Authors: K. A. Applegate
I pushed against Rachel, trying to force her off Jessica. Suddenly, Jessica started lashing out. I assume she was trying to hit Rachel.
She missed.
“Ow!” I grabbed my left eye. “What are you hitting
me
for?”
And that’s when the first teacher showed up.
Five minutes later, Jessica, Rachel, and I were sitting in the assistant principal’s office.
Chapman’s office.
Jessica was acting outraged in a very loud voice. Rachel was staring stonily ahead. I was wondering whether my eye would just keep swelling up.
Chapman glared at us. “What is the meaning of this?” he demanded. “Fighting in the lunchroom? And you, Rachel, of all people!”
“What, like you think she’s better than me?” Jessica demanded.
Chapman ignored her. He focused on Rachel. “Is
something the matter? Mr. Halloram says
you
started the fight. Are you okay, Rachel? Is there some kind of stress in your life?”
For a split second, I was afraid. The look in Rachel’s eyes was dangerous. I had this terrible flash of her saying, “Yeah, Mr. Chapman, I am a little stressed. I nearly got killed turning into an ant to sneak into your basement to fight you and the rest of your evil Yeerk friends.”
I knew Rachel was too cool for anything like that. But then, I would have said she was too cool to start a fight in the lunchroom.
“It’s my fault, Mr. Chapman,” I said.
“Your
fault?” His eyes narrowed.
“Yes, sir. Um, they were fighting over me. See, they both want me. They’re both madly in love with me, and I can certainly understand why. Can’t you?”
“Are you crazy, you little toad?!” Jessica shrieked.
But when I glanced over at Rachel I saw just the slightest little tugging at the corner of her mouth. The beginnings of a smile.
Chapman yelled at us for a few minutes and told us all to make appointments with the school counselor. Then he let us go.
In the hallway outside his office, Rachel walked with me.
“I wish I could do that,” she said.
“What?”
“Always think things are funny. It’s why you’re so … you know, cool and in control.”
“Me? Cool and in control?” The idea surprised me. Rachel thought I was in control?
“Yesterday … last night … it got to me,” she said. She shrugged. Then she smiled her supermodel smile at me. “You grind my nerves sometimes, Marco, always joking the way you do. But keep it up, okay? We need a sense of humor.”
“Humor? You thought I was kidding? You mean, you and Jessica aren’t both insanely in love with me?”
“Dream on, Marco,” she said.
A
x finished building his distress beacon. He had it ready the next day, now that he had the Z-Space transponder.
Now we just had to figure out where to lay our trap. It couldn’t be any place that would ever be connected with us. Not Cassie’s farm, or the nearby woods. Not even anywhere in town, if we could help it.
A couple days after the ant episode, we met up again in the fields of Cassie’s farm, up against the trees of the forest. This was one area we definitely had to keep safe. It was the only place we had to keep Ax if this mission to help him escape failed.
It was Tobias who came up with the answer.
“If we’re flying somewhere we’ll have to get Ax a bird morph of some type,” Jake said. He looked at Cassie.
“We have a few choices in the barn,” she said. She bit her lip, thinking. “We have a northern harrier that was poisoned. About your size, Tobias.”
“Ax? Do you mind picking up a bird morph?” Jake asked.
“No offense taken,” I said. “But you’re wrong about humans having no natural weapons. You marinate human feet in a pair of old tennis shoes for a few hours on a hot day and you’ll see a deadly weapon. The dreaded stink-foot.”
“Okay. That’s settled,” Jake said. “Now, let’s get down to details. If we’re going to call down a Bug fighter we need to have a plan ready. Saturday should be the day, I think.”
“As long as it doesn’t involve ants,” I said. I meant it as a joke. But no one laughed.
“No ants,” Jake agreed quietly.
I shook my head in amusement. “You know, we’re talking about taking on Hork-Bajir and Taxxons. I used to think they were the scariest things in the world. But it’s the little ant that scares me worst now.”
When the meeting broke up I hung around till Jake was done saying good-bye to Cassie.
Jake and I walked home together. For a while we talked about the normal kinds of things we used to talk about before. Before our lives changed.
We talked about basketball and disagreed over which was the best NBA team. We talked about music. Neither of us had bought a new album recently. We even talked about whether Spider-Man could kick Batman’s butt or vice versa.
You know, stupid, normal, everyday stuff.
I was stalling because I didn’t want to have to tell him what I had decided.
But Jake’s been my friend forever. He knows me.
“Marco? What’s the problem?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you haven’t said a single mean-yet-funny thing the whole way. That’s not you.”
I laughed. Then, I just blurted it out. “This is my last time,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
He knew exactly what I meant, of course. “I’m in for this time, but that’s it. No more after that. And I’m serious. No one is going to guilt me into it. I’ve done enough.”
He thought about that for a while as we walked. “You’re right. You have done enough. You’ve done a million times more than ‘enough.’”
“It’s just been too many close calls.”
“Yeah.”
“One of these days we aren’t going to pull it off, you know? Ten more seconds and those ants would have had us. And before that it was a pot of boiling water. And before that I was practically killed by sharks. I mean, come on. Enough is enough.”
“You’re right,” Jake said.
“Yeah.”
