Jake

Where the hell was Cassie? I needed to speak with her. As much as she might hate me right now, she had to listen to me. It was the end of the school day and I hadn't seen anyone but Ed, Mark and Nathan. I didn't have any classes with any of the others today except first period with Marco, but I wagged, watching the others smoke while I worried about Cassie.

Last period I didn't have any of the Animorphs in my class, but I didn't have Ed, Mark or Nathan in my class either, so when I retrieved my bag from my locker, and walked out of the school building, I had no idea where any of them were. Trusting my suspicions that Ed, Mark and Nathan were probably in the so called garden, I ventured there. I walked across the dirt patch and around another corner, where, most recently I had watched three guys get stoned.

"Great," I muttered to myself as I found it empty.

I turned around to walk back to where I had come from, when someone grabbed my shoulders and slammed me against the school building wall. At first the face staring up at me was unfamiliar, but when I blinked again, the face couldn't have been more familiar to me. Marco's angry face glared up at me, while Rachel's equally furious glare behind him let me know why they were so angry.

I tried to push Marco off, but surprisingly, he was too strong for me at the moment.

"Where are the drugs, Jake?" he spat at me.

"What are you talking about?" I lied.

"Don't play dumb, Jake," Rachel raged. "Just give Marco the drugs."

"Get off me," I snapped, shoving Marco off me for good.

"You take drugs now, Jake?" he asked.

"No," I said simply.

Rachel didn't buy my lie and I hadn't expected her to. She stalked over to me and roughly shook my bag off my shoulder. She opened it and peered inside. A disgusted expression crossed her face and she handed the bag to Marco.

"No?" he asked, pulling out the plastic bag. "What is this?"

I looked at the bag and shuddered.

"I'm not taking it," I said, truthfully. "I've never and will never take drugs."

Rachel snorted. "Not according to Cassie."

"Cassie saw Ed, Mark and Nathan take the drugs, not me," I defended.

"So why did you lie to us?" Marco asked sceptically.

"Because I really don't think you'd appreciate it if Mark came around your place, knocking the crap out of you," I retorted.

They seemed dumbfounded by my small speech, or whatever it was.

I sighed. "Look," I said. "I really had no idea what kind of a guy Mark or any of the others were. To me they were just average people."

"Yeah, to you," Marco agreed. "But not to anybody else."

"You want that?" I asked pointing to the plastic bag filled with drugs. "Because I've got two more at home that are untouched."

"No thanks," Marco said, obviously convinced that I had nothing to do with drugs.

"Where's Cassie?" I asked, remembering that I needed to talk with her.

"She didn't want to come with us," Rachel shrugged, taking the plastic bag in two of her fingers and throwing it into a pile of dirt. "She said something about she had given up on you or something."

I turned around and walked around the corner.

"Hey, where are you going?" Rachel shouted out at me.

I stopped in my tracks and turned around to face them. "Ed, Mark and Nathan are desperate to keep their usage to themselves," I explained. "They know Cassie knows about it. I've realised they're capable of anything."

"Do you want us to come?" Marco asked.

"I can handle them," I replied and walked out of the "garden".

I hurried towards Cassie's barn. I knew Cassie's parents would still be at the Gardens, which ironically was actually a garden, or close enough to it anyway. The reason that her parents were out made me more particularly nervous because she was all alone.

I turned a corner into her street and knew my gut instincts had proven to be right. The entrance to her barn was in full view and I saw her bend over an injured hawk in a cage. That's not what scared me though. What scared me was the fact the three prominent figures were just entering. I quickened my pace as I heard her shout out at them.

"What's going on here?" I demanded as I walked through the barn doors and saw the three bullies smiling evilly at Cassie while Cassie held a rake protectively to her chest.

"Jake," Ed said delightfully. "You've come to help us teach this—a lesson."

Let's just take a minute there to think about that. What Ed just called Cassie should have ended in the seventies. It shouldn't have even started in the seventies. I hate that kind of language, that kind of racism. It doesn't belong in a multicultural world. In fact it didn't belong in any world, whether it be human, Yeerk or Andalite. I hated it and I was going to put a stop to it.

