Текст книги "Animorphs - 11 - The Forgotten"

Автор книги: Katherine Alice Applegate

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1.22 PM My name is Jake. I can't tell you my last name, or where I'm from. That would just help the Yeerks. They'd love to find me and my friends. They'd love to know who we are, even what we are.

Knowing my last name isn't important for you. What you need to know is that everything I'll tell you here is true. It's real.

It's actually happening. Right now.

The Yeerks are among us. The Yeerks are us. They're a parasitic species. They live inside the bodies of other beings. They take over your mind and body. Controllers. That's what you call a creature that is ruled by a Yeerk. A Controller. Something that looks human, acts human, sounds human, but whose mind is Yeerk. They are everywhere. They can be anyone. Think of the one person in the whole world that you trust the most. Think of that one special per son. And now realize, believe, accept the fact that they might not be the person you think they are. Deal with the reality that behind those friendly, loving eyes lives a gray slug. That's what a Yeerk looks like in its natural state. Just a gray slug. They enter your head, squeezing through the ear canal, and flatten themselves out to envelop your brain.

You know all those nooks and crannies in brains? You've probably seen pictures in school. Well, the Yeerk forms itself into those nooks and crannies and it ties into your mind. You wake up and you want to scream, but you can't. You can't scream. You can't move your eyes or raise your finger or make yourself walk.

The Yeerk controls you. You're still alive. You can still see what's happening. Your eyes move and focus, but you're not moving them. You can still hear your own mouth speaking and using your voice. You can feel it when the Yeerk opens up your memories and looks through them. You can hear the Yeerk laughing at you as it pries into your every secret.

I know. Been there. For a few days, I was Controller. The Yeerks are here, all right. Their mother ship is parked in high orbit right now. It's hidden from human radar, but it's there. And the Yeerk super-evil leader, Visser Three, is there, too. We are being invaded. We are being enslaved. We are losing our own planet. And we don't even know it.

My friends and I fight the Yeerks. But we're just five kids.

Well, five kids and one Andalite. Yes, we have some amazing powers, but we're still desperately weak and outnumbered compared to the force of the Yeerk invasion. We are the only humans resisting the Yeerks. We may be the only hope that Earth has. We have a lot on our shoulders. Which is why I really, really, really did not see why I had to have more suffering piled on. Wasn't I under enough stress? Life wasn't bad enough? We had to have . . . square dancing? Square dancing! The horror! The CD player was blasting out screaming– cat fiddle music. Which, in my opinion, is possibly the worst music ever created.

The lights in the classroom seemed blazingly bright compared to the dark gray clouds outside. The teacher was standing off to the side. She was wearing that smug, satisfied look teachers sometimes get when they know they are grinding the students" last nerves.

"Now promenade left! Bow to your partner, do-si-do!" the stereo drill-instructor yelled.

I promenaded, which consists of walking like a BIG HONKING GOOBER around in a circle. And then I bowed. A strange, jerky sort of movement.

And finally, my least favorite thing: I did a do-si-do. Or as the shrieking, yammering voice on the CD said, do-si-Doooo!

"You call that do-si-do?" Rachel sneered as I high-stepped backward around her.

"Don't mess with me, Rachel," I warned.

"Smile, Jake. Big smile!" Rachel said. "We are happy while dancing. Happy!" She was so totally enjoying torturing me.

Rachel is my cousin. She's an Animorph, too.

"Now swing your partner back to the left and promenade!"

"Promenade this," I muttered darkly. I grabbed Rachel to swing her. I was considering swinging her into the nearest wall. But although Rachel may look like some dippy Clueless type, she's a lot closer to being Xena: Warrior Princess. In other words, I'm just a little scared of Rachel. I've seen her in lots of battles. You just really don't want to make her too mad. You really, really don't.

