Even when I look back on it, I can scarcely believe it. The events seem a blur. My recollections seem distorted. The whole thing seems unreal.

  But I know it was real, because what happened afterwards was real — all too real, in fact, and deadly dangerous. And none of that would have happened had it not been for what happened in my bedroom that afternoon with Freddy and Dr. Cumberton.

  "You have a plan?" I asked.

  "Yes," Freddy said. "And you, Melvin, are the key to it all."

  Me?" I asked.

  "Let's sit on the floor, in a circle," Freddy said.

  We did so, and Freddy held out one hand to me and the other to Dr. Cumberton. Then Dr. Cumberton and I joined hands, completing the circle.

  "Do you remember what I have always said to you?" Freddy asked softly. "I believe that we all have the power to change ourselves into whatever we want to be."

  "Yes," I said quietly. A tingle ran from his hand to mine. "You have told me that many times."

  "It is what my family believes," Freddy said. "It is what my father believes, what my grandfather believes, and what people in my family have believed for many generations."

  Something in his voice filled me with calm and made me feel pure inside. I closed my eyes.

  "It is not easy," Freddy said. "It takes work. It takes honesty. It requires a purpose that is clean and pure and not selfish — not related to fame or fortune or even your own personal happiness."

  I sat with my eyes closed, letting his words wash over me.

  "But it can be done."

  I rocked forwards and backwards a little, listening. I felt Freddy holding one of my hands and Dr.

  Cumberton holding the other. It seemed to me that each of my hands began to tingle and feel warm and prickly.

  "Melvin, I want you to listen to the words of my people," Freddy said. "You will not understand them because they are in my language, not yours. Still, I hope they will find their way to your heart and do their work."

  I cannot repeat the words he said then, nor can I describe the effect they had on me. They sounded soft, rhythmic, beautiful, and somehow filled with truth.

  It seemed to me that I disappeared: There was no more Melvin, only truth, earth, nature, and reality. I felt the peace of the forest, the beauty of the animals, and the warmth of the sun, which makes all things grow.

  I felt the happiness of babies and the wisdom of the old. I felt the joy of peace and the pain of war. I felt the kindness of justice and the cruelty of all the things in the world that cause hurt and are not fair.

  Tears ran down my cheeks.

  Still the rhythm and beauty of Freddy's words washed over me.

  Then I felt as if I were being stretched in some grotesque and horrible way, like a doll made of bubble gum or a man made of clay. I could see nothing, but it seemed that first one arm was stretched to an impossible length and then the other.

  I could no longer hear Freddy's voice. Surely I was flying through space. Everything was dark and empty. My legs stretched; my body warped and flattened and twisted.

  I spun round and over, flying and floating. I tried to scream but I could make no sound. I opened my eyes but everything was dark. I tried to hold tighter to Freddy's hand and Dr. Cumberton's, but their

  hands were gone from mine.

  I was alone.

  My body twisted and flipped and rolled through emptiness. I felt scared and dizzy, stretched and distorted.

  Suddenly, my feet touched something solid.

  Everything was still black. My head was spinning. My hands pressed on something solid in front of me, propping me up. I stood for a minute, swaying, trying to catch my balance.

  Then I heard the voice of a grown-up man quite close to me

  "Mr. President," the voice said. "Are you all right?

  Chapter Twenty-One

  I opened my eyes and immediately closed them again. The light was so bright it blinded me.

  Slowly, I opened my eyes again, first one and then the other. Light streamed in through doors made, from top to bottom, of small square panes of glass. Beyond, as I squinted against the light, I saw a beautifully landscaped garden, filled with bushes, trees, rolling lawns and red roses.

  I looked down at my hands. They were braced against a carved wooden desk, huge and dark, with a surface about as big as my parents' dining room table. You could have set dinner for six on top of that thing.

  I raised my eyes and looked around the room in which I found myself. Fancy chairs and couches were set in little arrangements around coffee tables. The floor was covered with a rug that featured, in the middle, an embroidered American eagle.

  I looked up at the walls and noticed they were rounded, not straight. There were no corners in this room.

  The whole office was egg-shaped — sort of oval, actually.

  Then I realized what had happened.

  I was in the Oval Office, the office of the president of the United States of America. And I was standing behind the desk, not in front of it, so that could only mean, believe it or not, that I was now...

  "Mr. President," the voice said again, "are you all right?"

  I looked to my right and saw a distinguished-looking middle-aged man in a dark suit standing there, looking concerned.

  "Uh, yes," I said, and my voice sounded impossibly rumbly and deep. "I'm fine."

  Then I looked down at my feet and got dizzy all over again.

  Not only were my feet in shoes that were polished to a shiny black gloss, but they had to be six feet away from my head! I had never seen them so far away. I felt like I was standing on stilts. Being a grown-up was going to take a little getting used to.

  I swayed before catching my balance again.

  "I'm fine," I repeated. "You can leave now."

  "Yes, sir," the man said. "Remember, you have a cabinet meeting at 3:30, sir. Shall I come and get you when it's time?"

