The Age Altertron Read Online Free PDF Page B

in the
early morning. (This would have a double benefit to Jackie; people would have
to start their day in a sour mood without their Pitcherville Press Morning
Edition , and they would blame the paperboy for not delivering it.)
    Sometimes Jackie replaced the milk that the milkman left on the porch with
milk bottles filled with soapy water. He was always careful to cover his tracks
and pretended never to know anything when it was time to get to the bottom of
something bad that he had caused. Once he slipped away from school and disguised
his voice and called Principal Kelsey on a pay phone to tell him that he had
better hurry home because his wife had left the faucet running in her bathtub
before she left the house and there was a cascade of water coming out of his
upstairs bathroom window. The absentminded principal was halfway home before
he realized that there was no upstairs floor to his house.
    And that he did not even have a wife.
But Jackie Stovall reserved his most illustrious acts of mischief for Rodney
and Wayne, because he was envious of the boys and all the good things they had
done for the town through their work with Professor Johnson. Sometimes it would
be a little thing like replacing the boys’ bologna sandwiches with mud sandwiches.
But sometimes Jackie’s stunts were of a far more serious nature—like the time
he put itch powder in the boys’ costumes when they played Pilgrims in the school
Thanksgiving pageant. Several people in the audience had watched the twins jumping
and wriggling around on the stage and had pointed at them and laughed in a way
that Miss Lyttle (who had written the Thanksgiving pageant herself) had not
intended. One woman had said in a loud voice, “Those two Pilgrim men must have
to go to the bathroom! Take those Pilgrim men to the bathroom, Chief Wahunsunacock!”

    All went well for so many days that the citizens of Pitcherville began to wonder
if the calamities had stopped altogether. “Wouldn’t that be marvelous!” exclaimed
Aunt Mildred, who was working late in her kitchen to make cinnamon fudge for
Professor Johnson. (Aunt Mildred, you see, was quite fond of the bachelor professor
and he liked her too, during those occasional moments when he could think of
something other than his work.)
    Then it happened: it was early in October when the mornings had gotten a little
cooler and the leaves on the trees were just starting to show a little color
that was not green.
    Rodney woke, as he usually did, without opening his eyes, and knew that this
was going to be one of those days. How did he know this? Because his
arms and legs felt funny. They felt somehow smaller than usual. How could such
a thing be? he asked himself, and do I dare to open my eyes to find out? Not
only did his arms and legs feel funny, but his pajamas felt several sizes larger
than they did when he went to bed. And where was his pillow? He reached about
his head and could not feel it.
    This is terrible, Rodney thought. I have been shrunk to a miniature size! Rodney
had wondered when this might happen. Only a few weeks before, he and Wayne had
sat down and made a list of all the different bad things that had yet to happen
to the town of Pitcherville, and Rodney, remembering the problems of Alice in
Wonderland, added to the list the possibility of everyone in the town being
made very tiny. “And now it’s happened!” he said aloud, his eyes still squeezed
tight.
    “Now what’s happened?” Rodney had never heard this voice before—it
was very high and very squeaky. And yet there was something a little familiar
about it.
    “Open your eyes, fraidy cat!” said the voice, now taunting him. And this is
what Rodney did. He opened his eyes and glanced in the direction of the voice—in
the direction of his brother’s bed— and there, sitting up against the wooden
headboard that had been painted with a long wagon train,