Read Online Shrunk! by F. R. Hitchcock - Free Book Online

me.’
    She carves a chunk of her homemade bread, and crashes it into a battered old tray as if it was the meteorite.
    â€˜The thing is, after that – I found I could shrink things.’ She stares really hard at me, and I nearly choke on the apple.
    â€˜Shrink? How – extraordinary.’
    â€˜Hmm.’ She bangs one of the mugs of soup on to the tray and reaches into a drawer in the dresser. ‘Here you are.’
    She pulls out a cloth bundle and unwraps it on the table. A small, ordinary, smoothed stone rolls out from a bundle of ancient, crumbling lavender.
    â€˜Woah, Grandma.’ I pick it from her hand. It’s very heavy, just like mine. So I put them side by side on the kitchen table. We both stare. They’re about the same colour and size. Both are odd shapes.
    â€˜They could come from the same rock,’ she says, stroking mine with her cracked old fingers. ‘Extraordinary, extraordinary.’
    â€˜What’s extraordinary?’ I ask.
    â€˜The cosmos, dear. It’s quite extraordinary, for example, that the night your meteorite fell, Jupiter vanished.’
    â€˜Is it?’ I say weakly.
    â€˜Yes – you wouldn’t know anything about it, I suppose?’

Chapter 22
    Did you know that stick-on Dracula teeth look exactly like plastic dinosaur claws?
    I know that, because Mum and Dad and Tilly save me from Death By Grandma by bursting back into the kitchen, and Dad’s false teeth shoot out of his mouth all over the floor.
    Mum scrabbles about picking them up and it turns out that one of them
is
a plastic dinosaur claw.
    Grandma stuffs her meteorite back in the drawer. I stick mine in my pocket. She snaps me a look that says the subject won’t be forgotten, that she’ll be asking again before the evening’s out.
    â€˜How did it go?’ asks Grandma.
    â€˜Fabulous – fantastic – they loved us.’
    â€˜And did the disappearing cupboard work?’
    Mum and Dad look at each other.
    â€˜Not exactly,’ says Mum.
    â€˜It was really funny,’ says Tilly. ‘Mum lost Dad, and the rabbits got stuck in the middle, and ran out all over the stage. The audience couldn’t stop laughing, they thought it was on purpose.’
    â€˜So did you enjoy it?’ I ask.
    â€˜Have a good fight?’ she asks, without even looking at me.
    â€˜Have a good time dressed as a pumpkin?’
    â€˜You must be really stupid choosing Jacob Devlin.’
    â€˜Thanks. Do you know where the games for Dad’s catch-the-baby-from-the-burning-building thing are?’
    â€˜They’re not in my room and you can’t go and look for them.’
    â€˜I’ll be careful.’
    â€˜No – and I’ll know if you’ve been in there, and I’ll kill you if you have. Anyway, they’re not there.’
    â€˜If they’re not there, why would I go in and look for them.’
    â€˜Exactly.’
    Most of the time, I don’t understand Tilly.
    Carrying a mug of oxtail goo, I escape upstairs, only to find Jacob and the squirrel standing nose to nose on either side of an empty cereal bowl. Oddly, they’re almost exactly the same height, and probably, the same weight. The squirrel’s tail is all fluffed up. It looks really angry.
    They’re circling round the bowl, first to the left, then back to the right.
    The squirrel’s got evil-looking claws, and with its lips pulled back, a nasty sharp-toothed scowl.
    Jacob’s holding his toasting fork, but I don’t think much of his chances against the squirrel.
    â€˜Stay st—’ I shout, but Jacob jumps on the side of the bowl, flicking the other side up and cracking the squirrel on the underside of his jaw.
    The squirrel yelps and leaps back into the corner. I throw myself forward to catch it, but it hides in a pile of socks. Jacob stands and brushes his hands together. ‘See – no problem – I can deal with anything.