"Excellent swing," Rachel mocked me. "Now you're getting into it. I can just picture you in a string tie, cowboy boots, maybe a bright red-checked western shirt "Don't push it, Rachel," I warned again. Then the worst possible thing happened. As I was "promenading" yet again, I heard Rachel yell.

"Hey, Cassie! Come by to watch?!" My heart sank. Cassie is another member of our team. She's also someone I really kind of like. If you know what I mean. And I really didn't want her watching me as I stomped clumsily around the circle. The sight of me, big old Jake, galumphing around in time to fiddle music was guaranteed to destroy any affection Cassie had for me. I mean, I was making myself sick. I could just imagine how I looked to Cassie. I met Cassie's gaze. She was standing in the doorway of the classroom. And she was laughing. She was laughing with her entire body. She was in convulsions.

I was so relieved. See, I was afraid I'd get a pity look.

Instead, she was cracking up. Tears were rolling down her cheeks as I "do-si-doed" right in front of her.

"You find this funny? Me, trying to dance?"

Cassie couldn't talk. She was laughing too hard. She just nodded. What could I do? I started laughing, too. There wasn't anything else to do.

Oh, maybe one other thing. I grabbed Cassie's hands and pulled her into the circle. Rachel backed away, letting Cassie take her place in the pattern.

Cassie stopped laughing.

"No way!" she said, alarmed.

"Let's see you do-si-do," I said.

I grabbed her and swung her, and in a breathless voice she whispered, "I just came by to tell you something. Tobias wants us. Right after school lets out. It's something big."

I took a deep breath. Suddenly, I wasn't in the mood to laugh anymore. Tobias wouldn't say "something big" unless it was something big.

And "something big" meant something bad these days. Cassie and I had to obey the music and separate then, but a few seconds later, we rejoined in the pattern, bowing to each other.

"I guess square dancing doesn't seem so bad now, huh?" Cassie asked me.

"Yeah, right. It would take more than the danger of sudden death to make square dancing okay," I said. "A lot more." I did some more promenading. I did some more bowing. I did some more do-si-doing.

But my thoughts were already running ahead, wondering what Tobias had seen. And just how much of a mess it would end up being.Then . . .

FLASH!

I fell!

I fell down and down through the green, green trees! A branch.

I snatched at it with my hand and swung and released, then flew through the air and caught another branch. I wrapped my tail around the branch and turned to look back. Monkeys were swinging toward me through the high treetops of the jungle.

I was giddy.

It was a rush!

It was . . .

FLASH!

Cassie was smiling, and looking a little strangely at me. The music was done. The class was breaking up.

"Are you okay?" Cassie asked me.

"Yeah. Yeah," I said, shaking off the weird vision.

"Daydreaming?" Cassie asked me.

"I guess so," I said.

"I wonder what Tobias wants. Do you have any idea?"

I was too weirded out to really respond. One second I'd been square dancing. The next second I'd been swinging through the trees. And both moments had been real.

3:08 P.m.

What do you think?" Marco asked me.

"Personally, I figure Tobias found some really good roadkill, and he wants us to share."

"Yeah, that's probably it," I said tolerantly. Marco's approach to everything is to joke about it. Especially when he's worried.

After school we all went our separate ways. Cassie to her home, Rachel to hers. We all knew Tobias had some serious reason to talk to us. We were all afraid it was trouble of some kind.

But I had something extra to worry about. The hallucination, or vision, or whatever it was I'd had was too real to just forget. Everyone daydreams. This was no daydream. I was in the jungle. Period. It was for just a few seconds, but it was definitely real.

But like I said, priority number one was figureing out what was bugging Tobias. So Marco and I walked home together because that's what we usually did. And it is very important for us to act normal. We don't want to draw attention. So we try and be like we always were. Like we were before the night that changed our lives forever.

We'd been walking home from the mall at night. We took a shortcut through an abandoned construction site. A really stupid, irresponsible thing to do. But it turned out it wasn't ax murderers or kidnappers we had to worry about. Before that night we'd all known each other, but we weren't a group. We had just happened to hook up at the mall. It was an accident or fate or something. Take your pick.

