The Visitor (3 page)

T
he next day after school I headed for my gymnastics class at the YMCA, which is just across from the mall. They have a big indoor pool, so the entire building always smells of chlorine. Except for the weight room, which just smells like sweat.

My class is taught in a smaller room, with blue mats covering the floor. We have balance beams and uneven parallel bars and a vaulting horse with a springboard.

I'm okay at vaulting and the parallel bars, but I'm pretty lame at the balance beam. To be honest with you, it kind of scares me. It takes such total concentration.

It's not one of those real serious gymnastics classes. I mean, none of us is going to be going to the Olympics. When I started out, I had dreams of being a gold medalist. But then I started to grow. I'm pretty tall now, for my age. People look at me now and say, “Oh, you're going to be a model,” not “Oh, you could be a gymnast.”

Most of us in the class are too tall or too heavy to ever be serious gymnasts. We do it for fun and for exercise. I do it because I've always thought of myself as kind of clumsy. My mom says I'm not, but that's how I feel, anyway.

Besides, it's just cool, hitting the little springboard and flipping through the air to bounce off the vaulting horse and stick the landing. Not as cool as flying, maybe, but fun just the same.

Melissa Chapman was in the locker room changing into her leotard when I came in. She's the exception to the rule in our class. She
does
look like a gymnast. She's small and thin, even though she doesn't starve herself like some fools who want to get into gymnastics. She has pale gray eyes and pale blond hair and pale skin. She looks like one of those solemn elves in a Tolkien book. At first glance she looks delicate, but when you look a little closer, you see strength there, too.

Melissa gave me the kind of not-very-warm smile
she always gives me lately. Like she was distracted, or thinking about something more important.

“Hey, Melissa,” I said. “How's it going?”

“Fine. How about you?”

“Oh, pretty much the same old thing.” That was a lie, of course. But what was I going to say? Yeah, Melissa, same old same old. Been turning into animals and fighting aliens. You know, the usual.

Melissa didn't say anything else. She just adjusted her leotard and started to do a few little stretches. That's the way it was. We said hi, but not much more. It used to be we were very close. She was my second best friend, after Cassie.

“Melissa, I was thinking … maybe you'd like to walk over to the mall with me after class? I have to buy a new pair of sneakers.”

“The mall?” She stammered a little, and then started blushing. “You mean, go shopping?”

“Yeah. You know—walk around and look at stuff and check out the cute guys and make fun of the snotty women at the perfume counters.”

I tried to sound casual, like it was no big deal. In the old days, it would have been totally nothing. But now Melissa looked like a trapped animal.

When had Melissa and I gotten to be such strangers?

“I'm, um, kind of busy,” Melissa said.

“Oh. That's cool. I understand.”

But I didn't understand. Not at all. She started to walk away. I was going to let it go, but then I remembered: This wasn't just about a friend who had drifted away. This was about her father, one of the leaders of the Controllers. One of our most dangerous enemies.

I grabbed her arm. “Melissa, look … I feel like we've kind of gone in different ways, you know? And I miss you.”

She shrugged. “Okay, well, maybe we could get together sometime.”

“Not
sometime,
Melissa, that's just you blowing me off. What's going on with you?”

“What's going on with me?” she echoed. For a moment a look of extraordinary sadness darkened her eyes and tugged downward at the corners of her mouth. “Nothing is going on with me,” she said. “We'd better get out there or Coach Ellway will have a fit.”

She pulled her arm away.

I just watched her go. I felt like a complete and total jerk. Something had happened to Melissa. And I hadn't even noticed. She was my friend and something had changed in her, and I hadn't seen it. I'd just gone my own way.

And now I was only
acting
like a concerned friend.
The truth was, I was only paying attention for my own reasons.

I wasn't able to concentrate on the lesson. Not concentrating when you're doing gymnastics can be painful. I slipped on the balance beam and banged my knee so badly I cried.

Melissa was the first one to rush over. And for about ten seconds she was the old Melissa. But by the time I'd gotten back up, she was off across the room in her own little world again.

It was right then that the terrible suspicion started.

Melissa had been acting very strangely. Her father was a Controller.

I looked at her from across the room and felt a chill.

Was she one, too? Was my old friend Melissa a Controller?

I didn't go shopping after my lesson. I didn't really feel like it. Melissa's eyes, the way she had looked at me, kind of killed my urge to shop.

I was supposed to head over to the mall, then call my mom when I was done to come pick me up. That was the plan. But since I didn't feel like mall-crawling I just headed home. Alone. With the sky growing dark as rain clouds moved in.

It was stupid and careless of me. But I guess I
was preoccupied with other things. Although at least I had the sense to stay out of the construction site.

I was walking down the sidewalk that runs along the boulevard when suddenly I realized that a car had pulled up just a little way down the sidewalk from me. A guy got out. He looked like he was in high school or even college. He also looked like trouble.

I should have turned around and run back toward the mall. But sometimes I don't always do the sensible thing. Sometimes I regret not doing the sensible thing. This was one of those times.

“Hey, baby,” he said. “Want to go for a little ride?”

I shook my head and clutched my gym bag close. What an idiot I was to be so careless!

