He guessed he must now be ten years old! It was so weird to be looking at a total stranger in the mirror. There was no trace of Josh in the reflection. Long, straight black hair and dark brown eyes, slender almost to the point of being skinny, large teeth and hands and feet that looked too big. The light blue potion had made him a little kid, and a Chinese kid at that!
"Lin!" A woman's voce startled him. What was a woman doing in the dorm? "Lazy child! Get out here and help your brother!" There was something else odd - he understood what she was saying, but the sounds were not English. He turned towards the voice and staggered again as the dorm room shifted around him. Sunlight streamed in through an open door, where a Chinese woman scowled and gestured for him to come out.
"But... my name is not Lin! I'm not really..." He stopped, realizing that he was speaking in that same odd tongue. Chinese. He spoke and understood Chinese!
"Oh, really? Well, whoever you are today, you need to help your brother gather the noodles. As much as you like to eat them, you can help make them."
Josh moved to the door and stared out. A sun-drenched countryside provided the backdrop for a boy in his early teens who was winding what looked to be long strands of spaghetti. The older boy grinned. "Yeah, you don't help, you can eat the scraps from the dirt."
The woman and the other boy were obviously expecting him to work, and just as obviously, saw nothing wrong with him being a ten year-old Chinese boy. Lin? But he was an American boy named Josh who had been standing in a college dorm room just a few minutes ago! The potion! It had changed him, and then somehow moved him to China! Where? When? Could he get back?