CHAPTER SEVEN: CASSIE

Jake and Marco took off, probably to go play basketball or video games or something. Blow off steam, pretend everything was still normal. I couldn't deny that part of me wanted to do the same thing—well, not the video games thing, I'd never really gotten into video games, and basketball wasn't my jam either—but pretending like things were the same? Yeah, that definitely sounded tempting…

But morphing. Oh man, there was nothing like it. Nothing. I had been a horse, just this morning. I had been a horse!

Tobias and I stayed with Rachel while Marco and Jake walked away, Tobias nursing his soda and me pretending to eat my salad. I couldn't concentrate on it, though; I was remembering what it felt like to gallop across a field with the wind in my hair—my mane.

Rachel picked at her chicken for a while but I guess the argument had made her lose her appetite, because she pushed it away suddenly and said, "I give up. Tobias, you want any of this?"

He jumped, then looked hurt. "Why would I want your food?" he asked, suspicious.

Rachel shrugged. "Boys are always hungry, right? Anyway I know Cassie won't eat it, she barely eats any meat."

"I'm thinking of becoming a vegetarian," I explained to Tobias.

The shadowed, suspicious look faded from his eyes, but it didn't go away completely. "I see," he said.

"I don't like the idea of just throwing all this out," Rachel continued, "but I can't eat any more. Are you sure you don't want any?"

Tobias huffed a little, like he suspected some kind of ulterior motive, but eventually he popped a few pieces of chicken into his mouth. I forced myself to eat some more of my salad. Okay, mostly I picked out the chunks of cheese and cranberries, but that counted.

"Listen," I said, "do you…do you guys want to come back to my house?"

Rachel shrugged. "I dunno, I was thinking as long as we're at the mall I might stop in and see if Express or the Limited are having any sales. I could find you a jacket to replace that one you destroyed," she offered, like she was suggesting a treat.

I smiled at her. "You could shop, I guess…but I was thinking, we have a lot of animals at the barn right now. Would you guys like to try what it's like to morph?"

. . .

We went to the barn, of course. Even Rachel didn't like shopping that much.

The barn is left over from when this used to be a fully functioning farm. The place has been in my family's hands basically since the Civil War, as my older relatives never tire of telling everybody. I guess that kind of heritage made it special, but mostly I just liked it because I felt comfortable out here with all the wild life and open grass and trees. I felt at home here the way I never really felt when I was in the suburbs where the others lived. Too many people there, too many buildings, too many judgments. Animals don't judge, they just are.

I guess maybe it's true what people say, and I do like animals better than people. But come on—animals are awesome! And now instead of just hanging out with them and helping to take care of them, I could actually be them. It was the coolest thing in the world.

Almost cool enough to let me forget about the Yeerks for a few minutes. Almost.

Rachel had been in the barn many times before, of course. She'd even helped me muck out the stalls once or twice, believe it or not. (Nobody had ever made shoveling manure look more fashionable.) Tobias hadn't, though. He looked around, a little awed.

At least I hoped it was awe.

See, the barn isn't exactly the cleanest place in the world. It's a barn. It's also full of wild animals in various states of injury or distress. So yeah, we sweep and shovel and stuff, and we clean out the cages regularly, but we don't go in and Windex everything down on the regular. It's a barn. We had bright florescent lights all along the ceiling so we could see what we were doing, and a bunch of medical supplies and veterinary equipment, but it was still a barn at heart, not a hospital. There was straw scattered on the floor and buckets stacked all around and long hoses for filling water troughs and washing away blood or other fluids. There were barrels of hay against one of the walls and cages everywhere else. We have partitions between different sections of cage, of course, because a horse isn't going to relax enough to recover if it's staring at a wolf the whole time, is it? But at its heart, the place really wasn't all that different than it had been back when this had been a working farm.

Tobias looked a little overwhelmed by the sights and the sounds (and the smells), but he didn't sneer or roll his eyes or say anything nasty. I relaxed a little and turned my attention back to the animals.

I cleared my throat and spread an arm wide, like Vanna White introducing the next set of letters on Wheel Of Fortune. "Ta da," I said, and grinned. "So, who wants to morph what?"

