Body Switchers From Outer Space
Author: R. L. Stine
Date: 1996-11-01 08:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Horror; Childrens; Science Fiction
Description: Will “the Spill” is a total klutz. He’d give anything to be Chad—the most popular kid in school—just for one day. Chad never trips, or falls, or drops anything. Then Will gets his wish. Chad says he’s got a body-switching machine. And he wants to switch bodies with Will! Will decides to do it. And it works. He loves being Chad—until he finds out Chad's horrible secret…and realizes he’s trapped in Chad's body forever!
Publisher: Aladdin

CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

‘Fright Christmas’ Excerpt

About R. L. Stine

1

I hate spaghetti days at Shadyside Middle School.

But does anyone ask my opinion? No. Instead, they torture me with spaghetti every Thursday.

I was prepared. I wore my spaghetti-day clothes—a red-orange shirt with white lines. That way, stains would be less likely to show up. But this spaghetti day was worse than usual. The lunch lady glopped spaghetti and chocolate pudding onto everybody’s lunch tray.

So when I tripped, I knew my shirt was doomed.

Okay, I admit it. It doesn’t take much to trip me. A crack in the sidewalk. A piece of paper in my path. I’m really a huge klutz. My feet just don’t get along with each other. But this time it wasn’t my fault. Somebody stuck out his foot as I passed by. I didn’t have a chance.

Wham! I fell face-down on the floor, right on top of the tray. Yecchhhh! Hot spaghetti and cold pudding smooshed together under me. All across the front of my only slightly stained, almost clean shirt.

No matter how many times I take a flop, it still really bugs me!

“Way to go, Will the Spill!” somebody yelled. Then some kids started chanting, “Will the Spill! Will the Spill!” Yeah, that’s right. I’m sort of a legend here at Shadyside Middle School. No one ever calls me by my real name, Will Kennedy. Noooo. It’s always Will the Spill.

I got up. And slipped on a blob of cottage cheese someone had thrown. Down I went. I scrambled to my feet again.

I could feel heat creeping across my face. I knew I was turning beet-red all the way to my ears. I always do.

I picked up my tray and shoveled as much gunk back onto it as I could. With my head down, watching my feet, I shuffled carefully toward the window. I wasn’t going to take another spill. I would stash my tray with the others on the windowsill and quietly sneak out to my locker. I was starving, but no way was I going through the spaghetti line again. I keep a supply of Twinkies for spaghetti-day emergencies.

“Hey, Will.”

I glanced around to see who called my name. My actual name. Chad Miller gave me a wave from a nearby table.

Yeah, Chad Miller. The coolest kid in Shadyside Middle School. He’s our star athlete. At every sport.

Chad doesn’t have a mouthful of braces like me, either. His teeth are as straight and white as a TV star’s. He has straight blond hair. Mine’s dark and always messy.

So why was Mr. Perfect—the coolest guy in school—calling me? I really wasn’t sure. The whole time he’s been at Shadyside, he’s never said two words to me.

Until a few weeks ago, when Chad said hi to me on my way to class. At first I thought, He can’t be talking to me. I glanced all around the hallway to see who he was speaking to. But there was no one else around. And Chad was looking straight at me.

Then, last week, he borrowed my notes. And yesterday he asked me to shoot hoops with him. It was weird, to say the least. But it was also nice to have someone as cool as Chad paying attention to me. I felt as if I was in the middle of my favorite daydream, the one where I’m one of the cool kids and everybody likes me and envies me because I never make any mistakes and I’m not clumsy.

“Will, come here a minute,” Chad called, snapping me out of my thoughts. He waved a bunch of napkins at me.

I noticed an empty chair at his table.

I sat down by Chad and took the napkins from him. I cleaned myself off as well as I could.

Chad glanced at the other kids at the table. “You guys are finished, right?” he said.

For a second nothing happened. The other kids looked at each other.

Then they nodded, picked up their trays or sack lunches, and left.

Making people go away just because you said so! Now, that’s power!

How did Chad do it?

His eyes darted around. I guess he didn’t want anyone to hear our conversation. No one was nearby.

He leaned toward me and said, “You ever get fed up with being yourself? You ever want to be somebody else?”

I stared at him. “Are you kidding?” I wondered if Chad could read my mind.

I hate being me.

My feet always trip me.

I can’t throw.

I can’t catch.

I can’t kick.

I continued staring at Chad. I remembered watching him in gym class. Boy, could he tear up the basketball court. He could hit home runs. He could pitch.

Everybody wanted to talk to him, but they wouldn’t unless he talked to them first.

He was the definition of cool at Shadyside Middle School.

If I could pick anyone else to be, Chad would be number one on the list!

“No, I’m not kidding,” Chad said. “Don’t you wish you could be somebody else?”

I looked down at the chocolate pudding stains on my spaghetti shirt.

I didn’t even have to imagine what my little sister Pepper would say when I got home. I’d heard it all before.

“I’d give anything to be someone else!” I finally answered.

Chad lowered his voice. “Listen,” he said. “My dad’s a scientist. He has a machine that can switch people’s bodies.” He glanced around the cafeteria again. Then his eyes locked onto mine.

“Let’s do it!” he urged. “Let’s switch bodies!”

2

“Huh?” I said. I must have heard wrong. He couldn’t have said what I thought he said.

“Just for an hour,” Chad continued.

“What are you talking about?”

“Switching bodies,” he repeated.

“You’re making this up!” I may be clumsy and uncool, but I’m not stupid. Chad had to be joking.

“No. It’s true,” he insisted. “I saw my dad do it. He put a dog in one change chamber and a cat in the other. When they came out, the cat barked, and the dog climbed trees. It really works! I’ve wanted to try it out for a long time. But everyone I ask is too scared. You’re not scared—are you, Will?”

No way! I wasn’t scared because this whole thing absolutely could not be true. It was unbelievable! And I wasn’t buying it.

“My dad’s done it with people before. I know he has,” Chad went on. His eyes sparkled, as if he were really excited. “I looked at his lab book where he wrote down the experiments. I know how to work the machine, Will. We could do it, just for an hour.”

I stared at him. He seemed pretty serious.

This story sounded so wild it had to be a joke.

But boy, was I wishing it could be true!

Sometimes it seemed as if I had spent the last two years doing stupid, klutzy things. Like falling into my spaghetti. But that part didn’t really bother me anymore. What really steamed me was when other people laughed at me. And when they called me things like Will the Spill.

I have my own private revenge, though. I draw cartoons. See, my dad writes stories for that cartoon show, Judo-Jabbing Adolescent Mutated Coyotes. I began drawing pictures of the coyotes when I was three. I started drawing pictures of everything else pretty soon after that.

In the back of my notebook I have mean, funny pictures of everybody who has ever picked on me. I have pages and pages. There were always new people to draw.

Of course, nobody knows I’m fighting back, because I almost never show my cartoons to anyone. But someday I’m going to photocopy all my pictures and put them on bulletin boards all over school. Then we’ll see who’s laughing.

Well, I dream about doing that, anyway.

Almost as often as I dream about being someone like Chad.

Chad’s voice interrupted my thoughts. “Come on, Will.” He wasn’t giving up. “What have you got to lose? One hour. We’ll switch bodies for just one little hour. You said you’d do anything to be someone else.”

“But—” Oh, man! If only!

“It really works. Honest it does. It’s safe, too. The cat and dog switched back and went right back to normal.”

I stared at him. I could be one of the coolest kids in school! Could it be this easy?

“Come on, Will.” He held up his arm, made a muscle, looked at it for a second, then grinned at me. “You want to switch. You know you do.”

Maybe this was just a dumb joke, but why should that stop me? I fall for dumb jokes all the time.

And if it wasn’t? That was too awesome even to think about.

“Okay!” I told him. “I’ll do it!”

He stood and smiled his bright, white, straight-toothed smile. “I knew you’d come around. Meet me in the playground after school.” Then he dashed out of the cafeteria, waving at kids who called out his name.

I shook my head a few times, trying to clear it. If this wasn’t a joke, it was all too good to be true.

After school, when we reached Chad’s house on Fear Street, he didn’t invite me inside. Instead, he signaled for me to stay back. He snuck behind a tree in the front yard and glanced at the windows. All the curtains were closed, and none of them moved.

He waved at me and I joined him behind the tree. “All clear,” he whispered. We walked our bikes quickly past the side of the house. “If my mom or dad knew we were doing this, we’d be in a lot of trouble.”

I couldn’t even imagine what my parents would say!

Chad led me to a shed in the backyard. You couldn’t see it from the street. The closer we got to it, the stranger it looked.

It was like no other backyard shed I had ever seen. It was shaped like a puffy mushroom, big and round and bulging. Some of the bushes and vines grew right up over it.

The shed was shiny silver and it had no windows. I couldn’t even see a door. I did spot a yellow-green circle the size of a baseball stuck on the smooth wall. It had a raised black border around it.

Chad touched the yellow-green part with his thumb. Whoosh! A round opening appeared in the side of the shed.

My mouth dropped open. Some door! It was totally invisible. No hinges. Not even an outline. No way to know it was there until Chad opened it. I had never seen anything like it.

I let out a little whistle. “Wow!” I was totally impressed.

Chad shrugged. “My dad invents lots of stuff.” He nodded at the mushroom building.

“Cool,” I said.

It was. Totally cool. Chad’s dad must be one great inventor.

Did that mean Chad had been telling the truth? And there really was a body-switching machine in there?

A green light glowed from inside the shed, and I could hear a ticking noise. My heart pounded double time. I glanced down to see if it was popping out of my chest.

That’s when I noticed all of today’s stains down the front of my shirt. There were green grass stains from gym in addition to red spaghetti blotches and brown pudding smudges. Plus a few spots that hadn’t come out in the wash from last spaghetti day.

Some things never change.

But—maybe they could.

I’ve wanted to be someone else for such a long time. And besides, Chad would think I was a total wimp if I backed out now.

I couldn’t let a whooshing door and a weird shed stop me.

“Come on in.” Chad stood in the silver mushroom doorway, waiting.

Well, here goes.

I stepped across the threshold and gave a little gasp of surprise. My foot sank deep into the floor. It was made of some kind of pink, spongy material. I bent down to examine it. The floor felt soft and warm on my hand. I poked at it in a few places before straightening up.

I watched Chad touch a yellow-green badge on an inside wall near the door. The opening whooshed shut. I glanced around the inside of the shed.

I don’t think I had ever been in a round room before. A large yellow circle was painted on the floor. A pale green light glowed from the ceiling. I noticed four big dark gray boxes that reached to the ceiling and looked like closets. These had visible doors, only the knobs were square and near the bottom. Wicked-looking lockers—if that’s what they were!

