Maggots. Squirming, crawling, busy little white maggots. They were all over a piece of rotting meat and fur. In my dream it was a dead cat. A dead cat covered with vermin eating the decayed flesh.
A shrew was getting in on the feast, eating the dead flesh and the living maggots with equal enjoyment.
In my dream I knew: I was that shrew.
40 Chapter Ten
"You look tired," Jake said the next morning. We took the same bus to school.
"Thanks," I said grumpily.
"Didn't get enough sleep last night?"
"I guess not, if I look as bad as you say."
"I didn't say you looked bad, I just said you looked tired." He hesitated. He glanced over his shoulder, checking to see whether anyone was listening. Fortunately, the noise level was pretty high in the bus. Jake lowered his voice and leaned close to my ear. "You didn't get creeped out by the shrew, did you?"
"Why? Just because I'm a girl, you think the shrew bothered me more than it would have bothered you or Marco?"
"No, that's not it at all," he said earnestly. "It's just . . . see, when I did the lizard morph, that bothered me. I had nightmares -- "
"Nightmares?" I said it too loudly. Then I lowered my voice back to a whisper. "Nightmares?
"
"Oh, yeah. Definitely. When I morphed the tiger I had dreams, too, but not nightmares."
"What kind of dreams?"
He smiled. "Kind of cool, really. Stalking through a dark forest at night. I was hunting something. It was like I wanted to catch it, but at the same time it was like if I didn't catch it that would be okay, too. Because just running and creeping and then running some more through the woods was the best thing in the world."
I nodded. "I felt like that after the elephant morph. It was this incredible feeling of being huge and invincible. Like I could never even possibly be afraid of anything."
"But the shrew was different, wasn't it? Same with the lizard."
"I guess it's the different characters of the animals. Maybe some are good matches for our human brains. Maybe others aren't." I looked out the window for a while. Then I said, "You know what scares me?"
To my surprise, Jake nodded. "Yeah. You're afraid that someday we might have to morph into bugs."
I shuddered. "I don't think I'll be willing to do that. I think that may be too much."
"Well, your next assignment is a cat. Tobias was a cat. He said it was amazingly cool. He liked it. Just like I really enjoy being a dog. Sometimes when I'm feeling depressed, I really wish I could just morph. Dogs know how to have fun."
41 The bus pulled up in front of the school. "An other day of school. Normal life." I looked over the crowd of kids milling around on the lawn and on the steps. I spotted Melissa.
"See you later, Jake," I said. "Thanks."
"No problem. We're all in this together."
I made my way down the bus aisle and ran to catch up to Melissa. But when I got close I saw that her eyes were red and swollen. She'd been crying.
I didn't know what to do. In the old days I would have just run right up to her and asked what was the matter.
"Hey, Melissa, how's it going?"
She looked at me, confused. "What?"
"I said, how's it going?"
She shook her head slowly, like she couldn't believe I was even talking to her. "What do you care?"
"Melissa. Of course I care. What's wrong?" Her eyes went kind of blank. She seemed to be looking at nothing but the air right in front of her face.
"What's wrong? Everything is wrong. And nothing is wrong. But just the same, every thing is wrong."
"Melissa, what are you talking about?" "Forget it," she said. She started to walk away.
I grabbed her arm. "Look, you can talk to me. I'm still your friend. Nothing has changed."
"Leave me alone," she said grimly. "Everything has changed. Everyone has changed. You stopped being my friend. And my mom and dad ... "
"What?" I pressed her.
The bell rang loud and shrill.
"I have to go." She pulled her arm away.
What could I do? I let her go. I wondered what she had started to say about her father. Had she discovered what her father was? What her father had become?
I walked up the steps of the school with my head lowered in thought. As I opened the school door, I ran right into someone.
"Hey, hey, watch where you're going, young lady."
"Mr. Chapman!" I recoiled in fear.
42 See, you have to realize that this was the man who had once directed a Hork-Bajir soldier to kill us all if he caught us. Kill us and only save our heads for identification.
That kind of thing sticks in your mind.
He peered at me. "What's the matter with you, Rachel? A little jumpy this morning?"
I nodded. "Yes, sir. I guess I didn't sleep too well."
"Bad dreams?" he asked.
My mouth was dry. "I guess so, Mr. Chapman.
He smiled. A normal, human smile. His eyes even crinkled up a little as he grinned down at me. "Well, shake it off. Nightmares aren't real, you know."
"At least not most of the time," I said to myself.
43 Chapter Eleven
We couldn't go to the Chapmans' the next night because Marco and I both had papers we had to write. And the night after that was Cassie's dad's birthday.
But finally, there we were again on the street outside the Chapmans' house. It was a little before eight.
Fluffer was out of the house, smelling a fence post four blocks over, where another cat had left his scent. At least, that's what Tobias reported.
"Are you ready?" Jake asked me.
I nodded.
"Are you sure?" Cassie asked. "You can put this off if you want. We don't have to do this tonight."
"The sooner the better," I said. "We all know something is wrong in that house. Melissa is still my friend. Maybe somehow I can help her."
"Your job is not to help Melissa Chapman," Marco pointed out. "You're supposed to be spying on Chapman. You're supposed to be finding some way for us to get at the Yeerks, so that we can all turn into wild animals and get ourselves killed."
"I know why I'm doing this, Marco," I said.
He nodded. "Okay. Well, take care of yourself in there. That's an assistant principal you're dealing with. He finds out you've turned into a cat and gone sneaking around his house, that will be after-school detention for like a year."
We all laughed. As if detention were the thing I had to fear. Marco can be obnoxious, but on the other hand, he can make you laugh right when you really need to.
"I'm ready," I said. I waved my arms at the dark sky above. Tobias swooped down, opened his wings to slow his speed, and settled on the fence beside us.
"How does it look up there, Tobias?" Jake asked.
"Looks fine. The cat is nowhere near the house. There's no one out walking around, except way over on Loughlin Street. There are a couple of cars, but not coming toward you."
"You know, you have quite a future in burglary," Marco said to Tobias. "You and I can burglarize places, and Jake can be Spiderman and catch us."
"Okay, I'm ready to do this," I announced. "As ready as I'm going to get, anyway."
Tobias sent me a private message. "Rachel, if you get into any trouble, just try and make it out side. I can lift you out of any danger. "