Oh, no! My feet!
I looked down and it took every single ounce of my self-control to keep the look of horror from my face.
My feet were swelling. They were growing thick, shaggy brown fur. They were swelling and straining my shoes. The laces were strained tight.
"I know you say everything is fine, Rachel, but -"
SNAP!
He frowned. "What was that?"
SNAP!
"Nothing," I said in a squeaky voice.
"I heard something pop."
My laces had snapped from the pressure. I shook my head. "No."
"Anyway, what I was saying, was . . . Rachel? Are you listening?"
No, I wasn't listening. I was busy trying to see
if any other parts of me were turning into grizzly bear. Because, see, that's what it was. I'd seen those feet before. They were bear feet.
"Urn, yes! Yes. I am listening very closely!"
Oh, please! No way! I can't morph here! Not right in Chapman's office. I focused. I concentrated. Demorph!
Chapman just kept droning on. On and on about The Sharing. And all the while, my shoes were torn to ribbons. And my legs, from the knees down, grew shaggy with long, rough brown fur. And hard nails grew where my toes had been.
"Anyway," Chapman said, suddenly glancing at his watch. "I'm going on and on. And you need to get back to class."
"What?" I asked frantically.
"Just think about it, Rachel," Chapman said. "Now, go straight back to class. No dawdling."
I gulped. What could I do?
I bent over and quickly stuffed the torn remnants of my shoes into my backpack.
My feet were like huge, fur boots.
In fact . . .
I stood up and headed for the door. I paused with my hand on the knob. I turned back and saw Chapman staring hard at my feet.
"Oh, you like my new boots?" I asked.
Chapman smiled. "The things you kids will wear."
"Heh-heh. Yeah, I guess I'm just a fashion victim."
I got out of there fast. By the time I made it to the girls' room my feet had returned to normal. I walked barefoot to the gym and got my gym shoes.
I was shaking more than I had from falling into the crocodiles the day before.
After all, a crocodile can only kill you. Chapman is a Yeerk. And they can do things that make plain old death seem easy.
I meant to ask Ax about my little problem. I had promised Cassie I would. But right after school we had the mission. And if I'd brought it up then, everyone would have made me stay home.
Maybe that would have been the smart thing to do.
But it seemed to me that the sudden, surprise morphing had occurred just twice. The first time it had been a total catastrophe. But the second time only my feet had morphed.
Obviously, whatever was the matter with me, I was getting better.
Probably it would never even happen again.
Probably.
I called my dad on his cell phone when I got out of school. "Daddy?
Are you in a meeting or anything?"
"No, honey, I'm outside the courthouse waiting for this man I'm supposed to be interviewing. What's up? Are you okay?"
"Yeah, I haven't fallen into anything or had any buildings collapse on me. So far. I just wanted to let you know I'll be hanging with Cassie.
We'll probably go to the mall or the library or something."
"Okay. Well, be sure to be back at the hotel by six, okay? I want to have dinner with you. Take a cab. Do you have enough money?"
"Yes. I'll see you for dinner."
Then I called my mom at work, got her voice mail, and left the same basic message.
It was sad how easy lying had become for me. I guess a lot of kids lie occasionally to their parents. But I have to do it way too much. Someday I'll be able to tell everyone the whole truth. That will be a relief.
Anyway, we were all supposed to meet up in the air above the beach. That was the plan. All of us except Ax and Tobias had the perfect morphs for the occasion. But it was one I hadn't used in a longtime.
The tricky part was finding a safe place to morph. I headed for the stand of trees beyond
the athletic field. Unfortunately, kids went there sometimes, and I couldn't risk being seen.
Fortunately, Tobias arrived to help.
"Hey, Rachel. If you can hear me, scratch your head."
I scratched my head and casually looked up to the sky. I spotted the red-tailed hawk outlined against a fluffy white cloud.
"There are three people in the stand of woods, but they're walking away.
They'll be gone by the time you get there."
I couldn't answer because you can only make thought-speak when you're in a morph. But I trusted Tobias totally. Hawk eyes are about ten times better than human eyes. Tobias could have told me how many mice and rats and skunks and toads and squirrels were in that stand of woods. Let alone how many big, noisy, clunky humans were there.
I walked quickly into the trees. There was a ton of trash: soda cans and chip wrappers and McDonald's bags. I laughed, because for the morph I was going into, this was like the perfect world.
"You're still clear," Tobias called down. "Four guys heading toward you from the school, but you'll be out of there before they arrive."
I nodded. Then I focused on the morph. And I tried not to focus on the fact that morphing had
gotten very weird since the day before. Like it was normal the rest of the time.
I began to shrink very quickly. Pine needles and dead leaves and beer cans and assorted trash all came rushing up.
Shrinking is weird because it's so much like falling. You don't think, Oh, I'm getting small. You think, Oh, I'm falling!
You fall and fall and fall, but somehow you never actually land. It's just that a can that started off seeming to be as big as your foot becomes as big as half your body. And a McDonald's bag that you could have stepped on is now so large you could crawl inside it. Leaves smaller than your hand are now as big as those little bathroom rugs.