You are among the first to check out the first two chapters of my upcoming book, Trapped in a Video Game 5: The Final Boss! Enjoy, and look out for the full book in a few weeks.

Chapter 1: 10 Minutes to Save the World

Ten minutes is not a lot of time.

Let’s say I order you to do something fun in the next 10 minutes. Your life depends on it. Time starts now. What do you do? You can’t finish a TV show in 10 minutes. You certainly can’t watch a movie. Ten minutes isn’t enough time to go to the neighborhood swimming pool, round up all your Nerf guns, or convince a friend to play Go Fish. (Also, Go Fish is not fun.)

Maybe you decide to watch something on YouTube. Cool. YouTube only has five billion videos. Choose wisely—your life depends on it. Uh, how about this one where a guy eats a ghost pepper? OK, you click on it. A 30-second ad plays. Then the guy starts rambling about his Instagram account. You begin sweating because you’re not even close to having fun yet. You click ahead—oh no! Too far! He’s already screaming! You try going back to the spot where he puts the pepper in his mouth, but time’s already up. You’re dead.

My point is, if 10 minutes is not even enough time to do something fun, it’s CERTAINLY not enough time to save the world.

Unfortunately, that’s exactly what Mr. Gregory was asking us to do. A billionaire named Max Reuben had built a video game universe and was about to use Mr. Gregory’s technology to suck every human on Earth inside. That includes my baby cousin Olivia who can’t even hold up her own head yet, my Aunt Dianne who HATES video games, and my 88-year-old neighbor Mrs. Gardino who leaves her house exactly once a week to go to church. Max actually stole the name for his event from church. He was calling it the “Reuben Rapture.” It was going to be bad. And according to the calm, Siri-sounding lady counting down as I teleported back to Mr. Gregory, it was going to happen real soon.

“Ten minutes to Rapture.”

I finally landed in Mr. Gregory’s lab on the 56th floor of Max’s office building. “What happened?” I asked as I rubbed my head.

“HE STARTED THE COUNTDOWN AND LOCKED ME OUT, AND I DON’T KNOW HOW TO STOP IT!” Mr. Gregory shouted as he typed like a maniac on one of his five keyboards.

“Huh? Who? How?”

At that moment, Eric appeared on the ground. “What happened?”

“AHHH! I DON’T HAVE TIME TO EXPLAIN AGAIN!”

I tried to get more information. “Mr. Gregory, are you saying that Max found a way to start the Rapture on his own?”

“THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT I’M SAYING!”

“How do we stop it?”

Mr. Gregory took a second to breathe, then turned to face us. “From the inside.”

My heart started pounding.

“I control all the computers in this building. I’m sure of it. The only way Max could have started the countdown was from inside the Reubenverse.”

“So we have to find him in there?” Eric asked.

“And destroy his computer,” Mr. Gregory finished.

“Nine minutes to Rapture,” Siri Lady reminded us.

Now I started to panic. “How are we supposed to do that in nine minutes?!”

Mr. Gregory rummaged through a toolbox on the floor while he answered. “Time moves slower in video games, remember? Nine minutes out here is nine days in there.” He pulled out two watches and plugged them into his tower.

“No, but like, where is he? What does his computer look like? How do we destroy it?”

“I don’t know any of those answers.”

“WHAT?!”

Mr. Gregory unplugged the watches and handed them to us. “These are synced to the countdown. They cannot . . . ” his voice cracked. He closed his eyes and tried again. “They cannot reach zero. Please.”

Eric strapped on his watch and looked up at Mr. Gregory. “You’re coming with us, right?”

Mr. Gregory sighed. “There’s one more thing you need to know. Max’s network is nowhere near ready to handle this. The closer the countdown gets to zero, the hotter it’s going to get in there. If the Rapture actually happens, there’s a good chance that the system will overheat and everyone inside will cook. If I . . . ”

“Eight minutes to Rapture,” Siri Lady interrupted.

“. . . If I stay back, I can at least buy you a little extra time by shutting down power to other parts of the building with that breaker box.” Mr. Gregory pointed to a large metal box in the corner of the room.

I looked at Eric uneasily.

“Listen, you two don’t have to do this. Even if you do find Max, there’s probably nothing you can do. But . . . ” Mr. Gregory covered his face and shook his head. “There’s no time for anyone else to help. There’s just no time.”

I wanted to step up and reassure Mr. Gregory that everything would be OK because Eric and I were just the heroes for the job. I opened my mouth to say something brave, but all that came out was, “Uhhhhhh.”