Anyway, the five of us ended up walking together as we were leaving the mall. And in a dark, spooky construction site, with empty, half-finished buildings all around us, we saw the spaceship land. It was an Andalite fighter. It was badly damaged. Up in orbit, the Andalites had come out on the wrong end of a fight with the Yeerks.

The Andalite pilot of the fighter was named Elfangor. Prince Elfangor. He was dying. He was the one who told us about the Yeerks. Life changed that night. Life went from being just the daily stuff any normal kid has to deal with, to knowing a secret that made you want to sit down and cry. It was Prince Elfangor who gave us the power to morph. It was all he could do to help us. It was the only weapon he could give us. The power to morph. To become any animal we could touch and "acquire." A great and awful power. A power that has given me some serious nightmares. I've seen things since that night at the con struction site. Things I wish I'd never seen. And I've done things I wish I couldn't remember.

"Hey," Marco said, interrupting my thoughts. "Speaking of Bird-boy. Up there. Is that anyone we know?"

I followed the direction he was looking. It was a dark afternoon and the sky just kept getting darker. It was filling up with rain clouds the color of steel wool. And there, silhouetted against the clouds, was a large bird.

Even from a distance you could tell it was a bird of prey.

"Could be. I can't tell," I said. "If it's Tobias he'll spot us."

Tobias is in hawk morph. Permanently. See, there's a nasty little hook buried inside the morphing power: Stay in morph for more than two hours, and you stay in morph forever.

Tobias has the soul and mind of a human. But his body is the body of a red-tailed hawk.

"He's coming closer," Marco said.

"Yeah." I had mixed feelings. Tobias is one of us. A friend.

More than a friend. He's risked his life for me many times.

But I sensed he was bringing bad news. And I really didn't want to hear bad news.

I heard his thought-speak voice in my head. "Jake. Marco."

"See? Figured it was him," Marco said.

We couldn't answer Tobias. He was still too high up to hear us speak, even with his excellent hawk hearing. And you can only make thought-speak when you're in morph. Or if you happen to be an Andalite.

"You guys need to haul it a little faster." Tobias said. He sounded tense, impatient, excited.

Not that he really "sounded" at all. But his thought-speak in my head carried tension. "Morph as soon as you get a chance, okay?"

I looked at Marco. He sighed.

"My dad should still be at work. We can use my house," he said. "We're almost there." We headed straight for Marco's house. We live in the same subdivision, just a couple of blocks away from each other. Most of the kids in our school live there, including Rachel. Cassie lives out on her farm a little ways down the road.

"l'll round up the others." Tobias said. "We'll meet up with Ax later. I'll catch up with you once you get airborne."

"This has "big trouble" written all over it," I muttered. "In huge red neon letters," Marco agreed. We reached Marco's house and went in. Marco checked to make sure we were alone. "Dad!

Dad, you home? Anyone home? Hey, Dad, I'm going to change all the settings on your stereo!" Marco winked at me. "If he's home, that'll make him come running."

There was no reply. Just a quiet house. We ran up the carpeted stairs to Marco's room. We ran past framed pictures of Marco and his dad and his mother, who everyone thought as dead.

Marco opened his bedroom window as wide s it would go. The breeze was cool and damp. It as going to rain. And I hate rain. Let's get this over with," I said. I kicked off y shoes and removed everything but my morphing suit. Marco did the same. focused my mind on a bird. It was a peregrine falcon.

The DNA of that falcon was part of me. And, thanks to the Andalite morphing technology, I could trade that DNA for my own.

I focused my mind and the change began.

Feather patterns appeared on my skin as if some invisible person had drawn them there.

The not-terribly-clean floor of Marco's room came rushing up at me as I shrank, dwindling down like a fast-burning candle.

