Zacktastic by Courtney Sheinmel Read Free Book Online Page B

anymore. I can’t even tell if I’m screaming, because the sound of wind is too loud in my ears. There are so many twists and kinks and turns—it’s as if I’m traveling through someone’s lower intestine.
    They say the speed of light is the fastest speed there is. But this has got to be faster—evenif that’s not technically possible.
    Very few things are impossible , Uncle Max had said.
    Ah, I’m slowing down now. I feel myself being pushed out of something.
    But pushed is the wrong word. It’s more like I’m being squeezed . I have to suck in my stomach and hold my breath.
    And I’m out.
    There’s no time to be relieved about it because I’m flying through I-don’t-know-where. The sky? Outer space? I don’t have time to look around before my body remembers there’s such a thing as gravity, and NOSEDIVE!
    I’m heading toward something dark and blue. It looks just like a lake. That is, if you’re looking at a lake from high above.
    Holy smokes! I’m heading toward a lake?!
    It’s getting closer. I don’t know how to swim, which means I’m about to drown! I’m too young to die!
    I squeeze my eyes shut, tight as I can. I can’t bear to watch.
    And then . . .
    Nothing.
    No smash, no splash. This doesn’t mean I’m dead, does it? I don’t feel dead—not that I know what being dead feels like. But I feel, well, alive still. And not like I’m nose-diving anymore. I open one eye, just a slit.
    The dark blueness is right below me. I’m hovering above it. I guess gravity doesn’t apply to genies after all. Man, that was close. Probably broke the record of closeness in the history of close calls.
    I open my other eye. Hmmm. That’s not water. It’s . . . well, I don’t know what it is. It’s kind of, uh, cushiony looking. I reach out a teeny, tiny arm. But I’m not close enough to actually touch it.
    The pins-and-needles feeling all over my body is back, and suddenly: Pop!
    Whoa. That’s my right hand. My GIANT right hand. Or maybe it’s just back to the regular size, but it looks giant compared to the rest of me.
    I can reach the blue now. It does feel like a cushion.
    Pop! goes my left hand.
    Pop! Pop! Pop! Just like popcorn kernels, my body’s growing bigger in bits and pieces. One of my eyes bugs out before the rest of my face goes bigger, kind of like a bubble bursting out of my eye socket. I can’t even imagine how strange I must look.
    There’s one last enormous pop, and I’m back to my same, wonderful, state-of-the-art Zack-body. And then SPLAT! The cushion breaks my landing, before I roll off it and onto the floor.
    Oh, beloved floor! Glorious floor! Floor of solid ground! I could kiss you!
    But that would be weird, so I don’t.
    Instead I do a quick inventory of my body. Fingers and toes: check! Eyes, nose, and mouth:check! Two arms, two legs: check! I think I’ve got it all. Phew.
    Now to figure out where I am exactly. I sit up and look around. On the far wall, colors are spiraling like pinwheels. I stand slowly, blinking, blinking, blinking. I realize I’m actually staring right into an enormous stained glass window as the afternoon sun glares through it. I spin around and see rows and rows of dark pews. That must be what I landed on: one of the dark-blue cushioned pews.
    The last time I was in a place with cushioned pews was the chapel for Dad’s funeral. My breath quickens once again. The boom-booming of my heart is back to full force.
    There’s a staccato pop! pop!—one pop on one side of my head, another on the other side. Oh, my ears are back. I hadn’t realized they’d still been itty-bitty.
    The first thing I hear is a scream: “OWWWWWWW! GET OFFA ME, YOUDIRTBALLS!” Quickly, I duck back down to the ground, out of sight.
    â€œOoh, he’s a slippery little sucker,” a different voice says, presumably