Every being in the universe has secrets. I am no exception to that. I have harbored secrets of my own ever since that fateful battle for the Ssstram homeworld, a secret borne by a revelation that I came across in the moment that I thought I was about to die by the tail blade of an Andalite warrior. It was quite disturbing now that I think back to it, and I was also quite disturbed by this thought when I first realized it.

In the moment when I thought that Andalite tail blade was going to lop off my Hork-Bajir host's head from her body, my host didn't say anything about how I deserved the fate I thought I was about to get. She didn't pray for a good afterlife. She didn't even beg for mercy, even if it was just in the recesses of her own mind. In fact, she said, and did, nothing at all. That in itself was disturbing enough. But when I delved deeper into the memories of my host, something that we Yeerks had been taught not to do unless it was unavoidable (like when we were infesting a new host for the first time), what I learned made my first realization all the more chilling. This Hork-Bajir had been through a series of Yeerks, each of them seemingly more abusive than the last. This Hork-Bajir had fought against her first Yeerk, and that Yeerk had fought back by performing the Empire-mandated "mental restructuring"; in other words, mental abuse and torture. This Hork-Bajir's reputation then began to precede her, and subsequent Yeerks assigned to her performed the "mental restructuring" once they infested her until she was finally broken. By the time I had been assigned to this Hork-Bajir, her brain and mind was beyond any reason and feeling. She no longer cared about what happened to her body; the other Yeerks had treated her as a puppet and eventually even she came to see herself as just that, a puppet for an alien brain slug to control and manipulate.

It was quite the chilling revelation for me, and it was the reason why I came to join the Yeerk Peace Movement and fight for the rights of Yeerks and hosts to be able to coexist with each other and become partners. But of course that didn't happen overnight, and I didn't learn about the Peace Movement immediately after I made my realization. Hence why I am talking about secrets right now. I had to keep my realization a secret because if my superiors got so much as a hint of what I had been thinking, I would be accused of "host sympathy" and sentenced to Kandrona starvation. And not just the one that happens after three Earth days; no, we Yeerks have mastered techniques to keep our criminals and "host sympathizers" just on the edge of survival and death by starvation until either they realize the error of their ways, repent and promise to never do it again; or refuse to give up their beliefs and die of starvation.

Feeding in the Yeerk Pool now became a somewhat terrifying proposition for me. I was sure that my brother and sister Yeerks could feel that I was beginning to develop a sympathy, not only for my host, but also for all of the host species under the thumb of the Empire. I was sure that I was somehow broadcasting all of my thoughts out for my fellow Yeerks to know, and that word of my nascent host sympathy would eventually reach a sub-visser and then I would be sent to one of the Empire's asteroid penal colonies (I believe that that's the closest human analogue to what I am describing) to serve out my starvation sentence. But as the days went on and no guards came to haul me out of the Pool, I began to realize that perhaps my fears were unfounded; that none of my fellow Yeerks could actually sense that I now had sympathies for my host in particular and our host species in general. Once I had realized this, I was able to restore a sense of normalcy to my daily routine. I was not in danger of getting picked up and arrested out of nowhere, and for that I was able to breathe a (metaphorical, of course) sigh of relief.

But now I had another problem: who am I going to tell about my new viewpoint of life? I have friends in the various Pools to which I had been assigned throughout my lifetime, of course, but who among them could I trust with my new secret and not to report me to the authorities? The Empire had made it very clear that sympathizing with our host species was a capital crime and that anyone who so much as said or thought something that could very well be construed as having host sympathy should be reported to your commanding sub-visser immediately so that the "sympathetic" Yeerk could be "reeducated" accordingly. You know exactly why there are air quotes around the word "reeducation".

Having said that, some time after the Dome ship attack on the Ssstram homeworld, I was feeding in the Pool some distance away from the rest of the majority of the other Yeerks when I sensed Gershi One-Five-Five approach me. After we had made the customary exchange of greetings by twirling our stalks together, Gershi asked me, (I couldn't help but notice that you were away from the rest of our brothers and sisters. Is there anything on your mind?)

