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  Chapter Nine

  Ethan's desk groaned as he shifted to raise his hand, the invisible limb knog one of the foam ceiling tiles above him askew. Luckily, Mrs. Rutherford didn't notice the magic jumpiangle, or maybe she did and just assumed it was trying to escape the most b algebra lesson ever.

  "Yes, Ethan, what is it now?"

  "Is it lunchtime yet?" he rumbled in reply. His new, deeper voice had raised a dangerous number of questions, but in a stroke of genius I'd mao vince everyohat poor Ethan was just suffering from that most fatal of ditions: puberty.

  "I've told you three times already," Mrs. Rutherford snapped, "you go to lunch when the bell rings!"

  "Then I have a snack?"

  "Absolutely not!"

  The other students snickered, and I wished I could have joihem. If this had been happening to anyone else, it would have been hirious. But si was happening to me, and being found out would get me in serious spinach, I just sucked up their thin trails of ughter and id my head down on my desk.

  On the bright side, though, I'd developed a nereciation for kon hair. Blue, Green, Purple, or Red, the color we're born with is the color we'll die with. No graying, no matter how old we get—which is good, because otherwise today would have turned my hair white.

  "Henry, wake up!" Mrs. Rutherford demanded, spping her palm on my desk. "Css is not for sleeping!"

  "I'm not sleeping," I said without raising my head. "I'm just thinking really hard about this problem."

  She huffed in annoyance. "Have you figured out the answer?"

  "Uh…yeah, absolutely."

  "Then what is it?”

  Peanut butter and liver sandwiches!

  I looked up at her. "I, uh…aren’t you worried you’ll make everyone else feel stupid? You know, since we’re both aware that I’m a genius and all. Let’s just take my word that I know the answer and—”

  “The answer, Henry. Now!”

  “Don’t you think this stuff is a little plicated for ninth graders?” I poi the board. “Like, that. What even is that?”

  “That’s a triangle, Henry.”

  “Exactly! That’s, like, some NASA level math right there, and I for ohink…”

  Luckily, I didn’t have to e up with something to think, because the bell chose that exaent t.

  “LUUUUUUNNNNCH!”

  Ethan sprang from his desk with all the force of a rocket ung into space, and made for the door. There was only ohing standiween him and food.

  Our teacher.

  “Ethan Griggs,” she snapped, moving to block his way, “the bell does not dismiss you. I dismiss you! Sit yourself back down and—AAAHH!”

  Poor Mrs. Rutherford. If she’d been as good at math as she cimed, she would have known that the size and mass of a geometry teacher is signifitly less than that of a hungry teenage sasquatch. Multiply that by the speed at which said sasquatch is sprinting for the door, and what do you get?

  A flying math teacher.

  Mrs. Rutherford did a surprisingly graceful flip before she crash nded somewhere around the fourth row of desks, but by thehan had gotten the door open—at least he didn’t rip it off its hihis time—and vanished into the hallway. I shoved my books into my backpack, then grabbed Ethan’s too because of course he’d fotten them, and gave chase. The trail he’d left would have been easy to follow even if I hadn’t knowly where he was going. All I had to do was follow the line of trampled students, like the world’s most painful ect the dots puzzle.

  I’m gonna kill him, I thought, sprinting through the school. Somewhere far ahead of me, I could hear Ethan’s booming footsteps. I’m gonna wait for him to turn back, and then I’m gonna freaking murder him!

  A fsh of green came from beh the door to the girl’s bathroom, and it swung open to reveal Jade.

  “He seems happy,” she noted, effortlessly keeping pace with me as we raced through the school.

  “He’s not smart enough to be unhappy!” I snapped, dodging around a nerd and his wobbly pile of books. “You hear his peanut-sized brain rattling inside his skull whenever he moves!”

  “Well, just remember, if he wishes for me to make him this ermaly, I’ll have to do it.”

  I gred at her. “Don’t you dare!”

  “art of ‘I’ll have to do it’ didn’t you uand?”

  “The part wh-oomph!”

  In an instant, I had e to a plete, dead stop. It felt like I’d run into a crete wall. A very hairy, very smelly crete wall…

  "Look, Henry!” Ethan excimed. "Lunch!"

  I took a step back, rubbing my nose, and realized I was in the cafeteria. Ethan was standing in the lunch lih his hands csped politely behind his back, boung on the balls of his feet like aed child.

