The Forgotten

by K. A. Applegate

  8:19 P.m.

  - J. misjudged the distance to the ground, hit it too hard, and rolled over, a tangle of wings and talons. less-than Nice landingeagreater-than Tobias said with a laugh. "Are you okay?" Cassie asked me. She rushed over and picked me up. Then she set me back down because I was starting to demorph. And I was getting heavier pretty quickly. "What the ..." I demanded. I almost had a heart attack. I was back! Back, behind the motel. Back, getting ready to go to the Safeway. Was it a flashback? One of the visions? No, it was lasting too long. This was real. I was behind the motel. Getting ready to morph and go check out the Safeway. I looked at my watch. Could it be? "What time is it?" I asked Ax. less-than Eight-nineteeneagreater-than he said. Eight-nineteen. Of course. I knew the time. At eight-nineteen, I had felt strange -- uneasy about making the decision to go into the grocery store. But I had made the decision to go ahead. And from that decision, everything else had followed. The Sario Rip. The disaster in the rain forest. "Cassie? Have you ever been t o the Amazon?" I asked. "What? No. Of course not," she said. It hadn't happened. At least not to this Cassie. It was still something that was going to happen. Unless I changed the time line. "Are we doing this or what?" Rachel demanded impatiently. "Come on, Jake, are we doing this or what?" I grinned. I laughed. I'm afraid I flat out giggled. "Or what, Rachel. Definitely "or what." We are out of here!" It was a day later before I finally got a chance to talk to Ax alone. I told him everything. He thought I was nuts until I said the words Sario Rip. Then he knew. less-than This is all very amazingeagreater-than he said as we walked through the woods. The good old, familiar woods. The woods without killer ants and piranhas and jaguars and snakes and natives with poison spears. less-than like have no memory of any of this. greater-than "Yeah, it was pretty amazing," I said. "I made so many wrong moves, I screwed everything up. The computer. . . letting us walk into a trap. . . . I mean, we were pretty much doomed. Then it was like I got a second chance to keep it from happening. But I don't even know how. You ... I mean, that other you, or however you want to say it, thought we had to recreate the Sario Rip in order to undo it." Ax nodded. less-than Yes, I suppose that would have worked. And there was only one other way. greater-than I stopped him. "You never told me about any other way." less-than No, I wouldn't heagreater-than Ax said. less-than like don't know it for sure ... but there is a theory. greater-than "I thought there might be," I said dryly. less-than lt is impossible for one person to be in two places at once. In theory. So if you . . . eliminate . . . one of the two, well, the consciousness snaps back together. I think what happened, Prince Jake, is that you died. greater-than I felt a chill run up my spine. less-than But even as you died in the rain forest, you were still alive here. So your mind snapped back. Then you undid the time line, so none of it ever really happened. You would find you cannot morph the jaguar or the monkey, because you never really acquired those animals. greater-than He made an Andalite smile, which just involves the eyes, since they have no mouths. "They teach this stuff in your schools, huh?" less-than Yes. greater-than "And you didn't pay much attention to this lesson, huh?" less-than True. greater-than "I can see why," I said. "This time travel stuff will make your head explode." less-than Exactlyeagreater-than Ax agreed. less-than And on that day, there was this game . . . and this female . . disgreater-than We walked a while farther. "It was a disaster down there, Ax. I blew it. The only reason we're all still alive is that in the end, I got lucky." less-than Maybe that is true, Prince Jake. But my brother Elfangor once told me, "It's a leader's job to be lucky." Sometimes, success is just luck. greater-than I nodded. It didn't make me feel any better. "Elfangor's luck ran out." less-than Yes. We must hope yours does not, Prince Jake. greater-than I laughed. "Don't call me Prince."" less-than Yes, Prince Jake. greater-than Don't miss I held up my left hand. It was green, too. Getting greener as I watched. Getting rougher. Changing. Morphing! There were scales forming on my