I want to start out this new chapter by letting everyone know that I am a huge review whore. HUGE. Yeah, I said it. Reviews are the reason that I have kept trying to finish this story for over eight years now. So for those of you that have been reviewing—I really appreciate it!

Also, just so I don't look like a hypocrite, I have started making sure that I (honestly) review EVERY story that I read. It is harder than it sounds. But I have been spreading out the good juju and hoping it comes back to me. I hope everyone knows that even a very short review can make someone's day—it definitely does for me!

-Catty

Rachel

"So tell me about the boy," Dr. Jameson said. She was sitting in a small forest green arm chair, with her notepad on her lap and her pencil ready to go. She had a desk too, but I guess she was sitting in the arm chair to make me feel more comfortable.

It was my first appointment with the therapist that the school had arranged for me to see. I had only been there for five minutes and I already hated the therapist. No particular reason, I just hated being asked all of these questions. Although so far it was just one question. I knew more were coming.

I chose to ignore the question that Dr. Jameson had actually asked. "I have a boyfriend named Tobias." I answered instead.

"And Tobias was the boy you had the altercation with at school?"

"No," I admitted.

Dr. Jameson smiled. If I didn't know better, I would swear that she was enjoying this. "And what is the name of the boy that you were fighting with?"

I sighed. "His name is Marco."

"And what is your relationship with Marco?"

I opened my mouth to answer and was surprised when nothing came out.

"Is that a difficult question for you?" Dr. Jameson asked. She wrote something on her notepad.

"No. It is not difficult," I said. "Marco and I are friends. Sort of. We actually don't know each other that well."

"Is that so?" Dr. Jameson asked. "How do you know him?"

"From school. And he is my cousin's best friend. And his best friend is dating my best friend." I answered honestly before I realized it made me sound like a liar.

Sure enough, Dr. Jameson said, "It sounds like you must have spent a lot of time around each other. How long have you known each other?"

"I'm not sure. A while," I answered before I realized that I couldn't even remember the first time I met Marco. I had known him even before kindergarten, because he had been Jake's best friend since diapers practically. I couldn't remember a time when Marco hadn't been around. I had known him even before I met Cassie.

In fact, Jake, Marco, and I had spent quite a bit of time together in elementary and early middle school. Even though Cassie and I met and became best friends in 3rd grade, she didn't live in our neighborhood and missed out on a lot of after school playtime.

Back then, it had often been Marco and I teaming up to get Jake to do crazier things. One time, when we were 8 or 9, Marco and I got this stupid idea to ride our bikes down one of those catwalks that has the super steep and winding walkways to get up and down. It was one thing that we could not convince Jake to do with us, so we did it without him. Marco ended up with a broken wrist, I scraped most of the skin off my right calf, and Jake was smug for months.

I'm not sure why that memory was stuck in my head. Or why I kept wondering…if Tobias had been there with 8 year old me, would he have hopped on his bike or watched from the sidelines?

And which was better?

"I guess he's always been around," I finally said. "But…you know how you don't notice people when they've always been there?"

"Yes. Yes I do," Dr. Jameson answered. I didn't like the way she insisted on keeping eye contact with me. It made me feel like I was being interrogated. Which I guess I was. I focused on the armrest of her chair instead, so I could avoid her gaze.

"Rachel, I would like for you to share with me a memory you have about Marco."

My head snapped back up so that I was looking at Dr. Jameson again. "Excuse me?"

"It can be anything you like," Dr. Jameson continued. "Just tell me about a moment that you have had with Marco some time in your life. It doesn't have to be significant. I want to understand how you two interact."

I chewed on my bottom lip. A memory about Marco. Lots of things came to mind. The story about the catwalk was one. But most of my memories of Marco had to do with his mom. And they weren't exactly memories that I could share with Dr. Jameson.

See, Marco's mom (or at least her body) is Visser One. The most powerful and deadly Yeerk that we have ever known. For years, Marco thought his mom was dead. His dad still does. But in reality she is a Controller. For a while we had thought she might be dead, mostly because of us. Marco had made that call. But for now she is still alive, and still a slave. Marco made that call, too.

But even if I could tell Dr. Jameson about that stuff, I wouldn't have chosen any of those memories. Because then Dr. Jameson might figure out how much I admired Marco for some of the choices he had made—choices that I wasn't sure if I would have been able to make, if it had been my parents or my sisters.

I needed a boring story that would give Dr. Jameson the impression that I had no interesting relationship with Marco. That he was just a neighborhood guy that I hadn't spent much time around.

