CHAPTER SIX: MARCO
The door opened and Tobias's mom walked in. I mean, I'd never met Tobias's mom before, but I knew who this lady had to be. First because she looked so much like Tobias, and second because who else would be walking into their apartment like that? She looked up and saw four kids she didn't know standing in her living room and she froze, her eyes going wide. They were the same dreamy blue color as Tobias's but they sharpened fast at the sight of us, sharpened and darted around the small room. When she spotted Tobias in the little kitchen, the sharpness faded and she smiled.
"Hello," she said.
I swallowed. I get weird sometimes, around people's moms that I haven't met before. It's not a big deal, it's just a stupid thing that happens. It's like…like if I haven't met somebody's mom, then in my head, maybe they don't have one. Maybe they're like me. But then I meet her, and I know they aren't, and I just…get a little weird. Just for a second or two. It's not a big deal.
But anyway, I kind of froze and stared at her for a second. Then I remembered she might have an alien slug in her head and be about to call in the walking salad shooters and the giant worms with teeth to murder us all, and I stayed frozen.
"Hi mom," said Tobias. I thought his voice sounded a little stuffy all of a sudden, but maybe he was thinking about the possibility of slug-infestation too. That would be enough to make anyone sound a little weird. "These are, uh…" He hesitated far too long, long enough that I turned away from his mom to frown at him, before he finally said, "my friends. These are my friends. Uh…this is Jake and this is Rachel," he pointed to the cousins, who responded with eerily similar smiles. "That's Cassie, on the couch with Aragorn." Cassie lifted one hand off the cat to wave. "And that's Marco."
I turned to face Tobias's mom again and made myself smile at her, trying not to think about the fact that she might already be a Controller, or about the fact that she was alive and smiling at all of us. "Hi, Tobias's mom," I said cheekily. What can I say? When I get nervous, I get cheeky.
Okay, I'm also cheeky when I'm bored or excited or smug or…just about anything, really. But I also get cheeky when I'm nervous. And right now, staring at Tobias's mother, I was nervous.
"Loren, please…Marco, was it?" she said. "You can all call me Loren."
I squirmed a little; I wasn't the only one. None of us, I guess, had the sort of parents who went around telling other kids to call them by their first name—not on first meeting, at least.
"Um, okay…L-loren," Jake said, stumbling awkwardly over the casual form of address. I smirked at him. "It's, uh, it's nice to meet you," he forged onward, valiantly ignoring the blush creeping up his cheeks.
I smirked harder.
Tobias's mom—Loren—closed the door behind her and put down her heavy purse. She looked a lot like Tobias: same blue eyes, same slight build, same soft blonde hair—a few shades lighter, but that could have just been from age, or maybe she spent more time outdoors than Tobias—and same gentle smile. She was a little paler than him, straight-up white where his ancestry was more ambiguous; I guess he must have gotten that from his dad's side, whoever his dad was, because Loren was the picture of an All American Girl Next Door all grown-up.
It was hard to say exactly how old she was; younger than my pa—than my dad, anyway. The clothes were what made it hard to tell, I think, because she was dressed more like a college student than a mom: crappy sneakers, faded jeans, faded band t-shirt, big red scrunchie in her hair. All of her clothes were marked with paint, from a few dots on her sneakers to a proliferation of rainbow streaks across her jeans. And the jewelry—oh man, the jewelry. Rachel's little sisters would have had a field day with the bright plastic circles and beads that dangled off this lady's wrists. No rings, though, not even a wedding ring, and no earrings either. That drew my attention to her ears, and that reminded me of the Yeerks, and suddenly I didn't feel like grinning at her strangely youthful clothes anymore.
"Something's wrong?" Loren said. It sounded like a question, the frown on her face made it look like a question, but somehow…not a question.
We all glanced at Tobias. This was his play, we knew; this was his mom. It was up to him to decide how to handle her.
"Nothing's wrong," he said quickly, and I let out a sigh of relief. I had been afraid that he was going to spill the whole can of beans to her, start gushing about how his aliens and her aliens were the same aliens, and oh gosh mom I'm sorry I doubted you, let's all hug it out…
Loren didn't look convinced, though. She raised her eyebrows and turned to look at us all, one by one.
