Free Say Cheese - and Die Screaming! by R. L. Stine

scratched. Chunks of skin.
    Shari took a step back. She let the new photo fall to the carpet. “Oh, this is so horrible!” she declared. “You’re still
huge—and now all your skin is cracking off!”
    “Ohh! My back itches so bad!” I wailed. “But I can’t reach it.”
    “I’m not going to scratch it for you!” Shari declared. “It—it’s too gross!”
    I pulled a chunk of scaly, red skin off the back of my hand. “Do you want me
to take a new picture of you?” I asked Shari. “Maybe you’ll have better luck.”
    “No! No way!” she cried. She took another few steps back. “No new picture. It
will only make things worse.”
    Her face twisted in disgust. She swallowed hard. “I’m sorry, Greg,” she
choked out. “But you look so gross, I think I’m going to be sick.”
    I tried to scratch the back of my neck. But my arms were too fat. I couldn’t
reach back there.
    I rubbed my forehead. A big chunk of skin dropped off and bounced on the
carpet.
    “Let’s just rip up the photos!” Shari declared.
    “Huh?” I gaped at her.
    She bent to pick up the scaly new picture of me. “Let’s rip them all up,” she
urged. “I’ll bet as soon as we rip them up, our bodies will return to normal.”
    I stopped my frantic scratching for a moment. “Do you think so? Do you think
that’s all we have to do?”
    “Maybe,” Shari replied. “It’s worth a try—don’t you think?”
    I pulled the first two photos from my pocket. The negative of Shari and the
first fat photo of me.
    “I’ll rip these two up,” I said. “You tear that one. We’ll see what happens.”
    We both held the photos up. I started to tear mine—then stopped.
    “Maybe if we rip them up, we’ll disappear completely!” I exclaimed.
    Shari and I stared at each other. Our hands stayed in the air, ready to tear
the snapshots to pieces.
    Should we do it?

 
 
24
     
     
    “No!” Shari cried. “Don’t do it!”
    We both lowered the snapshots.
    “You’re right,” I said. My whole body was shaking. “It’s too dangerous.”
    “If we tear the photos to pieces, we might be torn to pieces, too,” Shari
said. “Or we might disappear completely and never come back.”
    I shuddered. “Let’s not talk about what might happen to us,” I
moaned. “Look at us. What could be worse?”
    “A lot of things,” Shari sighed. “We’ll think of something to save ourselves,
Greg. We just have to think positive.”
    I stared at her. “What did you say?”
    “I said, think positive,” she repeated.
    Think positive.
    “Shari—you just gave me a really good idea!”
    I cried.
     
    * * *
     
    We carried the snapshots to Kramer’s, the photo store where my brother works.
    It wasn’t easy to walk there. I had to stop to catch my breath every few
steps. And I had to scratch my scaly, peeling skin. And I had to hold on to
Shari to keep the wind from blowing her away.
    The walk was only about eight blocks. But it took us more than an hour.
    When we finally stepped inside the store, my heart sank to my knees. I didn’t
see Terry.
    “He’s in the developing lab,” Mr. Kramer told me. He kept staring at Shari
and me. I guess we looked pretty weird. A stick figure and an elephant.
    I pulled Shari to the lab in the back of the store and knocked on the door.
You can’t just open the door and walk into the developing lab. If you let in the
light, you destroy the film in there.
    We waited about five minutes. Then Terry came out. At first, he didn’t
recognize me. I think he forgot that I had put on four hundred pounds in the
past few days.
    “Yuck. What happened to your skin, Greg?” he demanded, making a disgusted
face. “Have you got a rash or something?”
    “I don’t know,” I replied glumly. “Can you do me a favor, Terry?”
    He shrugged. “What’s the favor?”
    I held up the first two snapshots. The negative of Shari, and the positive of me weighing a ton. “Can you reverse these for
us?” I asked.
    He squinted