"And how about the Andalite?" he asked in a quiet voice.
I hesitated. I don't know why, but I didn't want to just pretend the Andalite away.
Tobias put his hand on my arm. "Stand right there."
"What? What are you going to do?"
"I'm going to help you decide whether it's real or not."
"Tobias… "
"Just wait And don't scream or anything." So I waited.
For a few seconds, nothing happened. Tobias just stood there. I glanced at his face. His eyes… his eyes were different. The pupils weren't completely round anymore. I swear there was a reflective greenish light in them. And his mouth was protruding a little, puffing out.
He was shrinking. Growing smaller right before my eyes.
The neck of his shirt was loose. His pants started scrunching up at the ankles. He was shriveling. And at the same time fur — yes, fur! — began to grow on his hands and neck and face. It was gray, striped with black, just like Dude's.
I had this absurd desire to start giggling. Tobias was becoming a tabby cat! But I knew if I started giggling I'd just keep on and on and never, ever be able to stop.
Tobias was more cat than human now. The pointed ears rose atop his head. The whiskers stuck straight out from beneath his delicate pink nose. He had dropped to all fours, clothing now half-draped over him, like so many rags. His tail twitched. Yes — his tail.
I wondered if I would just drop dead from the lump that had filled my throat, or from the jack-hammer pounding of my heart. Then I wondered if I was still asleep.
But if it was a dream, it was a really convincing one.
I was standing there in my bedroom, staring down at a gray-black cat that less than two minutes earlier had been my friend, Tobias.
CHAPTER 8
"I hope I'm asleep," I muttered. "I really do."
"Is that you?" I demanded of the cat.
"Yes," I said cautiously.
Tobias said.
"I guess it only works when you're… morphed."
I am talking to a cat! I realized. And I thought Tobias was crazy?
I wondered if Tobias had heard my thought. I concentrated. Tobias, can you hear me?
"Did you hear my thoughts before that?" I asked.
Suddenly Tobias leaped through the air. He pounced precisely on an autographed baseball that was lying in the corner. Maybe a four-foot jump.
"Pull a string? Why?"
I dug in my desk drawer and found a length of string left over from a birthday gift. I'm not exactly big on keeping my room clean. The string was from a birthday two years ago, "How's this?" I drew the string slowly across the floor, a foot or more from Tobias's nose. He settled back on his haunches and began wiggling his hindquarters. He pounced! He landed on the string, grabbed it in his sharp teeth, rolled over, and began ripping at the string like it was the only thing on Earth that mattered.
I tried pulling the string away, but he pounced again.
"Tobias, what are you doing?"
Suddenly he stopped. His tail twitched. He looked up at me with those cold cat eyes, but I'm sure I saw a look of confusion there.
"Tobias, I think we're learning something here," I said. Amazing, how quickly I was becoming used to the idea of talking to a cat.
"I think you aren't just Tobias. You really are a cat. I mean, you have all the same instincts. You want to do the things a cat wants to do."
"You'd better change back," I said.
He nodded his cat head up and down. Very weird to see, I can tell you — a cat nodding yes in a thoughtful, normal way.
The change back to human form was at least as strange as the change to cat. The fur disappeared, leaving bare patches of pink skin behind. A nose grew out of the flat cat face. The tail was sucked up like a snake going up a vacuum cleaner.
Tobias stood there, looking embarrassed. He quickly pulled on his clothes. "Maybe with some practice we can figure out how to change back into our clothes."
"We?"
He smiled his gentle smile again. "Don't you get it yet, Jake? If I can do it, so can you." I shook my head. "I don't think so, Tobias."
Suddenly he grew angry. He grabbed me by both my shoulders and actually shook me. "Don't you understand, Jake? It's all true. All of it."
I pushed him away. I didn't want to hear it.
But he kept after me. "Jake, it's all true. The Andalite gave us these powers for a reason."
"Fine," I snapped. "You use them."
"I will," he said. "But we'll need you, Jake. You most of all."
"Why me?"
He hesitated. "Geez, Jake, don't you understand? I know what I can do and what I can't do. I can't make plans and tell people what to do. I'm not the leader. You are."
I laughed rudely. "I'm not the leader of anything."
He just looked at me with those deep, troubled eyes — eyes I can now see only in my memory.
"Yes, Jake, you are our leader. You are the one who can bring us all together and help us defeat the Controllers. We have the ability to be much more than we are, to have the stealth of a cat, and… and the eyes of eagles, and the sense of smell of a dog, and… and the speed of a horse or a cheetah. We're going to need it all, if we have any hope of holding out against the Controllers,"
I wanted it not to be true. I wanted none of it to be true. But I knew that it was.
I nodded slowly. It felt like I was agreeing to something awful. Like I was volunteering for a trip to the dentist or something much worse. It felt like a million pounds of weight had just landed on my shoulders.
I knew what I had to do next.
"Well," I said grimly. "I guess I'd better go find Homer." Homer. That's my dog.
