54 - Don't Go To Sleep (2 page)

“It’s not fair!” I muttered to myself. “Pam and Greg get whatever they want—and I get punished!”

Nobody is using the guest room, I thought. I don’t care what Mom says.
I’m
sleeping there from now on.

Mom left for her night job. I waited until I heard Pam and Greg turn out the
lights and go to their rooms. Then I slipped out of my room and into the guest
room.

I was going to sleep in that guest room. And nothing was going to stop me.

I didn’t think it was that big a deal. What was the worst thing that could
happen? Mom might get mad at me. So what?

I had no idea that when I woke up in the morning, my life would be a complete
disaster.

My feet were cold. That was the first thing I noticed when I woke up.

They were sticking out from under the covers. I sat up and tossed the blanket
down over them.

Then I pulled the blanket back up. Were those
my
feet?

They were huge. Not monster huge, but huge for me. Way bigger than they’d
been the day before.

Man, I thought. I’d heard about growth spurts. I knew kids grew fast at my
age. But this was ridiculous!

I crept out of the guest room. I could hear Mom and Pam and Greg downstairs,
eating breakfast.

Oh, no, I thought. I slept late. I hope no one noticed that I didn’t sleep in
my room last night.

I went to the bathroom to brush my teeth. Everything felt a little weird.

When I touched the bathroom doorknob, it seemed to be in the wrong place. As if someone had lowered it during the
night. The ceiling felt lower too.

I turned on the light and glanced in the mirror.

Was that me?

I couldn’t stop staring at myself. I looked like myself—and I didn’t.

My face wasn’t so round. I touched my upper lip. It was covered with blond
fuzz. And I was about six inches taller than I’d been the day before!

I—I was
older.
I looked about sixteen years old!

No, no, I thought. This can’t be right. I’ve got to be imagining this.

I’ll just close my eyes for a minute. When I open them, I’ll be twelve again.

I squeezed my eyes shut. I counted to ten.

I opened my eyes.

Nothing had changed.

I was a teenager!

My heart began to pound. I’d read that old story about Rip Van Winkle. He
goes to sleep for a hundred years. When he wakes up, everything is different.

Did that happen to me? I wondered. Did I just sleep for four years straight?

I hurried downstairs to find Mom. She’d tell me what was going on.

I raced downstairs in my pajamas. I wasn’t used to having such big feet. On
the third step, I tripped over my left foot.

“Noooo!”

THUD!

I rolled the rest of the way down.

I landed on my face in front of the kitchen. Greg and Pam cracked up—of
course.

“Nice one, Matt!” Greg said. “Ten points!”

I dragged myself to my feet. I had no time for Greg’s jokes. I had to talk to
Mom.

She sat at the kitchen table, eating eggs.

“Mom!” I cried. “Look at me!”

She looked at me. “I see you. You’re not dressed yet. You’d better hurry or
you’ll be late for school.”

“But, Mom!” I insisted. “I’m—I’m a teenager!”

“I’m all too aware of that,” Mom said. “Now hurry up. I’m leaving in fifteen
minutes.”

“Yeah, hurry up, Matt,” Pam piped up. “You’ll make us late for school.”

I turned to snap back at her—but stopped. She and Greg sat at the table,
munching cereal.

Nothing weird about that, right?

The only thing was, they looked different too. If I was sixteen, Pam and Greg
should have been nineteen and twenty.

But they weren’t. They weren’t even fifteen and sixteen.

They looked eleven and twelve!

They’d gotten younger!

“This is impossible!” I screeched.

“This is impossible!” Greg echoed, making fun of me.

Pam started giggling.

“Mom—listen to me!” I cried. “Something weird is going on. Yesterday I was
twelve—and today I’m sixteen!”

“
You’re
the weirdo!” Greg joked. He and Pam were cracking up. They were
just as obnoxious now as they were when they were older.

Mom was only half-listening to me. I shook her arm to get her attention.

“Mom! Pam and Greg are my
older
brother and sister! But now suddenly
they’re younger! Don’t you remember? Greg is the oldest!”

