
Petty hid the grasshoppers in her coat pocket. They were safely tucked into a small plastic tub with holes in the lid so there was plenty of air to breathe. It was not a pleasant journey. They were jogging along in the tub, which smelled of old curry.
“I hope she’s right about this S.W.I.T.C.H. cube being in Mr. Grant’s house,” muttered Danny. “We could be at home now, playing with Piddle or filling up the wading pool. Not stuck in a plastic tub in a crazy old scientist’s pocket, trying not to be sick. I’m only just holding back the panic goo here, you know!” His green face went a little greener.
Petty had told their mom her sons were helping out in the garden for half an hour. Mom thought that was a nice thing for Josh and Danny to do. She believed Petty was a lovely, harmless old lady.
Suddenly there was a flash of light as the tub rose out of the darkness of Petty’s coat pocket. The lid abruptly snapped off and a fresh breeze blew in. Josh and Danny clambered warily up to the rim of the tub. They saw that it was being held up against a long blue cliff, with a rectangle cave set into it. “It’s his mailbox, in his door,” said Josh. “She’s putting us through!”
Sure enough, the dull yellow metal at the back of the “cave” suddenly flapped backward. Petty’s enormous pink fingers poked at it. Josh and Danny leapt through the gap and found themselves gliding down through the cool indoor air of the hallway. They landed on the rough bristles of a doormat, next to a gigantic folded newspaper.
“BURGLARY ON THE INCREASE” read the front-page headline. It made Josh and Danny feel guilty.
“Come on—we haven’t got much time,” said Josh. He sprang down the hallway and into the living room. He bounded up onto the mantelpiece above the fireplace in one easy leap. The long pine shelf was full of clutter. Pictures, ornaments, matchboxes, tobacco tins, a pair of pliers, a jar of screws, and lots of thick fluffy dust.
“Eeeww!” whimpered Danny. He was frozen on the other side of the jar of screws, his green mouthparts twitching with disgust. At his feet lay a large, upside-down spider. Hairy, crispy, the color of straw. It was bigger than Danny. It was a good thing it was dead.
“Just turn around and hop away!” advised Josh. He couldn’t believe, after all Danny had been through, that he was still scared of a dead spider. Although, he supposed, Danny had been the one who was very nearly eaten by a spider a little while back.
Danny turned around and hopped away. Then he let out a chirrup of exci
tement. “It’s here! I’ve found it!”
Josh jumped along the mantelpiece. He found his brother staring at a large, clear, perfectly cut cube of glass. Even through a layer of dust, it sparkled with rainbow light. Inside, delicately carved by laser, was the hologram of a snake. Its diamond-patterned body was coiled like rope and its head raised up, as if ready to strike. “It’s beautiful,” murmured Danny. He wondered which part was the one-sixth of Petty’s secret formula.
“It is,” agreed Josh. “Uh-oh!” He felt a strange tingling and knew what was coming. “Better get off the mantel—OW!” He sat up on the carpet. He rubbed his head where it had smacked against the brick fireplace. “That was a quick change!” He hadn’t even had a second to hop down off the mantelpiece before he’d thwacked back into being a boy.
A moment later, Danny fell on his face.
“MMM-OW!” Josh shoved Danny off. “You could’ve aimed somewhere else!”
“Sorry,” said Danny, as he picked himself up. “Didn’t have time.”
He turned and quickly collected the S.W.I.T.C.H. cube from the mantelpiece. He shoved it deep into his school pants pocket.
“WHAT ON EARTH IS ALL THIS?” yelled a voice from the hallway.
Josh and Danny froze, horrified. They were in the middle of burgling Mr. Grant’s house—and he was IN IT!
Mr. Grant appeared in the doorway, looking furious—at the newspaper in his hand. He was staring at the headline and shaking his head.
“What’s all this?” he thundered. “Burglaries on the increase? Stuff and nonsense.” He flipped over the paper as two small burglars slid down behind his old leather armchair. “Tennis club faces closure!” he bellowed. “Rubbish! All newspapers are rubbish!”
Then he stomped across the room. He thumped down into the armchair, sending up a cloud of dust around it. Josh and Danny, squashed behind it, held their breath and scrunched up their eyes. Josh felt a sneeze build up in his nose. He pinched the end of it, desperately. If he sneezed, they would be found out.