"Anyway, what I was saying, was . . . Rachel? Are you listening?"

  No, I wasn't listening. I was busy trying to see

  if any other parts of me were turning into grizzly bear. Because, see, that's what it was. I'd seen those feet before. They were bear feet.

  "Urn, yes! Yes. I am listening very closely!"

  Oh, please! No way! I can't morph here! Not right in Chapman's office. I focused. I concentrated. Demorph!

  Chapman just kept droning on. On and on about The Sharing. And all the while, my shoes were torn to ribbons. And my legs, from the knees down, grew shaggy with long, rough brown fur. And hard nails grew where my toes had been.

  "Anyway," Chapman said, suddenly glancing at his watch. "I'm going on and on. And you need to get back to class."

  "What?" I asked frantically.

  "Just think about it, Rachel," Chapman said. "Now, go straight back to class. No dawdling."

  I gulped. What could I do?

  I bent over and quickly stuffed the torn remnants of my shoes into my backpack.

  My feet were like huge, fur boots.

  In fact . . .

  I stood up and headed for the door. I paused with my hand on the knob. I turned back and saw Chapman staring hard at my feet.

  "Oh, you like my new boots?" I asked.

  Chapman smiled. "The things you kids will wear."

  "Heh-heh. Yeah, I guess I'm just a fashion victim."

  I got out of there fast. By the time I made it to the girls' room my feet had returned to normal. I walked barefoot to the gym and got my gym shoes.

  I was shaking more than I had from falling into the crocodiles the day before.

  After all, a crocodile can only kill you. Chapman is a Yeerk. And they can do things that make plain old death seem easy.

  I meant to ask Ax about my little problem. I had promised Cassie I would. But right after school we had the mission. And if I'd brought it up then, everyone would have made me stay home.

  Maybe that would have been the smart thing to do.

  But it seemed to me that the sudden, surprise morphing had occurred just twice. The first time it had been a total catastrophe. But the second time only my feet had morphed.

  Obviously, whatever was the matter with me, I was getting better. Probably it would never even happen again.

  Probably.

  I called my dad on his cell phone when I got out of school. "Daddy?

  Are you in a meeting or anything?"

  "No, honey, I'm outside the courthouse waiting for this man I'm supposed to be interviewing. What's up? Are you okay?"

  "Yeah, I haven't fallen into anything or had any buildings collapse on me. So far. I just wanted to let you know I'll be hanging with Cassie. We'll probably go to the mall or the library or something."

  "Okay. Well, be sure to be back at the hotel by six, okay? I want to have dinner with you. Take a cab. Do you have enough money?"

  "Yes. I'll see you for dinner."

  Then I called my mom at work, got her voice mail, and left the same basic message.

  It was sad how easy lying had become for me. I guess a lot of kids lie occasionally to their parents. But I have to do it way too much. Someday I'll be able to tell everyone the whole truth. That will be a relief.

  Anyway, we were all supposed to meet up in the air above the beach. That was the plan. All of us except Ax and Tobias had the perfect morphs for the occasion. But it was one I hadn't used in a longtime.

  The tricky part was finding a safe place to morph. I headed for the stand of trees beyond

  the athletic field. Unfortunately, kids went there sometimes, and I couldn't risk being seen.

  Fortunately, Tobias arrived to help.

 

  I scratched my head and casually looked up to the sky. I spotted the red-tailed hawk outlined against a fluffy white cloud.

 

  I couldn't answer because you can only make thought-speak when you're in a morph. But I trusted Tobias totally. Hawk eyes are about ten times better than human eyes. Tobias could have told me how many mice and rats and skunks and toads and squirrels were in that stand of woods. Let alone how many big, noisy, clunky humans were there.

  I walked quickly into the trees. There was a ton of trash: soda cans and chip wrappers and McDonald's bags. I laughed, because for the morph I was going into, this was like the perfect world.

  Tobias called down.

  I nodded. Then I focused on the morph. And I tried not to focus on the fact that morphing had

  gotten very weird since the day before. Like it was normal the rest of the time.

  I began to shrink very quickly. Pine needles and dead leaves and beer cans and assorted trash all came rushing up.

  Shrinking is weird because it's so much like falling. You don't think, Oh, I'm getting small. You think, Oh, I'm falling!

  You fall and fall and fall, but somehow you never actually land. It's just that a can that started off seeming to be as big as your foot becomes as big as half your body. And a McDonald's bag that you could have stepped on is now so large you could crawl inside it. Leaves smaller than your hand are now as big as those little bathroom rugs.

  As I shrank, I could see my flesh turning white. White as snow. White as paper. And then, when I was a creepy, shrinking ghost, the feather patterns begin to appear. They were tiny, close, delicate feathers. Much smaller than the owl or eagle morphs I used.

  My teeth melded together and began to force themselves outward, forming a single hornlike protrusion. It pushed out and split open horizontally, creating a hooked beak.

  I spread my arms wide and saw that they were already wings. Not the broad, powerful wings of

  an eagle. Shorter, sharper, narrower, more acrobatic wings.

  I had become the bird that is never endangered. The bird that lives on all seven of the seven continents. The bird that seems to thrive in every environment.

  I was the mighty seagull.

  Eater of fish, french fries, melted candy, eggs, Burger King Whoppers, popcorn, beef jerky, pickle slices, maraschino cherries, cheese puffs, burritos, and basically any other food that has ever been invented.

