I.
CHAPTER ONE - Welcome Freshmen
BLEEP! BLEEP! BLEEP!
My hand shot out from under my blankets and slapped around, searching for the relentless alarm clock.
BLEEP! BLEEP! BLEEP!
Where was it? I ran my fingers over the cherry wood nightstand until I reached the wall behind it. My eyes were still squeezed shut under the covers as I felt around for the electrical socket and fished for the cord. That was why I was so startled when something grabbed my wrist. I yelped and forced myself to peek.
"Oh. Hey." My head retreated back under the blanket.
"You're going to electrocute yourself," Cassie said irritably.
"Good idea, I definitely could get a doctor's note for that."
"I've been up for an hour," she grumbled, finally shutting off the alarm for me. "In the sixty minutes since I've been awake, I've heard you snooze this alarm eight times. Eight times. If I hear this thing go off one more time I will completely lose it, so would you Please. Wake. Up."
"I am awake," I mumbled into my sheets.
Cassie tore the covers off from over my head. Sudden draft and intense sunlight overwhelmed my senses.
"Ahh! Okay, okay, I'm up!" I whined, trying to burrow myself deeper into my mattress and pillows.
"You are not up! Your first class starts in an hour and since not even a bald eagle can carry a bag full of books to campus, you'll have to drive. You're gonna be late!"
"An hour is plenty of time. We're like fifteen minutes from campus!"
She whacked me with a pillow. "You need extra time to find your classes and get familiar with the buildings. It's you're own fault you didn't want to go to freshman orientation. Hurry up!"
"Can't I just ditch my classes today? It won't hurt to miss one day," I groaned.
"You've missed two days."
"Still not too bad."
"It's only the third day of classes!" Cassie marched over to my closet, blindly pulled out some clothes, and tossed them onto my lap. I cringed at her outfit selection. It had been over ten years since we became friends, and she had gleaned absolutely zero fashion sensibility from me in all that time.
"Rachel, come on. You're the only Animorph to go to college, you've got to represent us well."
I scowled, and Cassie immediately looked guilty.
"Sorry. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to turn it into that. I know this isn't about what the public thinks. This is about you, and I'm proud of you..." she said, sitting at the foot of my bed. Like when we were just kids, not Animorphs. Not intergalactic superheroes. Not tabloid fodder.
After the post-war fervor had died down a little and the world got bored with praising us, it turned out the media could get pretty nasty. They wrote that Jake had such severe Post-Traumatic Stress, he should be committed in a mental facility because he was a danger to himself and others. Cassie was accused of being a pathological workaholic and hypocrite that hid herself in her charity and alien rights work. Tobias was harshly judged and ridiculed for his decision to remain a hawk after the war had ended. Even Marco, who soaked up attention like it was sunlight, got angry when he read the article about his alleged interspecies romantic relationship with Ax.
We all agreed, though, that the tabloids enjoyed messing with me the most. For months now, there was a daily article describing my alcoholism, drug addiction, and promiscuity. In truth, I had only ever been with one person, never even tried smoking and had only tasted beer once with my dad. Fighting in a war and then being swept up in the aftermath didn't exactly leave me a lot of time for partying, or whatever else this mythical Rachel liked to do.
"...shouldn't let the media nonsense affect you. They're just having a hard time believing that you weren't completely messed up by the war. They don't understand that you've always been really strong, even when we were little..." Cassie was still talking and I tried to look like I was paying attention, but my mind was wandering.
For the past three years, I lived my life mostly as a shadow. I studied and eventually got my GED like my mother had vaguely suggested, making me the only Animorph with an actual diploma. Not that it mattered all that much. I tagged along with Cassie on her little Hork-Bajir crusades, went to the occasional red carpet movie premiere with Marco, made everyone happy with the odd public appearance. I read. I volunteered. I did charity. I smiled. Nothing suspicious. Nothing...just, nothing.
