Chapter 12


When I told my sisters we were going to Monterey for the day, their reaction was appropriate, as I think only dolphins could fully appreciate the noise Sara made. Jordan was a bit more contained, but it was obvious that both of them were ecstatic. We hadn't gone to the aquarium since spring break, and it took no effort on my part to get them ready. In no time at all, my sisters were dressed and they were fine with PopTarts for breakfast. I even got Jordan to feed the guinea pigs without any complaining.

My parents were already at work for the day, and while I had fallen into a comfortable denial as far as my dad was concerned, I was more than fine that I didn't have to deal with him that morning. I like sundresses and skirts a lot, but this was a day for pockets, and I had just the cutest white denim cutoffs. I made sure I had the membership cards and cash in my back pocket, then mentally griped that not one pair of shorts I owned had a pocket that would actually fit my cell phone. The reality of women's jeans is that they're designed to flatter more than they are to be functional. Who needs to fit a phone as long as your ass looks good, right? So stupid.

I grabbed my backpack, and made sure everyone had a change of clothes. There were a number of touch pools at the aquarium and a few places where we could conceivably get wet, and I was not going to sit in Jake's SUV for an hour in wet clothes.

I was already on my second coffee before Jake showed up. I was quickly becoming a caffeine lush. Coffee hadn't been my favorite, but running on as little sleep as I was getting - and not particularly restful sleep at that - I found that given enough French vanilla creamer, coffee really is the best.

Jake helped me shuffle my sisters into his SUV. Technically, it could seat seven, but that was assuming three children in the rear row. I'm tall for a girl, so it was a bit snug. If Sara had been much bigger, it would've been uncomfortable. As it was, with a sister on either side, I was in for a ride. It takes a little under an hour to drive to Monterey from Santa Cruz.

Thankfully, one of our little bedtime routines is to make sure tablets are put on their chargers. Usually for any given activity I pick for a day, one of my sisters will complain about it. Like Jordan at the library. Today, I wanted them to stay occupied in the car, and Kindles and headphones are great for car rides with kids.

It was about ten or so when we picked up Marco. He sat in the middle with Tobias. He had brought - and I wish I were kidding - the DVD box set of BBC's Blue Planet. It was an appropriate choice, I'll say that much. When we pulled up to Cassie's and Jake got out to go get her, Marco put in one of the discs. I'm not sure if he was trying to be helpful. I had forgotten Jake's SUV even had a DVD player, and it was great in terms of keeping my sisters busy. Or perhaps he intended for me and Tobias to gain some insight as far as what we were getting into so far as morphing our way down four hundred meters. But when he played the episode entitled simply The Deep, I wondered if he was messing with us.

My sisters were fine with it, though, and we spent the next forty minutes listening to David Attenborough talk about submersibles, bioluminescence, and the sad reality of the male anglerfish.

When we got to Monterey, we didn't go straight to the aquarium. We parked at the Downtown East Garage like we always did. There's a trolley that comes by the garage every ten or fifteen minutes, and it would take us the rest of the way to the aquarium. But first, we had a stop to make.

We got out on Reeside Avenue at the Cannery Row Inn. My sisters immediately turned to me as we hopped off the trolley. "I thought we were going to the aquarium," Jordan said,

"Oh, we are," I said.

"Then what are we doing?" she asked.

"Come on, kid, you'll see."

We were only two blocks from the San Carlos Beach, but we weren't here for that either. It was a nice day, and the waters of the Monterey Bay shimmered beryl green in the shallow waters off the beach.

"Are we going swimming?" Sara asked.

"You don't have your swimsuit, Sara," Jordan pointed out.

"It's a surprise," Jake said. "Come on."

At the end of the beach is a marina parking lot, but if you keep on the pedestrian path, it becomes Coast Guard Pier. We passed a few people fishing, but the pier was pretty sparse. The last twenty or so feet of the path was blocked off by a rectangular chain link cage. The reason for the fence was very obvious. Jordan and Sara heard them before they saw them, and if you've never heard the guttural barking of a sea lion up close, it's a sound you don't miss. Beyond the fencing, the breakwater continued for at least another four hundred feet of bare rock. And this elongate finger of bare rock was the perfect place for sea lions to hang out.

My sisters thought this was the best thing ever.

"Omigod, omigod!" Sara squealed. "Look at them! Rachel! Look at them!"

"Whoa, did you see that one?!" Jordan burst.

One of the sea lions had just jumped out of the water and then rushed back under the waves. If you've never seen a sea lion in person before, one of the first things you notice is that they're considerably bigger than they look in nature documentaries. Case in point, one of the big males swam by, and we watched its silhouette glide effortlessly through the water. He had to be over seven feet long, and as he crawled out of the water, pulling his massive brown bulk up onto the rocks, he was probably at least as heavy as my grizzly bear. Actually, looking at it, sea bear might have been a better name for them. The big brute shook water from his fur like a dog, the layer of blubber rippling over the muscular frame. He bellowed loudly and chased off one of the other sea lions before lying down on the warm rock.