"Oh man," Rachel said, walking forward eagerly, "this is awesome. It's like trying to choose the perfect blouse, only cooler."

I beamed a little at that. I knew how much Rachel enjoyed shopping, so having her say that about my idea, about my animals? It made me feel pretty good.

"Would you like to be a horse, Tobias?" I offered, remembering how his eyes had lit up when I was demorphing early that morning.

His eyes weren't on the horses at the end of the barn, though, but rather on the section of cages devoted to birds. "Maybe," he said hesitantly. "That does sound pretty cool, but…" He ran a hand lightly over the bars of a cage that held an osprey. The osprey watched him suspiciously, its eyes sharp. Tobias grinned back, looking like a kid in a candy store who had just been told he could pick out as many sweets as he could carry.

Rachel was crouched on her haunches looking at a raccoon with a broken paw. I rolled my eyes affectionately. Trust Rachel to head straight for one of the grumpiest animals we had.

"Actually, I think…I think I'd like to fly." Tobias turned to look at me, a sheepish smile on his face. "Is that…would that be okay?"

I grinned at him. "Sure," I said. "Who do you want to fly as?"

Tobias looked back at the birds. He walked up and down the row of cages, drinking in the sight of the various beaks and talons and tail feathers. Eventually he stopped in front of a cage that held a red-tailed hawk with a broken wing. The hawk stared at him. It can be pretty intense to get stared at by a bird of prey, but Tobias didn't flinch. He stared at the hawk like it was the most beautiful thing he'd seen since—

Well, since the Andalite.

"This one," he said. "Can I be this one?"

I helped Tobias acquire the hawk. Then, because she was never one to be left out, I helped Rachel acquire a bald eagle. I wasn't sure if Rachel had chosen her because she was the biggest bird we had at the moment, or because she liked the idea of turning into a national symbol. I didn't ask; just kept my face straight and helped her acquire the eagle without getting her hand savaged. Fortunately the eagle was pretty out of it, recovering from the nasty dose of poison it had ingested (probably from eating a rodent that had eaten some rat poison) so it was actually easier to manage than the hawk, despite being so much larger.

They both looked kind of nervous when they'd finished, nervous and excited.

I closed the door of the eagle's cage. "Well," I said, "who wants to go first?"

"I'll do it," Rachel said immediately. "Unless—?" She turned to look questioningly at Tobias.

I was a little surprised. Usually Rachel has this whole "take the lead" attitude, but not because she's bossy; she just doesn't like hesitating so once she makes up her mind to do something, she jumps straight in. Most people spend more time thinking before we act, or at least I do. But she was going out of her way to let Tobias go first, if he wanted to, and it was…well, was it sweet? Certainly I didn't think it was because she was afraid. When something scares Rachel, she just does it more and faster. (Like her whole thing with the balance beam in gymnastics. She hates the balance beam, which I'm sure is why I've never seen her hesitate to throw herself onto one.) No, she was backing down for a different reason. Maybe she felt bad because of how worried Tobias had been about his mom?

Or maybe she did have a crush. Huh.

Tobias took a deep breath and then said, "Okay."

Before either of us could talk about it anymore, he closed his eyes.

It was Rachel's turn to look surprised. I don't think she'd expected him to want to. She didn't protest, though, or try to bully her way in to go first after all; instead she stepped back next to me, giving Tobias plenty of room.

For a moment, nothing seemed to be happening, and I frowned thoughtfully. Maybe the morphing would only work on mammals? Maybe you couldn't turn into something as evolutionarily distant as a bird? But then I realized—feathers. His pale skin was patterned all over with markings like feathers.

As we watched, the pattern stiffened and rose, becoming three-dimensional. Feathers started rising from his skin all over as his fingers started to melt. He was shrinking too, rapidly sagging toward the floor as his clothing billowed out around him.

"Oh," he gasped, and I couldn't tell if his voice was reverent or horrified, "Oh this is so shREEKHH!"

His teeth had burst forward through his lips, hardening and darkening into the sharp, black-tipped beak of the hawk. I saw his soft blue eyes shift to yellow, sharpening like a blade as they switched to raptor vision, and then he disappeared into the tent of his clothes.