Shiny machines of all different shapes and sizes stood along the walls. They were made of brightly colored metal—green metal, red metal, purple metal—and they were all wrapped with thin wires and multicolored metal ribbons.

What could the machines be for? Were they more of Chad’s dad’s inventions? What other kinds of experiments did he do?

Two of the biggest machines in the room stood side by side. These looked like purple telephone booths without windows. Next to them was a table with a slanted top covered in shiny colored patches. I figured the table was the control panel. Those patches looked like the one Chad had touched to open and close the door to the shed.

Chad strode to the slanted table and pressed his thumb on a square blue patch.

Oval doors whooshed open on the sides of the telephone booths.

They looked dark and empty inside, and a sour smell came from them.

“Excellent,” I said. I hurried over to join Chad at the slant-topped table. Well, actually, I bounced over because of the spongy floor. I wanted to check out that control panel.

Some of the slick patches on it were square, some round, some oval. One or two were squiggle-shaped. Each patch was a different color, surrounded by a black line. This was neat stuff.

“How does it work? And what are those metal things?” I asked, waving at the machines around the room.

“Never mind,” Chad said. “We need to get into the change chambers.” He pointed at the giant purple telephone booths. “That’s how we switch bodies.”

Something in the room was humming the way a refrigerator does when it’s working. A lot of power was generating in the shed. These machines were plugged in and ready to go. If body switching was possible, these babies looked like just the machines to do it.

“Ready?” Chad asked. He smiled at me.

Those could be my perfect teeth. What a weird thought.

Come on, Will. Go for it. What have you got to lose?

I stumbled across the floor and tripped into one of the purple chambers.

The inner surface was shiny and dark. I touched the wall. It was warm and wet. The sour smell surrounded me.

Chad still stood by the table.

“All set?” he called.

“Aren’t you getting in the other one?” I asked. My palms started to sweat. What if something went wrong?

What if it was all just a mean joke?

What if Chad shut me in here and left me?

What if he never let me out?

What if . . .? All of a sudden this didn’t seem like the best idea.

“I’ll pop in as soon as I program the body-switch,” Chad explained. He pressed his fingers on the patches on the table.

The opening in the side of the chamber whooshed shut.

I plunged into darkness. Total, stinky darkness.

The floor started humming under my feet. My body began to vibrate, and the hum seemed to spread all through me.

I had no idea whether Chad had gotten into the other chamber.

Pink squiggly lines of light flowed over the walls. The lines turned into green swirls. Then, bursts of colored light lit up the chamber like fireworks.

Oh, man! Maybe I wasn’t ready for this, after all.

Mist rose from the floor and came down from the ceiling. It made me cough. It wasn’t cold and wet mist, it was more like smoke from a fire, only it tasted like perfume and it was pink.

My skin felt as if it was sizzling and popping, the way carbonation tastes on your tongue when you’re not used to it. The air had become very hot. I felt as if I were flying, but I knew I wasn’t going anywhere.

Something was definitely happening!

I wish I knew what was going on with Chad! Did he get into the other chamber? Was this all working the way it was supposed to?

A noise under my feet pulsed, slowly at first, then faster and faster. My body twitched to the beat. The sound pounded louder and louder, thumping like a drum or a heart. Suddenly a huge sideways lurch tossed me into the wall of the chamber. I thought I was going to throw up.

Then nothing.

No sound. No fireworks. No nothing.

Had it worked? Was I in Chad’s body? Was he in mine?

For a minute I couldn’t breathe. My lungs felt squashed.

All my muscles felt stretched out and burned.

I tried to move my head, to look around.

My neck didn’t work!

I grabbed for the walls, but my arms just lay by my side. I couldn’t lift a finger!

No! I thought. Something horrible must have happened! What’s wrong with me? Am I paralyzed?

My heart pounded so hard my ears hurt. I couldn’t move a single muscle, and I couldn’t even breathe.

My body was completely frozen in place!

3

I struggled to move. My mind raced around and around. Trapped. Would I ever be able to move again?

The mist began to clear. The chamber cooled off. It was dark again inside the telephone booth.

Dark as a tomb.

I gasped. And this time my chest heaved and managed to pull in a huge breath.

Air! Hurray!

I realized I was really thirsty. Probably because of how hot it was in the chamber.

I licked my lips. Something was different.

But what?

My tongue pressed against the backs of my teeth. They were the wrong shape.

I couldn’t feel my braces!

Could it be . . .?

I still hadn’t been able to blink or turn my head. I tried to look down, and finally my eyelids blinked. I thought about opening my mouth, and my head looked down.

Every time I tried something, my body would do the movement I tried to do the minute before! I was always one step behind myself. Just attempting to move was making me sweat.

Now that my head was looking down, I realized I wasn’t seeing my spaghetti shirt.

I was staring at Chad’s clothes!

Oh, man!

It worked! The switch had actually worked!

I wasn’t me!

I still felt like me, but I was inside Chad’s body.

Chad’s body! Oh man, oh man, oh man. This was the biggest, bizarrest, most fantastic, whacked thing that had ever happened in my life.

But I was paralyzed! I was in the most excellent body in all of Shadyside, and I couldn’t get it to work right!

This was worse than being me!

What if I was stuck like this forever?

I tried to lift my hand. I blinked instead. I tried kicking the wall and my hand lifted. I tried to make a fist, and I kicked the wall.

I couldn’t live like this! I wanted my body back—and fast!

This switch was a stupid, stupid idea. Obviously, something went wrong.

Could it be made right?

With a whoosh a hole opened in the wall in front of me.

A tall, skinny, dark-haired dorky guy stood there grinning at me.

Spaghetti and chocolate pudding stains covered his red and white shirt.

It was me! I was looking at me!

Or at my body, anyway!

“Hey!” he said. In my voice! “Hey . . . Chad.” Then he grinned again.

I managed to open my mouth, but couldn’t make a sound. I tried to blink, and “Hey yourself” finally popped out—in Chad’s voice!

Oh, man!

“It takes a minute or two for your brain to adjust,” he explained, “unless you’ve switched before. Come on out!” Then he turned away and did a flip.

A flip! In my clumsy body! Never in a million years could I make my body do a flip.

“So now you know,” Chad said, grinning a big dorky grin. Light bounced off his—my—braces. “I have done this before. That’s how I know how safe it is. You’ll be okay in a couple of minutes.”

By thinking one thing and doing something else, I managed to get out of the change chamber. I didn’t even trip over the door sill.

“You have to open the door,” Chad said, pointing to the yellow-green circle on the wall. Even though I knew there was a door there, I still couldn’t see it. “It’s keyed to my body’s thumbprint.”

“Open the door?” I protested. “I can’t even walk yet!” But I could walk better. The lag time between my thinking of an action and doing it was getting shorter.

“It’ll get easier. Just don’t think too hard,” he reassured me.

I wandered around, getting used to the feel of Chad’s body. I checked out some of the weird machines. I was leaning over a little square yellow one with two big black patches on it when Chad yelped, “Don’t touch that!”

I stepped back. “Why not?” I asked.

“It’s not finished. It still malfunctions,” he explained. His voice squeaked just the way mine did when I was really nervous.

“Oops,” I said, and grinned.

“And keep away from the yellow circle,” he instructed.

“Fine, fine, fine.”

I went back to walking. Strolling. Then, okay, I admit it, skipping. Let me tell you, I was beginning to feel good. So this is what strong feels like, I thought. I can definitely get used to this!

“Come on, you’ve wasted ten minutes already,” Chad whined. “We only have an hour.”

It was weird. He was such a cool person when he was in the body I was using. But now that I was him and he was me, he sounded really irritating and uncool.

I bounded over to the wall and pressed my thumb on the yellow-green patch.

The door whooshed open.

I loved that door! I wondered if I could get Chad’s dad to install one at my house.

I jumped through the door, landed perfectly, then jumped again just because it felt great.

“Yesss!” I exclaimed.

“Close the door,” Chad said.

I pressed the yellow-green patch on the outside of the shed, and the door vanished.

“Listen,” Chad said. “I want to look around as you. You can go do what you want for an hour. Make that fifty minutes.” He checked his watch. “Let’s meet back here at four-thirty so we can switch back. What time do you have?”

I glanced at my watch. “Quarter to four.”

“Good. Don’t be late. Otherwise—big trouble!” Then he turned and dashed off.

My eyes followed him down the driveway. He moved like an athlete. He almost made my body look good.

I sneaked away from the house. I didn’t want to run into Chad’s parents.

For one thing, I wouldn’t recognize them.

But even worse—what if they told me to get inside and start on homework? Do chores? What a waste of my hour that would be!

I hit Fear Street running.

Now that I was used to this body, I could appreciate what a good deal I had gotten. Everything worked so well!

I ran fast and didn’t get out of breath. I didn’t trip over cracks in the sidewalk or fall over the curb.

I raced down Park Drive and up Hawthorne. My muscles pumped like a lean mean machine.

I cruised by Shadyside Middle School. Some kids were playing basketball in the school yard. “Hey, Chad!” they yelled. It took me a second, but then I realized they were talking to me! “Come on over and play!”

These were cool kids! The kind of kids who wouldn’t even say hello to Will!

I ran onto the court and someone tossed me the ball. I caught it like it was part of me. I threw it and it went right through the hoop without touching the rim. Swoosh! Right through the net.

I wanted to stay in Chad’s body forever!

We played Horse for a while. I put the ball through the basket every time. Without even trying!

I was having so much fun I never noticed the time.

“Chad! Chad!”

I glanced toward the familiar voice and saw Chad in my body. His face was red. He was waving frantically at me.

“Come on, Chad! We’re going to be late!”

“Late for what?” asked David Slater. “Where are you going with that dork?”

“Gotta go,” I said. I heaved the ball at him. Hard. It caught him right in the chest and knocked the wind out of him.

That will teach him. I grinned and strode off the court.

I gazed at Chad in my body. My tall, thin, lanky body. My face was red, my mouth half-open, showing those stupid braces, and panting from running.

For a second I thought about not going back to that mushroom shed and the purple change chambers.

For a second I thought, No way, buddy. I’m staying right here.

I looked at my watch. It was four twenty-five.

I sighed.

I had to go back. We had made a deal. I don’t back out on a promise.

I raced over to Chad.

“Hurry! We’ve got to hurry or we may be too late!” he urged.

“Too late for what?” I asked.

“If we don’t change back right now,” he told me, gasping for breath, “we could stay like this forever!”

4

“Come on, come on, come on,” Chad muttered as we ran.

