I was prepared. I wore my spaghetti-day clothesâa 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. Perfectâthe coolest guy in schoolâcalling 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!”

“H
uh?” 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 scaredâare 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.”

“Butâ” 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?

BOOK: Body Switchers from Outer Space

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