"How can you be so sure?" I asked her.

"Because what counts is what is in your head and in your heart," she said with sudden passion. "A person isn't his body. A person isn't what's on the outside."

38 "Rachel . . . I don't even remember what I looked like." I could see that she wanted to cry. But Rachel is a person with strength that runs all the way through her. Maybe that's why I came to see her. I needed someone to be sure. I wanted someone to let me borrow a little of their strength.

She went over to her nightstand and opened the drawer. She rummaged for a minute, then came back to me. She was holding a small photograph. She turned it so I could see.

It was me. The me I used to be.

"I didn't know you had a picture of me," I said.

She nodded. "It's not a great picture. In real life you look better."

"In real life," I echoed.

"Tobias, someday the Andalites will return. If they don't, we're all lost, all the human race. If they do come back, I know they'll have some way to return you to your own body."

"I wish I was sure," I said.

"I am sure," she said. She put every ounce of faith into those three words. She wanted me to believe. But I could see the tears that were threatening to well up in her eyes as she lied.

Like I said, hawks don't miss much.

39 CHAPTER 13

Talking to Rachel helped. A little, anyway. I spent the night in my little drawer in Jake's attic.

I spent the next day flying around, waiting for my friends to get out of school. In some ways, I realized, my situation wasn't all bad. For one thing, I had no homework. For another, I could fly. How many average kids can hit forty miles per hour in level flight and break eighty in a stoop - a dive?

I went to the beach and rode the thermals there. It was best where the cliffs pressed right up against the blue ocean.

I saw some prey, some mice and voles in the grass along the top of the cliff, but I ignored them. I was Tobias. I was human.

Jake had called a meeting for all of us for that evening in his room. Tom, Jake's brother, would be away at a meeting of The Sharing.

The Sharing is a "front" for the Yeerks. They pretend it's just some kind of Boy Scouts or whatever, but its real purpose is to recruit voluntary hosts for the Yeerks.

I've gotten into the habit of checking people's watches from up in the air. Also, you know how banks sometimes will have a big sign showing the time and temperature? Those are helpful, too.

It's strange the things you miss when you lose your human body. Like showers. Like really sleeping, all the way, totally passed out. Or like knowing what time it is.

In the afternoon I flew back to the school. I drifted around overhead till it let out. Then I waited till I saw Jake, Rachel, Cassie, and Marco come out. They came out separately. Marco had pointed out that it was bad security for them to be seen together all the time.

I followed the bus with Jake and Rachel in it. They lived closest, just a few blocks away from each other. Marco lived in some apartments on the other side of the boulevard. He lived with just his dad, since his mom drowned a few years ago.

Cassie had to travel farthest, out to the farm, which was about a mile from the others. For me it was about a three-minute flight.

Like I say, there are some good things about having wings. I guess really it's okay most of the time. Really.

I floated on a nice thermal above Jake's house, waiting for him to get home. I saw him get off the bus and go inside. I couldn't see Rachel from where I was because there were trees in the way, but I did see Marco for just a second or two.

I concentrated on watching my friends. That way I didn't notice the squirrels in the trees as much. Or the mice that poked their little noses from their holes and sniffed the air.

After a while I saw Tom leave Jake's house.

Tom looks just like Jake, only he's bigger and has shorter hair. I'd never really known Tom well. But it was during the doomed attempt to rescue him from the Yeerk pool that I was trapped.

40 He headed down the street, acting nonchalant. Then, a block away, a car pulled up and opened a door. He jumped in.

Off to his meeting of The Sharing.

After a while, I saw the others start to head for Jake's house. I could identify Rachel easily.

She was practicing for her gymnastics as she walked. She would walk along the edges of curbs, pretending they were balance beams.

I flew in Jake's window once everyone was there. I didn't want it to look like I'd been hanging around all that time with nothing to do.

"About time," Marco said. "We've all been waiting here for like an hour."

They'd been there for about two minutes. "I'm a busy bird," I said. "I lost track of time."

"We better make this kind of quick," Cassie said. "Ms. Lambert gave us papers to write by day after tomorrow, and I promised my dad I'd help him release this great horned owl. He was a mess. He'd landed on a power line and got fried. But he's ready to go now. We have a habitat picked out."

"Friend of yours, Tobias?" Marco teased me.

The others all shot him nasty looks. But the truth was, it made me feel okay to be teased by Marco. Marco teased everyone.

"We hawks don't hang with owls," I said. "They do nights, we mostly do days."

"He's a beautiful animal," Cassie said.

"I see them sometimes at night," I said. "They're amazing. So cool. Totally silent. Their wings don't make a sound. One can fly an inch in front of your face and you won't hear it."

"Um, okay, look, if Cassie has to get going, maybe we better deal with business," Jake said.

"Yeah, if you two are done with the bird-talk part of the meeting," Marco added.

"I have to get going soon, too," Rachel said. She looked a little embarrassed. "My gymnastics class is putting on an exhibition at the mall."

"Oh, I'm there," Marco crowed.

"No, you are not there," Rachel snapped. "None of you is going near that place. You know how I feel about having to put on stupid exhibitions."

Rachel is not one of those people who like to perform in front of a crowd.

"We have learned how the Yeerks get their air and water," Jake said, trying to get down to business. "And we even know where they do it. And we more or less know when. There ought to be some way for us to use this information. Any ideas?"

41 Rachel shrugged. "We try and find a way to destroy the ship."

Marco raised his hand like he was in class. "How about if we, um, go back to talking about birds?"

Rachel ignored him, as she usually did. "Look, we find some way to destroy that ship and maybe the Yeerks will run out of air and water. Maybe that will even mean that they have to give up and go home."

"Maybe," Cassie said. "Or they may have a dozen more of those ships in different places all over the earth. We don't know how many ships they have."

"This one would be all we need if - " Marco began to say. Then I guess he realized he was about to suggest something dangerous. "I mean . . . nothing."

"What?" Jake asked him. "'What were you going to say?"

Marco looked trapped. He shrugged. "Okay, look, what if that ship didn't get blown up or disintegrated or whatever. What if it was flying over the city and suddenly the cloaking device was turned off?"

We were all silent while we thought about that image. Suddenly a million people would look up in the sky and see a ship the size of a skyscraper.