The Sickness Read online

  For Michael and Jake

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  SNEAK PEEK

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  COPYRIGHT

  My name is Cassie.

  I wish I could tell you my whole name. Because that would mean I was a nice, normal girl. But I’m not either one. Not nice. Not normal.

  Okay, my friends think I’m nice. Marco is always calling me a tree-hugger. And even though I don’t actually hug trees, I do care about them. Which makes me nice, right? A girl who cares about trees can’t be anything but nice.

  Unless that girl has also ripped a living creature’s throat out with her bare teeth. Which I have.

  I was in wolf morph, deep in battle. Seven Hork-Bajir against six of us. Jake gave the order to retreat. And either right before he said it, or right after, I yanked the throat out of the Hork-Bajir I was fighting.

  I hope it was right before. I hope that I didn’t go in for the kill when I could have just run. But I’m not sure.

  That’s why I don’t think I qualify as nice. You’ve probably already gotten a clue why I don’t qualify as normal.

  Here’s the short version: An Andalite prince named Elfangor gave the power to morph to me and four of my friends. He knew he was about to die, and he didn’t want to leave Earth defenseless against the Yeerk invasion.

  He showed us a small blue box. We pressed our hands against it. And we were changed.

  This morphing cube was lost for a while. Now we have it again. We’ve used it once, to add an Animorph to our group.

  Then we had to subtract that new Animorph. And we’ve kept the blue box hidden ever since.

  Since that night in the construction site, since that change, the five of us, plus Elfangor’s younger brother, have been fighting the Yeerks.

  Yeerks are parasites. A Yeerk enters a host through the ear canal, flattens itself out on the brain, and takes over completely. The host creature can’t scratch an itch unless the Yeerk wants it to. We call a being who has been taken over that way a Controller.

  You must be thinking the Yeerks are pure evil. But let me tell you what it’s like to be a Yeerk who isn’t in a host. Yeerks are basically gray slugs. No hands, no legs, no eyes, no ears.

  If a Yeerk wants to be free, free to really move, free to see the beauty of the world around it, free to hear music or even the sound of rain on leaves, if a Yeerk wants that, it has to have a host. If a Yeerk wants to be free, it has to make another living creature a slave.

  Not an easy choice, is it?

  I know something about hard choices. I’ve made a lot of them since I became an Animorph. And one of the hardest was whether I wanted to be an Animorph at all. Because I know that when — if — this whole thing is over, it may be too late for me to be either nice or normal ever again.

  Like I said, I know something about hard choices.

  “So, Cassie, here’s your choice. If you were on a desert island, who would you want to be with you — Baby Spice or Marco?” Rachel asked as we sat down at our usual lunch table.

  “Huh?” What else could I say to that question?

  “It’s the desert island game,” Rachel answered. “You pick two annoying people. Then you have to choose which of them you’d rather be on a desert island with.”

  I glanced across the cafeteria at Marco. He and Jake were sitting at a table by the windows.

  “Marco is not —” I began.

  Rachel grabbed me by the arm. “Hey, shush. Listen to Allison and Brittany,” she whispered.

  I pulled my yogurt from my backpack and tried to eavesdrop without looking like I was eavesdropping. Allison and Brittany were sitting at the other end of our table.

  “Maybe I should ask him to the dance,” Allison said.

  This is what Rachel wanted me to hear?

  “Do it,” Brittany urged. “Jake has gotten so cute.”

  Wait. Did she say Jake? The Jake? Or some other Jake?

  I shot a glance at Brittany and Allison. They both stared over at Jake. As in Jake, the leader of the Animorphs. As in my Jake.

  Now you’re probably picturing us walking around school hand-in-hand, maybe kissing by the lockers before class. But it’s not like that. It’s more an inside kind of thing. We’ve only kissed one time. Although I would like it to happen again.

  But most people at school don’t have a clue we’re together. Obviously.

