"We can do an inventory of our history, but for now I don't wanna know. Lie to me... let it sink into my brain."
—Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, 1991

I leaned back against the cool stone of the memorial obelisk behind me, crossing my arms. "You know something funny?" I said quietly. "For the longest time I thought that everything—everyone—would have been better off, if you'd just given me a good clean death the way you tried to do."

It was the middle of the goddamn night, and I was due back to the courthouse in just over four hours. And yet here I stood.

Rachel's grave was, as always, covered in wreaths and cards and bouquets. I never knew who left them—no one in my family really went for that kind of thing, and as far as I knew Aunt Naomi and Uncle Dan hadn't been back here since the funeral. Admirers, maybe. Grateful strangers whose lives she had saved, even though she'd never learn their names and at the time they hadn't known hers. Their connection to this place was probably stronger than ours: we all knew that she wasn't buried here, that she would have hated the candid no-makeup photo that someone had propped up against the headstone.

"Anyway." I wrapped my arms a little tighter around myself; it was the middle of January and a cold breeze blew through the graveyard. "I only really realized that I'd been assuming that was the case because, uh, I think now I was wrong. I'm starting to think that there are a lot of things I would have missed. Ones that wouldn't have been worth missing. Things I will miss in the future, if I drop dead tomorrow, that it would really suck to miss. And, uh, I haven't thought that in a long time. Like, a really long..."

Rachel probably would have hated the plastic flowers and the school photo where you could see her pores and the zit on her left cheek, but I had a feeling that she would have loved the monument itself. In the grey pre-sunrise light it looked majestic and terrifying. When the artist who designed it had described the idea to Jake in an attempt to get the Official Animorphs Stamp of Approval on the thing (which ended up being more like the Official Animorphs Shrug of Apathy), I'd assumed that it was going to turn out hideous-looking and bizarre. But the reality was surprisingly graceful.

The statue looming over the headstone showed Rachel striding forward confidently with her head thrown back and her hair streaming behind her. Her outstretched arms were a pair of eagle wings adorned with hork-bajir elbow blades, the foot she had planted on the front of the plinth ended in a grizzly bear paw, and her face was framed by halo-like elephant ears. Her back leg managed to form half a dolphin's tail without making her look like a ridiculous mermaid-thing, and she had an extra pair of many-jointed insect limbs sprouting from the middle of her body.

It was filled with movement and light like it was about to lunge forward at any second on its terrifying mishmash of body parts and kill anyone who dared look on it. She looked like a cross between that headless angel sculpture from ancient Greece and one of the fiercer-looking statues of Shiva, only more like a movie monster than either of those.

"Like, maybe I'm fucking this all up," I whispered. "But maybe I want to keep trying anyway."

Someone had left a candle on the edge of the plinth, burned-out wax slopping over the side and frozen now in a single moment of freefall.

"So, yeah." I cleared my throat. "I guess what I'm saying is, turns out there is life after high school. So I'm sorry that you're missing it. But I also, uh, I want to be grateful. I mean I am grateful. Because..." I spread out my arms, almost sliding sideways off the monument I was leaning against. "Because it seemed like I should tell someone. Because, not gonna lie, there've been times when I thought the dead were the lucky ones. But I'm starting to think there's some stuff worth sticking around for as well. Only if you'd opted to say 'fuck it' and stay safe at home, I'd be dead or worse. So... Thanks."

The night was cold and getting ever colder. They probably needed me to testify tomorrow—today, I guess—if the lawyers ever got over their technicalities and moved the damn evidence forward. Rain threatened in the low-slung clouds overhead, and I hadn't forgotten that I was technically trespassing in a national cemetery right now.

I stayed.

"You gonna lurk up there all night, or are you going to come down like a normal person?" I said at last, voice loud and hoarse.

The ancient tree that separated this section of graves from the rest of the cemetery rattled, and a dark shape swooped down from its upper branches.

I blinked, startled, when Tobias flared and landed gracefully on one of Rachel's outstretched insect-legs. I'd been expecting Marco, with an outside chance of either Jake or Cassie.

"Anybody ever tell you that it's rude to lurk in trees and watch other people grieve?" I said, trying to hide my surprise with irritation.

{You know, they never actually covered that one in any of the etiquette classes I had in elementary school,} Tobias said, cocking his head at me.

"Etiquette classes? Where the hell'd you go to elementary school?" We'd only ever had math and reading and occasional hodge-podge science or history when I'd been a kid.