It was like falling and falling without ever quite hitting the ground.

Or in this case, hitting a dirty white sock.

"Oh, man," I said. "Marco, you could at least not leave dirty gym socks around."

"Hey, I've seen your room," Marco said. "You still have some of your old baby diapers lying around."

He started to say more, but that's when his human tongue shriveled down to become a tiny bird tongue. So all he said was "Craww hee hrrar."

Whatever that meant.

The dirty gym sock went from being the size of a sock to being the size of a blanket. The only good thing was that falcons don't have much of a sense of smell. I was grateful for that.

My lips became hard as fingernails and began to press outward, forming a sharp, down-curved beak. It was weird and disturbing because I could actually see the beak grow, like some humongous nose.

My feet were gone, replaced by talons that could open up a prey animal like a can opener on a can of cat food.

My bones made grinding, squishy noises as my skull shrank. My arm bones became hollow and other bones disappeared altogether.

Then the patterns of feathers on my skin grew three– dimensional. It was eerie to watch – like my skin was chapping really badly. Like skin was peeling up at an incredible rate, and each peel of skin formed a feather.

Gray feathers, mostly.

I glared at Marco with my incredible Force-10 falcon vision.

He glared back with the eyes of an osprey. "Let's catch some air."I said.

I flapped my wings twice and hopped up to the windowsill.

"Last time I was in osprey morph some peregrine took a shot at me." Marco said. He sounded a little resentful. Like it was my fault. He hopped up to the sill beside me.

"Don't worry, Marco. I'll protect you." I said it knowing it would make him mad. "Protect me? Right. Come on, big guy, let's fly.

See if you can keep up with me first. Then see if you can "protect" me. Hah!"

I opened my wings wide, kicked off from the windowsill, and dropped straight for the grass in Marco's backyard. This is always terrifying. See, you know you're a bird and all, but in your mind you're still a human. And jumping out of windows scares humans. I was ten, twelve feet off the ground, with nothing but lawn to catch me if for some reason my wings didn't work. But then my wings caught the air. I felt the pressure of the air pushing up beneath me. I flapped hard, one, two, three, four, and shot for ward. Forward and upward.

I flapped and flapped, working hard to get al titude in the cool air. Flapping is hard. Just be cause you're a bird doesn't mean flapping is easy. Marco and I had just managed to climb maybe fifty feet when Tobias came zooming up alongside us, zipping around like he'd been born a bird.

"Follow me." he said.

"Follow you where?" I asked, maybe a little too grouchily.

Tobias laughed. "We're going to the grocery store." he said.

"We're going to the Safeway."

"Tobias, are you nuts?" Marco demanded. "The grocery store?

What, is there a sale on gourmet birdseed?"

"Funny, Marco." Tobias said. "But it's not about birdseed.

This grocery store seems to be having a sale on high-ranking Controllers."

Lt's hard to be worried when you're flying. You feel so powerful, floating high above the heads of all the little people below you. People are so slow. They walk in little lines along side walks, always stuck moving in two dimensions: left-right, forward-back. A bird moves in three dimensions and has a lot more going on when he's flying. There's the air temperature, the speed of wind gusts, the steadiness of the breeze crosswinds and thermals and humidity.

Your wings and tail are constantly adjusting – extending your wingtips, spreading or narrowing your tail, altering the angle of attack.

Fortunately, the falcon's brain handles all of that. Because let's face it, as a human, I know basically nothing about flying.

All I know is it's the coolest thing in the entire world.

Marco and I flew along with Tobias till we spotted two other big birds of prey rising up toward us: Rachel and Cassie.

"Break it up all." Tobias advised. "We're going to draw every bird-watcher within a hundred miles. Spread out. Stop thinking like humans – we don't have to be bunched together to see the same things."

He was right. Falcons, hawks, and eagles don't exactly fly in flocks together. And with the intense vision of our bird morphs, we could see whatever we were supposed to see from a quarter of a mile away.