  “What did I tell you about going off on your own?” I demanded.

  Ethan gave me the most nonplussed look I’d ever seen. “But…But lunch!”

  “But nothing! You stay with me, uand? No excuses!”

  Ethan scratched his head. “But lunch!”

  I unzipped my backpad dumped all my books and papers out on the floor. O was empty, I pced it over my head and zipped it back up as much as I could.

  Then I screamed.

  It took us nearly fifteen mio get our food, sihan—bottomless pit that he’d bee—kept more. I could feel every eye in the cafeteria staring at us as he requested tray after tray of food, until my arms were shaking from the weight of it all. That’s right, my arms. han’s, even though I’m pretty sure he could have picked up a freaking train. If he’d carried them, since his real body was invisible, the trays would have looked like a swarm of tiny ufos desding on the helpless denizens of Gumspt Junih.

  “I don’t suppose you want to help?” I growled at Jade.

  She shook her head. “Not unless—”

  “Not unless he wishes for it. Yeah, yeah, what a ve excuse.”

  “First, I’m going to eat all the bread,” Ethan was saying, his gaze as wistful as his skull was empty. “Then I’ll wash it down with all the milk. Henry, should I eat the beans or the jello after that?”

  “Jello,” I said without hesitation. “Sauerkraut spaghetti, Ethan, I don’t even want to think of what you’ll smell like if you eat all those beans!”

  Ethan stopped so quickly that I nearly ran into him again. “Ooh, sauerkraut? And spaghetti! Henry, we o go bad—”

  “They don’t have either of those, so will you just pick a freaki already?”

  Ethan thought for a mihen poi a table toward the back of the room. To my relief, it was almost empty. He bumbled his way n the half dozen other students he knocked down, and I followed.

  As much as I hated to admit it, all things sidered the day was going surprisingly well. I mean, yeah, today would be a perma bck mark on both of our reputations, but you learn to see the positive side of things when you hunt maiams for a living. Positive things like, at least your idiot best friend hasn’t inspired a new urban legend, or at least you aren’t being bur the stake for blowing the interdimensional unity’s secret to the entire world.

  Or my personal favorite: at least Aesop O’Gale isn’t here to turn the whole thing into a big stupid joke.

  “Top o’ the marnin’, Henry!” Aesop said.

  Where the shrimpy lepre—with his oversized camo clothes and bright red buzz cut—had e from, I had no idea. I was too busy looking on the bright side agaie jumping roughly a mile in the air, I did not drop my mountain of lunch trays.

  “Ye be feelin’ a mite peckish, do ye?” he said, gng at the trays with a smirk. “Even more than ye usually be doin’, I mean.”

  “It’s not for me,” I said, nodding toward Ethan. “They’re his.”

  Aesop immediately dropped his fake at. “Him? All of them?”

  “Well, I’m keeping one for myself,” I snapped. “If he lets me, anyway.”

  “If Ethas you?” he echoed. “If Ethas you?”

  “That is what I said, yes.”

  “And you’re not joking?”

  In front of us, Ethan sat down at the far end of a long, regur lunch table—and the other end shot up into the air, catapulting three unluerds halfway to the puter b.

  “Whaaaat?” Aesop whispered in a voice heavy with shock, and maybe a little reverence.

  Ethan grinned as the three unattended lunches slid right to him, as if he’d phe whole thing. I might have believed he had p, if he hadn’t been so pastry puffingly stupid.

  “Hey,” I said, catg up to him before he could dig in, “how about we eat outside instead?”

  Ethan looked down longingly at the half eaten luhen shrugged and stood up.

  “I carry?” he asked.

  “Nope.” I stepped bad gave Aesop a ki the rump to push him forward. “He’ll do it. Now move it, fuzzbutt!”

  Luckily, Aesop did as he was told without pint, taking the three extra lunches and following us as we made our way outside. I led the way around to the back of the school, where nobody would be able to see us from the parking lot.

  The minute I’d set the stack of trays on the grouhan wasted no time in grabbing one aing half of it in one massive bite—including the tray. He chewed it the way you would chew a tough steak, and swallowed it with a satisfied “Aaah!”

  Of course, to Aesop, it looked like the tray had levitated about eight feet off the ground before vanishing into thin air.

  “Henry, I’ve been patient,” he whispered urgently as Ethan finished off the tray, pig up another before he’d even finished chewing, “but if I wait one more sed, I’m going to explode. What the hell is going on?”