“WE’RE IN!” Eric said, marching toward the Reubenverse double doors.

I followed after Eric. “One sec! What about . . . ”

Eric held up his arm with the countdown watch. “We don’t have one second!” With that, he threw open the doors, crouched down, and jumped into the swirling red light.

I looked back at Mr. Gregory, who seemed to be on the verge of barfing. “I’m sorry” was all he could say.

I crouched in front of the door like Eric had done and took two quick breaths. “Do you at least know which planet this door leads to?” I asked over my shoulder.

“It’s totally random.”

With that terrific news, I closed my eyes and dove. The last thing I heard before tumbling into the Reubenverse was Siri Lady.

“Seven minutes to Rapture.”

 

Chapter 2: 10 Welcome to the Reubenverse

“Welcome to the Reubenverse,” Siri Lady chirped.

I opened my eyes to see that I was free-falling 5,000 feet above a desert landscape. I reached back, hoping to find a rip cord or jet pack or squirrel suit or something. Nothing. Uh, not good. I flapped my arms, hoping that maybe this was Planet Fly Like a Bird. It was not. Then, I noticed Eric below me. He was falling too, but his fall looked like it was on purpose. He rocketed toward the ground in a Superman pose.

“ERIC! WHAT’S THE PLAN?!”

He didn’t hear me.

“ERIC!” I tried again. “WHAT . . . AHHH!”

Eric smashed into a pile of rocks. Turns out, he didn’t have a plan.

“NONONONO!” I clawed at the air like a cartoon character. Have you ever had a dream where you’re falling off a huge cliff? You always wake up before you hit the ground because your body gets too scared to let you finish the dream. Let me tell you, your body is smart. The end of the dream is the worst. I closed my eyes right before I hit the ground, felt a quick, sharp pain, then heard Siri Lady speak again.

“Welcome to the Reubenverse.”

I reopened my eyes to see that I was back to tumbling 5,000 feet above the ground. Eric was just below me. “SLOW DOWN!” I yelled. Eric spread his arms and legs so I could catch up.

“THIS IS SO COOL!” he said. “DOESN’T IT FEEL LIKE WE’RE FLYING?!”

“NO! IT FEELS LIKE WE’RE FALLING!”

Eric flapped his arms. “IF YOU DO THIS, IT FEELS LIKE YOU’RE FLYING!”

I grabbed Eric. “HOW ABOUT WE FIGURE OUT A WAY TO SURVIVE SO WE DON’T HAVE TO KEEP DOING THIS!”

Eric rolled his eyes and pointed left.

I looked over. The land ended in a cliff, and a wild ocean beat into the rocks below. “ARE YOU SERIOUS?! YOU CAN’T SURVIVE . . . ”

SMASH!

“Welcome to the Reubenverse.”

Of course it’s impossible to survive a 5,000-foot ocean dive. But you know what’s even more impossible? Surviving a 5,000-foot cactus face-plant. I sighed, linked arms with Eric, and steered toward the ocean. When we were 50 feet above the water, I let go and angled my body into a dive.

SPLASH!

It worked! I couldn’t believe it! I’d splashed instead of smashed! I cut through the water probably 50 feet down, then started swimming upward. While I swam, I looked for Eric. There! He’d landed 20 feet away, and he was swimming up too. Before I could get too excited, though, I noticed a shadow appear behind Eric. A big shadow. Like a whale-size shadow. Suddenly, the shadow came into focus, and I screamed.

“BLUUUB!” (That’s an underwater scream.)

The prehistoric-looking creature opened its mouth, revealing approximately 200,000 teeth. Before I could “blub” a warning to Eric, the monster swallowed him whole. Then it opened its mouth again and . . .

“Welcome to the Reubenverse.”

“THAT WAS WORSE THAN HITTING THE GROUND!” I yelled to Eric as we fell again.

“MAYBE IF WE SWIM FASTER!” Eric suggested.

We tried swimming faster. It did not end well.

“Welcome to the Reubenverse.”

“MAYBE IF YOU DISTRACT IT WHILE I SWIM TO THE SURFACE AND FIND A BOAT!”

Perhaps you can guess how that went.

“Welcome to the Reubenverse.”

“WE COULD TRY MAKING FRIENDS WITH IT!”

“Welcome to the Reubenverse.”

After getting eaten by the dinosaur whale-shark four times in a row, we were both a little over the whole Reubenverse thing. The fifth time, we just fell silently and let ourselves get eaten without fighting it. Maybe this was going to be our fate—getting eaten over and over by a dinosaur, waiting for the world to join us in the worst video game ever made.

