Memories

Chapter Three

Jake did the only thing he could to save us. To save me. He gave me the blue box. He told me how to acquire the hawk named Tobias and turn into a bird to escape.

I'm sure I was afraid. I would've been an idiot not to be. Turning into a bird, watching Jake loose half his tail feathers to a shotgun, flying back to the barn. Who wouldn't have been scared witless? But I can't remember the fear. I've felt fear many times since that day I woke up alone, so I can imagine how it must have felt. I can imagine a sense of doom worming away inside me, slowly eating away at everything. I can imagine the blind terror that kept my mind from functioning in any logical way. I can imagine it, but I can't remember it. And fear was such a driving emotion in those days. It had to be. Nothing else was strong enough to keep us going.

"I didn't have a choice," Jake sighed, rubbing his hand through his hair. "We were trapped. Julie couldn't run, even if they hadn't been right behind us."

"And that's another thing," Marco ranted, continuing a tirade that he'd been keeping since Jake and I flew into the barn nearly twenty minutes earlier. "Who were those guys? I'm mean, have the Yeerks started just sending out random search and destroy parties? They had SHOTGUNS!"

"Really? I hadn't noticed."

Marco scoffed. "Oh, fine time for you develop a sense of humor, Jake."

Cassie chose that moment to cut in with her soft, calming voice. "What do we do now?"

Everyone looked over to the corner where I sat, shivering under a blanket and trying to hide my nakedness. By necessity, my clothes were under a tree in the forest. My mind was still in shock, still trying to process what had happened, not realizing that they were talking about me.

Jake crouched next to me and touched my shoulder lightly, jerking me out of my dazed state. I scooted away from him and clutched the blanket closer to me.

"What do you want?"

"We need to know what we're going to do now, and that's a decision you need to be a part of."

I looked from one face to the next, trying to understand what they were asking of me. "I…wha-"
"Now, hold on Jake." Marco pulled on Jake's shoulder, making him turn away from me and face the group. "Are you talking about letting her join?" He leaned in closer and lowered his voice, but didn't quite whisper. Like he was talking about something he wanted to avoid, not something he wanted to keep secret. "Remember David?"

Jake's eyes flashed for a moment, in anger or fear I couldn't tell. "I remember. But Julie isn't David and it's a bit late to just leave her out of it."

"Leave-" I tried to raise my voice in protest, but it cracked and I had to swallow while they watched me. "Leave me out of what?" I asked quietly.

Jake looked at the others, who either nodded or avoided his gaze. And then he told me.

We talked late into the night. It was past midnight when I returned to home. I landed on my back porch and waited until I saw Jake, who was de-morphing in his own backyard, go in though his backdoor. While I appreciated his offer to guide me home in bird morph, I had to be careful until Cassie had a chance to teach me to morph clothes. Grateful that my parents were already asleep, I quietly crept through the house, dressed in pajamas, and crawled into bed. I was so exhausted, physically, mentally, and emotionally, that I fell asleep and didn't move until noon the next day.

"Good morning," Mom called cheerfully from the table as I stumbled into the kitchen.

I grunted in response and fell against the fridge door, leaning my head against the cool metal surface.

"Are you okay, honey?"

"Quiet. I'm eating by osmosis."

"Well, if you ever get bored with that there's some lunch leftovers for you in the fridge."

I considered moving to get the food, then decided it took too much effort and grunted instead.

"Oh, and Jake called about an hour ago."

Memories from the previous night flooded my mind and I had to wait a few moments until I was sure I could talk in a steady voice. "What did he say?"

"Not much. Just to call him once you wake up. Something about a history paper."

"Oh. Right." The damn history paper. Just one more thing to worry about on top of aliens taking over the planet, one neighbor at a time. Not to mention friends who turn into animals and crushes who aren't fully human. "Yeah. I'll call him after I eat."

She didn't say anything as I reheated and ate the covered bowl of spaghetti. Nor did she mention the phone call as I rinsed my dishes and wandered into the living room to watch TV. I kept glancing over at the phone mounted on the kitchen wall, wondering if it would ring. Wondering what would happen if I called Jake. Wondering what would happen if I didn't call Jake. Would he call again? Would he come over? What did he want to say? More about last night? Or would he tell me to forget the whole thing? Or that it was all just a sick joke?

