7

Back at the hotel, in the bathroom, after he’d washed his face and gotten over his disappointment, Scott looked at the suit and helmet. There was a belt and some other weird gear with it, and little vials of red fluid in the belt. “Why would you lock this up?” he wondered out loud. “So weird.”

He decided to try them on. Why not? They must be valuable or they wouldn’t have been in the safe. That was a rule of human nature. Nobody put things in safes unless they were valuable.

Once he got the suit and helmet on, he looked around. Things didn’t seem much different. The helmet’s visor kind of restricted his peripheral vision, but other than that it was just like wearing a fancy cycling suit—with a weird belt and gloves that had red buttons on them, at the base of each index finger. Right where it would be easy to push them with your thumb.

He heard the front door slam, and Luis called, “Scotty, what’s up, man?”

Scott didn’t want Luis to see him in the suit. He jumped into the bathtub and pulled the shower curtain closed. “I wonder...” he said to himself, looking at the buttons. “What is this?”

He pressed one. Nothing happened.

He pressed the other one. A lot happened.

Suddenly Scott was falling through space, a giant open space with a vast white floor below. After falling for a long time he hit the floor hard. When he got to his feet he looked around, wondering where he was...and then he figured it out.

He was still in the bathtub. Only the shower-drain plug was the size of a boxing ring. The washcloth lying on the other side of the tub was the size of a basketball court.

No, that was wrong. They weren’t bigger.

He was smaller.

“The world sure seems different from down here, doesn’t it, Scott?” a voice said in his ear.

“What? Who...who said that?” Far above him, Scott saw Luis come into the bathroom and pull the shower curtain aside. “Luis!” he shouted. “Luis, I’m here!”

Luis didn’t hear him. He bent toward the faucet. “It’s a trial by fire, Scott,” the voice in the helmet said. “Or in this case, water.”

The water from the faucet was a flash flood, sweeping Scott up and flinging him straight to the other side of the tub. He rode the crest of the water up and into the air, then tumbled over the edge of the tub and smacked down onto the tile floor—which cracked at the impact. “Guess you’re tougher than you thought,” the voice commented.

Scott had other things on his mind. Namely, Luis undressing. “Oh, I don’t want to see this,” he said, and dodged Luis’s clothes as they fell to the floor. But he wasn’t looking where he was going, and he fell through a crack in the floor...then punched straight through the next floor, which slowed him down enough that when he landed on the turntable in the party room downstairs, he didn’t even break the record. He spun around, screaming. The grooves in the vinyl record were big enough for him to hold on to—no, he was small enough to hold on to them. But the needle hit him and knocked him to the floor. The bass from the music practically bounced him around, and Scott ran through the party, dodging feet the size of battleships.

He screamed again as one of them stepped on him—but he wasn’t hurt! Amazed, he kept running. He tripped on the edge of a heating grate and fell down through the duct. When he came out, he landed on a rug just in time to be vacuumed up with a bunch of dust. The vacuum shot him up into its bag so fast that he punched through the top of it. He ran through a crack in the wall, thinking maybe he’d be safe for a minute...

And there was a mouse the size of a brontosaurus. It chittered at him and lunged. Scott ran and jumped ahead of it onto a loaded mousetrap. His weight sprang the trap and he was catapulted through the hotel wall and out over the street. He landed on a car below and, even though he was still the size of a BB, the impact of his body left a dimple in the roof.

A moment later, he felt a surge and all of a sudden the world shrank back into place. No, he grew back to his regular size. Panting and terrified, he lay there spread-eagled on the roof of the car, trying to figure out what had just happened to him.

“Not bad for a test-drive,” the voice in the helmet said. Scott slapped at it and the mask popped up. Rain fell on his face. “Keep the suit. I’ll be in touch.”

“No, no,” he panted. “No. No, thank you.” Nothing in the world would convince him to keep the suit if it meant he might go through that again.

Scott did the only thing he could think of: He broke into the house again and put the suit back that same night. Then, when he vaulted back over the wall and landed on the street, ready to go home, lights flashed everywhere and Scott was immediately surrounded by police. “You are under arrest!” one of them shouted, gun drawn.

“No, I didn’t steal anything!” Scott said. “I was returning something I stole.”

Oops , he thought. That was the wrong thing to say.

Sitting in jail later, Scott looked up to see Paxton on the other side of the bars. “You know you almost had us convinced you were going to change your ways? They were really rooting for you. This is going to break their hearts.” He looked at Scott and Scott wished he could disappear.

Well, no. He’d just done that and it was terrifying.

Another cop came up to the bars. “You have a visitor.”

“Who?”

“Your lawyer.”

“My lawyer?” Scott hadn’t called a lawyer.

The cop led him into a room where an older guy with a neat goatee and wearing a five-thousand-dollar suit sat at the table. “I told you I’d be in touch, Scotty,” he said, and Scott recognized the voice. This was the guy who had talked to him inside the helmet. “I’m starting to think that you prefer the inside of a jail cell. Sit down.”

Scott did. “Sir,” he said, “I’m sorry I stole the suit. I don’t even want to know why you have it.”

“Maggie was right about you,” the man said. Scott shut up. How did he know about Maggie? “The way she’s trying to keep you away from Cassie...” he went on. “The moment things get hard, you turn right back to crime. The way I see it you have a choice. You can either spend the rest of your life in prison or go back to your cell and await further instructions.”

“I don’t understand,” Scott said. He’d never said anything truer.

“I don’t expect you to,” the suit’s owner said. “But you don’t have many options right now. Quite frankly, neither do I. Why do you think I let you steal that suit in the first place?”

“What?” He’d been set up? How? And more important, why? All of a sudden Scott was wishing he was back at the ice cream shop.

“Second chances don’t come around all that much. So next time you think you might see one, I suggest you take a real close look at it.” The suit’s owner got up and left. Scott didn’t see the ants clearing away from the lens of the surveillance camera.