by Rose Saltveit
Henry was daydreaming. He imagined that he was in a place where it was warm and sunny all around, along with two other kids – a girl and a boy. The boy was playing the clarinet, and the girl was wearing sunglasses and stroking the fur of a strange looking bunny.
Just then something hit his head. He quickly woke up to see a paper airplane bouncing off of his face. Miss Alsko, his teacher, wasn't very good. She was talking to the class but also grading homework assignments at the same time. Kids were throwing paper balls and airplanes, and passing notes. Henry was opening notes that were getting passed. They said things like "Henry is boring – yawn!" and "Ugly Henry" with a mean picture of him. He lived a miserable life with no friends and not even a pet, and his parents were always working.
The bell rang, so he got his backpack out of his locker. He was just walking, kind of bored and kind of sad, toward the place where his mom always picked him up.
Henry saw a familiar looking bunny in his path with fur that was a little bit of a dirty brown, with brown and black hairs mixed together. Its teeth were surprisingly clean and white. He gave the bunny a little crumb from his lunchbox, then picked it up and looked straight into its eyes. "He's cute. And he looks so smart."
He felt something bright and warm over his head, and suddenly started floating up. He got really scared because he thought he was dying. But once he reached up and touched the bright ball of light, everything went dark. Then he blinked, looked up and he could see again.
He felt warmer and suddenly hungry. All at once, Henry was overwhelmed with a million smells, dirt and trees and grass around him, and the exhaust from cars, and flowers, and an old dirty wrapper on the ground, and animal droppings, and more than anything else, a huge smell of a warm campfire with a vegetable garden and a bakery and all these delicious and wonderful things, and he could smell it and see it, a giant blue cage that he was afraid was a trap for him. Quickly he realized that it was a simple lunchbox, a GREAT smelling lunchbox, right in front of him, wide open, right next to a handsome boy sleeping on the ground. He sniffed the boy, and thought he smelled very familiar. Then he thought, "Huh? What? Why am I smelling this boy? That's weird. They're going to think I'm crazy. Oh wait, they already do."
His whole life, he had been having little visions, little movie clips that other people didn't seem to have, and sometimes they even came true. One time during a baseball game he imagined himself on the ground, knocked out with a ball next to his head, and two minutes later it actually happened. Sometimes he told people about his visions, and they called him crazy. They'd say, "Are you sure you are getting enough sleep?"
He looked around for the bunny and couldn't see it anywhere. Turning around quickly, he got a glimpse of its tail, but then it disappeared again. "I could have sworn I saw it a second ago. Maybe they're right, I am crazy," he thought. "I feel dizzy." He put his hand to his head and thought, "Why is my hand fluffy?" Then he bent down and looked at his other arm. It was dirty brown, and tiny. He turned over his … paw, and looked at his palm. His paw?!?!? He looked again at the boy. " Hey, that's me! OK, calm down. I turned into a bunny, but …. But that's me, on the ground over there. So who am I now?"
Then he heard a quiet voice inside: "You're in the rabbit now. Eyes, the eyes." "Oh my gosh, I'm in a rabbit! This is great!' He started hopping around and playing. He felt very young and flexible and energetic. He was perky and strong, his legs incredibly powerful. "This is the best day ever! Wait, how do I get out?" He heard the voice again: "Eyes, the eyes."
He hopped over to the boy – to himself – and used his paws to pull down the eyelids. He looked right into the eyes, and immediately felt the burning light above his head. He touched it. The black flashed again. He blinked, and he was back in his body. He was tired, and his eyes were sore. Then he saw the bunny looking at him. It blinked. Henry hollered, "Awesome, let's do that again!"
Back in the rabbit, he looked at the boy — himself — longer. "Wow, that's a bad haircut. And his shirt's really gross, there's grass stains and food on it. Do I look like that? When I get home, I better get a new shirt if I want to have any friends around here."
He went back to exploring, having a great time. "I could do this all day!" The quiet voice in his head said "10 minutes, or forever." "What?" he thought. "You heard me," the voice answered. "It's people like you who make this job tough." Then he heard a loud voice, an outside voice, saying "Hey look, a dead body! Wake up!!" Some kid threw a water balloon at — his body. It hit him and the body stayed on the ground, helplessly. "Ew, gross! He really IS dead! Run!"
The bunny hid in the bushes, horrified by these crazy giants. He heard in his mind, "Your time is halfway done. Better get back in." Even though it was a hot day – one week before summer vacation – he began to shiver. Henry started over toward his body and heard an awful growl behind him. He turned and saw the biggest Chihuahua ever. It had long, blood-tipped fangs and dark black eyes, and it looked hungry.
"Hop away! Hop like the wind!" the voice in his head said. He pushed his legs as fast as any bunny ever had before, and ran for the first hiding place he could find – a gap between two garbage cans. He could barely squeeze into it. The Chihuahua shoved its ugly head in to try to bite him, but accidentally got his head stuck. The bunny could feel the rough vibrations of the dog's fury. After about two minutes, the bloody Chihuahua got his head out and ran away, frustrated.
When the dog was finally out of sight and the bunny could no longer smell its nasty scent of dead squirrels and rotten bunny meat, he squeezed his way back out of the gap in the direction of his body. He could feel the air getting colder and colder as his time ran out. As he approached his body, two gigantic human hands reached down and picked it up. It was his own mom, dragging his body toward their car, as a terrified neighbor dialed 911.
Henry was desperate, and the quiet voice was getting kind of loud, too. "Look in his eyes! Hurry!! Runnnnnn!!!!!!!" Henry ran. He jumped onto the boy's face and started pulling his eyelids down with both paws. Seeing a crazed rabbit attack her dying child's face, Henry's mother slashed at the bunny's neck to swat him away. To her amazement, the bunny hung on ferociously just long enough to pull open the eyelids as if they were curtains, and stare full power into the boy's huge brown eyes.
He blinked as hard as he could, opened his eyes, and saw – a kid with paws on his eyelids. Henry was still in the bunny! The quiet voice said "Uh oh." All at once, a tough, leathery grip yanked him back, then catapulted him forward way high in the air. Henry was in a complete panic. Why wasn’t he back in his body? The sun was burning down on his head, but his body got colder and colder. It felt like the tip of his nose and his ears were all on fire and he had to run into some water before it reached his heart. He raised his paws to shield himself, and accidentally touched the burning ball of light above his head, which he had been too scared to notice.
As he was falling, just five feet off the ground now, things went black. Henry opened his eyes to see a bunny with arms and legs flailing, like a bird falling out of its nest, right before it slammed into the dirt. The rabbit tumbled, then ran to hide in the bushes. Henry yelled "Bunny!", and his sudden awakening shocked his mom, who screamed and dropped her son on the ground. "Oof!' he grumbled.
Just then two EMTs (rescue dudes) from the fire department arrived, answering the call to 911. His mom said "I, I, my son was on the ground unconscious, and then this rabbit grabbed his face and attacked him!" The first EMT said "Are you OK, son?" Henry mumbled "Yeah, I'm all right." "OK, lady, we'll look out for a … bunny. Be sure to call us if he attacks again." As they walked away, the other EMT said "This is going to sound really stupid when we tell our boss." Henry's mom yelled "I heard that!"
As they drove home, the car was quiet. It felt awkward. Finally, Henry said "Hey Mom, I really need a new shirt."