CHAPTER SEVEN: MARCO

The next day was a school day, which was a bummer, but it was the kind of bummer I was used to. Most days of my life are school days whether I like it or not, and mostly I don't. This one wasn't so bad, though. I'd managed to get all of my homework done, both before and after the fun little escapade with the shrew, or at least all of the homework due today. The cafeteria was serving tacos, which were absolutely one hundred percent not actual tacos, not even close, but were nonetheless a good dozen steps up from most of the slop they served us, and I'd managed to make several pretty girls laugh in math class that morning with my witty comments about ratios and fractions.

I was thus feeling pretty good when I hit the lunch room, tray full of definitely-not-actual-tacos in hand. I looked around for Jake but I spotted his cousin first. Rachel looked like any one of a dozen other mall-crawling airheads on first glance, and maybe even on second or third.

Rachel, tall and pretty and tall and blonde and sharp-tongued and tall. That was Rachel. Did I mention that the girl is tall? She's also one of the more popular girls in school. Not the most popular, no; but a combination of good genes, good luck, and a good enough allowance to let her afford the clothes that her good sense of taste told her would look good on her had given her a certain position in the school hierarchy without her having to work for it. It was almost enough to make a boy jealous, even if he didn't care about either clothes or popularity. It was enough to make other people fall all over themselves to spend time in her presence, even if it meant they got cramps in their necks from having to look up at someone so ridiculously tall.

I'd never given her much thought before that night in the construction site; she was just Jake's freakishly tall, exceptionally pretty cousin. But I'd started paying a little more attention to all the Animorphs since we'd become a group

Not that we hung out as a group in school, of course. I mean, I still hung with Jake because we'd been best friends since forever, and Rachel and Cassie were the same, but we didn't want to suddenly start moving around like a unit of five. We didn't want to raise anyone's suspicions. Which I guess left Tobias kind of on his own, because he'd always been a loner. Having a mom whom everyone knows is nutter-butters puts a damper on your social life, you know?

Whatever, Tobias wasn't my problem and I'd learned my lesson there.

However, Rachel had not. Because now she was sitting at a lunch table smack in the middle of the cafeteria with Tobias sitting next to her, hunched low over his tray of tacos and looking like he'd rather be anywhere else in the world. I easily spotted at least a dozen boys staring their way who all looked like they'd rather Tobias was anywhere else too, especially if they could then take his place. It wasn't just boys who were staring, either, but while their faces were a uniform mix of envy and outrage, the girls were mostly divided between amusement and confusion.

Rachel, of course, couldn't have cared less. She was casually chowing-down on a taco, somehow managing to keep her cheap hardshell from splintering in her hand and spewing cheaper chunks of overcooked beef all over her tray, as inevitably happened to the rest of us mere mortals when we tried to eat school lunch tacos. If Rachel knew she was the center of the attention of half the student body, it didn't show on her face. She was laughing and chatting with Tobias like whatever he was mumbling into his hair was absolutely fascinating.

I paused and looked around the room, and I couldn't help grinning at the jealousy and bewilderment I saw. Like I said, Rachel wasn't the most popular girl in school, but she was in the upper echelon and had been pretty much all her life. There wasn't a single person at our school who didn't know her name and face, I figured, even if half of them had probably never actually talked to her. And Tobias—well, everybody knew who he was too, but not because he was popular. Quite the opposite. Tobias wasn't famous, he was infamous. He was the kid whose mom talked to aliens, the school weirdo.

And now here he was, sitting in the cafeteria next to Rachel the Tall.

I started to laugh, I couldn't help myself. I caught sight of Cassie where she was sitting several tables away, watching the Rachel-and-Tobias-Show with bemusement on her face. She met my eyes and lifted her shoulders in a silent, helpless shrug. I laughed harder and went to claim a seat across from Cassie.

"Okay," I said, in between cackles of laughter, "explain."

Cassie sighed. "Well," she said, "you know how Jake told Rachel she should get some tips on acting cat-like from Tobias?"

"Yes," I said. I saw where this was going and I started to grin. I picked up one of my tacos and took a big bite. The shell splintered and suddenly I had more of a taco-salad than taco. I sighed and picked up my plastic fork to shovel the rest of the taco into my mouth. "Go on."

