I know my heart is a broken freezer chest
'cause I can never keep anything frozen.
So no, I am not always crying.
I am just thawing outside of the lines.
– from "A Letter to the Playground Bully, from Andrea, age 8 1/2" by Andrea Gibson
Rachel sat bolt upright in bed. It took her a moment to register why: the familiar tap-tap-tap of a raptor's beak against her window. It woke her up faster than her alarm clock, and she was wide awake even after so little sleep.
«Hey Rachel,» said Marco as she approached the window. «I've got some booze. Wanna help me drink it?»
Rachel opened the window and looked into his huge owl eyes. "Where'd you get it?"
«I didn't steal it, if that's what you're asking.» She could hear him rolling his eyes even though the owl couldn't. «My dad threw out all his liquor a while back. He decided he was getting totally sober. I rescued it from the trash. I've kept it in the back of my closet ever since. And I figured, well, if we ever needed a drink, it's right about now.»
The dream Marco had interrupted came back to her in fragments. She was a rat, gnawing on David's ear until he screamed No no please let me go! You can't! She was in the shower, and David was the lion, paw at her throat. She was naked and helpless and he growled I know where you live.
Rachel focused on the owl and felt her chest thicken with powerful flight muscle. «Definitely. Anyone else coming?»
«Oh, you know Jake. He'd get all Dad-ish about it, and Cassie would get all Mom-ish, and, um, I'm pretty sure Tobias' uncle was an alcoholic, so… he might not be so into it. We could probably convince Ax to try it, but I'm not really in the mood to babysit a drunk Andalite.»
It sounded like maybe it was an excuse to be alone together, but Rachel decided she didn't mind. She couldn't look at Jake or Cassie right now, much less drink with them. She was eternally grateful to Ax for standing vigil with her for those awful two hours when no one else would, and she could use whatever reminder she could get that Tobias really hadn't been murdered. But right now she felt dirty inside. Marco was someone she could be ugly with.
«Where's the stash?» she said, more bird than human now.
«I moved it to the shed behind my house. It'll be warmer in there than outside anyway.»
Rachel hopped through the open window and followed Marco through the night. She didn't know his house well, only that he'd moved back to Jake's neighborhood after his dad got his act back together. Marco had kept complaining that hauling boxes to his new house would be a lot easier if he could have used his gorilla morph. She recognized Jake's house as they flew over it, the yard where Tom had picked up Jordan and Sara so they could pretend to be airplanes, back when her parents had still been together. Marco's house was smaller, but it was nice enough for two people. They landed behind the shed to demorph. It had rained earlier, and the grass was wet and cool beneath their bare feet.
"Welcome to Marco's All-Night Cantina," he said, throwing open the door to the shed. He grabbed two big flashlights off a shelf, put them on the ground bulb up, and turned them on.
"Looks more like an outtake from the Blair Witch Project." She saw the light reflect off glass and spotted the bottles of alcohol. One of them had a label that said Fine Scotch Whisky. "Hey, this one looks fancy." She broke the foil seal and twisted off the cap. She sniffed. It smelled like smoke, dirt, and rubbing alcohol. "Smells kinda gross."
"Can't handle your liquor, Rachel?" Marco smirked, sitting cross-legged on the floor of the shed. The flashlights broke his face up into pieces of bright and dark.
"We'll see about that, pint-size." She braced herself for the first pull. She coughed at the harshness of it, but soon she felt warmth fill her cheeks and throat. "Hey, not bad." She sat down across from Marco, propping herself against a folded-up beach chair, and set down the bottle between them.
Marco took it and drank. He wheezed a little, then pressed the back of his hand to his cheek. "Huh," he said. "I guess they don't just drink it to get drunk." He passed the bottle back to her. His fingers felt warm against hers where they touched.
Rachel smiled as she took another drink. "This feels so normal, you know? Just a couple of teenagers getting drunk off Daddy's booze. Ha. Can you imagine how we'd be like at one of those keggers they have out in the woods? If we were normal kids. You'd be trying to get everyone to spray beer out their nose laughing."
"And charming the ladies, of course."
"And I'd keep getting hit on by morons like you."
"Hey, if the construction site hadn't happened, I wouldn't know you so well. Maybe I'd give it a try. I'd say, 'Hey Rachel, what are you doing there all alone? Need some company?'"
"I wouldn't be alone. Cassie would be with me."
"Like you could drag Cassie out to a kegger! The only way you could would be if Jake was there, and if Jake was there, then they'd be off somewhere together being awkward at each other."
Rachel wondered if Tobias would be there, but then even if he were, they would know each other even less than her and Marco. "Fine. I'm alone. So I say, 'Cassie ditched me to make moon eyes at your best friend.'"
"Well, that was rude. I have no idea what sees in him. He's just a big dork."
"And you're not?"
"Well, yeah, but at least I try not to be."
Rachel drank. She felt so warm she must be glowing through her skin. But there was still a cold place inside it couldn't touch. "David would be there, too. If we were normal."
