My T-shirt and my jeans were suddenly very loose.
I looked at Rachel. Huge long whiskers were growing out of her still-human mouth.
The side of the cabinets beside me grew higher and higher. They had originally been maybe three feet high. Soon they seemed as tall as a three-story building. The grain in the wood looked like huge swirling patterns, like strange paintings the size of murals.
The one-foot squares of tan and green linoleum seemed to double and triple and quadruple in size, until each was as big as a parking space. As I shrank, my clothes folded and billowed down over me like a collapsed circus tent.
My skin turned a sort of pinkish-gray, then suddenly sprouted white fur. My legs were shriveling. My arms were shriveling. My face bulged like a zit about to pop. My nose poked way out, farther and farther. My face became pointed.
And then, the rat's senses replaced my own.
On came the ears, like someone had thrown a switch. On came the nose.
And on came the rat's instincts, bubbling up in my human mind and carrying their messages of fear and hunger and more fear.
"Yikes!" Rachel commented. "Nervous little things, aren't they?" 6 Chapter TWO
The rat's eyes weren't any better than my own. In fact, they weren't quite as good. Like lots of animals I've been, the eyes were better at seeing movement than at seeing colors and shapes.
Nothing was moving, so my vision was kind of, I don't know . . . kind of dull.
I could see Rachel well enough, though. We were made from the same rat's DNA, so were basically the same rat. I could see her long, naked pink tail. That tail is the reason people hate rats, but think squirrels are cute.
That, plus the fact that rats have been known to nibble on humans from time to time.
The rat's hearing was excellent, but it was its sense of smell that was really amazing. I twitched my little rat nose and the whole world sent me messages.
I smelled the chemicals in the cabinets. I smelled the lingering aromas of hundreds of different kids who had passed through the room that day. I even smelled the seeds and nuts in the maze, up on the table.
I felt the rat's brain beginning to surge more strongly up beneath my own. The rat instincts were coming out. Fear. Not the sharp sudden fear a human might feel. It was the eternal fear of a small animal in a world of great big predators.
And the hunger. The hunger of a tiny animal who will spend its entire life, every single minute of its life, searching for its next meal.
But there was also the intelligence.
When you morph an animal, its instincts come through. You don't get its memories, usually, but you do get its instincts. Its basic abilities are there.
This rat was very nervous. It was afraid of being out in the open. It wanted to be next to the wall so that enemies would have a harder time attacking it. I decided that wasn't a bad instinct.
"Maybe we should get somewhere safer?" I asked Rachel in thought-speak.
"Oh, yes, definitely," she agreed.
The little rat legs powered up and we took off. Not fast, really, but it seemed fast because I was so low to the ground. My nose was just a quarter of an inch above the linoleum. As I waddle-walked along I saw huge walls looming over me -- the sides of the lab tables. And I saw sparse forests of trees -- actually the legs of chairs.
I scooted along the corner of the wall with Rachel right behind me.
"That is not an attractive tail," Rachel said. "I mean, I'm a rat and I still think it looks bad." Then I saw the table where my maze was set up. The real Courtney was up there. I checked out the area.
7 "I think we can climb up my backpack onto the chair. Then onto my sweater, then jump to the tabletop. "
"I'm following you," Rachel said. "Lead the way, Rat-girl." The rat body was amazingly good at climbing and scampering up to the tabletop. You wouldn't think that squat body and those stubby little legs would be good for climbing, but I really do believe that rat could have gone just about anywhere it wanted to go.
I saw the pile of books I'd left as a sort of stairway up the outer wall of the maze. And now that I was rat-sized, that wall really was a wall. It looked about nine feet high.
"You go do the maze," Rachel said. "I'll wait out here." I scampered quickly up over the books. The pictures on the front of my science book looked like huge mosaics made of colored tiles.
I reached the top and gazed down into the maze. I knew I could jump down in there, down into those long hallways, but at that moment I was afraid. It was odd, but the idea of running into the real Courtney made me nervous. I've always felt a little funny about using animals' bodies. It makes me feel a little guilty somehow.
But I had a job to do. I had to figure out why Courtney couldn't find the nuts. She should be able to smell them . . .
"Hey. Wait a minute. I can't smell them, either. Not at all. "
"Can't smell what?" Rachel asked.
"The nuts. I can't smell them."
"Do I care?"
"It's the whole point," I said.
I looked around, puzzled. Then I noticed the breeze. I aimed my rat eyes upward. There, a million miles up, as far away as the moon, was a ceiling fan.
If I'd had lips, I would have smiled.
"Hey. It's the fan. It's blowing the scent of the nuts away. "
"Great. Now can we get out of here?"
I was feeling pretty satisfied with my insight when two things happened at once. First, Courtney -- the real Courtney -- came zooming around the corner of the maze.
The second thing was that I heard a loud crash, a roar of loud laughter, and the rushing approach of footsteps.
8 Courtney froze and stared at me. I stared at her. Then I looked back at Rachel. Rachel was frozen, same as me.
"HEY, LOOK! RATS!" an impossibly loud voice shouted. A boy, I was sure of that. I didn't recognize the specific voice, but I recognized the tone. He was looking for trouble.
"GROSS!" another voice shouted. "SOMEONE SHOULD EXTERMINATE 'EM. I HATE RATS!"
Two of them. Two guys playing around. Two jerks looking for something to break or destroy.
Two very, very big creatures compared to us tiny rats.
Sudden shadows! Vibrations. Huge movements!
WHAM!
The table shook like it was hit by a massive earthquake!
WHAM! THUD!
A shadow, moving fast, descending on me. I jumped!
THUD!
The tabletop jumped from the impact of the boy's hand slamming down near me.
I felt the maze being lifted. It tilted wildly up on its side. I could see the entire maze, now a wall instead of a floor.
Courtney fell out of the maze onto the table. Now there were three of us, trapped on the tabletop.
"HERE! A BROOM!"
"Bail!" Rachel yelled.
"Run!" I cried.
THWACK!
Something the size of a pine tree slapped the surface of the table. It was a broom handle. The handle swept across the table, coming right at us, a wooden log half my own height.
I jumped. Rats don't look like jumpers, but when they have to, they can.
Up! Over the broom handle, Rachel right beside me. I saw Courtney haul in the other direction.
Run! Run! Run! Rachel and I moved out at top rat speed.