"So Rachel spots Tobias in the hallway on her way into lunch and grabs his arm, starts babbling about how she just found out he has a cat, and she wants to hear all about it." Cassie shook her head, her expression a rueful mix of admiration and incredulity. "Rachel says that Jordan's been pestering her mom to get them a cat all of a sudden, so she wants to hear what it's like to own one."

I started to laugh again, which involved snorting a few globs of crappy beef out my nose. Cassie made a face and turned away to watch Rachel instead, but she kept talking.

"Anyway, at least six girls start babbling about how they've got cats, why doesn't Rachel ask them, but she just brushes them off and keeps walking. Says that she's met most of their cats, and they aren't that impressive, but she saw a painting that Tobias did of his cat for art class last year, and that's the kind of cat Jordan wants."

"A fat, lazy orange tabby that sheds on everything?" I said.

Cassie smiled. "I guess so," she said.

"And let me guess," I said. "Tobias goes all deer-in-headlights and lets her just drag him along?"

Cassie nodded. "Of course," she said. "When Rachel gets the bit between her teeth, there's not much you can do but go along with it. So she tells her friends that they're too annoying and she can't hear Tobias talk, can they all back off and give her some room?"

I was now laughing too hard to eat safely. I put my fork down. "Oh man," I said.

"By this point Tobias is the color of a tomato," Cassie continued, and I could hear that she was struggling to hide her own laughter behind her "sympathetic" voice. "Everybody else is pissed at Rachel, and she clears half the table so she and Tobias can talk about his cat in peace."

"Oh man," I said again.

I spotted Jake walking past, looking curiously toward the cluster of seething students surrounding Rachel and Tobias, and I waved him over. "Oh man, Jake!" I called. "Come here, you have to hear what your cousin just did!" Jake heard me and changed direction, veering our way with a tired look on his face that basically screamed, What now?

He gave Cassie a dorky little smile as he sat down next to me, but I was suddenly too distracted to tease him about that. I left Cassie to tell Jake the story while I stared across the room at another blonde girl eating a taco, this one sitting by herself at the end of one of the tables along the wall. She was watching Rachel and Tobias too, but the look on her face was different from the rest of the spectators. She didn't look confused or jealous or annoyed; she looked small and sad.

Her name was Melissa Chapman.

I got a funny feeling in my stomach, looking at her. Or maybe the tacos were off today. Personally, I'd prefer to blame the tacos. I didn't let myself look away, though. I studied Melissa. I wasn't worried about her catching me staring; she had her gaze fixed on laughing Rachel and moping Tobias with all the intensity of a kid staring at the arcade game on which she'd just spent her last quarter.

It was funny, I mused, how little Rachel's friends looked like her. I mean, you expect a certain uniformity from girls of that type, right? And yeah, most of the girls Rachel hung out with had a basic interchangeability of look, style, and attitude. It had taken me considerable effort to learn to tell all of the pretty, popular girls in school apart. I still wasn't sure if they did that on purpose to make life harder for us guys, or if that was a byproduct of some strange feminine urge toward stylish camouflage.

It was a subject Jake was useless for speculating with. I think the only reason he wasn't as fashion-compromised as Cassie was because the universe refused to allow anyone who shared Rachel's genes to be a total clothing dud. Well, that and guys' fashions were a little easier to keep up with.

Anyway, so Rachel's friends: I guess girls like her are supposed to travel in packs, all gossip and giggles and clothes on the cutting edge. And a lot of them did blend together pretty easily. For example, the only way you could tell Dahlia and Darlene apart was by remembering which of them was white and which was black, because everything else about them was identical right down to the breathless way they laughed. But man, did you want to make sure that you didn't get their names confused, because the whole group would laugh at you for three days if you mixed them up.

Not that I speak from experience or anything.

Neither Darlene nor Dahlia seemed to be especially close friends of Rachel, though. They all hung out together, but Rachel's best friend was Cassie and she was not part of that crowd at all.

