“Hokey! Hokey, where are you?” I called out, feeling the panic rise in my voice.
In a flash, my sister leaped out of the cupboard, trailed by fine, lightning-white silk. She landed on the table with a frog-like grace, brushing the shimmering strands out of her dark teal hair. Beneath her feet, frost spread across the mahogany like breath on a mirror.
“Hokey!” I said, barely holding back irritation. “Get off the table! You’re freezing it again.”
Hokey hopped down, her eyes wide and round with that puppy-dog look she always uses to get out of trouble. Not this time. I was in full-blown crisis mode.
“My throat is burning, my eyes are watering, my skin’s tingling, my hair’s growing, and my feet are itching,” I said, gesturing wildly. “I think I’m turning into…you-know-what.”
“What?” she croaked.
“A soda!” I blurted, barely holding back a sob.
Hokey’s eyes went even wider, and she started hopping around my room in a frenzy. For a moment, I thought she was laughing, but no, she was in a full-blown panic.
“Call Mama!” I shouted.
Hokey dashed out of the room, her hair streaming behind her, and moments later returned with Mama.
“Hokey said you’re turning into a soda? That’s impossible!” Mama checked my symptoms with a frown, bustling around the room and pulling out bottles and jars. Her beehive hair, normally light green, started sizzling to a bright vermillion. I knew what that meant, she was definitely worried.
“Mama, look!” I whimpered, glancing down. “I’m shrinking!”
Sure enough, my arms and legs were pulling inward, and my skin was feeling oddly cold and fizzy.
“Oh, goodbye, cruel world! Mama, if I’ve been enough of a terror to deserve this, at least let me turn into grape soda. I’ve always wanted to be grape soda.”
Mama pressed a bottle into my hands. “Drink this, honey! It’ll fix you!”
But it was too late. I could feel myself hardening, my skin turning transparent and glassy, and a chill spreading over me. I closed my eyes, bracing for the end.
When I opened them, Hokey and Mama were staring at me. I lay on the bed, glistening with a frosty sheen. A label across my middle read, Dragona’s Poisonous Orange Soda.
Orange soda? Really?
“Well,” I thought, feeling a strange sort of satisfaction. “At least I’m poisonous.”
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