“WHAT IF WE BANANA?” Eric asked.

I shrugged. Bananaing was what the teenagers did when they jumped off the waterfall near our house. (Actually, it wasn’t a waterfall. It was a drainage pipe that dumped stormwater into a creek, but whatever.) As soon as they’d hit the water, they’d bend their body into a banana shape so they wouldn’t dive down too far since the creek was so shallow. It worked for a while, and then of course some kid got hurt. The city put up a big fence around the pipe and a sign that  read “NO JUMPING!” with a stick person cracked in half, which is the kind of sign city hall has lying around when your town has a lot of teenagers. Bananaing doesn’t really work in real life, but then again, neither does skydiving into the ocean.

As soon as I hit the water, I bent my body into a banana shape and fell only 10 feet underwater instead of 50. I righted myself and swam for the surface like crazy. After just a few strokes, I made it! I cheered when I popped my head above water and instantly realized how pointless this all was. What were we supposed to do now? Climb the cliff? Eric’s head popped up a few feet away.

“We made it!” he shouted right before he got sucked underwater by the giant dinosaur again. I cringed and waited for the same fate, but something different grabbed me. Instead of getting sucked underwater, I suddenly swooped into the air. I looked up to see that I’d been snatched by a pterodactyl. “Woo-hoo!” I cheered, marking the first time in history that any creature has been excited about getting snatched by a flying death dinosaur. I looked up just in time to see Eric appear below the clouds. “Over there!” I pointed as if the pterodactyl could understand me.

The pterodactyl did not understand me, but it looked up anyway, and when it saw Eric, it squawked. We zoomed up to Eric, then the pterodactyl swooped under him and caught him.

“Woo-hoo!” Eric cheered, marking the second time in history any creature has been excited about getting snatched by a pterodactyl. Eric grabbed the dinosaur’s shoulders. “I think I can steer it!” Eric leaned left, and the pterodactyl flew right. Eric pushed down, and the pterodactyl flew up. Eric pulled back, and the pterodactyl got mad and tried to shake him off. “OK, maybe I can’t steer it.”

We were along for the ride wherever the prehistoric bird decided to go. Unfortunately, it decided to go to a nest full of smaller, hungrier prehistoric birds on the side of the cliff. Eric and I both screamed when we saw the squawking, snapping pterodactyls waiting for their meal. Then I sighed. It was OK. Once they ate us, we’d just go back to falling again. Maybe we could . . .

I suddenly stopped breathing. Sitting quietly on the side of the nest was something much more dangerous than a video game dinosaur.

It was a Hindenburg.

You are among the first to check out the first two chapters of my upcoming book, Trapped in a Video Game 4! Enjoy, and look out for the full book in a few weeks.

Chapter 1: The Zipper

“You want to see me throw up, don’t you?”

“What? No! Come on, this is a fun ride!” I said as I pushed my friend, Eric, closer to the Zipper.

“It’s definitely not fun, and it’s barely a ride!” Eric said as he fought me. “It’s a throw-up machine! A machine literally invented to make people throw up!”

Eric was right. The Zipper, if you’re not familiar, is a carnival ride that tries to answer the question, “How many times will the human body handle being flipped upside-down in a single minute?” Its two-person spinning coffins are rickety and unpredictable and full of hard metal to slam your face into on your flipping journey. It is not a fun ride.

I smiled as I handed two tickets to the disinterested teenager in charge of the whirling death machine.

“Jesse! Are you listening to me?! Roger, talk some sense into him!”

beep beep bwyooooooop

Roger is a drone from the video game Super Bot World 3. After he got sucked into the real world through a computer glitch, he helped me rescue my friend Eric from the clutches of an enormous robot called Goliatron. If this is the first you’re hearing of Roger, that sentence was probably the most confusing thing you’ve ever read, but I promise that it made sense at the time. Anyways, Roger got smashed to bits during the rescue, but our friend’s dad, Mr. Gregory, rebuilt him from spare parts. Over the last few weeks, he’s become our constant companion — always buzzing back and forth between my house and Eric’s, never letting either of us out of his sight for long. We’ve become famous around the neighborhood for having a drone as a pet, and kids come from streets away now to watch us do tricks with him. Roger was doing one of those tricks now: wobbling back and forth while making a scary sound.

“See, Roger thinks it’s a bad idea too,” Eric said as he tried to turn around.