Amazing! I could run faster than he could. That’s never happened before.

He sure was sweating!

We snuck around the house again. “Open the door, open the door!” he hissed at me. I pressed the yellow-green patch, and the door whooshed open.

“Close it. Hurry!”

You’re pushing it, bud, I thought. Don’t forget. I’m the one with the muscles right now! I punched the yellow-green patch inside, and the door closed.

“Now do exactly what I tell you,” he said. He led me over to the control panel with the colored patches on it. He told me which ones to press and in what order.

Chad hurried over to one of the chambers and stepped in. I punched patches the way he had told me to. I tried to memorize what I was doing. It seemed like a good idea.

I hesitated for just a second before climbing into the chamber. What if I didn’t go through with it? But the machine was already humming. What would happen to Chad if he made the switch and there was no body in the other chamber?

It could be horrible!

I jumped in just before the door closed.

Colored lights flashed in the slick black walls, and that weird perfumed mist flowed out again.

My skin tingled, the floor pulsed with noise, and there was a lurch in my stomach.

And then it was over.

I blinked. My eyes worked right away. I glanced down at my stained shirt, my long skinny hands.

I was me again. Will.

Bummer.

Chad must have run really hard in my body. I had trouble breathing, and I had a stitch in my side.

The wall opened and Chad peered in.

“Come on,” he ordered, pulling me out by the arm. “We’re really late. You okay?”

“I guess I am,” I replied in my own voice.

I followed him to the door and stumbled over a little blue box. Yep. No doubt about it. I was back in my own clumsy body.

We left the shed and snuck by the house. I got on my bike and rode as fast as I could back toward home.

I pedaled past the school yard where sinking baskets had been a breeze when I was Chad. Where kids wanted me to join their game. Those kids were still playing basketball, but nobody called out to me. One or two of them even gave me dirty looks, as if they were mad that I had dragged Chad off.

If they only knew.

After being Chad, I hated being me even more.

*   *   *

After dinner that night we took our regular places on the couch. Mom on the left, Dad on the right, and me and Pepper in the middle.

Pepper is nine. She has short curly brown hair and a lot of freckles, and her eyes are green. She’s still short, especially compared to me, but Mom says we Kennedys are late bloomers. Pepper might turn into a giraffe sometime soon.

As usual, she clutched one of her creepy porcelain dolls. She has a lot of dolls. She collects them.

Dad had rented a couple of action-adventure videos. He was looking for ideas for the Judo-Jabbing Coyotes.

I usually love those movies. Only tonight I wasn’t into watching them. Tonight I was thinking about how it felt to be Chad. Jumping up and dropping the ball right through the hoop.

Looking at the other kids. Seeing they wanted to be like me.

I was thinking about being Chad when I carried the stainless-steel bowl of popcorn back to the living room.

I wasn’t watching where I was going.

I tripped right over our basset hound, Dumbbell, and spilled popcorn across Mom, Dad, and Pepper. Not to mention Dumbbell, who didn’t mind eating it off the floor.

“Wow, Will! Takes talent!” Pepper said.

“You okay?” Dad asked, staring at me as I sprawled on the floor.

“Sure. Sure,” I muttered.

He looked at me a little longer, his face concerned. Then his expression changed. His eyes sparkled the way they do when he gets an idea. He scribbled some notes on his yellow legal pad.

I knew I would be seeing another Judo-Jabbing adventure featuring Rocket Riley, the clumsy jackrabbit who kept spilling things, tripping over things, and messing everything up for the Coyotes.

When Dad puts Pepper in a cartoon, he calls her Paprika, the super-snoopy chipmunk.

Paprika always does cute things.

Riley always does dumb things.

Sometimes I hate Dad’s job!

I bet this kind of thing never happened to Chad.

If I could just be Chad again for a while, maybe I could figure out how to move without tripping.

Maybe I could practice and learn not to fall over things.

At that moment all I wanted was to be Chad one more time. . . .

*   *   *

The next day at school Chad seemed to be everywhere. He was always surrounded by adoring fans, or answering some teacher’s question, or doing handstands in the school yard. Just for the fun of it.

I didn’t have a chance to talk to him until we were on the sidelines together halfway through gym period. He was playing an awesome game of basketball. And he wasn’t even sweating. Me? I was gasping for air.

“You look like you could use this,” Chad said, offering me his water bottle.

The words popped out of my mouth. “Chad, can we switch again? Please? Even if it’s only for another hour?”

Chad gazed at me. Then he shook his head. “I almost got in trouble yesterday. You didn’t watch the time. I was late!”

“It won’t happen again.”

“You bet it won’t, because you’re not going to get the chance!”

He picked up a spare ball and spun it on one finger.

That could be me, I thought as I watched him.

Before I got to be Chad, I didn’t realize how good I could feel. I had gone along being Will the Spill because I didn’t know there was an alternative.

Now I knew. It made being me seem so much worse.

I tried to think of something to convince Chad to make the switch, just once more. Then somebody yelled something.

I turned and saw a basketball heading straight for my face.

5

The basketball zoomed toward me, getting bigger and bigger.

Yesterday, when I was in Chad’s body, I could have stopped that ball from hitting me. No problem.

Today? No way. If I tried to do anything, I would either make a fool of myself or get hurt even worse. Besides, it didn’t matter anyway.

So I just stared at the ball speeding toward my face.

A hand shot out in front of me.

Chad’s hand. He deflected the basketball.

“Hey!” Chad yelled at someone on the court. “Watch where you’re throwing that, you dope!”

Since it was Chad, the kid actually apologized.

I just stood there.

“What’s the matter with you?” Chad asked me in a low voice.

I shook my head.

“You got a death wish or something? That ball almost creamed you!”

I shook my head again. How could I tell him I was too bummed about being me to bother? Instead, I muttered, “Thanks.”

He squinted his eyes and gazed at me for a moment.

He turned and watched the kids running around the court, dunking, throwing, jumping. Then he looked me up and down. “It’s the body-switch, isn’t it?” he finally asked.

I hung my head and nodded.

Chad sighed. “Listen. If it means that much to you, we can switch again.”

My head popped back up.

I was going to get to be Chad again! If I didn’t think I’d fall over, I would jump for joy.

This time I was going to figure out how he moved the way he did.

This time I would remember what it felt like. And then I would take all that coordination, strength, and skill and bring it back with me to my own body.

Yes! This time everything would be different!

*   *   *

That afternoon Chad and I snuck around to the silver mushroom shed in his backyard. Chad stopped before the entrance and gazed at me. “Listen,” he said finally. “You’re not so geeky. All you need is a little more practice in a body that works better.”

Then he made an incredible offer. “Do you want to switch for the weekend?”

“Awesome!” I yelled. Yes! Two whole days of being Chad!

“Shh!”

I put my hands over my mouth.

“You can’t tell anybody, do you understand? Nobody.”

“I won’t!”

“We switch now, then we meet back at the shed at seven-thirty Sunday night. That’s after dinner at my house. When do you guys eat?”

“Six. We should be finished by then.”

“Okay. We can switch then. That way we won’t have to be each other at school.”

“Can we really get away with this?” I blurted. “Won’t your parents notice?”

“Nah,” he assured me. “You’re going to look exactly like me. Don’t worry. It will be fine.”

“So where do you live?” Chad asked.

I told him my address over on Kent Place. “My sister’s name is Pepper and my dog is Dumbbell,” I said. “My bedroom’s the first one on the left up the stairs.”

“Mom and Dad are just Mom and Dad,” Chad said. “My room is the second door on the left from the top of the stairs.”

We compared watches. I changed mine to match his.

Chad opened the shed door, then yanked me across the threshold. The door whooshed shut.

“I think my parents are home,” he explained as he crossed to the control panel. “We have to be extra careful to not get caught.”

I stepped into the purple chamber while Chad hit the colored patches. It was just like the first time. The weird stinky smell, light show, pink mist, and the pulsing noise under my feet, revving faster and faster.

When the sideways lurch came, my stomach turned over again. For a minute I felt paralyzed, but this time I was calmer. It only took me a couple of seconds to be able to move. I looked down. I was inside Chad’s body again.

Oh, man! This was great!

The door whooshed open, and I jumped out, feeling how strong and springy my legs were.

This time would be even better. This time I would remember how Chad’s body worked. I had a whole weekend to figure stuff out!

Chad acted strange as we headed for the shed door.

He stopped in the center of the round room. He gazed at all the stuff in the shed, as if he were trying to memorize it.

He frowned for just a minute as I touched the yellow-green patch with my thumb and the opening appeared in the wall.

Then he smiled.

I wasn’t used to watching my own expressions. I was especially not used to seeing my face looking like that.

His smile looked almost, well, mean.

That couldn’t be right! Hadn’t he saved my life this afternoon? Hadn’t he just made a dream come true for me? He was doing me a huge favor.

I must be wrong!

We stepped out and I closed the shed door.

“Now remember,” Chad said. “We’ll do the switch Sunday night at seven-thirty sharp.”

A wide grin spread across his, I mean, my face. Then he raced past the house and onto Fear Street. Even in my body Chad didn’t trip over anything. He stopped on the pavement across the street, then turned around. For a moment he stared at me and the house. Then he waved and took off again. Double-time.

I thought I should be thinking about how lucky I was to be in Chad’s body and not my own scrawny, clumsy one. Instead, a shiver went through me as I watched Chad disappear around the corner. I couldn’t understand why.

I shook my head, to clear it. I held my hands out in front of me: Chad’s strong hands. I flexed my arm. I actually had muscles. Man, oh, man! This was going to be great!

I scooted around to the back of Chad’s house.

There was another one of those touch pad things on the back door. It was yellow-green, too. These door locks were awesome!

I touched the yellow-green patch and the door slid open, even though it looked like a normal door. The air coming from the house smelled funny. Sort of damp and moldy.

I hoped Chad had been wrong about his folks being home. I wanted to memorize the layout of the house before Chad’s parents noticed I didn’t know my way around. That would be kind of tough to explain.

The back door opened into the kitchen. I stepped across the threshold, and froze. There at the stove was a kid stirring something.

“Where have you been?” he demanded. He turned to face me.

I staggered back and almost fell back out the door.

He was blond and tall for his age. He looked about twelve years old. He had perfect white teeth.

He looked exactly like Chad!

6

Who was this guy?

Did Chad have a twin brother?

Why didn’t he go to school, too?

And how come Chad never mentioned anything about him?

Most importantly, what was I supposed to say to this guy?

Maybe this is all a dream, I thought. Maybe I’m still Will. I peeked down at my hands. They were definitely Chad’s strong, large hands. I looked across at this other kid. He had the same hands, too.

