Chapter 13

I woke to the hellish cacophony of my nightstand alarm clock. I sat upright in a fit, suddenly panicked that I'd overslept. I hadn't, but with the thinnest five hours of sleep I really wanted to lay back down and take a sick day. But as I wiped the cold sweat from my face, I remembered the bizarre nightmares, and sleep lost its appeal very quickly.

I'd dreamt that I had been bolted to a cold metal table, with my mouth wired open. One after another, spiders the size of tabby cats crawled over me and forced their way into my open mouth.

This had been our first mission. I'd crawled through a vent. I didn't even place the camera, just mapped the path with kite string. And one small glitch was giving me severe mental and physical backlash.

Elfangor had said if we found the Yeerk pool, he could make an adequate explosive. If this was where I was after the first baby steps of the human resistance, I wasn't sure how well I'd take to explosions.

It was Monday. We'd had eyes on Chapman most of Saturday, all of Sunday, and now with the camera in place, we knew it was probably going to be time. He was going to go to the pool today. And if not today or in the middle of the night, then Tuesday morning would be the last possible option.

Unless we were wrong. Maybe Chapman wasn't a Controller. What would we do then? We'd be back to square one, with no leads and no options. And how would we help Elfangor then?

But no. I was sure he was one of them. He'd shown up minutes after that call from the pay phone. He'd been looking around. Melissa noticed he was different. He had blacked out the basement windows and not even the fucking cat could get down there. I knew he was a slave to the Yeerks. I just didn't want it to be true.

I went to the hall bathroom, splashed water on my face. I debated getting another shower, but I opted against it. I'd had one last night, and I worried if I got in the spray, I'd just stay there till we were out of hot water. I took off my shirt and wiped myself off with a washcloth and got dressed.

I went downstairs for my usual minimalist breakfast, cup of coffee and a banana, and found Tom pouring himself a cup. Both of us actually get up for school before our parents leave for work, and the great advantage of having an older brother is that I seldom have to make my own coffee in the morning.

"Hey, bro," he said. "You alright? Thought I heard you in the bathroom last night praying to the porcelain god."

"I think the fried mushrooms at the Boardwalk disagreed with me," I lied. "What were you doing up that late?"

"Texting Zoe," he said with a yawn.

"Things going okay with you two?" I hadn't ever really taken much interest in Tom's girlfriend. She was nice enough, I guess. She seemed a bit distant, though I couldn't really tell you why. She was the socially responsible type, homes for the homeless, soup kitchens, that kind of stuff, and she was cute enough that I could definitely see where Tom got into The Sharing. But Zoe had a something of a joyless personality, and hanging out with her felt tedious, even if she wasn't particularly abrasive or anything. Like the stuff I found interesting seemed boring to her and vice versa. Her boyfriend had a basketball scholarship and she didn't even seem that into sports, which I guess isn't all that weird, but whatever. Suffice to say we didn't dislike each other or anything, just never clicked on a personal level.

"Things are going well. We're planning a volunteer outreach for The Sharing for early June. Wanna come?"

I shrugged. "Do I have to do anything?"

Tom laughed. "Dude, it's a beach cookout. Barbecue and volleyball. Maybe a few local bands if we get the permits. Trying to get new volunteers."

I yawned, trying to shake the last remnants of post-lizard spider dreams out of my head. "I'll go for the free food, but I got a job and this is my first summer with a girlfriend with an actual barn-load of chores. No promises on volunteering."

"Yeah, man, I know how that goes. Enjoy the summers while you can, bro. College will sneak up on you." He actually tousled my hair like I was a little kid and he wasn't barely two years older than me.

We grabbed our backpacks, I made sure I had my wallet before tossing Tom the keys. He'd either take the bus home or get a ride from Zoe or one of his other friends. He had his own plans after school anyway.

Tom parked in the side lot and tossed me the keys. I looked up at the roof. I of course didn't see an osprey looking down, and I didn't really expect that I would. I don't know why I looked up, really. One last breath before I took the plunge.

The walk up the stairs seemed weird, and the hustle of so many other people made me nervous. I was back to my Yeerk paranoia, wondering how many of my friends were infested, how many of my teachers? I also had the slow dread that at any minute cops were going to show up and call all our names down to the office, that somehow the camera had been discovered and we were all caught on tape morphing throughout the school.

