You know how I'm always right? I am always right. Well, almost always right. Maybe wrong once in a lifetime. But I was right about this, at least: Jake would kill me when he found out.

"You let a teacher, a teacher we know nothing about, catch you looking at Yeerk chat rooms during class?"

"It wasn't like that! It's - well, it's because I cheated off Jesse once."

Jake gave me a look. So did the others.

"OK, more than once. What?" I protested. "You try studying critical reading for more than two minutes."

"I get it," said Cassie. Trying to be soothing, I knew, but she just sounded condescending. "School is stressful for you. It's fine." She patted me on the shoulder.

"It's not fine," Jake said - commanded, really. It's funny when he gets into Big Leader Mode. He's still got a baby face. It's like watching a toddler wear a suit. Although it'd be more funny if he didn't look ready to morph tiger and kick my ass. "Just because we're Animorphs doesn't mean we have free rein to get into trouble at school. Especially not with Controllers involved."

"Yeah, yeah, I'm Goofus and you're Gallant. The point is, he didn't suspect anything. Anything except cheating, I mean. I was the only guy in detention. And Chapman was leading it. I'd be dead if he knew."

((What is a Goofus?))

We'd met, as usual, in Cassie's barn. Cassie is kind of a tree-hugger type. Loves animals more than some people. Loves bird poop more than clean clothes. Her mother works at The Gardens, this amusement park near town with a wildlife preserve attached. I used to go there for the roller-coasters. Now I go there to acquire new morphs. I liked the roller-coasters better.

Her parents also help run the Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic, which is like a private animal hospital. All hours of the day, the barn out back has cages full of injured geese and panting foxes and various forms of roadkill. And us.

"The point is," Jake continued, "Brown Nose is chatting about Yeerks. Why?"

"That's kind of what I was hoping you would answer."

"So we nab the kid," Rachel, of course. Rachel is like Xena from the old TV show, or maybe like Daenerys from Game of Thrones. Very blonde. Very pretty. And very likely to slit your throat if you look at her wrong. "He's got to be a Controller, right? But he's just a kid. He can't hurt us. Lock him up in the barn, wait three days, find out what his deal is, kick Yeerk ass, the end."

"We kidnap a first-grader?" Cassie asked dubiously. Cassie's kind of our moral compass. Even when we already know our way.

"Third-grader," Jake said.

"Who CARES? What's our alternative? Let this kid keep going on Yeerk Chatroulette with Visser Three's brother? With Gump?" Cassie's face fell. Gump was another kid from the chat room. His father was a Controller, and he didn't know who to talk to. Cassie had tracked Gump down and told him not to trust his dad. It wasn't a nice memory. But then, what memories are nice anymore?

"Rachel goes on Chatroulette? No way! I go on Chatroulette. Maybe we've met before." I leered. "I seem to remember this one blonde chick I exchanged pics with. Well-dressed. Tall. Hot, too."

"Is that how you meet girls, Marco?" Rachel teases me a lot. She and Tobias are a couple or whatever, but secretly she wants me.

((I know this kid,)) Tobias interrupted, in thought-speak - speech you can hear inside your head, but not out loud. It's the way we communicate in morph. Tobias, right now, was a red-tailed hawk. He's a red-tailed hawk most of the time. See, you can only be in morph for two hours at a time. Go above, and... well, you learn to eat with a beak. Tobias flew down from the rafter and perched on Rachel's shoulder. She nuzzled his wing, and I made a big show of retching. ((I fly by his parents' place sometimes. They're loaded. They've got security everywhere.))

((Human security,)) said Ax, our resident Andalite. Scoffed, more like. Andalites don't think much of human technology.

((Rich human security, Ax-man. Alarms. Motion detectors. More locks than a hardware store. Private guards. Plus the mayor, the council and half the police on speed dial. They'll raise hell if their son goes missing for three days.))

((Do rich humans have a special connection to hell?)) Tobias and I shared a look. A look that said "hey, how about you be the one to explain human class divisions to the alien."

"We also don't know if his parents are Controllers," Jake said. "It might not just be human security we'd be dealing with."

"Hold up," I said. "Brown-nose used a school computer. On the school network. School networks track everything! Remember the time we edited the school Wikipedia page to call Mr. Tidwell an ex-convict, and they gave us detention for a week?"

Jake sighed. "I'm pretty sure that was just you, Marco."

