CHAPTER THREE: RACHEL

On Sunday we all met up and went flying again. Maybe it sounds kind of pathetic to you, that we didn't have anything better to do than sneak off to the local lighthouse and turn into birds for eighty minutes—but if you'd ever been flying, you would know better. Flying is such a…well, not to be cheesy, but it's a real high. And not just because you're dozens of feet up in the air. It's just this total, complete rush, being held aloft by nothing but the wind and the power of your own wings.

Besides, we'd only had the morphing power for a little more than a week, at this point. We were all still a little drunk on the possibilities, I guess.

And not just the recreational ones. I sneaked a glance at Jake as we were demorphing. He was bright-eyed and flushed with excitement, just like the rest of us, but as soon as his feathers were gone he got serious again. I had a feeling that for Jake, flying wasn't just fun, it was more like…practicing. Preparing.

Jake wanted to go back to the Yeerk pool—no, "wanted" isn't he right word. He needed to go back to the Yeerk pool. That, or find some other way to get Tom out.

Tom's his older brother, and he's also a Controller. He's who we'd gone down into the Yeerk pool to rescue in the first place, but we hadn't managed to bring him out with us. Fortunately we hadn't managed to get him killed either, or to expose ourselves to the Yeerks; Visser Three and his goons all think we're Andalites who survived the destruction of our spaceship. I guess that's a good thing, because if he knew we were just kids—if he knew which kids we were—well, then Jake would probably be the first to be grabbed, since there's a Controller sleeping in the room right next to his. But the rest of us would follow suit soon enough, dragged back down into that hellish cavern, marched along that cold metal pier by implacable Hork-Bajir guards, our heads shoved under that viscous gray liquid and…

It gives me the shivers to think about it even now, in the middle of the afternoon with the sun out. The nights, when I was trying to sleep, were a whole different matter. I wondered sometimes if I'd ever stop having nightmares about that place, about the way the helpless hosts would scream and scream and scream and then go silent as the Yeerk crawled back into their head, taking over again. I'd sooner be dead than have a Yeerk in my head, controlling me.

Fortunately I wasn't the only one who felt that way. I knew that I could count on Marco, at least, to have my back if the worst came down to it. I wasn't sure about the others—they hadn't said anything one way or the other when we'd made our little pact, down in the Yeerk pool—but I knew that Marco would kill me before I could be taken, and I'd promised him the same.

Marco was Jake's best friend and he could be a real pain in the butt, but he was starting to grow on me.

I guess that's why when he started talking about the show-bizz career he could have if only the pesky Yeerks weren't around to spoil everything, I smiled at him and said sweetly, "Uh-huh, lots of women love animals. But sooner or later you'd have to change back into your actual self, Marco. And then, boom, they'd be out of there."

Marco laughed along with the others; another nice thing about him is that as much as he loves making jokes, he doesn't mind when those jokes are at his expense. Lots of people who think they're funny can't handle it when the tables are turned, which makes them pretty annoying in my opinion. Like, if you can't take the heat don't be the one who lights the match, you know? But Marco, well, he was annoying to be sure…but he could take the heat, and dish it right back out too.

It made him fun to talk to, when I wasn't wishing I could strangle him.

I was also hoping I could tease him enough to get him to tell us the story of where he and Tobias had gotten the bruises they'd showed up sporting this morning. Of course they were gone now, because morphing heals whatever injuries you had before the morph—since it restores your form based on your original DNA, which doesn't carry the wounds along with it—which was handy, to be sure…but I was still curious. I didn't think they'd been fighting each other, but it was possible; like I said, Marco is annoying. Tobias isn't really the fighting sort, though, and Marco is more the type to slay somebody with a witticism than a left-hook, so I was pretty sure they'd been fighting with somebody else. They both shrugged the questions off when we tried to ask about it, which irritated me.

I mean, I'm not Jake, I don't go around telling bullies to mind their manners and expecting them to listen to me—but Tobias and Marco were my friends, dang it. Or at least something like friends, being that they were fellow Animorphs. Either way, I didn't want some bunch of losers thinking they could go around beating on them with impunity…even if people had been beating on Tobias with impunity for as long as I've known him.

