“Mom! Pam and Greg are my older brother and sister! But now suddenly they’re younger! Don’t you remember? Greg is the oldest!”
“Matt has gone cuckoo!” Greg cracked. “Cuckoo! Cuckoo!”
Pam fell on the floor laughing.
Mom stood up and set her plate in the sink. “Matt, I don’t have time for this. Go upstairs and get dressed right now.”
“But, Mom—”
“Now!”
What could I do? Nobody would listen to me. They all acted as if everything was normal.
I went upstairs and got dressed for school. I couldn’t find my old clothes. My drawers were full of clothes I’d never seen before. They all fit my new, bigger body.
Could this be some kind of joke? I wondered as I laced up my size-ten sneakers.
Greg must be playing some crazy trick on me.
But how? How could Greg get me to grow—and get himself to shrink?
Even Greg couldn’t do that.
Then Biggie trotted in.
“Oh, no,” I cried. “Stay away, Biggie. Stay away!”
Biggie didn’t listen. He ran right up to me—and licked me on the leg.
He didn’t growl. He didn’t bite. He wagged his tail.
That’s it! I realized. Everything has really gone crazy.
“Matt! We’re leaving!” Mom called.
I hurried downstairs and out the front door. Everybody else was already in the car.
Mom drove us to school. She pulled up in front of my school, Madison Middle School. I started to get out of the car.
“Matt!” Mom scolded. “Where are you going? Get back in here!”
“I’m going to school!” I explained. “I thought you wanted me to go to school!”
“Bye, Mom!” Pam chirped. She and Greg kissed Mom good-bye and hopped out of the car.
They ran into the school building.
“Stop fooling around, Matt,” Mom said. “I’m going to be late for work.”
I got back into the car. Mom drove another couple of miles. She stopped… in front of the high school.
“Here you are, Matt,” Mom said.
I gulped. High school!
“But I’m not ready for high school!” I protested.
“What is your problem today?” Mom snapped. She reached across the front seat and opened my door. “Get going!”
I had to get out. I had no choice.
“Have a good day!” she called as she pulled away.
One look at that school and I knew—I was not going to have a good day.
4
A bell rang. Big, scary-looking kids poured into the school building.
“Come on, kid. Let’s move it.” A teacher pushed me toward the door.
My stomach lurched. This was like the first day of school—times ten! Times a zillion!
I wanted to scream: I can’t go to high school! I’m only in the seventh grade!
I wandered through the halls with hundreds of other kids. Where do I go? I wondered. I don’t even know what class I’m in!
A big guy wearing a football jacket marched up to me and stuck his face in my face.
“Um, hello,” I said. Who was this guy?
He didn’t move. He didn’t say a word. He just stood there, nose to nose with me.
“Um, listen,” I began. “I don’t know what class to go to. Do you know where they keep the kids who are about—you know—my age?”
The big—very, very big—guy opened his mouth.
“You little creep,” he muttered. “I’m going to get you for what you did to me yesterday.”
“Me?” My heart fluttered. What was he talking about? “I did something to you? I don’t think so. I didn’t do anything to you! I wasn’t even here yesterday!”
He laid his huge paws on my shoulders—and squeezed.
“Ow!” I cried.
“Today, after school,” he said slowly, “you’re going to get it.”
He let me go and walked slowly down the hall as if he owned the place.
I was so scared, I dove into the first classroom I came to.
I sat in the back. A tall woman with dark, curly hair stepped in front of the blackboard.
“All right, people!” she yelled. Everybody quieted down. “Open your books to page one fifty-seven.”
What class is this? I wondered. I watched as the girl next to me pulled a textbook out of her bag. I looked at the cover.
No. Oh, no.
It couldn’t be.
The title of the book was Advanced Math: Calculus.
Calculus! I’d never even heard of that!
I was bad at math—even seventh-grade math. How could I do calculus?
The teacher spotted me and narrowed her eyes.
“Matt? Are you supposed to be in this class?”
“No!” I cried, jumping up from my seat. “I’m not supposed to be in this class, that’s for sure!”
The teacher added, “You’re in my two-thirty class, Matt. Unless you need to switch?”
“No, no! That’s okay.” I started backing out of the room. “I got mixed up, that’s all!”
I hurried out of there as fast as I could. Close one, I thought. I won’t be back at two-thirty, either.
I think I’ll cut math class today.
Now what do I do? I wondered. I wandered down the hall. Another bell rang. Another teacher—a short, dumpy man with glasses—stepped into the hallway to close his classroom door. He spotted me.
“You’re late again, Amsterdam,” he barked at me. “Come on, come on.”
I hurried into the classroom. I hoped this class would be something I could handle. Like maybe an English class where you read comic books.
No such luck.
It was an English class, all right.
But we weren’t reading comic books. We were reading a book called Anna Karenina.
First of all, this book is about ten thousand pages long. Second, everybody else had read it, and I hadn’t. Third, even if I tried to read it, I wouldn’t understand what was going on in a million years.
“Since you were the last one to class, Amsterdam,” the teacher said, “you’ll be the first to read. Start on page forty-seven.”