“Roger, you hang out here. We’ll be right back!” I said as I grabbed the back of Eric’s shirt and dragged him onto the Zipper. Eric tried to go limp, but it was too late. I’d wrangled him onto the ride.

“Good luck,” the carnival worker said as he clicked our coffin door closed. Not “enjoy the ride,” “have fun,” or even “be safe.” Good luck. I took a deep breath. We were going to need it.

The teenager returned to the control station and pushed the button to advance us upward and load the next coffin. Once we were in the air, I turned to Eric. “The reason I brought you on this ride is because I have something important to tell you, and I needed to do it in private.”

“And you couldn’t have done it in my room or your room or literally anywhere else besides the puke machine?”

“Listen, do you remember anything being off about Mr. Gregory after the whole robot thing?”

Eric wrinkled his nose. “I don’t know, that was like two months ago. He’s kind of a weird guy anyways, right? Isn’t he always off?”

“Remember the first thing he said after the police rescued us? He didn’t ask us if we were OK or what had happened or anything. He asked if we’d told anybody about ‘The Agency.’”

“Yeah, so?”

“We didn’t even know what The Agency was. Doesn’t that seem weird when you think about it?”

“He was probably just trying to protect us from something.”

“But what if he wasn’t?”

Eric gave me a weird look. We creaked upward again as the teenager loaded another pod. I took a deep breath and told Eric about Charlie Gregory’s theory that his dad wasn’t really his dad, but instead a human-looking robot made to look like his dad. I’d expected to spend most of the ride convincing Eric to believe this crazy idea, but he was on-board after just three sentences. Eric loves conspiracy theories.

“This is crazy!” Eric said. “Crazy!” I could see his eyes widen as his mind worked overtime. The last pod finished loading, and the Zipper started spinning for real. “But, but why?”

“I’m guessing the suit people kidnapped the real Mr. Gregory and sent the robot lookalike to make sure we didn’t say anything.”

Eric tried to nod, but at this point, the Zipper had really kicked into gear, so his chin kind of just smooshed into his chest. Then he gasped. “Wait, so if Charlie’s dad is actually a spybot…” Eric paused while we flipped four times in a row. “Then when he fixed Roger…” We flipped twice more. I waited for him to put it together. “Do you think he turned Roger into a spybot too?”

“That’s what I think,” I said.

Eric looked green. I couldn’t tell if it was from the news he was hearing or the flipping. “Why?” he croaked. “Why… did…”

Eric was really struggling, so I finished his sentence for him. “I don’t know why they’re spying on us. I think they just want to make sure we don’t ruin whatever they have planned.”

Eric grabbed my arm with one hand while clutching the bar with the other. “NO!” He looked at me with crazy eyes. “Why did you let me eat that elephant ear if you knew we were going on the Zipper?”

“Oh. I didn’t think about that. Sorry.”

The Zipper finally, mercifully, slowed to a stop. “I assume you have some sort of a plan?” Eric mumbled with all the color drawn from his face.
Oh yeah, I had a plan. I’d been working on it for weeks. I grinned. “I call it ‘Operation: RMG’ for Rescue Mr. Gregory. We’re gonna get these guys. I’ll tell you the whole plan, but…”

“BUT WHAT?!”

I looked out the door of our pod. Roger was staring back at us. He waved with one of his little claws. “But we’ve gotta ride this again.”

“I’m going to kill you.”

 

Chapter 2: Hide and Sneak

Two days later, Eric and I showed up at Charlie Gregory’s house to start Operation: RMG with Phase One — Hide and Sneak. I’d barely slept all night and was already sweating. Eric, on the other hand, was grinning like he’d just won a trip to Disney World. I also noticed that he had on the dumb spy watch I’d told him not to bring.

When we got to the door, Roger reached out his telescoping arm to ring the doorbell. A few seconds later, Mr. Gregory appeared. His face lit up when he saw us. “Jesse! Eric! It’s good to see you again! And you too, Roger!” Roger beeped and did a little flip.

“Hey, Mr. Gregory!” Eric said. “Charlie invited us over to play hide-and-go-seek. Is he home?”

“He sure is! I’ll grab him.” Mr. Gregory took a few steps into the house, then turned around. “Can I get you two any ice cream?”

“Yes! Please!” Eric said.

Mr. Gregory gave a thumbs up and a cheesy eyebrow wiggle, then disappeared into the house.

