Reluctantly, the others followed me over to the empty shell I'd picked out. Nothing was inside except for a few pieces of rubble that lay scattered on the floor. The frame of a staircase led to the upper level.
"We can leave our things under those stairs," Rachel said, "Perfect hiding spot."
I certainly hoped so. My Skipman portable tape player and my favorite mixtape were in my backpack. I could stand to lose anything except those.
The biggest problem with morphing is that only skintight clothes morph with you. No jackets, blue jeans, or shoes, and definitely not our backpacks, so we all had our morphing outfits on under our street clothes. There wasn't any more skin exposed than if we were swimming at the beach, but I still felt extremely self-conscious wearing nothing but a pair of bike shorts, especially with Rachel standing next to me.
The hawk DNA was there, swirling around somewhere in my blood. All I had to do was focus on it. As I started shrinking, I could see my feet slowly mutating into hawk talons. Five short, stubby toes stretched out and fused into three, with a fourth claw bursting out of my heels. I couldn't stand up straight with feet like that, and immediately fell over. I threw my arms out to break the fall - what was left of them, anyway. My fingers had shriveled away, leaving a single digit at the end of what only slightly resembled an arm. My bones were shifting around, and suddenly I could no longer move my 'arms' like I could before. I was stuck lying face down in the dirt, until my skull finally rearranged itself. The last few feathers grew in, and the change was complete.
I was a hawk again, with superhuman eyesight and hearing, wings that could lift me almost two miles above the ground, and the ability to fly faster than a speeding truck on the highway. Once again, everything was right with the world. A few feet away, the others had also finished morphing. Rachel and I had acquired the DNA of the same hawk. Unlike the rest of us, Lee didn't have a bird-of-prey morph, but he had acquired a crow. Or maybe it was a raven. I'm not quite sure what the difference is.
(All right. Lead the way, boys,) Rachel said. Lee bobbed around to face her.
(What's that supposed to mean?) he asked, on the verge of panic.
(It means I don't know which way the Esplin building is.)
(Obviously. What was that part about 'boys', though?)
(Oh, yeah, I guess Tobias is the only boy here. Sorry.)
Lee hopped over to the door.
(Tobias?)
(I haven't told her anything,) I said, (But if you keep squirming like that, she's definitely going to think you're hiding something.)
Up to that point, I hadn't told anybody the secret Lee had shared with me a few days ago: that despite being born and raised as a girl, he was absolutely sure that he was... well, a 'he'. That he'd been born in the wrong body. So far, he was too afraid to tell anybody else. It wasn't a subject I was familiar with at all, but I figured that Lee understood his own identity better than I ever could. He said he was a boy, and that was good enough for me.
It got me wondering. Does gender still matter when you're in morph? Was I still a boy, even though I currently had a hawk's body? I knew that I was still ME, but how much of my identity was based on a physical human body I'd be returning to in an hour, and how much of my identity was based on my mind alone? If I'd been a girl instead of a boy, how much of me would still be the same? Try as I might, I couldn't answer those questions. So I pushed them to the back of my mind and followed Lee as he led us to the Esplin building.
Up high, you really get a sense of how spread out the suburbs are. Sprawling on the fringes of the city in geometric order. An insulated border in between the bright lights and the far unlit unknown. I'm a Rush fan, in case you couldn't tell.
I was getting to be a little more familiar with the city from the sky than from ground level, and I had a few favorite landmarks. I really liked Century Plaza. The north and south sides were solid walls of bronze-tinted glass that gently sloped back, with the middle third going up one story higher than the outer wings. There wasn't anything else in town that looked like it. Then there was a cluster of three identical orange towers, square shaped, with green pyramid roofs. And of course, there was the EGS tower, with the array of satellite dishes on the roof that almost made it look like a cluster of barnacles was growing on it.
As it turned out, I'd seen the Esplin building several times before. A massive grey-green cube out by the waterfront, with massive, blue-tinted windows, a cluster of radio antennas on the roof, and surrounded by a well-manicured lawn and an eight-foot-high concrete fence. There was a parking ramp on the north side. I don't know who designed that ugly monstrosity, but its presence in the world probably made Frank Lloyd Wright spin in his grave.
We landed on the roof of a small office tower across the street, where we could easily watch everything going on outside. And as it happened, we arrived with perfect timing.