"Okay," she said, in a voice that meant the complete opposite of agreement. "Well…can I do anything? I could make pancakes, maybe, if you're hungry…?"
"Mom, it's almost lunch time." Tobias's voice was gentle but impatient, like somebody explaining something to a toddler, or a grandparent who had started wearing underwear on their head and kitchen mitts for slippers. It was a weird way to talk to your mom, I thought, but then again, Tobias's mom was crazy. Maybe crazy. Probably crazy.
Maybe.
She shrugged and smiled again. "Nothing wrong with pancakes for lunch," she said lightly, and stepped forward through the room. We all moved aside to let her pass, but she headed for the couch and Cassie and the cat. I tensed, wondering if crazy alien conspiracy ladies could also be crazy racist conspiracy ladies, but she just looked down at Cassie and said cheerfully, "Wow, Aragorn seems to really like you."
Cassie looked up with a grin. "I like animals," she said.
Loren nodded. "Me too," she said.
I rolled my eyes. I turned to look at Jake. This is getting us nowhere, I mouthed.
Jake shrugged.
I rolled my eyes again. Obviously somebody had to take charge of this pathetic little gathering, and just as obviously it wasn't going to be Jake, so I guess it would have to be me.
"Well," I said loudly, "since that school project seems to be all taken care of now, I guess we'll just be going…"
I tried to wave the others toward the door, but nobody else moved. I sighed and turned back around.
Loren had left the couch and walked toward the hallway that led, I presumed, to the bedrooms and bathrooms. She looked down and cocked her head curiously, then bent over. It wasn't until she straightened up that I realized what she had been looking at: the painting that Tobias had brought out to show us, the one that showed kind of a resemblance to the Andalite, if you squinted the right way at the sloppy brushstrokes. If you squinted the other way, it looked kind of like a toilet bowl after you squirted in the cleaner, but I'd had a feeling that nobody else would have been interested in listening if I'd tried to point that out.
She turned around, holding the painting in much the same way that Tobias had, although where his grip had been light, almost reluctant, Loren's hands were clenched so tightly around the frame that her already pale knuckles whitened to a color barely darker than bleached bone.
"Were you…" She swallowed, cleared her throat, and tried again. "Were you showing your friends my art?" she asked. Her voice was light, cheerful—too light, too cheerful. Her smile trembled and her eyes were full of hurt. She thought that Tobias had brought us over here to laugh at his mom's delusions, to poke fun at her paintings.
I saw Cassie draw in a breath, start to rise; I saw Jake tense his shoulders, start to raise his hands placatingly; I saw Rachel take a step forward, her head beginning to shake from side to side—
"Yeah," Tobias said. His voice was hoarse. "Yeah, I thought they'd like to see them."
"Oh," said Loren. Her voice was very small. "Well…that's nice." Her smile was trembling harder than ever. She started to blink rapidly and I looked away. I was not ready to watch somebody's mother cry.
"They're really pretty, Ms.—Loren," said Rachel earnestly. "You're a great artist."
Loren shook her head, her smile still weak and her eyes still misty, and said, "Oh, well, not really, but that's nice of you to say."
"No it's true!" Cassie, jumping up off the couch, the cat hopping to the floor and bolting for the underside of the nearest chair. "It is, we really liked them!"
Loren nodded, but didn't seem to mean it. "That's…that nice. Thank you, Cassie." She looked at her son and the pleading in her eyes made my stomach turn over.
Tobias broke their gaze, looked away. "Yeah, well, anyway. Like Marco said, we're…we're done with that project now, so…so I guess we'll go."
"Okay," Loren said. "Will you…will you be back for dinner?"
"Sure," said Tobias. He was looking at his feet again. The rest of us started inching toward the door. I wondered if the others felt awkward and cruel too, or if it was just me. "Sure, probably."
"Well…h-have a good time!" The false cheer in Loren's voice cut me like a knife. I shouldered past in front of Cassie, through the door. My feet squeaked on the swaying metal steps. I couldn't get out of that place fast enough. The only reason I didn't keep going when I hit concrete was because Jake was in front of me, and I ran into him.
He caught my arm, steadied me, kept me out of the gutter. For some reason I was breathing hard, even though it had only been one flight of stairs. The brightness of the afternoon sun made my eyes water after so long in that dim room, too. I wiped the back of my hand across my eyes, drying them.
