Then I felt the change begin. My legs grew thick. My arms grew big, bigger. I could feel myself growing large. Large and solid. I felt the squirmy sensation of my ears becoming thin and leathery.
20 But it wasn't enough to just look creepy. This guy had made me mad. I wanted to scare him half to death.
My nose suddenly began to sprout. Then, from my mouth, like two huge spears, the tusks began to appear.
I figured that was about enough. I broke my concentration, which stopped the morph.
I stopped suddenly. The creep barreled right into me.
He was not going to like what he was about to see.
21 Chapter Five
I wanted to tell the jerk to step off. What I wanted to say to him was, "So, you still want to go for that ride?"
What I really said was "HhhohhHEEEEERRR."
The guy stopped dead. He just stared.
What he saw was me, halfway through morphing into an African elephant. I had about a third of a trunk and most of my huge fanlike elephant ears. My legs were like stumps. My arms looked like Arnold Schwarzenegger's, only gray. And my tusks stuck about a foot out of my mouth. Just to make things extra weird, I still had my normal hair and my normal eyes.
Suddenly, the guy wasn't interested in hassling me.
"AAAAAHHHH!"
He turned. He ran. For a minute he forgot he even had a car. Then he turned around and jumped in through an open window.
He started the car and took off.
He was definitely breaking the speed limit as he tore out of there.
I concentrated again and began to reverse the morphing process, going back to human shape.
I had been wearing a loose sweater and leggings, which was good. They had both stretched.
But my shoes had been split open by the sudden growth of my elephant feet.
It had started raining, so the trip home was going to be very unpleasant. "Oh, great!" I muttered.
"I have got to remember to kick off my shoes before I morph into an elephant."
Just then, a second car pulled up and came to a stop. The window rolled down.
"Hey, Rachel." It was Melissa. I recognized the voice. "Do you want a ride home?" She didn't sound very excited by the idea.
I looked through the car window, past her. Chapman was behind the wheel.
A wave of sick fear swept over me. Had he seen what I'd just done? If he had, then I was dead. My friends were dead.
"I'm ... I'm fine," I said. "I could use the exercise."
"Nonsense, young lady," Chapman said, sounding like his usual assistant-principal self. "It's beginning to rain. Get in."
What was I supposed to do? I forced a smile. It wasn't easy. "Thanks," I said.
Melissa was in the front with her father. I sat in the back. I tried not to shiver. I tried not to stare at the back of Chapman's head. That's how it is when you're around a Controller. You 22 know that evil slug is right there in the Controller's head, attached to all his nerve endings.
Controlling the human brain. Dominating it.
It's hard not to stare when you think of what is squeezed inside that skull.
"When we were stuck back at the red light it looked like some guy was bothering you,"
Melissa said. "Then he ran off. Was he bothering you?"
"Um . . . no," I lied. "He was . . . he was just picking up something he dropped by the side of the road."
Pathetic! I was such a lame liar.
I saw Chapman's eyes watching me in the rearview mirror. He looked like normal old Chapman. That's the problem with Controllers. There is no outward clue. They look so normal.
"He went running off like the hounds of Hades were after him," Chapman said.
"Did he?" I said in a squeaky voice. "I wasn't looking. I guess it was the rain. That's probably why he was running. There. You can turn left there."
"I know where you live," Chapman said.
I almost swallowed my tongue. Was that a threat? Did he suspect? Did he guess? Was he looking at me strangely?
Or was I just being paranoid?
He pulled up in front of my house. My heart was hammering, but I was determined to act casual. "Thanks for the ride, Mr. Chapman," I said. "Hey, Melissa, I was totally serious about us getting together, okay?"
She nodded. "Sure, Rachel. Absolutely."
I closed the car door behind me. I had escaped. I was alive. I'd probably just been imagining things.
Then I heard Melissa call out to me. "Hey. What happened to your shoes?"
I looked down. My shoes were in tatters, the result of my feet growing from a size six to a size three hundred in about five seconds flat.
"See?" I said, as lightly as I could. "I told you I needed to go shopping."
Melissa just looked puzzled. Her father stared at me with an expression I could not read.
I was shaking like a leaf when I walked into my house. I headed upstairs to my room and stuffed my ripped shoes into the trash. Only then did I go back downstairs and say hi to my mom.
23 She was at the kitchen table, half hidden by a pile of buff-colored books. My mother's a lawyer, and she brings work home a lot so she can be around me and my two little sisters.
She and my dad are divorced. I only get to see my dad a few days a month, so mom feels guilty when she isn't there for us.
"Hi, honey," she said. Then she got her "suspicious mother" look. "How did you get home?
You didn't walk, did you? You were supposed to call me."
"Melissa and her dad gave me a ride," I said. Well, it was the truth. Sort of.
She relaxed and made a point of closing her book. "Sorry. You know I worry about you."
"Where are Jordan and Sara?"
"They're in the family room watching another one of those scary shows. Of course, tonight Jordan will be sleeping with her night-light on and Sara will end up in my bed, no doubt. I don't know why they like things that frighten them. You were never that way."
It almost made me laugh. I felt like saying, well, Mom, I don't have to watch things that are scary, I am scary. Should have seen me a little while ago with tusks sticking out of my mouth and a three-foot-long nose.
What I really said was, "So, what's for dinner?"
My mother winced. "Pizza? Chinese? Any thing else you can order over the phone? I'm sorry, but I have this brief and I have court in the morning."
"Mom," I told her for maybe the thousandth time, "I don't mind pizza. Sorry, but your cooking isn't all that great, so it's no big deal ordering pizza."
"Well, at least get some veggies on it," she said.
After dinner I called Jake.
"Do you want to come over?" I said. "I got that new CD, if you want to listen to it."
There was no CD, of course. It's just that we always have to be careful. Like I said, Jake's brother, Tom, is a Controller. He could be listening on the extension. Then I called Cassie and Marco and told them the same cover story.
When they arrived I told them about Melissa, and then I told them about my little run-in with the creep. I did not tell them about Chapman driving me home. I don't know why. But when I saw the way Marco exploded, I was glad I hadn't told them the whole story.
"Oh, that was dumb! Dumb! DUMB!" Marco said. "What if that guy is a Controller?"
"He wasn't a Controller," I said\ scornfully. "Why would the Yeerks want to make a Controller out of a punk? They want people in positions of power."