But I still spent most of my other free time in morph, flying as an eagle, swimming as a dolphin. These days, I did it alone. I liked being alone. Marco had foolishly tried to get me into the party scene, but that idea was doomed from the beginning. Even Ax offered me a place on the Andalite home world. Something about a friend looking into "artificial skin fashion" for Andalites. But I never felt like I belonged, unless I was somewhere else. Something else.
At this point, I felt like I had seen everything and experienced more at 19 years old than most people do in their entire lives, and I still didn't know anything about who I was. I was a warrior. I was an Animorph. And I was a hero. None of those things applied to me now. I had heard most people liked to "find themselves" by either traveling around the world or going to college. But after having been blasted from galaxy to galaxy, timeline to timeline, I figured I was done with the traveling thing for a while.
"...so I'm glad you decided to go the college route. Blythe University is perfect for you."
I snapped out of my trance. Cassie was watching me, wondering what I was thinking.
"I don't know," I admitted. It seemed my appropriate go-to answer for most things these days.
"I know you," Cassie said firmly. Confidently. "I've seen how you retreat into your eagle morph or whatever, but that's totally okay. It's therapeutic, it can be relaxing if you want it to be and exciting when you need one of your little adrenaline kicks. That's a good thing. I'll be honest, Rachel, I didn't know how you would handle life after the war. You had gotten too into it. Too violent. You scared me."
I thought about last week. A bored eagle soaring, skimming the treetops and getting increasingly angry that it was bored. It was looking for prey. There were dozens of chipmunks, mice, possums. I thought of the cat. The cat that was easily big enough and vicious enough to take me down and rip me apart.
"But you're okay now." She brushed my too-long blond hair from my forehead. "Your life is wide open, and college will help you figure out the rest."
"I guess."
The eagle had screamed in my head, screamed that the huge cat was not prey. It was the predator. It was going to kill me. The human in me begged, pleaded. The cat belonged to someone. It had a collar. A little silver bell. But I ignored eagle. I ignored the human. I felt nothing inside me, and I needed something. Anything.
The fight had been violent, it hurt, and I barely survived. But it just made the cat's stringy muscle taste that much sweeter. When I was done, I left the carcass in the woods, and dropped the little collar into a creek. The tiny bell tinkled as it fell.
I wasn't quite as okay as people thought.
Cassie was looking at me hesitantly. "You must be really nervous about school, huh?"
I imagined the sensation of tough cat muscles and tendons churning in my stomach. I forced a laugh. "Yeah, right."
"After all we've been through, you pick now to chicken out? Because you don't want to go to school?" She was trying to joke, trying to put me in a better mood.
"Shut up," I said, making sure to play my part as grumpy best friend. I swung my legs over the side of my bed and got up unsteadily. From the corner of my eye I could see the deep grooves scratched into the surface of my nightstand. The mark of a particularly bad dream. I moved my alarm clock back to its rightful place, to cover them up. Too late.
"Those aren't new, are they?" Cassie asked, looking at the grooves.
"Nightmare."
"Is that why your nails are so short now?"
I grunted in response as I pulled off my pajamas and returned the clothes Cassie picked out to my closet. I had no qualms about being naked in front of her. We had been through too much together for either us to care anymore.
"I didn't realize they still got so bad."
That was all that needed to be said. This wasn't the first time either of us had woken up screaming and thrashing uncontrollably in bed. It was just a reality that came with our lives. Cassie had dents and scratches in her own room as well, although hers were admittedly older. She didn't cry in her sleep anymore like she used to.
She moved back on my bed to lean on the wall and hugged her knees to her chest. She was getting comfortable, which meant she definitely wanted to do the whole feelings thing this morning.
Sometimes I wished she wasn't this great a friend.
"Seriously, you have nothing to worry about. You fought off aliens and aced high school, I think you can handle college. And if you're worried about paparazzi, you know that they're restricted from campus. And the surrounding mile radius. And the airspace around campus. The literal air above the school is restricted."