{West Virginia. And Colorado. And Pennsylvania, I guess, but I was there for less than a year so I don't really count that one.}

This conversation was very weird and I was starting to regret having gotten into it in the first place. "What were you, a miniature Holden Caulfield?"

{Foster kid.}

"Oh."

{Anyway, sorry, I guess. For being weird.}

I sighed. "You saved my sorry butt last month, so I'll give you a pass. Several more, too, if it comes to that."

{Thanks.} Tobias settled into a more comfortable position on Rachel's marble arm.

"Uh-huh."

{You ever resolve that one, by the way?} he asked.

I grimaced. "Kind of. She's on trial for six or seven of the murders now."

{You don't sound particularly happy about that fact.}

I opened my mouth to make some dismissive comment about how zombies never sound happy about anything and he shouldn't take it personally, but I closed it again without saying anything. The truth of the situation wasn't one that I should be able to wave aside. "She might have been right all along," I said at last.

{What, you think people should kill voluntary hosts now?} Tobias sounded annoyed.

"No." I stared into space across the dark graveyard, trying to figure out the words I wanted to use. "But... the yeerks had her for a long time. And they did things to her that no one should ever have to live through."

{Couldn't the same be said of all you guys?}

I bit my lip. "Not exactly. You, uh, you know how the yeerks were getting more hork-bajir, right? I mean after that first generation they took by force from the home world."

It took Tobias quite a while to answer. {Honestly I hadn't thought about it before, but now that I have worked it out, I think I was better off not knowing.} He'd gone tense, sharp, watching me with unforgiving intensity.

"Um, yeah." I shifted position, not sure I should even be talking about this. "Anyway, turns out the yeerks had already made the first forays into breeding human hosts as well. She was one of the first victims they used as a mother. She's been going after the voluntaries involved with the project."

{Hrthesthr.} Tobias said it like a curse.

"What's that?" I said. I'd heard the term before—it was from the native hork-bajir language—but didn't know what it meant.

He laughed without humor. {Literally, it translates to 'one who is so careless in cutting the bark from a tree as to damage the wood underneath, causing the entire tree to become diseased and rot.' Figuratively...}

"Ouch." Yeah, I could figure that one out. "I always just guessed it meant 'yeerk,'" I admitted. "But then, the only time I'd heard it before was from hork-bajir hosts during feedings, so I guess that makes sense."

{I wasn't talking about the yeerks.} Tobias's voice was thick with disgust.

I thought again of Sophie Hatter dead on the pavement, of how Margaret's claws must have torn into her. Of the bleak terror of freefall, and how much worse it must have been with no wings to save her. Had that been justice? Had she been a monster who the world was better off without?

Had I, in fact, made everything worse by meddling?

{Anyway, you were saying.}

Oh. Margaret. "She was killing the voluntary hosts who were complicit in... what happened to her. And to the kids that the yeerks took from her and basically lobotomized."

{So you're pretty sure you should have left her to it.}

I tensed, hunching my shoulders. Hearing it so bluntly phrased was... It was like the pain of the razor severing tendons and skin and prying apart the bones. Brilliant and world-crystallizing and shocking and vomit-inducing horrible, all at once.

"She was killing human beings," I whispered.

{So?}

"So murder's not... I just mean..."

I didn't have an answer for that one. She'd put more pain into the world with what she did, but then maybe so had I.

Tobias said something else and I missed it.

"Hmm?" I said at last, looking up at him.

{I was just wondering why the heck she was so determined to kill you, if that was her M.O.}

"Oh, that." I pressed one hand over my eyes, even knowing it wouldn't help the headache building in my brain. "I ran my mouth on national television, and it came off sounding like I might have been a voluntary myself."

{What?} Tobias shuffled his wings restlessly, looking impatient. {That's bullshit. There's tons of evidence that you're not— There's no way you were— I saw you punch a taxxon-controller, for Pete's sake!}

Yeah, that had been one of the stupider things I'd ever done, on a long list of extremely stupid things. I had paid dearly for that little escape attempt, along with most of the other hosts involved. Just picture the worst migraine you've ever had, and then double it, and then double that until you want to throw up from the pain, and then imagine that every nerve in your entire body is...

Anyway, you get the picture.

"What can I say," I drawled. "It's that legendary Berenson caution at work. Measure twice, cut once, practically there on the family crest."

Tobias laughed silently. {Yeah, well, if you need anyone to tell people that you definitely weren't there because you wanted to be...}

"Thanks." I smiled tightly. "But I've got everyone from ex-hosts to Animorphs to your mom giving statements on my behalf already. At this point it's only interesting to the really scungy tabloids."

