Say Cheese and Die--Again! Read online

  “Greg,” she whispered weakly. “Is that you in that big body?”

  “Shari!” I cried. “Where is the rest of you?”

  “I—I don’t know,” she stammered. “Look at me! I’m shrinking away. I’m so light. It took me hours to walk to school this morning because the wind kept pushing me back!”

  “Are you sick?” I cried.

  She frowned at me. “I’m not sick, and neither are you,” she replied in a tiny, frail voice. “I’m shrinking away, and you’re getting huge—and it’s because of those photos we took.”

  I sighed and worked my wide shoulders through the doorway. “What are we going to do, Shari?” I whispered. “It’s those photos. You’re right. But what are we going to do?”

  Dad picked me up after school. He had rented a van since I couldn’t fit into the car. Dad helped me squeeze through the door. My body took up the entire backseat.

  The seat belt wouldn’t stretch over my stomach. So we had to forget about it.

  “I’m sure Dr. Weiss will have you back to normal in no time,” Dad said. He was trying to be cheerful. But I could tell he was really upset and worried.

  He drove slowly to Dr. Weiss’s office across town. The van couldn’t pick up speed because of all the weight it carried—me!

  Dr. Weiss is a nice elderly man with bright blue eyes and a long mane of white hair. He talks to all the kids as if they’re two years old. He still gives me a lollipop after each visit, even though I’m twelve!

  But I didn’t think he’d give me a lollipop today.

  He took all kinds of tests, his expression tense and thoughtful. “We’ll send the blood samples to the lab,” he told me. “We should have some answers in a few days.”

  He shook his head and frowned. His blue eyes appeared to fade. “I’ve never seen anything like it, Greg,” he said softly. “I’m completely stumped.”

  I wasn’t stumped. I knew exactly what the problem was.

  As soon as I got home, I lumbered to my room and grabbed the phone. It took all my strength to raise my huge arm and hold the receiver up to my huge face.

  I punched in Shari’s number. It took three tries. My finger was so wide, it kept hitting two numbers at once.

  She answered on the third ring. “Hello?” Her voice floated out so tiny and weak, I could barely hear her.

  “I’m coming over,” I announced. “And I’m bringing the camera.”

  “You don’t have to shout!” she squeaked. And then she added, “Hurry, Greg. I’m getting smaller. I’m so light, I’m afraid I’m going to float away.”

  “I’ll be right there,” I told her. “We’ll figure out a way to save ourselves.”

  I hung up the phone. Then I carefully dug the camera out from its hiding place in my underwear drawer. I had to bend over to reach into the drawer.

  Carefully gripping the camera, I lowered myself down the stairs. “I’m going to Shari’s,” I called to my parents.

  They were in the den, discussing what Dr. Weiss had told Dad.

  “It started to rain,” Mom called. “Take an umbrella.”

  “I’m only going next door!” I shouted back.

  Besides, an umbrella wouldn’t cover all of me.

  I peeked outside. It was only drizzling. Not much of a rain at all.

  I tucked the camera under my arm, pulled open the front door, and started to step out. But I stopped when I saw the dark-haired boy walking up the driveway.

  Jon!

  “Oh, no!” I murmured. I knew why he had come. He wanted his camera back.

  But I couldn’t give it back. I needed it to save Shari and me.

  I watched him walking slowly, his head down because of the rain.

  What am I going to do? I asked myself. I can’t let him take back his camera. I can’t!

  I’ll duck back inside and hide, I decided.

  I tried to back up. Tried to back my huge frame into the house.

  Too late.

  Jon saw me.

  He waved to me and started jogging toward the house.

  I had the camera in my hand. I carefully lowered it to the porch and stepped in front of it. I knew it would be hidden behind my enormous body.

  But what was I going to say to Jon? How could I convince him to let me keep the camera for a while longer?

  “Hi!” he called.

  “Hi,” I answered, my voice deeper than it used to be.