I dug around for a minute before deciding on something that actually matched. "Whatever. I don't care that much. I'm only going because I don't have anything else. I'm not saving the world anymore, unlike you."
I pulled on my clothes for the day. I had showered last night, so I could get away with skipping this morning. I inspected myself. Passable. When I looked at Cassie behind me in the mirror, she was frowning.
"Are you - ?"
"It's kind of sad that I chose the miserable life of a college student, right? " I said quickly, interrupting her question. I'd had all the thought and feelings I could stand for one morning.
Cassie rolled herself off my bed and placed her hand on my shoulder. "Nah. Maybe someday, I'll get a chance to do it."
"Yeah, sure."
She finally got the hint that I was done talking about it, so she changed the subject. "I'll be out most of the day - "
"You're having a meeting with Good Morning America about the Initiative via satellite until eleven," I said, as I started for my bathroom to splash some water on my face and maybe get some makeup on. "Then you're meeting with Ronnie for lunch and researching some Canadian nature preserves for the Hork-Bajir Foundation. At three you're going to Marco's place so you both can go over notes for tonight's interview about the Visser's incarceration. Then you'll come home late and tired, but barge into my room anyway and ask me how my first day of school went."
At her surprised look, I grinned.
"I'm just as overly informed about every aspect of your life as you are about mine. Tell Marco I said hi, and that whoever he's sleeping with this week is a - "
"Rachel."
"That last girl, Nina-something? Marco was on antibiotics for two weeks."
"Rachel!"
"I'm just saying!" I smirked at her. "Tell Ronnie I say hi, too. We'll talk about him later."
When I left for school, she was still blushing.
I looked up from my dizzyingly complicated campus map. A dozen people simultaneously looked away. It was kind of understandable, since my presence practically put the campus on lockdown. No media allowed, and anyone who took a photo of me on school grounds was subject to expulsion or termination from their jobs, in addition to further punitive legal action. My mom had called me the other day and told me that the Mayor made it some kind of misdemeanor or crime or something to distribute photos through any channel – internet, cell phone, or otherwise - of me taken on the Blythe University campus. It was actually kind of cool.
Also, it was widely known that I was sort of rude to anyone who annoyed me. As evidenced by the paparazzi guy whose kneecaps I almost fractured two weeks ago for asking me if I had a boyfriend, a somewhat sensitive topic for me. It wasn't a huge surprise that people kept their distance.
Right now, though, I needed help finding the Cooper Building for my Calculus class and there was no one I could ask.
I went into the library atrium and found it nearly deserted. It was still early in the semester, and I supposed no one had anything to study for. There was a coffee kiosk at the center, though unfortunately it still looked closed.
Cassie was right, I should have gone to the stupid freshman orientation. I looked back down at the campus map, hoping that by some miracle I could figure out which way to hold it so that it made any sense. If I walked past the coffee kiosk, I'd be going out the west exit and then...
"Whoa!"
A tall guy carrying a stack of large cardboard boxes was suddenly in front of me. I was too focused on my map and he couldn't see me over his boxes until it was too late. We collided and found ourselves on the shiny linoleum floor, covered in flaky croissants.
"Watch where the fuck you're going!" I snapped, the fuse on my temper sparked.
"Me?! What about you?! I'm six-two and carrying giant boxes of pastries! How did you not see me?!" He glared at me and, to my surprise, did not waver in his fuming after realizing who he was yelling at. I was too stunned at the fact that someone was being actively angry at me - Rachel Berenson, Savior of the Universe, Puncher of People That Piss Me Off - to have any of my usual biting retorts.
He climbed to his feet and I did notice that yes, he was tall enough to be hard to miss. His thick black hair was short, but messy in a way that definitely was not just from our run in. I noted that he was lean, not quite skinny but not broad enough to escape being lanky or awkward. If the boxes had been stuffed with anything other than fluffy croissants he probably wouldn't have been able to lift them all by himself. He was wearing a Superman t-shirt, which was ironic and obviously meant he was a real winner at life.
