Marco

Jake and I stayed in the barn, sitting across from each other on bales of hay. For one of the first times in my life, I had no idea what to say to my best friend.

Jake finally stood up and began to pace the open area in slow, deliberate circles. "I saw on the news this morning that three bodies were found in the school. Three human bodies, nothing else. That they reported, anyway," he said as he walked, never looking back at me.

That meant that the Yeerks had somehow managed to dispose of the Hork-Bajir bodies before the uninfested police had arrived.

It also meant that I was directly responsible for the deaths of three human beings.

"There was also a firefighter killed this morning while checking for survivors."

Make that four.

I swallowed down against the nausea rising in the back of my throat, trying not to picture the brown-haired young woman with the gun. "Ok, there were casualties, Jake, but this is a war. There are going to be deaths. We saved children, maybe hundreds of them!"

Jake never looked back at me. "Is that why you did it, Marco? To save the children? Did you even stop to think about how many children would have been infested if you and Rachel had both been killed and there were suddenly only four Animorphs to hold back the Yeerks?"

I couldn't deny his logic, but I jumped up to my feet anyway, suddenly furious at Jake for even daring to suggest that I didn't think about the war, about humanity. "Don't even get started with me on that. I pushed my own mother off a fucking cliff for this war, and you're going to ask me if I'm thinking about the long term?"

Jake stopped to finally face me, his face unreadable. "All I know is that last night you were willing to risk everything so that maybe Rachel would notice you. You were thinking with your dick, not your brain."

I didn't think, I just lunged at Jake, but he dodged me and I went crashing into a stack of empty cages. I hit the ground hard, slicing my arm on a metal cage door along the way, which I knew I deserved.

Jake sighed and held out his hand to help me up. I ignored him and inspected the damage to my arm. Blood was starting to seep into the sleeve of my shirt. "I was not thinking with my dick," I muttered, pressing down on the cut to try and stop the bleeding.

Jake left me sitting on the dirty floor and went back to pacing. "Tell me what you were thinking, then."

There was no point in trying to hide or deny the reason anymore. I stared down at my arm to avoid looking and Jake and seeing his reaction. "I did it because I'm in love with Rachel."

I heard Jake's footsteps stop, and then start again, at a faster pace. "Are you really in love with her?"

"I think so. I've never been in love with anyone before, so I can't say for sure. Does it feel like there's a burning hot ball of fire in your chest that is threatening to erupt at any moment? Except somehow good?" I looked up to see his response.

Jake grinned wryly. "Yeah, that sounds about right."

"Would you have done it for Cassie?" I asked him.

Jake thought about it for a while. "Yeah, I think I would have."

He walked back over and sat down next to me on the barn floor. "You went against the rest of us and made a crazy, reckless decision that could have gotten you and Rachel killed. But this isn't entirely your fault. I was wrong yesterday when I said that we should give up on the elementary school. I shouldn't have put Rachel—or you—in that position."

"It's not your fault; it's mine. I let all of this happen. And now I'm in love with Rachel, and it sucks. Rachel doesn't even give a shit about me, and I'm making decisions that I never would have made before—decisions that have caused people to actually die."

"The shitty thing is, you don't get to pick who you fall in love with, Marco. All you get to decide is what you're going to do about it."

I groaned and leaned back against the wall of the barn. "All I've done so far is get stomped on by Rachel and make spectacularly bad decisions."

Jake sighed and leaned against the wall next to me. We probably looked pretty pathetic sitting there on the dirty floor of the barn together. He nudged aside one of the cages that I had crashed into so he had room to stretch out his legs in front of him. "I hate that I have to admit this, but…you destroyed the elementary school. Children are saved, and Rachel is safe. They weren't the worst decisions. You just made them for the wrong reasons."

"I didn't do it because I thought it would make her want to be with me. She's made it clear that that's never going to happen. I did it because I knew how much it would kill her if her sister was infested. I couldn't stand the thought of seeing her in that much pain." I knew that kind of pain, and Jake did, too. The pain of knowing that someone you loved, your family, was suffering, and you had the physical power to stop it, but couldn't. For the good of the planet.

Jake looked at me funny. "I thought that you just wanted to hook up with her, but you really do love her, don't you?"

"Yes," I said simply, because there wasn't any question anymore. I loved Rachel, and Jake knew it, Rachel knew it, Tobias knew it, even Ax knew it and he got all of his knowledge on human relationships from watching The Young and the Restless. I loved Rachel enough to risk everything to save her sister. I even loved Rachel so much that if she needed to be with Tobias, then I'd be damned if I wouldn't find a way to make that happen for her, too.

"So what are you going to do about it?"