“Now, don't be stuck-up, sweet thing,” he said. “I think you'd better get in the car.”

The way he said it didn't sound like an invitation. It sounded like an order. Now I was really afraid.

I clutched my gym bag close as I passed him.

“Don't ignore me,” he hissed.

He reached for me and missed. I walked faster. He was behind me.

I broke into a run.

He ran after me.

“Hey. Hey, there! Come back here.”

I had been stupid going out alone. But fortunately, unlike most people, I wasn't helpless.

As I ran, I focused on something completely different. I concentrated on an image in my mind.

Then I felt the change begin. My legs grew thick. My arms grew big, bigger. I could feel myself growing large. Large and solid. I felt the squirmy sensation of my ears becoming thin and leathery.

But it wasn't enough to just look creepy. This guy had made me mad. I wanted to scare him half to death.

My nose suddenly began to sprout. Then, from my mouth, like two huge spears, the tusks began to appear.

I figured that was about enough. I broke my concentration, which stopped the morph.

I stopped suddenly. The creep barreled right into me.

He was not going to like what he was about to see.

I
wanted to tell the jerk to back off. What I wanted to say to him was, “So, you still want to go for that ride?”

What I really said was
“HhhohhHEEEEERRR!”

The guy stopped dead. He just stared.

What he saw was me, halfway through morphing into an African elephant. I had about a third of a trunk and most of my huge, fanlike elephant ears. My legs were like stumps. My arms looked like a body builder's, only gray. And my tusks stuck about a foot out of my mouth. Just to make things extra weird, I still had my normal hair and my normal eyes.

Suddenly the guy wasn't interested in hassling me.

“AAAAAHHHH!”

He turned. He ran. For a minute he forgot he even had a car. Then he turned around and jumped in through an open window.

He started the car and took off.

He was definitely breaking the speed limit as he tore out of there.

I concentrated again and began to reverse the morphing process, going back to human shape. I had been wearing a loose sweater and leggings, which was good. They had both stretched. But my shoes had been split open by the sudden growth of my elephant feet.

It had started raining, so the trip home was going to be very unpleasant. “Oh, great!” I muttered. “I have got to remember to kick off my shoes before I morph into an elephant.”

Just then, a second car pulled up and came to a stop. The window rolled down.

“Hey, Rachel.” It was Melissa. I recognized the voice. “Do you want a ride home?” She didn't sound very excited by the idea. I looked through the car window, past her.

Chapman was behind the wheel.

A wave of sick fear swept over me. Had he seen what I'd just done? If he had, then I was dead. My friends were dead.

“I'm … I'm fine,” I said. “I could use the exercise.”

“Nonsense, young lady,” Chapman said, sounding like his usual assistant-principal self. “It's beginning to rain. Get in.”

What was I supposed to do? I forced a smile. It wasn't easy. “Thanks,” I said.

Melissa was in the front with her father. I sat in the back. I tried not to shiver. I tried not to stare at the back of Chapman's head. That's how it is when you're around a Controller. You know that evil slug is right there in the Controller's head, attached to all his nerve endings. Controlling the human brain. Dominating it.

It's hard not to stare when you think of what is squeezed inside that skull.

“When we were stuck back at the red light it looked like some guy was bothering you,” Melissa said. “Then he ran off. Was he bothering you?”

“Um … no,” I lied. “He was … he was just picking up something he dropped by the side of the road.”

Pathetic! I was such a lame liar.

I saw Chapman's eyes watching me in the
rearview mirror. He looked like normal old Chapman. That's the problem with Controllers. There is no outward clue. They look so normal.

“He went running off like the hounds of Hades were after him,” Chapman said.

“Did he?” I said in a squeaky voice. “I wasn't looking. I guess it was the rain. That's probably why he was running. There. You can turn left there.”

“I know where you live,” Chapman said.

I almost swallowed my tongue. Was that a threat? Did he suspect? Did he guess? Was he looking at me strangely?

Or was I just being paranoid?

He pulled up in front of my house. My heart was hammering, but I was determined to act casual. “Thanks for the ride, Mr. Chapman,” I said. “Hey, Melissa, I was totally serious about us getting together, okay?”

She nodded. “Sure, Rachel. Absolutely.”

I closed the car door behind me. I had escaped. I was alive. I'd probably just been imagining things.

Then I heard Melissa call out to me. “Hey. What happened to your shoes?”

I looked down. My shoes were in tatters, the result of my feet growing from a size six to a size three hundred in about five seconds flat.

“See?” I said, as lightly as I could. “I told you I needed to go shopping.”

Melissa just looked puzzled. Her father stared at me with an expression I could not read.

I was shaking like a leaf when I walked into my house. I headed upstairs to my room and stuffed my ripped shoes into the trash. Only then did I go back downstairs and say hi to my mom. She was at the kitchen table, half hidden by a pile of buff-colored books. My mother's a lawyer, and she brings work home a lot so she can be around me and my two little sisters. She and my dad are divorced. I only get to see my dad a few days a month, so Mom feels guilty when she isn't there for us.