Don't sweat, deep breaths, act casual.

Easier said than done.

I went to the computer lab and tried to clear my head. I had stuff to do in here anyway. In my two trips to Best Buy yesterday, I'd still forgotten to buy ink cartridges. I wished my English teacher would have just taken emails, but she didn't, so I logged into my Google Drive and printed off my paper and then went to my homeroom.

None of my morph-capable friends were in my homeroom. I would see Tobias in English and trig, and I'd see Rachel and Cassie at chemistry, and Marco and I had gym together. But the only time it'd be the five of us together was at lunch.

As I sat at my desk, I got drawn into a conversation with my friends Matt and Drew about the new Spider-Man movie and whether having Spidey in the Avengers continuity would be any different from the last Sony incarnation with Andrew Garfield.

It seemed so fake, so hollow. I laughed, I added to the conversation, put in my two cents about the Vulture and how every reboot was too scared to rehash the villains of the last continuity. "I mean they really shoe-horned the Green Goblin plot in Amazing2," I heard myself saying, "but I would have loved to see their take on Doc Oc or something. Hell, even Mysterio would have been better than that Goblin trainwreck."

It was my voice, my friends, things I used to talk about. And in less than three days, I'd become so distant to this shit. One weekend with Elfangor and it just didn't matter anymore. I had Cassie, I had Marco, Tobias, my cousin Rachel, and the stranded alien soldier presumably sitting on the roof of this building. I didn't care so much about watching TV with Tom, or discussing comics with Matt and Drew, or anything, really.

But I still went through the motions. I held up the veneer of Jake Berenson. Like I was playing myself in a movie.

School droned on. Part of me was actually glad for it. I mean, I wasn't in the right headspace for trigonometry, even on the best day. But listening to my teacher go on about secants and cotangents gave me something to focus on that wasn't Elfangor or the camera hidden in Chapman's office. Tobias and I traded glances, but we both knew we couldn't really talk in class. It was the end of May, and that meant we were all gearing up for finals. Nearly all my classes were just review, and while I wasn't going to ever be the valedictorian, I did hit my B- average pretty consistently. I'd actually gotten better with trigonometry as the year had gone on, and I was doing about ten percent better on quizzes than I was at the beginning of the year. But trig made as much sense to me right then as it ever would, and I don't think any amount of studying would really change my grade much. I could probably take the final now and still get at least a C- or better, so it did feel like all this review was wasted effort.

But it did kill time.

Classes went on. Tobias and I walked together to English, but we didn't say anything. I turned in my paper, and listened through the lecture of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice . I went to my chemistry class and went over covalent bonds and stoichiometry, exothermic reactions versus endothermic reactions. Review after review.

Finally, it was lunchtime, and I grabbed a tray and found my friends.

We weren't usually together at lunch. I usually sat with Marco, sometimes Tobias. And Rachel and Cassie usually sat together, but right now, we were a group of five, and I was worried things might look weird.

The level of paranoia is hard to overstate. Yes, I know, I'm sitting at a fucking cafeteria table, get a grip, not that big a deal. And any other day, I would've agreed with that sentiment. But right then, in a cafeteria full of students, teachers, cafeteria workers, I couldn't fight the image of brain slugs sitting in all of their heads. Any of them could be one of the Yeerks. I'd had this same moment of dread and unease Saturday morning when we'd gone to Cassie's after we'd heard Elfangor had gone missing. But what made this moment a little different was that this was the first time I remember concretely seeing the Yeerks as enemies.

I guess that's weird, maybe. I'd seen them as a threat at first. They were like the flu or herpes or something, an outside risk that could strike anyone, and that posed a danger. But shy of a few rogue pathologists out there, I don't think anyone really saw diseases as an adversary. Maybe an adversity or a challenge, but a faceless happenstance, nothing with a face.

But placing the camera in the vent, seeing Melissa yesterday with her bubbling energy, I thought about Chapman.

