Animorphs #3: The Encounter by Applegate K. A

Author:Applegate, K. A. [Applegate, K. A.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780545389280
Publisher: Scholastic Books
Published: 2011-07-01T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 15

I flew.

I flew as fast and as hard as I could. I wanted to go so fast that the memory of killing and eating the rat would be left way behind me.

But not even I can fly that fast.

Human! I am human! I am Tobias!

I don’t know why it was Rachel I wanted to see right at that moment. Maybe she was just the closest thing I had to a real friend. Maybe it was the way she had seemed so sure of who and what I was.

I needed someone to be sure.

Down below I saw the huge, irregular rectangles of the mall. I saw a glass door. People streamed in and out. Rachel. That’s where she was.

“Tseeeeer!”

I screamed in rage and frustration and terror as I stooped. I shot toward the door like I’d shot toward the rat.

But I wasn’t going to stop. I wasn’t going to slow down. I was just going to end this right now. I would hit the glass at full speed and maybe that would awaken me from this nightmare.

The speed just kept building. The door rushed up at me. The earth itself was jumping up to hit me.

A guy, dark hair, short, stepped to the door. He opened it.

Shwoooop!

I must have been doing eighty as I hurtled through the open door.

A second set of doors, but these were open, too.

No impact.

No awakening.

Colors and bright lights all around me. Like a highs-peed kaleidoscope.

The Gap. Express. The Body Shop. Easy Spirit. Mrs. Fields.

Zoom!

I was a bullet, blazing inches over the heads of the shoppers. I heard screams. I heard cries of amazement.

I didn’t care. I wanted to hit something. I wanted to wake up. I wanted to fall to the ground because my wings had disappeared and been replaced by clumsy legs and flailing arms.

I wanted to be me again.

I am human! I am human! I am Tobias!

Nine West. Radio Shack. Barnes & Noble. Benetton. A world I knew. A world where I belonged. Places I had been. Foods I had eaten. The world of human beings.

Zoom!

Suddenly, in seconds, I was at the center of the mall.

A crowd was standing around in a circle. In the middle of the circle, blue mats were on the floor. Girls in leotards were doing midair flips and graceful backbends. People on the upper level were crowded around the railing to look down.

Rachel was on the balance beam. She was just raising one leg, balancing on the other.

I was a brown and gold and red missile shooting past her.

“Tobias!” she cried.

Straight ahead, a wall. A blank wall where they were going to put a new shop. I was still moving fast. I could still hit it and wake myself up from the nightmare.

“No!” Rachel cried.

I flared and shot straight up. The wall scraped my stomach. The ceiling was glass, a skylight. I was there! A last-second turn, almost too late. My shoulder hit the glass. I bounced off and began to fall down toward upraised faces staring at me with horror and amazement and pity.

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