Trapped by Laurie Halse Anderson

Chapter One
    F irst, I’m a dog. Then I’m a cat. Then a cobra, a frog, and a fish. No, I’m not some nut revisiting my past lives. I’m just doing yoga.
    It’s Sunday, and Mom and I are in the sunroom. Our house—it’s more of a cabin, really—is in the middle of a forest. But somehow, even with all those trees around, this room is always full of sun in the morning. The warm rays find me wherever I move as Mom and I go through each of the postures. I stretch and hold, paying attention to my breath and to how my body feels.
    My mom loves yoga because it’s relaxing and teaches her to “live in the moment.” She thinks it’s good for me for those reasons. But I love it because I get to be each animal as I do the postures. Have you ever seen a dog stretching first thing in the morning? Then you already know how to do the Downward Facing Dog, one of my favorite yoga postures. When I hold that pose, I’m not Brenna Lake anymore. I’m off in some other world.
    â€œShould we finish up with a Lion?” Mom asks.
    I grin at her. “Definitely.”
    â€œMe, too! Me, too!” My little brother, Jayvee, runs into the sunroom. He’s too squirmy to do a whole session of yoga with us, but he loves the Lion pose. So do I.
    We kneel facing each other. To do the Lion, you open your eyes really wide. Then you take a deep breath, open your mouth as far as you can, stick your tongue out, and go “Aaaaarrrrrhhh!”—roaring like a lion. Then you crack up, because everybody looks so hilarious.
    Mom, Jayvee, and I open wide and give our best roars. Then we all fall over on the soft beige rug, laughing our heads off. I grab Jayvee and give him a big hug. He’s still young enough to let me do that, sometimes.
    â€œWell,” Mom says, as we sit up and brush ourselves off. “At least we haven’t been abandoned by all our boys.”
    I smile sympathetically as she gives Jayvee a squeeze. Sunday mornings aren’t the same lately, and we’re both sad about it. Once upon a time, yoga was a family thing. But these days Dad is way too busy with his carpentry (he has a shop next to our house), and my older brother, Sage, has “more important things to do.”
    Sage is seventeen and Jayvee is seven. They both look almost exactly like my dad, with dark eyes and wavy brown hair, except Dad’s the only one with a beard and an earring in one ear.
    Sage and I used to be best buds. We hiked in the woods together, rode bikes, and worked in the critter barn with Mom and Dad. My parents are wildlife rehabilitators. Our family takes in and cares for injured wildlife until the animals can be released back into the wild.
    But lately Sage and I aren’t so close. He spends a lot of time in his room, working on the computer. And he’s also been going to meetings of this group he joined called Animals Always. It’s a bunch of local animal rights activists who are totally dedicated to their cause. They’re very active in this part of Pennsylvania, doing things like picketing stores that sell fur, campaigning against hunting, and writing letters to newspapers about all kinds of animal rights issues.
    Sage has become passionate about animal rights. It’s all he ever seems to think or talk about.
    I love animals, too. I always have. I spend most of my free time working with them, both at home and at Dr. Mac’s Place. That’s our local veterinary clinic, which is run by a very cool woman named J.J. Mackenzie, otherwise known as Dr. Mac.
    I’ll be heading over to the clinic later to join my friends Maggie Mackenzie and her cousin Zoe Hopkins (they’re Dr. Mac’s grandaughters), Sunita Patel, and David Hutchinson. We’ve all been volunteering at the clinic for a while now.
    I’ve learned so much about animals working with Dr. Mac. I love every minute I spend there, even if I’m not doing anything more exciting than