(I was just thinking about what happened with that Andalite fighter during the attack of the Dome ship,) I replied.

(Ah, yes. We barely survived that one, didn't we? I really thought that that was going to be the end of both of us. If it weren't for that squad of Mak saving us, we wouldn't be here talking about this right now.)

(Yes, that is true,) I replied. (Gershi, can I tell you something?)

(Yes, of course, Yemra. You can tell me anything,) Gershi replied.

(You must understand, Gershi, that I trust you,) I told him. (But what I'm about to tell you… it's not exactly something that I can just tell to anyone, do you know what I mean?)

(I'm not sure that I do,) Gershi admitted. (But why are you saying that you're not sure that you trust me immediately after you told me that you do trust me?)

(Gershi, you must promise me that you will never tell this to anyone else,) I asked him. (No one else can know. You must promise me!)

(There is no need to shout, Yemra. That kind of defeats the purpose of keeping this a secret, don't you think?)

I thought about it, and what Gershi said made sense. (Yes, Gershi, you're right,) I conceded. (Now listen closely because I don't want to say this more than once. Let us go back to the start of this conversation. Do you remember the fight against that Andalite fighter, the one where we both crashed and we both thought that we were about to die?)

(Yes, I do remember that,) Gershi replied. (How does that relate to what you want to tell me that I cannot tell to anyone else?)

(Well, when that Andalite was about to kill me, my host felt nothing at all,) I replied hesitantly.

I could feel the tension, shock, and even fear that was suddenly emanating from Gershi. (Your host felt nothing?) he asked me in the equivalent of a whisper. (What do you mean by that?)

(I mean that my host didn't think of anything at all while that Andalite was preparing his tail blade,) I replied. Now that I had mustered the courage to tell someone else my secret, everything was coming out of me in droves. (My host didn't feel any satisfaction or relief or gratitude. She didn't beg for mercy from the Andalite or laugh at me because we were both about to die. No, my host didn't think anything at all. She didn't even feel anything at all. And I think it's because my host has been through so much mental restructuring from her previous Yeerks.)

(Did I hear you correctly, Yemra?) Gershi asked me carefully. (Are you telling me that you believe that your host has been rendered mentally mute due to previous mental restructuring from her former Yeerks?)

(I do not wish to make such an accusation,) I said back immediately. (But I happened to look into my host's memories because I wanted to know why she was like that—)

(You looked into your host's memories as well?) Gershi asked in complete shock. (Are you beginning to develop sympathies for your host, Yemra?)

(What? No! I did not say that I was sympathizing with my host, Gershi,) I replied. (All I said was that I had looked through my host's memories to learn why she had become emotionless during that moment where I thought that we were both about to die. I am not sympathizing with her! I only wanted to know what had happened to her.)

(Of course, Yemra, I understand,) Gershi replied in a calmer voice than he had used for the past few moments. (But you do realize that, host sympathy or not, looking through your host's memories beyond the first few moments of infestation is still frowned upon and could get you demoted back to a Gedd, right?)

(Yes, yes, I know, but I was just so curious about what had happened to my host to turn her into what she is now,) I said. (And you know what, Gershi? Mental restructuring must go!) Now I was on a roll, and it was fair to say that I wasn't thinking about what I was saying, or the consequences that could come with the wrong ears hearing my words. (It does nothing to help our relationships with our host species,) I continued, (and all it does is damage our hosts! We need our hosts to be as healthy as possible so that they will respond immediately to our commands when we need them to!) And then I realized what I was about to say next, and I finally managed to shut myself up.

