"You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist." -- Golda Meir

The silence that followed reminded me of being in detention. Neither of us wanted to disturb it by speaking, as it could have drastic effects. The Yeerk kept Lydia's eyes ever trained on me, and even though on the surface, she showed no emotion, I could tell that she was nervous by me. Which is exactly how I wanted her to feel.

Finally, I broke the silence. "Where's the Kandrona?"

It was like a veil was lifted from her face. She smirked sarcastically. "I'm not going to tell you." I charged my weapon, but she just laughed. "And you're not going to shoot me."

I think I shocked her with my answer. "You're right; I'm not going to shoot you. But you are going to tell me where the Kandrona is."

Snort. "What makes you so sure of that?"

I shrugged, as if we were just talking about the weather. "A simple matter of the choices available. See, you are going to die. Pure and simple. The question is how you choose to die."

She snorted again. "I'm not going to die. You're not going to shoot me."

"Again, you're right. But there is more than one way to skin a Yeerk."

"Short of killing me, how do you plan on getting information from me?"

"You truly are a stupid Yeerk, aren't you?" Before she could retort sarcastically, I continued. "If you know the information, so does your host. Now, granted, I don't have the time or patience to starve you for three days, but I could knock you unconscious, morph a Yeerk and push you out of your host's head. And I will win, should we battle in Lydia's head, because I am much, much stronger than you."

I saw her lip twitch in fear ever so slightly, but her arrogant disposition was back before too long. "You don't have a Yeerk morph. You're bluffing."

"Please. I spent eight years around Yeerks and another three with Andalites. Trust me, I have a Yeerk morph. Of course, you're welcome to call my bluff." She made no indication. "Now, there is another option: you could crawl out of Lydia's ear on your own and I promise your death will be quick and painless."

She snorted. "You sound like Visser Three."

I spread out my arms and smiled. "I lived with him for eight years. I'm bound to pick up some of his nuances."

"So my choices are a battle royale in Lydia's head, which I may not lose -"

"You'll lose."

"- or leaving on my own volition, and getting killed by you anyway?"

"Like I said, you'll die either way. It's up to you how."

"I have a better idea: how about I call for assistance and watch you get infested with a Yeerk?"

I shrugged nonchalantly again. "That's a good idea, too. But your so called 'assistance' didn't come so far, and there's a good chance that my friends are keeping them occupied. So if you do call them, it would be useless, and we'll be back, again, to my two choices."

She grinned. "What if I just told you where the Kandrona is, and waited for you to destroy it? That way you get what you want and I go away."

"Nope. Because you know who I am. You cannot live. Do you get it now? Either a slow death or a quick one. You choose."

"You just want to kill me for a personal reason," the Yeerk sneered.

I narrowed my brow. "Maybe that's true, but those are the options. And I'm growing impatient, so decide soon or I'll assume you want a slow death."

Lydia's face glowered at me with such an intense amount of hatred that I had trouble believing it was the same girl I've been dealing with all week. But I figured that the Yeerk in her head didn't want to go through what my idea of a slow death was, which is why, as I watched, the sneer on Lydia's face slowly but surely loosened, as a grey slug made its way out of her ear and made a PLOP on the floor.

"I guess she wasn't as stupid as I thought," I muttered.

"Sarah," Lydia started, "I -"

"Shut up," I hissed. I walked up to where the Yeerk dropped and picked it up. It looked a lot less imposing and sinister in its natural state. Just an oversized slug. How pathetic. And the whole universe is afraid of this?

"Sarah, you need to unders -"

I charged the beam and pointed it at her, not looking at her. "I said shut up."

I wanted to watch it suffer. Make it writhe and squirm in my grasp. But I was true to my word, even to a filthy parasite like this Yeerk. So I squeezed it as hard as I could until its flesh popped open and spilled its slimy guts all over my hand and dripped down my arm. I figured that was as fast and as painless as I could get it.

For some reason, I stared at its guts on my arm for a while. I did really feel anything; it just seemed so useless. In their natural state, they can't see, hear, smell, or feel. They are so absolutely helpless that I couldn't help but wonder how they got so far ahead of every other being in the galaxy, besides Andalites, of course.

"Are you okay?" Lydia asked, in genuine, non-Yeerk concern.

I wiped the slime off on my pants and demanded, "Where's the Kandrona?"

"In the boiler room."

"Why were we told it was in the control room?"

Lydia looked away. "The sub-Visser spread that rumour in order to keep the true location hidden from the Andalite bandits."

"Those Andalites are my friends," I spat. "Don't talk about them like that."

"Sorry."

I growled at her and she humbly kept quiet. It was just like she was with the Yeerk in her head, but there was something about her now that seemed to put me at ease. I stared at her for a while before realizing the truth: she was humble in a humble way, not in an arrogant, Yeerk way. She acted just like Erek.

I suddenly found it very difficult to stay mad at her.

I started walking to the door that Rachel ripped off from the hinges. "Come on," I said to Lydia, normally; without anger. I heard her nervously keeping in step behind me. I stopped walking and waited for her to get beside me. "Where is the boiler room?"

I saw a ghost of a smile on her lips, but that may have been my imagination. She headed down a hallway, in the opposite direction of the rink, where my friends were no doubt fighting for their lives.

"We need to talk," Lydia said, matter-of-factly. I could still hear the quiver in her voice.

"No talking," I replied. "Just show me the boiler room, let me do my thing, and we can get out."

"I'm surprised you're not attacking me."

"I can if you'd like me to."

