((Author's Note: I apologize for the length of time it has taken to post this new chapter. Lots of crap has happened in the past couple months. Namely, stuff like college, getting my first job, needing surgery because of an abcess near my tailbone, being sick, schedule difficulties, my sister developing a persistent sinus infection, and trying to find a place of my own to move into. However, I'd like to state that the next few chapters are all more or less planned out in my mind, so it shouldn't take quite as long to get them out. I already have one chapter (not the next one, Chapter 7, unfortunately) partially written, as well as a completed, later Interlude, and then some other general stuffs floating around in my mind. The slightly sappy tone has crept in again but I think it's not bad. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this one.))
Chapter 6: Marco
My name is Marco, and I must be going insane. Now, don't get me wrong. I value insanity. Sometimes doing something a little crazy is a great way to get a laugh, and laughter is my way of dealing with life's problems. I say that if you can't laugh at yourself every once in a while, you're too serious. People that are too serious go seriously mental, whacked-out, cuckoo, put-me-in-a-rubber-room nutzo.
But my life isn't exactly one that's conducive to sanity. You're probably thinking, "Yeah, right. A typical teenaged almost-high school guy, with a great dad, lots of money, nice house, all the stuff he could want." If only you knew.
My friends and I fight aliens, and they've got it all. Green, slimy, body-snatching, evil-to-the-marrow, and secretly taking over the world. If you think this is another one of my jokes, guess again. The Yeerks—that's what these aliens are called—are here and they're fighting a secret war in plain sight.
We cut through the construction yard near the mall one night. We had a choice between taking the safe, but long way, or a quick, dangerous shortcut Of course, it wasn't nearly that easy. That night, in the middle of the construction yard, we met our first alien.
His name was Elfangor, an Andalite warrior. His people had fought with the Yeerks in the space above Earth, and they lost. He flew, broken and dying, into the construction yard hoping to find someone, anyone that he could warn. He found six middle-school kids. He found us.
I don't think any of us will ever forget that night. The night Elfangor died. But before he died, he gave us a weapon to fight the Yeerks, a piece of powerful Andalite technology. He gave us the ability to morph into any animal we've touched for two hours at a time. If one of us went over the two hour limit, we'd be stuck in the shape of a flea or an elephant or, in Tobias' case, a red-tailed hawk. Later, we rescued the last Andalite survivor from Elfangor's ship, his little brother Ax. The seven of us, the Animorphs, fight the Yeerks, hoping that the Andalites will come to rescue us soon.
At first, I didn't want to fight. My mom had "died" a few years before that, and it destroyed my dad. He quit his job at the observatory just outside the city, stopped seeing all of his friends, and spent all his time working, sleeping, or staring at the TV. When that boating accident happened, I lost more than my mother. I lost my father for three years.
Then, not too long after that, I found out my mother was alive…but not the same. She had been taken for a host by the highest leader of the Yeerk military, Visser One. Only Jake knew that it was my mother, that I was facing a lie that had nearly destroyed my life. But that night, I found a reason to fight the Yeerks. Maybe it was selfish. I don't really care. I wanted my mom back, and if it meant fighting against aliens, I'd do it.
That doesn't stop me from complaining about it when it gets crazy, though.
Last fall, my dad finally came back to the real world. He realized that Mom wouldn't want him to waste his life away, and decided to go back to his old job. We moved into a new, nicer house, not far from where my best friend Jake lives.
Jake and I have known one another since we wore diapers. Our parents have been friends longer than we've been alive. He's a little too serious at times, but I like to think I keep him from getting boring. Jake is sort of the responsible, natural leader type. 'Course, he'd never asked to be the leader, but he is, and we've been through everything together.
His cousin, Rachel, is your typical warrior princess. She's tall, blonde, beautiful, and she's got an attitude bigger than the Grand Canyon. Rachel doesn't care for my "stupid jokes" very much, even if she does laugh at them. Her best friend is Cassie, a.k.a. Tree Hugger Woman, who runs a wildlife vet clinic in her barn along with her dad. The two of them are like night and day, but like Jake and I they get along pretty well.
Cassie and Jake are an item. Nobody else says much about it since Jake can get a little touchy, but they are. It's an open secret, and I'm not sure either of them is really aware of that fact. Oh, they look at each other shyly, they blush whenever it's hinted at. They did kiss though, finally, a couple months back, so maybe they do know we know.