Or maybe he just wanted to talk about school. Maybe it never happened. Maybe...I was drunk. The whole thing was a dream. Anything.

I sat on the couch, trying to find a sane explanation, or maybe just a more pleasant one, when the phone rang, scaring me witless and making me jump about three feet in the air. Mom answered it.

"Julie! It's for you."

"Is it Jake?"

"Yup."

I heaved a sigh and got off the couch to take the phone. "Yeah?"

"Hey, Julie. Your mom told me she would tell you to call me."

"She did. I just didn't feel like it."

"Um...oh."

I sighed again. "Look, sorry. Didn't really mean to snap at you."

"S'okay."

"So, um, about last night-"

"Yeah, I just wanted to ask if I could come over. You took a book I need when you came over here the other day. Besides, you're so good at history, I thought you might be able to help me."

"History paper? You want to talk about a history paper? When we just-"

"Is your mom home?"

I stopped short, taking note of my surroundings for the first time. Mom was still seated at the table, looking at me suspiciously. "Um...yeah...that's fine. You can come over."

"Great. I'll be there in a minute."

I hung up the phone, beet red. Partly from how my side of the conversation sounded to my mother, and partly from the fact that I'd nearly compromised the secret so soon after learning it. She didn't ask for an explanation and I didn't offer one; I just returned to the living room to wait for Jake.

As soon as I let him in, we headed upstairs to my room. I dropped into my desk chair and looked at him expectantly. "Well? Or did you really come for the history paper?"

"Are Alex and Andi here?"

I gave him a patronizing look. Alexander and Andrea, my twin younger siblings, were well known for their curiosity, but his paranoia was starting to get annoying. "No, they're still at that space camp for another few days. And Dad went to the store and Mom's in the kitchen, so unless you think someone planted a bug in my room, you can say whatever you like."

"I'm just trying to be careful."

"So what did you want?"

He sat on the edge of my bed and looked at me with real concern that made me feel guilty. "I just wanted to see how you're doing. See if you have any questions about...last night."

Questions? I had a million questions. But only one that would make any difference. "What am I supposed to do?"

"Huh?"

"You guys told me about the Yeerks and how you're fighting them and all that, but no one talked about me. What happens to me now? Do I just go on my merry way and what not?"

Jake sighed and rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. "Well, it's really up to you. If that's what you want, you can do that."

His statement clearly had a second part so I waited expectantly for him to finish. "Or?" I prompted.

"Or...you can fight, too."

I stared at him, wide-eyed. The idea wasn't exactly new to me, just something I'd been avoiding. To hear him say it out loud made it concrete. Made it real.

Made it a responsibility.

"Look, you don't have to. We can't ask you to risk your life for anything. But if you wanted, we need all the help we can get."

"But I don't have to?"

"No, you don't have to."

I could hear the disappointment in his voice as he said it. Disappointment and just a bit of hope.

I glared at him in fury. "Shit, Jake, how can you say that? 'We need your help to save the planet, oh, but you can just sit on your keester and watch us all risk our lives if you want. That's fine.' Yeah, right, what kind of choice is that?"

He shrugged and avoided looking at me. "It's your choice."

I put one elbow on the desk and propped my chin on one palm. "Well, both options suck."

"I know."

We sat for a while, the silence stretching between us. I kept hoping he might suddenly speak up, give me a third option, a way out. But he just sat on my bed, staring at the floor.

"Who's David?" I finally asked when I realized he wasn't going to speak up.

He waited a long time before answering. "He was a kid who found out about us once. They took his family before we could do anything about it and so he joined us. Only...it didn't really work out."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning he couldn't handle it and tried to betray us."

I stared at my desk, trying to process it all and seething with resentment at my situation. "Well, no wonder Marco didn't want to include me. Anything else you neglected to mention?"

Jake gave me a look that reminded me of a father scolding a temper-throwing four-year-old. "There's a lot we didn't tell you. Some things are need to know, and as of yet, you don't need to know them."

"Right, just tell me enough to get me to join and leave the rest for later."

"Are you saying we should have told you everything up front?"

"Yeah. I'm rather fond of the truth."

"Except when you're the one telling it."

I opened my mouth, ready to argue back, but couldn't think of a single thing to say. The insult stung more than it should have.

Jake made an aggravated noise and rubbed the back of his neck again. "I'm sorry, Julie, I shouldn't have said that."