She sighed. "I'm sorry, if it helps."

"It does not."

She stopped walking and roughly grabbed my wrist. With anyone else, I would have socked the side of their head. But for some reason, I didn't hit her. I just scowled at her. "Look; if that Yeerk never entered my head, I would never have been with Marco."

I jerked my hand away. "Keep walking."

"Not until you get it. Last semester we had Math together. He was a jerk; a sarcastic, arrogant pain in the ass. He still is, mostly. He's immature, childish and gets on my nerves so much, I fear being around him for too long would drive me crazy. I hated him. Now, that hatred has softened into ignorant indifference. I do not like him at all in that way. I never did."

I knew she was telling the truth, because of the look in her eyes. I just didn't want to hear it. "I said keep walking. I want to destroy that thing as soon as possible."

She blatantly ignored me. "When the new term started, and you came to the school, I noticed that the two of you became fast friends. If you're not with Cassie in the hallways, you're with Marco. And all I could think of was that you made a cute couple."

I shoved her hard. She just barely kept her balance. She was so determined to explain this to me that her humbleness all but vanished. "Shut up, Lydia," I hissed.

"No. You shut up. Listen to me. I may not be the smartest girl in the world, but at least I know better than to stick my nose in the middle of a potential relationship. My friend Gloria did that once and actually changed schools because of the explosion it caused. Not only did I want to avoid a confrontation from you, but I didn't even want Marco in the first place!

"And then I made the incredibly stupid decision to join The Sharing. My mom is dead and my dad's a drunk. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I remember I was at some barbecue of some kind when three adults, who were full members, came up to me and said, 'She'll do', and dragged me to the Yeerk Pool. They put that Yeerk in my head. She wasn't a sub-Visser at the time, but when she managed to convince Visser Three that a new Kandrona in this location would expand the Empire beyond this one city, he promoted her.

"So for weeks, she oversaw the construction of the housing, which she thought was very boring. She wanted to do something to excite her, and searched my mind for an answer. She noticed how at school I made the observation that you and Marco made a cute couple and decided that putting a rift in your friendship was exactly what she needed."

I shook my head in disbelief. "I don't see how that worked. Marco is much smarter than that. I don't see him being duped so easily."

"This may be hard for you to hear, but Marco is a teenaged boy. He could be a young Einstein, but he is still a teenaged boy. And that Yeerk in my head was a newly-promoted sub-Visser, at least twice his age. I hate to say this, but the Yeerk's powers of persuasion were awesome. A little eyelash batting here, a low-cut shirt there; a strategically placed necklace with a humble, nervous rubbing of it whenever he looked, deliberately bumping into him in the hall, with a silky smile, warm enough to melt ice. The Yeerk had him practically eating oats out of my hand in a week."

I shoved her again, and this time, she did tumble to the floor. But she got right back up, barely acknowledging the pain. "I resisted the whole time," she went on. "Not just because I was afraid of you, but because the thought of being with him made me physically ill. In fact, there were several times during the whole courtship that I had to throw up and the Yeerk could not stop it."

"Shut up!" I yelled. "I don't care, okay? I don't!"

"You need to know! You need to understand. Everything that happened between the two of you was all according to her plan. Remember when you threatened to hit me if I didn't move out of your way? The Yeerk ran to Marco, crying, telling him that you were going to hit me. Period. It was a subtle change to what you did say, but I bet he didn't take it too lightly."

I sighed angrily. "He shoved me into a wall."

She nodded. "She twisted everything you said in such a way that it made him think you wanted to hurt me all the time. All the while, she would bat her eyelashes or stroke his hair; you know, softening him so he'd believe anything she told him."

"Thus the rift began," I muttered.

"Yeah." She paused. "Um, you remember what happened when you were walking to math class, right." She saw that I was about to shove her again, so she backed up. But she spoke anyway, "She only did that because she knew you were coming. And she knew it would tear you apart. It almost didn't happen because of the way I was resisting." She paused to shiver. "It was the most disgusting thing I ever did. He tasted like he hadn't brushed his teeth in a week. And perogies."

I raised an eyebrow. "What's wrong with perogies?"

"I hate perogies."

I didn't want to do it, but it happened before I could stop it. I smiled. And laughed a little. The more I tried to stop it, the more of it came out. And when Lydia joined in, the two of us just stood there, laughing like idiots, until tears formed in my eyes.

After we were finished, Lydia said, more softly, "You know who I really wanted to be with?"

I blinked. "Who?"

"Erek King." I laughed again. "No, seriously! He's sweet and kind and humble. He's the perfect gentleman. In fact, half the reason I joined The Sharing was because he was a member. But my Yeerk, in order to make me miserable, made Erek, who is also a Yeerk, do things to be close to me. As if she were telling me that he and I could never be together, because he was a Yeerk."

I bit my lip to stop myself from telling her the truth about Erek. It didn't surprise me that she fancied him; they were both disgustingly meek. Although, I didn't see how they could ever be together anyway: he was an android and she was human. How would it work?

The subsequent image I received made me laugh, to which Lydia took as me making fun of her. "Is it really that unbelievable?"

"No, no, not at all," I said, between snickering. "Can we go to the boiler room now?"

"Oh, sure." She finally started walking again.

I don't know what it was, but as I followed her to our destination, I began to see her in different light. The urge to bash her head against a table was ebbing. Maybe it was because I killed the being responsible for all the hostility I built up around her. And now that it was gone, maybe Lydia isn't as bad as I first thought…