The boy just attracts bullies, like how a rose attracts bees. Only the bees don't sting the crap out of the rose in the process of getting their pollen.

Maybe I was just jittery, spoiling for a rematch with Visser Three and the rest of the Yeerks. I'm sort of competitive and I don't like losing, don't like getting my butt kicked. And we had had ours kicked—hard. I mean, we did some good too; we saved at least one woman that I know of, and Cassie swears there were other people on the stairs ahead of her who also made it out. She doesn't know how many, and we don't know if they made it far or if they were dumb enough to go home and get snatched right back up again—but we did something, that night we went down into the pool.

Just not enough, in my opinion. So maybe I was looking for an excuse to take my temper out on some jerks, since I couldn't really get to the Yeerks.

Oh, we knew how to get back into the pool: there was an entrance right in the janitor's closet in our middle school. But until we could come up with a better plan than "run in, break some cages open, and try not to get killed on the way out," we weren't going back. Especially not now that the Yeerks would be on their guard for the "Andalite Bandits" who had raided their pool a few days ago. Yelling at some bullies would have made me feel a little less useless, I guess…

But then Jake came up with an idea for how I could be useful, and I didn't like it one bit.

We were standing outside the construction site where we had met Elfangor, where we had been given the power to morph, where we had seen the Yeerks for the first time. We were all feeling a little sad and deflated, I guess, because we just kind of drew to a halt and stared at the place for a while.

Cassie started to cry, so I gave her a hug. I think Tobias was crying too, but he walked a little bit away from the rest of us and hung his head so his hair hid his face, so I pretended not to notice. Boys can be weird about crying, and while Tobias was probably the least ridiculous boy I'd ever met, he still got silly sometimes. I swear, whoever invented the term "macho" should be tried for war crimes against the entire male gender. It makes me glad I've got sisters. They can be even more annoying than Marco at times, but at least they aren't brothers.

That made me think about Tom again, and I eyed Jake balefully over the top of Cassie's head. He was staring blankly at the abandoned construction site, his face tight and his eyes shadowed.

"You okay?" I asked him quietly.

"No," said Jake. "Of course I'm not okay."

Cassie broke from my hug to walk over to Jake and put an arm around his waist. "Someday we'll save Tom," she said.

Jake kind of stroked Cassie's head. I guess he got embarrassed when he realized he'd done it, because he instantly pulled away. Cassie didn't mind. She knows how dumb boys are about feelings, too.

"We shouldn't just stand here like this," Marco said after a while. "The Yeerks are probably still looking for the kids who set off those 'fireworks' in there the other night. We don't want them getting suspicious it might have been us—or any more suspicious than they already are, anyway."

We started walking again.

I think all of us were leery about asking Jake if he'd noticed anything about his brother acting weird, or paying more attention than usual; we knew Tom would be on the look-out for any evidence that it had been us there that night, since he'd mentioned to his fellow Controllers that he suspected Jake of being one of the hapless kids spotted after Elfangor's death. At least it hadn't been Tom who suggested they go ahead and just kill us, to be sure—or at least, I didn't think it had been Tom. Cassie had been the one to eavesdrop on the Yeerks, and she'd overheard something that she'd told Jake alone, something she hadn't wanted to share with the rest of us…but surely Tom wouldn't suggest killing his own brother, even if it was the Yeerk in his head talking, right?

I shook off my gloomy thoughts and searched for something else to say. "We need to find another way to get at them," I growled. It bothered me, that I lived in a world where I had to wonder if one of my cousins was plotting to murder another. It bothered me that Tom wasn't free.

"Get at who?" Marco asked skeptically.

I rolled my eyes. "The French, Marco," I retorted sarcastically. "Who do you think? The Yeerks, duh."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Marco said. "We tried that, remember? We went down into the Yeerk pool after them and got our butts kicked. Yeerks ten, humans zero."

"I don't think the lady we rescued would put it that way," Tobias said sharply. "More like Yeerks ten, humans one, at least."

"That's right," I agreed, nodding. "We saved at least one person. Probably more. That's not exactly a total defeat."

"We still got our butts kicked," Marco insisted. "And we didn't do what we set out to do."