There were signs on the fence warning that it was illegal and dangerous to feed or bother the sea lions, as if it wasn't patently obvious that an animal the size of a sofa could hurt you. But the threat of a nasty bite or thousands of dollars in fines was apparently insufficient as a deterrent, hence the fencing. As far as Jordan and Sara knew, this was just a lovely little addition to the day plan at the aquarium. But this was a tactical location for us.

We all had our cell phones out, taking pictures. Nothing weird about a group of teens taking shots of wildlife. But we were also stealthily - we hoped - taking shots of the surrounding area. The breakwater was pretty isolated, but we wanted to be certain there were no cameras in the area, no vantage points where someone might see five teenagers trying to pet the sea lions.

It was going to be night when we came back here, and I was already concerned that the sea lions might sleep somewhere else. We'd have to hope that this was their overnight spot too. But watching the big guy bark, I could see his teeth. This was likely not going to be a fun experience for us. Jake had already been bitten by a tiger. And despite their playful disposition on the rocks and their proximity to humans on the breakwater, I knew they were wild animals. And they were predators. An animal doesn't get that big if it sucks at catching fish.

We were on the clock, though, so after about half an hour, we had to get Jordan and Sara to say goodbye to the sea lions and walk the half mile back to the same intersection to catch the trolley again.

If you've never been to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, I really recommend it. It can be a little pricey for tourists - four adult tickets cost as much as a one-year membership - but it's definitely worth it. There's a walking tour on Google Maps, but it doesn't do the live experience of being there any justice. For one thing, the Google tour was done while the aquarium was closed, and even on a Monday, the aquarium was bustling with people. Being summer vacation, a lot of the crowd was teenagers like us, but there are always crowds of grandparents, nannies, and stay-home parents pushing strollers.

Coming in the front entrance, you're immediately hit with the scale of the place. The high, trussed ceiling made me feel small everytime, and after we checked in at the membership counter, the first thing you see in the main hallway is the full-sized fiberglass orca hanging from the ceiling above the door to the gift shop. And when a killer whale looks small, you know you're in a large space.

The first thing we did was to go right back outside.

The northern corner of the aquarium sits out over part of the bay itself, and it's this deliberate incorporation of the native environment into the building's design that makes the Monterey Bay Aquarium the marvel that it is. You can see dolphins at the aquarium, but they're not captive animals. They just happen to live in the bay and occasionally pass by. On a trip with our parents, I think Sara was probably four or five, we once saw a humpback in the bay from the deck at the aquarium, so in a lot of ways, it's just a lottery chance of what you'll see any given trip.

Today, there was nothing but pelicans and cormorants out in the bay. There were probably other things out there we couldn't see, but my sisters wanted to see the otters, which meant we had to go back inside. There are two places to see the otters. There's the second floor viewing area if you like watching sea otters float on their backs. But just around the corner from the fiberglass orca - and under a second orca you can't see from the main entrance - there's the underwater viewing for the otters. That's where we all ended up.

The fluffy little sea weasels always seemed to me to look like a masterfully skilled toymaker made the best ever teddy bear without really knowing what a bear was supposed to look like. They are unimaginably fluffy. Unlike dolphins or sea lions that have a layer of blubber to insulate against the cold water, sea otters have only their thick coats. A sea otter has ten times as many hairs per square inch as the average person has on their entire scalp. This is why whenever they're not feeding or playing, they spend so much time grooming their fur. They actually blow into their fur to add insulating bubbles of trapped air. At least, that's what the plaque by the tank said.

But sea otters weren't on our morph menu.

Our next stop was to the bat ray touch pool. Jordan was way more into this idea than Sara was. My youngest sister was terrified of the large black rays swimming in the pools. It was actually Tobias that calmed her down. He picked up my sister and held her to his hip like she was a toddler and she watched as he dropped his left hand into the water as the stingray swam past.

When his fingers touched the ray, I knew he was acquiring it. The ray became torpid and slow the way animals always did when we acquired them. Sara reached down, hanging from his neck almost, and pet the fish before Tobias let it go.

I looked at Cassie, my eyes darting to Tobias. She had seen it too. She saw the question I couldn't ask, and all she did was nod. Then she tapped Jake on the shoulder and before I knew it, she was petting one of the rays herself. I was a little confused, I'll admit. Stingrays hadn't been on our morph list, but I went along with it. One by one, all of us acquired a bay ray. The texture of the fish's skin was like wet silk, and if anyone noticed the rays being a little sluggish after being pet by five teenagers, no one said or did anything. I was worried we were going to have aquarium staff running up to us to see what we'd done to the rays, but thankfully that didn't happen.

We did, however, leave the touch pool very soon after we were done.

We spent the rest of our time at the aquarium in more of a freeform fashion. We wondered around the kelp forest exhibit, and we caught a keeper chat regarding the aquarium's resident Laysan albatross, Makana. The aquarium had an ongoing commitment for raising awareness to the extent of the damage plastic wreaks on the ocean ecosystem, and albatrosses are particularly susceptible to eating plastic trash that floats. But of all the animals on our morph list, the albatross was up there. And while the bird had long-since been acclimatized to people and crowds, the keeper made it very clear to Sara that Makana wouldn't like being pet.