"Tobias?" I called tentatively.

There was no answer, but the bundle of clothing thrashed.

"Tobias, if you can hear me, I'm going to move your clothes so you can get out, okay?" Rachel said.

I opened my mouth to caution her, but too late: she stepped forward and lifted Tobias's shirt. Immediately a hawk's frightened, angry shriek sounded, making her stumble backwards—and just in time, because with the smothering blanket of his shirt removed, Tobias lunged upward, beating his wings, and launched himself bodily into the air.

Rachel ducked as his talons soared past over her head.

We both spun to watch as the bird that had been a boy no more than three minutes ago flapped clumsily around the barn. Around us the other animals burst into noise—chittering, shrieking, nickering, whatever their particular vocal abilities suited them to—as the sight of the hawk flying free riled them up, either fearful or excited depending on their particular ecological relationship to red-tailed hawks.

I was a little worried that my dad might come out to see what was going on, but unless the animals started getting really loud or kept the racket up for more than a few minutes, I didn't think it was likely. Sometimes our patients made noise; it wasn't always for a reason, at least not one that we humans could recognize. Unless they sounded really upset or frightened, we didn't worry.

"Wow," said Rachel, her eyes bright as she watched Tobias. "Oh yeah, I've got to try that."

"Tobias," I said, "Tobias, can you hear me? The hawk is panicking because he doesn't know where the exit is. Hawks don't like being indoors," I explained, "and he can't find the sky. I'll open the door after Rachel's changed too so you can both try flying outside, but I don't want to do that until I know you're in control, okay?"

"What do you mean, in control?" Rachel asked nervously.

I hesitated, then admitted, "When I morphed the horse the first time, it took me a few minutes to…to remember that I'm Cassie, that I'm human. It was really exciting, just running, feeling the air and the sun and the grass and everything. I mean, I had all the instincts of a horse, right? Only I'd never been a horse before, so I didn't really know what to do with them." I gave a self-deprecating little laugh. "I guess not many people can say they've got experience with that, right?"

Rachel grinned at me, then looked back at Tobias as he fluttered anxiously around the corners of the barn. She frowned. "Why isn't he saying anything? He should be able to use thought-speak, right? You did when you were the horse…"

"Because the hawk is panicking," I said grimly. "I should have thought of this. Birds aren't comfortable indoors, not wild birds like hawks. So the hawk is freaking out, and that's freaking Tobias out, and he can't get control. Tobias," I called, making my voice as gentle as I could while still making it loud, "Tobias, hey, try and exert control over the morph, okay? Remember who you are, okay? What you are? You aren't a hawk, Tobias. You have to control the hawk."

Rachel seemed to pick up on what I was trying to do because a moment later she said, "Remember drawing, Tobias? You draw a lot in class. Remember doing that? You can't do that with hawk talons, can you? You need human hands for that, right? Because you're human, Tobias. Remember, human?"

"Just try and focus and be calm," I said. "I don't want to open the door while you're freaking out, I'm afraid the hawk would fly away and take you with it, and we don't want to lose you, right?"

He hadn't spotted the hayloft yet. I was scared that he was going to notice it and go soaring out into the great outdoors, and we would never see him again. Suddenly this was starting to seem like a really bad idea.

"Remember your mom, Tobias?" Rachel said. "She's a human, right, not a bird? So you have to be human too, don't you?"

I wasn't sure if I was imagining it or not, but I thought he was flapping a little slower now. Maybe he was just getting tired. Most animals, when they panic, the burst of energy ebbs fast if they can't escape right away.

"Remember the Andalite?" I said, struck by a sudden flash of inspiration. "Remember holding his hand? Remember him talking to us in our heads?"

{The…the Andalite?}

Tobias's voice, broadcasting in thought-speech.

I sagged against the shelf with the squirrel's cage. He sounded uncertain and frantic still, but he was there.

"That's right," I continued, "the Andalite. Remember him? He gave us the power to morph? To do things like turn into hawks?"

Tobias fluttered down to perch on the top of one of the horse stalls. The horse snorted at him, but didn't try and do anything else. Horses don't really care about birds unless they bother them first, and vice versa.