  “Hey, Allison. Hey, listen up.” Allison looked over and Rachel shook her head slowly. “Uh-uh. Don’t even think about it. Jake’s with Cassie.”

  My face got hot as both Brittany and Allison started checking me out. I’m not beautiful like Rachel. And I admit I sometimes have a little bird poop on my jeans. I spend a lot of time helping my dad take care of the animals at the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center he has out in our barn, and birds, being birds, will poop.

  But that stuff doesn’t matter to Jake. I know how he feels about me.

  Allison tossed her long red ponytail over her shoulder. “It doesn’t look like Cassie and Jake are together,” she told Rachel. “He’s sitting over there. She’s here. There, here. Waaayyy over there, as opposed to right here.”

  “Yeah,” Brittany chimed in. “Has Jake even asked her to the dance?”

  They didn’t even ask me their questions. They acted like I was invisible. I’m used to that. Rachel is one of these people who seem to go through life with a spotlight focused on them at all times.

  “The dance? Of course he asked her to the dance,” Rachel said.

  Then she stood up and grabbed my yogurt in one hand and my backpack in the other. “Allison, Brittany, we, Cassie and I, are going over there. Waaayyy over there.”

  Rachel marched across the cafeteria toward Marco and Jake. I had no choice but to follow.

  “You and my cousin make me want to hurl,” she said over her shoulder. “Jake can face death every day, but he can’t manage to ask a girl to a dance. And you’re no better.”

  “Me? What am I supposed to do?” I protested.

  “Duh. Even Allison the Airhead knows,” Rachel said.

  Rachel sat down next to Marco. She put my yogurt down next to Jake. I took the hint and sat next to him.

  “We are all going to the dance Thursday night,” Rachel informed Jake. “And you are taking Cassie.”

  Jake choked on his macaroni and beef. Marco started banging him on the back.

  “So, Rachel, I guess that means you need a date, too, huh?” Marco said. “I could make time in my busy schedule.”

  “Look at that! A flying pig!” Rachel exclaimed. Then, “Oh, sorry, my mistake. I thought for a minute I saw a flying pig. But I didn’t. And that’s the only time I would go out with you.”

  Jake was recovering. His face was red. I waited for him to tell them we wouldn’t be going to the dance. I thought he’d say that we had to spend that night doing some kind of Yeerk surveillance or something.

  But Jake just smiled at me. “We could use a
night doing something nice and normal.”

  “Oh, man,” Marco moaned.

  “What?”

  “Every time we try to do something nice and normal it ends up turning out nasty and weird,” he said. “Every single time.”

  The dance.

  Picture loud music. Picture chips and dip and a bowl of trail mix. Picture the lights low, the decorations limp, the teachers standing outside the rest rooms discussing whether there would be a teachers’ strike.

  Picture guys mostly with guys, girls mostly with girls. But with lots of eye contact.

  Not my kind of place, really. Rachel had forced me to wear a dress. She had dragged me through the mall, dressing me up like her own personal Barbie doll.

  I had on shoes I could never run in. I was even wearing makeup.

  I felt like the largest, most obvious dweeb in the history of dweebs.

  “Ax-man, someone is checking you out,” Marco said.

  I wasn’t surprised that Ax was getting some attention. His human morph is cute. More pretty than cute, really.

  “No way. She’s looking at me,” Tobias said. He shot a quick look at Rachel to see how she liked the idea of another girl giving him the eye.

  “Uh-huh. Maybe after the dance you could take her back to your tree,” Rachel said, batting her eyes at Tobias.

  Tobias laughed. “Hey, the chicks go wild for the feathers, bay-beee.” He laughed again. “Sorry. Ax had Austin Powers on his TV last night.”

  I looked at Allison. Marco was right. She was staring at Ax. I guess she figured if she couldn’t have Jake, she’d go for the cute new boy.

  Not that Tobias isn’t cute. And he might as well be a new boy. He went to our school for a while, back when he was human. Back before he was trapped in his red-tailed hawk morph.

