At first, the shock was so immense that all Matt could do was howl to the ceiling. When his voice got tired, though, he started to breathe, and as he took deep breaths, he began to think. And while he thought, he couldn't stop looking at himself in the mirror. Yes, he was a dog, with no real explanation of how it could have happened, and that was frightening and unexpected, but how bad was it, really? Very bad, he tried to tell himself at first: 'I'm supposed to be a boy! What will my parents say? I need to get ready for school!'
But then, dogs don't have to go to school, do they? They don't have to take baths or put on clothes or take tests. Of course, they also don't get to play video games. But they do get to play other games. They get to chase balls and catch frisbees. They get to play with dogs and chase squirrels. They get to sniff things--and Matt started noticing that he really wanted to sniff things. The scent of wood, glass and varnish was practically blasting his nostrils from the mirror he was looking at, and all sorts of other smells were reaching him from the rest of the room. He could smell and hear his family and other rooms, and he could smell breakfast. Dogs do get to eat breakfast, right?
'I guess there's nothing really wrong with me, except for the fact that I'm a dog now,' he thought, realizing he wasn't really in any pain and didn't feel sick, even though his entire body had reshaped during the night. Maybe the idea of spending the day as a dog wasn't really so frightening, after all.
'But how long am I even going to be like this?' he thought. Part of him wanted to examine the mirror some more to see if there was some way that it might change him back, or even if it was actually the mirror that did this. But increasingly, Matt found himself more interested in sniffing around the room and looking for things to chase or chew on. As he trotted toward his door with his nose to the ground, he heard and even smelled a human coming toward the same door from the other side. "What was all that noise in here?" the person asked. The person was...