The Great Interactive Dream Machine by Richard Peck Read Free Book Online Page A

some clothes that fit us.”
    â€œIs this stealing?”
    â€œIt’s borrowing, and do you have a better idea?”
    We waited. Another bell rang, and the school settled down for afternoon classes. We waited some more, and I couldn’t get used to this body. It bulged all over, and my head was so far from the floor, I nearly had a nose-bleed. Then at the last minute we remembered our sixth-grade shoes and hid them in a file drawer. As Aaron said, if Mrs. Newbery found our shoes but not us, it would just deepen the mystery.
    â€œLet’s synchronize watches,” he said at the door. Luckily both watchbands were expandable. We had wrists like tree trunks. “We do this at a dead run,” Aaron whispered. “If Mrs. Newbery’s at her desk, sprint right past her. She won’t know us anyway.”
    When Aaron opened the Black Hole door, we ran into each other. Then we started galloping through the media center. Mrs. Newbery wasn’t around, which was just as well. I was pretty sure that somebody was in the book stacks, but I didn’t really look because everything was a blur. We weren’t used to being this big. It was like running on stilts. All four of our legs got tangled up, and we came crashing down in front of the Leisure Reading revolving rack. We were both grunting. Also, our dress code strangled us all over. When we got up, I heard the seat of Aaron’s pants go completely.
    The upper-school locker room is in the basement at the other end of school. It was two flights down, and we fell twice each. Our sock feet were like flippers. Then we were thundering down an endless corridor, taking huge strides, following the smell of the upper-school locker room. Then we were in it, and it was empty. The big guys were all over at the soccer field in the park.
    â€œAaron, we don’t know the combinations of any of these locks.”
    â€œIf they’re anything like the middle school, half of them are broken.” He ran a gigantic hand along the locker doors. He jerked one open, then another.
    And inside ... big dress code.
    â€œAaron, what if they don’t fit?”
    â€œJosh, this isn’t The Gap. We’re not shopping.”
    The upper-school guys’ books were in their lockers with their names on them. “Hey, look,” I said. “This is Harrison ‘Hulk’ Hotchkiss’s stuff.”
    â€œAnd I’m getting Otis ‘Stink’ Stuyvesant’s stuff,” Aaron said. “We’re in luck. These are two of the bigger guys in upper school.”
    I pulled out a huge blazer. “Whoa,” I said.
    â€œDon’t dawdle,” Aaron said. “Get naked and get dressed.”
    I hadn’t thought about getting naked. I don’t usually think too far ahead.
    I wrestled out of my little blazer. Taking off my shirt was like shedding a skin. When I peeled off my pants, my door keys popped out of a pocket and fell on the floor. I swept them up. Hanging on a hook in the locker were Hulk Hotchkiss’s big underpants. I wasn’t too crazy about wearing somebody else’s used underpants. But my sixth-grade pair really had me tied in knots.
    Aaron was down to his underpants too. We turned our backs on each other. Finally we were free.
    Then we said, “Wow.”

6
    Better Than Grown
    We could keep our own socks. They stretch. Hulk Hotchkiss’s shoes were a tight fit. I could have used a size larger. The hardest part was knotting our Huckley ties with our big hands. We had fingers like sausages. Aaron was really slow. Until just lately, his mom’s been tying his tie for him. When we were finished, we looked each other over. It was fantastic. It was unbelievable.
    My fully formed heart pounded in my well-developed chest. “Okay,” I said, “where do we go from here?”
    â€œWe get out of the locker room before anybody comes back,” Aaron said. “We get out of school.”
    â€œJust