I wanted to get altitude because I was struggling with the dead air around me. I had the narrowest wings of the group. I was brutally fast in a killing dive, much faster than the others. But at the business of endlessly riding wisps of breeze I was weak.

I split off from Marco, circled to the right, and kept my laser-focus eyes on Tobias, careful to stay within thought– speak range. "0kay, this is it." Tobias said. "See the big car lot down there? Track left a block."

I was catching my first decent breeze, so I soared upward as I searched the ground below. Then I saw it. "Left of the car lot ... that's a grocery store, right?" I asked. I was puzzled.

From the air, almost every building just looks like a big rectangle. "lt looks like they had some kind of fire."

"Yep. Now, look closer." Tobias advised. "See the plastic sheet across the left side of the store? Look how the breeze blows it in. See?"

"lt looks like the entire left wall was knocked in or something." Rachel said. She was a bald eagle, riding high above me and further west.

"Exactly." Tobias said. "Now, see the parking lot on that side? See the marks?"

I did. There were several long gouges torn in the blacktop.

Long, straight gouges, in perfect alignment, pointing right toward the busted wall of the grocery store. A couple dozen workmen seemed to be on the ground, rushing around to erect a plywood wall to conceal the hole. Suddenly, I realized. I guess Marco did, too.

"0h, man." Marco said. "0h, man."

"You'd never notice it from ground level." Tobias said smugly.

"But from the bird's-eye view, it's pretty obvious."

"Something hit the ground. It was moving fast. It skidded across the grocery store parking lot, hit the wall, plowed inside, and started a fire." I said.

"Exactamundo." Tobias said. "It must have happened late at night."

Cassie pointed out. "0therwise there would have been cars in the parking lot."

"You still haven't seen the best thing yet." Tobias said.

"Take a run, one at a time, over the site. Check out who's in charge of the cleanup crew."

I flapped hard, turned, flapped harder, and shot over the smoke-scarred grocery store. I only caught a glimpse of the man who was directing the work crew. I couldn't quite believe what I saw.

"Chapman?" I asked.

"Chapman." Tobias confirmed. "He's been here all day."

Chapman is the assistant principal at our school. He's also a high-ranking Controller-a very important part of the Yeerk invasion.

"Why is the assistant principal from our school suddenly working construction?" Cassie asked, adding, "As if I couldn't guess."

"Whatever this is, it must be important." Rachel said.

"They're working fast. And look! That guy there with the long coat? Up on the roof? I just caught a flash of a machine gun under his coat."

There were six or seven men and women on the roof of the store. They were looking around with the kind of steely, paranoid gaze you see on the faces of the President's Secret Service guys.

"They're nervous." Cassie agreed. "Scared, even. You cannot see from the way they move. The way they act. Someone screwed something up big time, and everyone down there is very afraid."

"So? What do we do, oh fearless leader?" Marco asked. He was asking me. The others like to act as if I'm in charge. I don't think of myself that way, not really. But you know, whatever.

If it makes them feel better to think I'm the leader, fine.

It's just that when people treat you like a leader, you start acting like a leader. And like I said, that means making decisions. Even when you're just guessing.

"Yeah, what's the plan?" Rachel asked.

FLASH!

Right in my face!

Big, glittering eyes, the only things shining in the darkness.

A muzzle open just enough to show long, curved fangs. The face of an extremely big cat. Mountain lion? Leopard?

In a second it would lunge, open its jaws wide and – FLASH!

"Whoa!" I yelled.

"What's the matter? Do you see something?" Tobias asked.

"Jake? I asked you, what's the plan?" Rachel said, sound ing annoyed.

I was back in the air. I was flying. I was in falcon morph.

Below me I saw the grocery store.

But I was totally confused. My mind wouldn't focus on reality.

It was still in some jungle I'd never seen, staring into the eyes of a beautiful, deadly predator. What was happening to me? Was I going crazy?