Some other guy, massively muscled with a neck like a tree trunk, rushed over. His voice was what I imagined my grizzly morph's voice would be like if it could speak.
"Dude, you jackass, do you even know who she is?!"
I hadn't realized, but the few students roaming the library had all stopped in their tracks to stare at us.
"Yeah, I know who she is," Croissant Boy said crossly. "That doesn't mean the oceans have to part wherever she goes. She's not Moses."
Grizzly Bear Guy cracked his knuckles. "You think you're funny? Pushing little girls around? I ought to bruise your skull - "
Now I was mad.
"Okay, back off," I said harshly. Grizzly looked surprised.
"Just trying to help. I'm Carter, by the way. I'm a huge fan - "
"Cool. You can mind your own business now, thanks."
Grizzly shook his head irritably and trudged off. I was pretty sure I heard him mutter "bitch" as he went. The other students started to move again, but slowly, making sure to keep watching me.
Croissant held his hand out begrudgingly, offering to help me off the floor. "I guess I should thank you for that. Carter could have pulled my head right off my neck with two fingers."
I swatted his hand away and got up on my own, maintaining the fiery glare I had on him. "I'm making all sorts of bad decisions this morning."
"Look, I'm sorry, okay? I'm having a crappy day already and now every croissant that touched the ground is coming out of my paycheck. I'm already scraping together my tuition as it is."
My expression softened, ever so slightly. "Well, maybe if you weren't a dumbass and tried carrying those boxes over one at a time."
"I was late."
"Wow, employee of the year," I sneered.
"I don't need to explain myself to you," Croissant growled. "I said I'm sorry. This conversation can end now. Bye."
He turned his back to me and started picking up the dirty croissants.
"Excuse me, Miss. Berenson?"
I jumped. I hadn't even noticed the tiny old man creep up behind me. He wore round Harry Potter glasses and a grotesquely puce sweater vest.
"My name is Mr. Julian Morrow, Head Librarian. I just wanted to say it's a pleasure to have you here!"
"Yeah, okay."
"Was this young man bothering you? Did he harm you? I can make sure he faces strict disciplinary action."
Croissant whirled around to face us, his eyes wide. "I – I didn't - "
"He's not bothering me," I said crankily. For just the briefest of moments I considered letting him get in trouble, but for whatever reason, I realized he was probably the one bothering me the least out of all the people I'd met today. "It's fine."
"Yes, well, if you're sure - "
"I'm sure," I said shortly. Mr. Head Librarian sensed the tone and left us. It was hard to ignore my tones.
"Thank you for sparing me," Croissant said sarcastically.
"What is your problem?" I demanded. "That's twice now I saved your ass."
"You're the reason my ass is here in the first place!" He accused. "Or, I mean...something. You know what I mean!"
"Whatever, I'll pay the for damn croissants."
"I don't want your money."
"Unbelievable."
"What, that money can't fix everything?" he snorted.
I clenched my fists tightly and counted to ten. Then to twenty, before squatting down and picking up some croissants from the floor.
"What are you doing?"
"Helping you. Or are you too self-righteous for that, too?" I felt him staring at me as I gathered an armful of croissants. "What?"
"It's just weird to see Rachel Berenson crawling around on the ground picking food up off the floor, that's all."
"Would you just shut up?"
"Yeah, sure." I glanced up to see him watching me with a confused expression. "Um, I guess put them in this bag, not back in the box. I can still sell the clean ones."
Wordlessly, I helped him drag the bag of bad croissants and the rest of the boxes to the coffee kiosk at the center of the library atrium, where he worked. He went behind the counter and pulled out a green apron with a name tag pinned to it that read "Gary".
"Gary, huh?"
"Nope." He washed his hands and started to position the croissants into the display case. A ghost of a smile was on his lips. "Ben."
"So...that's kinda weird, then," I said, pointing at the name tag.