Eric glanced over with a “You sure this guy’s a robot?” look. I stepped on his toe. Although this was Eric’s first time at the Gregory house after learning the news, it was my fourth. The first time I came, I had the same reaction as Eric. After my chat with Charlie in the school bathroom, all I could picture was a Disney World Hall of Presidents animatronic robot with herky-jerky movements and cold, rubbery skin. But that’s not what I got at all. On the surface, this new Mr. Gregory seemed just as normal as my own dad. He was warm and funny. He remembered things. One time, he even made a face like he got a brain freeze when he ate ice cream too fast.

But the more time I spent over Charlie’s, the more weird things I noticed. For instance, Mr. Gregory’s blinks seemed “off” somehow. He seemed to be blinking harder than normal — as if he were trying to squeeze his eyes shut, if that makes sense. And then there was the timing. When I started paying closer attention to the blinks, I found that I could time each one to five seconds exactly. Five-four-three-two-one-BLINK, five-four-three-two-one-BLINK. There were other things too. Like, he said “presumably” kind of a lot. And he licked his finger before turning the page in whatever he was reading — every single page! And he would always spend an extra long time in the bathroom.

OK, OK, now that I write all those things down, they don’t seem like the robot giveaways I thought they were at first. I guess they could all be weird adult things. But that’s why we were here. Hide-and-go-seek is the best way to snoop through anyone’s house. If Charlie’s house held any evidence of robot activity, we’d find it and immediately bring it to the police.

To work together under the noses of Mr. Gregory and Roger, we established a few codewords. “Pickles” was, “I’m fine.” “Tuna” was “I’m in trouble.” And “mousetrap” was, “Get the robots out now because I found something big.”

Charlie had a big, fake smile on his face when he came to the door. He seemed to be sweating just as hard as I was. “Hey, guys! Uh, pickles, huh?” (In retrospect, we probably should have come up with codewords that’d be easier to use in normal conversation.) Charlie tried to do a complicated handshake with me, which failed miserably. I gave him the “play it cool” signal with my hands.

“Hey, do you want to play hide-and-go-seek?” I asked in a reading-from-the-cue-cards voice.

“Sure!” Charlie replied in an equally unnatural way.

“You guys had better watch out,” Eric said. “I’m pretty much the hide-and-seek champion of the world.”

Over the next half hour, Eric proved that statement to be maybe the least true thing he’s ever said. Not only was he bad at snooping for robot stuff, he was bad at pretending to do anything but snoop for robot stuff. The first time I was it, I “found” Eric in the kitchen — not hiding in a cabinet or anything, but fumbling through the junk drawer. We eventually decided to make Eric the all-time seeker before he could blow it for the rest of us. Eric and Roger would look for me and Charlie, while we would inspect every corner of the house.

Even with Eric out of the way, the investigation went poorly. It seemed like every time I got close to a possible clue, one of Charlie’s little brothers or sisters would ruin it.

“HEY, WHATCHADOIN!” little Cheyenne said when she saw me picking through the wires behind the entertainment center.

“Shar warsh?” Christian asked, trying to hand me a light saber under the bed. “Shar warsh, shar warsh, shar warsh!”

“Ahhhhh ah ah ah AHHHHH!” the toddler screamed, blowing my cover inside the nursery.

So it came as no surprise when I found myself with a companion in the bathroom. I was “hiding” in the bathtub, trying to peek down the drain (I was really running out of ideas), when the door shut. I rolled my eyes and sat still. As embarrassing as it’d be to reveal myself now, it’d be ten times worse if the other person in the bathroom turned out to be a little kid who’d announce my presence to the whole house. I waited quietly for the sound of the toilet lid, but it never came. Instead, I heard someone picking through the medicine cabinet. That couldn’t be a kid — the cabinet was too high. I silently peeked around the curtain.

It was Mr. Gregory. My heart raced as I slinked back until only the tiniest sliver of my face was peeking out. It was just enough to see him take something out of the cabinet. This could be it! I strained to get a better look. It was… it was…

An electric shaver.

I rolled my eyes. Here I was, feeling like this important spy, and my big break was watching my friend’s dad shave. I felt dumb.

Wait. What was he doing?

Mr. Gregory plugged in the razor, but instead of turning it on, he detached it from the power cord. Then he did something I’ll never be able to erase from my mind.
He plugged the power cord into his skin.

Congrats! You’re the first to check out the first chapter of my upcoming book, Trapped in a Video Game 2! Enjoy, and look out for the full book in a few weeks.

What did you do last night? Sleep? Hm, you don’t say.

