Bridgewell High, 10:00 AM

Cam

((Are you two ready for this?)) Tobias asked Ashley and me.

"Yup," we both answered.

"I've been waiting to tear up Bridgewell for forever, Cam!" Ashley answered, always the optimist. Figures.

((Okay, here's the plan. Ax is waiting outside in his human morph. As soon as those doors close, we burst in, full battle morph, and beat the crap our of everything that's not human, got it?))

"This is gonna be fun," Ashley replied.

We heard a voice come from down the hall, "Are you guys talking to a bird?"

Ashley spun around. "Alexis! What's up?"

I did a double-take and tried to ignore her, but Ashley pulled my arm and tugged me towards her. After all, this was part of the mission.

"You know, we should just skip the assembly, it's total bull," I said. Dad had said to try and get as many students as we could to play hooky. Ah, the crazy antics of the Animorphs.

"You're… Sam, right?" she asked me.

"Cam," I answered, flushed. Ashley elbowed me in the ribs and giggled. "Shut up," I muttered under my breath.

((Hurry up, you two! Ax says we have about twenty minutes.))

"We could go, uh, graffiti the teacher's lounge?"

She smiled a smile that turned the butterflies in my stomach into butterflies on steroids, then said, "That sounds like fun." Alexis Hall walked away.

Ashley elbowed me again. "Ow!" I exclaimed, but she just walked away. I followed, clutching my ribs. That girl can elbow hard.

((Eighteen minutes.))

"Your daughter is crazy, Tobias."

He laughed, ((Just like her mother.))

Well, lucky him.

We ran into about four or five different groups, and made plans to graffiti, destroy, finish homework, steal soda from the vending machines, and put snakes in several teachers' cars. We ran into Henry Cook, who said, "Nah, it'll be fun. We can make fun of them the whole time." Apparently proving to Ashley that St. Henry was a Controller.

At 9:50, we snuck into Study Hall, carefully making sure we didn't look at all suspicious. Our vice-principal's voice rang over the loudspeaker, "Okay everyone, we can begin to enter the auditorium now."

As our class filed into the hall, I noticed a very unpleasant sight out the window. A Hork-Bajir, and it wasn't Toby this time.

"Ffffffffffff…" I said, catching myself.

"What?" This kid Mike asked.

"Erm… nothing," I said, absentmindedly. Just, uh, this is going to be sooooo boring. We should skip it."

"Oh, totally. Let's go down right now, actually."

"How bout you go, and I'll be right there?" I asked, silently praying he wouldn't make me come with him.

"So I get in trouble? No way, man. You gotta come too."

I looked at Ashley. She gave a "I can handle it by myself" look, which made me doubt she could even more.

Things were not going as planned.