Before I could think too hard about it, I started telling her the first non-Animorphs, non-cheating-on-Tobias story that came to mind.

"I went to this party once," I began, and I instantly regretted my choice of story, but it was too late. It was already spilling out. My secret Marco story, the one not even Cassie knew about.

"This girl at my school—she's a cheerleader or something, I think—was having this big party at her house one weekend. And for some reason she invited me. I helped her out with her math homework once, so maybe she was trying to be nice. Anyway, none of my friends were going, and I didn't think any of them even knew about it. I don't know why, but I decided to go by myself." That last part was a lie. I did actually know why I decided to go by myself.

We've all been changed by the war a little bit, and I know a lot of people worry about me the most. They worry that I enjoy the war too much. Maybe I do. And maybe sometimes I worry about me too. That was why I decided to go to the party. I wanted to prove to myself that I could be a normal teenager. I wanted to prove that I could have a good time without fighting anyone. Without even thinking about the Animorphs, which is why I didn't bring along Cassie or Tobias.

"So I show up at the party, and I don't really know anyone. I was wandering around by myself for a little while. A couple of guys asked me to dance, but I wasn't interested. I thought about drinking something, but it seemed lame to sit in a corner and drink by myself. And then…I saw Marco."

Dr. Jameson was taking notes on her notepad, but I could still feel her watching me. I refused to look at her, and instead I studied the spines of the books on the bookshelf next to me.

"What did you do?" Dr. Jameson asked me after a long pause.

"I went over and said hi," In reality, Marco and I had stared at each other awkwardly for a few moments as we realized what we both had done. We had both tried to ditch the Animorphs for one night—and look how it had turned out. We'd laughed about it.

"And then?"

"We started hanging out…and we were drinking a little." That was an understatement. We had hit the booze table and Marco had grabbed an entire bottle of Bacardi rum. We had started out drinking it with Coke, but soon we were both taking straight shots.

"What's 'a little'?" Dr. Jameson asked me with a smile. Clearly the woman was used to dealing with teenagers.

"Ok, maybe it was a lot," I admitted with a wince. It was a painful memory. I had somehow let Marco goad me into a drinking contest.

"What were you doing while you were drinking?"

I was pretty sure that at some point there had been a dance off, but there was no reason that Dr. Jameson or anyone else ever needed to know about that. "We were just talking."

"What did you talk about?"

I chewed on my bottom lip as I considered my answer. This was getting a little too personal—I needed to make sure I wasn't letting anything incriminating slip out. Although the funny thing was, now that I thought back on it, I couldn't remember Marco and I talking about anything Yeerk-related.

Marco had started out by pouring us drinks. "Jake would kill us if he found out about this," he said.

"Yeah, well," I took a healthy swig from my cup. This was at the point when there was still Coke mixed in with the rum, but it was a very strong drink. "I'm 16, not 35."

"Right," Marco nodded as he began to gulp down his own drink. "We are young, hear us roar! We should do something wild and crazy. Like have sex under the pool table."

I rolled my eyes. "There is not enough alcohol in the world to make that happen."

"I beg to differ. That was a very well-stocked card-table-passing-as-a-bar."

"You get drunk and try to hit on one of the other girls here, and I will stay mostly sober so I can observe the moment and remember it in the future whenever I need a good laugh."

Marco grinned. "Is fearless Rachel afraid to get waaaaaasted? Have I finally discovered mighty Xena's weakness?"

I knew that he was messing with me, but I couldn't stop myself. "Bullshit! I can drink you under the table! But not the pool table," I added, when Marco started to leer.

And that was the beginning of the drinking contest. Things get a little fuzzy after that, but the next thing I remember clearly, Marco and I were in a completely different room of the house. Definitely a bedroom. We were sitting on the floor, leaning against the bed with the bottle of Bacardi between us.

"So…you and Tobias. What's up with that?" Marco asked.

"Excuse me?"

"Don't give me that look, Xena. Obviously I know that he is the Mickey to your Minnie and all that."

"Then what are you asking me?" I was getting pissed, but the room was spinning a little too fast for me to do anything about it. Like hit Marco.

Marco took another drink, this time straight from the bottle. "Explain it to me. The connection. Cause I am totally not understanding how Wonder Woman ends up with Robin. Bird reference totally intended."

"I'm not a comic expert, but have those two even met?" I took the bottle from Marco and drank from it myself, assuming that the alcohol would kill the Marco germs.

Marco turned so that he was looking at me. "You are avoiding the question."

