My belly wriggles like it’s trying to escape my body. And those butt symptoms my dad likes to ask about? I have them everywhere. My eyes itch. My scalp convulses. My skin feels like bubbling oatmeal.

Keep it together, I tell myself. You are Jake, a totally boring absolutely non-weird and completely solid individual.

I can tell myself anything, but that doesn’t mean my body will listen.

A tiny squeak escapes my lips as my right thumb sprouts little miniature thumbs like branches. A thumb tree is not something I’d ever imagined, and now I’ve got one.

My whole world vibrates. Desperately, I shove all my thumbs in my pocket and search my head for French words in case I need to activate Marcel.

Luckily, Agnes isn’t paying attention to me. I’m wriggling and weird, but so is the ground. The earth sags, and the grass we’re sitting on tilts down. Clumps of turf break loose and slide like puzzle pieces off an upended table into an expanding hole.

Agnes and I scrabble backward, trying to get away from the arcade air-hockey-sized chasm. Agnes grabs my arms to keep me from falling in, and I do the same to her with my non-thumb-tree hand.

Finally, the hole stops growing. Red soil sifts. Pebbles click-clack into the hole.

“What just happened?” I ask.

Agnes springs to her feet and leans over the edge of the hole.

“Sinkhole! Unstable ground gives way and everything above it collapses. And we were lucky enough to witness it!”

I do not feel very lucky.

Kids are running over as if there’s a cool fight to see. Whistles shriek as teachers and yard supervisors try to call them back.

While Agnes peers into the darkness below, I check out my thumb-hand and touch my ears and run my tongue over my teeth. Everything seems normal on the outside. On the inside I feel like soft-serve ice cream.

“Look at that!” Agnes says, pointing into the hole. “There’s some kind of ooze.”

“More like goo than ooze,” I say like I’m an expert on the difference between ooze and goo. Which I am, but why announce it?

The goo squirms from the ground near the rim of the hole, like an earthworm after a rain, except it’s big as a breakfast sausage link. It looks familiar. Not quite cake batter. Sort of what I look like when I go liquid. Like Jake batter.

Now kids crowd around the hole, shouting, laughing, pretending to push each other in.

Agnes takes a deep breath. “OH MY GOD THERE’S A DEAD BODY DOWN THERE!”

Everyone gets excited, shoving each other out of the way to get a better look, even the teachers. While they’re all distracted, Agnes drops to her knees, spoons the goo sausage into a plastic cup, screws the cap on, and seals it with a strip of tape.