"What did you call her?" I asked.

Ed repeated the word, enthusiastically. Cassie looked disgusted, but didn't say anything.

I didn't want to hear that again, not to anybody and definitely not to Cassie. I grabbed the collar of his shirt and hit him. It was like hitting Marco.

"Hey, man, that's out of line," Nathan growled, stepping forward and pulling Ed away from me.

"No," I replied. "Don't tell me what's out of line."

"Why'd you do it, Jake?" Mark asked, stepping in front of the others. "We're your buddies."

I laughed. "Sure," I replied. "But not anymore. Don't you dare call anyone that filthy name again."

"Or what?" Mark challenged.

"Would you like to find out?" I said.

"Come on, guys," Ed said, holding his nose. "Let's get out of here."

Ed practically ran outside. Nathan followed, but Mark remained.

"Watch your back Jake," he said, glaring at me.

I laughed, but found no humour in it at all. "Do you know what a tiger can do to a human being, Mark?" I asked, almost innocently.

"What?" he said, obviously stumped by the question.

"Do you know what a tiger can do to a human," I repeated.

He remained silent.

"A tiger is so soundless when it moves, it moves with grace," I said, playing the part, "that when it comes to attack you, you don't even know it until your throat has been ripped out. Don't mess with me, because I can turn into that tiger."

Mark stared at me, his emotions concealed, finally he turned around and walked out of the barn.

I put a hand to my forehead, trying to numb the throb. I turned around to meet Cassie. The rake was slightly lowered, but she hadn't lost her grip.

"Cassie, put down the rake," I said wearily.

"Why?" she asked, sounding delirious. "So you can smother me with your drugs? Is that it Jake?"

"I don't do drugs," I said, defiantly. "Put the rake down," I repeated. "I prefer my eyes in their sockets, thanks."
Cassie dropped the rake, but her eyes never left mine. "You don't do drugs?" she asked finally. "But I saw…"

"What you saw Cassie, were three guys getting high, me not included," I said, sitting on a bale of hay. "They've been giving me drugs for a while now. I've never taken it."

"You've never taken it?" she asked.

I looked up at her. "I was close to it," I admitted. "I was about to raise it to my mouth when Tom walked in on me."

"Tom walked in on you?" Cassie exclaimed, sitting down on a separate bale of hay. "Didn't you lock the door?"

"Yeah, I did, he must have picked the lock or something," I said. "That's when I knew I couldn't do it. I realised then that I had sunk lower than I've ever been in my life."

"What about the smoking?" Cassie asked, quietly.

"I quit that after the drugs," I confessed. "I was just feeling so low that I needed something to stimulate any kind of happiness I might have."

Cassie studied me for a moment and then as casually as she could, said, "What did your dad say, Jake."

I didn't even think about lying. "He told me that he loved my mum and he was proud of Tom and me. He said he wanted me to take care of myself."

I said this as though from another world. I stared out into space. By saying this it sort of made me realise that everything that had happened was true. It was all true. I was in a car accident, my dad had died. This wasn't a dream.

Cassie cleared her throat uncertainly and placed a hand on my arm. "How did the car crash?" she asked.

I looked at her carefully, snapping out of my revere. I didn't answer her, just stared at her.

"Rachel told us, Jake," she sighed. "Rachel is a witness and if you don't tell the police, she will."

"She can't prove it," I argued. "The phone is broken; they can't hack into my phone records."

"Why are you hiding it, Jake?" she asked quietly.

I got up and started pacing; rubbing my face as though I was just waking from a dream.

"What do you think they'll do with that kind of information, Cassie?" I asked.

"It was an accident," she replied. "What exactly did happen?"

I took a breath and prepared to tell what really happened for the first time. "It's funny really," I said. "He saw a Volkswagen of all cars! I mean a Volkswagen! He turned around on his seat to get a good look at it and he drove on the other side of the road. You know the rest."

Cassie stood up and walked towards me, she stood in front of me to force me to stop pacing.

"What your dad did was reckless," she said. "But it was an accident. Don't punish yourself for this. It's not your fault."

I nodded, and the funny thing was, I believed her.