"What do you mean 'do about it'? There's nothing to do. Rachel and Tobias will work things out. We never—I mean, we just kissed a couple of times. He'll get over it." And I would get to sit in agony and watch them continue their relationship right in front of me.

"Is that what you want to happen?"

"Rachel wants Tobias. It doesn't really matter what I want to happen."

"Have you told Rachel how you feel?"

"Trust me, Jake, Rachel knows exactly how I feel."

"I think—" Jake paused for a few moments and then started over. "If you don't at least tell her, you'll regret it. No matter what her response is going to be, you should let her hear how you feel."

I shook my head. "No. I'm not going to put myself out there for Rachel to smash down again. It would just make things worse for everyone. I've already fucked Tobias over enough—how can I just go up to his girlfriend and say 'I love you more, pick me'?"

"How can you not? How is Rachel supposed to make a decision without all of the relevant information?"

I clenched my fists in frustration. "That's what you're not getting, Jake. It doesn't matter whether I make an embarrassing declaration of love or not—Rachel already made her decision."

Jake turned to survey me with an almost pitying look in his eyes. "Alright…Marco, you realize that as unofficial leader of the Animorphs, I am honor-bound to make the decisions that I think are best for the group as a whole?"

I stared at Jake, confused by his sudden topic change. "Um...where are you going with this?"

"I just want it to be clear that the group dynamic is important to me. Important to the world, actually. Like Ax said, we're not going to be able to fight if we can't get along and trust each other-"

"I get it, Jake," I interrupted him with a wave of my hand. "I'll apologize to Tobias, and, assuming I survive that, he and Rachel can go back to their tortured bird-loves-girl story and I'll go back to being the funny wannabe ladies' man. Everyone will be happy."

"—but you're my best friend," Jake finished.

"Huh?"

"Marco," Jake said, "you say that Rachel already made her decision."

"Yeah…?"

"Then how come Ax went after Tobias instead of her?"

I snorted at this insignificant detail. "Well, because—I mean…that doesn't mean…" I trailed off as I realized that I didn't have an explanation for why Rachel hadn't gone rushing out of the barn after Tobias.

Jake raised his eyebrows pointedly.

I wasn't going to do it. I wasn't going to cling to some puny detail in hope that maybe things weren't as black and white as I said they were. "It doesn't mean anything," I insisted. "Rachel wasn't staying for me."

"You asked me if I would have blown up the school for Cassie," Jake reminded me.

"And?"

"And I said yes. I would have blown up the school. And also, if she had ran away like that, like Tobias did, I would have gone after her. No matter what else was going on."

A tiny spark of hope lit up inside my chest, but I immediately smothered it out. "That's you, Jake. We're talking about Rachel here. The normal rules do not apply."

Jake shrugged his shoulders helplessly. "Ok. I'm done trying to explain it to you, and, in fact, I am done talking about your love life in general." He stood up and began morphing to peregrine falcon. "Let's go. We're going to go to my house and play video games until I manage to forget about this entire day."

I immediately followed his lead. It was going to take way more than video games to make me forget about everything, but I was willing to give it a try.

Several hours later, I left Jake's house with a crick in my neck and blurred vision from staring at his TV screen. I was sadly out of video-game-shape. Our old marathons had lasted for days before I had started to feel any effects.

But it had been a welcome distraction. Now that I was back alone in my room, I couldn't stop thinking about my conversation with Jake in the barn.

I hated him for giving me hope that, not matter how hard I tried to squash it back down, kept filling me with a swelling, excited feeling that maybe he could be right. With crazy thoughts buzzing around in my head, I decided to write Rachel a letter, figuring that if I changed my mind I could always flush it down the toilet and no one would ever have to know.

After my first draft, I realized that I probably shouldn't include Howard Stern references or jokes. The second attempt contained too many comparisons of Rachel to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Drafts three through five were eliminated due to an excess of political, Romeo and Juliet, and robo-baby jokes, respectively.

Number six had "NO JOKES" written across the top in black Sharpie. It didn't help.

I shredded the whole stack into tiny pieces and took them out to the backyard where my dad and Nora had recently had a campfire pit installed. I doused the small pile in lighter fluid, threw a wooden kitchen match on top, and poked my rejected love letters to Rachel with a stick as they burned.

Well, I decided as I watched the scraps of paper shrivel into nothing but ashes. Jake was probably wrong anyway.

"What are you doing?"

I yelled in a surprise at the sound of a voice behind me and jumped back, falling completely off the log I had been sitting on and sending my poker stick flying through the air as I tried to catch myself. Rachel dodged it easily and stared down on me, lying flat on my back in the dirt.