  “I’m looking for a boy who lives around here,” Jon said, stepping up to the porch. “His name is Greg, and he’s blond, and he’s about my age. Do you know him? He has a camera of mine.”

  I stared at him. My mouth dropped open.

  “What’s his name?” I choked out.

  “Greg,” Jon repeated. “I don’t know his last name. Does he live around here?”

  He doesn’t recognize me! I realized. I’m so huge, he doesn’t know that I’m me!

  “Uh … yeah. I think I know who you mean,” I told him. “There’s a kid named Greg who lives over there.” I pointed up the street.

  “Do you know which house?” Jon asked, turning to where I pointed.

  “It’s about four blocks that way,” I lied. “A big redbrick house. You can’t miss it. It’s the only brick house on the block.”

  “Hey, thanks,” Jon said. The rain started to come down harder. He turned quickly and jogged down the driveway.

  A close call, I thought.

  I felt bad about lying to Jon. But I had to lie. I couldn’t give him back the camera—ever. It was too dangerous.

  I watched him until he disappeared behind some hedges. Then, I reached down and picked up the camera, which felt tiny in my giant hands, and bounced across the front yard to Shari’s house.

  Shari greeted me at her front door. I could see the shock in her eyes when she saw how huge I had become.

  I was shocked, too. I cried out in surprise. She was starting to look like a stick figure!

  As she led the way to her room, she kept tripping over the cuffs of her jeans, which sagged down over her feet. She had tied a knot in the belt around her tiny waist, an attempt to keep the jeans from falling off.

  “If I get any smaller, I’ll have to wear doll clothes!” she wailed.

  “Did your parents take you to a doctor?” I asked, trying to duck through the doorway.

  “Of course,” she replied in her tiny, weak voice. “The doctor said to make me drink milk shakes five times a day!”

  “I wish my doctor said that.” I sighed.

  I lowered myself carefully onto her bed. I didn’t want the bed to collapse under me. But as soon as I sat down, I heard a crunching sound. The sound of wood splintering.

  And the bed crashed loudly to the floor.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Shari said softly. “I don’t have the strength to climb up to bed, anyway.”

  “If I get any bigger,” I moaned, “I won’t be able to get out of the house. I really won’t fit through the door.”

  She folded her hands in front of her. Her fingers were so skinny, they looked like bird claws. With her black hair hanging down from her tiny, round head, and her straight pole of a body, she looked more like a mop than a person!

  “What are we going to do?” she wailed.

  I patted the camera with my huge, thick fingers. “I brought this,” I said. “I thought maybe—”

  “What good will that stupid camera do?” Shari cried. “I wish I’d never seen it! Never! Never!”

  “I have an idea,” I told her.

  She hugged herself. “What kind of an idea?”

  “Let’s take new pictures of ourselves,” I said. “Maybe the new pictures will show us looking normal. Maybe the new pictures will change us back to the way we were before.”

  She raised her eyes to mine. I could see her thinking about it, thinking hard. “It’s kind of risky—isn’t it?” she said finally.

  “Do you have a better idea?” I asked.

  She thought hard again. Then she lowere
d her eyes to the camera. “Okay,” she agreed. “Let’s do it.”

  I struggled to climb to my feet. But my arms and legs were barely strong enough to push up my huge body.

  Before I could move, Shari flew across the room. She grabbed the camera from my lap.

  “Oh!” she cried out as she nearly dropped it. “It feels so heavy!”

  “That’s because you’re so light,” I told her. I tried again to lift myself off the bed. And failed again.

  “Sit still,” Shari ordered. “I’ll take your picture first.”

  “Okay,” I agreed. “I hope the new photo shows me at my normal size.”

  “Say cheese,” Shari said, aiming the camera at me.

  “Don’t be funny,” I snapped. “Just take the picture.”

  She stared through the viewfinder. Raised her finger over the shutter button.

  Then she lowered the camera with a sigh. “It—it’s too dangerous,” she stammered.

  “Shari—take my picture!” I insisted. “Look at us! We couldn’t be any worse off—could we?”

