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Remembering a spit wad pelting the back of his head, caused Pauly to sit up fast, dragging his heel across the plug and pulling it out of the drain.
“Great!” Pauly grumbled, scrambling to put it back before too much water escaped. His elbow bumped the chair next to the bathtub, knocking his jeans into the water. He fished them out as the penny he’d found earlier in the office plunked into the tub.
“I wish I’d shrink to nothing and just get sucked down the drain with the rest of the water,” he said, giving up and leaning back again. Just then he felt the water bubbling around his feet like the jets in a hot tub. He sat up to see what was going on. Strangely shaped bubbles were fizzing up from the bottom of the bath. He tried to jump out but was pulled under by a strong suction. It felt like little hairs were tickling every part of his body. He scrambled to reach the side of the tub to pull himself out but his arms were too short to reach.
Pauly lay still for a moment, staring up at the blurry ceiling and the wavering faucet. Something was still keeping him underwater. When he thought of drowning, he started to kick and thrash wildly again. To his horror the bathtub that his legs used to dangle over the edge of was now like an Olympic sized pool that he couldn’t see over the side of. Either everything around him was growing bigger or he was shrinking.
“This is impossible!” he yelled and then realized he was also talking and breathing underwater. One of the strange bubbles fizzing from the penny had encased him. He tried to push and grab at it but it was always just out of reach, moving with him.
A strong suction started to pull him deeper into the tub. Pauly swam frantically for the other side when he saw what was causing it. He hadn’t put the plug back in the drain and all the water was spiraling downward in one big whirlpool that was quickly pulling him and his bubble down the drain.
As he glided smoothly into the dark tunnel he caught a glimpse of the golden penny, caught up near the opening of the pipe. It had to be the cause of this he thought, remembering that Ms. Shyvly had scoffed at the idea of it being magic. Well, there was no doubt of that, he thought, bouncing from one side of the winding pipe to the other. The bubble was protecting him from being beat to a pulp like the thick stringy slime that clung to the pipe’s walls and made the water murky and hard to see ahead in.