At the end of the keeper chat and a brief question and answer session, most of the crowd started to move on to other exhibits. But Cassie went up and thanked her for her time. I saw the saw the faraway look in her face before her eyes fluttered. I knew Cassie had just acquired the albatross handler.

The only one of us that had ever morphed another human was Jake when he'd morphed Chapman. I had acquired Mrs. Chapman. Jake had asked me to, I think just in case, but I'd never morphed her. Honestly, before that moment, I had forgotten all about it. There were any number of things I might be able to get away with as an adult. Well, maybe not as Kimberly Chapman, but being someone else for a while had some appeal. Probably a terrible idea, but still appealing.

We hit the Tentacles exhibit for awhile. The aquarium had a whole section just for its cephalopods, which is cool. We saw the pyjama squid, flamboyant cuttlefish, and the giant Pacific octopus. I wondered if any of them should be on our morph list. The giant octopus is one of my favorites. I was thinking of maybe getting an octopus tentacle as a tattoo on my calf for awhile. Being an octopus, that would be fun.

We stopped at the auditorium to watch the short film about the aquarium's ongoing Project White Shark. From there, we went up to the second floor and actually ran out a decent chunk of the rest of our time at the aquarium in the kid-friendly Splash Zone exhibit. My sisters loved the penguins and the other touch pools, and time passed quickly.

We caught the afternoon feeding for the sea otters, which meant it was already three thirty. We decided to call it a day, and Jake promised Jordan and Sara that we'd come back a few times over the summer. And he suggested McDonald's since it had been more than five hours since any of us had eaten. The trolley ride back to the garage was spent talking and all of us had our own highlights for the trip. I noted that Jake had developed something of what could be taken as an unhealthy predisposition for fast food since we'd met Elfangor. But I was hungry too, and I didn't have a problem with it, just something I noticed.

I spent a decent amount of time on the way home texting Melissa. She liked the idea of the camping trip a lot, and she was surprisingly supportive of me ditching my sisters for a few days. I smiled when she texted that she hadn't succeeded in her quest for a summer job yet, so taking a bite out of my big sister stipend was admittedly better than no pay at all. Plus, her dad seemed preoccupied with some kind of summer thing now that school was out.

I took that with a frown. We knew exactly two Controllers and I was still weirded out that her basement was now firmly off-limits. I've known Chapman as my friend's dad long before Melissa and I ever made it to high school, though admittedly he was a history teacher when I met him. But he usually spent his summers working the adult-education circuits and doing volunteer work. Habitat for Humanity and stuff like that. I wondered what he might be doing that seemed out of the ordinary when it clicked to me that I had no reliable reference for how long Chapman had been a Controller. I guess I just assumed it was a relatively recent development. No real reason for that, though. I suppose since the Yeerk invasion was new to me, I just projected that it was new for Chapman. But there was no way to tell really. Elfangor had told us the Yeerks had been on Earth for a long time. More than a decade. It was hard now not to wonder if his promotion to principal wasn't some element in a Yeerk plot. Or maybe becoming principal is what put a target on him in the first place. Hell, for all I knew, Chapman had been a Controller since I've known him. That thought turned my stomach.

Then I kept going with it. Could he have been a Controller even before Melissa was born? Could she have been nothing more than a prop piece in the alien invasion? Two Controllers having a kid just to assuage suspicion?

I shook the idea from my head. Yes, partly just because I didn't want that to be true, but also because I remembered that Melissa had mentioned she noticed the changes in her parents' behaviors. It was something that had a concrete beginning. I wondered how to ask her for details. She'd chalked it up to midlife crises or even just thought maybe she was exaggerating the change out of teen angst or something. It should be noted that Melissa Chapman is probably the least angstish teen anyone has ever met. She could sell pep to the cheer squad.

I went back to my fries, absently listening to Jake and Cassie talking in the front. I noticed Marco had put on another episode of Blue Planet and it was not only keeping his own attention, but also Tobias and Sara were watching it. Jordan had decided to read a book on her Kindle. She liked to listen to music when she was reading; I saw her lightly tapping her finger against the edge of her Kindle case.

We had another half an hour before we got home, and Melissa could be somewhat mercurial when it came to texting. So I decided to look up bat rays on my phone. Ironically, or I suppose obviously, I ended up on the aquarium website. I found that they are actually a type of eagle ray, though that fact was completely meaningless to me. They're common in kelp forests so they're common in the Monterey Bay. I also found that they can get to be six feet across, though the ones we had acquired had only been maybe two feet wide. Their teeth are fused into plates because their prefered prey are clams and crabs and the plates are designed to crush shells.

But it was the last fact that made me both understand why we had acquired them and get silently pissed at Tobias. See, it turns out that bat rays are a prey species for California sea lions.

We were going to morph into bait.