Katherine Alice Applegate - Invasion

Focus, Jake! I ordered myself. Focus!

Slowly I calmed the dog part of my mind.

Let go of the smells. Let go of the sound of a dog out in your yard.

It wasn't easy, that first time. Being a dog is so completely amazing. For one thing, there's nothing halfway about it. You're never sort of happy. You're HAPPY! You're never sort of bummed. You're totally, completely bummed. And boy, when you get hungry in dog form, you are nuts on the subject of food.

There was a knock on my bedroom door. Yes, my bedroom door. I knew who I was again. I was Jake. Jake with four legs, a tail and a snout, but Jake.

The knocking seemed incredibly loud to my dog ears.

"Jake, you got Homer in there with you?" My brother Tom's voice. "Mom's on the phone, stop him yapping — "

He opened the door and stepped in. He looked around, confused.

"Who are you?" he demanded of Tobias.

"I'm Tobias. I'm a friend of Jake's."

"Well, where is he?"

"Oh… he's around," Tobias said.

Tom looked down at me. There was a strange smell about him. My dog brain couldn't quite identify it. It was an unsettling, dangerous smell. And somehow, in my own mind, I heard the echo of a laugh. A very human laugh I had heard the night before as Visser Three swallowed the Andalite whole.

"Bad dog," Tom said to me. "You keep quiet. Bad dog." And then he left.

I was devastated. I wasn't a bad dog. Not really. I was just barking because some other dog was in MY yard. Bad dog? I was a bad dog? No, I wanted to be a good dog. I crept into the corner, utterly miserable.

Tobias knelt down and patted my head.

When he scratched me behind the ears, I felt a little better.

I called all the others on the phone after I got done morphing back into my normal body. Tobias took off on his own, saying he'd hook up with us later at Cassie's farm. I was on the kitchen phone with Cassie when Tom came in.

"Oh, there you are," he said.

I covered the mouthpiece. "Yeah. Tobias said you were looking for me before."

"I just wanted you to shut your dog up," Tom said. He turned a chair around backward and straddled it.

I hesitated. For some reason I didn't want to talk to Cassie with Tom listening in. "I'll just see you there in a couple hours, okay?" I told Cassie. I hung up.

I looked over at Tom. He's bigger than me, even though I'm not exactly small. His hair is darker, almost black, while mine is brown.

I had always trusted him. He wasn't like a lot of guys who pound on their younger brother. We were always kind of close. At least, until the last year or so. Somehow we just weren't spending as much time together. Partly it was that he was involved in this club called The Sharing. They did all this stuff together, so he was busy a lot of the time.

The thing is, Tom should have been the very first person I told about all the stuff that had happened. But as I was sitting there watching him munch toast, I just had this feeling. This feeling that said No, this has to be a secret. Even from Tom.

Instead I told him the other thing I was afraid to tell him.

"I, uh… I didn't make the team," I said.

"What team?" he asked. He looked puzzled.

"What team? The basketball team. Your old team."

"Oh. Too bad," he said.

"Too bad?" I repeated. I could not believe how little he seemed to care. "It's just sports," he said. He munched another big bite of toast.

"Just sports?" I couldn't stop repeating what he said. Tom, saying sports were no big deal? No way. He lived for sports. "Yeah, I guess I just don't have your total skill."

He shrugged. "Well, I quit the team, anyway. A couple days ago."

I practically fell off my chair. "You quit! You quit the team? And you didn't even talk to me about it? What's the deal?"

"I didn't say anything because I knew you and Dad would make a big thing of it. Look, there are more important things than throwing balls through hoops," he said. He had this mysterious look in his eyes. I figured he meant girls were the more important thing. "Besides," he added, "we do much cooler stuff at The Sharing. Maybe you should join up."

I was stunned. Obviously, Tom and I were further apart than I had realized.

When we were done talking, I headed outside to mow the lawn. I mow the lawn every Saturday. It's my major chore. That, and taking out the trash, which I hate, because we have to do all this recycling stuff.

When I was finally done mowing and trimming and raking, I hopped on my bike and took off.

I had arranged with everyone to hook up at Cassie's farm. It isn't exactly a normal farm, although it had been in the old days. And they do still have horses and a cow. But now the big red main barn is the Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic. Cassie's father runs it. They take in any kind of injured animal except pet-type animals, There are always lots of birds, along with squirrels and deer and skunks and so on. Sometimes they get a bobcat or a fox or even a wolf.

Cassie's mom is a vet, too, but she works at The Gardens. That's this huge amusement park that also has a zoo — or I guess they call it a wildlife park. Luckily, Cassie really loves animals. It would have been hard, having her parents, if she didn't really love animals.

Me, I have a dog. Tobias has a cat. Cassie has everything from porcupines to polar bears.

By the time I got there, Marco, Tobias, and Rachel were already waiting outside the barn.

