We read George Seldon's A Cricket in Times Square in the fourth grade. When we finished reading the book, we watched the animated version, where Mario learns the story of the cricket from his piano teacher and not the shop owner where goes to buy Chester's cage.

Afterwards, the teacher started a discussion and (focusing on the animated version) asked us how Mario's teacher might have known about the cricket story.

I offered any number of suggestions, including the music teacher learning the story when he was a kid. To which my classmates quickly responded by pointing out that the music teacher was a fictional character and therefore not real. My classmates were idiots.

The point is I've always had a tenancy to overanalyze things. Sometimes it's a good thing, like when a teacher wants to know that I'm paying attention. Or when I go over conversations I've had with someone and try to remember anything that could explain the way things are happening now.

For example, I remember Erek telling me about the Yeerk pools. He also mentioned that the Yeerks need to return to these pools every three days or they'll die. If my dad was infested sometime on Saturday and today was Tuesday morning, it meant his Yeerk needed to feed and soon.

It took the whole day to fly back to Vermont and then we had to drive from the airport another four hours. So unless Dad's Yeerk had arrangements to teleport back to the west coast, then there had to be a Yeerk Pool nearby.

More to the point, it seemed like Dad's Yeerk was running a side operation against his boss, Visser Three. If that was the case, he would need a safe place to hide Dad when he was feeding, otherwise another Yeerk would infest him and know what he was planning.

All of this speculation was useless of course. If there was one thing Dad always taught me, it was that a journalist needed proof. Speculation wasn't enough to sell a story. Sometimes, it was just enough to cripple a good reporter.

So I got dressed for school and before I left, I grabbed a bagel from the fridge. As I walked, I took note of the birds I passed.

This early in the morning I could all ready hear robins and chickadees making noise as they flitted about in the bushes and lawns, looking for food. They were useless for long term flight and easy pickings for a hawk or cat.

Crows cawed and hung out on power lines. One was picking at road kill in the middle of the road. You almost had to admire its nerve, sitting there, daring the other crows to approach it and not bothering to fly away until it nearly became a hood ornament to the tow truck that sped through. Still, from what I could see, crows weren't very good distance fliers either. Ravens might be a little better, but there was no chance of getting close enough to acquire one and besides; I can't tell a crow from a raven.

But there was one bird I knew for certain I could get close enough to touch. It was a bird that was almost as tenacious as the crow, but definitely cockier.

It's a common misconception that seagulls only hang out near the…well, the sea. Believe it or not, I have actually seen seagulls near lakes and heard people ask what they were doing near a lake, since they were "seagulls". (And when you hear that story, it almost becomes easy to see why the Yeerks thought we'd be easy pickings for an invasion, but I digress.)

The fact is that seagulls fly quite a ways inland in search of food. Riding the current like living kites, you hardly ever see them flapping their wings, except perhaps to remain airborne. I live two states away from the ocean and the nearest large body of water is a four hour drive north of here. But there are plenty of seagulls here. Most of them love to hang around the school, where trashcans can get pretty full of food long before the janitors get around to changing the liners.

When I got to the school grounds, the sun was only halfway over the mountains, with rays barely touching the parking lot and the building where the cafeteria entrance was located. It was at the trashcan by the entrance I saw them.

Two small gulls had managed to pull a McDonalds bag to the ground, and were now fighting over a French fry. The better fighter one won out and the smaller pecked at the bag for more food. I removed the bagel from my pocket and broke off a small piece.

At first, neither seagull was interested when I tossed it to the ground. Either that or they didn't see it. I tossed another small piece. This time they both flew right to the second piece and again, began fighting over it. Never mind that there were two pieces of bagel on the ground, they both wanted the one piece.

"All right, stop fighting," I said, breaking a third piece off and tossing it.

I barely registered a third seagull flying right above me. But it's what I was counting on. I started making larger pieces of one half of the bagel and tossing it. Three quickly became four. And soon about six or seven were beginning to crowd me. Some were even flying close enough to touch. But I didn't want to hurt them, so I didn't reach out yet.

After the first half was gone, I started breaking up the second half of the bagel.

"Caw, caw!"

Two gulls started fighting again. A third one joined the fray to get the same piece. The larger ones didn't fight, they simply waited for me to throw a new piece. I wanted one of the larger ones. The bigger, dominant gulls who were eyeing me like I was the little girl in the opening scene of The Lost World: Jurassic Park.

I crouched down and threw a piece to the largest one I could fine. A big gray winged gull with the white belly. It jumped over, spreading its wings out and cawing, daring the others to try to take its food. No takers. The other gulls simply floated around me, waiting for me to throw another piece.

I did. But this one was closer to me.

Like I planned, two or three of the gulls landed closer to me. The big gray winged one jumped in and fought them off, but I threw another piece. He got clear of them and landed close to my feet.