  King of scavengers! Lord of the trash!

  I flapped my wings and took to the sky. I flapped hard and rose to treetop level. And below me, the beauty of the world was revealed to my alert, seagull vision.

  Food was everywhere! Everywhere humans threw garbage was a restaurant to

  me. The Dumpster behind the school! The parking lot of the convenience store! I saw it all. I spotted every blowing candy wrapper. I noted every single bit of road kill.

  Other birds had to kill to eat. Other birds had narrow, cramped environmental niches with just one or two kinds of acceptable food. Not me. I could live on junk food and garbage.

  And that's why the skies were filled with my brothers and sisters. I saw them everywhere, al-

  ways near the ground, always on the lookout for the next bread crumb.

  Above me I spotted a dangerous form . . . the dark silhouette of a bird of prey. But I wasn't too worried. He was high up, and I was fast and very agile.

  I flapped hard and flew fast, zooming like a wobbly, erratic rocket above the treetops, over the roofs, flitting through telephone wires, skimming easily over lawns and yards and gardens.

 

  What the . . . ?

 

  It took a few seconds for me to track. The voice in my head was Tobias. Tobias was a human. So was I.

  Oh. Hello. Wake up, Rachel.

 

  It was embarrassing, actually. When you first do a morph it's very hard to control the mind of the animal. I mean, when I'd morphed the crocodile, even though I was totally prepared, I'd been ready to chomp that kid.

  But I'd done the seagull before. I shouldn't have had any difficulty with it.

  Tobias asked.

 

  This wasn't related to the problem with uncontrolled morphing. This was just a minor thing. A minor loss of concentration.

  Nothing to worry about. That's what I told myself.

 

  <0f course I know the way to the beach,> I said, still mad for no good reason.

 

  Tobias peeled off and I flew on. One thing the seagull knew was how to find the beach.

  But I was not a happy little seagull.

  Something was wrong with me, and it wasn't going away.

  We met high above the beach. Four seagulls, looking totally normal among the hundreds of other seagulls. And higher up, floating on the thermals, a red-tailed hawk and a harrier.

  The harrier was Ax. He'd never acquired a seagull. The harrier morph was a type of hawk, about the same size as Tobias.

  Jake asked.

  He was one of the wheeling, screaming seagulls around me, but I couldn't be sure which one.

  I said. That's what I almost always say at the start of a mission. Everyone expected me to say it.

  The truth was, I felt nervous and worried and totally unsure of myself. But people expected me

  to be all gung ho. If I hadn't been, they'd have known something was very wrong with me.

  Marco said sarcastically.

  <0h, shut up, Marco,> I said.

  Jake said.

  Marco said.

  Tobias laughed.

  Jake asked.

 

  Marco said.

  Tobias said.

  I said. It was all the usual banter before we go on a mission. It felt good to be doing something. Action

  was better than sitting around waiting to see if I was going to morph out of control.

  And I was still looking forward to actually seeing Jeremy Jason McCole. There was still the possibility we could rescue him or something.

  Tobias said,

  We said good-bye to Tobias. I know he hates not being able to go with us on every mission. He feels like he's not doing enough, I guess. Which is stupid because really, no one does more for the cause than Tobias.

  And none of us has paid a higher price in this war with the Yeerks than Tobias has.

  We flapped away, slowly emerging from the dogfight of seagulls in the sky. We crossed the line from sand to surf. And then we kept going, out over green water and on to the deeper blue.

  There was a breeze blowing against us and it was a struggle to make headway. But this was what seagulls were built to do. The seagull brain knew how to exploit every lull in the breeze. And the body was almost tireless.

  Ax's harrier, on the other hand, was having a harder time. Hawks are made for soaring, or swooping down on their prey. They are great at riding the thermals, the big, billowy updrafts of

  warm air. But they aren't distance flyers. They can't just flap their wings endlessly.

  But he still had better long-range vision than we did.

  Ax announced. He didn't complain, but he sounded tired.

  Cassie asked excitedly.

  I said.

 

  I added.
  Marco, of course.

  Ax said.

  Marco said.
  Jake muttered.

 

 

  Marco said.

  Jake agreed. I think he was kidding. But I couldn't be sure.

  Marco went on.

  Jake said quickly.

  Jake gets embarrassed any time anyone mentions his feelings for Cassie. And we were practically caught up to the yacht.

 

 

 

 

 

  I jeered.

  I flapped hard to pull away from Jake and Marco. Ax gratefully peeled off, soaring back and away on the breeze.

  The yacht was very large. I don't know how big, but it was big enough that the four people lounging on the aft deck could have played a game of volleyball if they'd wanted to. I mean, this was not some little motorboat.

  Cassie and I moved behind the boat. Below us, propellers were churning the sea turquoise and white. Just ahead, we could clearly see the four people.

  One was the movie producer wearing shorts and an open shirt. I'd seen him on CNN.

  One was a man who stood with his back to us.

  The third person was a woman in a bikini. She was young and pretty.

  And the fourth person . . . yes! There was no mistaking that hair. That face. Those lips.

  Cassie said.

  <0h, yes,> I agreed.

  Jeremy Jason McCole. Star of Power House. At least he was the star if you forgot about that comedian guy who played his father.

  Jeremy Jason McCole, who had appeared in

  basically every fanzine published in the last five years. Most of which either Cassie or I had read.

  Cassie said.

 

 

 

 

  I said.

 

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