"I'd say that's a yes." I laughed. "You're not afraid to be a mile up in the air, but you're afraid of water?"
"Not water," he said hotly. "lt's just that, you know, there's no air in the water. You can't breathe. It presses in all around you."
"Hey, how about if we stop busting on Tobias, okay?" Rachel growled. "If he doesn't like water, he doesn't have to like water."
"No, it's okay," Tobias said shakily. "l'm cool. I mean, I'll be a dolphin, right? They live in the water."
I nodded. "Yep. We've established that dolphins live in water."
"Okay, then," Jake said. "Tobias needs to go to The Gardens to play with the dolphins. And we need to make this fast. So let's fly, and let's hope we get lucky."
"They hold their breath underwater, right?" Tobias asked. "l mean, I guess that's obvious. But if they ever forgot . . . "
"It'll be okay," Cassie reassured him. "You'll see. Once you've been a dolphin, you'll never fear the ocean again."
"The ocean. Oh, man. The entire ocean."
I don't know why, but Tobias being scared made me feel better. I guess it's true that misery loves company.
"Let's morph," Jake said.
And a few minutes later, I had curved, swept-back wings, brilliant white feathers, and a serious passion for garbage.
If you want to fly high and far, take on a bird-of-prey morph. But if you want to be able to go anywhere, without anyone really noticing, be a seagull.
Seagulls and pigeons can appear anywhere and do anything without anyone getting upset. But if you show up as a bald eagle, people are going to notice.
We'd all done seagull morphs before, except for Tobias and Ax. We figured Tobias had enough to deal with having to acquire a dolphin, so no one suggested he do a gull, too. But Ax is a different story. Cassie had an injured seagull in her barn. So Ax had quickly acquired it.
We flew to The Gardens swift and low, the way
seagulls do. And we noticed every last piece of edible garbage on the way. Every stray french fry, bread crust, burger fragment, candy wrapper, cheese puff, and melted jujube. Seagulls are as good at spotting edible garbage as hawks are at spotting mice.
"l cannot believe I'm flying with seagulls," Tobias sneered. "l could get kicked out of the hawk fraternity for hanging out with lowlifes." Actually, Tobias wasn't exactly hanging out with us. He was flying higher, about two hundred feet above us. But Tobias has been a hawk so long he relates almost as much to other birds as he does to humans. He respects and fears golden eagles and falcons, both of which will occasionally attack a hawk. But he actively dislikes pigeons, seagulls, and above all, crows. I think it's something to do with the groupy nature of those birds. Tobias is a loner.
I spotted The Gardens up ahead. It was easy, since the roller coaster is about ten stories high. And I saw lots of other gulls circling in the sky over the amusement park and zoo.
"Ah, our brothers and sisters await," I said.
"They probably already got all the good food," Rachel grumbled.
She was joking. I hoped.
We swept on a following breeze above the parking lots and above the fences and right over
the gate where we would have had to pay if we'd been human.
"Let's go this way!" I yelled, suddenly excited. I've always loved amusement parks. I live for coasters. Or at least I did before I became an Animorph and discovered bigger thrills.
"Which way?" Jake asked.
"This way!" I banked my wings and suddenly shot left. Straight for the wooden roller coaster. A car was clank-clank-clanking its way up the first main hill. I flapped my wings and swooped right for it.
The first car had two guys in it. Not much different than Jake and me, I guess. They were holding their arms up in the air, getting that anticipation rush.
I flew straight for them and landed on the front railing of the car at the moment it reached the top of the hill.
"Whoa. Birds!"
"Marco, what are you doing?" Jake asked. "We're not here to play around." But he landed right beside me. Jake has gotten awfully responsible lately. But he's still my old bud.
"Get away, birds!" one of the kids said.
We ignored him, and just then, the coaster dipped over the top of the hill. Down we went.
Down and down, faster and faster. I clutched the railing with all the strength in my seagull feet.
"Yaaaahh!" I yelled.
"Whoa-oh-oh!" the kids shouted.
The bottom of the hill rushed up at us. Down we shot. Then the bottom and up, up, up at a hundred miles an hour, and right then, at maximum speed, I opened my wings. The car dropped out from under me and I was airborne again.
"Yee-HAH!" I yelled.
"You're nuts!" Jake cried, but he followed my lead. The two of us blasted off like we'd been shot out of a cannon.
"Look out!" Whitewashed wooden beams were dead ahead, the supports for the coaster. I trimmed my wings, turned on my side, and blew through a gap in the timbers with no more than two inches of clearance all around.
"Come on. Now that was cool, admit it!" I told Jake.
"Yeah. That was cool."
"We're still our old selves, aren't we? I mean, we haven't changed. Not really. No matter what, right?"
"Sure, Marco."
"No, I mean it." I realized I had grown very serious. I don't know why, but I wanted Jake to agree with me. It was important to me. "We're still just us. Nothing that happens can really change what you are.
Right?"
We flapped side-by-side back to the others.
"Look, Marco," Jake said wearily. "l'm not exactly a philosopher, okay?"
"Yeah. Well, I'm me, no matter what," I said defiantly. "No matter how many morphs, no matter how many battles. No matter what. I'll still be me. Everyone better accept that."
Jake laughed a little. "Marco, if it makes you feel any better, you'll always just be a punk to me."