I tossed the rest of the bagel as far as I could with one hand and grabbed the seagull with my other, focusing on it. Just like with the turkey, the seagull seemed to go limp for a moment. I loosened my grip, hoping it wasn't hurt.

After a few seconds the gull screamed and bolted into the air, almost knocking me over.

"Awesome."

I spun around to see a kid named Bryce Treet. He was about my height with short dark hair and a ton of freckles covering his face and nose. The freckles weren't going away anytime soon. That, along with his name, was a trait that got him picked on quite a bit, even though it was something he couldn't really help.

We weren't exactly friends, but I stuck up for Bryce a few times—even though it got me a bloody nose or a bruise on my cheek for my trouble. And as a way of saying thank you he would help me with my math homework and save me a seat at lunch. It was as close to being friends as I was with anyone so it worked for me.

At the moment, the fact that it was too early for either of us to be near the school just wasn't as important to me as what he must have seen me doing. So I stood there trying to come up with a perfectly sound explanation.

"Uh…Hi Bryce," was all I could manage. I looked at the seagull, which had circled the parking lot and disappeared over the main school building. "I, uh…"

"Are you really going to morph into a seagull?" Bryce asked.

He couldn't have shocked me more if he had hit me. Off my look, he just laughed.

"It's okay Sean. I'm a Chee, like Erek."

Again…he couldn't have surprised me more if he had hit me. Only this time I was glad he surprised me in a way that wouldn't leave me with a concussion.

"After all this time, why am I not surprised?" I said. "You know, as friendships goes, ours isn't exactly based on honesty if you can't manage to tell me that you're an alien android pretending to be a school kid."

Bryce shrugged.

"We're not really that close." He pointed out.

"No, but I seem to remember getting the crap kicked out of me for sticking up for you," I pointed out, rather annoyed. "Do you think that maybe the fact that you're basically Superman wearing glasses could have been useful during any of those times."

"I'm really sorry," Bryce said, sincerely. "Chee are programmed for non-violence. I wasn't able to stop the bullies, even though I wanted to. But I did keep them from finding you again."

I remembered John and Erek's ability to hide me from plain site.

"The holographic projector," I said. "Everytime they seemed to be looking for me you lead them away."

"Erek was right about you." Bryce smiled. "I was kind of right about you too. It was my idea to let you know about us."

Were the Chee programmed to be annoyingly cryptic too? I wondered.

Bryce took me to his house, which wasn't far from the school. I had run away from enough bullies after school to kind of be jealous of him not having to run so far. But at the same time it had to suck living so close to school. At least where I lived it wasn't easy for them to figure out where I lived or how I got there, since I took different routes when I knew I was being followed. Of course my envy turned to annoyance the moment I realized Bryce was a Chee.

His mother and father, Mr. and Mrs. Treet were at the breakfast table reading different sections of the morning paper and his younger brother, Joseph, who was already dressed and ready for school, was in the living room eating a bowl of cereal while watching Histeria.

"Hi guys," Mr. Treet said, looking up from his paper. When he saw me, he frowned. "Ah, Sean. I take it Bryce has filled you in."

I shrugged.

"I guess so, sir," I said. Chee or not, Mr. Treet was an adult and I was raised to be polite.

"We're sorry to hear about your father," Mrs. Treet said.

I almost choked up when she said it.

"It's okay," I said, looking into the living room. "I guess little Joey is one of you too, huh."

"Not exactly," Bryce said, with a laugh. "Joey is a human boy that Chee-Enos…that's my father, adopted. He doesn't know what we are and he won't ever know, so we'd like it if you kept that part to yourself."

I raised an eyebrow at that.

"But…aren't you kind of like the Yeerks then?" I asked, uncertain of how I felt about this. "How many kids are being raised by Yeerks right now?"

Mrs. Treet smiled and shook her head. I expected her to be offended by the comparison, but this threw me off.

"The Yeerks infest children too," she said. "They know no bounds. Joeseph has the potential to learn all that we have learned, without us forcing it upon him."

I gave Bryce a resentful stare.

"And when Joey gets picked on by bullies?"

"We can teach him to protect himself." Bryce explained. "We just can't act on our own."

"Is that why you chose to save me?" I asked, trying to keep my voice down. Joey laughed as Loud Kiddington shouted. "You and Erek? So I could do your dirty work for you against the Yeerks?"

"No," Bryce said with a sincerity that almost irritated me. Why did these Chee have to be so honest and sweet about it? "I asked John to save you because you were the only person who stood up for me when no one else would. And when I found out about your Dad, I didn't want you to become a Controller as well so I asked Erek to explain everything to you so you would know how to defend yourself. We may be billions of years old but we know how valuable a friend is."

"It's what the word Chee means," Mr. Treet explained. "Friend in the Pemalite language."

I swore if could just go one whole day without hearing another buzzword from someone I would run naked in the streets. But I couldn't help myself.

"What are the Pemalites?"