(Ooh, Dad's working late tonight,) Lee said, (I just saw his car.)
(Where is he?) Rachel asked.
(OK, you see that red Nissan over there?)
(I see it,) Rachel said, (Woah! That's your dad? He looks just like George Takei!)
The resemblance was uncanny. I could just about see him on the bridge of the classic USS Enterprise.
(Ugh. I wish he was my dad,) Lee grumbled, (Or Tom Selleck, or Hasselhoff... but no, instead of somebody unbelievably cool, I'm stuck with some jerk who's more interested in mineral deposits than his own s-) he hesitated for a moment, and corrected himself. (Than in his own kid.)
We watched as the red Nissan pulled up to the main gate. A security guard let him through, and the car disappeared into the parking ramp.
(Let's see where he parks,) Lee said as he jumped off the roof and glided across the road. Rachel and I followed. It was tricky, trying to fly at exactly the right altitude to see into the parking ramp, but somehow, we got lucky, and I was able to see the car pull into a stall.
(Fourth floor! He's over here!)
I landed on the edge of the banister and watched as he walked over to a door leading into the building. From 100 feet away, I could see in perfect detail as he showed an ID badge to another security guard, who let him inside.
(Well, that's as far as we can follow him,) Lee commented, (How about we try and look through some windows instead?)
We flew back over to the rooftop we'd been watching from earlier. And immediately encountered a problem.
(Well, this sucks,) Lee complained, (There's too much glare on the windows. I can't see inside any of them!)
(I'm not having any luck, either,) I said.
(I'm starting to think I should've picked that osprey morph like Cassie and Marco,) Rachel said, (They eat fish, so their eyes are designed to look through shiny reflective surfaces so they can see the fish hiding underwater. I'm pretty sure that would work on window glass as well as water.)
(I'll see if I can stop over at Cassie's barn tomorrow, then,) Lee replied (Since I'm the only one who doesn't have a bird-of-prey morph.)
A crow landed on the rooftop, keeping a cautious distance from us.
(Hey, check it out! There's another raven up here!) Lee said.
(How can you tell the difference between crows and ravens?) I asked.
(Ravens are bigger. And you see how the feathers under his throat kind of look like a beard? Crows don't have that. Also, they don't go 'caw caw', they-)
The raven croaked. Krra-Soo! Krra-Soo!
(They do that. You know, he's probably wondering what I'm doing hanging out with you guys. Ravens and crows tend not to get along with hawks.)
Another raven landed next to the first one. And then a third.
(Let's not outstay our welcome,) Rachel said, (I think we've done everything we can for tonight and it looks like these guys would like to use the roof.)
We flew away, with the little flock of ravens staring daggers at us. Between the suspected Yeerks across the street and the bullies at school, I had enough enemies without picking fights with birds. So, with the sun starting to sink low and shadows stretching out longer and longer, we returned to the hidden spot in the construction site. The kid with the bicycle was gone. There were a couple of vagrants camping out by the northeast corner, but they were a safe distance from our hiding place. So, back down onto the ground to demorph. Back to being nearsighted and helpless. Back to being me.
We slipped through the gap in the fence and back onto the street. Lee headed off in one direction while Rachel and I went another way. We walked quietly at first, but a few blocks later, Rachel finally broke the silence.
"Hey, Tobias. That was kind of fun tonight."
"OK."
"We should do that again sometime."
"I thought that was the plan, as soon as Lee finds a-"
"I meant, just you and me. Nobody else."
She winked at me. And it still took me forever to catch her meaning.
"Wait... you mean like a date?"
"Exactly."
I'd never dared to hope this was a possibility. Rachel was beautiful, intelligent, athletic, and generally looked like she belonged on the cover of Cosmo or Vogue... while I was just some poor kid from a dysfunctional home on the wrong side of the tracks who kept getting bounced around like an empty soda can in a gutter. Rachel was way out of my league, and I'd always thought that if I was the one trying to ask her out, she'd turn me down in a heartbeat. But somehow, SHE was the one asking ME out. I felt like I'd found an actual pot of gold in a box of Lucky Charms.
"Let's do it," I said, "Let me know when you'd like to go."
Author's Note: A lot of the buildings Tobias describes are places from my hometown and other cities nearby. The red Nissan is the same car my dad used to drive.