skin. Crawling up my arms. I bolted from the chair and raced for my full-length mirror. My face was just beginning to bulge out. A huge, long black-green snout. This is something you never want to actually see. "Yahhhh!" I yelped. The swelling bulge split open to reveal a row of long, yellowed teeth. "Crckkk!" I started to say, but my mouth was no longer human enough to make human sounds. My legs shriveled as I watched helplessly. I fell forward onto the floor. The huge tail was surg ing behind me. I felt my spine stretching. No! No! I hadn't decided to morph! And yet I was morph ing. At warp speed! I was on the floor of my bedroom, turning into a mur derous, twenty-foot-long crocodile. Morph out! I ordered myself. Morph out! But the transformation continued. I was too big for the room! My snout was pushed into one corner, while my tail stretched out under the bed and curled in the far corner. What was happening to me? If Jordan or Sara or my mother walked into the room, my secret would be out. Worse yet, I wasn't sure I could control the crocodile. It was hungry. Focus, Rachel! Focus! Morph out! Go human! But I wasn't morphing out. At least, not back to human. Instead I began to notice a completely differ ent kind of change. My body was narrowing in two places. I was cinching up. Forming three different body sections: head, abdomen, and thorax. I was becoming an insect! And that's when I became afraid. See, it's impossible to morph straight from one animal to another. Or at least it's supposed to be impossible. But I was definitely morphing. And I was not morphing to human. I was still a huge crocodile, but my massive crocodile head was connected to my body by a tiny, narrow neck. And the area connecting my squat crocodile body to my fat crocodile tail had narrowed so much it was the size of a human wrist. less-than This can't be happeningffgreater-than I cried to no one. less-than This has to be a dream. greater-than But I'd had dozens, maybe hundreds of awful morphing dreams. And they'd never been like this. I could hear my bones squishing as they turned to water and disappeared. I could see the black-green crocodile scales turn dark brown, almost black, as an insect's exoskeleton grew over me like armor. Huge spiky hairs shot like daggers from my back. My big teeth melted together, solidified, blackened, and reformed to become a long, vile-looking tube. Two new legs spurted from my sides. Two spiky, multi-jointed legs. I knew all these changes. This was a morph I had done before. But never like this! I was on my way to becoming a fly. But be- cause morphing is never logical, I was a gigantic fly. I was becoming a fly before I'd had a chance to shrink. Then the shrinkage kicked in and I was spiral-+ wildly downward. I was going from twenty-five feet in length to less than a quarter of an inch! I wanted to scream for help. But who could help me? No one. No one! Suddenly my reptile eyes bulged and popped out like balloons. The world around me was shattered into a thousand tiny pictures. I had the compound eyes of a fly! My mind was reeling. It had to be a nightmare. This wasn't possible. It had to be some awful dream! I was shrinking so fast that the corners of the room seemed to be racing away from me. The wood grain grew large and dark and clear. The cracks between boards were growing as wide as ditches. And then, with a sickening lurch, I realized I had stopped shrinking. I was growing again. The wood grain grew smaller. The cracks shrank. And I grew. And grew. And grew! My extra legs were gone. I had just four now. Four legs growing thicker and taller and thicker and taller! less-than 0h, please! Someone help meffgreater-than SPROING! SPROING! The springs in my mattress popped as my bulk crushed them. I was too big for the room. Bigger even than the crocodile. My bookshelves fell over. My desk slammed against the wall. Sparks shot from my computer and the screen went blank. Too big for the room! I was big enough to be weighed in tons, not pounds. I was morphing a full-grown African elephant. In my small bedroom. C-r-r-r-r-r-e-e-e-e-k! less-than 0h, noeagreater-than I whispered. I could literally feel the floor sinking under my impossible weight. My head was shoved up against the ceiling. C-r-r-r-Unch! With a scream of twisting wood, the floor gave way. . . .

 

 

 
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