I swept by, high above, and turned the corner. In another classroom I spotted Marco. He was

talking. This was not a surprise. The class began to laugh. The teacher laughed, too, then looked exasperated, like she didn't want to laugh. This was also not a surprise. That's Marco. The boy loves to be the center of attention.

It took a while before I spotted the last human member of the Animorphs.

She wasn't in her usual classroom. In fact, I spotted her first in just a brief glimpse, walking down the hall.

Then she stepped outside. Out into the empty quad that separated the main building from the gym and the temporary buildings.

She stepped out into the sunlight, and her blond hair became a flame of pure gold.

Rachel.

Have you ever known a person who seems to walk through life with her own private spotlight shining on her? That's Rachel.

"Hi," I said in thought-speak. "What are you doing? Skipping school?" She couldn't answer. See, you can only do thought-speak when you're in a morph (or if you happen to be an Andalite). Although you can hear it just fine.

Rachel stopped walking and shielded her eyes with her hand, scanning the sky for me. Then she gave just the smallest wave, just a twinkling of two fingers.

She jerked her head toward the gym. That's where she was going. She opened her binder and revealed a piece of yellow notepaper clipped inside. Ah, so she was delivering a note for some teacher.

But Rachel must have forgotten that I can see things no human could ever see. Beneath the note was a fancy-looking sheet of stationery. It was a letter, addressed to Rachel. It read: "Congratulations! You have been named a Packard Foundation Outstanding Student."

I was about to add my own congratulations, when I noticed the date.

There was to be an awards ceremony Monday. This was Friday. It was the kind of thing Rachel would have invited everyone to.

Everyone but me. I can't exactly go to things like awards ceremonies.

Rachel hadn't even told me about it. And I knew why.

"Hey, I have something to show you after school," I said, trying to sound perky. "My Yeerk pool mapping project is paying off. Want to go for a fly after last period?"

I saw her smile. She nodded her head again, just a slight movement no one else would notice.

"Cool," I said.

I soared away and she walked on to the gym.

There are definitely some nice things about

being a hawk. And flying with Rachel is probably the nicest. But it would have been nice to see her get the Packard award, too.

Sometimes I asked myself if I had it to do all over again. ... If I could never become Tobias the hawk, and only be Tobias the boy, would I actually do it?

I didn't think about that often, though. Maybe I didn't want to find out the answer.

I spent the day drifting around on the breeze and checking everything I had learned in the last couple of weeks.

See, we knew the Yeerk pool was a gigantic underground complex beneath the school. We knew it extended at least as far as the mall. But we had never figured out where all the entrances and exits were.

That's what I'd been doing with my days - following people we knew were Controllers, watching them come and go. From them I learned the extent of the Yeerk pool.

Maybe I should back up and explain. I know you're probably someone living a nice, normal life. You go to school, hang out with your friends, have dinner with your family, watch a little TV. Normal.

And if I told you that maybe your teachers aren't really your teachers anymore; and maybe your friends aren't your friends at all; and maybe even your parents have become something totally different, well, you might think I was nuts.

I understand. You wouldn't believe how often I have these dreams that maybe none of it's real. That there is no Yeerk invasion. That Yeerk slugs are not inside the heads of so many people. That maybe I have my own hands and toes. . . .

It all started when Jake, Cassie, Marco, Rachel, and I took a different way home from the mall. In a dark, eerie, abandoned construction site we saw the spaceship land. And we met the strange part-deer, part-scorpion, part-humanoid creature called an Andalite.

His name was Elfangor. Much later we found out he was Ax's big brother.

He told us about the Yeerks, the race of parasitic slugs. The Yeerks, who, like some awful galactic disease, are spreading secretly from planet to planet.

They steal bodies. They make other creatures into Controllers - absolute slaves. The entire Hork-Bajir race has been enslaved. As well as the incredibly gross Taxxons, although they went along

voluntarily. They've gotten the Gedds and other races, too.

And now, it's our turn.

They are here. The Yeerks are among us. Inside the people you least suspect. Cops. Teachers. Friends. Parents. Reporters. Pastors and priests. Your own brothers and sisters.

The Andalite Prince Elfangor warned us. And he gave us the weapon - the power to morph. To become any animal we could touch and acquire.

There was just one big drawback, see. You can't stay in a morph for more than two hours. After that you stay in morph forever. That's what happened to me.

The Yeerks also have a weakness. Every three days they have to return to the Yeerk pool. They drain out of the heads of their host bodies and swim in the sludgy liquid of the pool. There they soak up the Kandrona rays that they must have for nutrition.

We've been to the Yeerk pool. It's not a place you want to see. Trust me. The screams that we'd heard in that place will be with me forever.

The Yeerk pool was where I lost my humanity. Where I passed the fateful two-hour time limit. Someday, somehow, we will destroy that place. But first, we have to understand it better.

That's what I was doing. That's why I spent

my days trying to discover every possible way in and out of it.

I was in the air over the mall at just about two-thirty in the afternoon when I spotted the big bald eagle floating, serene and powerful, on the thermals. The brown body stood out against the clouds, while the white head seemed almost invisible.

It was an odd place for a baldie. They usually like the shore.

I flapped hard to change direction and gain speed toward the eagle. I knew this eagle.