For his part, Gershi was inscrutable. I could not sense any emotions or feelings from him. He was unreadable. I knew that I had just "messed up big time," as you humans are fond of calling it, by blabbing about my newfound thoughts and realizations to Gershi. Yes, Gershi was my friend, but when it comes to the possibility of being accused of host sympathy, nobody can really be your friend, especially if you're a Yeerk in the Yeerk Empire. There is nobody in the Empire whom you would trust with your deepest and darkest secrets, especially if those secrets entail the possibility of being considered as sympathizing with your host, not even a friend. And I do not exaggerate when I say that there have indeed been cases of Yeerks being sentenced to slow starvation just because they said something to a Yeerk whom they thought to be their friend. Because the truth was there was no such thing as a friend in the Yeerk Empire. It was all about surviving and getting ahead of others.

And I could not know how Gershi was going to react to what he had just heard from me. Was he going to report me immediately? Or was he going to keep quiet, bide his time until he was back in his Taxxon host, and then that was the moment that he was going to report me to the nearest sub-visser? I just didn't know.

In the first few years of my infestation of Jen Carson, I had made her keep my existence a secret from everyone else. I had to make her do it. I had crawled into Jen's ear just a few days after the Yeerk Pool underneath her city had been attacked and captured by US Army and Marine units in a set of coordinated attacks which culminated with the venting of the Pool ship in orbit above the Earth. Anyone else finding out about my existence would have been very dangerous both for me and for Jen because Jen could very well be attacked for keeping me in her head, and I could very well be forced out of Jen's head and stomped or crushed to death by a group of Yeerk hunters. And that wasn't even getting to the fact that I was somehow able to survive more than three Earth days without the vital Kandrona rays that were so important to Yeerk-kind…

But, as I had learned from my own experiences, keeping a secret was easier said than done. It had been just a few months since the day that I had infested Jen in the river, and it was now the first day of school for her. Jen was deathly nervous about the fact that she now had an alien slug living in her head and that she was about to take said alien slug to school with her. And as much as I had tried to convince her over the week before the start of classes that no one would be able to tell that there was a Yeerk wrapped around her brain, Jen was still convinced that the rest of her classmates would know about my being in her head almost immediately.

For the last time, Jen, no one will know that I am in your head, I told Jen as she dressed herself in front of her mirror. That was why we Yeerks were able to keep our presence here on your planet a secret for as long as we did.

"Yeah, you keep telling me that," Jen said to me physically. She was still slightly uneasy about trying to talk to me mentally so she was still speaking to me using her own mouth even though I could already read her thoughts as soon as she formed them. "But someone still found out that the Yeerks were here, right? And that's why you're now hiding in my head, right?"

Yes, all that you have said to me is true, I conceded. But what is also true is that none of your classmates, and even none of your teachers, will see me in your head. Unless you are some kind of human where other people can see through your skin and your skull.

"Okay, um, I'm not that weird, you know," Jen replied. "Now people are going to think I'm weird because I got an alien in my head. Now I'm weird because of you. And everyone is gonna know it!"

Do you want me to take control of you, at least for today, so that you don't have to worry about your classmates noticing that I am now in your head? I asked.

"No! I thought we were clear on that! My body, my brain, my rules!" Jen replied angrily.

All right, Jen. There is no need to shout. There is no need to be upset. You don't want to explain to your mother or your father why you're talking as loudly to yourself like what you're doing now, would you?

"No, I guess not," Jen admitted meekly. She then finished buttoning up her sweater, and she smoothed out her miniskirt and rolled up her sleeves to her wrists, and then Jen stood in front of the mirror. "So, how do I look?" she asked me.

You look like a regular American schoolgirl, Jen, I replied. You look completely normal.

"Really? I'm not too sure about that," Jen replied.

All right, Jen, take a good, long, and hard look at yourself, I said. Since it appears that you don't believe in me, maybe you will finally believe when you see it for yourself. Now, ignore for the moment the fact that I am indeed in your head. Now look at yourself. Can you tell that you have a Yeerk in your head?