"I left my name tag in my dorm. Like I said, I was late. And we're not allowed to work without the name tag. You know, so people could identify us if we spit in their coffee or whatever."
"Seriously. Employee of the year."
Ben suddenly cracked a smile. Not some small polite smile, an all-out bright, dimpled grin. He was actually more than a little cute, in a weird way.
"Okay. For real now, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have been carrying so many boxes that I couldn't see where I was going, and I appreciate your helping me clean up. Can we start over?"
"I don't start over," I said bluntly. "But I guess I could have been paying closer attention to where I was walking."
"You guess?"
"Do you want me to get Mr. Julian Morrow Head Librarian and that frat boy ape creature back in here?"
He laughed, a hearty bellowing laugh. Ben did not express his feelings halfway, it seemed. I supposed we had that in common. Except my feelings weren't always quite so...pleasant.
"So what were you looking at so intensely that you crashed into a walking bakery, anyway?" he asked.
I pulled my rumpled map from my bag and set it on the counter. "Cooper Building?"
Ben squinted at it for a few seconds, turned it around, and squinted again. "What the hell is this?"
"Right?! It's impossible!"
"Cooper Building is out the back doors here. Cross the Peace Quad and it will be on your left down the steps, it's the one with the flags out front. I don't know what the fuck that map is of, I've gone to this school a year already and I can't read that."
"Oh. Thanks."
"Yup. Coffee?"
My eyes widened. "Actually, that sounds great."
Ben wiped his hands off, poured me a large cup and handed it to me. "Three dollars."
"What?!" I yelped, before I could stop myself. I could barely remember the last time I walked up to someone and they had me pay for something. My face flushed instantly in embarrassment. God, when I had become that person.
"Yeah, I know, it's like twenty cents cheaper at the Dunkin' Donuts down the parkway. But I can spot you if you need me - "
"No, it's fine," I said, hurriedly fishing in my bag for three dollars.
"Or, you know, I can give you the Animorph discount." He winked. I had no idea if he was kidding, if he knew what I had been thinking, or if he was just a weird guy. Somehow, I had a feeling it was all of the above.
"You are really annoying." I plunked three dollars on the counter and grabbed the coffee.
"You're not the first to say that. I am also, however, great at computers and math."
"Huh?"
He motioned at the Calculus textbook and the Welcome Pamphlets I had set on the counter during my search for three dollars. On top was the hopelessly complicated packet about setting up school email and accounts.
"I can help you with that if you want. It can get kind of overwhelming. My shift is up at noon and then I have two classes, but if you're not busy at around three...?"
His proposal just sort of hung there between us. I stared at him. His smile was warm, genuinely pleasant. And he was cute.
Smooth, I muttered to myself. I had never been flustered by boys before. This problem was a completely foreign concept to me, and it was even more frustrating because I knew exactly why.
My first boyfriend and my first big break-up had left me more than a little shattered.
"Just to help with the computer," Ben said suddenly, noting my hesitation. "That's all, no ulterior motive. Not a big deal if you don't want to. I'll live. I promise."
I was being stupid. Why wasn't I saying anything? Say something.
"I'm not trying to make this like a meet-cute, I swear," he laughed nervously.
I frowned. "A what?"
"You know, a meet-cute."
"I...don't know what that is."
"Probably better if you don't, actually," Ben said, his face a little more pink than before. "Forget I said that."
I shrugged. "Whatever. Well, I'm busy most of today. Think you could help me out tomorrow?"
Ben nodded. "That's cool. We can meet here. Same time, around three?"
"Yeah, okay. Um, sorry again for walking into you."
"Again? You didn't say sorry the first time!"
I rolled my eyes and muttered, "Jerk."
He snickered and waved me off, thanking me again for helping him. I realized that in the maybe ten minutes of my knowing him, I really, really enjoyed his smile.
When I stepped outside, I almost groaned out loud.