CHAPTER 9
It isn't painful. Morphing, I mean.
I petted Homer for a while, feeling like a complete and total fool. "This is the stupidest thing I have ever done," I told Tobias.
"Look, you have to concentrate. At least, I did, I mean, I formed this mental picture of Dude, right? I thought about becoming him."
"I see. So I have to, like, meditate on becoming a dog."
"That's right. You have to think about it. You have to want it."
Normally I would have figured he was nuts. But I had just seen him turn into a cat. So if he was nuts, so was I.
I thought about becoming Homer. As I stroked his fur I formed a picture in my mind of me becoming Homer. Homer became weirdly quiet while I did it. Like he was asleep, only his eyes were open.
"Just like Dude," Tobias commented. "I think the process kind of puts the animal in a trance or something."
"He's just scared because he thinks his master is a looney tune." I continued stroking Homer's fur and concentrating, and Homer continued to lie very still. "Okay, now what?" I asked Tobias.
"Now we bette
r put Homer outside. He might get slightly freaked by watching you turn into him."
It took Homer about ten seconds to come out of his trance. But then he jumped up, normal, hyperactive Homer again. I put him outside in the yard.
Tobias was sitting patiently when I got back, just waiting. "Give it a try," he urged me. "Think about it. Want it."
I took a deep breath. I closed my eyes. I recalled the picture of Homer I'd formed in my mind. I thought about becoming Homer.
I opened my eyes. "Bow wow," I said, laughing. "Guess it didn't work for me, Tobias." The back of my hand itched and I scratched it. "Jake?" Tobias said. "What?"
"Look at your hand."
I looked at my hand. It was covered with orange fur.
I jumped about a foot, straight up in the air. "Ohh! Ohh!" I stared at my hand. The fur had stopped growing.
"Don't be scared," Tobias advised, "Go with it. Now you've stopped the morph. You have to concentrate."
"My hand!" I said. "Fur!"
"Yeah, and your ears… " Tobias said.
I ran to the mirror over my dresser. My ears had moved. They had slid up the side of my head, and were definitely larger than they should be.
"Go on, it's so cool!" Tobias said.
"Cool? It's… it's… creepy. It's weird. It's… I mean, look at my hands! I have fur!"
"You have to do this," Tobias said.
"I don't have to do anything," I said sullenly.
Tobias nodded. "Okay, you're right. You don't have to do this. You can just forget what we saw last night. And forget what we know. And as the Yeerks take over more and more people, you can just ignore it. We can all just go along and grow up in a world where human beings are nothing but bodies to be used by murdering aliens."
Okay, when he put it that way it didn't sound like a great option.
"Come on," Tobias urged.
I swallowed hard. I closed my eyes. I thought of Homer. Of being Homer.
I felt the itch mess again, and when I opened my eyes, there was fur growing on my arms. And fur growing out of my face. And fur curling up from under my collar. My legs itched and I realized they were growing fur, too. My bones… well, they didn't exactly hurt, but they did feel very strange. You know when you go to the dentist and he gives you Novocaine so the drill doesn't really hurt, but you know it should hurt? I guess that's what it's like.
My bones shortened. I could feel my backbone stretching as it extended out into a tail. There was a scraping sound as my knees suddenly reversed direction. I toppled forward, no longer able to walk upright.
When my hands hit the floor they weren't exactly hands anymore. The fingers were gone. All that was left were short, stubby nails.
My face bulged out. My eyes drew closer together.
Tobias got up and tilted the mirror down so I could see myself.
I watched the final transformation as the last patches of my pink human flesh disappeared. And the tail — my tail — sprouted to its full length.
I was a dog. It was insane. But just the same. I was a dog.
I knew I should be scared by all this, only I wasn't. I was ecstatic. I was giddy. I was thrilled. Happiness just washed over me, Happiness filled me up.
I breathed in through my ridiculously long nose and wow! Wow! The smells. Oh, man, you have no idea! I breathed in and right away I knew my mom was toasting a waffle in the kitchen. And I knew Tobias had walked through the territory of a big male dog. And I knew things I couldn't even explain in human words. It was like being blind all your life and then suddenly you can see.
I ran over to Tobias and sniffed his shoe. I wanted a better idea of who that big male dog was. From the scent of his urine picked up by Tobias's shoe I got a sort of picture of him. See, Homer knew him. His owners called him Streak. He was neutered, like me. He spent most of his time in his yard, but he broke out sometimes by digging under his fence. He got a mix of canned and dry food, Purina. No table scraps, unlike me.
All this information made me happy all over again, and I had to wag my tail. I looked up at Tobias. He looked tall and strange and not very colorful, I wasn't all that interested in looking at stuff. Smelling things was way better.
INTRUDER!
There was a noise in the yard. A dog! An unknown dog in MY yard. An INTRUDER! I ran to the window and perched against it and cut loose.
"Rrrawf! Rrawf rrawf! rrawfrrawfrrawfrrawf!"
I barked as loud as I could. No WAY some unknown dog was just going to walk through MY yard.