What was going on?

Just then a woman came through a door across from me. “Close the door, Chad-One,” she said, gazing right at me. Her voice sounded kind of sticky and sweet.

Chad-One? Was she talking to me? I glanced behind me. Must be. Nobody else was there.

Chad-One? That’s a weird nickname. How many of us were there? I stared at the woman. I knew I couldn’t ask her such a dumb question.

Why hadn’t Chad told me about any of this?

The woman was thin and blond. She wore a big smile, a red-and-white-checked dress, and an apron with lace around the edge. Her hair came down from the top of her head and then flipped up at the bottom, near her shoulders.

She looked a lot like the moms in the old TV shows I saw on Nick at Nite.

My dad would have taken one look at her and declared, “Sitcom damage!” That’s what he always says when he sees people who look as if they’re pretending they’re on TV shows.

She bent her head sideways and smiled at me. “I asked you to shut the door, Chad-One. You’re letting in flies.”

I gulped and turned around to touch the yellow-green pad on the inside wall. The door whooshed shut. With me inside.

Oh, man! Time to face the music! I had to pull this off.

The hair on the back of my neck prickled.

“Did you have a nice day at school, dear?” I heard behind me.

I put a big smile on my face and turned around. “Yeah,” I responded, “it was great.”

A man came through the door and stood beside the woman. He was smiling, too.

A pipe stuck out the side of his mouth. It wasn’t lit.

His dark hair was covered with the kind of greasy Dad stuff I saw on men’s hair in old TV shows. He was wearing a blue shirt and a plaid tie and brown pants and loafers.

This was the big inventor who had made the body-switching machine? The fancy door locks? All that other excellent stuff in the shed?

He looked like a reject from “Early Television”! You know, when everything was still in black and white.

What a family!

But I figured I’d better start thinking of them as Mom and Dad. I was spending the weekend with them, after all.

He took the pipe out of his mouth. “Howdy, son,” he greeted, smiling like an advertisement. He stuck the pipe back into his mouth.

This was too weird! Nobody had parents like this.

“Mom,” whined the other Chad, “Chad-One is late again!”

“Chad-One, how many times have I told you to come straight home after school?” Even though she was frowning and trying to sound mean, she still sounded sweet.

Chad-One! What kind of name was Chad-One? “Uh—a lot?” I ventured.

“Twenty-seven,” Mom stated. “More often lately. Young man, you will have to start behaving better!”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. It seemed like the right thing to say.

“Now, help Chad-Two set the table!”

Chad-Two? I should have guessed. Boy, these were the dumbest twin names I had ever heard! Hey, maybe we were clones. With all the equipment in the shed, anything was possible. Maybe Chad-Three and Chad-Four would pop out of a closet any minute!

Why didn’t Chad, er, Chad-One warn me? How did he expect me to keep up the act with all this weirdness around me?

“Hey, it’s his turn, Mom!” Chad-Two complained. That was the first normal thing I’d heard so far. Pepper and I always fight over chores.

Mom just kept smiling. “Why don’t you both do it? Supper’s almost ready!” That kind of sounded like something my mom would say. Maybe things weren’t as strange as I thought.

Muttering and griping, Chad-Two led the way into the other room, which turned out to be a dining room.

He opened cupboards and drawers, taking out place mats, silverware, and cloth napkins. I followed him, doing exactly what he did.

The whole time we were setting the table, Chad-Two hounded me with questions. It was like the third degree. “What did you do in school today? Did any of the kids do anything interesting? What did you learn? Anything in social studies? What did Mr. Sirk make you do in gym? What about Ms. Hartman? Did you make any significant observations about students at each end of the spectrum?”

Most of these questions I could answer, but I couldn’t figure out that last one.

“Significant observations about students at each end of the spectrum?” I repeated.

“Any deviations from the norm for Will Kennedy?”

“What?” I was so startled I dropped a spoon.

Of course, since I was in Chad’s body, I caught the spoon before it hit the floor. Chad-Two had his back to me and didn’t notice.

“He spill anything at lunch?”

“Dropped his milk,” I told him. Which was true. Of course.

“What about Lance Holloway?”

Other than Chad, Lance is the coolest kid in school. He even wears sunglasses most of the time. My guess is he’s sneaking in some nap time during class. Who could tell behind those shades?

“Nothing significant,” I said, hoping that was a good enough answer.

Just then Mom came in carrying a big brown bowl with a cover on it. She set it in the middle of the table.

Dad, still sucking on the unlit pipe, came out of the kitchen carrying a covered pot. It must have been hot; he was using pot holders. He put it on the table, too.

Mom smiled and went back to the kitchen. I heard the refrigerator open and close. Then she came back in carrying a big green plastic container.

Dad went and got a pitcher of something.

Everyone smiled at everyone else.

It was so creepy! Definite sitcom damage, I thought.

I waited until the others picked chairs and then took the one that was left. As soon as we were all settled, Mom reached out and snapped the cover off the brown bowl.

“Everyone serve yourself,” she said cheerily.

I stared into the bowl. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

There in the soupy yellow liquid floated little brownish-purple creatures.

As if that weren’t disgusting enough, the critters began waving their tentacles in the air.

Dinner was alive!

7

Yeecccchhh!

And that was putting it mildly. I had seen my mom and dad order snails at a restaurant. And I tried some raw fish once—but this! This was the grossest thing ever! I’d never seen anyone eat anything as awful as this!

It had to be some kind of joke!

Right?

Chad-Two reached in and grabbed a handful of the creatures while I sat there—stunned.

He stuffed two of them into his mouth!

For a second a couple of squirming tentacles stuck out between his lips. He sucked them in like noodles and grinned while he chewed.

Oh, man—talk about gross!

My stomach crawled up my throat!

Mom and Dad scooped out handfuls of squirming creatures. The critters slid around on their plates, wiggling their eyestalks and tentacles.

Mom popped one into her mouth. Her fingers dripped with yellow goo. She licked it off and smiled at me some more.

“What’s the matter, Chad-One?” she asked. “Why aren’t you eating?”

“Uh—ur—I—” Because I have to go throw up! “I don’t feel very well! Maybe I’d better go to bed.”

“Are you coming down with something, honey?” Mom asked. She laid the back of her hand against the back of my hand.

“I think . . . maybe,” I said. I coughed to sound more convincing.

“You’ll feel better with some food inside of you,” she said. She picked up one of the purple octopuses and held it toward me. It waved a sucker-covered tentacle.

“I don’t—urp—excuse me!” I jumped up and ran out of the room, through the front hall, and up the staircase.

Chad told me his room was the second one on the left. But as soon as I stepped off the top stair I knew I was going to have trouble.

There was no upstairs hall. It was like stepping inside a giant pink beach ball or a hot-air balloon. The floor was pink and spongy, like the floor of the backyard shed. It curved up at the sides until it turned into walls. The whole place was round. I wasn’t sure where the floor and walls and ceiling started or ended.

The only areas that weren’t pink were two square slick orange patches on the floor. They were about two feet across, and four pairs of fat white boots sat next to them. They looked like moonboots, but puffier.

I noticed more of those circle things on the wall like the one that had made the shed door open.

Could it be? Well, I had to try something. Second door on the left . . . I went to the second patch on the left wall and stuck my thumb on the green-yellow surface.

A long oval door whooshed open.

I peered through the opening. There was nothing in it but some bars along the side walls, about waist high. The space was closet-sized, about two feet by four feet.

This was Chad’s room? You couldn’t even sit down in there, let alone lie down!

I must have opened the wrong door.

I bounced over to another colored patch on the wall. I could hear Chad’s family talking at the dining room table.

“I think I’ll take a plate up to Chad-One,” I heard Mom say. “He may be ready to eat now.”

No! No way! I was not eating creepy crawlies!

This place was way too weird for me!

I snuck down the stairs, careful not to make a sound. I pressed the patch by the front door. Whoosh! I shut the door behind me and took off!

I ran faster than I ever had before—faster than I ever could have in my own body.

Once I put some distance between me and Chad’s house on Fear Street, I slowed down a little.

The closer I got to my own home, the better I felt.

Could I have been wrong? Maybe I hadn’t seen what I thought I saw. Maybe Chad’s family wasn’t eating slimy, creepy, live creatures. Maybe it had just been some kind of weird noodles.

Noodles with eyes?

I still felt sick to my stomach. What kind of food was that?

I’d seen some disgusting food on TV, but those crawly things were the worst!

What could possibly be in the other dishes?

I didn’t want to find out!

There it was! My front porch. And the shaggy lawn, which I was supposed to mow tomorrow morning. It had never looked so good.

It was great to hear the TV blaring through the living room window screens.

I charged up the front porch stairs two at a time. I didn’t trip over the top step the way I always do. I rang the doorbell.

My bratty little sister, Pepper, answered the door. “Can I help you?” she asked through the screen door.

“Let me talk to Chad.”

“Sorry. You have the wrong house,” Pepper said. Her sneer softened as she gazed at me. She started flipping her eyelashes. It made me nervous.

That’s when I remembered. I realized just in time that I wasn’t me, I was still Chad-One. Or looked like him, anyway.

“No, I mean, let me talk to Will.”

“You don’t want to talk to Will. Will’s a big dummy. I can beat him at Trivial Pursuit and Jeopardy every time.”

This was a big fat lie, and I was about to tell her so, but then I remembered I wasn’t exactly me.

“I don’t want to play games with him,” I said, irritated. “I just want to talk to him.”

She looked at me for a minute, then said, “How much do you want to talk to him?”

“Huh?”

She was sharpening up into the Pepper I knew and suffered from. “Like, how much would you pay me to go get him?”

“Pay you?” I repeated.

“Is there an echo around here?” she asked, cupping her ear with her hand. “You got fifty cents?”

I reached into my pockets. I had no idea if Chad had fifty cents. There was something in the right front pocket that felt interesting, but it didn’t feel like money. Then I came to my senses. “Forget it!” I shouted. I pressed the doorbell again, hoping to get Chad’s attention.

He wandered down the stairs.

“Hi, Chad,” he said. He stepped out onto the porch.

“Hey, tell Pepper I’m Will,” I told him.

For a second he looked furious. It was almost scary. I didn’t know my face could look that mean and cold.

Of course. I had promised not to tell anyone about the switch.

Then his face went back to normal. “Sure,” he said. “Pepper, this is Will.”

“Don’t be an idiot, Will,” Pepper said to Chad. “Oh. Sorry. You can’t help it.” She smirked.

“She’s too smart for us, Chad.” Chad shrugged.

“You are soooo dumb!” Pepper said.

She stuck out her tongue at both of us, then stomped into the house, slamming the screen door behind her.