I sneaked a glance at Cassie. She was trying to look mature and disapproving as she explained Rachel's stunt to Jake, who had his elbows on the table and his hands over his face, but her mouth kept twitching as she tried not to laugh. Cassie wasn't my type either, and I don't say that just because my man Jake had a tragically, pathetically, embarrassingly, disastrously huge crush on the girl and you do not like the same girl as your best friend. It wasn't because she wasn't pretty, either, because she was definitely cute even with her dorky old jeans and probably-poop-stained The Gardens t-shirt. The problem with Cassie, in my mind, is that she was way too earnest and way too nice. Both major turn-offs for the Marco. I wasn't entirely sure that Cassie fully knew how to use sarcasm, to be honest…

But Cassie wasn't the question right now. Melissa Chapman was.

And before you get the wrong idea, I wasn't ogling some pretty girl. Not that Melissa wasn't pretty, although not exactly to my taste; too pasty and waifish for me. No, I was staring with a purpose.

Melissa, like Rachel, was a seventh grade gymnastic student. She was also a white girl with long blonde hair, like Rachel, but the similarities ended there. Rachel was the sort of girl that the ancient Greeks would have carved out of marble and called the goddess of a hunt—all strong jaw and sharp brows, nose and chin jutting forward stubbornly and her shoulders squared. Melissa had a soft, dimpled chin, faint brows, and round cheeks. Where Rachel was tall and tan, Melissa was pale and washed-out. Her hair was a subdued straw color, thin and flat. Her eyes were a gray as sharp and vibrant as a bank of clouds while Rachel's blue eyes were like a river full of rapids, and probably just as likely to leave bruises. Melissa's skin was the unfortunate pallid color of a white girl who lives her whole life indoors, and the faint dusting of freckles across her nose was probably the closest she had ever come to a sunburn. Melissa stood like she was trying not to take up too much room; Rachel walked through the world like she owned every inch of it.

Of course, I probably shouldn't judge Melissa too hard: she was the daughter of our Vice Principle, which doubtless put a damper on her coolness factor. Or maybe the reason she faded into the background so easily was because the Yeerk in her head had better things to worry about than middle school popularity, and she preferred to go overlooked so she could do…well, whatever it was Yeerks did with twelve-year-old Controllers.

Did she have a Yeerk in her head like her dad? That was the big question.

It occurred to me that Melissa might be better off if she was a Controller. I had a feeling that the Yeerks considered every human being who wasn't currently playing taxi to an alien slug to be expendable—certainly Chapman hadn't seemed too bothered by the possibility of five frightened kids winding up dead when he'd told the Hork Bajir to bring him just our heads—which meant that Melissa might be safer around her dad if she was a Controller, too. Otherwise if she got in his way, she might be killed by her own dad for the sake of convenience.

Isn't that a pretty thought?

My happy musing was interrupted by Jake kicking me in the ankle.

"Ow!" I complained, and turned to glare at him. "What was that for?"

"You were staring at Melissa," Jake hissed.

"Uh, duh," I said back. "I know."

"Well stop it," Jake ordered. "Somebody's going to notice."

I snorted. "Are you kidding?" I said. "With Rachel over there holding court with her sad new jester? Please. I could jump up on the table and do a tap-dance rendition of I Will Always Love You and nobody would notice."

"Okay," said Jake. He nodded. "Go ahead."

"What?" I said.

"Go ahead," he repeated. "I want to see this tap dancing."

I glared at him. Cassie started to giggle, so I turned to glare at her too.

"Traitors," I told them both, and picked up my second taco. It fell apart, just like the first. I transferred my glare to my lunch tray. "I am surrounded by traitors," I declared, and picked up my fork.

. . . .

If I had thought that after Rachel's spectacular brush with social suicide, lunch couldn't get any more exciting, I would have been wrong.

The bell rang, dismissing us all to more fun and exciting classes. Of course, since we all had to exit by the same pair of double doors, there was something of a bottleneck situation by the exit, just like every other day. This time, we had some additional entertainment as we shoved and jostled our way into the hallway.

