"Are you okay?" Cassie asked me.

"Yeah. Yeah," I said, shaking off the weird vision.

"Daydreaming?" Cassie asked me.

"I guess so," I said.

"I wonder what Tobias wants. Do you have any idea?"

I was too weirded out to really respond. One second I'd been square dancing. The next second I'd been swinging through the trees. And both moments had been real.

3:08 P.m.

What do you think?" Marco asked me.

"Personally, I figure Tobias found some really good roadkill, and he wants us to share."

"Yeah, that's probably it," I said tolerantly. Marco's approach to everything is to joke about it. Especially when he's worried.

After school we all went our separate ways. Cassie to her home, Rachel to hers. We all knew Tobias had some serious reason to talk to us. We were all afraid it was trouble of some kind.

But I had something extra to worry about. The hallucination, or vision, or whatever it was I'd had was too real to just forget. Everyone daydreams. This was no daydream. I was in the jungle. Period. It was for just a few seconds, but it was definitely real.

But like I said, priority number one was figureing out what was bugging Tobias. So Marco and I walked home together because that's what we usually did. And it is very important for us to act normal. We don't want to draw attention. So we try and be like we always were. Like we were before the night that changed our lives forever.

We'd been walking home from the mall at night. We took a shortcut through an abandoned construction site. A really stupid, irresponsible thing to do. But it turned out it wasn't ax murderers or kidnappers we had to worry about. Before that night we'd all known each other, but we weren't a group. We had just happened to hook up at the mall. It was an accident or fate or something. Take your pick.

Anyway, the five of us ended up walking together as we were leaving the mall. And in a dark, spooky construction site, with empty, half-finished buildings all around us, we saw the spaceship land. It was an Andalite fighter. It was badly damaged. Up in orbit, the Andalites had come out on the wrong end of a fight with the Yeerks.

The Andalite pilot of the fighter was named Elfangor. Prince Elfangor. He was dying. He was the one who told us about the Yeerks. Life changed that night. Life went from being just the daily stuff any normal kid has to deal with, to knowing a secret that made you want to sit down and cry. It was Prince Elfangor who gave us the power to morph. It was all he could do to help us. It was the only weapon he could give us. The power to morph. To become any animal we could touch and "acquire." A great and awful power. A power that has given me some serious nightmares. I've seen things since that night at the con struction site. Things I wish I'd never seen. And I've done things I wish I couldn't remember.

"Hey," Marco said, interrupting my thoughts. "Speaking of Bird-boy. Up there. Is that anyone we know?"

I followed the direction he was looking. It was a dark afternoon and the sky just kept getting darker. It was filling up with rain clouds the color of steel wool. And there, silhouetted against the clouds, was a large bird.

Even from a distance you could tell it was a bird of prey.

"Could be. I can't tell," I said. "If it's Tobias he'll spot us."

Tobias is in hawk morph. Permanently. See, there's a nasty little hook buried inside the morphing power: Stay in morph for more than two hours, and you stay in morph forever.

Tobias has the soul and mind of a human. But his body is the body of a red-tailed hawk.

"He's coming closer," Marco said.

"Yeah." I had mixed feelings. Tobias is one of us. A friend.

More than a friend. He's risked his life for me many times.

But I sensed he was bringing bad news. And I really didn't want to hear bad news.

I heard his thought-speak voice in my head. "Jake. Marco."

"See? Figured it was him," Marco said.

We couldn't answer Tobias. He was still too high up to hear us speak, even with his excellent hawk hearing. And you can only make thought-speak when you're in morph. Or if you happen to be an Andalite.

"You guys need to haul it a little faster." Tobias said. He sounded tense, impatient, excited.

Not that he really "sounded" at all. But his thought-speak in my head carried tension. "Morph as soon as you get a chance, okay?"

I looked at Marco. He sighed.

"My dad should still be at work. We can use my house," he said. "We're almost there." We headed straight for Marco's house. We live in the same subdivision, just a couple of blocks away from each other. Most of the kids in our school live there, including Rachel. Cassie lives out on her farm a little ways down the road.

"l'll round up the others." Tobias said. "We'll meet up with Ax later. I'll catch up with you once you get airborne."

"This has "big trouble" written all over it," I muttered. "In huge red neon letters," Marco agreed. We reached Marco's house and went in. Marco checked to make sure we were alone. "Dad!

Dad, you home? Anyone home? Hey, Dad, I'm going to change all the settings on your stereo!" Marco winked at me. "If he's home, that'll make him come running."

There was no reply. Just a quiet house. We ran up the carpeted stairs to Marco's room. We ran past framed pictures of Marco and his dad and his mother, who everyone thought as dead.

Marco opened his bedroom window as wide s it would go. The breeze was cool and damp. It as going to rain. And I hate rain. Let's get this over with," I said. I kicked off y shoes and removed everything but my morphing suit. Marco did the same. focused my mind on a bird. It was a peregrine falcon.

The DNA of that falcon was part of me. And, thanks to the Andalite morphing technology, I could trade that DNA for my own.

I focused my mind and the change began.

Feather patterns appeared on my skin as if some invisible person had drawn them there.

The not-terribly-clean floor of Marco's room came rushing up at me as I shrank, dwindling down like a fast-burning candle.

It was like falling and falling without ever quite hitting the ground.

Or in this case, hitting a dirty white sock.

"Oh, man," I said. "Marco, you could at least not leave dirty gym socks around."

"Hey, I've seen your room," Marco said. "You still have some of your old baby diapers lying around."

He started to say more, but that's when his human tongue shriveled down to become a tiny bird tongue. So all he said was "Craww hee hrrar."

Whatever that meant.

The dirty gym sock went from being the size of a sock to being the size of a blanket. The only good thing was that falcons don't have much of a sense of smell. I was grateful for that.

My lips became hard as fingernails and began to press outward, forming a sharp, down-curved beak. It was weird and disturbing because I could actually see the beak grow, like some humongous nose.

My feet were gone, replaced by talons that could open up a prey animal like a can opener on a can of cat food.

My bones made grinding, squishy noises as my skull shrank. My arm bones became hollow and other bones disappeared altogether.

Then the patterns of feathers on my skin grew three- dimensional. It was eerie to watch -- like my skin was chapping really badly. Like skin was peeling up at an incredible rate, and each peel of skin formed a feather.