“What do you want?” Chad asked me. That mean look came over his face again.

“We have to switch back now,” I told him.

He glared at me. His jaw got really tense.

“No way!” Chad exclaimed. “We have a deal!”

8

“I can’t stay at your house!” I cried. “Your family is weird!”

“I never said my family was normal,” Chad answered. “And a deal is a deal.”

If Chad wouldn’t cut short the switch, at least he could explain a few things. Maybe then I’d have a shot at getting through the weekend.

“How come there’s another Chad?”

Chad grinned. But it was the nastiest-looking smile I had ever seen! He never looked that way at school. “He’s my brother,” Chad said. “I know he’s a pain, but Pepper is no picnic, either.”

“What’s with that weird second floor? Do you sleep in that closet?”

“It’s a New-Age kind of thing,” Chad explained. “My dad invented it. You’ll see. It’ll make you feel great!”

“But—”

Chad cut me off. “Just watch what the other Chad does,” he instructed. “Copy him. Everything will be fine.”

For a second he almost convinced me. But then I remembered dinner. “Chad!” I burst out. “That food . . . I can’t eat that food! We have to switch! Now!”

Chad shook his head. “We had a deal. You wanted to be me. Now you are me! Live with it.” Then his expression softened. “Come on, Will,” he wheedled. “It’s just two more days.”

Mom’s voice called from inside the house. “Will! Time for supper!”

“Get out of here,” Chad said, giving me a shove. He went inside and shut the front door. I even heard him lock it.

I jumped down from the porch and stared up at my house. Some of the paint was peeling, but I didn’t care. I missed my home!

I thought about all the drawers and closets in my room. I knew what was inside of them. I knew what food I’d find in the cupboards and the refrigerator. I even knew where Mom hid the cookies.

Back at Chad’s house, I didn’t know what I would find. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t find anything I could eat.

And my stomach was growling!

In Chad’s body there was no way I could go into my own house and act as if I belonged there.

Especially if Chad didn’t help me.

He could have said I was sleeping over.

But he didn’t seem to want me around at all!

So now what do I do? The Division Street Mall was only two blocks away. I could go to the arcade and kill some time. I wondered if Chad had any money on him when we did the switch.

I checked my pockets.

In the front pocket I found a weird little metal thing. It was made of different pieces in shades of purple, all folded up. I couldn’t get it to unlock or open. I thought it might be some kind of puzzle, or one of Chad’s father’s inventions.

There was a wallet in the back pocket. Four dollars in it. I could buy a burger, or play Galaxy Gremlins for six or eight hours. I’m really good at Galaxy Gremlins.

But that didn’t totally solve the problem.

The mall closed at nine. Then what?

I had two friends from school I sometimes had sleepovers with. But I couldn’t go over to their houses looking like Chad and expect them to let me spend the night.

It was getting dark. It was supposed to be chilly tonight. I couldn’t think of any place to go that would be safe.

I didn’t want to do it, but I didn’t seem to have a choice.

I had to go back to Chad’s house.

*   *   *

The yelling started the moment I touched the door pad and walked in through the front door.

“Where have you been?”

“You know you’re not supposed to leave the house without permission!”

“You know you’re supposed to help with dinner cleanup!”

It was weird, all this harsh stuff coming out of people who looked like the perfect mom, pop, and son from a sitcom.

Then Mom’s voice went back to being sweet. “We know you don’t like the way skwiggers move,” she said. “But they’re better for you when they’re alive! Chad-One, you have to eat!” She waved a handful of wigglies at me.

“I know what’s wrong with him,” Chad-Two shouted. “It’s those slimy humans! You like them! You keep socializing with them instead of studying them! You’re starting to act like a human!”

Act like a human? What did he mean?

How could I not act like a human?

“You know how dangerous it would be for us if the humans found out we were here!” Dad shouted.

Mom went back to yelling, too. “You were hand-picked for this mission,” she scolded. “Picked because you could maintain distance from local life-forms! Do you want to get us all in trouble?”

I looked at Mom. I looked at the little monsters squirming in her hand.

Then it hit me. The only way you could act like a human was if you weren’t human!

These people were not just weird!

They were aliens!

9

Aliens!

I was trapped in a family of aliens!

Aliens who hate humans—who think humans are slimy!

What would they do to me if they found out I was one of the slimy humans? Would they take me back to their planet with them—whichever one that was?

Or would they do something even worse?

I had to get out of there! Faster than fast!

My palms were wet with sweat. I had trouble catching my breath. I stared at the aliens. How could I ever have thought they were humans?

I should have known. No one really looks like people on TV.

I couldn’t stay here! I had to get my body back!

Then it hit me. Chad was an alien, too. There was an alien in my body!

“Eat just one, Chad-One,” Mom crooned. “Come on. For Mommy. You’ve got to keep up your strength!” Mom picked one of the wiggling things out of her hand and held it out to me.

I almost spewed. Just looking at that thing made me sick.

But I had no choice. I had to eat it. I couldn’t let them find out that I wasn’t an alien! As I gagged, Mom stuffed it in my mouth. I swallowed before I could taste it much or feel it on my tongue.

I thought I could feel the skwigger move around inside my stomach. But not for very long.

The weird thing was that it stayed down, and I felt slightly better. Less hungry, anyway. And I didn’t feel like throwing up anymore.

“Good boy,” Mom chirped. “Now it’s time for bed!”

I checked my watch. It was about a quarter to eight. Aside from everything else that was awful in this house, early curfew!

What if I made a break for it? I knew I could run fast in this body. Chad-Two could probably run just as fast, though, and Dad might be able to run faster.

“Bed!” Dad announced. He grabbed my shoulder and pushed me toward the staircase. He was really strong!

Maybe I could sneak out after they all went to sleep.

I followed Chad-Two upstairs.

We trudged up the stairs to the weird pink second floor. I planned to watch Chad-Two very carefully. I didn’t want to make any mistakes. It would be a disaster if he found out I wasn’t the real Chad-One!

Chad-Two went to the first big touch pad on the floor and pulled on a pair of boots, then he stamped on the orange touch pad six times.

I waited for something to whoosh or glow. Nothing happened.

He walked over to the first green touch pad on the left wall and thumbed it. A long oval door opened, revealing another tiny room only a little bigger than a coffin. It was identical to the one I had seen before.

The next thing Chad-Two did surprised me. He grabbed the bars on either side of the little room and swung his feet up. They stuck to the ceiling!

He hung there upside-down like a bat, his arms crossed over his chest, and his hair hung straight down. He stared at me. “Go on,” he snapped. “Get in your own sleep chamber, will you?”

I crossed over to the big touch pad on the floor and pulled on the boots. They fit, but kind of grabbed my feet and ankles tight, and they felt prickly inside.

I stamped on the big orange touch pad six times, the way Chad-Two had, then went to the second green badge on the wall near his.

My thumbprint opened the closet I had guessed was Chad’s room. Now I knew why there were bars on the wall.

Trying to copy Chad-Two’s movements, I grabbed the bars and swung up. It took me three tries to get my feet to touch the ceiling. I hoped that didn’t make Chad-Two suspicious.

I nervously let go of the bars. I figured I would fall on my head any minute. But the boots felt as if they were welded to the ceiling.

I started to feel dizzy. I wondered if I would ever be able to sleep in a position like this.

But I didn’t want to fall asleep. I needed to stay awake so I could try to escape.

“What’s the matter with you, anyway?” Chad-Two grumbled.

“I feel sick,” I said. That was no lie!

“You act sick, but it’s not any illness I’ve seen before!”

“Maybe I caught something at school.”

“Not a chance. Not after all those vaccinations we had when we first got these bodies!”

When they first got these bodies? Oh, man! What do they really look like? Maybe they have six eyes and two heads and eight long arms! I shuddered at the thought of them in their true form.

“If you caught anything at school, it was a bad attitude! We should never have let you do this week! Except I couldn’t have taken that math test.”

So both Chads did go to school? And nobody noticed the difference? Wow. I still couldn’t figure out why there were two of them. But it’s not like I could ask Chad-Two!

“And your observations are better,” Chad-Two continued. “But now I know why. You like those horrible, slimy humans! And to tell you the truth, it’s beginning to give me the creeps!”

I was giving him the creeps?

“You have to stop hanging around with humans.” Chad-Two went on lecturing. “One of them might find out the truth! And you know what will happen to you if you let one of the humans get too close. We won’t have any choice.” Chad-Two’s voice lowered ominously. “You know what we’ll have to do with you—mind tailoring.”

10

Mind tailoring? Oh, man! What was that? It sure didn’t sound like anything good!

And mind-tailoring was something they did to each other for just getting close to a human.

“You remember Zoink from back home?” Chad-Two asked. “Well, after he explored the Quarex galaxy, they mind tailored him—and now he has no memories. No brain at all. He just sits in his pod with that blank look on his face. You don’t want to end up like Zoink, do you, Chad-One?”

I gulped. “No. I don’t.”

“Good,” Chad-Two said. “Then remember that story the next time you feel like hanging out with those slimy humans.”

I couldn’t believe it. If the aliens did things like this to each other, they were sure to do horrible things to me if they discovered what I really was.

My heart started pounding in my ears.

I had to get out of this house!

But I didn’t even know how to get off the ceiling!

I had a terrible thought. What if they already knew I was human? They lured me into hanging upside-down. I’m trapped. Now they could do anything they wanted to me!

“I’m watching you,” Chad-Two warned. “You’d better clean up your act soon! Shut your door and go to sleep.”

Even if I could get down off the ceiling, I couldn’t sneak out now. Chad-Two was still awake. If he caught me trying to sneak out, I’d be mind tailored for sure. I had to pretend I was going to sleep.

But first I had to figure out how to get my door shut. I stared at the three touch pads near my hand. One of them was green, like the other door controls I’d used before. On a hunch, I touched it.

Bingo. The door to the closet whooshed shut and disappeared.

I was in total darkness, hanging upside down from the ceiling like a trapped fly.

In a house full of aliens!

Great. Just what I had in mind for the weekend.

The darkness wasn’t quite total. The three touch pads glowed.

My Chad act was probably still working. Since I followed Chad-Two’s orders, maybe now he’d leave me alone.

I couldn’t imagine falling asleep with so much on my mind, and I wanted to stay awake and figure out what to do next. But a weird fizzing started in my head, and I conked out.

*   *   *

My eyes popped open. Why is it still dark? I reached for my alarm clock to see what time it was.

I noticed three floating bubbles of color off to my right. What are those things? I wondered.

Then I realized I was hanging upside-down from the ceiling. That really didn’t seem right!