I was surprised that he took it so well. I guess I shouldn’t have been. We all kind of treat Jake like he’s the leader, but he’s never been pushy about it.
“What are you going to do Sunday?” he asked.
That took me by surprise again. “I don’t know. Some Sundays we go to my mom’s grave. Leave
flowers and all. But this is the two-year thing.” I shrugged. “I don’t know, man.” He just nodded.
“But I’ll tell you one thing, Jake. A year from now I don’t want my dad going to leave flowers at
two
graves.”
T
his is wonderful! Wonderful! Flying!>
The six of us were all together. Flying. It was the first time for Ax. He just kept saying how wonderful it was. He wouldn’t shut up. It was the most excited he’d been since he’d discovered coffee.
Which was cool, because flying really
is
wonderful.
Ax said.
We were sailing above a patch of woods. It was almost solid green below us. We had risen high on a beautiful thermal. A thermal is a warm bubble of air that acts like an elevator, letting you soar high with almost no effort.
We hoped there were no bird-watchers down in the woods. We made a very unlikely flock—a red-tailed hawk, a falcon, a harrier, a bald eagle, and two ospreys. We kept some distance between us so it wouldn’t be too obvious that we were together.
Also, the eagle, who was Rachel, was carrying something that looked like a small TV remote control. She was the biggest bird. She got stuck lifting the weight.
I said.
anyone who might be in the woods. But there was no one.
We spiraled down from the sky. Down into the deep, open gash in the earth that was the gravel quarry. It was a desolate place. Just a big hole in the ground with some water in the lowest spots.
A few minutes later we were back in our usual forms. Minus shoes, of course. And wearing our motley collection of morphing clothes.
“We look like a trapeze act from a cheap circus,” I said. “Way too much spandex.”
“Don’t start with the uniforms again,” Rachel said.
It was an old debate. I would say how we needed some decent superhero uniforms. You know, like the X-Men or whatever.
But now, I realized, I shouldn’t be talking that way. As if we were all going to be together in the future.
I couldn’t tell if Jake had told any of the others that I was quitting. Probably he had told Cassie. I doubted Rachel knew, or she would have said something. The same with Tobias.
And Ax? Who knew with Ax? He was still a mystery to us. It was one of the things I would miss after I quit. I mean, how often do you get to hang out with a real alien?
That and the flying. I would miss the flying. But if I was out, I had to be out all the way.
I guess I must have looked morose, sitting there on a pile of rocks, thinking. Jake came over and kind of gave me a shove. You know, in a friendly way.
“Come on. We need to go back under that overhang. Out of sight.”
“Great,” I said. “The rocks will fall and crush us and we won’t have to worry about the Yeerks.”
There was a sort of shallow cave in the quarry wall. Not deep at all, but it would hide us from anyone flying over.
“Well,” Jake said. “Let’s try this out. Ax? You ready to trigger that thing?”
Jake looked around at everyone. “You all ready to go into your various morphs?”
We nodded. All except Ax. See, we were all going to go into morph — our strongest, deadliest morphs—in order to take care of the Yeerk crew when they came. But Ax didn’t have anything but a shark, a lobster, an ant, and a harrier. We figured he was better off in his own Andalite body, which was plenty dangerous.
“Okay, Ax? Do it. Everyone? Morph!”
“And let’s keep our fingers crossed,” I added. “Or talons, claws, or hooves, as the case may be.”
Ax pressed a button on the distress beacon. As far as we could tell, nothing happened.
So, Rachel, Cassie, Jake, and I began to morph. These were all morphs we had done before. There would be no battle to maintain control over the animal mind.
Rachel went into her elephant morph. We figured we might need that brute strength and size.
Jake slowly became a tiger. Cassie used her wolf morph. And I focused on my gorilla.
“What a freak scene this is.” I laughed as the changes began. “Anyone who stumbled onto this would think he’d lost his mind.”
It was definitely odd. You haven’t seen weird till you’ve seen pretty, blond, supermodel Rachel grow a trunk as thick as a small tree and ears the size of umbrellas.
Or Cassie, growing gray fur over every inch of her body, falling to all fours and baring long yellow teeth.
And then there was Jake. Huge, curved claws grew from his fingers. A snakelike tail whipped out behind him. Orange and black fur covered him. And when he was done he was a full grown tiger. Almost ten feet from his nose to his tail. Easily four hundred pounds.
If something deadly can ever be beautiful, it’s a tiger.
so.>
mature,> Cassie said.
Ax said.
I started to explain, but just then a red light began to flash on Ax’s homemade distress beacon.
He slunk away, liquid power, to hide in the shadow of a boulder. Rachel pressed back under the shallow overhang. Cassie trotted to a spot to the right of Jake, and I tried not to look like a four-hundred-pound gorilla behind a pile of gravel. Tobias flapped hard, struggling to gain altitude.
SWOOSH!
It came in low, just above tree level, then disappeared before turning to come back.
A Bug fighter. Just as we’d planned.
S
WOOSH!
The Bug fighter flew over once again, seemed to pause, then settled down toward the floor of the quarry.
Bug fighters are the smallest of the Yeerk ships. They aren’t much bigger than a school bus. They have a cowled, insectlike look, except that on either side there are very long, serrated spears pointing forward. So they look a little like a cockroach holding two spears.