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I ACTED SURPRISED WHEN MOM GOT off the phone that Mondayand told me Steve had recovered She was excited and did a little dance with me and Annie in the kitchen

"He snapped out of it by himself?" Dad asked

"Yes," she said "The doctors can’t understand it, but nobody’s co!"

"Incredible," Dad muttered

"Maybe it’s a miracle," Annie said, and I had to turn my head aside to hide my smile Some miracle!

While Mom went off to see Mrs Leonard, I started out for school I was half-afraid the sunlight would burn me when I left the house, but of course it didn’t Mr Crepsley had toldthe day

I wondered, from time to ti back Deep down I kneas real, but I tried believing otherwise, and sometimes alht of being stuck in this body for so long Hoould I explain it to Mom and Dad and everybody else? I’d look silly after a couple of years, especially at school, stuck in a class with people who looked older than me

I went to visit Steve on Tuesday He was sitting up, watching TV, eating a box of chocolates He was delighted to see aht hi up

"I’ll have to get bitten by poisonous spiders more often," he joked

"I wouldn’t ht not get well next tihtfully "You know, the doctors are baffled," he said "They don’t knohat made me sick and they don’t kno I recovered"

"You didn’t tell them about Madam Octa?" I asked

"No," he said "There didn’t seem much point It would have meant trouble for you"

"Thanks"

"What happened to her?" he asked "What did you do with her after she bit ot mad and stomped her to death"

"Really? "he asked

"Really"

He nodded slowly, never taking his eyes off ht I saw you I ht But it was a lifelike drealy, dressed in red, with orange hair and a long scar down the left side of his face"

I didn’t say anything I couldn’t I looked down at the floor and squeezed ," he said "The nurse who discovered me awake swore there were two people in the roo tricks and said it doesn’t h, isn’t it?"

"Very strange," I agreed, unable to look hies into sleep when I went to bed, and kept waking in thei from far away In school, I could listen to voices from the next two rooms, almost as if there were no walls between et in better shape I was able to run around the yard during break and lunch without working up a sweat Nobody could keep up with me I was also more aware of my body and was able to control it I couldaround opponents at will I scored sixteen goals on Thursday

I grew stronger, too I was able to do push-ups and pull-ups now, as many as I liked I didn’t have newthrough me that hadn’t been there before I had yet to test it properly but I believed itmy new talents but it was difficult I explained away the running and soccer skills by saying I was exercising and practicing a lot s were trickier

Like when the bell rang on Thursday at the end of lunch The ball had just been kicked into the air by the goalie who I’d put sixteen goals past It was coht hand to catch it I did, but as I squeezed, my nails sunk in and burst it!

And when I was eating dinner at ho I could hear our next-door neighbors having a fight and I was listening to their argus, and after a while I noticed the food was tougher than it should have been I glanced down and realized I’d bitten the head off the fork and was chewing it to pieces! Luckily, no one saw, and I was able to slip it into the wastebasket as I ashing up

Steve called that night He’d been let out of the hospital He was supposed to take things easy for a few days and not co crazy with boredom and had persuaded his mother to let him come tomorrow

"You mean you want to come to school?" I asked, shocked