{Still, what happened to her. It sounds like it messed her up.}

"No disagreement here," I said. "Like you said. I probably should have left her to it."

{Killing people? I mean, if you really think it was helping her...}

"What? No. I don't think it was helping anyone." I shook my head sharply. "I just don't think that doing nothing while they walked around free was helping her either."

{So what would you do if you could do it differently?}

"I don't know." I ran a hand over my hair. "Have a conversation with her? But I guess if I did she'd probably just kill me. And her kids... I don't know. They were murdered, and she murdered someone else."

{And it didn't fix anything.}

"I didn't fix anything either."

{Sorry, man, I'm not a fortune cookie. I've got nothing.}

"Yeah." I sighed, glancing away from him. "Yeah, I guess."

We lapsed into silence, the graveyard around us as quiet as... Well, you know.

The hosts who died during infestation didn't get graves and headstones. I tried, and failed, to avoid imagining a tiny infant body tossed to the hungry taxxons below. Had the baby even had a name? How long had it lived? Was it, in fact, still alive when they threw it into the tunnels?

"It's weird, isn't it?" I said at last, when the silence got too long for even me to stand.

Rachel was still watching us both in fierce silence. Would she have understood what I did? Would she have understood Margaret?

{What is?}

"Trying to figure out what someone would have wanted, after..." I shrugged, shoulders rubbing against the cool stone of the monument I leaned against. "After death."

{Why should it matter at all?} Tobias sounded harsh. I knew there was more emotion than his cold tone revealed hiding behind those predators' eyes, though.

"I don't know, common courtesy?" I shrugged again. Rachel's metal eyes were half-lidded, hollow and yet piercing. "Like, you usually try your best not to do stuff that would hurt the people you care about before they're dead. So it's sort of natural that that instinct to do what's best for people, especially the ones you care about, continues after. Right?"

Tobias was silent.

"Sorry," I mumbled. "I'm talking nonsense."

{So what would she have wanted?} Tobias asked, glancing up at the statue's face. Like me, he wasn't talking about Margaret anymore.

To live, I thought, but the idea of saying so out loud seemed unnecessarily cruel. "For me?" I smiled tightly. "A bullet in the head, no doubt."

{We both know that's not true.}

I gave Tobias a long, steady look. "Uh-huh."

{If that was the case, why the hell did she not just kill you the instant she figured out you were a controller?} he asked. {It would have been simpler. Safer. For everyone on the team. What she wanted was what you've got. You. Free. No yeerk.}

"Oh, sure," I said, "and she wanted you to become some recluse who lives in a tree for the rest of eternity. Don't be naive."

{Hey, man, you're the one all worried about doing what she would have wanted. Personally I don't give a crap one way or another.}

I rolled my eyes. "Bullshit."

{She's gone,} Tobias said. {And we both know whose fault that is. Consider it me doing the only favor I owe her that I haven't done anything about that.}

"Are you threatening me?" I said, baffled.

{What?} Now Tobias was the one who sounded genuinely surprised. {Of course not. I wasn't talking about you.}

Oh. So that's how it was. "Uh-huh." I crossed my arms. "Well, in that case thank you ever so much for not killing Jake. What saintly self-control that must take, denying yourself the opportunity for murder out of love for Rachel. Clearly I cannot begin to comprehend the—"

{Shut up,} he snapped.

"You realize that the decision to stay or go, to die or not, came down to one person, right?" I said. "And that one person wasn't Jake."

{She never would have even been in that situation if not for what Jake decided was best,} Tobias said bitterly.

I hadn't been present when that particular decision was made, and I was pretty sure Tobias hadn't been either. All I knew was that Jake didn't have nearly enough stubbornness—and Rachel didn't have nearly enough compliance—that he could have in a million years gotten her to agree to anything she didn't want to do.

I slid down the mausoleum at my back to sit on the damp grass, not caring about its unpleasant coolness. "What I'm getting out of this conversation is that you're only pissed at Jake because it's easier than being pissed at Rachel."

{Gee, thanks for the gross oversimplification, Dr. Phil.} Tobias glared at me, feathers puffed with annoyance. {You've cleared everything right up.}

"Well, at least the 'oversimplification' part tells me I'm partially right," I said.

Tobias turned away from me.

"Awesome." I flattened my right hand against the grass, cool blades slipping between my fingers. "Glad we got that all straightened out."

