Author's Note: Um... not much to say here. I haven't been able to update for a while because I went out of town for a week on a family vacation. I'll make up for it with a long chapter.
Disclaimer: Animorphs and related characters are property of Scholastic and K. A. Applegate
Claimer: Ricky, Amy, and Eftlak are property of ME!
Chapter Seventeen: Ricky's POV[I don't think this is a good idea, Ricky,] Eftlak told me, as I started the burgers. [You can barely afford to feed Amy and yourself already.]
[I'll work overtime or something. It's only for a week.]
[Well, I still don't think it's a good idea. Tom and Esp I trust, but what about those other people? What do we know about them?]
[We know that Tom and Esp trust them,] I pointed out.
[Granted. But they're both very trusting people. ESP trusts VISSER THREE, for heavens sake!]
[Visser Three's his twin.]
"Can I help?" someone asked me. Loren, I think. I shrugged.
"Plates are in the sink. There's about twenty. We don't use them much, but they can come in handy."
"Disposable plates?" Loren said inquisitively.
"Yeah, china's to easy to brake. Don't throw 'em out, though."
I turned back to the burgers. This always took a while. I didn't have a proper stove, so I had to use a microwave oven that I'd modified into a cook-top. Eftlak had helped.
[Ricky, PLEASE reconsider this. You can't feed nine extra people for a week!]
[We'll manage. I can't just turn them out, they're not built for the streets. I'd've thought that the Andalites could stay in the woods, though.]
[I cannot believe that you'd just let them stay without even asking why they 'need' to!]
[I'm sure they have a good reason, Eftlak. It may be better for us not to know.] I began flipping over the burgers. They were halfway cooked. They just needed a few more minutes. [The less we know, the less information we can reveal in torture.]
[How comforting. I feel SO reassured.]
"Ricky?" Loren said tentatively from behind me.
"That's my name, don't wear it out!" I quipped.
"Thanks. For letting us stay here, I mean. I know it isn't going to be easy..." She trailed off.
"Loren, meet Eftlak. I think you two would get along quite well together."
"What do you mean?"
"He's being very pessimistic about this."
Loren flushed. I could tell by her voice. "We... we didn't mean to cause trouble between you..."
"It's okay. Just one more thing to argue about." I laughed. "It'll help us with our compromising skills." I checked the burgers. "These're done. Dinner time!"
Amy had heard me. She came tearing out of her room like a wild animal. The others weren't far behind, though they moved at a much calmer pace.
I flipped the burgers off the stove and on to the buns with practiced ease, and handed on to each person. The two Andalites were back in human morph.
"Why is there an extra?" Loren asked.
"I told Pete he could join us if he was still sober," I explained. "He's probably sleeping it off."
Amy looked up from her burger. "He's nice when he's not drunk," she announced.
"Hey, Tom, Ricky, how do you two know each other?" asked Jake.
"Well, we are both in The Sharing," Tom pointed out.
"And Esp and Eftlak already knew each other," I added.
"We're from the same pool," Esp threw in.
"That's Sulp Niar, right?"
Eftlak proceeded to make me choke on my burger. "I can't believe you're STILL telling people that." Without waiting for a response, he turned to Jake. "Let me set things straight. Sulp Niar is a major pool on the Yeerk home world. As far as I know, no Yeerk from our pool has ever been to the home world. We were 'born', if it can be called that, in the first artificially made Yeerk pool to be taken off planet. It did not have a name. However, Esp was insecure about not being able to say which pool he was from—a standard part of Yeerk introduction—and since all three 'parent' Yeerks were from Sulp Niar, he began saying that he was, too. Though this may have also been because he was insecure about never having been to the home world at all."
Elfangor frowned. "If no Yeerk from your pool has ever been to the Yeerk home world, how did the Visser re-create parts of it when we accidentally created an alternate universe?"
"He probably accessed it through Alloran's memories," Esp answered.
"Is there any other misinformation you've given us that you would like to clarify?" Aximili demanded.
"No. Now are we going to tell you how Tom and Ricky originally met or are we going to play Twenty Questions?"
"You people use a lot of big words," Amy commented. "I'm done." She stayed still and waited for the rest of us to finish.
[I wonder where Pete is,] I said to myself. At least, I meant to say it to myself. Eftlak heard me, and thought I was talking to him.
[He either forgot, got drunk, or decided to stay home. Or some combination of those. Or all three.]
Everyone else finished shortly after Amy did. I went to get out dessert.
[We're lucky Amy wanted cupcakes instead of a real cake,] Eftlak commented.
[They're smaller, easier to eat, usually last longer, and, in Amy's mind, 'cute'.]
[I know, I'm just saying we're lucky about that. There're a dozen—one each and one for Pete if he shows up. He probably won't, though.]
We handed out the cupcakes, putting the extra one next to the extra burger. If Pete didn't show up, the burger would be Amy's breakfast tomorrow and the cupcake would be her dessert tomorrow night.
[It's sweet the way you always put Amy first,] said Eftlak. I hastily gave him control of the face so that no one could see me blush. [So,] he continued, [how are we going to feed nine extra people for a week?]
[I'll work extra shifts at my job. Boss will pay me overtime, and if he doesn't, I'll threaten to quit. I'm the only employee he's still got.]
