Before Osheen knew it, his thoughts had drifted back to his own small feet. Disappointment about his so-far unsuccessful experiment filled his head. He let Mr Banyon’s reading voice wash over him, not hearing a single word. His mind was stuck on the hair growth serum. Maybe, he thought, even now his feet could be growing, and that soon they would break free from his shoes and explode from under the table. The thought instantly produced an all-colour, slow-mo image in his brain. He was interrupted from his daydream by Mr Banyon.

“Osheen, would you read the next paragraph, please?” he asked.

Fergus nudged him and pointed to the right place in the book.

Osheen sat up straight and began to read. He was doing very well until he reached the last few words in the sentence. “The spaceman returned to his spaceship and sat in the control seat,” read Osheen, but instead of ‘control seat’, it came out as ‘control feet’. Luckily, Mr Banyon didn’t appear to notice and moved on to the next reader.

Osheen settled back in his seat and let out a sigh of relief. His mind strayed again and he began to think of some words his Pappy had said to him once. ‘If you want to be a workman, like me, you’ll have to grow big, strong feet to fill out big workman's boots with steel toe caps.’ Osheen still wasn’t sure what steel toe caps looked like, but they sounded really cool. Pappy sometimes let him stand on the toes of his workman’s boots. They felt like cold, hard concrete. Pappy said the steel toe caps protected his toes from being squashed if something fell on them. Osheen wanted to grow big, strong feet just like Pappy’s more than anything else in the world. Then he would fit into workman’s boots with steel toe caps. But it seemed such a long way off unless his feet started to grow soon.

Mr Banyon collected the book from his desk and Osheen realised he’d missed the rest of the story.

“Did you like the story?” asked Fergus. “I thought it was kinda boring. There were no space aliens or monsters, but it was okay, I guess.”

“I wasn’t really listening,” admitted Osheen. “I was thinking about other stuff.”

“Like your feet?” asked Fergus cheekily.

“You heard that?” Osheen gasped. “My mind was on ‘seat' but my mouth said ‘feet’. D’ya reckon anyone else noticed?” He quickly glanced around the classroom.

“Nah, I don’t think so,” Fergus shrugged and pulled a ‘so what’  kind of face. “It doesn’t really matter.”