  Now no one seemed to recognize him. But, then, he’s totally different from the kid bullies used to pick on. He doesn’t project those I’m-helpless-so-come-and-terrorize-me vibes at all anymore.

  Partly that comes from living a life where even the good times are dangerous. Partly it’s that he’s sort of forgotten how to express emotions with his face. Smiling when he’s happy just isn’t natural to him anymore, because hawks don’t smile. Now when people look at Tobias, they notice the strangeness of his blank face, not the face itself. Even when he laughs he doesn’t really smile.

  “Checking me out? What does that mean?” Ax asked.

  “It means that girl over there is warm for your form,” Marco told him. “It means she wants your body.”

  Ax started to look a little nervous. “My bod-deee? Body, body, bawd-eee?”

  Ax normally does not have a mouth. In human morph, with a mouth, Ax can be … unusual.

  “She’s making her move,” Marco told Ax. “Although if you want to get rid of her just try saying ‘bod-eee’ like that a few times.”

  “Buh-dee. B-dee,” Ax said, continuing to play with the sound.

  Of course if Allison knew what Ax really looks like, she’d run screaming in the other direction.

  Ax’s Andalite body is strange. Strange and beautiful and intimidating, too. Picture this: a blue-and-tan deer-like body, a giant scorpion tail, a pair of small arms, a humanoid head with no mouth, and two extra eyeballs mounted on stalks.

  Allison stopped in front of Ax. She smiled and tossed her red hair around.

  “Hi. I wanted to know if you, you know, want to dance?” Allison said.

  Ax nodded. “I would like to shuffle my artificial hooves to the music with you. But you cannot have my body. My bod. Dee. My bo. Dee.”

  Allison backed away. “Ah. Oh. You know what? I hear my friend calling me,” she said. Then bolted.

  A wild burst of laughter escaped my mouth. I couldn’t help myself. The expression on Allison’s face —

  “Bo. Dee,” Ax repeated. “I enjoy the way my tongue hits the front of my mouth when I say that. Dee. Oh! Food! Do they possess the delightful flavors of grease, salt, and sugar here?”

  Ax also likes to use his mouth to eat. To a dangerous extent.

  Sometimes when I watch Ax experiencing the sense of taste I find myself thinking about the Yeerks. When they enter a host they get hit with thousands of new sensations.

  I can hardly wrap my mind around what it must feel like. I have to narrow it down for myself. I’ll pick one thing, like color. Then I’ll close my eyes and try to imagine I have never seen any color of any kind.

  When I open my eyes the array of colors around me makes me dizzy. And color is only one part of sight. And sight is only one of the new senses Yeerks experience in a host.

  I didn’t bother telling my friends what I was thinking about. None of them are all that interested in considering the joys a Yeerk can find in a host. Not that I blame them.

  Yeerks are the enemy. It’s easier for us to do our job if we see them as evil. Pure evil.

  I shook my head and told myself that a dance wasn’t the time to get all philosophical. Especially my first real kind of date with Jake. A date involving an actual dress. And makeup. I tuned back in to the conversation.

  “Baby Spice or Oprah?” Marco was saying, looking thoughtfully at Rachel.

  “What do you have against Oprah?”

  “She’s on my list of ‘people I’ve heard way too much about.’”

  “You have an actual list?” Tobias asked skeptically.

  I smiled. It was just dumb, normal, pointless conversation. It was nice to be normal sometimes.

  Jake must have felt the same way. Our eyes met. “Want to dance?”

  “I’m not very good,” I said.

  “I dance like a lumberjack,” Jake said.

  “Like a lumberjack who’s just chopped off one of his own legs,” Marco interjected helpfully. “Like a one-legged lumberjack whose remaining leg is a tree stump and —”

  Jake grabbed my hand and pulled me out onto the dance floor. The dance floor formerly known as the basketball court. And then I was dancing. With Jake.

  I gave a little twirl of happiness. Is it horrible to admit that I hoped everyone was watching? Especially Allison?