The press of the crowd had squashed Jake and Cassie and I close enough that we could all hear when a girl's shrill voice rose above the sounds of shoving and squabbling: "I should have known you didn't mean it! I should have known you didn't actually want anything to do with me!"

I didn't really pay attention—there's always some girl shrieking something at the end of lunch, usually about some guy or some other girl's hair—until I heard a more familiar voice respond.

"What are you talking about, Melissa?" Rachel said.

I craned my neck, cursing all the tall people I went to school with, trying and failing to see through the crowd. I could hear Melissa, though, even if I couldn't see her. "You just wanted to pump somebody for information about the stupid cat your stupid sister wants, and you thought I'd be an easy mark, huh?"

"What are you—? No, Melissa, no, I just wanted to hang out with you again. It's been forever since we did anything, and I—"

"Oh please!" I still couldn't see her face, but I could tell that Melissa wasn't buying it. "You know," she snapped at Rachel, "if you'd just asked for my help, I would have told you what you wanted to know. You didn't have to run a smokescreen about going to the mall. You didn't have to pretend you wanted to be friends again. You could have just asked me. I'm not a jerk. I'd have t-told you!"

"Are you serious right now?" I couldn't see Rachel well either, but her head stuck out over the top of the crowd like a daffodil in somebody's yard. And I didn't need to see her clearly to know that she was starting to get angry. "I invited you to the mall because I wanted to spend time with you, you dummy! If all I'd wanted was to ask you some questions about stupid Fluffer, I would have just asked after practice!"

I wasn't the only one watching the show, of course. Rachel was the kind of girl who attracted attention even when she wasn't getting shouted at; even when she hadn't just had lunch with the official school weirdo; even when she wasn't blocking half of the doorway that every student in the school was trying to shove through. The audience didn't stop the two girls, though; it didn't even slow them down.

"Oh yeah?" Melissa shouted. "Well then why didn't you? Huh? Why'd you ask him about his stupid cat, instead of talking to me? If I'm your friend, why not ask me?"

Jake started shoving his way through the crowd toward Rachel and Melissa. I wasn't sure what he thought he'd do when he got there—try and get them to cool off before any teachers came to break things up? Stand back and watch the show?—but I tucked in close behind and followed, using his bigger bulk like I was a Nascar driver drafting for speed. I saw Cassie reach for Jake's hand (because she wanted help getting through the crowd, or because she thought pretending she wanted help to get through the crowd would be a good excuse for holding Jake's hand? I smirked but saved my clever observations for later) but she missed and three girls from my Language Arts class shoved between us before she could try again. We left Cassie behind and kept moving.

"Um, because you blew me off maybe?" Rachel retorted. "Because Tobias was right there when I was thinking about it, and I knew he had a cat?" I could see her face now, if I jumped up onto my toes to peer over Jake's shoulder, and she was scowling but it was a scowl of confusion as much as it was annoyance. She didn't understand why Melissa was so upset, I guessed, but I thought I did.

"So do I!" Melissa said. "You were there when I got him, remember? But maybe you don't. I guess you stopped caring about me too, huh?" There were tears in her pale eyes and her cheeks were red and splotchy. She was on the brink of a full-out meltdown. I glanced at Jake, wondering how he wanted to handle this. If we got involved we might only make things worse, and we definitely couldn't do it without getting noticed…

"Melissa what are you talking about?" Rachel burst out. "Of course I care about you! You're one of my best friends—"

"Bullshit!" Melissa cried, and everybody gasped. I did too. I didn't know Melissa Chapman well, but even I knew she wasn't the kind of girl who said words like that, not in the school hallways anyway. I think even Melissa was surprised with herself, because her face went dead white and her eyes went wide.

She opened her mouth again, and I wasn't sure if she was going to apologize or keep yelling at Rachel some more, but before she got a chance to do either, a deep male voice said, "Okay, which one of you said that?"

It was one of the teachers who had been on lunch duty—Mr. Halloram—and he sounded both bored and annoyed. I guess maybe not all teachers get off on catching kids stepping out of line; maybe some of them would rather just keep their heads down and get through the day, like us. But being bored and annoyed wasn't going to stop Mr. Halloram from handing out the necessary punishments and lectures.