I could hear Jen's thoughts churning around in her brain as she tried to decide whether I had a point or not. Those thoughts included, ((Dang, I think she has a point)), ((But I still think people will see I've got a Yeerk in my head)), and ((I really, really love this miniskirt)). One of those thoughts is not like the others, but other than that, Jen finally saw my side of the argument. "All right, fine, I can't see you in me," she said, "but if someone else notices you, I'm not blaming me!"

"Jen, are you ready yet?" Jen's mother Eve asked from the other side of the door. "You might be late for school! And it's only the first day! You don't want to be known as the girl who's always late for the first day of school now, do you?"

"Just wait a minute, Mom! Just one more thing and then I'm done!" Jen walked away from her mirror, grabbed a pair of well-worn boots, put them on, and then she picked up her backpack and walked out of her room, straight into her mother. "I'm ready, Mom!" she said with a smile. We got in the car, and Jen's mom drove to Jen's school to drop her off. Just as Jen had stepped out of the car, Eve called out to her and said, "Remember what we talked about, Jen. The one before you slipped in the river."

"Yes, Mom, I will," Jen replied, and then Eve rolled up the window and drove off, leaving Jen in front of the school. Jen turned around and saw all the other students milling around in the school and the smile immediately vanished from her face. "Oh, my God, there's a lot of people here," she said.

Don't worry about it! I told her. Just keep calm. Nobody knows I'm in your head. No one will even notice unless you begin acting strange. Just do what you always do every first day of school. Unless you want me to do it for you…

"No!" Jen shouted. Then, after making a big mental effort of it, she continued our conversation mentally. ((Remember what we talked about. My body, my rules! I say you can't control my body, you can't control my body! End of story.))

Then you need to calm down and just do what you normally do on the first day of school and we will both get through this day just fine. Nobody's going to be looking for a Yeerk in your school, especially not one whom everyone else thinks is dead. Unless you or your family have a connection to The Sharing that you're somehow keeping secret from me…

((No, I don't think so,)) Jen replied, physically shaking her head for good measure. ((Mom and Dad don't really like the community helping stuff that The Sharing does.))

All right. Now I believe it's time for you to go to class, Jen. As your mother said, you don't want to be late on the first day of school, do you?

"All right, I'm going," Jen said out loud, and then she began walking over to her classroom. I could still hear Jen's thoughts swirling around her mind, thinking that the other students could tell that she was walking around with an extra passenger in her head, but at least she wasn't directing her thoughts at me. I also chose to keep quiet because an argument between the two of us right here in the middle of the hallway would be the very thing that would get the both of us noticed for all the wrong reasons. Jen finally entered her classroom and immediately headed for her seat, where her best friend Julia "Jules" Baker was waiting for her. "Hey, girlfriend," Jules called out as she waved Jen over.

"Hey yourself, girl," Jen said back as she laid down her backpack underneath her table.

"So did you really crack your head in the river?" Jules asked.

Jen sighed and clasped her head in her hands. "Oh, yeah, that," she said. "Yeah, I did. I was skipping rocks on the river and I was trying to get some more rocks and then I slipped."

"Oh," Jules muttered. "That must have been nasty. I only heard about it a few days ago from Carina and Haley after the family got back from Cancun. Carina told me that you had a concussion and lost a lot of blood. I mean, thank God I didn't have to see that but did you really get a concussion?"

"No, I didn't get a concussion," Jen replied. "I did have to lie down for like three days though. And I didn't lose a lot of blood but I was definitely bleeding. The doctor said my head hit the rock in a way that split the skin which was why I was bleeding a lot. You should have seen it, Jules. Mom was freaking out and crying while Dad was shouting for someone to call 911. I couldn't move my body too. I thought I was gonna die."

"Yeah, no thanks. I'm already getting the creeps just thinking about it," Jules said.

"The docs had to sew me up too," Jen continued. "You wanna see my scar?" Before Jules had even replied though, Jen had already pulled her hair back to reveal the small scar just at the base of her skull. "At least my hair hides it so no one can really tell it's there," she continued.

