I sighed and looked around at the barn. It smelled pretty bad, and sometimes it was a nuthouse of yammering birds and howling wolves and whinnying horses, all needing care, and all scared of the care we gave them. But it was the place I felt most at home in the whole world.
24 Out through the door of the barn, the fields of corn and open meadow stretched off into the distance, till they pressed up against the dark trees of the forest.
"I know this is crazy," I said, "but the ocean scares me a little. I understand the land. I under stand soil and things that grow out of it." I laughed. "I guess I'm just an old farm girl. You know this farm has been in my family since the Civil War?"
Jake winked. "Do I know that? Puh-leeze. I had Thanksgiving with your family last year, you may remember. Your great-grandmother gave me the complete history."
"Going all the way back to when dinosaurs ruled the earth," I said. "Grammy does tend to go on about our history, doesn't she?"
He looked serious again, almost hard. "It's your call, Cassie. It will be really dangerous and we probably won't do much good. I mean, it's a big ocean out there. But it's your decision."
"Yep," I agreed. I shook my head slowly, sadly. "I believe these dreams are real. I believe there's an Andalite out there, somewhere . . . somehow . . . trapped. Calling for help."
"Good enough," he said. "Now. How do we get out there?"
I frowned, thinking of the possibilities. "Some kind of fish? It would have to be some thing fast. Something that isn't prey. You know, not some fish that's going to get snapped up by a hungry tuna or whatever."
Jake nodded. "And it has to be something we can acquire. Which means, probably, something at The Gardens."
"They have sea lions. And dolphins. But we can't morph them, can we?"
"Why not?"
"I ... I don't know. It's just that, I mean, dolphins? They're highly intelligent. It seems kind of, I don't know, kind of wrong."
"Well, you decide," he said, leaning his shovel against a wall. "I have to go. I can't blow another test, and I have to study."
He climbed back on his bike.
"You're just saying that to get out of shoveling manure," I said.
"Cassie," he said, "I would rather shovel manure with you than do homework without you, any day."
I think it was a compliment. Sort of.
He rode off, leaving me much less at ease than I had been before he'd come.
25 Chapter 8
The next day after school, the four of us headed toward The Gardens on a city bus. Tobias flew. He said he'd be there before we were, but he wasn't sure how close to us he actually could get.
The Gardens is this big amusement park that also includes a zoo. Only they don't call it a zoo, they call it a "wildlife park." My mom works there. Actually, she's the head of medical services, the head vet.
I have a pass to get in anytime I want, but the others all have to pay, which is kind of a drag be cause Marco never has any money. Ever since Marco's mom died, his dad has been kind of messed up. He just takes temporary jobs, and they're always broke.
I guess I kind of think it's romantic, the way Marco's dad has never gotten over his wife dying. But on the other hand, it's like I had to learn when I started helping my dad with the animals - sometimes death just happens, and all you can do is get over it the best you can.
It's tough for Marco because he feels like he has to take care of his dad - instead of having his dad taking care of him.
On the bus, I glanced over at Marco. He was looking out of the window, being kind of quiet.
"Hey, Marco," I said.
"What?"
"Is that a new haircut? It looks good."
"Yeah?" He looked surprised. He ran his fingers back through his long brown hair and kind of smiled.
I did some homework on the bus (math, gag, yuck!) and listened to my Walkman.
When we got there, it turned out there was a special on tickets - buy two and get the third ticket for a dollar. Marco had a dollar, fortunately, so we didn't have to go through any big scenes.
We cruised through the area where all the rides were, heading toward the wildlife park.
Jake shook his head sadly, looking up at the monster roller coaster. "That used to be the coolest thing in the world to me," he said. "But ever since I morphed a falcon, it just hasn't seemed like any big deal. I mean, you're going maybe eighty miles per hour on a steel track.
When I was a falcon I did like two hundred miles an hour in midair."
"This morphing stuff does kind of change things," Marco agreed. "I used to want to get all pumped up. Then I morphed into a gorilla, and it was like, why bother lifting weights? I can just become a gorilla and bench press a truck."
"I don't feel that way," Rachel said. "Being a cat made me more interested in gymnastics. I mean, as a cat I was just so totally, totally in con trol and graceful. Ever since then I've been 26 trying to use that feeling. When I'm on the balance beam I try and remember that cat confidence."
"And then you fall off just the same as always?" I teased.
"Oh, yeah," Rachel said with a laugh. She made little walking fingers in the air that then fell over. "Boom. I slip right off. But I feel confident while I'm falling off."
We reached the wildlife park entrance. The marine mammals are one of the first exhibits.
There's a main building, then there are several outdoor tanks.
We went straight for the largest outdoor tank. There were bleachers all around it on three sides where people sat for performances. A show had just ended, and hundreds of people were leaving. The next show would be in a couple of hours.
"Good timing," Jake said. "Not too big a crowd."
"It's a weekday afternoon," I said. "It's never all that crowded on school days."
We forced our way upstream against the rush of people, and reached the side of the tank.
It's pretty big. Like four or five big swimming pools. It's very blue, very clean-looking.
There's a low platform on one side where the trainers stand to communicate with the dolphins.
"So what's the difference between porpoises and dolphins?" Marco asked. "Both just fish, right?"
SPLOOSH!
The placid surface of the water exploded a few feet from us. Water sprayed across me.
"Oooooh!" we all said as one.
He flew straight up out of the water, like a sleek, pale gray torpedo. Eleven feet long from nose to tail. Four hundred pounds. He simply flew into the air, seemed to hang there, ten feet above the surface of the water, took a skeptical look at us, gave us his permanent wise-guy grin, and slid back beneath the water so smoothly that there was barely a ripple.
"That is a dolphin," I said to Marco.
"Okay, I like that. That is excellent," Marco said. "Did you see what he did?"
You know how really great athletes never look like they're even trying? Like Michael Jordan? How everything they do is perfect, and you know they must have practiced for a million hours, but they always look like, "Oh. No big deal. Of course I can fly through the air. Nothing to it."