“Hi, honey,” she said. Then she got her “suspicious mother” look. “How did you get home? You didn't walk, did you? You were supposed to call me.”

“Melissa and her dad gave me a ride,” I said. Well, it was the truth. Sort of.

She relaxed and made a point of closing her book. “Sorry. You know I worry about you.”

“Where are Jordan and Sara?”

“They're in the family room watching another one of those scary shows. Of course, tonight Jordan will be sleeping with her night-light on and Sara will end up in my bed, no doubt. I don't know why they like things that frighten them. You were never that way.”

It almost made me laugh. I felt like saying, well, Mom, I don't have to watch things that are scary; I am scary. Should have seen me a little while ago with tusks sticking out of my mouth and a three-foot-long nose.

What I really said was, “So, what's for dinner?”

My mother winced. “Pizza? Chinese? Anything else you can order over the phone? I'm sorry, but I have this brief and I have court in the morning.”

“Mom,” I told her for maybe the thousandth time, “I don't mind pizza. Sorry, but your cooking isn't all that great, so it's no big deal ordering pizza.”

“Well, at least get some veggies on it,” she said.

After dinner I called Jake.

“Do you want to come over?” I said. “I got that new album, if you want to listen to it.”

There was no album, of course. It's just that we always have to be careful. Like I said, Jake's brother, Tom, is a Controller. He could be listening on the extension. Then I called Cassie and Marco and told them the same cover story.

When they arrived I told them about Melissa, and then I told them about my little run-in with the creep. I did not tell them about Chapman driving me home. I don't know why. But when I saw the way Marco exploded, I was glad I hadn't told them the whole story.

“Oh, that was dumb! Dumb! DUMB!” Marco said. “What if that guy is a Controller?”

“He wasn't a Controller,” I said scornfully. “Why would the Yeerks want to make a Controller out of a punk? They want people in positions of power.”

“We don't know that for sure,” Jake said. “Tom isn't in a position of power.”

“And how about people driving by in their cars, or looking out of the windows of their homes?” Marco asked. “And what if he runs and tells someone about this girl who suddenly sprouted a trunk and tusks?”

“No one is going to believe a lowlife like that,” I said.

“His friends won't believe him,” Marco said poisonously, “but a Controller
would
believe him. A Controller would know what it meant.”

Yes. A Controller would know what it meant. A Controller like Chapman. Or even Melissa, if she were one of them.

I felt sick. It was like my whole life was nothing but lies. Lies to Melissa. Lies to my mother. Now I was lying by not telling the others the whole truth.

“Okay, I screwed up,” I muttered.

“You sure did!” Marco crowed. “You screwed up so—”

“Marco, let it drop,” Jake said. “Rachel knows she made a mistake. We all make mistakes.”

Marco rolled his eyes.

Cassie gave me an encouraging smile. “It
was
dumb putting yourself in that position, Rachel. You need to be more careful. But still, I'd have paid my next ten allowances to see the look on that guy's face.”

“The important thing is that it doesn't sound like Rachel can use Melissa to get close to Chapman,” Jake said. “Not if she's a Controller herself. And not if she's going to continue being weird to Rachel.”

“I guess we'll have to find another way,” I said quickly. “I mean, we know where Chapman's office is. We know where his house is. Maybe we could just morph into some small animals and hide out.”

“Small animals like what?” Marco asked. “When Jake turned into a lizard he got stepped on. He lost his tail. Besides, what are you going to morph into? A cockroach?”

We all shuddered at the thought. The smallest, strangest thing anyone had morphed so far was when Jake had done the lizard. It creeped him out big-time. A roach would be even worse.

“The problem with being a cockroach,” I said, “aside from the fact that it is too gross to believe, is that roach senses might not even be useful to us. Can a roach ‘hear' in a way that would make it possible for us to understand
what
we're hearing?”

We all looked at Cassie. She's sort of our expert on animals.

Cassie held up her hands. “Oh, come on. Like I know how a cockroach sees and hears? We don't take care of roaches at the rehab clinic.”

We all sat there feeling glum for a few minutes. But I wasn't going to let it drop. This was about more than just striking a blow at the Yeerks. I had to find out if Chapman suspected me. If he did, we were all in terrible danger.

I happened to glance over at my desk. There was my math homework, still not done. That didn't make me feel any better. But then I looked at the photos I had mounted in one of those big frames with six different holes. One was of me with my mom and dad on a white-water rafting trip we took. One was of me visiting my dad at his job—he's a weatherman on TV. We were grinning in front of a map of storms. Another picture was of Cassie and me riding horses side by side, with Cassie, as usual, looking like she'd spent her entire life in the saddle, and me looking like a total clown.

But the picture that got my attention was one taken a couple of years ago of Melissa and me.

I got up and went over to take the frame down. I stared hard at the picture.

“What?” Jake asked. “What is it?”

“It's me and Melissa,” I said. “It was, like, her twelfth birthday, or some birthday, anyway, and we were out on her lawn playing with the present her dad gave her.”

“So what?” Marco asked.

“So …” I passed him the photograph. It showed me and Melissa in shorts. And between us, a small black-and-white kitten. “So her present was a cat.”