Now, I have to mention here that my jacket pockets are rarely empty. They almost always contain such items as candy wrappers, pencil stubs, a couple of paper clips, an interesting pebble or two, a few remains of some cheese crackers. And so on. But one thing I had never found in a pocket was a bunch of feathers. Wrapped around something warm. Something warm that moved. I quickly dropped down on one knee and pretended to tie my shoe.
“Fred?” I hissed. “Fred, what are you doing here?”
“I came with you,” Fred replied, sounding a little nervous.
“Well, I can see that!” I said. “But I don’t recall telling you that you could.”
“No, you just said you’d think about it,” chirped Fred. “You never said any more about it, so I just made a command decision. After what you told us last night, I wasn’t going to let you go without being around to watch over you.”
“But what you did was downright dangerous,” I said. “What if someone like Billy Swanson had bumped into my pocket? You’d have ended up birdburger, Fred. Well, you’re here, and I can’t do anything about it now. Did you remember to pack a lunch?”
“I didn’t need to,” Fred replied. “You’ve got enough cracker crumbs in here to sink a canoe.”
“Well, I appreciate your concern, Fred,” I said. “But you really shouldn’t have come.”
“Miss Blossom, Rupert’s talking to his shoelaces,” I heard Melvin Bothwick, class snoop, reporting.
“Are you all right, Rupert?” Miss Blossom asked at once.
“Just broke a shoelace,” I said, jumping up. “Sorry about the delay.”
Oh, my aching eyebrow! Now I had a stowaway I had to worry about, as if I didn’t have enough on my mind. But as we wandered the halls of the museum, waiting to enter the exhibit, nothing seemed to be happening. No shrinkage. No nothing. I looked over at Miss Blossom, threw out my hands, and shrugged. But I could see her eyes darting up and down and everywhere. The class trip wasn’t over yet.
Then it was time for our turn in the Egypt exhibit, so we got our tickets punched, got handed a pamphlet about what we were going to see, and trooped in. I stuck my ticket back in the same pocket because I wanted to give Fred a pat on the head. Then I just wandered around with the rest of the class looking at ancient cracked pots and pieces of pots and other such thrilling items. Nobody was too interested in ancient Egypt, but we had to stay there until our time for outer space. There was still nothing unusual happening by way of shrinkage. When I looked at my reflection in a window, I couldn’t see my head getting any smaller or anything like that.
Then Miss Blossom sidled up to me. “Rupert, tell me something,” she said. “Don’t you usually come just about up to my chin?”
“I think so, Miss Blossom,” I replied.
“Well, where do you come up to now?” she asked.
“Your—your shoulder?” I stammered.
“Exactly!” she said. “It has started, and I still haven’t found the medium. You were fine outside the exhibit. I checked. So it couldn’t be the tickets I handed you. That crossed my mind.”
“Are you thinking the pamphlets we were all given?” I asked. “Isn’t that pretty far-fetched?”
“It is, Rupert,” replied Miss Blossom. “But it’s the only thing we have. I want you to come with me and distract each person while I administer a drop of the anti-bewitchment formula to his or her pamphlet. If I’m right about this, you’ll be back up to my chin before we get to the second sixth grader. You remember—toadstoolius enlargius instantium! Come along! We haven’t a moment to lose!”
Fortunately, the room was dark enough that what we had to do wasn’t too difficult. I’d point out a display window to someone. Miss Blossom would put a drop from her bottle on the pamphlet they were holding. That was it. Nothing to it. There was only one problem. When we finished the whole class, I had now shrunk to an inch below Miss Blossom’s shoulder!
Of course, the rest of the class was shrinking, too. Nobody knew it, though. It was dark for one thing, but the main reason was that everyone was shrinking so slowly and all at the same time, so naturally nobody felt any smaller than they ever had. Actually, even if we all had been wandering the halls of the museum and shrinking, nobody else would have noticed either. After all, there were dozens of groups of students of all ages there. Everyone would have thought we were the Pepperdine fifth grade. Or fourth grade. Or third grade. Or less, as we kept shrinking. To what?
“Miss Blossom, it isn’t working! Just … just how far can we shrink?” I asked.
“You don’t want to know, Rupert,” Miss Blossom said grimly. “But things are getting desperate. I must think of something!”
And it was then that I felt someone pecking at me through the hole in my pocket.
“Not now, Fred,” I said. “We’re in big trouble out here.”
“What’s that, Rupert?” Miss Blossom asked. “You weren’t speaking to your shoelaces again, were you?”
“No, Miss Blossom,” I said. “It’s Fred. He stowed away in my pocket. I didn’t even know it until we got here.”
“That’s unfortunate,” she said, “because he’s probably going to shrink away with the rest of you.”
“No probably about it!” Fred said. “Look, you’ve got to listen to me, Rupert. After you put that ticket in your pocket, it was quite a while before you took it out again. All that time, I didn’t feel a thing. Then you pulled out the ticket, and when you put it back in your pocket again, there was a hole in it, so I figured someone had punched it. And that’s exactly when I started getting smaller. Your pocket, which is a pretty tight fit, was suddenly getting roomier. Then it began to get a lot roomier. Your pocket might have been shrinking, but