  She nodded in agreement. Then, with a sigh, she raised the camera to her eye again. It felt so heavy in her skinny arms, she had to hold it up with both hands.

  “Here goes,” she said softly. “I hope it shows you normal again, Greg.”

  She snapped the picture. The flash made me blink.

  A second later, the white square slid out from the front of the camera. She carried it over to the bed and dropped lightly down beside me.

  “Let’s see it!” I cried, eagerly grabbing for it.

  “Careful!” Shari warned. “If you fall over, you’ll crush me!”

  I gasped. She was right. It was too dangerous to be near her.

  “Maybe you’d better stand up,” I suggested.

  She climbed to her feet, swaying because she wasn’t used to being so light. “It’s starting to develop,” she announced.

  She held the snapshot in front of me so we could both watch it. The yellow filled in first. I squinted to see if I could make out my face.

  Was it back to normal?

  The yellow was too pale. I couldn’t see my face at all.

  Shari and I both were frozen there, staring at the small square. Not moving a muscle. Not blinking. Watching it darken.

  And suddenly, I could see myself.

  My huge face. My gigantic body.

  Still enormous.

  “Noooooooo!” I let out a long cry of horror. “Noooooooo! I want to be changed back!”

  Shari was shaking her tiny head sadly, still staring at the darkening photo. “What’s that on your face?” she cried. “Yuck!”

  I grabbed the snapshot from her and held it close. “Oh, no!” I groaned. “My skin—it’s all scaly. I look like an alligator or something!”

  Shari grabbed back the photo and studied it. “The scaly stuff is on your arms, too,” she said. “It looks like reptile skin or something.”

  And as she said that, I started to itch.

  I glanced down and saw red scales covering my arms. Itchy red patches. I started to scratch. But the scratching made the scales itch even more.

  My skin flaked off under my fingernails.

  “Oh, yuck!” I moaned. “It itches so bad!”

  I scratched my arms. Then I scratched my face. More dry skin peeled off as I scratched. Chunks of skin.

  Shari took a step back. She let the new photo fall to the carpet. “Oh, this is so horrible!” she declared. “You’re still huge—and now all your skin is cracking off!”

  “Ohh! My back itches so bad!” I wailed. “But I can’t reach it.”

  “I’m not going to scratch it for you!” Shari declared. “It—it’s too gross!”

  I pulled a chunk of scaly, red skin off the back of my hand. “Do you want me to take a new picture of you?” I asked Shari. “Maybe you’ll have better luck.”

  “No! No way!” she cried. She took another few steps back. “No new picture. It will only make things worse.”

  Her face twisted in disgust. She swallowed hard. “I’m sorry, Greg,” she choked out. “But you look so gross, I think I’m going to be sick.”

  I tried to scratch the back of my neck. But I couldn’t reach back there.

  I rubbed my forehead. A big chunk of skin dropped off and bounced on the carpet.

  “Let’s just rip up the photos!” Shari declared.

  “Huh?” I gaped at her.

  She bent to pick up the scaly new picture of me. “Let’s rip them all up,” she urged. “I’ll bet as soon as we rip them up, our bodies will return to normal.”

  I stopped my frantic scratching for a moment. “Do you think so? Do you think that’s all we have to do?”

  “Maybe,” Shari replied. “It’s worth a try—don’t you think?”

  I pulled the first two photos from my pocket. The negative of Shari and the first giant photo of me.

  “I’ll rip these two up,” I said. “You tear that one. We’ll see what happens.”

  We both held the photos up. I started to tear mine—then stopped.

  “Maybe if we rip them up, we’ll disappear completely!” I exclaimed.

  Shari and I stared at each other. Our hands stayed in the air, ready to tear the snapshots to pieces.

  Should we do it?

  “No!” Shari cried. “Don’t do it!”

  We both lowered the snapshots.

  “You’re right,” I said. My whole body was shaking. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “If we tear the photos to pieces, we might be torn to pieces, too,” Shari said. “Or we might disappear completely and never come back.”

