Why should Josh get all the fun? thought Ric.
He muttered the transformation spell again under his breath, and quickly followed it up with the words that made it retroactive.
It hit him all at once: the room spun, and he felt like he was falling...
But then his vision cleared and he realized he was just standing there, like he had been. After all, falling over was hard with four legs.
Ric looked down at his flip-flops, wiggling the toes on each foot in turn. Of course, his mom couldn't afford to keep him in shoes either; it was bad enough just buying all the flip-flop for him and his brother. Not to mention buying double pairs of shorts and jeans and tailoring them into four-legged wear.
Ric suddenly realized that there was a fair amount of hair on the four legs he was staring at... but of course, there had been for months now. He'd been going to ask Mr. Mendes about it... that's why he'd been interested in the book...
Ric shook his head, trying to separate old thoughts and memories from new ones. As he did, he caught a glance of himself in the mirror on the wall: he really was looking older. Older and taller than Josh again, thankfully. In fact, he looked like one of the freshman athletes from the high school, or even a sophomore.
Well, plus the four legs. He'd almost forgotten about those, since he'd always had them. Well, not always, but now always. It was confusing. He reached up to scratch the back of his head and noticed that his arm made a pretty big muscle.
"Well," said Mr. Mendes, completely obvilious to Ric's sudden change, "now that it's just us four-legged guys for the summer, what do you want to get up to?"