CHAPTER ONE- SEEING THINGS
My name is Jackie, Jackie Ink. Up until I was twelve, I thought I was a perfectly normal kid.
Then I started seeing things, things I was sure were products of my big imagination.
My math teacher turned into a sheep-faced woman. The banker had a badger face for a split second while he yelled at a man with a face of a cat.
I thought I was sleep-deprived at first. I was tired when Mrs. Meep turned into a sheep. Then I thought I was going insane. So I told Mom I needed counseling and an admission to a mental hospital. Then she took me into my room and explained to me that those weren't really hallucinations.
It was a lot more complicated than that.
It was a normal November day. I walked my normal route to school, watching the leaves swirl around and land in carpets of red, orange, and yellow that crunched beneath my feet. I swung my lunchbox as I walked across the road.
I was careful not to step on Mr. Culligen's lawn, because he gets grumpy when people do. No one's sure exactly how old he is, but the general agreement is that he's somewhere over ninety. And he still mows his own law. You gotta give the man some credit for that. Until that fateful day, I thought there was absolutely nothing out-of-the-ordinary about my elderly neighbor.
"Hello there, Jackie!" he called.
"Hi Mr. Culligen!" I replied, waving. He smiled, then his face did something really scary. It turned into that of a dog, or maybe a fox. I almost screamed what I was thinking, which was, WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING TO ME?!
"Is something wrong?" he called.
"N-no. I-I have to go. Don't wanna be late for school!" I ran away from Mr. Culligen as fast as I could.
When I got to school, I found my bast friend Robin and told her how I saw Mr. Culligen's face turn into a fox's. She looked worried. And for a second, it seemed she was scared of me. But all she said was "Are you sure you're feeling all right, Jackie? Maybe your eyes are playing tricks on you."
Everything at school was fine until third period Math, when Mrs. Meep caught Valentina Tippet chewing gum in class.
If there is anything that Mrs. Meep will go nuts over, breaking rules is the big one. She gave Valentina a long, screaming, time-eating, lecture about not violating rules in her class. While she was giving Valentina a talking-to, her face turned into a sheep's. I felt sick. I'm still hallucinating. I thought.
Valentina got detention and Mrs. Meep went back to what she was doing before, muttering "Stupid Balam. Doesn't respect me just because I'm a Seelangut."
Baaa-laaamm? Sail-len-goot? Is Mrs. Meep going senile? I wondered.
The sick feeling continued for the rest of the period and into fourth. Finally, I couldn't take it anymore. I asked my Social Studies teacher if I could go to the nurse.
When I got there, I told the nurse that I felt sick and that I was seeing things. The nurse took my temperature and told me I had to go home. She told me she'd call my mom and I should go up and collect my stuff from my fourth period class. When I got back to the office, Mom was standing there, looking grim.
"I have to stop at the bank on the way home. Can you last a detour to the bank?" she asked.
"Uh huh." I replied.
Mom and I drove to Rockaway Savings & Loan in silence. She told me we had to go there because she had to cash in her paycheck.
While we waited on the line, a customer and a teller started arguing. They both looked really angry. As their argument progressed, the customer's face turned into a cat's and the teller's into a badger's.
I got a sinking feeling in my stomach. The hallucinations were still happening.