"Give me one reason why I should answer it."

I stopped telling my story at this point, because I remembered exactly what it was that Marco had said to me that had made me shove the story way back in my head where I could almost forget about it.

Dr. Jameson put down her notepad after we had been sitting in silence for a few minutes. "Are you having trouble continuing, Rachel?"

So many years of lying to everyone about everything, and yet I could not think of an alternative way to finish my story.

"No. I'm not having a problem."

"Then what happened next?"

What had happened next was that Marco had gotten really serious. Apparently Marco was a serious drunk. Or maybe not, considering the dance off. But either way, Marco had been very serious when he said to me, "Because you don't seem happy."

I opened my mouth to object, but Marco cut me off. "No, wait, listen to me, Rachel. I have seen both of you every day for the past three years, so I think I know what I am talking about. I see the two of you, and you both have this determination, like you have decided to be together, and that is just how it is going to be. No matter what.

"And I know both of you really well, and you have so little in common. You are this amazing war goddess, and you are smart and funny and interesting and you don't take shit from anyone. And you like fashion and shopping and TV. And Tobias?"

Marco didn't have to finish. We both knew where it was going. Tobias was my calming side, which was good. I needed someone to calm me down sometimes. But no matter what Jake or Cassie worry about, after this war, I always see myself being normal again. Or at least as normal as possible. I want to finish school and watch TV and go shopping and eat McDonald's.

Tobias is different. For a long time I thought that Tobias was choosing to remain in the fight instead of becoming a human permanently. I could respect that decision. As much as I wanted a fully human boyfriend, I also really wanted Earth to not be taken over Yeerks. But I also wonder (worry?) that Tobias is just refusing to give up being a hawk.

I wonder if Tobias will ever choose to be human again.

Of course, I didn't tell Dr. Jameson this part. Instead, I jumped to what Marco had said next, thanks to in vino veritas: "You and Tobias don't make sense."

I insult Marco a lot. We argue a lot. But when it gets down to it, he is one of only 5 people in the entire world that really knows me. If anyone every asked, I would say that Cassie knows me the best. Followed by Tobias or Jake.

But Marco and I are a lot alike. We both spend a lot less time wrapped up in the ethics of the war. We are the more brutal Animorphs. Marco, Ax, and I are often the ones that are dedicated to harming the Yeerks and actually winning the war—while Jake and Cassie try to keep us alive without killing our souls.

And Tobias? I don't know if this is Tobias's war anymore.

My point is, when Marco said that, it cut through me. Right to where I keep all of my own doubts about my relationship with Tobias. Because it is one thing to have doubts. It is another thing to hear someone else say them out loud. And that was when I knew that Marco was actually the one that got me—maybe even more than Cassie.

"I love Tobias," I said, aware that I was gripping the bottle of rum way too hard. I took another drink.

Marco nodded. "I love Jake," he said. "He's my best friend. But that doesn't mean we should be dating."

I looked up from the Bacardi so that I was making eye contact with Marco, and that's when I knew two things for sure: 1) Marco was telling the absolute truth about his opinion of me and Tobias, and 2) He was thinking about kissing me.

This made my head spin even faster. It also gave me a fluttering feeling in my stomach that I decided to believe was caused by the alcohol.

"Rachel…" Marco began after a period of silence.

"No," I said. I stood up. Shakily. "Fuck you, Marco." I threw the glass bottle into the bedroom wall, and it shattered, splashing us both with rum. I stumbled out of the party then and never looked back to see if Marco tried to follow me. I went behind some trees outside to morph to an owl and fly home. When I demorphed back to human, I was completely sober.

I told all of this to Dr. Jameson, except the part about morphing home and becoming sober again. And the stuff that made it sound like we are in the middle of a war for planet Earth.

"How long ago did this happen?" Dr. Jameson asked me.

"I think it was about two months."

"How did you interact with Marco after that?"

"I don't know," I shrugged. "The same I guess. I kind of wanted to forget about it. I figured that he was only thinking about kissing me because…you know, drunk. But just in case, I acted a little meaner towards him. But I really just wanted to forget the whole thing."

"And your fight in the hallway was the first major interaction that you have said since this party?"

I folded my arms across my chest and sunk low in my chair. "Not exactly," I admitted.

"Would you like to tell me more about that?"

"No," I snarled. I had definitely done enough sharing for the day.

"Alright," Dr. Jameson agreed. She stood up and sat her notebook down on her desk. "I think that this is probably enough for today. I will see you soon, Rachel."