[That's because you're so desperate for cash you'll take whatever you can. And he gives you discounts on regular shopping.]
Maybe I should explain that I work as a clerk, cashier, customer service rep, maintenance worker and janitor at a 7-Eleven. So far I've been through four armed robberies (three of which ended with the guys going to the hospital), ten shopliftings (all of which I handled discretely but effectively), and a series of attempted arsons by underage 'customers', outraged that I wouldn't sell them cigarettes. That's not even mentioning the many people who complained about the 'high prices' and 'bad service'. I didn't feel that either complaint was justified. Anyway, the job didn't pay much at first, but I'd gotten a raise every two months since I started—three years ago. I was twelve at the time.
Amy and I were half-siblings, related through our mother. Neither of us knew who our father was. Our mother had taken good care of us—she was the reason we had a house, and weren't living on the streets. She'd had temporary jobs as a waitress, a cashier, and an assistant at a Laundromat. There wasn't much money in any of the jobs she was given, but she was to honest, and proud, to steal from her employer. She was often fired for some reason—budget cuts, places going out of business, people applying who apparently needed the job more than she did, etc., but she still took care of us as best she could.
She was killed on my twelfth birthday. It was a hit and run—the driver was never found. Her death had been slow, painful. I'd been able to drag her off the road before it happened. I remember every detail perfectly.
"Ricky..." she'd gasped. Her breath rasped in her throat, it had to force its way past the blood. "Where's Amy?"
I'd actually felt resentful. She wanted Amy. "She's inside, Mom," I told her. "Are you okay?"
"Ricky... I'm dying..."
"No, Mom, you can't die," I'd whispered. "We need you..."
"I... I need you, too..." Her eyes lost focus. "Ricky... promise me that... that you'll ... take care of Amy... No matter what..."
"I promise, Mom. I'll take care of Amy. No matter what."
"Ricky... I... I love you..."
"I love you too, Mom," I'd whimpered. I remember wiping my eyes, and being surprised that my hand came away wet. "Mom?"
Silence. She was dead. I collapsed and cried for what seemed like hours. A police car came by and saw me. The officer asked me some questions—I lied for some of it, pretended that Amy was older than I was and I could stay with her. I had no intention of letting them take me to an orphanage. The officer took away the body. I applied for my job the next day.
It was the worst birthday of my life.
I'd gotten addicted to cigarettes when I was thirteen. Some packages had been ruined in shipping, and my boss let me have them. I'd gotten addicted to beer at about the same time, when Pete had offered me some. Amy had been quite upset when I came home drunk. I don't remember it, but she told me later that I'd yelled at her.
Amy was the reason I joined The Sharing. I'd heard about them, I forget where, and I thought maybe they could help. Like Eftlak said, I always put Amy first. I knew cigarettes and alcohol were bad for me, but without Amy as an incentive, I would have died drunk and smoking. (Although, without Amy, I probably wouldn't have cared enough to get a job, so maybe I would have just died drunk.) I'd hoped that The Sharing could help me to quit.
They did help, a bit. I had trouble organizing my job and the meetings to fit together without neglecting Amy entirely. However, this also meant I didn't really have time to smoke or drink anyhow. For some reason, I never mentioned Amy at the meetings. I didn't know why, but when I was made a full member, I was glad that I'd kept my mouth shut about her.
I was lucky to get Eftlak. He had some kind of disorder that made it impossible for him to completely control a host, so he immediately tried to be friendly. He agreed not to mention Amy if I agreed to keep his disability a secret. Amy would be to young for the Yeerks to use her as a full time host body, anyway, (or so he told me,) but she might be used as a 'practice host' or 'training host' for Yeerks who'd never had one before.
I would NEVER let Amy be infested. Even if she got a disabled Yeerk like Eftlak, or a gentle one like Esp, if I could prevent her from being infested, I would. She knew about Eftlak—at least, she knew what I had told her and she could understand, which wasn't much. Mostly she knew that he was a secret.
Everyone was eating his or her cupcake when I excused myself. I slipped into the 'den' and got Amy's present. She liked unicorns and stuffed animals, so I figured a stuffed unicorn would be the perfect gift for her, short of bringing Mom back to life.
I reentered the kitchen in time to see Amy finish her cupcake. She had frosting all around her mouth and a bit on her cheeks. I'd have to wash her face before she went to bed—she still hadn't mastered doing it herself.
"Oh, A-my," I singsonged.
"Hi, Ricky!" she said brightly.
"Happy birthday!" I announced, revealing the unicorn with a flourish. Amy squealed, jumped up, and grabbed me in a bear hug.
"Thanks, Ricky!" She examined the unicorn as I pried her off of me. "I'll call her Nicole. Nicky for short, so she's almost named after you!"
"Thank YOU, Amy. I'm honored." Somehow I managed not to laugh when I said that. Most of her stuffed animals—the unicorn made six—were named after me somehow.
Eftlak WAS laughing. [I wonder if she'll ever realize that Ricky is short for Richard.]
Author's Note: No more updates for a while because my parents are making me come camping. I'm not sure how long it'll be.
I am not going to have Pete come into this (which is a shame because he becomes a major character) until someone guesses correctly who he is. (Hint: people have been requesting him.)