Everything I’m about to explain happened in eleven seconds. Lucky for you, it felt like it was in slow motion, so I remember every last detail. And since you’re one of my all-time best friends, I’ll tell you the whole story in eleven one-second bullet points! Because you know how much I love lists. Here we go!
The amazing list of eleven things that happened in eleven seconds:
the first second: I saw a very large truck barreling toward the wheelbarrow. My two friends, Barker and Fen, were in that truck. They looked like they were screaming, but I couldn’t hear them because the truck was super loud. They were both staring at me.
the second second: Right before the truck hit the wheelbarrow, I looked at the giant Snerb eyeball. It was wide open, staring at the truck. This seemed like a good time to jump out of the way, so I took two quick steps and dove for the side of the road.
the third second: The truck hit the wheelbarrow. The sound this made was like a symphony warming up, but the instruments were buckets of fart putty, wet mops slapping a gym floor, buckets of water being dumped on a driveway, mashed potatoes hitting a plastic lunch tray, toilets flushing, and pulling a bunch of boots out of a swimming pool full of cooked oatmeal. This is the sound of a very large Snerb exploding out of a wheelbarrow. You’re welcome.
the fourth second: The Snerb went airborne. It looked like a jellyfish smooshing and squishing and expanding and stretching into the sky. All the many air hoses flopped around like ramen noodles and the whole thing was strangely beautiful, like a sunset. Okay maybe not a sunset, but still pretty, in a weird way.
the fifth second: The furry tube—or hose or whatever it was that connected my armpit to this thing flying through the air—started to pull. It was stretchier than I expected, like the biggest rubber band in the history of rubber bands. Naturally, I raised my hand like I wanted to answer a question in class, because a very powerful rubber band was pulling my armpit toward the sun.
the sixth second: I flew into the air. For the entire length of the sixth second, I thought this was incredibly cool. I am Jenny Kim, the girl who could fly.
the seventh second: I realized I wasn’t a bird or a plane or a UFO and flying was not in my skill set. I was not supposed to be flying. I went through the eight stages of fear while flying through the air attached to a Snerb: crying, screaming, punching the air, kicking the air, summersaults in the air, pretending to swim the backstroke, Yoga poses, and looking down. Looking down caused me to scream again.
the eighth second: As I was screaming and staring at the ground, I realized two things:
- I was really far from the ground.
- The truck was doing a burn out at the end of the dirt road. It was turning around and coming back.
the ninth second: The Snerb reached the end of its rise into the sky and began falling back to Earth. The big eyeball saw me as it went by and seemed to feel sorry for me, which I appreciated. I waved.
the tenth second: The hose attached to my armpit tightened again and pulled me toward the ground right behind the Snerb. It appeared we were both headed for trouble.
the eleventh second: The truck skidded to stop. Dust billowed in a giant circle underneath me, and the Snerb landed in the truck bed. This caused the Snerb to spread out like a water balloon squishing onto the pavement before it explodes, very useful for someone in my situation because the truck bed, with its high metal walls, had basically turned into a swimming pool. Half a second later, I landed on the Snerb for the second time in a half hour.
Pretty amazing, right? I mean the fact that I even survived is a big pile of marshmallow miracle sauce. It’s amazing! I laid on top of the Snerb like a snow angel and laughed. But then the loudspeaker on the front of the truck crackled to life again.
“Please exit the truck bed and find your way to the door,” Vexler said. “Initiating stage three.”
I heard the sound of the truck door opening somewhere down below. The Snerb had survived the fall and it was starting to make some new sounds I hadn’t heard before.
“Exit truck bed immediately,” Vexler said in her calm German accent. “Snerb is entering phase nine. Exposure no longer safe. I repeat, exit truck bed immediately.”
I sat up and felt the Snerb I was sitting on with my hands. It was furry, like a green on a golf course.
“Hey, what’s this thing?” I asked out loud.
I reached out and touched something about the size of a blender. It was white.
“There’s another,” I said, because a second one had popped out right next to me. “What are these things?”
They were appearing all around me, emerging from the depth of the Snerb, like objects floating up out of the ocean.
“Wait just a second here,” I said.
I figured out what they were as they continued to pop out in a circle all around me, because I was also sinking.
The Snerb was growing teeth.
And I was sitting in what was about to become its mouth.