"Well," I said cheerfully, "that was fun. Let's never do it again."
We were back at the mall. The food court, this time. Like Tobias had told his mom, it was almost lunch time. We needed to eat…even if most of us didn't want to. My own stomach was still churning and I looked at the slice of pizza in front of me with a glare of betrayal. How could I be sitting here smelling delicious, cheese-dripping, sausage-covered pizza and not want to stuff my mouth?
The only one of us who was eating with any real enthusiasm was Rachel. Cassie had a salad (gross) which she was picking at (like you do with a salad) with more habit than appetite. Jake had a burger that he'd managed to take two bites out of so far, and a carton of fries that he had put more effort into stacking in criss-cross piles than in putting into his mouth. Tobias hadn't ordered any food, claiming he wasn't hungry yet. Ordinarily I would have assumed that he just didn't have money to spare and was too embarrassed to admit it, but given the way my stomach felt—and it hadn't been my mom we'd just almost made cry—I was inclined to believe him. All he had was a coke, which he was nursing as slowly as an old gunfighter in a saloon, looking bereft and fragile.
I picked up my pizza and took a huge bite. My stomach recoiled, but I made myself chew and swallow. This is pizza, I told my body firmly. Greasy, cheesy, delicious, hot sausage pizza. You love this! So enjoy it!
My body didn't listen. I kept eating anyway.
"I don't think she was a Controller," said Cassie.
We all stopped eating. Or at least, I stopped eating and so did Rachel. The others hadn't really started, so they didn't have anything to stop. Jake put down the fries he was playing with, though, and Tobias let go of his soda.
"No," Tobias said softly, "no I don't think she was." He shuddered a little but didn't say anything else.
I shuddered too, and tried not to wonder what it felt like to worry about Yeerks in your family's heads. "I guess the Yeerks only want the sane ones, huh?" I said, forcing a grin. "Good news, Jake, you're safe."
"Ha, ha," said Jake, glaring at me.
"And you'll be safest of all," Rachel told me, leaning forward to pluck a piece of sausage off my pizza. She licked it off her fingers with every evidence of actually enjoying it, and my stomach clenched. I glared at her, more for the indignity of her being able to enjoy my pizza when I couldn't than over the insult.
"Yeah, yeah, hilarious. But seriously, do you think we'd be able to tell?"
The others all turned to stare at me. I stared back.
"Do you think we'd be able to tell? If she were a Controller, I mean?" I waved my hand to take in the bustling food court, less packed than it would be in half an hour or so but still populated with plenty of shoppers, all laughing and arguing and stuffing their faces. "How many of these folks do you think are Controllers, secretly? Unless they start asking us about construction sites and fireworks, what would give them away?"
"I think if mom had been a Controller, she would have reacted differently to the painting of the…of the Andalite," Tobias said. "I think…" He swallowed hard before continuing. "I think she would have been more surprised or even excited, and less…less hurt." He hunched in on himself, dropping his head so his hair slid forward over his eyes again. That stupid little defensive gesture was beginning to annoy me.
"Maybe she was faking it," I insisted.
"Give it a rest, Marco," said Rachel. She stole another piece of my sausage, just to be a jerk. "Tobias is right. If she'd been a Controller, she would have known immediately why Tobias had brought that painting out to show us. She would have known we'd been the kids at the construction site last night, and we'd already be under Hork-Bajir arrest."
"How?" I said, belligerent. I wasn't sure why I was pushing so hard. Maybe I was just annoyed that no one else seemed to be taking the threat of infestation seriously enough. Maybe I just wanted to make sure I wasn't the only one scared out of my mind. "You think she was hiding a Hork-Bajir in the refrigerator? No offense, Tobias, but I don't think your apartment's even big enough to fit a Hork-Bajir." Not that I had a lot of room to talk, the apartment that my dad and I had had to move into after mom died being not that much larger, but it was still a good point. "Maybe she called them as soon as we left. Maybe there are Yeerks driving over here right now…"
"Well then they're taking their sweet time about it," growled Jake.
I turned to look at him, feeling betrayed.
"Seriously, Marco, if Tobias's mom was one of them, we'd already be in trouble."