I hadn't really spoken to Tobias for a year now. That was the last time we'd gone flying together, over the mountains near where the Hork-Bajir colony was. Flying with Tobias had been the only thing that hadn't changed between the war and the aftermath. It was just like old times, we didn't talk about the war or the media or anything else that stressed us out. We would just fly, joke, laugh, and occasionally go human for some private time, shielded from the world and the reporters by the natural cover of trees.
It was that last time that I stopped and asked him why, years after the war ended, he hadn't stayed human. Why had he remained a hawk? He had friends, he had me. He even could have had his mother, if he tried. Tobias didn't have to worry about the war anymore, so it shouldn't have mattered whether or not he could morph. I had wanted a boyfriend, a human one, and didn't see why I couldn't have one.
Tobias tried to explain, tried to reason with me. Some bullshit about being too used to the sky, about the human world being too crazy right now. He still hung out with Cassie and I, sometimes even Marco. He talked to Ax every week via the Z-space communications hub Marco had installed in his ludicrous mansion. He thought life was good. He didn't understand that I couldn't deal with him only being human for two hours at a time anymore. I got angrier, and he got quieter. I accused him of being a coward, and he just took the insult, didn't jump at the bait.
But would I ever give up the power to morph? Never be an eagle again, or a bear, or a dolphin. He never pointed out that I spent a lot of my time in morph to avoid the real world, just like him. The fact that he did that, that he was taking the higher road, made me even angrier.
By the time I got to the Cooper Building, I had crushed my empty coffee cup to pieces in my fist. I threw it out and stormed into the building, looking for room 201.
Tobias and I were over. We were over the minute that he said no, he didn't want to be human with me. He didn't want to brave this new world with me. We were over. I loved him for years, waited for him, and I couldn't wait for him to be ready any more.
I knew I was being crazy. That there was absolutely no reason for me to be thinking any of this right now. Because Ben was cute? Because he was the first guy I met in a very long time that I didn't think was an absolute asshole? Where my standards that low?
Standards for what? I wasn't even into Ben. I had just met him! I was just crazy and broken, any little thing could set me off in a spiral. That madness had always been with me, but it had gotten worse.
I was pissed at myself. At Tobias. At Ben, for no real reason. When I got to the classroom, I didn't even look up at the teacher. I found a seat at the very back of the maybe 50 desks in class, where it was harder for people to turn and stare at me, and focused stonily at the board. I didn't hear a word the professor was saying about differential and integral calculus. I was too busy fuming silently about nothing, and didn't even realize that the hour was over until I heard people start zipping up their bags. I got up and kept my head down, ready to make a quick and easy exit.
"Rachel? Miss Berenson?"
I sighed. It was the professor. "Yeah?"
"I just wanted to say that it's an honor to have you in my class. I know everyone here regards you as a hero, and it is my pleasure to offer my assistance in anything you need for school. Anything at all, I can help you out. Please don't hesitate to ask."
"Thanks," I said, nodding like a puppet. "Okay." I backed out into the hallway before he could say anything else. But after seeing that exchange, my classmates apparently found the courage to talk to me. They all said it was an honor to meet me, they all offered to help me out with anything I needed, they all offered to hang out with me after class, some asked for autographs. I caught a few people rolling their eyes at me and the attention I was getting. Heard some grumbles. And some kids did try and stay out of my way, out of fear or nervousness or whatever.
I forced myself to smile tolerantly and nodded, gave out a few vague "maybe" answers, and excused myself to the bathroom where I hoped no one would bother me. I was wrong, of course, but I eventually got out of there, too. It wasn't the worst fan assault I ever had to deal with, but no ambush was a good ambush.
Anxiety was drowning me, filling my lungs and making it hard to breathe. I needed to talk to someone, someone that wasn't going to smother me in a mob. Ducking down behind one of the dormitories, I pulled out my cell phone and called Cassie. I let it ring six times before hanging up. She was still working.