“Matt has gone cuckoo!” Greg cracked. “Cuckoo! Cuckoo!”

Pam fell on the floor laughing.

Mom stood up and set her plate in the sink. “Matt, I don’t have time for
this. Go upstairs and get dressed right now.”

“But, Mom—”

“Now!”

What could I do? Nobody would listen to me. They all acted as if everything
was normal.

I went upstairs and got dressed for school. I couldn’t find my old clothes.
My drawers were full of clothes I’d never seen before. They all fit my new,
bigger body.

Could this be some kind of joke? I wondered as I laced up my size-ten
sneakers.

Greg must be playing some crazy trick on me.

But how? How could Greg get me to grow—and get himself to shrink?

Even Greg couldn’t do that.

Then Biggie trotted in.

“Oh, no,” I cried. “Stay away, Biggie. Stay away!”

Biggie didn’t listen. He ran right up to me—and licked me on the leg.

He didn’t growl. He didn’t bite. He wagged his tail.

That’s it! I realized. Everything has really gone crazy.

“Matt! We’re leaving!” Mom called.

I hurried downstairs and out the front door. Everybody else was already in
the car.

Mom drove us to school. She pulled up in front of my school, Madison Middle
School. I started to get out of the car.

“Matt!” Mom scolded. “Where are you going? Get back in here!”

“I’m going to school!” I explained. “I thought you wanted me to go to
school!”

“Bye, Mom!” Pam chirped. She and Greg kissed Mom good-bye and hopped out of
the car.

They ran into the school building.

“Stop fooling around, Matt,” Mom said. “I’m going to be late for work.”

I got back into the car. Mom drove another couple of miles. She stopped…
in front of the high school.

“Here you are, Matt,” Mom said.

I gulped. High school!

“But I’m not ready for high school!” I protested.

“What is your problem today?” Mom snapped. She reached across the front seat
and opened my door. “Get going!”

I had to get out. I had no choice.

“Have a good day!” she called as she pulled away.

One look at that school and I knew—I was
not
going to have a good
day.

A bell rang. Big, scary-looking kids poured into the school building.

“Come on, kid. Let’s move it.” A teacher pushed me toward the door.

My stomach lurched. This was like the first day of school—times ten! Times
a zillion!

I wanted to scream: I can’t go to high school! I’m only in the seventh grade!

I wandered through the halls with hundreds of other kids. Where do I go? I
wondered. I don’t even know what class I’m in!

A big guy wearing a football jacket marched up to me and stuck his face in my
face.

“Um, hello,” I said. Who was this guy?

He didn’t move. He didn’t say a word. He just stood there, nose to nose with
me.

“Um, listen,” I began. “I don’t know what class to go to. Do you know where
they keep the kids who are about—you know—my age?”

The big—very, very big—guy opened his mouth.

“You little creep,” he muttered. “I’m going to get you for what you did to me
yesterday.”

“Me?” My heart fluttered. What was he talking about? “
I
did something
to
you
? I don’t think so. I didn’t do anything to you! I wasn’t even here
yesterday!”

He laid his huge paws on my shoulders—and squeezed.

“Ow!” I cried.

“Today, after school,” he said slowly, “you’re going to get it.”

He let me go and walked slowly down the hall as if he owned the place.

I was so scared, I dove into the first classroom I came to.

I sat in the back. A tall woman with dark, curly hair stepped in front of the
blackboard.

“All right, people!” she yelled. Everybody quieted down. “Open your books to
page one fifty-seven.”

What class is this? I wondered. I watched as the girl next to me pulled a
textbook out of her bag. I looked at the cover.

No. Oh, no.

It couldn’t be.

The title of the book was
Advanced Math: Calculus.

Calculus! I’d never even heard of that!

I was bad at math—even seventh-grade math. How could I do calculus?

The teacher spotted me and narrowed her eyes.

“Matt? Are you supposed to be in this class?”

“No!” I cried, jumping up from my seat. “I’m not supposed to be in this
class, that’s for sure!”

The teacher added, “You’re in my two-thirty class, Matt. Unless you need to
switch?”

“No, no! That’s okay.” I started backing out of the room. “I got mixed up,
that’s all!”