In a heart-sickening rush, it all came back to me.

I wasn’t Will. I was in Chad’s body.

Only there were two Chads.

I was hanging upside down in a house full of aliens with sitcom damage and scary food!

And they were threatening me with mind tailoring! They said they’d take away my memories! That I’d have no brain at all!

I had only been awake for two minutes, and already I was shaking and sweating from fear! I had to do something, quick!

I touched the oval pink pad on the wall. Instantly my feet let go of the ceiling and I crashed to the floor.

Well, I had figured out how to get down off the ceiling!

The room was so small I didn’t fit on the floor. I ended up on my back with my legs stretched up the wall.

For a minute I felt just like my clumsy old Will self.

I must have fallen onto a touch pad, because when I landed a pale blue light came on.

I looked around and discovered some other touch pads. Maybe one of them opened a window! Maybe I could sneak out that way!

I scrambled around and stood up. These weren’t the touch pads that glowed in the dark. I was just reaching to touch a dark purple pad and see what it did when a hollow thunking sound came from the door.

“What’s with you?” Chad-Two yelled from the other side of the door. “It’s time for breakfast! Why aren’t you up?” He knocked again.

I pressed the green touch pad and the door opened. I stepped out into the pink windowless round area.

Chad-Two was already out of his boots, and he was wearing different clothes.

I wondered where he had gotten them, but I couldn’t search around now. Chad would know where his own closet was! Chad-Two stood in the pink room, watching my every move. Better to keep on these clothes and worry about changing later.

I slipped off my sleep boots and put my hightops back on. Then I followed Chad-Two downstairs.

The dining room table was already set. I guess breakfast wasn’t one of the Chads’ chores.

I peered into the bowl at my place. It was filled with dried-up nuggets shaped like starfish. They floated in blue milk, and smelled salty and rotten.

Mom and Dad were already seated at the table. Dad was reading the newspaper upside-down. Aliens made mistakes, too, I guess. Mom wore another frilly pink knee-length dress with a puffy skirt, an apron, and that dopey smile.

I glanced down at the bowl. At least these starfish things weren’t looking back at me!

I was starving by this time, so when I took my place at the table, I shoved a big spoonful into my mouth.

Mistake!

It was much worse than it looked. Like biting into totally salty, greasy, rotten cat food treats with crunchy bones in them!

And what was worse—the cereal stabbed like needles in my mouth!

I couldn’t spew them all over the table. This could be Chad’s favorite dish.

I drank something yellow and milky that was in the glass at my place. It tasted like hot glue! I thought it would help the cereal go down, but it just coated my tongue and made my throat close up.

I looked at Mom. Smiling. Dad. Behind his upside-down newspaper. Chad-Two. Wolfing down that poisonous cereal. Happy campers.

I couldn’t take it. I leaped up and ran!

I bolted from the house, not even closing the front door behind me. I didn’t want them to catch up with me!

I had to get home. I had to get Chad to switch back right now! I couldn’t eat that food. I couldn’t stay in a house full of aliens. I couldn’t wait around for them to tailor my mind!

I was so hungry I could hardly think. I needed some food!

I darted into the Stop ’n Shop.

I bought Twinkies and a Coke. Real food! Then I crossed the street to the park by the high school and collapsed onto a bench.

I tore open the Twinkies package and crammed a whole one into my mouth. I love the way they squish!

A second later I was gagging! It tasted like chalk. Dry chalk! It sucked all the spit out of my mouth and made me cough!

I spat it out.

My mouth was so dry from the chalky Twinkies, I chugged half the Coke.

The Coke tasted like gasoline!

My stomach hurt. I started sweating. I felt dizzy and sick.

I had to get home—fast!

I shook a little when I got up from the bench. My legs kind of wobbled as I tried to make it to my house. Will’s house.

I had to stop and rest a lot. I was feeling sicker and sicker. My stomach hurt, my muscles ached, and I was sweating so much my shirt was wet through.

I tried to run. I tried to walk. Then I couldn’t do anything but sit down. Right on the curb.

“What have you done?” somebody yelled.

I looked up. Chad-Two!

“That’s it!” he bellowed. “You’re coming home with me!”

I felt so sick, my head was spinning. But I still knew exactly what Chad-Two had planned.

He was going to mind-tailor me!

11

Chad-Two yelled at me all the way home. He was really mad. For one thing, he practically had to carry me. I was sweating and freezing and then sweating again. I couldn’t stand up by myself. Way too rubber-kneed!

He told me I was an idiot to eat Earth food.

“No wonder you’re sick!” Chad-Two shouted. “Everything on this planet is poisonous to us, even in these bodies! How could you forget?”

I hung on to his shoulders and tried to get my feet to walk. It didn’t work very well.

I wondered if I would die from eating Twinkies!

Chad-Two dragged me up the porch and into the front room of the aliens’ house. He dropped me onto the couch.

“Don’t move,” he ordered before going into the next room.

He came back a minute later, carrying a bowl.

“Eat some of these skwoos,” he instructed, plopping a handful of live bugs into my shaking hand. They looked like giant cockroaches, only they had more legs.

I didn’t much care what I did now, I felt so terrible! I couldn’t feel any sicker than I already did!

I shoved the squirming bugs into my mouth and chewed.

I couldn’t believe it! They tasted like beef jerky. One of my favorite foods in the world. It was horrible the way their legs moved in my mouth, but they tasted so good, I ate them all.

A couple of minutes later I felt a little better.

“You are such a spidunk!” Chad-Two said. “Maybe this poisonous food is what’s messing up your mind. Take this box of skwoos with you, and take this pinter, too.”

He gave me two small boxes, a pink one and a brown one. Each had a little black touch pad on it.

“Put them in your pocket,” he said. “If you eat any more local food by mistake, take two skwoos right away, and then a pinch of pinter. Can you remember that?”

I nodded and put the boxes in my pocket.

He glared at me. “Earth food! What were you thinking? This place—these people—have warped your mind. We’re not here to make friends. Have you forgotten that?”

“No,” I mumbled.

“Well, make sure you don’t forget!” he snapped.

Chad-Two led me to the sleep chamber. I flipped upside-down and closed my eyes. That strange, fizzling sensation came over me.

As soon as I’m feeling better, I thought, I’m going to find a way out. Just as soon as I’m better.

*   *   *

My eyes shot open. Chad-Two stood in front of me—and he was upside-down. He looked right at me and said something in another language. It wasn’t like any other language I’d ever heard.

I stared at him. What was I supposed to do now?

“Whoops! I forgot.” Chad-Two smacked his forehead. “We’re supposed to speak in Earth languages only. Good job, Chad-One! You’re obviously returning to normal. Now, get out of bed and let’s go test the shink.”

I had no idea what a shink was, but I tried to act cool about it. “Why do we have to test it today?” I asked. “It’s Saturday!”

“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 shoes 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 pad 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.

Chad-Two went to the set of touch pads on Mom’s other side, so I took the only set left. I made sure to touch the same two pads everyone else was touching.

“Ready?” said Mom.

“Yes,” we all said.

“Good. Now zum.”

The others all started humming. I joined in. Then the ship itself started humming!

It was weird. I could feel the metal humming under my feet!

Lights flickered and flashed. For a second I could see right through the ship into the garage. We were lifting off the ground!

I glanced at Dad, and he was flickering and flashing.

I looked down at my hands. They were flickering, too!

I felt as if everything in me was fizzing and sizzling. Like I was burning up! I looked up at the garage’s ceiling when the flashes lit it up. I thought we were going to bump into it.

But more flashes, and then I saw the sky! The ship was going right through the ceiling and taking us all with it!

“Uh-oh,” Mom said. “Zum down!”

We hummed softer and softer. The ship dropped back down and settled gently on the ground.

“All systems functioning perfectly!” Mom said. “Pack up everything you want to take. Leave the storage module out back for last. We need that machinery up and running until the last minute. Now, we’ll want to switch back to our own bodies as close to departure time as possible. Be ready to leave at two P.M. local time.”

“Don’t forget anything,” Dad added. “We won’t be coming back.”

15

No! It couldn’t be!

They couldn’t be leaving! As in leaving the planet!

Oh, man! What if I couldn’t get Chad to give me my body back before two P.M.? Then the aliens would take me with them into outer space! Away from my friends—away from my family!

I was so scared I couldn’t even think. I followed as Chad’s family crawled out of the ship and went into the house.

The next thing I knew, I was upstairs with Chad-Two in our workroom. Packing for space travel.

Chad-Two opened drawers and took different machines out of them.

He tapped tiny black touch pads on the edges of the machines, and they shrank down to the size of quarters.

He took a case out of one of the closets and opened it. It had a whole lot of slots in it, and each thing he shrank fit into one of the slots.

“On the next planet we explore, we get to have six legs!” Chad-Two said. “It’s got to be better than this dump! I can’t wait until we leave!”

Oh, man! Six legs!

Oh, man! Two P.M.? That was really soon!

Leaving! We were leaving the planet!

My thoughts whirled around my brain.

“What’s wrong with you, Chad-One? We won’t need those where we’re going!” Chad-Two snapped.

I looked down and saw I was trying to stuff a pair of tennis shoes into the big case.

“We’ll never have to wear these itchy ugly clothes again, thank Sprog!” Chad-Two shrank the notebooks we kept our observations in.

“Sorry,” I choked out, putting the tennis shoes back into the closet. What kind of clothes would I wear on some other planet? Maybe none at all. It would be tough to make a pair of pants with six legs!

Oh, no way!

I had to get Chad back to that shed. I had to get my body back! I had to get out of here! But how could I distract Chad-Two long enough to make a break for it?

Then it hit me.

“Hey, Chad-Two,” I said, trying to sound helpful. “Aren’t you going to pack the Slinkies?”

“The Slinkies!” he yelled. “Croggers, I haven’t had time to transmorph them with shink technology! The Slinkies! I almost forgot!”

He opened the Slinky drawer and grabbed about six of them.

“Help me carry these out to the storage module,” he said.

I grabbed the rest of the Slinkies in the drawer.

We passed Mom and Dad, who were collapsing stuff downstairs. Chad-Two explained what we were doing.

“Slinkies!” Mom exclaimed. “Yes! We need to take the Slinkies!”

I followed Chad-Two to the door. Whoosh! The door opened. I dropped the Slinkies and darted out!

I had never run so fast in my life.

I crossed Fear Street and zoomed through someone’s backyard, putting a house, some fence, and a few trees between me and the aliens.

I reached Kent Place in record time. Then I slowed and snuck up to my house, using the bushes for cover. I glanced down at my watch. It was nearly one P.M. Less than an hour to takeoff!