"Oh, wow," Jules said as she saw the scar for the first time. "Yeah, that really is ugly." Both Jen and I then felt more than saw Jules touch the thickened skin of the scar, which felt strange for the both of us, and Jen and I also thought that it must have felt strange to Jules as well. "But you're right. The hair hides it. Just don't do buns."

"Why, thank you, Julia. I haven't thought of that before," Jen said, sarcastically according to her. "I'll keep that in mind."

"But enough about you, Jen. What about those aliens though?" Jules asked. "What do they call them again? Eeks? Creeps? Years?"

"Yeerks," Jen replied automatically.

"Yeah, whatever," Jules waved off. "Those things have been living under our cities for how many years now, crawling their way into our brains, and they only got stopped now? And you can't even tell who's got aliens in their heads! Can you believe who had aliens in their heads? Remember Mr. Bosworth, the gym teacher? His wife had one! Remember Johnny Olsson in 3-B? His parents had aliens in their heads too! So did his sister and brother. It's like Johnny's the only one in the family who didn't have an alien in his head. And remember George Steele's cousin? The hot one? He had an alien in his head as well!"

((Oh, crap,)) Jen said to me. ((This is it. I can feel it. Jules is gonna sense I've got an alien in my head too, and she's gonna report me!))

Don't even think about it! I told her. Just calm down and keep talking to Jules. She can't tell I'm in here, I promise you.

"Mike Steele?" Jen asked. "He had a Yeerk in his head too?"

"What? No! Not Mike! The other one!" Jules said indignantly. "The blonde one! With the dreamy gray eyes… What's his name again? Larry! Larry Tucker! He's the one with the alien! Mike's the one with the llama face. Oh, my God, Jen," Jules muttered, covering her mouth with her hand. "You think Mike the Llama is hot?"

"Of course not!" Jen replied equally indignantly. "I forgot about Larry Tucker, okay? I mean, sure, he's hot, but I'm not the one with a crush on the guy! That's you and you alone, Jules!"

"Okay, forget about my crushes for a second," Jules said. Then in a whisper she said, "I even heard that both Susan and Harvey had aliens in their heads as well. We spend eight hours a day with them, Jen. Who knows what they could've done to us then? I'm telling you, Jen, these aliens are real scary. Just imagine it: you can't tell if the guy or girl next to you's got an alien in their head or not!"

((She knows,)) Jen told me. ((Jules knows! We're both dead!))

Hush! Calm down! I retorted. Then without telling Jen what I was going to do, I took control of her brain's glands and made them release the necessary chemicals and compounds to calm her down and slow down her heartbeat.

"At least I know you don't have an alien in your head, Jen," Jules said. "Your parents aren't real fond of The Sharing, right? And everyone I know who had aliens in their heads were all in The Sharing. So I know you're clean, Jen. And that's nice."

Jen smiled back at Jules, although it was very much a nervous smile that could have very well tipped off Jules that something might not be right with her best friend. "That's real nice of you too, Jules," Jen said, and then both she and Jules faced forward as their first teacher of the day arrived in the classroom.

Of course, Jen and Jules went back to this conversation once the legal status of Controllers was finally clarified (meaning it was decided that Controllers had the same rights as everyone else and were not lower than dirt because they had collaborated with the aliens that had tried to take over the Earth) and, as Jen had expected, Jules was completely shocked to find out that Jen actually had a Yeerk in her head at the very same time that she had said that she knew that Jen couldn't possibly have had a Yeerk in her at the time. "That's really, really unbelievable," Jules said once she had gotten over the shock. "But I was right! I couldn't tell you had a Yeerk back then, and even now that I know you've got one, I still can't tell! This is really, really creepy, dude."

"You'll get used to it, Jules," Jen replied. "Heck, even I took a year or two to get used to Yemra. So it's all right. It's gonna happen eventually." And she did, and so did Jen's other friends. So, as they say, everything went well in the end after all.