Gecko-ing Through Changes by Jiayi

Mike was an ordinary boy in an ordinary life, with no action or surprises whatsoever. He always managed to miss out of the exciting stuff, like the time in first grade when they had Party Day on the one time that he was sick off school, or in third grade when his classmates and teachers were leaping about in the air, trying to catch a bird with a broken beak to send off to the vets when Mike was at an appointment. And the time in fourth grade, when they had a professional woodworker visit his school and teach his class to make a wooden airplane model. The list goes on and on.

That was why, when he woke up on Sunday as a small gecko, he was absolutely thrilled for 30 seconds until he realized that he couldn’t eat his mother’s pancakes for breakfast, and the fact that he was probably going to get picked up and chucked into the wild.

So Mike made a simple 2-step plan.

  1. PANIC!
  2. Yell for help.

After executing step 1 for a few minutes, Mike decided to begin step 2. That was when he remembered that XS geckos didn’t have voices.

So he decided to go and repeat step 1.

Finally, Mike calmed down and started to think. Why was he a gecko? What had he done the day before? Did a person do it?  Well, there was the disapproving garbage collector that always comments on Mike’s front garden. And the hardcore exerciser that insists on running 20 kilometres a day. Also there was the weird candy shop in the corner of the mall he visited yesterday. He bought a bag of chewy candy, and the flavour that he ate was sort of like fresh rain and trees in a forest. A perfect paradise… for… geckos…

He stamped his padded gecko feet in frustration, but he soon had a more dangerous problem to worry about.

Tiddles, the fat cat who didn’t sit on a mat, was our family pet. But he was lazy and slow, except when he was chasing small, edible objects. Namely, Mike right now.

That was exactly what he saw, this 5kg ball of menacing chubbiness glaring right back at him. Mike did what all people would do. He ran. Really fast. Up his bedroom wall and past a poster of the Beatles laughing back at him, until he was as far as possible from Tiddles.

But he didn’t realize that he was close to a small cupboard, and Tiddles jumped onto that, before having a go at leaping at Mike. He started panicking again, and swiftly darted over to the other side of the room before dropping off, tongue flapping behind him.

Mike landed on the very pile of candy he had bought from the candy shop. His tongue scraped a candy, and its flavour reminded him of his mother’s pancakes.

Mike blinked, and suddenly he was a lot taller than before, with shin instead of scales, and looking at a rather terrified Tiddles.