"Um . . . um, I ... I guess we better take a closer look, huh?" I managed to say.

"Definitely. Let's work up a plan. Let's do it." Rachel said with her usual enthusiasm.

"Rachel, why is it whenever I hear you say "let's do it" my blood runs cold?" Marco asked.

"Let's see. Because you're a weenie?" Rachel speculated.

"Whatever this is, they're trying to clean it up fast. We have no time." I said. "Better do this tonight."

"0h." Rachel said. "Tonight? As in ... tonight"

She didn't sound so enthusiastic anymore.

"0h, good." Marco said sarcastically. "An-other rushed, unplanned, last-minute mission. Those always turn out so well."

Marco, I thought, you don't know the half of it. Because in addition to all the other ways this could go bad, your "fearless leader" is losing his mind.

Of course, I didn't say that. See, when you're the leader, you're not allowed to be crazy.

"I hate this kind of stuff." Marco said. "I hate rushing into things."

We had landed in the woods. Landing, by the way, is the hardest part of flying. Taking off is scary, but landing is terrifying. See, the difference between landing and crashing is about two inches and two miles per hour.

We landed more or less gracefully on the pine needle floor of the forest. Tobias flew off to look for Ax. The rest of us demorphed.

"I seem to remember that the last time we rushed into something we managed to screw up the plan." Cassie said. "0n the other hand, we did survive."

"Barely," Marco said, as he made the transition from mostly osprey to mostly human. "It's just a grocery store," Rachel said with a shrug of shoulders that were just emerging.

"Come on, how hard can it be?"

"How should we go in?" Marco wondered, looking at me.

I looked at Cassie. "Any suggestions?"

"We have a couple of morphs available for this job," she said.

"Like Rachel said, it's a grocery store. A burned-out grocery store, but a grocery store just the same. You'd expect there to be cockroaches, rats, flies..."

Suddenly, there came a rush of pounding hooves and a crash of underbrush. Ax raced up to us, graceful and bizarre all at once. He plowed straight toward us, moving as fast as a panicked horse. Just when I was sure he'd run us down, he kicked his hind legs and sailed easily over our heads. He landed almost daintily, and turned back to face us.

Ax is Aximili-Esgarrouth-lsthill. He's the younger brother of Prince Elfangor. As far as we know, Ax is the only Andalite to survive the destruction of their Dome ship. Andalites have certain things in common with Earth animals. But you'd know right off that he's from a long, long way away. His body is like a sort of strong pale-blue-and-tan deer. But where the deer would have a neck, Ax has a somewhat human upper body. It looks like the chest and shoulders of a boy. He has two weak– looking arms and a few too many fingers.

His head is where you'd expect to find it, but it is missing one very major ingredient: a mouth. Andalites eat by absorbing plants through their hollow hooves. And they communicate through thought-speak.

Ax has three small slits for a nose and two big, almond-shaped eyes. He also has two other eyes. These are mounted on top of his head on short stalks. These two eyes can move separately in any direction. It's distracting till you get used to it. Ax may look at you with his two main eyes, or he may look at you with both stalk eyes, or one stalk eye, or a combination of his two main eyes and one stalk eye.

To summarize: It's very strange making eye contact with an Andalite.

And last, but definitely not least, there's the tail. It's like a scorpion's tail, cocked up so that the deadly sharp blade on the end sort of hovers above Ax's shoulder.

The tail is fast. Very fast. As in, you're bleeding and wondering why you can only count to four on your fingers, before you even see it move. Fast, accurate, and very good to have on your side of a fight.

"Hello, everyone." Ax said."Tobias told me to hurry."

Just then, Tobias swooped low overhead and landed with utter confidence on a branch. He dug his talons into the bark and began to calmly preen his wing feathers.

"Hi, Ax," I said. "What has Tobias told you?"

"Everything. I guess we are going in to take a closer look?"