I looked up to the empty blue sky and sighed. No birds, no red-tailed hawks. There was nothing up there. But there was going to be. I hid behind the dumpsters of the closest dining hall, shoved my bag behind it, and morphed. I grew my wings and struggled to gain some altitude. I had to flap relentlessly towards the closest parking lot, just to get some halfway decent thermals. Thankfully, I was able to get high enough to soar over the campus. No one was looking up at me. Only an Animorph had that habit, frequently looking up in the sky for someone they knew. And birdwatchers, I guess.
I flapped just a little higher so that I could soar in an arc towards the forest. Blythe University had its own nature preserve, a couple hundred acres of just grass, creeks, woodland creatures, and nerdy biologists taking poop samples. I soared deeper into the preserve, where I was almost sure no one would be hanging out right then in the middle of the day.
My thoughts were like torture, endless back and forth. I owed Tobias nothing. Nothing. Yet one random guy offers to help me with email, and I felt like crap. I should have felt good, but there was something inside gnawing at me, telling me I had done something wrong. That I had just put the final nail in a coffin. A coffin that held Tobias, the war, and whatever else had once meant everything to me. Stuff that now meant nothing.
So many people in me class wanted to be my friend. I didn't know any of them, and for all I knew, they would not have said a word to me if I hadn't been all over the their internet homepages. It was superficial, blind, hero-worship crap. All of it. Four years ago, it seemed like everything mattered. Everything I did mattered, my friendships mattered. Now, nothing did. I had Cassie, but there was no Tobias. Barely any Ax. Jake had withdrawn from me, and I did see Marco a couple times a week, but mostly just for trivial business and press things that didn't matter. Nothing mattered.
I knew this feeling. I was losing it. My own deranged version of a panic attack. I was spiraling deeper, uncontrollably into madness as I fought my way higher into the sky, so high that I was starting to get dizzy. Then I angled my wings, pointed my beak down and plummeted.
The bald eagle was like a bullet. Faster than a bullet, practically invisible as it streaked back towards the earth. I felt the bird's already rapid heartbeat race madly, the tops of the trees shooting up towards me like spears. The eagle's brain screamed at me to pull over, it called me crazy. Insane.
[WOOOOOOOOOOOOO!] I pulled out of the dive seconds before being impaled by the top of a pine tree. The tips of the trees scratched my belly as I skimmed so close to death. Now I was pumped. I was still going insanely fast, having managed to retain most of my speed from the dive, and I arced back upward, forming a loop in midair. This was the best thing in the world.
So why did I expect Tobias to give it up for me?
I slowed down, the high ending so abruptly it was like I had crashed. Of course he wouldn't give up flying for me. Who the hell was I? Without the war making me great, I was just a some blond. A dumb blond not even worth being human for.
Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a raccoon. It wasn't overly large, medium I guessed, for a raccoon. Plenty big enough to pull me out of the air if it got a hold of me. Plenty strong enough to tear into me. I remembered the cat. The rush. The taste. The thrill of winning, being a champion over a defeated foe.
TSEEEEEEEEER!
Later, I demorphed and was glad to find that no one had stolen my bag from the dumpster. I dug around in the front pocket until I found some gum and chewed it on my way to class, tricking myself into thinking I was fresh and clean. Before going in, I checked myself in a bathroom mirror. There was a twig in my hair. A small stain of blood that wasn't mine at the hem of my shirt, it had seeped through from my morphing suit. Tucking it into my jeans was not a good look, so I pulled a sweater on, even though it was near 80 degrees.
My Economics class had been over for twenty minutes now, and I was about to be late for American Literature.
I was able to focus in this one, though. I actually learned things about Edgar Allen Poe. Took some notes, even looked forward to reading tonight. People talked to me, and I didn't feel like running away. I was annoyed, but I successfully repressed the urge to attack anyone, even the ones that stupidly asked me out. I heard some stoners in front of me talking about how they were getting baked in the middle of the woods before class and saw some "hawk" tear apart a raccoon and eat its heart.
But I was chill.
I was cool.