The station wagon wasn’t in the driveway. That meant Mom and Dad weren’t home.

I found Pepper, Chad, and Dumbbell playing Frisbee in the backyard. Chad and Pepper tossed the Frisbee back and forth, and Dumbbell ran around barking.

I watched them, trying to figure out what to do. How would I get Chad to make the switch? Or even go back to the change chambers? Time was wasting away.

Then Pepper told Chad she was going inside to get some lemonade.

I crept over to the house and slipped inside. I startled Pepper in the kitchen. She screamed.

“Shh!” I hissed.

“Who are you,” she demanded. “What are you doing in my house?”

“Keep your voice down,” I implored her. “It’s me, Will!”

“Prove it!”

“Your real name is Penelope.”

“Ewww!”

“You know it’s me, Pep. You know it!”

She shook her head, glaring at me.

“Don’t you?” I wanted to shake her!

She stuck out her lower lip. Then she said, “I will never forgive you for wrecking my doll!”

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’ll never do it again!”

“That’s for sure. Since you don’t live here anymore!”

“Please, Pep! This body, the whole family, they’re aliens from outer space! And they’re blasting off in less than an hour! If I don’t get my body back right now, they’ll leave and take me with them. I’ll never see Earth again!”

She snorted. “This is waaay too much to swallow!”

“It’s true! If you can just help me get the alien pretending to be me back to their house, I can prove it to you. I can show you the body-switching equipment and the spaceship and everything!”

“How am I supposed to get him to go anywhere?”

Good question!

I shoved my hands in my pockets. Maybe some of the junk I was carrying around would give me an idea. I started pulling things out. The merister. The lifter. The boxes of pinter and skwoos Chad-Two had given me.

A light went on in my brain. An idea! Earth food had nearly killed me. Maybe alien food would make Chad sick!

Skwoos wouldn’t work. They were big and still alive, and Chad would know not to swallow one. But the pinter . . . Chad-Two had said it was powdered.

I tapped the brown box up to full-size.

Pepper gasped as it grew in my hands.

The box was filled with multicolored powder that looked like ground-up butterfly wings.

“If I put a pinch of this in some lemonade and Chad drinks it, I bet it’ll make him sick,” I told Pepper. “Then maybe I can get him on a bike and wheel him back to his house.”

“Will it kill him?” she asked, peering out the window. Chad was throwing the Frisbee up and catching it as it came down.

“I hope not!” I told her. I didn’t want to kill Chad. I didn’t want to kill my own body. I didn’t want to kill anybody! But I had to try something!

I put a pinch of pinter in the bottom of a glass and poured lemonade over it. I stirred it really well.

I handed Pepper the glass. “Please help me, Pep. Please!”

She stared at me for a long minute.

“This is for real, isn’t it?” she asked.

“Yeah. It’s for real,” I told her.

She bit her lip, then went outside, carrying the glass of lemonade.

I hid in the kitchen and watched her walk out and give the glass to Chad. He grabbed the lemonade and drank it all.

Pepper smiled at him.

He told her to go long. He waved the Frisbee at her.

Pepper stared at him, then ran across the yard. He threw the Frisbee in a perfect arc.

A beautiful pass.

Chad was fine. The pinter didn’t affect him.

My plan wasn’t going to work! I was doomed!

16

They went back to playing Frisbee.

I went back to thinking that my life was over.

I stood staring out the kitchen window more miserable than I’ve ever been. I’d never get my body back now!

My days on Earth were over.

Pepper tossed the Frisbee and Chad jumped up and caught it in the air—but he tripped when he landed. He fell to the grass.

That wasn’t like Chad. Even in my body.

I clutched the sink below the window. I held my breath.

“I don’t feel so good,” Chad said as he pushed himself up. He pressed the backs of his hands to his cheeks. His face was red.

Could it be? Yes! Chad was getting sick. My plan was working. I still had a chance!

“Come on, Will. I’ll get you inside and call a doctor,” Pepper said. She pulled his arm around her shoulders and led him toward the driveway where our bikes were.

I slammed out of the kitchen door and stood in front of them.

Chad was wiping sweat off his forehead, but he looked up and saw me. “You! Oh, no. What have you done?”

“Come on, it’s just a pinch of pinter!”

“Pinter? You want to kill me?”

“No! I want my body back! Now get on this bike!”

Chad groaned and held his stomach. He collapsed on the cement. His face was red and he was sweating.

“He’s dying!” Pepper yelled. “Do something!”

I felt in my pockets and found the lifter.

I headed for Chad, when a shadow fell across the driveway.

I glanced toward the street.

Chad-Two stood there.

And he didn’t look happy.

17

“What are you doing?” Chad-Two demanded.

“Who is this?” Pepper screeched. “How many of you space guys are there? What do you want?”

Chad opened his eyes, groaned, and slumped again.

“What’s the matter with you, Chad-One?” Chad-Two yelled at me. “You’ve been acting so weird, I planted a tracer on you! What are you doing with these slimy humans? How could you tell them about us?”

“I’m not Chad-One,” I confessed. Shink or no shink, I had to tell him. “He’s Chad-One. He stole my body, and I want it back!”

“I did not steal it!” Chad croaked. “You gave it to me!”

“Chad-One! How could you?” Chad-Two shouted.

“I want to stay here,” Chad said.

“You want to what?” Chad-Two was so shocked he squeaked. “You would destroy everything we’ve worked on for two years local time just so you can stay on this stupid planet?” Chad-Two fumed. “You idiot! You fleeflaw! You groober!”

“Will you help us switch back?” I asked.

Chad-Two’s face was purple. For a minute his mouth just opened and closed and no words came out.

Then he blinked a couple of times. His eyes narrowed. He looked really mean. “Oh, yeah. I’ll switch you back. And then it’s mind-tailoring for you, Chad-One!”

“Fine,” I said. I was afraid of Chad-Two. But one thing at a time. First I would get my body back, then figure out what to do next. “Pepper, you stay here.”

“Oh, no,” Chad-Two said. “The larva comes with us!”

“Larva?” Pepper shrieked.

He glared at her and she shut up.

Chad groaned again.

“What’s wrong with him?”

“I gave him a pinch of pinter,” I explained.

“Pinter? In an Earth body? He needs some sklix right away!”

“After we switch,” I said.

“Okay,” he agreed. “How did you plan to get him back to the storage module?”

“On my bike,” I said. I pulled the lifter out of my pocket and tapped it up to size. “Will this work on him?”

“Good thinking,” he said. Then he remembered who he was talking to and glared at me.

We lifted Chad to his feet. He leaned on me and I raised his shirt. Chad-Two put the clear ball against Chad’s back. And lifted him with no problem.

We left the driveway, me on Chad’s right, Chad-Two on his left, Pepper walking beside me.

I sneaked a peek at my watch. Quarter to two!

When we reached the house, we rushed over to the silver puffball mushroom shed out back. I opened it with the touch pad.

“Wow!” Pepper said, staring at the door opening. When we stepped over the threshold, she said wow about fifteen times—every time she looked in a different direction.

Chad-Two went over to the touch-pad console and pushed the pad that opened the change chamber doors.

The familiar, sour smell wafted out.

I took Chad over to one of the big, purple telephone booth change chambers and settled him inside, then tapped the lifter so it let go of him.

I tapped the lifter small. I shoved the lifter and the merister into Chad’s pockets—my own jeans pockets—then went and climbed into the other chamber.

“Ready?” asked Chad-Two.

“Ready,” I answered.

A second later the doors whooshed shut and I was in the dark again.

It was all just like before.

I felt as if I were jerking sideways on a carnival ride.

But when I opened my eyes again, boy, did I feel different!

I felt hot and then cold. My stomach ached. My throat hurt. I could feel sweat pouring off me and soaking into my shirt.

My mouth felt weird. I ran my tongue on the backs of my teeth. Braces!

They were mine! Will’s!

Oh, man! I never thought I would be so glad to go back to being Will the Spill!

The door whooshed open.

Pepper ran over to me. “Will? Are you okay? Are you—you?”

“Your birthday is May eleventh,” I gasped. My throat hurt as the words came out. “Your favorite color is red. It worked, Pep. Thanks for believing in me.” Then I moaned. My muscles were burning!

Pinter! The pinter I gave Chad while he was in my body was still having an effect. It was making me sick!

I glanced around for Chad-Two. He was opening a cabinet in the wall.

Chad-One stormed out of the other change chamber. He looked furious. “I hate you, Will Kennedy!”

Chad-Two came over with a small blue box. He tapped it up, then slid the lid sideways.

Inside was a gray-green bug with a million legs. It started oozing up over the side of the box.

“Take this sklix,” Chad-Two said.

I grabbed the bug and ate it. It tasted sour and crunchy, and it fluttered in my mouth. I didn’t care.

“Eww!” Pepper yelped. “You ate a bug?!”

I started feeling better right away! Oh, man! I was back in my body again, and everything was all right! I was so happy I felt as if I could fly!

I got to my feet. I wiped sweat off my forehead with the back of my hand. Everything about being in my own body felt a little skewed and sideways, but I didn’t care. I could adjust! I took some deep breaths.

Then I grabbed Pepper’s hand and headed for the door.

I thumbed the green touch pad.

Nothing happened!

Of course. I didn’t have Chad-One’s fingerprints anymore! Chad-One had said the locks were keyed to specific people!

I pointed at the touch pad. “Can we borrow your fingers? Just for a minute?” I smiled.

“Sorry. Not possible,” Chad-Two said. He strode across the room and stood directly in front of me.

“Wh-wh-why not?” I stammered.

“I can’t let you two leave,” Chad-Two informed us. “You know too much!”

18

“What do you mean? We don’t know anything!” I said. “I don’t know what planet you’re from or what you’re doing here!”

Chad-Two shook his head. “You know we were here, and that’s enough.”

“I don’t know what your real bodies look like! I don’t know where you’re going! We won’t tell anybody! I promise!”

“Who would believe us, anyway?” Pepper added.

“Sorry. We have a policy about this,” Chad-Two said.

Chad-One came over and stood next to him. Chad-One had a nasty grin. He looked over at the shink.

They were going to shink us like the rat?

No! I couldn’t let that happen.

My heart pounded in my ears. My palms felt sweaty.

I shoved my hands in my pockets.

The merister and the lifter were still there! Right where I put them before Chad and I switched back!

I pulled out the merister and tapped the touch pad to make it bigger. It grew until it was just like the ray gun Chad-Two had used to net the rat!

I didn’t know if it would work on anything as big as a person, but it was better than nothing!

I turned toward the two Chads and tapped the pad that fired the merister.

