Elliott showed up to walk with Nory to school the next morning, Friday, just like normal.

“Where were you yesterday?” Nory asked.

“At school, just like you,” Elliott said. “Der. Hey, how’d your first tutoring session go? Is Mr. Vitomin any good?”

“I’m talking about yesterday morning,” pressed Nory. “I waited for you for six thousand hours.”

“For our tutoring session, Willa and I went swimming. Isn’t that cool?”

“Yes. But you didn’t answer my question.”

“We used the high school pool,” Elliott continued. “Our tutor’s trying a technique called aquamerge. We have to connect with the water element, since we’re Flares and water’s the opposite of fire. Willa made it rain in the pool.”

“Elliott.”

“Guess what? I think it’s meatball day in the cafeteria,” said Elliott. “Meatball day is my favorite.”

Fine. He wasn’t going to tell her.

When they arrived at school, Elliott stepped through the heavy front doors first—“Whoa!” His feet did a crazy dance and he dropped to the floor on his bum. “Ow!”

Nory slipped next. Bam! Ouch!

Marigold was several feet in front of them, and she went down, too. Hard. “Marbles!” she said. “Why are there marbles everywhere?”

Hordes of kids poured into the building, and nearly everyone hit the floor. Limbs flailed. There were yelps of pain and surprise. It was chaos.

Nory scooched to a safe place against the wall. She drew her knees close and picked up one of the marbles.

Oh. It wasn’t a marble, actually. It wasn’t made out of glass. It was gray and cool in her hand. A rock.

The hall was really noisy now. Kids in kitten shape batted the stones around the floor. Kids in human shape got up and fell down again. Flyers launched themselves off the floor, but collided with one another and crashed back down.

A sixth-grade girl yelled when a stone rolled off the top of her locker and bonked her on the head. A seventh-grade boy shrieked when his friend dropped a handful of rocks down the back of his pants.

“Enough!” Principal Gonzalez boomed, appearing out of nowhere. The principal was a Flicker. He could do that sort of thing. “Students, get yourselves under control. Fluxers, take human form! Flyers, feet on the ground immediately. Everyone stop moving. I’ve called the janitor, and she’s on her way.”

Nory peered through the forest of bodies. Principal Gonzalez tugged at his tie.

“It seems that our Pennies for Potions have been magicked into stones, the whole enormous jar of them,” he said. “Eighth graders, if this is a prank, it’s not funny.”

“It wasn’t us!” called an eighth-grade girl.

The principal studied the eighth graders and nodded to himself. “I need to check the other halls. You all stay where you are until we get the stones cleared up. We don’t want any injuries.”

Then he vanished.

Quietly, and then louder, people began to murmur.

“We had a thousand pennies at least! Who’s going to give our pennies back?”

“It’s got to be an upside-down magic thing.”

“The Pennies for Potions jar must have exploded,” someone said.

“Do you think those wonko kids can explode things?”

“I don’t know.”

“Can they turn pennies into stones?”

“My mom says they’re dangerous.”

“It’s not their fault—they were born that way.”

“It’s their fault if they turn our charity money to stone!”

Next to Nory, Marigold pulled herself up on the water fountain. She got slowly to her feet, but her foot slipped again on a rock. Her elbow jammed against the fountain handle. Swoosh! Water squirted in a huge spray—and the spray hit Lacey Clench smack in the face.

Lacey Clench was the number-one meanie of the Sparkies. They were the Flare kids who gave the UDM kids such a hard time.

Like most bullies, Lacey was scared and jealous and disappointed. It made her mean. She was also powerful. It wasn’t her Flare magic that was powerful. It was her personality. She believed in rules. She was a leader, full of big ideas.

Lacey had flared Elliott’s bike tires, melting them to rubber goo. She had set Andres’s leash on fire, the leash that kept him from floating into the sky when he was outdoors. She had mocked Bax. She insulted Nory every chance she got.

Lacey and her Sparkie friends, Rune and Zinnia, were bad news.

Now Lacey was soaked in water from the fountain. “You wonko!” she yelled at Marigold. Her thin blond hair was pasted to her skull, and her large round glasses were splattered with droplets. She wailed and wrung out the bottom of her cardigan. “My sweater is ruined!”

“I lost my footing on a rock,” said Marigold, touching her hearing aid as if Lacey’s yelling hurt her ear. “I’m sorry. It was an accident.”

Lacey yelled even louder. “YOU MUST NOT HAVE HEARD ME. YOU RUINED MY SWEATER!”

“I can hear you just fine,” Marigold said quietly. “My hearing aid isn’t broken. Your manners are.”

“What did you just say?”

“I apologized already.” Marigold’s voice shook, but she didn’t back down. “It was an accident. And you shouldn’t make fun of my hearing.”

Nory was impressed. Marigold was brave.

“I have a right to be upset,” snarled Lacey. She gestured at her wet sweater. “I can’t go through the school day like this.”

“Don’t Flares keep extra clothes in their lockers in case something gets burned?” said Nory. “Just go change.”

Lacey twisted her face into an ugly shape. “How about if you just go away.”

“It’s only water.”

“And you’re only an upside-down wonko who doesn’t know that wool isn’t supposed to get wet.” A new light came into Lacey’s eyes. “Omigosh, you did this, didn’t you?”

“Did what?”

Lacey swept her hand through the air. “The rocks. You fluxed the Pennies for Potions into rocks, didn’t you?”

“No,” Nory said. “That’s not even possible.”

“Then maybe Marigold shrank them. Did you, Marigold?”

“Then they would be tiny pennies,” Marigold pointed out, laughing in disbelief. “Not rocks.”

Lacey stepped forward and pushed her. “Don’t laugh at me.”

“Hey!” Marigold yelped.

Lacey went to push her again, and Marigold’s hand flew up. She grabbed Lacey’s wrist, and the air shimmered around Marigold’s fingers.

“Marigold! Stop!” cried Nory.

Marigold jerked her hand away, but it was too late. Lacey was already shrinking.

Smaller.

Smaller.

“I didn’t mean to,” Marigold cried. “I shrink things all the time by accident!”

Lacey’s body shrank like a deflating balloon.

Her arms became tiny spindles.

Her head was the size of a cherry tomato.

Her teeny-tiny cardigan was still wet.

Finally, at three inches high, Lacey stopped shrinking.

Some of the kids gasped. Others laughed.

“You witch!” Lacey shrieked from down on the floor. Her voice was a squeak.

“She looks like a doll,” a sixth grader said.

“Too small for a doll,” another kid said.

Tiny Lacey stomped her tiny foot. “I am not a doll. Zinnia! Pick me up!”

Lacey’s friend Zinnia moved in, looking horrified. She lifted Lacey gently between her thumb and forefinger and put her in the outside pocket of her backpack, which she left unzipped.

“Call my mother!” shouted Tiny Lacey. “Start a petition! Stop the upside-down magic! Call my father, too! Take me to the nurse! Take me to the principal! I want a dry sweater!”

Zinnia carried the backpack carefully toward Nurse Riley’s office, followed by Rune. They walked on tiptoe to avoid the rocks.

Lacey’s tiny voice could be heard for longer than Nory would have imagined. “Rune, get me a tissue! I want to dry off! Do you think we should call the newspaper? We’ll need photographs, of course. Zinnia, I’m hungry. I want a grape. You’re going to have to slice it into tiny pieces.”

Marigold moaned. “I feel terrible.”

Nory patted her arm. “Don’t worry.”

“You say that, but you’re worried!” Marigold wailed. “I see it on your face!”

Nory tried to fix her features, but Marigold was right. Lacey Clench might be tiny, but she could still cause big trouble.