  "Please do," I rumbled in my new bass voice. "That will be fine."

  I was glad the man, whoever the heck he was, had offered to come and get me. Otherwise, I would have had no idea how to find the cabinet room.

  He left, closing the door quietly on his way out. I sank into the leather chair behind me and stared around me, feeling frightened.

  I was the president of the United States, supposedly a very powerful person. But I was all alone, and I had no idea in the world what I was supposed to do.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The cabinet met around the largest table I have ever seen.

  It was large and oblong. If I thought the desk in the Oval Office was large, you could have set dinner for about fifty-eight people on this table.

  I sat in the center of one the long sides. A bunch of grown-ups filed in and took the other seats as if they had been assigned to them, though I saw no nametags.

  Most of the members of my cabinet seemed to be elderly white men. All of them sat down and put yellow, lined pads of paper on the table in front of them.

  I guess they were ready to take notes in case I said anything worth remembering, or gave them a bunch of orders.

  One man, a handsome middle-aged man with dark, olive-colored skin, straggled in late. As he rounded the table towards his chair, he bent his head close to my ear.

  "Melvin ... I mean, Mr. President. It's me, Freddy," he whispered, then headed for his seat.

  Well, that was a relief. I wasn't quite as alone as I had thought.

  The cabinet, I knew from all the reading I had done about the presidents, consisted of the heads of the main departments of government — the Department of State, which does all our negotiating with other countries; the Department of Defense, which does all our fighting with other countries; the Department of the Interior, which takes care of all the land the government owns inside the United States; and so forth.

  I sat in my seat and looked around the table.

  Every single person there was looking at me. No one spoke.

  Then I realized that it was my job to run the meeting. And I did not have the faintest idea how to go about it.

  I had to think fast.

  "All right," I rumbled in my deep voice. "Let's do something a little different today. I want each of you to tell my your department's top priority — the most important thing you want to accomplish this year."

  All of them looked as me as if I were crazy, but I had started so I had to go through with it.

  "OK," I said, in a leader-like voice. "We'll start with..."

  I looked at the man sitting next to me. I had no idea what his name was or what department he ran.

  "Uh, we'll start on my right," I said firmly.

  I listened to one person after another. I realized pretty soon that the top priority of each person there was to get more money for his department.

  The Department of Education wanted more computers, the anti-pollution people wanted more money to measure smog, the war-makers wanted more bombs, and so on.

  One piggy-faced man in a military uniform made a big speech about how he needed more money to protect the president, namely me. He said that, with all the threats from terrorists in the modern world, the Army needed to help the Secret Service make sure the president was safe — and what the Army needed to do that was, you guessed it, more money.

  "I know you want the very best protection money can buy," he said. Then he smiled a piggy little smile at me as if he had just said something very clever.

  No one seemed to be saying, "My top priority is to do something good for the people of this country."

  Until I came to Freddy.

  "Mel-. .. er, Mr. President," he said. "Rather than tell you the Department of the Interior's top priority for the coming year, I would rather talk about our top priority for the coming week. And it is something that I think should be the priority of every person in this room."

  "Fine, Fre- . . . er, Mr. Secretary," I said. "Please go ahead."

  "It has come to my attention," Freddy said, his voice sounding deep and rumbly, too, "that in Atkin-son, Nebraska, on the banks of the Elkhorn River, there is something that is supposed to be a state-of-the-art dairy factory. But I have evidence that, instead of milk, the factory produces anthrax."

  Everyone in the room stared at Freddy. No one said a word.

  "The Elkhorn River is rising, and more rain is forecast," Freddy continued. "If that factory floods and anthrax gets into the river, that poison could be carried downstream into the Platte River, the Missouri River, and on into the Mississippi River all the way down to New Orleans."

  "Please go on," I said.

  "The water supply for millions of Americans would be poisoned," he said. "My top priority for this week is getting the plant closed down."

  Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that the piggy-faced man's face had gone white. His fat cheeks trembled and anger shone from his eyes.

  "Close the Nacirema plant?" he shouted. "Over my dead body!"

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The cabinet meeting erupted into a tumult of shouts. All those elderly white men began acting like little kids, yelling and pointing fingers and hurling insults.

  I slammed my fist on the table.

  "I will not tolerate that kind of childish behavior in here!" I boomed.

  They fell silent.

  "Now," I said, "I want everyone to listen closely. At our next meeting, I want each of you to present a new top priority for your departments — one that you choose not because it will get your department more money, but because it will do some good for the people of this country."

  All of them scribbled notes on their pads.

  "Number two," I said, "I want secretary of the Interior" — Freddy nodded at me — "and, uh, the general here..."

  "General Burden," the piggy-faced military man said, looking angrier than ever.

  "Ah, yes, excuse me," I said. "And General Burden to meet me in my office in half an hour to discuss the Nacirema plant. Meeting dismissed."

  All the cabinet members filed out, grumbling and looking at me strangely. As Freddy passed, I grabbed him by the arm and pulled him aside.

