I was killing time. That was the sad, sad truth: I had nothing to do, I didn't want to go outside and face the paparazzi, and I was bored. So I did what I had been doing more and more often lately: I logged onto my computer account, went straight to Google, and typed in the word that defined my life: "Animorph."

A million results pulled up. Several scores of pointless headlines squandered the first few pages, and then I happened across something that seemed a bit more interesting.

"The Animorphs: Forgotten Days" was the blaring headline, and I clicked it. What were they saying about me now?
When the page was fully loaded, I stared in raw shock at what was before me. Little T's were intertwined with R's; and there were, most prominently, J's and C's intertwined together, splashed across the page.

I gasped in a breath, collected my willpower, and began to read.

"Poor Jake!" The article began.

According to reports from anonymous reliable sources, Jake Berensen proposed to Cassie Gardener several weeks before the final battle of the Animorphiean War. She accepted; but now, years after the war's sad conclusion, we onlookers see a Jake that is struggling to cope with the pressures of being the most famous man ever to walk the earth—and he is noteably Cassie-less. Meanwhile, we see a Cassie Gardener that seems happy enough in the arms of the man whom she is absurdly affectionate toward but repeatedly denies to be her significant other, Ron Helexson. Jake's fellow Animorph, Marco Torres, has hinted that Jake's failure to marry Cassie as he said he would was a result of Cassie's reluctance, and not the other way around. And yet, when fans have put the pair up to compadability tests, they almost unfailingly achieve a perfect score. Marital counselors have confirmed, after extensive analyzation of the pair's different personalities, that they would make a couple that was not only loving and well-matched, but that could conduct a durable relationship. Says Animorphiean expert and scholar John Mildworth, "Jake is smart. He knows that he was meant for Cassie, and she for him; but he knows, also, that proposing the subject would upset the delicate balance of the odd 'relationship' that they can barely even now maintain. He's not about to ask her to marry him." Poor Jake!

I sat there with my fingers posed on the keyboard, in dumb shock. Of course I knew that there were Cassie/Jake fanlistings out there—of course. But this? This was a surprise.

"Hey Cass?" Ronnie came to the door, grinning at me, framed in the whitewashed doorway. "Yeah?" "Have you seen my razor?"

I looked him up and down, one eyebrow cocked, stifling a laugh. There he stood in a muscle shirt and shorts, half-shaven. It was this that I loved about Ronnie: the absolute candidness of our relationship.

"I love you."

"I love you too."

It was true, I admitted to myself.

I loved Ronnie. That was a love I could never recreate with any other man, not even Jake.

Right?