bowlingballhead

My career as a mild-mannered middle school student ended the usual way, with a quarterback turning into a shark. Or maybe he was a forward receiver.  Or made line drives.  Penelope Akk, nerd supreme, had more important hobbies than Sport.  What mattered to me was that one second a boy on our team was human, and the next he turned big and bulky and grey.  His jersey ripped over his suddenly massive upper body, and it was a blessing to us all that he wore stretchy pants. “o/` We will / We will o/`” chanted the girl next to me, before trailing off with everyone else. Shark boy certainly rocked them.  In a dis

I was in the middle of history class when it hit me.  I needed a cloning tank. History is my favorite subject, although I would never tell my dad that.  I loved how weird the great events of the past really were.  America was discovered by a crazy Italian who convinced the queen of Germany who had switched places with the queen of Spain that he could get to India by sailing West, because everybody else was wrong and the world was really shaped like a burrito. He believed he had super powers, too.  It was in his letters.  He knew he was right because he could hear Indians talking across the ocean.  If he'd sailed a little farther South, he cou

I awoke with Sandy, a natural side effect of being tucked into the corner of her arm when she fell asleep.  At first I thought she might have forgotten I was there, because she slid out of bed and walked over to the creaky old dresser in our inn room without saying anything. She squinted at herself in the mirror, ran her fingers through her hair, and then patted her hand over her eyes.  Ah, she was looking for her glasses!  It took no effort for her to find them, since her next act was to pat my face where her glasses were sewn on.  Raising me in both hands, she twisted me from side to side.  Perhaps she was watching the way my rag hair and h

I had something to check before I joined the others at the factory.  The track led past the chocolate rabbit's spring.  She would be there.  I knew it. I wasn't as quiet as the last time I snuck up on the chocolate fountain.  My tail touched the ground now.  At least that rubbed off some of the slime, and pushing through the undergrowth scraped off more.  By the time I peered over the edge of the bowl, the creamy sweetness of that fountain could at least tease me. I didn't see her, but she would be here.  Her soft chocolate couldn't last long without renewal.  That was one reason.  More importantly, whatever Metal had done to her, she was sti

My home still smelled of butterscotch, because the buttercream beams with their brown sugar flavoring were too high to reach.  The place had been stripped.  My garden had been reduced to bare chocolate, the greasy, chalky stuff that had been here when Rummy and I arrived.  My cooking bowls had been taken, big and small.  All of my supplies were gone, and the tasteless lollipop stalks and licorice baked to charcoal that I'd piled up beside my house.  I used to think of it as a castle, but chunks had been pried out of the walls, and it just looked like an ugly natural dome now. A nasty worry hit me, and I slithered through a gap in the fence, t