I sat down at a desk and fumbled around. “Um, sir”—I didn’t know the guy’s name—“um—I don’t have the book with me.”
“No, of course you don’t,” the teacher sighed. “Robertson, would you please lend Amsterdam your book?”
Robertson turned out to be the girl sitting next to me. What was with this teacher, anyway? Calling everybody by their last names.
The girl passed her book to me. “Thanks, Robertson,” I said. She scowled at me.
I guess she didn’t like being called Robertson. But I didn’t know her first name. I’d never seen her before in my life.
“Page forty-seven, Amsterdam,” the teacher repeated.
I opened the book to page forty-seven. I scanned the page and took a deep breath.
That page was covered with big words. Hard words. Words I didn’t know.
And then long Russian names.
I’m about to make a big fool of myself, I realized.
Just take it one sentence at a time, I told myself.
The trouble was, those sentences were long. One sentence took up the whole page!
“Are you going to read or aren’t you?” the teacher demanded.
I took a deep breath and read the first sentence.
“‘The young Princess Kitty Shcherb—Sherba—Sherbet—’”
Robertson snickered.
“Shckerbatskaya,” the teacher corrected. “Not Sherbet. We’ve been over all these names, Amsterdam. You should know them by now.”
Shckerbatskaya? Even after the teacher pronounced it for me, I couldn’t say it. We never had words like that on our seventh-grade spelling tests.
“Robertson, take over for Amsterdam,” the teacher commanded.
Robertson took her book back from me and started reading
out loud. I tried to follow the story. It was something about people going to balls and some guys wanting to marry Princess Kitty. Girl stuff. I yawned.
“Bored, Amsterdam?” the teacher asked. “Maybe I can wake you up a bit. Why don’t you tell us what this passage means?”
“Means?” I echoed. “You mean, what does it mean?”
“That’s what I said.”
I tried to stall for time. When would this stupid class be over, anyway?
“Um—mean? What does it mean,” I murmured to myself, as if I were thinking really hard. “Like, what is the meaning of it? Wow, that’s a tough one—”
All the other kids turned in their seats and stared at me.
The teacher tapped his foot. “We’re waiting.”
What could I do? I had no idea what was going on. I went for the foolproof escape.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” I said.
Everybody laughed except the teacher. He rolled his eyes.
“Go ahead,” he said. “And stop by the principal’s office on your way back.”
“What?”
“You heard me,” the teacher said. “You’ve got a date with the principal. Now get out of my class.”
I jumped up and ran out of the room. Man! High-school teachers were mean!
Even though I was being punished, I was glad to get out of there.
I never thought I’d say this, ever. But I wanted to go back to junior high! I wished everything would go back to normal.
I wandered through the hall, looking for the principal’s office. I found a door with a frosted-glass window. Letters on the window said, MRS. MCNAB, PRINCIPAL.
Should I go in? I wondered. Why should I? She’s only going to yell at me.
I was about to turn around and leave. But someone was coming toward me down the hall.
Someone I didn’t want to see.
“There you are, you little creep!” It was the big guy from this morning. “I’m going to pound your face into the ground!”
5
Gulp.
Suddenly the principal’s office didn’t seem so scary. This guy—whoever he was—would never hurt me in the principal’s office.
“You’ll be needing plastic surgery when I’m finished with you!” the guy yelled.
I opened the principal’s door and slipped inside.
A big woman with steely gray hair sat behind a desk, writing something.
“Yes?” she said. “What is it?”
I paused to catch my breath. Why was I there again?
Oh, yeah. English class.
“My English teacher sent me,” I explained. “I guess I’m in trouble.”
“Sit down, Matt.” She offered me a chair. She seemed kind of nice. She didn’t raise her voice. “What’s the problem?”
“There’s been some kind of mistake,” I began. “I don’t belong here. I’m not supposed to be in high school!”
She frowned. “What on earth are you talking about?”
“I’m twelve years old!” I cried. “I’m a seventh grader! I can’t do this high school work. I’m supposed to be in middle school!”
She looked confused. She reached out and pressed the back of her hand to my forehead.
She’s checking to see if I have a fever, I realized. I must sound like a maniac.
She spoke slowly and clearly. “Matt, you’re in eleventh grade. Not seventh grade. Can you understand me?”
“I know I look like an eleventh grader,” I said. “I can’t do the work! Just now, in English class? They were reading a big, fat book called Anna something. I couldn’t read the first sentence!”
“Calm down, Matt.” She stood up and went to a file cabinet. “You can do the work. I’ll prove it to you.”
She pulled out a file and opened it. I stared at it. It was a school record, with grades and comments.
My name was written at the top of the chart. And there were my grades, for seventh grade, eighth grade, ninth grade, tenth grade, and the first half of eleventh.
“You see?” Mrs. McNab said. “You can do the work. You’ve gotten mostly B’s, every year.”
There were even a few A’s.
“But—but I haven’t done this yet,” I protested. What was going on? How did I end up so far in the future? What happened to all those years?