Want to know what I did? I talked to an Army guy. Not like someone from the real Army trying to recruit me (I’m 12. It would have been a short conversation). The Army guy I talked to happened to be six inches tall and made of plastic.

I don’t make a habit of talking to toys — I’m not crazy — but I had a good excuse. This one talked to me first. See, I met this particular toy when he wasn’t a toy, but a real sergeant in the game Full Blast. Two weeks ago, I got sucked into Full Blast with my friend Eric Conrad. We flew around with jetpacks and rode the Statue of Liberty like a rocket ship and almost got trapped inside the game for good by an alien who said our names in the creepiest way possible. It’s a long story. You should read it sometime.

Anyways, in Full Blast, we met Mark Whitman — another kid from our class who had gotten sucked into the same game. Mark stayed behind so Eric and I could escape. Now, this Army guy was telling me that I could go back into the video game to save Mark, but I had to “go back now.”

Of course I wanted to go back. I’d do anything for Mark. The sergeant asked me if I was sure. Yes I was sure, let’s go! I stared at the Army guy, waiting for him to — I don’t know, click his heels or open a portal in my closet or something. Instead, he stared at me motionless kind of like a toy would. That’s when I started feeling stupid.

“Hey, I said ‘yes.’” I poked the sergeant. He continued staring with his blank toy expression. “Do I need to press some sort of button?” I picked him up and turned him over in my hand. No button.

At this point, you might be thinking that maybe the whole talking toy thing was a dream. And I would normally agree with you, except for one very important detail: the sergeant had actually woken me up from a dream. Now have you ever woken up from a dream only to find yourself in another dream? You have not. That has never once happened in real life, only in movies. The talking sergeant was not a dream because this is not a movie, and also I am not crazy.

I spent the next several minutes talking to and poking at the Army guy. Then I got up and checked all the places that he might have hidden some sort of portal to the video game (TV, toilet, wardrobe, etc.). Nothing. I crawled back into bed and spent much of the rest of the night convincing myself I wasn’t crazy, and then I think I fell asleep.

“Jesse! Breakfast!”

My eyes popped open. Sunlight streamed through the window. Monday morning.

“Jesse!” my mom yelled up the stairs again.

“Mmmf,” I replied. I stumbled out of bed and plop-plop-plopped down the stairs. I took my seat at the table and waited for my dad to grab the cereal from the top shelf. “What kind do you want, hon?” he asked.

“Blueberry crunch,” my mom replied as she finished packing her lunch.

“I’ll try that new chocolate one,” I said.

My dad grabbed the blueberry only. “Can I try the chocolate one?” I repeated a little louder. My dad set my mom’s cereal box on the table and grabbed his milk bowl from the freezer. (“Freeze the bowl first. It will change your life,” he tells everyone who will listen. Not true. From personal experience, I can tell you that the only thing freezing the bowl will do is turn the milk so cold that it hurts your teeth.)
I sighed and reached for my mom’s gross organic blueberry cereal. I knew the promise of chocolate for breakfast was too good to be true.

“Did you call Jesse?” my dad asked as he grabbed the cereal box before I could.
I squinted at him and waved right in front of his face.

“Yeah Dad, I’m right here.”

My mom sighed. “I’ll call him again.” She walked to the stairs. “Jesse! Jesse Daniel Rigsby! Get down here now! You’re going to be late for school!”

I threw my hands into the air. “Dad. Dad! DAD!”

My dad finished pouring his cereal and reached across the table for the milk like I wasn’t there. I jumped up and grabbed the milk before he could to get his attention. That didn’t stop him, so I pulled the milk toward me. Or at least I tried to pull it toward me. When I did, my hands went right through the jug.

“WHAT IS GOING ON?!” I grabbed the cereal box. Same thing — I could touch and feel the box, but when I tried to move it, my hand went right through. “AHHHHH!” I screamed as I ran to the bathroom. The bathroom mirror confirmed my worst fears. I looked at the mirror, desperately hoping to see my terrified face. Instead, all I got was the empty bathtub behind me. I looked down at my hands. Real as could be. But when I waved them in front of the mirror — nothing.

I was a ghost.

And that wasn’t even the worst of it. As I stood in the bathroom, trying to figure out what to do next (What do ghosts eat? Do they go to the bathroom? What about school? Is there a special ghost school?), I heard a snort behind me. I looked into the mirror. Nothing. Another snort.

I slowly turned around. Behind me, sitting patiently in the tub, was an eight-foot-tall, bright blue Bigfoot.