"We did do some good, though," said Cassie.

"And we gave the Yeerks a reason to be afraid, too," I said.

"Yeah, they're terrified of us. Visser Three probably can't sleep at night, he's so worried about five kids," Marco said sarcastically. "Look, Visser Three doesn't think we're a threat. He thinks we're lunch."

"He doesn't know who—or what—we are," I pointed out. "The Yeerks are convinced that we're Andalite warriors because they know that we can morph. And they know that we found the Yeerk pool, and infiltrated it, and took out a few of their Taxxons and Hork-Bajir while we were at it. I think they're probably a little nervous, at least."

Jake nodded. "Rachel's right. But we need a better plan before we try again. We need more information."

"So we follow Tom," I suggested. "Spying on him worked out okay last time. We just trail him for a while, and see what we can see."

"No," Jake said, with surprising vehemence. "We leave Tom out of this." He met my eyes, his brown gaze dark. "If we call attention to him in any way, the Yeerks may decide he's too much trouble for them. They may decide to kill him."

I looked away. That possibility was too real, and too ugly, to argue with.

Marco gave me a sour look. "This is what you want to keep doing? Risking our lives and the lives of everyone we know? For what?"

"For freedom," Cassie said simply.

"For Elfangor," said Tobias, his voice soft.

Marco didn't have a smart answer to either of those statements, although he did shoot Tobias a dirty look.

"There's still Chapman," Jake said.

Chapman is our assistant principal. He's also one of the most important human-Controllers. He runs The Sharing, the club that helps recruit unsuspecting kids into being hosts for the Yeerks.

"If there were some way for us to get close to Chapman…" Jake let the words hang in the air. He carefully didn't look at me. But I knew what he meant. He'd obviously been thinking about this for a while. He just didn't want to actually say it.

"Melissa?" I asked.

He nodded. "It's a possibility."

"Who's Melissa?" Tobias asked.

I grimaced. "She's a friend of mine," I explained. "Maybe my best friend, after Cassie. We've known each other for…gosh, forever? She does gymnastics with me. We started because we thought it would be fun to do together, you know? Anyway, she…she's also Chapman's daughter. Melissa Chapman."

"Oh," said Tobias. He grimaced too. "I see," he said.

What I didn't tell him, what I didn't tell any of the others, was that Melissa and I hadn't been as close as we'd used to be, these last few months. She'd been acting distant, disinterested, like she didn't care about anything anymore—or at least didn't care about me. Every time I suggested we hang out, she brushed me off. So eventually I'd stopped asking, and now I could barely remember the last time we'd done anything together outside of school or practice. Even in gymnastics class, she barely spoke to me. But she was still my friend.

"I don't know, Jake," I said, turning to frown at my cousin. "I don't like using a friend that way."

"Oh, suddenly the mighty Rachel is weaseling," Marco crowed. "You don't like using your friends? You're pretty willing to risk my life."

I smiled at him sweetly. "Sure, Marco, but who said you were my friend?"

"Very funny," Marco said. But at the same time he looked a little hurt. I was almost touched; I hadn't thought he'd have cared. And he was growing on me.

"Kidding, Marco," I said. "Just kidding. Of course you're my friend. But you're an Animorph. Melissa is just an innocent bystander."

"I wish I had never come up with that word," Marco grumbled. "Animorph," he sneered. "Gimme a break."

"Rachel, Melissa's father is one of the main Controllers," Jake said gently, ignoring Marco. "She's in this whether she likes it or not."

I felt a bitter taste in my mouth. Jake was right, of course. Chapman was the logical lead to follow. And Melissa was our way to get close. It made sense. It made sense for me to betray one of my oldest friends.

It also made me feel like dirt.

I didn't feel like going straight home, after that conversation. I had too much restless energy to burn-off, too many unhappy thoughts to stew over. If I went home I'd just snap at my sisters and sulk.

"Anyone up for some shopping?" I asked. I was looking at Cassie when I said it, but she squirmed under my gaze, looking everywhere but at me. It reminded me of how some of the wounded animals she and her parents rescue act sometimes.