I slouched in my chair and traced the wood-grain patterns on my desk with one finger, refusing to look at him. "Why are you so desperate for me to join when you don't even trust me?"

"I do trust you." He waited for me to reply, then pressed on when I didn't. "I've known you four years, Julie. I know you're a good, loyal friend and I know you're smart. I trust you to make the right choice, whichever choice that might be." He smirked slightly. "And I know you can keep a secret."

I glanced at him from the corner of my eye, wondering if he was talking about his years-long crush on Cassie, or the time I helped him play hooky from school, or one of the many other times I'd kept my lips sealed when I didn't have to. Not that it really mattered. I'd never consciously give away this secret.

"No one's going to find out about you from me. I promise."

"That's good enough for me." He gave a slow smile and stood. "Look, you don't have to decide anything right now. Think on it for a couple of days."

I gave him a frightened look. "A couple of days?"

"Yeah. We can afford to take a break for the weekend, so take your time. Think it out."

"Okay, but what I do in the meantime?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. It's the weekend. Do whatever you want. Watch TV. Read something. Write more of that book you think no one knows about."

I blushed and glared at him. "How'd you know about that?"

"You write bits of it the margins of your notes."

My blushed deepened and he laughed softly as he left the room, reminding me of Tom. I sent a host of ill-wishes after him. He'd never be copying my notes again.

I leaned back in my chair with a sigh and stared at my computer. Write? Writing was a great way to work out my emotions. Everything becomes clearer when someone else is doing it and you can look on from a distance.

But I didn't want to write. I didn't want to be objective, and I didn't want to work things out. In fact, I wanted to blot out the memory of the whole past week. I wanted to do something normal. Something mind-numbingly simple and normal.

I wanted to go shopping.

Paul was ecstatic to get my call and I was only too happy to meet her at the mall's bookstore. Paul was my very best friend and loved to rant about everything, starting with her name, Pauline, and going all the way down through politics to dating to books and somehow, always, back to her name.

"Julie!" she called, rushing over from the new releases section.

I opened my arms wide and we hugged and squealed in the middle of the store like the stereotypical teenage girls we were.

"So how have you been?" she asked when the public display was over.

"Fine," I answered, giving the standard response and not thinking about how completely false the statement was. "How's private school treating you? I never see you anymore now that we're not in class."

Paul sighed heavily and rolled her eyes. "It's horrible," she whined.

I laughed and led her away from the front door and toward the café. "Well, how 'bout you buy me a tea and tell me all about it?"

"Whatever."

She bought drinks for both of us and we settled at one of the small tables. After a few moments of contented sipping, she started the expectant rant.

"Well, first of all, all of my teachers call me 'Miss Pauline.' How whacked is that? 'Miss Pauline?' It screams 'pampered airhead.' Oh, but don't try and tell them that. They all think it's 'cute.'"

I laughed silently and motioned for her to continue.

"And the other students? I swear, one day I'm going to kill one of these wanna-be rich kids and it won't be my fault. We have one who claims she's a 'Goth cheerleader.'"

Paul continued her rant for a solid half-hour, during which we both laughed more than I had in weeks, until the perfect little moment was utterly ruined for me. Glancing over Paul's shoulder, I saw Marco wander in the front door, acting as if everything were perfectly normal.

At least he knew enough not to even glance at me before meandering further into the store.

"Hold on a moment, Paul. I've got to use the little girl's room."

To my credit, I really did go to the restroom before seeking out Marco. He was browsing through the comic section, looking at one of those cheat books for video games.

"What are you doing here?" I demanded, marching strait up to him.

He looked up from his book, a genuine look of surprise on his face. "Reading a book," he replied without missing a beat. "What are you doing here?"

I rolled my eyes and crossed my arms over my chest. "Please. Why are you guys still following me? I thought we'd already established that I'm on your side. More or less."

Marco lost the innocent, surprised look and matched me glare for glare. "No one's following you, Miss Paranoia. I just came to the mall to get a new book."

That made me pause and think. Maybe he was just at the mall. But still, who can blame me for being suspicious?

"Jake didn't tell you to follow me?"

Marco scoffed and put the book back on the shelf. "No. In fact, he made a point of telling us all not to follow you. Said we should give you some space to think, or some bull like that."

"You don't agree with him?"