For some reason that just made me madder. "You don't think I get that?" I said. "That's the whole point, that's what I'm talking about! We need to be more careful!" I looked around at the others. They were staring at me balefully, except for Tobias who was still staring at the ground. "If Tobias's mom had been a Controller, we'd be dead right now—or infested ourselves. We were careless. We can't do that again."
"What are you saying?" asked Jake, his voice heavy with suspicion.
"I'm saying, no more letting anyone else catch on that we know what Andalites are. No more talking about them, or Hork-Bajir, or Yeerks, or any of it. No more morphing, no more anything."
"No more morphing?" Cassie's eyes were troubled. "I don't think you'd be saying that if you'd tried it," she said. "We can't just give that up…"
"And what happens when some Controller happens to be going for a walk while you're turning into a horse?" I asked her. "What happens when you get a Yeerk shoved in your big horse ear because you wanted to go run with the ponies?"
Cassie looked hurt, but she didn't argue with me. None of them did. "Don't you get it? This isn't a game. We could die."
"Maybe Marco is right," Rachel said, shocking me. "This is too big for us. We're just kids. We need to find someone important to tell this to. Someone we can trust."
More surprisingly than Rachel agreeing with me was Tobias disagreeing with her: he lifted his gaze from the protective curtain of his hair and said flatly, "We can't trust anyone. Anyone could be a Controller. We tell the wrong person, we are all dead. And the whole world will be doomed."
Cassie looked anxious, but she was worried about the wrong thing, as far as I was concerned. "I don't want to stop morphing," she said wistfully. "Do you realize all we could do with this power? We could communicate with animals, maybe. Help save endangered species."
"Humans may be the next endangered species, Cassie," Tobias said in a quiet voice.
The frown on Cassie's face deepened. She turned away from Tobias to look at Jake. "What do you say, Jake?" she asked.
"Me?" Sudden panic seemed to flare in Jake's brown eyes. "I don't know. Marco's right, we could all get killed. Rachel's right, this it too major for a bunch of kids." I started to lean back in my chair, relieved that we were all starting to see sense—but then Jake kept talking. "But Tobias is right, too," he said. "I mean, the whole world is in danger. And we can't trust anyone."
"So, what do we do?" Rachel sounded angry. She'd totally forgotten about both her sweet and sour chicken and my sausage.
"Hey," Jake protested, just as upset, "it's not up to me to decide."
Before anyone else could venture an opinion Rachel said, "Let's take a vote."
I spoke quickly. "I vote we try to live long enough to get driver's licenses."
Tobias's didn't hesitate before arguing. "I vote we do what the Andalite said—fight."
"You've never even been in a fight," I sneered at him. "You can't handle the punks at school. Suddenly now you want to kick butt on that Visser Three freakazoid?"
He blushed and looked down again, hiding behind his hair. Oh yeah, he was going to give the Visser nightmares, the boy too scared of the world to even look at it. I rolled my eyes.
"I vote with Tobias," said Rachel, glowering at me. She'd sure gotten over her concerns fast, I thought sourly. "I wish we could dump all this on someone else," Rachel continued, not breaking eye contact. "But we can't."
I glared back at her. I wasn't going to back down just because Miss H&M wanted to get her manicured hands dirty. I bet she'd change her tune fast the minute things got nasty, anyway. Girls like Rachel weren't usually keen on any kind of fight that couldn't be fought with cutting remarks and cold shoulders. And somehow, I didn't think Visser Three would care if she laughed about his mismatched socks.
"Let's think it over for a while," said Cassie in a soothing voice. "This is a big decision. I mean, it's not like we're deciding whether to wear jeans or a skirt."
I figured that remark was meant for Rachel, but she didn't look abashed. We kept glaring at each other until Jake said, "Yeah, let's wait a while. In the meantime, no one say anything to anyone. We just go back to normal."
I smirked. I knew what that meant. It meant I'd won, and Jake was too nice a guy to say it to Rachel and Tobias's faces.
And maybe that's what it did mean, right then. But then we discovered that Tom was a Controller. And I knew—I didn't want to admit it, not even to myself, but I knew, I knew—that we were going to do it. We were going to fight. Or Jake was, at least, and he'd drag the rest of us along—because Tom was his brother. And Jake would sooner die than leave his brother in the hands of a bunch of evil alien parasites.
"Dammit, Tom," I whispered to myself. "You're going to get all of us killed."