I'm not the kind of kid that spends a ton of time in the principal's office, but I have here and there. Marco and I have pulled a few pranks, that fight I got into with Braden, and that time I'd come in late because I had lost my SUV keys in the laundry. But even without a whole lot of personal experience, like most teenagers, I didn't have a particularly positive opinion of the school administrators. I'd thought of Chapman in some pretty unflattering terms, honestly. To be a high school principal, you have to be better at grading papers than you are at actually teaching. That's what I'd always thought. Someone that can take the constant bullshit of administrative paperwork and budget constraints and somehow see that as a step up from teaching. I'd seen him as a relatively boring, studious, cog in the machine that was public school.

And now, as I walked across the cafeteria to sit with my friends, I saw him as a person for probably the first time. He was Melissa's dad. He had a wife, hobbies, likes and dislikes. I judged him entirely on my own perspective as a student, but I suddenly wondered what he was like in person. Maybe he went fishing on weekends. Maybe he got up early on Saturdays and drove the carpool for the girls lacrosse team. I should ask Rachel later.

But my point, is that as soon as I saw Chapman as a victim, I saw the Yeerks in the adversary column. They ceased being an abstract problem, and I felt the anger course through me. If there had been an old man in a black cloak trying to turn me to the Dark Side at that moment, I probably wouldn't have offered much resistance.

I'd gone from puking in my bathroom and spider nightmares to Dark Side in less than twelve hours, and this kind of mood swing wasn't good. I'm sure one of mom's psych books would tell me my anger was an emotional manifestation of my sense of useless futility and whatever. It probably was true, but I took a breath, exhaled, and sat down with my friends.

"Hey, Jake, you alright?" Tobias asked.

"Tired and a little moody, honestly," I said.

"Any word from our friend upstairs?" Rachel asked between bites of salad. She was not vegan, there was an obscene amount of bacon bits in her chicken strip salad.

I shook my head. "No, and I'll doubt we're going to get any other updates for awhile. He doesn't know the floorplan or our schedules, and even if he's for some reason randomly trying to thought-speak to Tidwell's class, he knows we can't answer him."

"You know we're going to have to make our move tonight," Marco said.

"Yeah, I know."

"I honestly think we have time," Tobias said.

We all looked at him.

"Okay, yeah, I mean he's the vice principal. And I'm sure he could make up a meeting or have to go out to lunch or whatever, so the camera had to go in. But when he leaves here, he has a daughter, right? Wouldn't it make more sense for him to go to the pool at like midnight or something?"

"No," Marco said. "I think that would be more suspicious. Melissa already knows he's working on rec room renovations and he could just say he has a parent meeting or some shit with the PTA. I think immediately after school, that's our likeliest window."

"Look, taking bets on when this is going to happen isn't going to help us," Cassie said. When the bell rings and we all get out of here, we have to meet on the roof, agreed?"

I nodded. "We'll all go to the Boardwalk after school, okay. Park the SUV where it won't look out of place, the SUV has tinted windows in the back, we can do what we need to do from there. Shh."

I shushed, because right then, Melissa Chapman sat down next to Rachel. "Hey, so I guess now that Jake and Cassie are dating, we're all going to be eating over here, huh?"

I blushed, and I'm pretty sure Cassie did too. But honestly I was relieved. In all my paranoia about Yeerks, I'd forgotten the obvious explanation and how teen gossip works. Of course the whole school knew Cassie and I were together now. She set her hand across the table and we held hands for a minute.

"So what's up? You say you're going to the Boardwalk?"

"Yeah," I said, trying not to panic that we'd been overheard. "I'm not sure if we're staying, though. I just told Tobias I'd get him a ride pass and we just never got around to it yesterday."

"Oh," she said. "That's cool. I'm not sure what I'm doing this summer."

"I think Jenny's quitting," Marco said. "Something about wanting to spend time with her boyfriend over the summer. Feel like a job at the movie theater?"

"Oh!" Melissa squealed. "That's such a good idea! I should get a summer job. Rachel, are you getting a job?"

Rachel laughed. "I'm a full-time babysitter over the summer. We're going to spend almost everyday at the Boardwalk and the library, maybe the zoo and the aquarium."

"You're getting the car?" I asked.

Rachel shrugged. "No clue. I'm hoping, but they haven't said anything."

Rachel's parents were more or less in the same income bracket as my parents. Her mom was a big deal attorney and her dad worked in advertising. And like my family, they were better off than most, but with the Great Recession and such, it seemed like any extra income was always put into savings and rainy day accounts. So it wasn't as if she'd be getting a brand new car from the dealership, but a used car was still likely to be newer and more eco-friendly than my SUV.