"Little jumpy, aren't you?" she asked.

My heart was pounding so fast that I had to take a second to catch my breath before I could sit up and subtly check the fire to make sure there were no legible parts of my letters left. "You scared the shit out of me."

"Sorry. No one was answering your front door. I noticed your dad and stepmom weren't home and Jake said you were here. I thought we could talk." Rachel picked my poking stick up off the ground and sat down on one of the cushioned lawn chairs that Nora had arranged around the fire pit.

I rolled the log I had been crouching on aside and sat in a lawn chair opposite Rachel's. "What do you want to talk about?" I asked cautiously. Even though I was far from scared anymore, my heartbeat was still uncomfortably loud.

Rachel scooted her chair closer to the pit so she could poke at the smoldering remains of the tiny fire. "Jake said four people died at the elementary school."

"I know."

"Do you regret helping me?" she asked, lifting up a blackened scrap of paper stuck to the end of the stick. I could, just barely, make out traces of my own handwriting.

"No, I don't. I wish that no one had died, of course, but it's a war. People have died before, and more are going to, possibly including us. It doesn't mean that we did the wrong thing." I didn't mention the way the entire thing had blown up in our faces concerning Tobias. I also didn't mention that, given the opportunity, I would make the decision to help Rachel destroy the school over and over again.

"What were you burning here?" Rachel asked, examining the debris from the fire.

"Nothing. Not important. Don't worry about it."

"Right," she put the stick down. "I wanted to say thank you. I don't know what would have happened if you hadn't shown up. It probably would have been me that died, or worse. I was wondering…how did you know I was going to be there?"

I shrugged and stared down into the fire pit. "I knew you wouldn't let anything happen to your sister. When you love someone…you want to protect them."

Rachel didn't say anything, but I could feel her looking at me as I stayed resolutely focused on the tendrils of smoke coming up from the pile of ash.

"Protect them like jumping in front of a bullet?"

My mouth was so dry, I had to swallow several times before I could respond. "Protect them…however they needed it."

"Not everyone needs to be protected."

I looked up at Rachel. She was leaning back in the lawn chair, one arm folded across her waist and the other clutching at her chest, right over her heart.

"Sometimes they do. Even when they're the strongest person you know."

Rachel stood up abruptly. "I should go. Your dad or stepmom could be home—"

"No, they won't be home any time soon. They went to visit Nora's family today, and they live a couple hours away," I said, standing up as well. "You don't have to leave yet."

Rachel shook her head, her expression completely unreadable. "I only came over to thank you. And I did."

"Rachel…" I suddenly wanted desperately to follow Jake's advice, but the words were all stuck in my throat. If my disastrous letters were any indication, even if I did manage to get them out they would probably be the wrong ones. How did people do this? I had thought following Rachel into the elementary school had been equivalent to ripping my own heart out and handing it over to her, but somehow trying to put things into words was even worse. "I need to tell you something."

"Don't say it, Marco," Rachel said, but she was moving closer to me, coming around the fire pit to where I was standing.

She was close enough now that I could see the way her cheeks were flushed red even though it wasn't hot outside. Her eyes were bright blue, brighter than normal, more blue than eyes should ever be.

"Why not?" I asked, not bothering to question how she knew exactly what I was going to say.

Rachel slowly reached up to grip her t-shirt again in that same spot, right over her heart. When she answered me, her voice was quieter than I expected and I had to lean in to hear her. "Because if you say it…then I won't be able to leave."

My heart, already beating at twice its normal speed, jumped up into my throat. Was she saying what I thought she was saying? It couldn't be—not Rachel. But there she was, only three feet away from me in my backyard, saying these things that had to mean…

Before I could lose my nerve, I took a deep breath and said it, all of it.

"I love you, Rachel. I know that you have a boyfriend and a war to fight, and that there's a million other reasons that I shouldn't, but I do. I love your strength, and your bravery, your humor, and your passion. I feel more alive when I'm around you, like maybe we could actually make it through all of this somehow."

I said all of this very fast, not giving Rachel any time to interrupt me or make comments, but I didn't know how to stand the silence once I had finished. Rachel hadn't moved, just stood there looking at me with her eyes that were almost too blue to be real.

"Say something," I begged her. "Or else I'm just going to start making jokes."

Rachel cracked a small smile. I saw her swallow and open her mouth to speak, but at the last second she changed her mind and instead crossed the short distance between us to wrap her arms around my neck and kiss me. I slid my arms around Rachel's waist as she kissed me hard, kissed me deep, kissed me like maybe she loved me back.

I broke away from Rachel and she looked at me in surprise until I held out my hand. She took it, lacing her fingers through mine, and followed me into my house.