Smiling should be easy. You pull up the corners of your mouth, maybe show some teeth, maybe don’t, and that’s it, you’re smiling.

Or, if you’re me, you grow a forked snake tongue, just for fun.

But only when nobody’s looking.

Only when you want to.

At least, that’s how it used to be.

Tomorrow’s the first day of middle school, and I have to keep my mouth and body under control, or else.

I face the bathroom mirror and try a smile, bright and friendly.

My teeth are all wrong.

Too small, too many, shaped like tiny, sharp arrowheads.

“Piranha teeth, great,” I mutter, being careful not to cut my tongue.

Things started going haywire in June. That’s when I started going haywire. I was at the grocery store with Mom, helping her pick out avocados for Tuesday Taco Night, and I had to get around an old man blocking the aisle. “Excuse me, sir,” I said, and he gave me a huge smile and told me I was very polite. For some reason the phrase “ear-to-ear grin” popped into my brain, and before I knew it, my mouth stretched so wide it curved around my face in an actual ear-to-ear grin. The top of my head might have toppled off if I’d smiled any bigger.

The old man screamed and ended up needing EMTs and oxygen and Mom rushed me out of the store and we didn’t have guacamole with our tacos that night.

That wasn’t my only accidental shapeshifting this summer. A week after the grocery store, I was bouncing on the trampoline in the backyard. On my last landing, my body flattened into a big tortilla. I managed to re-form my human shape after a few seconds, but if the neighbors had seen . . .

Shifting in public is very dangerous.

They could find out about me.

They is the police.

They is government agents.

They is my teachers and classmates. They is my friends.

They could be anyone.

That’s what Mom and Dad tell me all the time.

I try another smile in the mirror, just a tiny one.

I can do this. I’ve smiled before, hundreds of times. I’m just having some new-school nerves. I’m just freaking myself out.

Close my eyes.

Take a breath.

Think normal thoughts.

I open my eyes. Staring back at me is a Venus flytrap.

I am doomed.

The drop-off curb in front of Cedar Creek View Middle School is a chaos of cars and slamming doors and screaming kids. Mom and Dad insisted on driving me, even though I could have walked or ridden my bike. They say delivering me to school makes things easier, but I know this is a test.

Mom turns to look back at me. “Feeling good about today?”

What she means is, “Have you accidentally grown eyestalks? Have you reverted to pure goo form? Do you need a bucket?”