"Jake, get a grip," Tobias said. "That's Homer out there." Homer? What? But I was…
I tucked my tail between my legs. What was going on?
"Jake, listen to me," Tobias said. "It's just what happened to me when I morphed into a cat. The dog brain is part of your brain now. You have to deal with it."
"That's Homer, Jake. You are Jake. You're just in a body copied from Homer's DNA. That's the real Homer out there. You put him out there. Focus. You are Jake. Jake."
I took several deep breaths. The smells! Oh, boy, there was this one smell I couldn't quite —
Focus, Jake! I ordered myself. Focus!
Slowly I calmed the dog part of my mind.
Let go of the smells. Let go of the sound of a dog out in your yard.
It wasn't easy, that first time. Being a dog is so completely amazing. For one thing, there's nothing halfway about it. You're never sort of happy. You're HAPPY! You're never sort of bummed. You're totally, completely bummed. And boy, when you get hungry in dog form, you are nuts on the subject of food.
There was a knock on my bedroom door. Yes, my bedroom door. I knew who I was again. I was Jake. Jake with four legs, a tail and a snout, but Jake.
The knocking seemed incredibly loud to my dog ears.
"Jake, you got Homer in there with you?" My brother Tom's voice. "Mom's on the phone, stop him yapping — "
He opened the door and stepped in. He looked around, confused.
"Who are you?" he demanded of Tobias.
"I'm Tobias. I'm a friend of Jake's."
"Well, where is he?"
"Oh… he's around," Tobias said.
Tom looked down at me. There was a strange smell about him. My dog brain couldn't quite identify it. It was an unsettling, dangerous smell. And somehow, in my own mind, I heard the echo of a laugh. A very human laugh I had heard the night before as Visser Three swallowed the Andalite whole.
"Bad dog," Tom said to me. "You keep quiet. Bad dog." And then he left.
I was devastated. I wasn't a bad dog. Not really. I was just barking because some other dog was in MY yard. Bad dog? I was a bad dog? No, I wanted to be a good dog. I crept into the corner, utterly miserable.
Tobias knelt down and patted my head.
When he scratched me behind the ears, I felt a little better.
CHAPTER 10
I called all the others on the phone after I got done morphing back into my normal body. Tobias took off on his own, saying he'd hook up with us later at Cassie's farm. I was on the kitchen phone with Cassie when Tom came in.
"Oh, there you are," he said.
I covered the mouthpiece. "Yeah. Tobias said you were looking for me before."
"I just wanted you to shut your dog up," Tom said. He turned a chair around backward and straddled it.
I hesitated. For some reason I didn't want to talk to Cassie with Tom listening in. "I'll just see you there in a couple hours, okay?" I told Cassie. I hung up.
I looked over at Tom. He's bigger than me, even though I'm not exactly small. His hair is darker, almost black, while mine is brown.
I had always trusted him. He wasn't like a lot of guys who pound on their younger brother. We were always kind of close. At least, until the last year or so. Somehow we just weren't spending as much time together. Partly it was that he was involved in this club called The Sharing. They did all this stuff together, so he was busy a lot of the time.
The thin
g is, Tom should have been the very first person I told about all the stuff that had happened. But as I was sitting there watching him munch toast, I just had this feeling. This feeling that said No, this has to be a secret. Even from Tom.
Instead I told him the other thing I was afraid to tell him.
"I, uh… I didn't make the team," I said.
"What team?" he asked. He looked puzzled.
"What team? The basketball team. Your old team."
"Oh. Too bad," he said.
"Too bad?" I repeated. I could not believe how little he seemed to care. "It's just sports," he said. He munched another big bite of toast.
"Just sports?" I couldn't stop repeating what he said. Tom, saying sports were no big deal? No way. He lived for sports. "Yeah, I guess I just don't have your total skill."
He shrugged. "Well, I quit the team, anyway. A couple days ago."
I practically fell off my chair. "You quit! You quit the team? And you didn't even talk to me about it? What's the deal?"
"I didn't say anything because I knew you and Dad would make a big thing of it. Look, there are more important things than throwing balls through hoops," he said. He had this mysterious look in his eyes. I figured he meant girls were the more important thing. "Besides," he added, "we do much cooler stuff at The Sharing. Maybe you should join up."
I was stunned. Obviously, Tom and I were further apart than I had realized.
When we were done talking, I headed outside to mow the lawn. I mow the lawn every Saturday. It's my major chore. That, and taking out the trash, which I hate, because we have to do all this recycling stuff.
When I was finally done mowing and trimming and raking, I hopped on my bike and took off.
I had arranged with everyone to hook up at Cassie's farm. It isn't exactly a normal farm, although it had been in the old days. And they do still have horses and a cow. But now the big red main barn is the Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic. Cassie's father runs it. They take in any kind of injured animal except pet-type animals, There are always lots of birds, along with squirrels and deer and skunks and so on. Sometimes they get a bobcat or a fox or even a wolf.
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