Rachel had her face turned up to catch the tanning rays of the sun. Cassie wasn't there yet. I figured she was doing chores. She had tons of work to do around there.

"Hey, guys," I said.

Rachel opened her eyes and immediately thrust a newspaper at me. "Look," she said, pointing to an article.

I started to read the article. It wasn't very long. It said that police claimed there had been a disturbance in the construction site the night before. It said several people had called, claiming they'd seen flying saucers landing there, followed by bright lights.

"Cool," I said, looking up. "So the cops know about it now. That's a relief."

"Keep reading," Rachel said.

The article went on to say that the police had arrived on the scene and found a group of teenagers playing with fireworks. The teenagers had run away. Fireworks were discovered at the scene.

The police spokesman had laughed at the reports of flying saucers. "It was just a bunch of kids playing where they shouldn't have been," he said. "There were definitely no flying saucers. People shouldn't be so quick to believe nonsense."

"But this is a total lie," I said.

"Ding ding ding ding! Correct answer. Johnny, tell our contestant what he's won," Marco said.

"Did you see the last part?" Rachel pressed.

I read the last sentence. It froze me up good, I can tell you. Police were offering a reward for information on the teenagers.

"They're looking for us," Marco said.

"Why would the police be… I mean, why would they lie?" I wondered aloud. But the answer was pretty obvious.

Marco laughed his sardonic laugh. "Let's see, Captain Brilliant — would it be because the cops are Controllers?"

"Probably not all the cops," Tobias pointed out.

"If the police have been infiltrated by the Controllers, who knows how many others have, too?" Rachel asked. "Teachers? People in the government? The newspapers and the TV?"

"Math teachers, for sure," Marco joked.

We all looked around nervously, like we expected to find ourselves surrounded by Controllers.

"I tried to tell myself it was all a dream," Rachel said. "Been there," I said.

For a while no one said anything. We all felt the same terrible feeling — like we were all alone.

Like suddenly we were dealing with stuff that was way, way, way over our heads.

Marco spoke first. "Look, why do we have to deal with this? I say we just forget it. We never talk about it. We never morph. We just deal with our own lives."

Tobias and Rachel both looked at me. They were waiting for me to argue with Marco.

"Marco, I halfway agree with you — " I started to say.

Suddenly Marco just went ballistic. "We could get killed!" he yelled. "Don't you get it? You saw what happened to the Andalite. I mean, this is radical stuff, Jake. This is for real. Real! We could all get killed."

Tobias was looking at Marco with this sideways look, like he thought maybe Marco was some kind of coward. I knew better. Marco had his reasons.

Marco shook his head. In a quiet voice he said, "Look, I think these Controllers are jerks. But if something happened to me… my dad. He wouldn't be able to handle it."

Two years ago, Marco's mom died. She drowned. They never even found her body. Marco's dad lost it big time. He totally fell apart. He quit his job as an industrial engineer because he couldn't handle being around other people. Now he was working as a night janitor, making barely enough to support Marco. He spent his days sleeping or watching TV with the sound off.

"You can all think I'm a weasel if you want," Marco said. "I don't care. But if I get killed or something, my dad will flat-out die. He's only hanging in there because of me."

I wondered if I should go pat him on the back or something. But if I had, Marco, being Marco, would have just said something sarcastic.

"There's Cassie," Rachel said, shielding her eyes and looking off across the open field.

A horse, galloping across the green. Its black mane was flying in the warm breeze. I didn't see any rider.

The horse slowed, trotting closer, and suddenly I had a strange feeling about the horse.

"Cassie and I have been here for a while," Rachel said by way of explanation. "She's really good at this. Look how fast she can do it."

The horse nickered softly. Then the animal began to melt. The big brown eyes became slightly smaller. The long muzzle became a human mouth.

A thing that was part horse and part Cassie smiled at us with big horse teeth and said, "Hey, kids."

Marco suddenly sat down. Very hard. He had never seen a morphing. "It's cool," I said, trying to sound very relaxed. "It's just Cassie."

I decided I'd better be a gentleman and look away. After all, when Tobias and I had morphed, we'd kind of morphed right out of our clothes. But I noticed that as Cassie emerged from the horse she was wearing a skintight blue outfit. One of those outfits girls wear to do aerobics. I watched and saw something beautiful happen. For just a few seconds, she stayed half-horse and half-human. She reminded me of the Andalite. I realized it was deliberate. Cassie was controlling the way she morphed.

"Jeez, Rachel," I said. "You're right. Cassie is good."

Suddenly we heard the sound of tires on gravel.

We all spun around. Down the gravel and dirt road came a single black-and-white car. "The cops!" Tobias cried.

"Cassie. Morph. Now!" I snapped. The police car was coming fast. "We do not want to have to explain a half-horse half-person."

"Which way should I morph?" Cassie wailed. "Horse or human?" She reared up slightly on her hind legs.

I knew what was happening. She was fighting the horse's urge to panic.