All of a sudden, everybody found something better to look at—like the tops of their shoes. For once being short worked to my advantage, because I could tilt my head up enough to keep watching the show without anyone noticing that I wasn't cowering and sulking like everybody else.

I saw Rachel glowering at the floor, like it had personally offended her, her hands clenched into fists. I saw Jake next to me, the half of his face I could see pinched in a worried frown. I couldn't see Cassie, but I did spot Tobias far down the hallway, turned back to watch through the curtain of his stupid hair. I guess he must have bolted from the cafeteria the minute the bell rang, to get that far ahead of the rest of us. Coward, I thought, and smirked. Cowardly and clever: I would have left at top speed too, if I'd been in his position.

"All right, I know what I heard," Mr. Halloram was saying impatiently. "Somebody fess up now, before you're all late to class."

That was an interesting prospect: if three-quarters of the student body showed up to class late, would we still get in trouble? Or would the teachers have no choice but to overlook our tardiness on the grounds of majority rules?

My existential musing was cut short by Melissa Chapman. I could see her, too, looking down at the floor like everybody else. But unlike everybody else, her lip was quivering and her shoulders were heaving, like she was about three seconds away from bursting into tears. She slowly raised her head and I could see that she was trembling. I could see her open her mouth, see her lips start to form the word me—

"Me!" I shouted it. I wasn't entirely sure why. Everybody turned to look at me, including Jake. Including Mr. Halloram. I grinned. "It was me, Mr. Halloram. Sorry. My boy Jake and I were taking bets, you see, on who would win in a fight, and Jake here said that Melissa would kick his cousin's butt and, I'm sorry, but that's just insane." I laughed, and several people laughed with me. "No offense, Melissa," I said, and winked at the girl who was gaping at me like I'd just grown a second head. "So yeah, as you can see, Mr. Halloram, that was such a crazy idea that I just couldn't help myself. I confess, it was me. I said it." I held my hands out in front of me, wrists pressed together like I was ready to be handcuffed.

"I should have known," I heard Mr. Halloram mutter.

Excuse me? I thought, but was smart enough not to say aloud. What's that supposed to mean?

What I said was, "I'm just too honest, that's my problem. Always has been. When I see bull, I have to call bull, and I think we can all agree, that was bull. Sorry Jake, man, but you've clearly been eating some of that Coocoo for Cocoa Puffs if you think that there is any situation in which Melissa could possibly kick Rachel's butt. Again, no offense Melissa."

I winked at her again. She didn't react; just kept staring at me.

"All right, all right," Mr. Halloram said. "That's enough, Marco. Everybody else, clear off. Show's over and you've all got classes to get to. Not you, Marco. You and me need to have a chat."

I stood there next to Mr. Halloram, feeling awkward, while everybody else shuffled away. Jake looked at me, shook his head, and walked off. Cassie patted my arm discreetly as she brushed past. I caught Rachel's eye before she left. The look she gave me was inscrutable.

And I'm not trying to be witty, I mean it was genuinely inscrutable. Was she grateful? Was she annoyed? I couldn't tell. I was unable to scrute the expression on her face.

After a minute she left too, and Mr. Halloram treated me to a lecture about appropriate language, and what would my dad think if he found out I was using words like that, and this school expected certain standards of behavior, and blah blah blah. It all sounded very standard, like he'd memorized the spiel years ago and could now do it on autopilot. I tuned him out, answering on autopilot too—uh-huh, of course, sorry, I get it, yeah—while I waited for him to finish.

I wondered if he would give me a pass for my next class if he kept me past the bell. Somehow I had a feeling that "receiving lecture from other teacher in response to inappropriate language in the lunch room" wasn't an excuse for tardiness that most teachers would accept.

I nodded along to Mr. Halloram's speech, spewing very sincere promises about never ever doing anything like that again, but the whole time all I could think was, Why did I do that?

As the last few students finished changing their books in their lockers, I caught sight of one of the stragglers staring at me from the far end of the hallway: Melissa Chapman, looking small and confused. I gave her a cocky smile.

She ducked her head and slinked around the corner.

I sighed. So much for chivalry.