Breakdown
Chapter One
One Year Later

Rachel leaned up against the kitchen counter, staring intently at the small TV that sat there on mute. Tobias came up behind her and put his arms around her waist. "Happy Victory Day," he whispered in her ear.
"Whatever," Rachel muttered.
Tobias dropped his arms and backed away. "What is it this time?"
"Does it have to be anything?" Rachel demanded.
"With you, there's usually something," Tobias muttered. He went to the refrigerator and sighed once the door was open. Three cans of beer were missing from the six-pack that had been full the night before. And it was only nine o'clock. "Hitting the booze a little early today aren't we?"
"Why shouldn't I?" Rachel slammed the power button on the TV. "Why do they need to have all these parades and specials today? Doesn't anyone else want to forget the whole damned thing ever happened?"
"Those who forget history are destined to repeat it."
"Oh, yeah. By forgetting I'm going to invite another race of aliens to enslave the human race. Right." Rachel grabbed her denim jacket. "I'll see you later."
"Wait, we have that press conference to go to this afternoon."
"Fuck the press conference," Rachel said. She slammed the apartment door.
Their apartment building wasn't the best in the city. The elevator was broken once again, so Rachel had to take the stairs down from the third floor apartment. She tried to take them two at a time, but she kept misjudging steps and ended up tumbling down the first two staircases before taking the last one one step at a time while firmly gripping the handrail.
"I need another beer," she muttered to herself as she left the building. She walked to the drugstore on the corner, but it was closed. "'Because of the holiday'," Rachel read on the sign on the front door. "Because of the fucking holiday." She kicked at the door, but ended up kicking the corner of a brick. "Ow!" she cried as she hopped on one foot. "Stupid brick. Stupid store. Stupid holiday!" The hopping and yelling weren't helping her headache. Rachel sat down on the curb, her head between her knees. She'd been hung over when she'd woken up so she'd grabbed another can first thing. Then another. Then another.
"Hey lady, you need something?"
Rachel looked up at the man standing over her. Even in her current state she could see he was a bum. Drunk or sober, she knew that plaid pants and a checked lumber jacket were a bad combination. But he had a brown paper bag in his right hand and she could see a bottle neck sticking out of it. "Um, yeah." She nodded toward the bag. "You got anything in there?"
The man shook the bag and bottle gently. The both heard the sloshing sound of liquid. "Yep," he said.
Rachel licked her lips while trying not to look desperate. "Could I, ah, have a sip?"
The man took a gulp. "Maybe. I'll need something in return, though."
"Anything," Rachel said. Her toes were throbbing in time with her head. She'd give anything to make them both stop.
"Well, y'see, you're a very nice looking woman. And it's been a long time since I've had any female companionship."
Rachel almost laughed. The bum wanted to sleep with her in exchange for a gulp of booze. To part of her it sounded ludicrous, but she'd slept with people for less. Besides, even booze-clouded sex could make some of the pain stop for awhile.
Carefully, Rachel stood up and tried to put on her most charming smile for the man. "Lead the way."
Grinning like an idiot, the man took Rachel's arm and led the way to an abandoned warehouse a block or two away. He pulled her past a couple dozen other bums, many of them passed out, to a corner where a lumpy mattress littered with beer bottles lay. "A lovely lady like yourself deserves better, some privacy at least, but it's what I've got to offer."
Rachel ignored the stares of the conscious street bums who called the warehouse home as she slipped off her jacket and quickly pulled her T-shirt over her head. "It's fine," she said. She kicked off her shoes, pulled off her jeans and underwear, then kicked most of the bottles off the mattress. She laid down and gave her bum the most seductive look she had. "I'll do whatever you want, baby."
"Whatever" wasn't much. The bum was so drunk that by the time he'd pulled his pants down and put on a condom, he lasted about two minutes before passing out. Rachel pushed him off her in disgust and grabbed his bottle. She gulped down the last bit of bitter whiskey and was about to pull her clothes back on when she noticed she'd drawn a crowd.
"All you want is booze?" one man asked.
"A condom, too, is preferable," Rachel said breezily.
One of the bums happened to have several. Probably stole them with his booze, Rachel thought. He passed them out to his buddies. Rachel lay back down and made herself as comfortable as possible. This wouldn't take long, but she might as well be comfortable for while she had to endure it.
An hour later, all the men who had had alcohol to spare had had their fun. After vomiting a couple of times, from the booze or the blow jobs or both, Rachel pulled her clothes back on and stumbled out of the warehouse and headed home.