I hurried out of there as fast as I could. Close one, I thought. I won’t be
back at two-thirty, either.

I think I’ll cut math class today.

Now what do I do? I wondered. I wandered down the hall. Another bell rang.
Another teacher—a short, dumpy man with glasses—stepped into the hallway to
close his classroom door. He spotted me.

“You’re late again, Amsterdam,” he barked at me. “Come on, come on.”

I hurried into the classroom. I hoped this class would be something I could
handle. Like maybe an English class where you read comic books.

No such luck.

It was an English class, all right.

But we weren’t reading comic books. We were reading a book called
Anna
Karenina.

First of all, this book is about ten thousand pages long. Second, everybody else had read it, and I hadn’t. Third, even if
I tried to read it, I wouldn’t understand what was going on in a million years.

“Since you were the last one to class, Amsterdam,” the teacher said, “you’ll
be the first to read. Start on page forty-seven.”

I sat down at a desk and fumbled around. “Um, sir”—I didn’t know the guy’s
name—“um—I don’t have the book with me.”

“No, of course you don’t,” the teacher sighed. “Robertson, would you please
lend Amsterdam your book?”

Robertson turned out to be the girl sitting next to me. What was with this
teacher, anyway? Calling everybody by their last names.

The girl passed her book to me. “Thanks, Robertson,” I said. She scowled at
me.

I guess she didn’t like being called Robertson. But I didn’t know her first
name. I’d never seen her before in my life.

“Page forty-seven, Amsterdam,” the teacher repeated.

I opened the book to page forty-seven. I scanned the page and took a deep
breath.

That page was covered with big words. Hard words. Words I didn’t know.

And then long Russian names.

I’m about to make a big fool of myself, I realized.

Just take it one sentence at a time, I told myself.

The trouble was, those sentences were long. One sentence took up the whole
page!

“Are you going to read or aren’t you?” the teacher demanded.

I took a deep breath and read the first sentence.

“‘The young Princess Kitty Shcherb—Sherba—Sherbet—’”

Robertson snickered.

“
Shckerbatskaya
,” the teacher corrected. “Not
Sherbet.
We’ve been
over all these names, Amsterdam. You should know them by now.”

Shckerbatskaya?
Even after the teacher pronounced it for me, I couldn’t
say it. We never had words like that on our seventh-grade spelling tests.

“Robertson, take over for Amsterdam,” the teacher commanded.

Robertson took her book back from me and started reading out loud. I tried to
follow the story. It was something about people going to balls and some guys
wanting to marry Princess Kitty. Girl stuff. I yawned.

“Bored, Amsterdam?” the teacher asked. “Maybe I can wake you up a bit. Why
don’t you tell us what this passage means?”

“Means?” I echoed. “You mean, what does it mean?”

“That’s what I said.”

I tried to stall for time. When would this stupid class be over, anyway?

“Um—mean? What does it mean,” I murmured to myself, as if I were thinking
really hard. “Like, what is the meaning of it? Wow, that’s a tough one—”

All the other kids turned in their seats and stared at me.

The teacher tapped his foot. “We’re waiting.”

What could I do? I had no idea what was going on. I went for the foolproof
escape.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” I said.

Everybody laughed except the teacher. He rolled his eyes.

“Go ahead,” he said. “And stop by the principal’s office on your way back.”

“What?”

“You heard me,” the teacher said. “You’ve got a date with the principal. Now
get out of my class.”

I jumped up and ran out of the room. Man! High-school teachers were mean!

Even though I was being punished, I was glad to get out of there.

I never thought I’d say this, ever. But I wanted to go back to junior high! I
wished everything would go back to normal.

I wandered through the hall, looking for the principal’s office. I found a
door with a frosted-glass window. Letters on the window said, MRS. MCNAB, PRINCIPAL.

Should I go in? I wondered. Why should I? She’s only going to yell at me.

I was about to turn around and leave. But someone was coming toward me down
the hall.

Someone I didn’t want to see.

“There you are, you little creep!” It was the big guy from this morning. “I’m
going to pound your face into the ground!”