  I looked around nervously, then said, “Ethan, you take off your N.O.S.E. for now.”

  Ethan paused with aray halfway into his invisible mouth, and plucked the little magic device from his face. As his real body shimmered bato existence, Aesop’s eyes widened…and widened…and W I D E N E D…until I thought they were going to pht out of his little lepre head.

  “Henry?” He spun around and grabbed me by my shirt, thrusting his face dangerously close to mine. “HENRY?”

  “Would you believe…puberty?” I asked.

  He shook me bad forth. “HENNNRRRYYY!”

  “Okay, okay! Chill out, dude.” I pushed him away and, seleg a siray of food for myself, sat dowo Ethan. Watg Ethan go to town on his lunch had almost killed my appetite—yeah, I could hardly believe it either—so I ate slowly while I expihings to Aesop.

  As soon as I mentioned a pharmacy that sold shapeshifting medication, Aesop’s face stretched into a cartoonishly evil grin.

  Oh, whoopie cushion in the sky, I thought. What have I done?

  “So, Henry, ol’ buddy ol’ pal,” he said, sitting dowo me and waggling his eyebrows. “You gonna tell me where this treasure trove of trouble is?”

  “Nope.”

  He recoiled, hand to his chest in shock. “What? I thought we were friends, Hea Rider!”

  “That’s where gets his medie,” I snapped. “If you got caught screwing around with Dr. Jack’s pills, you’d get his shop closed down! Do you have any idea how much trouble would be in if that happened?”

  Aesop opened his mouth tue, but then he hesitated and looked away, a fsh of guilt visible in his bright green eyes. I sighed in relief. Aesop might have been an incible troublemaker—that’s ere friends, after all—but he knew when something was important enough not to make fun of it. Usually.

  Sometimes.

  “So, Ethan,” he said instead, “if you decide you want to stay this way, then what? You get a lifetime prescription?”

  Ethan shook his big, shaggy head, sending crumbs flying everywhere. “No. I wish for Jade to make me this way forever!”

  Panic shot through me, and I shot a look at Jade. She was just sitting there, though, watg us. I guess that meant just saying the words I wish wasn’t enough to activate her…you know, genie mode. I breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Well, what are you waiting for?” Aesop demanded, grinning again. “Hurry up and do it!”

  Ethan cocked his head. “Huh?”

  Aesop ractically dang with glee at this point. “Make the wish! e on, you know you want to!”

  To my horror, Ethan put a fio his in thought.

  “You want to be big and strong like this forever, don’t you?” Ethan egged him on. “Do it! Make the wish! Make! The! W—”

  I whipped out Sptsy and ed Aesop across the head. Not enough to hurt him—not permaly, at least—just enough to shut him the three bean casserole up.

  But it was too te.

  “Yeah!” Ethan excimed. “Jade, I wish—”

  Moving with the Hunter’s speed, I snatched one of the remaining lunch trays off the ground, jumped into the air, and sm duhe whole thing ihan’s mouth.

  “Mmmph?” he grunted in fusion, uo talk with his mouth full. Then he began to chew, and he smiled. “Mmm!”

  He swallowed, and immediately grabbed aray. I sat down heavily, too relieved to even sigh this time. Crisis averted.

  For now.

  “Does he seem…different to anyone else?” I asked a few mier.

  “You mean, besides the fact that he smells like mustard gas?” Aesop asked, sitting up and giving me a dirty look. I slugged him. “Ow! What’d I do?”

  “Henry, Sasquatches aren’t known for being smart,” Jade spoke up.

  “So it’s the pill doing this?”

  Jade shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Hey, Ethan!” I said. “What’s two plus two?”

  Ethan thought for a sed, then said, “BURRRRRP!”

  Aesop burst out ughing so hard he fell over.

  “What are we going to do about this?” Jade asked.

  I sighed and stood up. At least Jade seemed to uand that this roblem. But like she’d said, if Ethan wished to stay this way, she would have no choice but to grant it. Hopefully I could vince her to help me talk him down from the ledge he’d so stupidly perched himself on.

  I put the N.O.S.E. ba Ethan’s face, giving his tongue a sp when it crept up to taste it.

  Ew.

  “Don’t worry,” I said, trying to sound fident. Behihe bell rang, ending our lunch period. “There’s only one person who get through a skull that thick. After school, I’ll take him to see McGus.”