"I don't know, Rachel," she said, "I have a lot of homework I haven't done yet, and I still have to clean the cages…"

"You also still need a new jacket," I reminded her. "To replace the one you destroyed by turning into a horse inside, remember?"

Cassie looked even more uncomfortable but she said, "It's only September, I won't need a new one for ages yet. Besides, I have other jackets…"

"I've seen your other jackets," I pointed out. "They're no better than the one you shredded. You ought to let me replace your whole closet, but I'll settle for that one. To start with."

"Not today, Rachel." Cassie shook her head. "I have too much to do. Really. Homework and chores and stuff."

"Don't you have homework too?" Jake asked.

I rolled my eyes at him. "Who are you, my dad? And no, I finished most of my homework yesterday. I have, like, maybe three questions for math yet to do. That'll take ten, twenty minutes tops." It wasn't exactly a lie. Maybe a little optimistic, but not a lie. And come on, who would rather do math than go to the mall?

Jake shook his head. "Well, I've got more than three questions waiting for me. Sorry, Rachel."

"Don't even," Marco said quickly, holding up a hand.

"Like I was asking you," I sneered back.

He grinned at me. "Good, then I don't need to come up with an excuse to say no," he said smugly.

I stuck my tongue out at him.

"I can come along," Tobias said quietly. His cheeks flushed as I looked at him. "Um, if you want me to, I mean. I don't have anything to do, but if you'd rather not, I mean, that's totally cool…"

"Great!" I beamed at him. "A volunteer!"

"More like a victim," someone muttered so quietly that I barely heard them. I chose to believe it was Marco speaking, rather than Cassie. At any rate, as Tobias and I turned to double-back to the mall it was definitely Marco who called, "Be careful what you tell blondie there, Rachel! He'll spill it all to his mom the minute your back's turned!"

"Marco!" Cassie said, her tone scolding. When I spun back around to glare I was surprised to see that she wasn't actually shaking her finger at him. It would have matched her tone perfectly. "Be nice! What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about Transparent Tobias over there blabbing to his mom all about you-know-what."

"You told your mom about—?" Jake began, aghast.

Tobias shook his head. "All I told her was what it had been like to meet an Andalite," he said, and I saw the tension start to bleed out of Jake's shoulders until Tobias added, "It was Marco who told her everything else."

Jake spun around. "You did what?" he demanded.

Marco put his hands up, palms turned out defensively. "Only because he made it sound like he already had!" he said.

For a minute I thought Jake was going to take a swing at Marco.

"Is that what you guys fought about?" I blurted.

Now it was my turn to get stared at, Cassie looking anxious and Marco frowning with disgust.

"You think the wuss there gave me this shiner?" he asked, poking at his recently-black-eye. "Please," Marco sneered. "He can't even look at the world, let alone punch it."

It was true that Tobias had drawn in on himself, head hung so that his hair had slipped forward in front of his face again, but Marco was way out of line. Tobias was shy, sure, but he was no coward. I mean, he hadn't hesitated to go down into the Yeerk pool with us, had he?

"Watch it," I growled at Marco. "Maybe Tobias is too nice to hit back, but—"

"Who did, then?" Cassie interrupted. She sounded worried. "Who did you guys fight with, if it wasn't each other? It wasn't…Controllers, right?"

"Don't be stupid," said Marco, earning himself another black mark on my list. "It was these two losers named Andy and Tap-Tap, all right? They were beating on Tobias and I decided to be an idiot and get involved. Don't worry," he added harshly, "I won't be doing that again."

He was glaring at Tobias, who was still hiding behind his hair. "I didn't ask for his help," he mumbled.

"Tap-Tap?" Jake snorted. "I'm sorry—this guy's name is Tap-Tap?"

Marco's frown started to crumble. "That's what I said," he muttered, his mouth curling reluctantly in a smirk.

Jake sighed. "Right," he said, "let's all just take a breath here, okay? Marco, I know you're just grumpy because you're mad that you screwed-up and spilled the beans to Tobias's mom, but stop being a jerk to Tobias over it, okay? And Tobias—maybe you'd better tell us all exactly how much your mom knows."

I sighed too. I was starting to get the feeling that I wasn't going to get to the mall today after all.