"You guess right, Ax-man," Marco said. "You have a preference for fly or cockroach morph?"

"I will do whatever Prince Jake orders."

"Ax, don't call me Prince Jake," I said automatically for about the thousandth time.

"Yes, Prince Jake." he said.

Sometimes I wonder if maybe Ax has a sense of humor. We'd never noticed one, but who knows?

"We have to get inside that Safeway," I said. "The closest place to morph is a long way away. Clear across the street, behind that boarded-up motel. No one will see us there, but then we have to get to the store. Across four lanes of traffic."

"Ouch," Marco said. "I hadn't really thought about that. Is it too late for me to change my vote?"

"We didn't vote," Rachel said. "But if we had, you'd have voted yes."

"How do you know how I'd have voted?" Marco demanded.

Rachel smiled. "Because I'd have voted yes. And you'd never let yourself look like a total wuss in front of girls."

"You think you know me," Marco said. "Unfortunately, you're right."

"Neither the roach nor the fly has very good vision," Rachel pointed out. "I mean, we want to be able to see whatever is in that store, right?"

"Yeah, but we also have to get across four lanes of traffic. I don't know about you, but I'd rather fly over the cars than try to walk in front of them,"Cassie said.

"Can flies even find their way that far?" I wondered out loud.

"Remember when we used to have normal, sane conversations?"

Marco said. "You know, we'd talk about baseball or who had a crush on who?"

Cassie gave him a wink. Then, she was back to business. "That grocery store must still be full of food, right? Rotting food, since I doubt the freezers are working in there. What's better at finding rotting food than a fly?"

"I can help guide you, maybe." Tobias said.

"You don't see that much better than humans do in the dark," I pointed out. "It'll be dark by the time we get in position."

"Car lights . . . streetlights . . . I'm just saying maybe I can help a little, all right?"

Tobias sometimes becomes frustrated because he can't go on all the missions. I understand. I feel sorry for him. But that's the way it is. I was about to tell him that when Cassie jumped in.

"Tobias, the only reason we even know about this is you,"

Cassie pointed out. "You discovered it. You showed it to us.

The least we can do is take the next step."

Cassie is so good at fixing hurt feelings. Better than me, that's for sure. But Tobias was still grumpy. "l'm still going along." he said.

"Okay," I said, clapping my hands together and trying to sound cheerful and optimistic. "Flies it is. Everyone go home. We meet behind the motel in..." I checked my watch, "in approximately three hours. Around seven forty-five or so. We do a quick morph, we're in and out of that Safeway in ten minutes and back home again."

"Oh, man," Marco groaned. "I hate it when you try to sound peppy, Jake. It always means you're worried. Next you'll flash that big "no-sweat" grin. I know you."

"Three hours to fly time," I said, forcing up a big, confident grin.

"We're dead meat," Marco said. Hi, Dad, what's up?" I asked when I got home. My father was in his La-Z-Boy, remote control in hand.

"What do you mean, "what's up"?" he asked, genuinely surprised. "The fight's on tonight. Forty dollars on Pay-Per– View. Corn chips, bean dip, loud grunting male noises, beer – for me – soda for you and Tom."

I practically slapped my forehead. The fight! I'd totally forgotten. It was a big thing. Not be cause I'm a boxing fanatic. I'm not. But it was a big thing for my dad to actually spend forty dollars on Pay-Per-View. He was doing it as a male-bonding, father-son thing. Me and him and Tom, and probably one or two of my dad's friends from work.

"That's tonight?" I asked. "What time?"

"Starts at seven o'clock. Do your homework, eat something containing vegetables to make your mom happy, and then grab some couch." I did a quick mental calculation. The fight started in a little over an hour. The last championship fight had lasted only three rounds. That would leave me maybe thirty minutes to morph and fly to the motel. Should I come up with some excuse for bailing out? No. No, there was no way my dad would buy it.