Chapter 3 We all walked most of the way home to gether, feeling worn out. The flying was a little tiring. And morphing always takes a lot out of you. Tobias flew high overhead. He didn't really participate in the conversation. It's hard for him. See, he can think-speak to us and we can understand him, but when we're in human shape we can only talk in the normal way. He can't hear us unless he's close by, and he can't be close and still fly. "This morphing thing would be so excellent if it weren't for the whole thing with the Yeerks," Marco was saying. "I mean, if it were just normal, we could really use these powers." "To do what? Fight crime?" Jake asked. Marco looked at him with a mixture of pity and amusement. "Fight crime? Who are you, Spiderman his I'm talking show business. Movies! TV shows! I could go on Letterman. I could be an entire episode of Stupid Pet Tricks all by myself." "You're right," I said, batting my eyes so he would know I was kidding, "you already have the stupid part down." "We'd be hot in horror movies," Cassie said. "Or how about as stuntmen?" Jake suggested. "One of us could jump off the tallest building and it would be totally realistic. Then we just morph into a bird on the way down and fly away." "Now I'm really mad at the Yeerks," Marco said. "They're getting in the way of my showbiz career. I could be a millionaire. I could be trad ing funny lines with Dave. I could have beautiful Hollywood supermodels all over me." "Uh-huh," I said, with a wink at Cassie. "Lots of women love animals. But sooner or later you'd have to change back into your actual self, Marco. And then, boom, they'd be outta there." We walked along the boulevard that goes by the construction site. It's this huge area of half- finished buildings with rusted earthmovers and cranes and backhoes scattered around. I guess it was originally going to be a shopping center, but for some reason they never finished it. We didn't take the shortcut through the con struction site, like we would have in the old days, though. See, it was at this construction site that we saw the Andalite prince's damaged fighter land. It was here that the Andalite warned us of the Yeerk conspiracy and gave us our special powers. It was also here that we saw the Yeerk com mander, Visser Three, murder the Andalite prince. Visser Three is the only one of the Yeerks who has our same power to morph. Visser Three is an Andalite-Controller, meaning he has an An dalite body. A human-Controller is a Yeerk with a human body. A Taxxon-Controller is a Yeerk with a Taxxon body. You get the idea. Visser Three is the only Yeerk to ever capture an Andalite body. So he's also the only Yeerk who can morph. That night at the construction site, he morphed into some creature from a far-off planet, a huge, horrible monster. And then he took the Andalite and . . . You know what? I really don't want to talk about that. . . . You'll have to ask Jake. We all fell silent as we passed by the site. Then I noticed that Cassie had stopped walking and was just standing there. I went back to her and realized that she was crying. "Are you okay?" I asked. She shook her head. "No. Are you?" I sighed. Flying around in the sky had been a wonderful distraction. But my head was still full of awful memories. "I guess not," I admitted. "Last night I had a terrible nightmare about the Yeerk pool. I was back down there. Down there in that vast open cave. And I was hearing the screams and cries of the people being dragged to the pool." Cassie nodded. "You know what's worse than the screams? The way they stop screaming once the Yeerk is in their heads. Once they've become Controllers. Then you know they are slaves again. Lost." "Like Tom." We both turned. It was Jake. He and Marco had seen us stop and had come back. Tom is Jake's brother. Tom is a human-Controller -- a human being enslaved by a Yeerk in his head. We'd found the Yeerk pool and gone down into that hell to get Tom. We'd failed. We'd barely escaped with our lives. Cassie put her arm around Jake's waist. "Someday we'll save Tom," she said. Jake kind of stroked Cassie's head. I guess he got embarrassed, because he instantly pulled away. Cassie didn't mind. She knows how guys are about showing their true feelings. I looked across the construction site and saw Tobias come fluttering down out of the sky. I couldn't see where he landed, because that part of the site is hidden from the road, but I knew right where he was -- on the spot where the Andalite had died. Somehow, in those brief moments when the Andalite had been with us, Tobias had formed some kind of special bond with him. We started walking again. "We need to find another way to get at them," I said angrily. It bothered me, imagining Tobias back in that maze of never-finished buildings mourning for the Andalite. "Get at who?" Marco asked suspiciously. "The French, Marco," I said sarcastically. "Who do you think? The Yeerks, duh." "Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Marco said. "We tried that, remember? We went down into the Yeerk pool after them and got our butts kicked. Yeerks ten, humans zero." "So you figure you should just give up?" I de manded. "We lost one game," Jake said. "You don't quit the sport just because you lose one game." "Some game," Marco said bitterly. "Some sport." "We didn't lose, anyway," I