  "Two questions," I whispered into his ear. "First, do you know who that guy is there in the dark suit?"

  I motioned toward the man who had been with me in the Oval Office when I first morphed into the president of the United States.

  "Yes," Freddy whispered back. "That's Mat-tingly, your chief of staff. He's your head assistant. If you tell him what needs to be done, I think he knows how to write up the orders and who to send them to."

  "Second," I whispered, putting my lips close to Freddy's ear again, "and more important right at the moment. Have you managed to find the bathroom yet?"

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  I looked at my watch, waiting for the meeting to begin, and saw that I was wearing cufflinks with the presidential seal on them.

  I wondered what I would do when it got to be time to go to bed. I wasn't sure I could get those things off. My hands might be stuck in my sleeves.

  Then I began to wonder what other problems I would run into when my day was over. I would sleep in the White House living quarters, of course. But when I went there, would I find a wife?

  Yikes! I don't like girls that much. I mean, a few of them are OK, but having one around full time? I don't think so.

  Yet it seemed possible. Everyone around the White House knew me, even though I didn't know them. It appeared that I had not morphed into President Melvin, but into the president who was already in office.

  That gave me chills. I must be President Clutter, I thought. Holy smokes, that guy was a jerk!

  Now that was me? I was him?

  I wanted to barf.

  The door opened and Mattingly, my chief of staff, walked in. He was followed by Freddy and General

  Burden. I motioned for them to take seats opposite my huge, carved desk.

  "General," I said, "what the heck did you mean that the Nacirema plant would only be closed over your dead body? Don't you see how dangerous this poison is to so many people?"

  "Mr. President," the general began, and I could see that he was still mad, "you yourself approved this project. I see no need to go over it all again. You were thoroughly informed before you made your decision."

  "Inform me again," I said. "I think Fre-... er, the secretary of the Interior has made some excellent points."

  It was the only thing I could think of to say, of course. I couldn't remember the first time I'd been informed, because I hadn't been there, if you know what I mean.

  "Well, the U.S. Army decided it needed the ability to make anthrax as a biological weapon," General Burden said.

  I nearly jumped out of my chair.

  "The U.S. Army?" I shouted. "You mean, that deadly poison is being made on the banks of the Elk-horn River by the government of the United States? What bonehead approved that idiotic idea?"

  "You did, sir," the general snapped. His cheeks shook and spit flew out of his mouth as he talked.

  "Well, I've changed my mind!" I yelled.

  "Sir!" he yelled back at me. "The Iraqis have biological weapons! So, probably, do the Syrians! So, I'll bet you, do the Russians! Lots of our enemies have them. So we have to have them, too."

  He was turning red. I answered him quietly this time.

  "Do we think the Iraqi government is so wonderful?" I asked.

  "Wonderful!" he sputtered. "They're awful! Terrible! Evil!"

  "Then why," I asked, "would we decide that we want to copy their behavior? If they're so awful, why should we do exactly the same things they do? That doesn't make sense, now, does it, general?"

  After I said that, I thought the general's head was going to explode. He swallowed hard and said that the Iraqis could kill millions of innocent people with their biological weapons.

  "So we need to be able to kill millions of innocent people, too?" I asked. "I may have approved it before, but today I am ordering that the Nacirema Dairy Production and Research Center be closed, permanently."

  For a moment, I thought that General Burden might cry. Instead, he stood up and marched out of the room.

  On his way out the door, he looked back and said, "You'll never get away with this. Never!" Then he slammed the door.

  Freddy, Mattingly and I were left in the room.

  "Mattingly," I said, "see to it that the Nacirema plant is closed at once."

  "Yes, sir," Mattingly replied. "I'm glad you've changed your decision, sir."

  "One more thing," I said. "How did the factory get that name? It sounds like the name of some tribe of Native Americans, but it's not a tribe I've ever heard of."

  Mattingly looked at me strangely.

  "You gave it that name, sir," he said. "Because it's our factory, and it needed a code name."

  "I gave it that name?"

  "Yes, because it is run by the American government," Mattingly said. "Nacirema is American spelled backwards."

  "Geez," I said. "That sounds like the kind of code a kid would think up."

  "That's what you said at the time, sir," Mattingly replied. "You said it was the perfect code, because adults never think like kids, so no adult in the world would ever figure it out."

  "Hmmm," I said. "That was pretty good thinking."

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  I breathed a huge sigh of relief. The problem was solved. The plant would be closed.

  I felt like exchanging high fives with Freddy and shouting "Wahoo!"

  But it didn't seem as if that would be an appropriate thing for the president of the United States to do.

  Presidents tend to be pretty serious people.

  Still, I felt pretty happy. Atkinson, Nebraska, was saved, not to mention the entire Mississippi Valley, down through the heart of the United States.

  "Well," I said, sighing again, "I guess that's that."

  The tension was gone. It was time to hold hands with Freddy, have him say the mystical words in his tribal language, morph back into myself, and go back home. I was so happy I almost laughed out loud.

  "I'm afraid that's probably not the end of it," Mattingly said.

 

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