Marco snatched the bottle back. "I would have hated that son of a bitch anyway. Even before he got mixed up in all our crap, he was a self-absorbed greedy little turd who thought it was fun to hurt animals."
"He was a little shit, yeah. But bad enough to trap as a rat for the rest of his life? No. Bad enough to threaten to kill his family?"
Marco stared at her.
"Yeah. I did. I threatened his family. I stabbed his ear with a fork while I did it. That's me, the warrior princess."
"Come on, Rachel, I'm just messing with you when I say that. I don't think you liked doing any of that to David, for fuck's sake."
"Really? You think? I didn't have to steel myself for it, that's for damn sure. I didn't even have to think."
"Look, I'm sorry you got pushed into this, Rachel. You think I like being the clown all the time? You think this is a fucking joke to me? This is my Mom I'm – " He took an aggressive swig of scotch. "It could have been Jake, you know. I know him better than you, even if he is your cousin. He could've been the warrior and you the leader. Maybe if Tobias hadn't talked him into it, that's how it would've gone. But that's not the way it happened, and you wanna know something, Rachel?"
"What?" she said.
Marco leaned forward, staring at Rachel almost defiantly. "I don't think you like fighting this war. But I think sometimes you wish you did, because then you wouldn't feel like you're torn up and bleeding inside. You like to act like that person, even though you aren't, because you get to pretend." He looked down at the bottle in his hand. "Hell, I wish I really was a sarcastic clown. If this were all some big joke to me, then it wouldn't matter so goddamn much."
Rachel nearly punched him, for a blinding moment. Then she thought about what it would be like, if she really were the warrior princess. She wouldn't have nightmares. She'd smile more around her family, have more energy. She could surrender completely to the thrill of battle, nothing held back. She wouldn't have to think too much – she'd be a weapon, and Jake would point her wherever she could do the most damage. It would be nice, wouldn't it? To be a monster?
She felt her face burn and prickle. If she had talked to Tobias, he would have said that of course she wasn't a monster, she was nothing like that. But Marco had seen the truth that Tobias would have spared her from knowing. Yes, she decided, she wanted to know exactly how ugly she was, deep down.
Marco's cheeks were flushed, and his dark eyes glistened. His hair, long again, fell in strands across his neck. "Are you crying?" Rachel said.
"No," Marco said. "Are you?"
"No way." Rachel blinked rapidly to keep back the tears. "Tell me. Was I a better person before all this?"
"You can't compare and you know it. You never know what you're going to do in a war until you're in it. Isn't David proof of that?"
"That's bullshit, Marco, just tell me."
"I like you better now, OK? I liked you then, but I didn't really know you. I didn't really know any of you except Jake. And now I've seen you on the inside, and yeah, you're pretty fucked up. When all this is over, you should probably get therapy or something. But still. I've seen all of that, and I still like it better. Because I've noticed something. You fight a lot harder when it's us. Not when it's a big thrill or lots of enemies, but when it's us you're trying to save." Marco set the bottle down, and turned his head so his hair fell across one eye. "Huh, maybe we should morph it off. My vision's getting a little funny."
"That's your hair, dumbass." Rachel was feeling it too, though, lightness in her head and a glow in her face. But she could feel that cold place inside her thaw a little, and that had nothing to do with alcohol. She got up on her knees and moved toward Marco. She swept the hair away from his face and kissed him. "Thanks for telling me the truth."
"Uh, yeah, you too. Thanks for, um." Marco touched his fingertips to his mouth, as if he could feel the kiss there. He finished, lamely, "We should drink together more often."
"My vision must be getting funny too," Rachel said, "since I just mistook you for a boy worth kissing." She held onto a lawnmower as she got unsteadily back to her feet. "I am so glad I don't have to deal with this hangover. Andalite technology rules."
"Augh." Marco struggled up from a kneeling position. "Any help here?"
Rachel gave him a hand. He leaned against her for a moment, then returned to his own balance. He turned off the flashlights, put them away, and let them out into the cool night.
Out here, it was hard to believe she'd been able to talk about everything weighing her down with Marco, of all people. She'd never understood before how Marco could be Jake's confidant. But Marco could cut through all her crap for the same reason he could trade insults with her blow for blow. If she was scary, well, so was he. And like her, he'd embraced that by now, in a way the others maybe hadn't yet.
Marco started sprouting feathers at the same time she did. "What do you need to get wings for? You live right here."
"I flew out through my bedroom window. Dad would hear it if I came in through a door. I'd be so grounded if he knew what I was doing back here."
"Yeah. Morphing with strange girls. Who knows what other bad stuff they could lead you into, huh?"
They giggled.
"Hey. Maybe next time we'll rope the others into it. I wanna beat Jake at a drinking game."
"Well, if we do this again, you know I'm in. I'm your first customer at Marco's All-Night Cantina, after all."
Rachel thought she caught a flash of want in Marco's eyes, a quick glance to her still-human lips. But then his eyes became huge and gold, so if it was there, it was just as quickly gone.
«Goodnight, Marco.» With a last sarcastic twist of the knife, she added, «Sweet dreams.»