said. The others looked at me like I was crazy. "Look," I explained, "I know we didn't save Tom, and we sure didn't stop the Yeerks. But we gave them a rea son to be afraid, at least." "Yeah, they're terrified of us. Visser Three probably can't sleep at night, he's so worried about five kids," Marco said sarcastically. "Look, Visser Three doesn't think we're a threat. He thinks we're lunch." "He doesn't know who -- or what -- we are," I pointed out. "The Yeerks are convinced that we're Andalite warriors because they know that we can morph. And they know that we found the Yeerk pool, and infiltrated it, and took out a few of their Taxxons and Hork-Bajir while we were at it. I think they're probably a little nervous, at least." Jake nodded. "Rachel's right. But just the same, I don't think we want to try to go back to the Yeerk pool. Besides . . . the door is gone." We all stopped and stared at him. He shrugged. "Look, I just wanted to see if the door still worked, okay? Just in case. But it's not there anymore." The door leading down to the Yeerk pool had been hidden in the janitor's closet of our school. There were dozens of doors to the underground Yeerk pool, spread all over the city, but this was the only one we knew about. "So we find another way to get at them," I said. "We can follow Tom again, when it's time for his Yeerk to return to the Yeerk pool." Yeerks have to go to the pool every three days. They drain out of their hosts" heads and soak up Kan drona rays. "No. We leave Tom out of it," Jake said firmly. "If we call attention to him in any way, the Yeerks may decide he's trouble for them. They may de cide to kill him." Marco gave me a sour look. "This is what you want to keep doing? Risking our lives and the lives of everyone we know? For what?" "For freedom," Cassie said simply. Marco didn't have a smart answer to that. "There's still Chapman," Jake said. Chapman is our assistant principal. He's also one of the most important human-Controllers. He runs The Sharing, the club that helps recruit un suspecting kids into being hosts for the Yeerks. "If there were some way for us to get close to Chapman . . ." Jake let the words hang in the air. He carefully didn't look at me. But I knew what he meant. He'd obviously been thinking about this for a while. "Melissa?" I asked. He nodded. "It's a possibility." See, Melissa Chapman, Assistant Principal Chapman's daughter, is one of my closest friends. Or at least she used to be. The last few months, she'd been acting very strange toward me. Like she didn't care anymore. We take gymnastics together. Actually, we got into it at the same time. You know -- something to do together. "I don't like using a friend that way," I said. "Oh, suddenly the mighty Rachel is weaseling," Marco crowed. "You don't like using your friends? You're pretty willing to risk my life." "Sure, Marco, but who said you were my friend?" "Very funny," Marco said. But at the same time he looked a little hurt. "Kidding, Marco," I said. "Just kidding. Of course you're my friend. But you're an Animorph. Melissa is just an innocent bystander." "I wish I had never come up with that word," Marco said. "Animorph. Gimme a break." "Rachel, Melissa's father is one of the main Controllers," Jake said gently, ignoring Marco. "She's in this whether she likes it or not." I felt a bitter taste in my mouth. Jake was right, of course. Chapman was the logical lead to follow. And Melissa was our way to get close. It made sense. It made sense for me to betray an old friend. It also made me feel like dirt.
C This e next day after school I headed for my gymnastic
s class at the YMCA, which is just across from the mall. They have a big indoor pool, so the entire building always smells of chlo rine. Except for the weight room, which just smells like sweat. My class is taught in a smaller room, with blue mats covering the floor. We have balance beams and uneven parallel bars and a vaulting horse with a springboard. I'm okay at vaulting and the parallel bars, but I'm pretty lame at the balance beam. To be hon est with you, it kind of scares me. It takes such total concentration. It's not one of those real serious gymnastics classes. I mean, none of us is going to be going to the Olympics. When I started out, I had dreams of being the next Shannon Miller. But then I started to grow. I'm pretty tall now, for my age. People look at me now and say, "Oh, you're going to be a model," not "Oh, you could be a gym nast." Most of us in the class are too tall or too heavy to ever be serious gymnasts. We do it for fun and for exercise. I do it because I've always thought of myself as kind of clumsy. My mom says I'm not, but that's how I feel anyway. Besides, it's just cool, hitting the little spring board and flipping through the air to bounce off the vaulting horse and stick the landing. Not as cool as flying, maybe, but fun just the same. Melissa Chapman was in the locker room changing into her leotard when I came in. She's the exception to the rule in our class. She does look like a gymnast. She's small and thin, even though she doesn't starve herself like some fools who want to get into gymnastics. She has pale gray eyes and pale blonde hair and pale skin. She looks like one of those solemn elves in a Tolkien book. At first glance she looks delicate, but when you look