{Look, I get it, okay?} Tobias burst out. {I know. She only did it because she had nothing left to live for. She knew there wasn't a point to life after the war. I know I wasn't enough to keep her here. Not when... When I wouldn't even become human for her, when she asked. So she figured she didn't have me, wouldn't have the war, wouldn't have anything. Might as well die, right? Trust me, I get it.}

I stared at him for several seconds. Also not at all where I had been expecting this conversation to go. "If you managed to get that out of what I just said, then you must have been listening to someone else," I said slowly. "How the fuck does you not wanting to be human cause Rachel's death?"

{I just told you. She obviously didn't see the point in sticking around.}

"So let me get this straight. You think you're the reason Rachel's dead?"

{Fuck you.} He hadn't left yet, which I was choosing to take as a good sign.

"I'm gonna go ahead and take that as a 'yes.'" I snorted a laugh, which was probably rude. "Fucking hell, you're as bad as Jake."

{Excuse me?}

If he took it as that much of an insult, that was his problem.

"Both of you, it's like..." I leaned my head back, thinking. "Like that chicken in that story that thinks it makes the sun come up and if for some reason it doesn't crow at dawn then the whole world will be dark forever."

{Rooster,} Tobias said flatly.

"Huh?"

{It'd have to be a rooster. Chickens don't crow.}

"You're the expert," I said easily. "Anyway, quick point of clarification..." I sat up all the way to look at him, squinting through the low light. "Are you now or have you ever been a yeerk, an Ellimist, or one of those creepy Leeran things?"

What? Tobias still sounded hostile, but he was also still sitting there.

"Are you now or—?"

{No. No I haven't,} he said.

"Then," I said slowly, "how the fuck are you controlling other people's actions?"

{Again with the massive oversimplification.}

"Fine then." I shifted into a more comfortable position as if getting ready to sit there all night. "Explain to me how I'm wrong. Tell me how you—or Jake, or whoever—caused Rachel's death, without actually being the ones to kill her."

{That's not what I meant.}

"Efflit thirteen-eighteen," I snapped.

{What?}

"Yeerk. No rank. Total psychopath. Controlled a guy named Tendai Matsika. Favored a polar bear morph. Visser Seventeen's second-in-command." I spread out my arms. "Hey look. I figured out who's responsible for her death."

Tobias had suddenly become fascinated with preening his own feathers. I stared into space, waiting him out.

{We could have found another way,} Tobias said at last. It sounded weak even to me.

"One that had a one-hundred-percent guarantee that a whole fuckton of other people wouldn't die in her place?" I asked.

He didn't answer.

"Well, when you figure that one out, let me know." I hauled myself to my feet using a nearby cross for support. My left leg was all pins and needles because I didn't move around enough when staying in one place. Add it to Eva's unending list of Zombie Problems.

{You don't know everything either,} he said at last. {You didn't know her like I did.}

I tilted my head, conceding the point to him. "In that case, you mind interpreting? Taking an educated guess about what she'd want?"

It took him a long time to answer. When he did, he spoke very slowly like he was choosing each word before using it. {She'd want what she got. Like I said. I wasn't enough. Sorry.}

"So maybe that's it. Maybe—"

Maybe Rachel was the only one who would understand, who wouldn't judge, if I told her what I'd done. That I'd been so angry, so righteous, that I hadn't asked enough questions. That I'd drawn out Margaret's life. That I had done whatever it took to take her down, and then to keep her alive. That I'd been angry, and it had made me ruthless. No. It had made me cruel.

Yeah, that was the real reason I came out here tonight. I know, I know, pathetic. Shut up.

{What, you got it all figured out?} Tobias asked.

"Fuck no." I stood up, dusting myself off. It was occurring to me for the first time that Tobias had probably been here before I'd shown up. That I had interrupted, not the other way around. "But... anyway, thanks."

{What for?}

"I don't know, existing?" I shrugged. "Obviously the sum total of your life has made the universe suck less, so... thanks. For that."

Tobias stared at me, expression inscrutably birdlike, for several more seconds. Then he suddenly took off, swooping low overhead before he caught an updraft and flapped upward into the sky.

I opened my mouth to say something rude about Tobias's idea of ending a conversation, glanced up at the statue, and thought better of it. Instead I scooped a pebble off the ground and balanced it on the edge of the plinth.

The ocean beyond the rise above me was just starting to become visible in the pink and grey light of the dawn, waves gilded by the first light of the sun breaking over the horizon. It was high time I moved on and headed home.