Mr. Brown looks at me. Kids look at me. All of them, looking at me. Please, oh, please, don’t let my mouth have transformed into a bird beak.

“Parker Zeballos,” calls Mr. Brown, moving on.

I guess my mouth did not transform into a bird beak.

The humming in my head softens and my hand reverts to normal and I let myself breathe now that everyone’s looking at Parker, a girl in the third row.

Everyone but Agnes Oakes.

She stares into my face while she scribbles furiously in her notebook.

Chapter 2

I SURVIVE THREE MORE CLASSES, most of which I spend devising a brilliant scheme to protect myself from the prying eyes of Agnes Oakes.

I, Jake Wind, will disappear.

In my place will be a completely different kid.

“Bonjour,” this different kid will say. “I am Marcel. I am from France.”

There are only two small flaws in my plan.

One: I can’t shift into a whole other person. Forked tongues, yes. Totally shifting from one thing into a complete other thing? No way.

Two: I don’t speak French.

It’s a garbage plan, pretty much.

Lunch is weird and I don’t know what to do with myself. At my old school, each class sat together at the same cafeteria table, but at Cedar Creek View Middle School, you can sit wherever you want, at any table, inside or outside. It’s too many choices. I wander around with my recyclable cardboard tray of stale chicken nuggets and carrot sticks and nonfat milk and spot Eirryk squatting on a log next to the main office. I catch his eye and try a nod. For the second time today, he acts like he doesn’t see me and turns to the rest of the kids he’s sitting with. The only one of them I know is Adrian Thacker. Adrian was in swim club with me and Eirykk at the city pool for three summers in a row, but not this summer, because of my shapeshifting problems. Adrian glances at me, says something to Eirykk, and they both laugh. I can’t hear what they’re saying, but I’m pretty sure they’re laughing at me. I don’t know why. What’s so funny about me?

I feel almost as weird as I did when I had a bird hand.

And as if things weren’t bad enough, my bones are starting to ache from the Hum.

The Hum is a low, deep vibration I started feeling early this summer.

Right around the time I started losing control over my shifting.

I know, right?

Sometimes it lasts just a few seconds. Sometimes it’s sort of in the background, like a ringing in my ears, only through my whole body. And sometimes it’s really strong and I lose form and have to spend some time in a bucket.

I wish I had a bucket right now.