  Even if it’s horrible, it’s true. I liked the idea of everyone knowing that I, Cassie of the sometimes-bird-pooped jeans, was with Jake.

  Jake smiled at me. He has a great smile, even though it always looks a little strange on his face. Just because he’s usually so intense, making life-and-death decisions for us all. Making more hard choices than I ever have to make.

  I smiled back, and gave another twirl. I spotted Ax, Marco, Rachel, and Tobias dancing in a group nearby. I hoped that Rachel and Tobias got a chance to break away and have a dance by themselves.

  I tried to catch Rachel’s eye. I thought maybe I could give her some kind of signal that she and Tobias shouldn’t spend the whole night hanging with Ax and Marco.

  But Rachel’s gaze was locked on Ax. As I watched, an expression of amazed horror crossed her face.

  What was wrong? I jerked my eyes to Ax, and felt my own face twist into an expression that mirrored Rachel’s.

  Ax’s head! A lump on the top of Ax’s head was throbbing to the music.

  “We have a problem,” I whispered to Jake.

  Jake and I shoved our way through the mass of bopping, spinning, shaking bodies. By the time we got to the group, Marco had his flannel shirt off. He started to fold the shirt into a bandana just as —

  Boing!

  Ax’s eye stalk burst out of the lump.

  I did a quick scan of the gym. Had anyone seen? No. Everyone was busy dancing. Or hoping someone would ask them to dance. Or psyching themselves up to ask someone to dance.

  Rachel grabbed the shirt out of Marco’s hands and wrapped it around Ax’s head.

  And here’s the thing about Rachel, even in a crisis: The bandana actually looked good.

  “Ax, you’re starting to demorph. You’ve got to stop,” Jake told him.

  Ax giggled. “Demorph. Dee, dee. That is a very pleasant mouth sound. Dee!�
��

  “He’s delirious,” I said. I felt the adrenaline start to pump through my body. This was a very bad situation here.

  “Another dee,” Ax said happily, swaying.

  I heard a soft shushing sound. And a patch of blue fur sprouted on Ax’s neck.

  “Equipment room should be empty,” Jake said. “To the right of the bleachers. Far side. Move, move, move!”

  We formed a circle around Ax and headed across the dark, noisy gym as fast as we could.

  We reached the equipment-room door. I grabbed the doorknob. Turned it.

  Locked.

  “Out the guys’ locker-room windows,” Marco said.

  “Two teachers always supervising in there,” Jake reminded him.

  “Not in the girls’,” Rachel told him.

  “Go straight behind the punch table. The line in front will give us some cover,” Jake ordered.

  “You’re telling me there’s no teachers monitoring the girls’ room?” Marco demanded. “That is so unfair!”

  We squeezed between the punch table and the wall, all of us keeping one hand on Ax.

  “We’ll meet up in the parking lot,” Jake said when we reached the locker room. He, Marco, and Tobias let go of Ax and turned toward the main exit.

  I jerked open the door. And Brittany and Allison walked out in a cloud of Love’s Baby Soft perfume.

  “She wants my body! BDEEE! BDEEE!” Ax screeched in terror. He broke away from me and Rachel and bolted for the main exit.

  “He’s heading toward Chapman and Mr. Tidwell,” Rachel cried.

  Vice Principal Chapman. A known Controller.

  And Mr. Tidwell. The strictest teacher in the school.

  We all tore after Ax. We caught up to him just as Chapman grabbed him by the arm.

  Ax’s flannel-shirt turban had gotten loose during his dash across the gym. One shake of his head could send the shirt fluttering to the floor.

  Giving Chapman a good look at Ax’s eye stalk. A fatal look.

  “He’s obviously been drinking,” Mr. Tidwell said. “I know this boy. I’ll call his parents.”

  Before Chapman could answer, Mr. Tidwell marched Ax out of the gym and into the hallway. We started after them.

  Chapman blocked us. “No one is allowed outside the gym until the dance is over unless a parent gives permission.”