She came back to an empty apartment. She managed to figure out the gist of a note from Tobias (he'd gone to lunch and wanted her to meet him at the restrant or the press conference). "Fuck that," she muttered and stumbled into the bedroom. She fell face first across the bed and promptly fell asleep.
About three hours later, Rachel woke up. "Blah," she muttered. She spit a couple times on the bedspread. "Yuck, what the hell?" Slowly her memory came back to her in fractured images. The first bum, the trade of sex for booze. The warehouse, the dozen or so men who had lined up like school children. . . .
"Oh, oh no," Rachel moaned. She stumbled to the bathroom adjacent to the bedroom and threw up in the sink.
After washing out the sink and her mouth, Rachel looked at herself in the mirror and groaned when she saw her reflection. She had dark circles under her eyes and dirt smudges on her face. And. . . "Oh my God." A hickey on her neck. She hadn't thought any of the men had stay conscious long enough to give her a hickey. Then she realized how much her clothes reeked and took them off carefully before surveying the damage to the rest of her body.
Mostly it was just dirt, but she saw a few scratches from fingernails, assorted bruises from her falls down the stairs, and her left arm had several long scratches that were all scabbed over by now. From the look of them, they were caused by broken glass. "Tobias will kill me when he gets back." Then she remembered his note and the press conference. He was there and, if by a miracle she remembered correctly, it was starting now. She turned on the radio then turned on the shower. She didn't need to find a station: anything involving the Animorphs was important enough to break into every radio and network TV station, and even some cable channels.
"Good afternoon." It was Jake talking. "On behalf of my friends and I, I'd like to say thank you for inviting us here. Rachel is unable to be here due to illness -"
"That's saying the least," Rachel said as she stepped into the shower.
" - and sends her regrets."
Rachel shook her head as she poured sweet smelling soap onto her bath sponge. "You are quite possibly the king of bull shit, Jake. In politics, anyway. I'm glad some things don't change."
Rachel half listened to the broadcast as she scrubbed her body and hair furiously, trying to remove the dirt and stench from herself. She didn't understand why anyone but Jake had to be at the press conference since he was the only one who spoke, going on endlessly about the importance of the day, and the importance of remembering the others who fought, like James and his group of Animorphs. No one else spoke until the press got to ask questions. Mostly inane things like what Marco's next Hollywood project was or what endangered species Cassie would save next.
No one even mentioned Rachel.
"What did I expect?" Rachel asked as she stepped out of the shower. The conference was ending so she turned off the radio. She wrapped a towel around her body, then another around her hair. She picked up her pile of stinking clothes and considered taking them to the laundromat, but of course it would also be closed. Besides, she wasn't sure if she wanted these clothes around as a reminder of today. So she grabbed a trash bag from the kitchen and threw them in. As soon as she was dressed, and had taken about ten aspirin for her headache, she took the clothes to the back of the building and threw them in the dumpster. When she got back to the apartment, Tobias was pacing around the living room.
"Thank God you're back!" he said as he crossed the room to give Rachel a tight hug. "I was scared to death. You stormed off this morning, then didn't show up for lunch or the conference and weren't here. . . . I don't know what I'd do if something happened to you."
Rachel smiled. How could she have been mad at this guy earlier? "Same here. I'm sorry I worried you. I've been here for awhile, I just wasn't feeling up to facing the press. I was just out back throwing some stuff away."
Tobias smiled and hugged Rachel again. He was glad to have Rachel back to normal and sober again. It was their unwritten rule to not mention her drinking when she was sober, so Tobias didn't say anything about why she'd stormed off earlier, or why she wasn't feeling well. "Come on, let's go have a little private celebration of our own," he whispered as he slid a hand under Rachel's turtleneck sweater, the only shirt she had that would cover all her newly acquired blemishes even though it was really too warm to wear it.
"No!" Rachel backed away quickly. She'd had enough sex for one day. For a lifetime, perhaps. "I mean, I really am sick," she said with an apologetic smile. "I think I should just sleep." She gave Tobias a chaste kiss on the cheek then went to the bedroom. She hadn't felt tired until the moment she had said it and was fast asleep as soon as she was under the covers.
After quickly demorphing and morphing, Tobias followed Rachel back to their room and looked at her from the doorway. She'd obviously gone out and gotten hammered and just as obviously, she'd done some things she regretted now. Unfortunately, neither even was unprecedented. He'd noticed Rachel's turtleneck. It was May and way too warm for such an outfit. She was obviously hiding something. But Tobias couldn't bring himself to prove it. If he did, he'd have to confront her, and she'd get angry and drink more and the whole cycle would repeat itself. In some ways, it was better for both of them to live in denial. At least then Tobias knew where she was. Most of the time.