Web shot out!

But I had forgotten I was Will! I aimed for the Chads, but I stumbled over the leg of a piece of equipment as I headed for them!

The web shot out, all right. But it didn’t come anywhere near the two Chads! Instead, it covered the touch-pad console that ran the changing chambers!

Chad-One snickered. “Nice shot.”

Chad-Two walked right up to me and grabbed the merister out of my hand. “Come on, Will. The shink doesn’t hurt.”

“What’s a shink?” Pepper demanded.

“They shinked me a couple of body switches ago when I was having discipline problems,” Chad explained. “Every time I caused trouble, they’d shink me. You don’t really notice anything when you’re in the small state. They put the setting on reversible, so I had one of those black touch pads they could tap bigger or smaller. I’ll do that for you, too. Maybe I can grow you later and let you loose on some other planet.”

“What’s a shink?” Pepper screamed.

“You’ll find out soon enough,” Chad-Two said, pushing me and Pepper toward the yellow circle on the floor.

Just then the shed door whooshed open, and Mom and Dad came in. “Oh, good, you’re both here,” Mom said. “It’s time for the body switch.”

Then she noticed me and Pepper. “Who are these humans? What are they doing here? This is going to throw off our schedule!”

“I was just going to shink them,” Chad-Two said. “Chad-One has been misbehaving. He stole this one’s body.” He pointed at me. “No wonder he’s been acting so strange the last couple of days—he had someone else’s brain!”

Pepper grabbed my sleeve and pulled on it. “Who are those people with sitcom damage?” she whispered to me.

“Grown-up aliens.”

“What’s a shink?” she whispered.

“It’s a machine that shrinks you and turns you into a pebble,” I whispered back.

“Nobody shrinks me!” she yelled.

“It doesn’t hurt,” Chad-Two said again. He shoved my shoulder to get me moving toward the yellow circle.

I tripped over that blue box on the floor again and fell across the edge of the yellow circle.

I reached out for anything to break my fall and grabbed the shink from Chad-Two’s hands.

I hugged it to my belly and curled around it as I fell.

I’m not sure exactly how it happened. Only it was way better than falling into a tray full of spaghetti!

I had the shink in my arms, and Mom and Dad and Chads One and Two were racing toward me.

They all looked horrified!

I felt as if everything were moving in slow motion.

I lifted the shink. I turned the fuzzy side toward them.

What if I couldn’t remember the right way to touch the pads?

They were closing in on me! Mom had her arms out to grab me, and for the first time I noticed how long and red her fingernails were!

I tapped the square black pad twice. I tapped the round black pad three times. I tapped the square black pad twice again!

For a second they kept coming. Then they all shrieked! Just like the rat. They shrank, twisting and squirming, until they were tiny statues on the floor!

19

It was a good thing I had that lifter in my pocket. Otherwise there was no way Pepper and I would have been able to cart all that stuff home, even though we shrank it all down—the spaceship, the shed, the body-switching machines, and all those other gadgets I didn’t understand.

I even double-shrank stuff the aliens had already packed into those big hard-sided cases.

The machine was on the reversible setting when I blasted everything. So all the stuff ended up having those little black touch pads on it. I can tap it back up to life size any time I want to.

I keep everything on the top shelf in my closet.

I found an excellent place in my basement to hide the shink so no one would ever find it. Especially Pepper.

Sometimes late at night when everyone else is asleep, I take out one of the machines and tap it up just to look at it. Just so I can convince myself that everything I went through was real—and not some weird, horrible nightmare!

The aliens didn’t shrink down as much as everything else did. They are about three and a half inches high, and you can tell by looking at them that they’re people.

Pepper keeps them on the top shelf with all her best dolls.

I’m thinking of starting a cartoon series about this superhero who can make things bigger and smaller and defeats body-switching aliens. And gets revenge on everyone who ever called him a dork.

I still trip over things. And I’m still klutzy. But Pepper doesn’t tease me as much as she used to. She has major respect for me now.

Because she got caught in the shink blast, too.

And now—any time I want—I can tap that little black pad on the back of her neck. I can make her really small and really quiet for as long as I like.

I guess you could say things are really looking up for Will the Spill.

Are you ready for another walk down Fear Street?
Turn the page for a terrifying sneak preview.

FRIGHT CHRISTMAS

I grabbed the doorknob and turned it. The door remained locked.

I jiggled the knob.

Tugged on the door again.

It didn’t budge.

It was bolted shut—from the outside.

Which meant I was stuck in a closet in Dalby’s Department Store! On Christmas Eve!

A small wave of panic rose up inside me.

I stared around the closet.

Relax, Kenny, I told myself. If you bang on the door, somebody will hear you and let you out.

I listened.

I heard only the low hum of the electrical control panels in the closet.

“Hey, could someone open this door?” I shouted. “I’m stuck in here.”

No one answered me.

“Hey, I’m stuck in here!” I yelled, pounding my fist on the door. “Somebody open up!”

No one came to the door.

With all the people out there, why didn’t anyone hear me?

“I’m a kid trapped in this closet!” I yelled as loud as I could. “Help me! Somebody! Get me out of here!”

I banged on the door with my hands. I kicked it hard with my feet.

There! Somebody had to hear that!

Silence.

An uneasy feeling crept into the pit of my stomach. I stood back from the door and took a deep breath.

Then I took a running leap at it, throwing my shoulder against it, hard.

Nothing.

I banged on the door until my knuckles hurt.

Still nothing.

Where is everyone?

I glanced at my glow-in-the-dark watch. 8:15!

Dalby’s closes at 8:00.

Did everyone go home?

How could that be?

How could everyone have gone home and left me in here? My mom must have told someone I was missing. Why weren’t they looking for me?

My hands began to sweat. I had to get out of this place. But how?

I wiped my sweaty palms on my pants and checked my watch again. 8:20.

It wasn’t that late. There had to be someone in the store. A manager. A security guard locking up. One of the department-store Santa’s stupid elves. Someone.

Oh, I get it! They know I’m in here, I realized. They’re trying to teach me a lesson or something dumb like that.

“Come on, you guys!” I yelled. “Please. Let me out of here! Now!”

No reply.

I grabbed the doorknob and pulled with all my strength.

“Help!” I screamed. “Help!”

I twisted the knob. Then I pulled again, as hard as I could.

“Let me out of here!” I shouted.

No one answered my calls. I backed away from the door, wondering what to do next.

That’s when I heard the sizzling sounds.

I gazed around the room. I couldn’t tell what was making that noise.

Then, suddenly, the hum in the room grew louder.

And the floor began to vibrate.

My legs shook hard.

The humming grew louder. Louder. It filled the room now, shrill and strong. It seemed to come at me from every direction, all at once.

The floor quaked under my feet.

I started to lose my balance.

Started to slam into the control panel—when the door slowly swung open.

I grabbed on to the control panel and caught my balance.

I stared at the door.

It swung open some more. A pale red light glowed through the opening.

I staggered toward the door on shaky legs.

“What took you so long?” I demanded as I stepped outside. “Something crazy was going on in that room!”

Huh?

No one stood outside the door.

The toy department sat in silence. Except for the dull red glow from the exit signs, it was totally dark.

As my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I glanced around. In the shadowy light, I could make out the outline of Santa’s Village.

In the glow of the red light, Santa Street looked eerie—like a miniature Fear Street. The deserted end of Fear Street. The part with the abandoned mansions. The mansions that people say are haunted.

I live on Fear Street. I have to admit it—the mansions do look kind of creepy. But haunted—come on! How could anyone really believe in ghosts.

I took a step forward.

“Hey!” I shouted. “Anybody here?”

My voice echoed back to me.

I took a few more steps. My sneakers squeaked on the marble floor.

I stood perfectly still and listened. All I heard was my own heart beating. Really loud.

Then I heard something else.

I held my breath. What was it?

It sounded like . . . bells.

Sleigh bells. Louder now. Coming closer—from Santa’s Village.

I took a few steps through the village gate.

“Hey, is someone there?” I yelled.

Footsteps. Slow and heavy.

I squinted in the darkness. I saw something move—down by Santa’s sleigh.

I could make out a shadow now—the shadow of a man. A man sitting in Santa’s sleigh.

He stood up and stepped out of the sleigh.

Even in the shadows I could tell he was big. And tall. He walked slowly down Santa Street—right toward me.

“Who’s there?” I shouted. “Who is it?” My voice squeaked a little.

The man didn’t answer.

He came closer.

I heard his heavy shoes scrape the floor.

And with every step he took, I heard the faint sound of jingling bells.

Barely breathing, I stood there and watched him. Now I could make out his fur-trimmed red coat and red pants.

Joe! The department-store Santa.

Joe—still wearing his big white beard. Didn’t he ever take that thing off?

“Hey, did you unlock that door for me?” I called out to him.

He shrugged. “Maybe I did. Maybe I didn’t.”

“Give me a break, Joe.” I rolled my eyes at him. “It sure took you long enough,” I complained. “I yelled my head off in there. Didn’t you hear me?”

“I’m a busy guy tonight,” Joe replied. “It’s Christmas Eve, after all—the big night.”

“Yeah, yeah. Whatever. So you’re still mad at me for pulling your beard off,” I said sarcastically. “You wanted to teach me a lesson, right?”

Joe walked right up to me and stared down into my eyes. He shook his head slowly from side to side. I noticed a funny little smile under his beard.

“You’ve been naughty all year, Kenny,” Joe said grimly.

“Naughty?” I mimicked his voice. Then I chuckled.

Joe wagged his finger at me, frowning.

“Come on, Joe. Lighten up,” I teased. “You don’t have to drag out this Santa act for me. Christmas shopping season is over.”

I reached up. I grabbed hold of his beard—and gave it a good yank.

It didn’t budge.

I pulled on it again—harder this time.

It didn’t come off.

No, I thought. It couldn’t be.

Could it?

About R. L. Stine

R. L. Stine, the creator of Ghosts of Fear Street, has written almost 100 scary novels for kids. The Ghosts of Fear Street series, like the Fear Street series, takes place in Shadyside and centers on the scary events that happen to people on Fear Street.

When he isn’t writing, R. L. Stine likes to play pinball on his very own pinball machine, and explore New York City with his wife, Jane, and son, Matt.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Aladdin
An Imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com

Copyright © 1996 by Parachute Press, Inc.

BODY SWITCHERS FROM OUTER SPACE WRITTEN BY NINA KIRIKI HOFFMAN

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

ISBN 0-671-00186-8
ISBN 978-1-4424-8739-0 (eBook)

First Minstrel Books paperback printing November 1996

Aladdin and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster Inc.