I mean, when you hook up to that dog nose it's like you've been walking around with cotton balls up your nostrils all your life and suddenly you take them out and wow! Wow! You're into a whole new experience of life.
I'd been a wolf in the forest. Now it was like I was a wolf in civilization. The information from my nose was so complex. So full, so rich, so en joyable.
"Hey, boy!" someone said. A girl! I was sure she was a girl. But was she a cute girl? I tried to make my dog eyes focus, but it was like sight was just irrelevant. I could see pretty well, but my dog brain was way too busy smelling and hearing.
I did notice the scent of patchouli oil, though.
The girl reached out a hand and stroked my head.
Instantly a warm wave of pleasure washed over me. Then she scratched behind my ear.
This was almost too good. This was sublime. This was probably the best thing I'd ever felt in my life.
I think I could have just stood there and let her scratch behind my ear forever. But then she was joined by a guy a guy who owned a cat, incidentally - and she started in on my ribs. I lay down and rolled on my side. The scratching of my ribs felt like tickling. I was so happy. I was beyond happy.
See, dog happy isn't like human happy.
Human happiness always has this little voice in the back of your mind going, "Don't be too happy.
Keep your guard up. Something bad could still happen."
But dog happy is just pure, distilled essence of happiness. I just lolled my wet tongue out and slapped my tail against the grass, and then it started.
My leg started going all on its own.
"Hah, I love it when dogs do that," the guy said. "That's so funny!"
His girlfriend scratched away on my ribs and my back leg just motored away, out of control, and I was in heaven. That's when Jake found me.
"That's nice,Marco." Jake said. "Very dignified. What's next? You going to lick yourself?"
"Oh, it's another dog," the girl said. "He's even cuter!" She leaned forward to pet Jake.
That brought me to my senses. No way was Jake a cuter dog than me.
"0kay, okay, that's enough playing around." I said. "Come on, Jake. Let's get closer to the stage."
We took off, tails wagging, leaving the nice hippie couple behind.
"See? I told you, Marco. Don't get too happy. A happy dog is almost too happy."
"Why not?" I asked, a little wistfully. "Why not just get happy?"
Then something stunning happened. There had been no music for a few minutes, and all at once, Offspring climbed onstage and unloaded.
They ripped into a song and I cowered a little.
The impact on my dog ears was shocking. But it wasn't just that it was so loud. It was that I could hear everything. Everything.
"Hey! I can understand the lyrics now." I said.
"Cool." Jake answered.
We trotted closer, into a thickening crowd of humans. The smells were just overwhelming.
And not always in a good way.
Suddenly, I saw him. He was passing out flyers.
He was walking through the crowd and pass ing out handbills.
A breeze caught one of the sheets and it fluttered to the ground in front of me. I forced my dog eyes to look at it. I couldn't read the fine print, but I could see the two big words at the top.
The Sharing.
The Sharing. The front organization for Con trollers.
"Jake." I said. "That guy. He's handing out flyers for The Sharing."
"Yeah. You know what? Does he look familiar, or is it just my imagination?"
He had brown hair, just a little over his ears. He was maybe five feet tall, but he managed to look taller. A slightly shorter version of Jake, strong and confident-looking. "Yes, he's familiar.
His name's Erek King. He transferred out of our school like a year ago."
Erek was coming closer, smiling and handing out flyers to anyone who would take one.
He knelt down and smiled at me. He reached out to pet me, but I pulled back. Erek shrugged and walked on his way, handing out flyers.
"Jake, did you notice t?"
"0h, yeah." he said.
"Definitely." "0h, man." I said. "There is something very, very wrong with Erek."
He didn't smell," I said.
"What do you mean, he didn't smell?"
Rachel demanded.
"I mean that he didn't smell.
He had picked up some odors off other people, off the ground, off dogs, whatever, but he had no smell himself. None. Like a black hole of smell. Like nothing there, nobody home."
It was later that same evening. Jake and I had left the concert shortly after encountering Erek. We'd called a meeting, and now everyone except Ax was in Cassie's barn.
Cassie's barn is actually the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center. It's a sort of hospital for messed-up wild animals.
Cassie's parents are both veterinarians. Her mom works at the Gardens, this big combination zoo and amusement park.
Her dad (with a lot of help from Cassie) takes in every sick or injured wild animal they come across. The barn is lined with wire cages filled with raccoons, foxes, opossums, eagles, rabbits, geese, badgers, crows, squirrels ... I mean, you name it. It's animal central.
"Maybe you just didn't notice it," Rachel suggested.
"Rachel, you've been in wolf morph," Jake said. "You know how good your sense of smell is? Well, the dog's sense of smell is almost that good."
Rachel shook her head. That's what she does when she's frustrated.
She was standing in the middle of the barn floor, looking immaculate, as usual. Rachel is one of those girls from the cover of Seventeen.
Beautiful, fashionable, way too tall, far too many bright white teeth, massive quantities of very clean blond hair. But beneath all that fashionable clothing and perfectly applied makeup there is a sword-swinging Amazon warrior just trying to break out.
Rachel's like one of those terrible elf-maidens in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings - beautiful and dangerous.
Jake is her cousin and Cassie is her best friend. Cassie actually experiences normal human emotions like fear and doubt. I approve of this because I sure experience plenty of fear and doubt myself.
I've experienced more fear and doubt since I became an Animorph than most people experience in about ten lifetimes.
Cassie has never met a dress she liked.
She does not subscribe to Teen or YM.
She's much more likely to buy a magazine like Smelly Animals of America.
You know, the kind of magazine that would have articles like "How to Give Suppositories to Raccoons,"
or "Let's Examine Owl Vomit!"
If you want to picture Cassie, think of a short, cute girl with very short black hair, wearing overalls and big muddy boots and looking totally capable of giving a tetanus shot to an angry bear.
Cassie is our animal expert, and our resident ecology nut. I'd say she likes animals better than she likes people, except that she really likes Jake. As in likes.
Actually, she and Jake like each other, although neither of them will admit it, of course. The only time they'll act that way is when we're about twelve seconds away from doing something insanely dangerous. Then they'll kind of give each other these pathetic sad looks.
It's so lame.
The last original member of our group was perched in the high rafters overhead. Tobias had his talons sunk deep into the wood to give himself a firm hold. And with his hooked beak he was preening the feathers of his right wing.