  I shuddered. “Let’s not talk about what might happen to us,” I moaned. “Look at us. What could be worse?”

  “A lot of things,” Shari sighed. “We’ll think of something to save ourselves, Greg. We just have to think positive.”

  I stared at her. “What did you say?”

  “I said, think positive,” she repeated.

  Think positive.

  “Shari—you just gave me a really good idea!” I cried.

  We carried the snapshots to Kramer’s, the photo store where my brother works.

  It wasn’t easy to walk there. I had to stop to scratch my scaly, peeling skin. And I had to hold on to Shari to keep the wind from blowing her away.

  The walk was only about eight blocks. But it took us more than an hour.

  When we finally stepped inside the store, my heart sank to my knees. I didn’t see Terry.

  “He’s in the developing lab,” Mr. Kramer told me. He kept staring at Shari and me. I guess we looked pretty weird. A stick figure and an ogre.

  I pulled Shari to the lab in the back of the store and knocked on the door. You can’t just open the door and walk into the developing lab. If you let in the light, you destroy the film in there.

  We waited about five minutes. Then Terry came out. At first, he didn’t recognize me. I think he forgot that I had grown over the past few days.

  “Yuck. What happened to your skin, Greg?” he demanded, making a disgusted face. “Have you got a rash or something?”

  “I don’t know,” I replied glumly. “Can you do me a favor, Terry?”

  He shrugged. “What’s the favor?”

  I held up the first two snapshots. The negative of Shari, and the positive of me. “Can you reverse these for us?” I asked.

  He squinted at the two squares for a long while. “I don’t get you,” he said finally.

  I sighed. “Can you take the negative and make a positive of it? And can you take the positive and make a negative?”

  Shari let out a sharp cry. She realized what my plan was.

  Maybe if we reversed the pictures, it would reverse our bodies.

  Terry would make a positive of Shari’s negative, and she’d grow back to her normal size. Then he’d make a negative of my picture, and I’d shrink the way Shari had.

  It seemed to make sense. Was it worth a try?

/>   Definitely.

  Terry took the two snapshots. He studied them closely. He scratched his head. “I guess I could do it,” he said. “But I’m really busy in there. When do you need it?”

  “NOW!” Shari and I both cried.

  Terry stared at us, then down at the two photos.

  I scratched the back of my neck. My arms were so massive, I could barely lift them that high. In a few hours, I knew, I’d be too big to walk. Someone would have to wheel me around in a wheelbarrow. No—make that two wheelbarrows!

  “Please!” I begged.

  “I just don’t have time,” Terry said.

  “I’ll give you my allowance for the next two months!” I cried.

  “Okay. I guess I can find the time. It’s a deal,” Terry replied. “Wait out here.”

  He disappeared into the lab. We stood outside the door and waited.

  And waited.

  And waited.

  The longest half hour of my life.

  Mr. Kramer kept staring back at us from the front counter. Shari and I tried to ignore him.

  I wanted to sit down. Being so big made my feet hurt. But I was afraid if I took a seat, I’d break it. And I wouldn’t be able to get back up.

  So Shari and I stood outside the door to the lab. And thought about this new plan.

  Would it work? Would reversing the photos reverse us?

  Finally, the door swung open and Terry stepped out. “Here,” he grunted. He handed me the new prints. “Don’t forget what you said about your allowance.”

  “I won’t,” I promised. “Thanks, Terry.”

  I gazed at the new prints. Terry had done it right. A positive of Shari, smiling into the camera. A negative of me as a giant.

  “Now, get lost,” Terry said, glancing up to the front desk. “Go ahead. Beat it. Before you make me lose my job.”

  I took Shari’s hand and started to pull her to the front of the store.

  Poor Shari. She really did feel light as a feather. She looked even paler and tinier than when we came into the store. Her hand felt like brittle bones.

  We stepped out of the store and stopped on the corner. I held the new prints up so we both could see them.