"No, I don't." He looked strait into my eyes when he talked, something that unnerved me. Not many people bother with the directness of eye-contact. "I think you shouldn't be trusted like that until we know for sure what you're going to do. Call me crazy, but I don't like wild cards when life and death are involved."

I couldn't think of a response for a while. "So what's your opinion? Tail me, or force me out of the group?"

Marco was quiet for a moment, his eyes clouded with something close to regret. "I guess that's the reason I'm not the leader of anything."

"What would you do?" I asked again.

He sighed and looked into my eyes again. It was more than unnerving, to see that kind of honesty. "Ideally, I'd kill you."

"You'd...you'd what?"

"Kill you. Obviously I can't, but it's the only way to make sure you don't compromise the group." He picked out another book and flipped through it quickly. "Look, I'm not harboring homicidal tendencies or anything, and if Jake thinks you'd be good for the group, then I'll welcome you with open arms."

"And a knife behind your back."

He winked. "At least we understand each other." And with that he all but sauntered away, leaving me with far too much to think about.

Paul was waiting impatiently for me back at the table. I did my best to keep a mostly pleasant expression on my face, and must have done a passable job.

"What took you so long?"

"Nothing, I just met someone from school and stopped to say 'hi.'"

She shrugged and launched back into her rant, picking up right where she'd left off, which was somewhere around cruelty to animals. But I wasn't really listening to her. I stared at her and sipped my flavored tea as all the implications of my conversation with Marco sank in.

I was a wild card, not the saving grace of humanity. Jake and the others feared me as much as they needed me, and they knew it. Joining their group would put everyone in danger because of my inexperience. Danger which could get people killed. Worse than killed. On the other hand, six against an entire army? What if joining them turned the tide?

I could join and take a chance between saving the world or dooming it. Or I could do nothing and live with that knowledge for the rest of my life. However long that may be.

"Julie? Julie?"

I snapped out of my contemplative state and focused on Paul again. "Huh? What were you saying?"

"Just that you seem a bit distracted."

Paul was my best friend, more talented and intelligent that anyone I knew. Why wasn't I asking her advice in this? Obviously I couldn't tell her everything, but...

"Okay, um, hypothetically speaking, if you have to choose between maybe saving the world and maybe getting killed or sitting back and letting someone else do it, what would you do?"

"Huh?"

I sighed and rubbed my forehead, trying to think quickly. Hypothetical seemed the best way to do things. "It's, um, well, I was poking around on the internet and someone asked me this question and it's been bugging me for a while."

"Okay, but what's the question."

"Okay, lets say you find out about...um...there's this group of people and they're fighting the evil government or something and, okay, the scenario is stupid. Anyway you've got two choices. You can join this group, but you don't know if it'll help them or hurt them. Or you could just ignore the whole thing and go back to your normal life. What would you do?"

"If I joined them, would I die?"

"Maybe."

"So you might die, but you might save the country, or whatever."

"Right."

"Is that worth dying for?"

"Well, yeah, sure it is when you're just sitting around a bookstore café, but if it really happened?"

"Either you would die for your country or you wouldn't. You're no different here than you would be battling...evil...governments... Can we pick a different scenario?"

"No. Evil governments. Answer the question."

"I'd do it."

I stared at her for a moment, trying to process her answer. "How...how can you answer so fast like that? Without even thinking about it?"

"I did think about it. My...er...country is more important than my life. Hey, can we say I'm saving you?"

"Sure, whatever."

"Okay, then. So, if I had a chance to save you and didn't take it and you died, I'd hate myself. Or if someone else saved you, I still don't think I'd be able to live with myself. So basically, my choices are save you, die, or hate myself for the rest of my life. Of course I'd risk my life for you. Or the country, or whatever."

"Well, that's a comfort. Nice to know you'd do that for me."

"Would you for me?"

I had to think on that for a while. Really think about it. Would I risk everything for my best friend?

Yes. It would scare me shitless, but I'd still do it.

"Of course I would."

And if I would do that for her, why wouldn't I do it for the whole world?

It took me a while to get up the nerve to call Jake. I spent the rest of the weekend thinking about my decision, trying to get over my fear of what I was doing, but I couldn't. In the end I just had to call him anyway.

"Jake?"

"Hey, Julie. What's up?"

"Not much. Just, that thing we were talking about? Is it still okay if I join you?"

"I guess so. Are you sure you want to come?"

"Yeah. I'm sure."