“Mrs. McNab, you don’t understand,” I insisted. “Yesterday, I was twelve. Today I woke up—and I was sixteen! I mean, my body was sixteen. But my mind is still twelve!”
“Yes, I know,” Mrs. McNab replied.
6
“Yes, I know you read a lot of science fiction,” Mrs. McNab said. “But you don’t expect me to believe that silly story—do you?”
Mrs. McNab folded her arms and sighed. I could tell she was losing patience with me.
“You have gym class next, don’t you,” she said.
“What?”
“This is all some kind of joke, right?” She glanced at my schedule, stapled to the file.
“I knew it,” she muttered. “You do have gym next. And you’re trying to get out of it.”
“No! I’m telling the truth!”
“You’re going to that gym class, young man,” she said. “It starts in five minutes.”
I stared at her. My feet felt glued to the floor. I should have known she wouldn’t believe me.
“Are you going?” she asked gruffly. “Or do I have to take you to the gym myself?”
“I’m going, I’m going!” I backed out of the office and ran down the hall. Mrs. McNab stuck her head out the door and called, “No running in the halls!”
Pam and Greg always said that high school was bad, I thought as I trotted to the gym. But this is a nightmare!
Tweet! The gym teacher blew his whistle. “Volleyball! Line up to pick teams.”
The gym teacher was a stocky guy with a black toupee. He chose a couple of team captains, and they started picking teams.
Don’t pick me. Don’t pick me, I silently prayed.
One of the captains, a blond girl named Lisa, picked me.
We lined up at the volleyball nets. The other team served. The ball flew at me like a bullet.
“I got it! I got it!” I cried.
I reached up to hit the ball back.
Klonk! It knocked me on the head.
“Ow!” I rubbed my sore head. I’d forgotten—my head was much higher now than it used to be.
“Wake up, Matt!” Lisa yelled.
I had a feeling I wasn’t going to be very good at volleyball.
The ball came flying at us again. “Get it, Matt!” someone called.
I reached up higher this time. But I tripped over my giant feet and fell—oof!—on top of the guy standing next to me.
“Watch it, man!” the guy shouted. “Get off me!” Then he clutched his elbow. “Ow! I hurt my elbow!”
The teacher blew his whistle and hurried over to the guy. “You’d better go to the nurse,” he said.
The guy hobbled out of the gym.
“Way to go, Matt,” Lisa said sarcastically. “Try to do something right this time, okay?”
I turned red with embarrassment. I knew I looked like a jerk. But I wasn’t used to being so tall! And having such big feet and hands. I didn’t know how to control them.
I got through a few rounds without messing up. Actually, the ball didn’t come near me. So I didn’t have the chance to mess up. Then Lisa said, “Your serve, Matt.”
I knew this was coming. I’d been watching everybody else serve so I’d know what to do.
This time I won’t mess up, I vowed. I’m going to serve this ball and get a point for my team. Then they won’t be angry at me for making us lose.
I tossed the ball in the air. I punched it as hard as I could with my fist, trying to get it over the net.
WHAM! I hit that ball harder than I’d ever hit anything. It whizzed through the air so fast, you could hardly see it.
SMACK!
“Ow!”
; Lisa doubled over, clutching the side of her head.
“Why did you have to hit it so hard?” Lisa cried, rubbing her head.
The teacher looked her over. “You’ll have a nasty bruise there,” he said. “You’d better go to the nurse too.”
Lisa glared at me and stumbled away.
The teacher gave me a funny look. “What’s the matter, kid?” he asked. “Don’t know your own strength? Or just out to get your classmates, one by one?”
“I—I didn’t do it on purpose,” I stuttered. “I swear I didn’t!”
“Hit the showers, kid,” the teacher said.
I hung my head as I dragged myself to the locker room.
This day can’t get any worse, I thought. There’s no way.
Still, why take chances?
It was lunchtime. I had half a day of school to go.
But I wasn’t going to stick around.
I didn’t know where to go or what to do. I only knew I couldn’t stay in that school.
High school was horrible. If I ever got back to my normal life, I’d remember to skip this part.
I left the gym and raced out of the school building as fast as I could. Down the hall. Out the door.
I glanced back. Was that big guy chasing me? Did the principal see me sneak out? No sign of anyone. Coast clear. Then—oof! Oh, no. Not again!
7
I bumped into someone. I bounced backwards and landed with a thud on the ground.
Ow! What happened?
A girl sat sprawled on the sidewalk. Books were scattered around her.
I helped her up. “Are you okay?” I asked.
She nodded.
“I’m really sorry,” I said. “I’ve been doing that all day.”
“That’s all right.” The girl smiled. “I’m not hurt.”
She wasn’t a high-school girl—she looked about my age. I mean, the age I thought I was. Which was twelve.
She was pretty, with long, thick blond hair in a ponytail. Her blue eyes sparkled at me.
She bent down to pick up her stuff.
“I’ll help you,” I offered. I reached down to pick up a book.
CLONK! My head bumped into hers.
“I did it again!” I cried. I was getting sick of this.