a little closer, you see strength there, too. Melissa gave me the kind of not-very-warm smile she always gives me lately. Like she was distracted, or thinking about something more im portant. "Hey, Melissa," I said. "How's it going?" "Fine. How about you?" "Oh, pretty much the same old thing." That was a lie, of course. But what was I going to say? Yeah, Melissa, same old same old. Been turning into animals and fighting aliens. You know, the usual. Melissa didn't say anything else. She just adjusted her leotard and started to do a few little stretches. That's the way it was. We said hi, but not much more. It used to be we were very close. She was my second best friend, after Cassie. "Melissa, I was thinking . . . maybe you'd like to walk over to the mall with me after class? I have to buy a new pair of sneaks." "The mall?" She stammered a little, and then started blushing. "You mean, go shopping?" "Yeah. You know -- walk around and look at stuff and check out the cute guys and diss the snotty women at the perfume counters." I tried to sound casual, like it was no big deal. In the old days, it would have been totally nothing. But now Melissa looked like a trapped animal. When had Melissa and I gotten to be such strangers? "I'm, um, kind of busy," Melissa said. "Oh. That's cool. I understand." But I didn't understand. Not at all. She started
to walk away. I was going to let it go, but then I remembered: This wasn't just about a friend who had drifted away. This was about her father, one of the leaders of the Controllers. One of our most dangerous enemies. I grabbed her arm. "Melissa, look ... I feel like we've kind of gone in different ways, you know? And I miss you." She shrugged. "Okay, well, maybe we could get together sometime." "Not sometime, Melissa, that's just you blow ing me off. What's going on with you?" "What's going on with me?" she echoed. For a moment a look of extraordinary sadness dark ened her eyes and tugged downward at the cor ners of her mouth. "Nothing is going on with me," she said. "We'd better get out there or Coach Ellway will have a fit." She pulled her arm away. I just watched her go. I felt like a complete and total jerk. Something had happened to Melissa. And I hadn't even noticed. She was my friend and something had changed in her, and I hadn't seen it. I'd just gone my own way. And now I was only acting like a concerned friend. The truth was, I was only paying attention for my own reasons. I wasn't able to concentrate on the lesson. Not concentrating when you're doing gymnastics can be painful. I slipped on the balance beam and banged my knee so badly I cried. Melissa was the first one to rush over. And for about ten seconds she was the old Melissa. But by the time I'd gotten back up, she was off across the room in her own little world again. It was right then that the terrible suspicion started. Melissa had been acting very strangely. Her father was a Controller. I looked at her from across the room and felt a chill. Was she one, too? Was my old friend Melissa a Controller? I didn't go shopping after my lesson. I didn't really feel like it. Melissa's eyes, the way she had looked at me, kind of killed my urge to shop. I was supposed to head over to the mall, then call my mom when I was done to come pick me up. That was the plan. But since I didn't feel like mall-crawling I just headed home. Alone. With the sky growing dark as rain clouds moved in. It was stupid and careless of me. But I guess I was preoccupied with other things. Although at least I had the sense to stay out of the construc tion site. I was walking down the sidewalk that runs along the boulevard when suddenly I realized that a car had pulled up just a little way down the sidewalk from me. A guy got out. He looked like he was in high school or even college. He also looked like trouble. I should have turned around and run back to ward the mall. But sometimes I don't always do the sensible thing. Sometimes I regret not doing the sensible thing. This was one of those times. "Hey, baby," he said. "Want to go for a little ride?" I shook my head and clutched my gym bag close. What an idiot I was to be so careless! "Now, don't be stuck-up, sweet thing," he said. "I think you'd better get in the car." The way he said it didn't sound like an invitation. It sounded like an order. Now I was really afraid. I clutched my gym bag close as I passed him. "Don't ignore me," he hissed. He reached for me and missed. I walked faster. He was behind me. I broke into a run. He ran after me. "Hey. Hey, there! Come back here." I had been stupid going out alone. But fortu nately, unlike most people, I wasn't helpless. As I ran, I focused on something completely different. I concentrated on an image in my mind. Then I felt the change begin. My legs grew thick. My arms grew big, bigger. I could feel myself growing large. Large and solid. I felt the squirmy sensation of my ears becoming thin and leathery. But it wasn't enough to just look creepy. This guy had made me mad. I wanted to scare him half to death. My nose suddenly began to sprout. Then, from my mouth, like two huge spears, the tusks began to appear. I figured that was about enough. I broke my concentration, which stopped the morph. I stopped suddenly. The creep barreled right into me. He was not going to like what he was about to see.