{I remember,} Tobias said. {Sorry. I just…wow. That was…wow.}

I smiled. "Yeah," I said, "I know what you mean. I'm sorry I didn't think about the fact that morphing in here would probably freak the hawk out. I should have warned you."

{It's okay,} he said, and chuckled drily. {I think I would have freaked-out a little no matter where I morphed. This is…this is intense.}

"Cool," said Rachel. "I want to try it." She started pulling her shirt off over her head and I yelped.

"Rachel! Tobias is still a boy, even though he's a hawk!"

Rachel rolled her eyes at me. "Well I don't want to get trapped in my clothes, do I?" she retorted. "Besides, I've still got my bra on."

{I won't look,} Tobias promised anxiously.

Rachel paused, her shirt up around her ribs, and grinned at him. "I know you won't," she said.

If hawks could blush, I swear Tobias would have. Instead he turned his head and stared intently into the corner opposite where Rachel and I stood. I gathered Tobias's clothes off the floor and set them on the shelf next to the raccoon's cage. Rachel, now dressed in nothing but her underwear and her training bra, folded hers neatly beside them.

She looked at me and said, "I should be able to morph with these, right? Like you did the leotard?"

I shrugged. "I don't know," I answered honestly. "It took me a couple tries to get that to work."

"Okay," said Rachel. She hesitated a moment, then stripped the rest of the way. I didn't blush; Rachel and I had been having sleep-overs since we were little kids. We'd seen each other naked way too many times for either of us to be bothered by the idea. "I don't want to have my wings trapped in my bra straps or something," she explained, laying her panties on top of the pile of clothes.

I nodded. "Good idea," I said. "You can work on the clothing once you've tried morphing on its own once or twice. Now remember, concentrate on—"

"On 'the eagle within me,' right," Rachel said, smirking at me. "I remember how you described it before."

"And try not to freak-out because you're indoors!" I reminded her hurriedly, but she had already closed her eyes and started to change.

It was a more painful-looking process than it had been with Tobias, possibly because he had done a fair portion of the morphing underneath the tent of his clothing while Rachel had nothing but her long golden hair to obscure the sight of shifting flesh and twisting bones. I stared, fascinated. I myself had morphed before, of course, but watching it happen to someone else was completely different. It looked like it should hurt, but I knew it didn't; it looked like…well, it looked like a dozen different nightmares all packed into one, but it was kind of beautiful too. Rachel was becoming a bird. A girl, becoming a bird! It was impossible, it was incredible, it was a miracle!

The only damper on the whole thing was that I couldn't share it with my mom and dad. I knew they would have a hundred thousand questions, knew they would be even more excited and curious than I was—but I also knew I couldn't tell them. Not yet. Not until I knew it was safe…

Once Rachel's soft pink human body finished becoming a taut, muscular, feather-covered American icon, I held my breath, waiting to see what she would do.

For a moment, nothing happened. The eagle looked around—at the animals in their cages, at Tobias on the stall, at the wooden walls, at me.

It is indescribably unsettling to be stared at that closely by a bird of prey, if you were wondering. I couldn't help shuddering, even though I knew that behind that steely glare was my best friend. Besides, it might not be her in control yet…

The eagle let out a screech and flapped once, twice, three times, lurching up to perch on one of the rafters. It screeched again. I flinched. I heard Tobias's feathers rustle. The other animals fidgeted and cried out and twitched, but it wasn't as bad of a racket as before. I didn't think dad would bother coming to see what had excited them. Not yet, anyway.

"Rachel?" I asked hesitantly.

{Rachel, are you in there?} Tobias sounded worried.

It occurred to me that maybe I should have let Tobias out of the barn before Rachel morphed. True, bald eagles didn't normally attack red-tailed hawks, but this wasn't a normal bald eagle…

{I…I'm here,} said Rachel. Her thought-speak voice was faint. Strained. {I don't…wow. Yeah. Yeah, I'm here. I'm here.}

Tobias and I both breathed a sigh of relief, although his only sounded inside our heads.

"Okay," I said, grinning shakily. "Okay, great. So…do you guys want to try flying?"