The Encounter by K. A. Applegate

going to a lot of trouble to keep themselves a big secret. You don’t hide if you’re tough enough to come out and kick butt in a fair fight>
    I expected Marco to have some smart comeback. But he just nodded. “Yeah, you’re right.”
    “This could be our big chance,” Rachel said. “Uncloak that ship, so the whole world can see.”
    “I hate to ask this,” Marco said with a groan, “but how do you think you’re going to do that?”
    It was Jake who answered. “We’ll have to get inside that ship.” He winked at Marco. “Want to know how?”
    Marco shook his head. “Not really.”
    “Through the water pipes. As fish.”
    Marco sighed. “Jake, I just
told
you I didn’t want to know.”

CHAPTER 14
     
    R achel and Cassie took off, heading in different directions.
    “Have a good show,” Cassie called to Rachel.
    “Yeah, right,” Rachel said grumpily.
    “I’ll be there soon,” Marco told Rachel. “Don’t fall off any balance beams until I get there.”
    Rachel shot Marco one of her “you’re a dead man if you mess with me” looks and disappeared, leaving just Marco, Jake, and me.
    “She really kind of likes me,” Marco said, with a wink at Jake and me.
    “Uh-uh,” Jake commented dryly. “Look, Tobias,if we’re going to do this mission, it can’t be till the weekend.”
    
    “The timing. We have to morph to travel up there. There are no buses and we can’t walk that far in human bodies. Even as wolves, though, it takes time. It took more than an hour last time. It just seemed to me that we might want to get up there in the morning, camp out somewhere hidden, and then be ready by afternoon when the Yeerks show up.”
    “And this time we may want to travel
around
that other wolf pack’s territory,” Marco pointed out. “I don’t want to get into it with them again.”
    It made sense.
    “Anyway, it might be a good idea if we had as much information about the area as we can get.” Jake gave me a thoughtful look. “So I was thinking—”
     I interrupted.
    Marco and Jake both laughed. I think Marco was surprised that I could make a joke about myself.
    I saw an intense look in Jake’s eyes. He was wondering if I was okay.
     I thought-spoke privately to him, so Marco couldn’t hear.
    He raised an eyebrow and nodded. He had been upset, too. I could imagine. I suspected there had been a lot of nightmares over that mess.
    “Okay, so now what?” Marco asked. “Do I sneak into the mall without Rachel being able to see me, or do we all sit around and play video games?”
    “I have homework,” Jake said. “And trust me, Marco, if Rachel sees you at the mall making faces while she’s on the balance beam, she will turn into an elephant and stomp you.”
    Marco winced. “Remember the good old days when all a girl could do to you was call you names?”
    I flew off, leaving them to play video games or do homework, or however they ended up killing time. Either way, it wasn’t something I could participate in.
    It’s kind of a shame, really. With my eyesight and the reaction time I have, I could probably be major competition in first-person shooters.
    But joysticks and control pads aren’t made for talons.
    I swooped out into the cool afternoon.
    I drifted around for a while. I checked out Chapman’s house. Chapman is our assistant principal.He’s also one of the highest-ranking Controllers.
    When we first learned Chapman was one of
them,
he was ordering a Hork-Bajir to kill any of us who were caught. He told the Hork-Bajir to save our heads for identification. Not the kind of thing you expect to hear.
    Even from an assistant