"Whatever. The point is, we don't need to kidnap him! Just get into the network, check the logs, and see what he's up to."

((Can't be done,)) Tobias said. ((Jake told me what had happened during lunch period, so I helped Erek sneak in after last bell.)) Erek's another friend of ours. He's a Chee. An android that looks like a puppy, unless he's projecting a hologram of a middle-school dude. Did I mention my life is weird? ((Turns out the machine he used was hacked. The school network can't monitor it. Or any network. Completely untraceable.))

"Well, that's convenient. Remind me which computer to sit at next time."

"So what do we do, then?" Rachel said. "Break into Jesse's house and spy on him?"

"Remember Joe Bob's house?" I protested. "Remember how well that break-in went?" Rachel remembered. She and Ax were captured during the mission. See, Fenestre's security was even better than the Browns'. Has to be, when you're keeping out Visser Three. Or Animorphs.

"I remember," Rachel snipped. "So let's go elephant and rhino, then. Bust our way into the mansion. Maybe we can burn it down too." This weird look came over Jake's face just then. Maybe I imagined it. I've always suspected Jake knew more about the Fenestre fire than he let on.

"We are not smashing up Jesse's house," Jake said. "Too much risk. Zero reward. We don't even know if he's a Controller yet."

"We could morph bugs again and look at his computer screen in class next week." Even as I said it, I realized how stupid an idea it was. "I'm guessing they don't let Hork-Bajir be test proctors."

((I could look through the window,)) Tobias offered.

((We may not have one of your weeks,)) Ax said. I sighed. He always did this.

"They're everyone's weeks, Ax. Just like they're everyone's minutes, and everyone's -"

((For the Yeerks to actively monitor such a primitive communications forum would require a situation that is urgent.)) He had a point. Fenestre's site wasn't exactly cutting-edge. More like Geocities. The kind of place gun nuts and Illuminati conspiracists hang out. Anyone stumbling across it would write it off - anyone, that is, who didn't know. ((We may need to take immediate action.))

"Action. Right. HOW?" I stood up. "Our options are go in as bugs and get poisoned, go in as birds and get captured, go in as rhinos and play Burnout Revenge with his house, or spy off his screen. Which sounds best to you?"

"I know," Cassie said. She had kept quiet until now, watching one of the raccoon cages. "We listened in on the chat before. Maybe we could drop by again. He has a... a chat name, right?"

"Cassie, Cassie, Cassie." Cassie is techno-illiterate. She doesn't have IM, she hates texting, and it took her until three months ago just to get her own smartphone. I guess there isn't an app for changing a raccoon's water dish. "It's called a username. Or a screen name."

((Or a handle,)) Tobias said.

((You humans have a strange language.))

"I'm just saying," Cassie said, "if he has a screen name they might know him. They might know more about him. Or about what's going on. We can listen in. Maybe even ask questions."

"I like it," Jake said, slowly.

"You always like her ideas," I whined. Jake ignored me. "Can't they just track us down? We can't exactly morph a firewall."

"Didn't you get Ax to rig your computer to be untraceable?"

"My old computer. Dad shoved it in the closet last month before Nora came over." Nora is my math teacher. She's also my dad's new girlfriend. As if I didn't have enough problems, now I have to hide in my room when she's over pretending they're just talking about variables. "Maybe he sold it, I don't know."

((It would be trivial to encode his software again,)) Ax said. ((This device is virtually interchangeable with the last one I encountered.))

"No way! That's a Mac, Ax-man. The latest model. Top of the line. Isn't even out yet. My dad pulled some strings." But he was right. Compared to Andalite engineers, Steve Jobs was like a caveman putting rocks together.

Jake cocked his head. "Your dad pulled strings? At Apple?"

"OK, maybe I lied a bit."

((Does this device incorporate strings?))

"It might be better this way, anyway," Cassie said. "Even if Jesse's a Controller, his host is still a third-grade kid. He knows he has more privacy at home than at school. No teachers to keep watch. No kids cheating off his screen."

"Let's do it," Rachel said. It's kind of her catchphrase. "Let's chat up some Yeerks."

"Chat up some Yeerks," Jake agreed. "Ax, you fix Marco's computer. Everyone else, meet at his place tomorrow after school."

"Can't," I interrupted. "Detention."

"After detention, then. And Marco?" I nodded. "Bring your PSAT book."

"Great. Multiple-choice questions and Yeerks. Join the Animorphs, kids! Every day's a party."