C I wanted to tell the jerk to step off. What I wanted to say to him was, "So, you still want to go for that ride?" What I really said was "HhhohhHEEEEERRR.
his The guy stopped dead. He just stared. What he saw was me, halfway through morph ing into an African elephant. I had about a third of a trunk and most of my huge fanlike elephant ears. My legs were like stumps. My arms looked like Arnold Schwarzenegger's, only gray. And my tusks stuck about a foot out of my mouth. Just to make things extra weird, I still had my normal hair and my normal eyes. Suddenly, the guy wasn't interested in has sling me. "AAAAAHHHH!" He turned. He ran. For a minute he forgot he even had a car. Then he turned around and jumped in through an open window. He started the car and took off. He was definitely breaking the speed limit as he tore out of there. I concentrated again and began to reverse the morphing process, going back to human shape. I had been wearing a loose sweater and leggings, which was good. They had both stretched. But my shoes had been split open by t he sudden growth of my elephant feet. It had started raining, so the trip home was going to be very unpleasant. "Oh, great!" I muttered. "I have got to remember to kick off my shoes before I morph into an elephant." Just then, a second car pulled up and came to a stop. The window rolled down. "Hey, Rachel." It was Melissa. I recognized the voice. "Do you want a ride home?" She didn't sound very excited by the idea. I looked through the car window, past her. Chapman was behind the wheel. A wave of sick fear swept over me. Had he seen what I'd just done? If he had, then I was dead. My friends were dead. "I'm ... I'm fine," I said. "I could use the exercise." "Nonsense, young lady," Chapman said, sounding like his usual assistant-principal self. "It's beginning to rain. Get in." What
was I supposed to do? I forced a smile. It wasn't easy. "Thanks," I said. Melissa was in the front with her father. I sat in the back. I tried not to shiver. I tried not to stare at the back of Chapman's head. That's how it is when you're around a Controller. You know that evil slug is right there in the Controller's head, attached to all his nerve endings. Control ling the human brain. Dominating it. It's hard not to stare when you think of what is squeezed inside that skull. "When we were stuck back at the red light it looked like some guy was bothering you," Melissa said. "Then he ran off. Was he bothering you?" "Urn . . . no," I lied. "He was . . . he was just picking up something he dropped by the side of the road." Pathetic! I was such a lame liar. I saw Chapman's eyes watching me in the rearview mirror. He looked like normal old Chap man. That's the problem with Controllers. There is no outward clue. They look so normal. "He went running off like the hounds of Hades were after him," Chapman said. "Did he?" I said in a squeaky voice. "I wasn't looking. I guess it was the rain. That's probably why he was running. There. You can turn left there." "I know where you live," Chapman said. I almost swallowed my tongue. Was that a threat? Did he suspect? Did he guess? Was he looking at me strangely? Or was I just being paranoid? He pulled up in front of my house. My heart was hammering, but I was determined to act ca sual. "Thanks for the ride, Mr. Chapman," I said. "Hey, Melissa, I was totally serious about us get ting together, okay?" She nodded. "Sure, Rachel. Absolutely." I closed the car door behind me. I had es caped. I was alive. I'd probably just been imagin ing things. Then I heard Melissa call out to me. "Hey. What happened to your shoes?" I looked down. My shoes were in tatters, the result of my feet growing from a size six to a size three hundred in about five seconds flat. "See?" I said, as lightly as I could. "I told you I needed to go shopping." Melissa just looked puzzled. Her father stared at me with an expression I could not read. I was shaking like a leaf when I walked into my house. I headed upstairs to my room and stuffed my ripped shoes into the trash. Only then did I go back downstairs and say hi to my mom. She was at the kitchen table, half hidden by a pile of buff-colored books. My mother's a lawyer, and she brings work home a lot so she can be around me and my two little sisters. She and my dad are divorced. I only get to see my dad a few days a month, so mom feels guilty when she isn't there for us. "Hi, honey," she said. Then she got her "sus picious mother" look. "How did you get home? You didn't walk, did you? You were supposed to call me." "Melissa and her dad gave me a ride," I said. Well, it was the truth. Sort of. She relaxed and made a point of closing her book. "Sorry. You know I worry about you." "Where are Jordan and Sara?" "They're in the family room watching another one of those scary shows. Of course, tonight Jordan will be sleeping with her night-light on and Sara will end up in my bed, no doubt. I don't know why they like things that frighten them. You were never that way." It almost made me laugh. I felt like saying, well, Mom, I don't have to watch things that are scary, I