"Well, the SUV fits all of us. Eight is tight, but you'll fit," I said.

"Eight?" Melissa asked. "So you're including me in this little group, huh?"

I shrugged. "I shuttle Marco to work as it is. And these guys," I said gesturing to Rachel, Cassie, and Tobias, "tend to use up our employee tickets."

"I gots kids," Rachel said with a smile. "Jordan and Sara can't wait for the new Despicable Me movie."

We finished our lunches and I tried to ignore the wet crunch of the lettuce. I was not going to let one bad morphing experience ruin sandwiches, dammit.

The rest of the day dragged on, though I found gym class to a welcome break. I've said I'm not a bad athlete, but not a great athlete. Right then, though, I felt like one. Maybe it was nervous energy, maybe I was happy I didn't have to sit through another review lecture, or maybe it was just a physical distraction from the Chapman situation. I don't know, probably a bit of everything, but running made sense to me in a way it rarely ever does.

Marco, even though he didn't surf anymore, still had that endurance. And I was able to keep pace with him, for awhile. But he eventually outpaced me like I knew he would and settled into a good rhythm. Maybe I'd try jogging with my dad once in awhile.

Gym was my last class of the day and a lot of that nervousness came flooding back when we got the call to hit the showers. It was almost showtime, I thought to myself as I got dressed. Marco and I split up as we each sought out our lockers.

I was the second one to reach the SUV, Rachel leaning against the vehicle lazily. She was wearing a white skirt and her red lacrosse jersey, somehow doing the typical Rachel thing of reminding everyone that saw her that badass and feminine went hand-in-hand.

Her season had just ended a few weeks ago, which was good because with her having practice two nights a week and games Saturday mornings, I'd not only played chauffeur more than I liked, I'd also done a fair amount of cousin-sitting.

That made me wonder something.

"So who exactly is watching your sisters today?" I asked.

"Melissa," she answered, as though that should've been patently obvious. "I need a break every once in awhile, y'know."

"Your sisters are fun," I said, half-sarcastically. They really were. But at eleven and nine, they were getting to the fun stage of being too little for big kid stuff and too big for the usual kid fare. I made a mental note to get more DVDs for the SUV. I wondered if my player would take burned discs.

"Says their favorite cousin that takes them to movies and ice cream," she snarled. "I tell you, I'm done with this teen mom shit."

"Oh, c'mon, is it that bad?"

Rachel shrugged and she suddenly looked uncomfortable. I could get Marco to open up if I pushed. Tobias was shy, and he got uncomfortable, but honestly I think he just wasn't used to people taking a genuine interest, but if I pressed, he'd answer. Cassie took no prodding. She was very aware of her emotions and if you asked a question, she'd answer. None of that was true for Rachel. She was one of the most fiercely guarded people I knew, if she didn't want to tell me something that was bothering her, then I was up shit creek. All I could do was sigh, wave to Cassie and Marco, and wait for Tobias.

Tobias was the last one out, and I had the distinct impression that he'd had a rough day. I didn't want to embarrass him in front of the girls, so I didn't ask. Besides, Tobias knew all he had to do was give me or Marco a name. Marco was smart, cool, and patiently calculating. He didn't hit Braden Stewart like I had. He'd simply let it out that Braden was cheating on his girlfriend, who had then screamed to the whole of the cafeteria that he has a small penis and had given her chlamydia. Of course, like most high school rumors, I knew it probably wasn't true, probably, but it had put the school in the position of putting up chlamydia awareness flyers to cover their bases and thus effectively ruined his life for the rest of high school. I'd given Braden a black eye and two stitches. Marco had given him the nickname Clapper, which was way more damaging. Marco didn't see the return on violence, and there was almost a mob boss mentality to the way he did things without getting his hands dirty.

But Tobias didn't say anything, he just got in the car. If the girls noticed anything, they didn't mention it.

The Boardwalk is never that busy on weekdays. It's busier in the summer, of course, and on a late May afternoon with school out it had some destination value with the local teens, ourselves included. But the real crowds would come with the weekends when school was out in two weeks. I've mentioned this is a surf Mecca, and there's a reason every sixth business in this town is a damned surf shop.

It didn't take much time to switch to raven. Tobias wanted to go hawk, but we told him that was probably going to attract more attention than necessary. The SUV was a fair enough venue for morphing, for those of us in the rear seats. The windows in the front seat were not tinted, so Cassie and I needed to keep looking around before we changed. One by one, five ravens flew out of the open window of my Ford Expedition. I'd hidden the keys under the seat and I had to hope nothing bad happened to my vehicle while we were out.

It occurred to me if anyone found the SUV like that, with all our clothes haphazardly laid out on the seats, backpacks left behind, key under the floormat, that it would probably go down as one of the strangest missing persons reports in our town history.

We landed on the roof and found no trace of Elfangor except the leather pouch and my cell phone.

There was a brief moment of dread shoot through my every fiber. I think all of us expected the school administrators to stay at the school for a few more hours. It was stupid to think Chapman would be stuck all day here and Elfangor had no way to call or text. The phone wouldn't pick up thought-speech and Elfangor didn't know English let alone how to use the other features of the phone.

I really wished I'd had the foresight to put a pre-typed text message and show him how to send it like we'd shown him the camera app.

*Shit!* Marco yelled. *What do we do now?*

I looked around, but I didn't see anything, and with raven eyes, if you can't see it, it's not there. This wasn't good, and it should've been anticipated, but whatever.

*Rachel, what kind of car does he have?*

*Um, a red Toyota Camry. We're going to go look for his car across the city?*

*If it comes to that,* I answered dejectedly. Oh, please, don't let it come to that. *Right now, let's swing past his place.*

*Oh, yeah, good thinking,* Cassie said.

*Wait, nevermind,* Rachel said. *Follow me.* It was hard to tell which raven was who, and the fact that thought-speech isn't exactly directional didn't help but a name to the identical wings around me. But one of the ravens banked hard to the left and the rest of us turned to follow Rachel.

*Um, what's up?* Tobias asked.

*I'm a fucking idiot, that's what's up.*

I got her meaning. She said Melissa was baby-sitting. *Ugh, we just went over this before we left the school and neither of us put it together,* I said embarrassed.

*Wait, what's going on?* Marco asked.

*I asked Melissa if she'd watch my sisters after school,* Rachel explained. *Who do you think is driving her to my house?*

*Don't stress,* Cassie said. *We're a little overwhelmed; it happens.*

She wasn't wrong. At any rate, I didn't say anything. But I was hoping we were still up for this. What else could we have missed?

But we soon saw the red car on Rachel's street, and more importantly, we saw the dark grey and white feathers of an osprey following the red car.

*Elfangor!* I called. *Can you hear us?*

*Barely,* came a muted answer.

He seemed to slow, though I don't think he could see us directly behind him. Birds have good vision but could really use some rearview mirrors. It only took a minute to close the distance between us. I seriously hoped the Santa Cruz area didn't boast an avid birdwatchers' club. We should've had Elfangor acquire a raven too. I don't know why that hadn't occurred to any of us yesterday.

*I was hopeful you would know where he was going,* Elfangor said.

*Of course we did,* Rachel fibbed.

*You weren't worried you'd be going in alone?* Cassie asked.

*I am a soldier,* he said, *and this mission is rather straightforward. I have no intention of engaging the enemy; I am only scouting the location of the Yeerk pool.*

*That's comforting,* Marco said dryly.

Elfangor seemed amused. *The prospect is not particularly appealing to me, either. And I must admit, Cassie, that I am glad I am not alone.*

*You know,* Marco said, *the fact that five kids with no clue what we're doing makes a significant impact on your morale really isn't much in the way of reassurance.*

The car had already left Rachel's house, and we must have just missed Melissa being dropped off. The high school got out earlier than the middle school or elementary. *Melissa has a key?* I asked.

*Yeah, I gave her my key and forty bucks. By the way, if anyone asks, I'm at the library studying for my finals.*

It became readily apparent that Chapman wasn't going back to the school. That much wasn't really that surprising. But I had a sickening thought as we followed the red car along Highway 1 over the San Lorenzo River and past the cemetery. And that worry was only intensified when we watched Chapman take the exit onto Highway 17.

*Oh, hell no,* Marco said.

I would've sighed if I could have.

We were heading toward San Jose.