Then there's Zeke. He was sort of a distant friend of mine, somebody I knew at school but didn't know very well. He and Cassie were closer friends, but not exactly buddies either. She had invited him along that night at the mall because he didn't get out much, didn't have many friends. He's not a bad guy, really. Smarter than anyone else I know. A nice, quiet kind of guy, but he's shy and awkward around people. I won't complain about the awkwardness, though, because that kid has saved my grade on more tests than I'd like to admit.
You'll probably never meet the last human of our little menagerie. Tobias is stuck in the form of a hawk, but the Ellimist gave him back the ability to morph, including back into his old self. He used to be a dopey kid that got picked on a lot, but Jake helped him and they became friends. Now he chows down on Mouse Pockets and baby bunnies in a field near Cassie's house. I tease him about it sometimes, but…I don't do it too much. Tobias has had the worst burden of all of us by far.
Finally there's Ax, the brother of Elfangor and (through the bizarre tricks of the Ellimist) Tobias' uncle. At first we didn't really get along all that well because I knew he was hiding things from us, but I've given him a second chance. In fact, that was exactly why I knew I had to be going insane.
"At least I took him here before going to Cinnabon," I muttered, shaking my head. The two of us—Ax in his human morph, of course—had gone down to the Central Library downtown. It's a big, old building, with lots of little spiral staircases and excessively tall shelves. The kind of place people get lost in if they aren't careful, and Ax wasn't feeling very careful. Or at least he wasn't feeling inclined to let me know where he was going.
"Ax, where the he—heck are you?" I called, relieved that I caught myself. Normally I don't care about swearing, but this was a library. It was bad enough that I was shouting, and I didn't need to give a librarian an excuse to kick me out while Ax was still inside. He was dangerous enough with someone watching him.
"Marco, I am right here," he said quietly as he came to a halt a few feet away. "There is no need to be concerned. Cerned. Erned."
I sighed. The boy was impossible. "Ax, I know you're excited about the books, but you have to sign the library card before you can use it."
He cocked his head to the side and asked, "Sign? Ign. What, aaat, do you mean?"
Holding up the library card, I pointed to the little rectangle on the back. "You have to put your name on it so you can have an account. I put the mailing address as mine when I asked for the card, so if you ever forget to return something I'll be able to let you know. But you have to have your name on it in order to use it."
"I cannot put my name on this card, Marco. The likelihood of a Controller seeing it is too great a risk." He frowned. "How will I be able to use it?"
Sighing, I rolled my eyes and shrugged. With all his Andalite knowledge, Ax just didn't get it sometimes. "Make up a name. Something you could use without people wondering, but close enough to your real name that you'd recognize it."
He stared at me blankly. "I do not know, www, the ways that the names of your people work. Erk. What do you think, Marco?"
"Well, uh…something that sounds like your real name, Ax." Suddenly, a name hit me. "Axle! And we could call you Ax for short."
"That appears, ears, to be a good choice," he said, mulling the name around for a moment. "I will need a surname, ur, surn, as well, I believe."
"Well…how about…" I thought about his Andalite name. Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill. Aximili. "Simile. Axle Simile." It was a horrible pun. I really didn't care; enough of my jokes are horrendous puns anyway. "And then if you go by your nickname, Ax, you'd be Ax Simile."
"Ax…Simile. I think that will work, Marco." I gave him a pen and he signed it. I almost laughed at how unreadable his signature was, but the look of shining pride on his face made me stop.
"Thank you, ou, very much Marco," he said quietly. Then, when he looked at the shelves in front of us, he became ecstatic again. "Oh! Books on languages!"
"Ax, are you sure you're feeling okay?"
It was an hour after we left the library. We'd gone to the mall, bought four Cinnabon cinnamon rolls (three for Ax, of course) and were now heading back to my place on the bus. Ax was looking a little green around the gills, if you know what I mean, and I was a little worried.
"Marco, I believe I requested, quest, too much icing on my cinnamon buns," he said, as he groaned softly. "And I have thirty of yo—thirty minutes remaining before I must…"
"Change into your other…outfit?" I asked, noticing that there were still several people on the bus. I whispered, "Keep quiet about it, but I know. We should be at my house before then."
The driver called out the stop nearest to my house, so we ambled off and I gestured for Ax to follow me. Thankfully, that specific bus stop was only a few blocks away from a place where Ax could safely demorph and rest, e.g. my bedroom. My dad was still working with the people at the observatory, preparing their equipment for the eclipse coming later that day, so I figured we had at least two hours before he got home.
Ax went into the bathroom connected to my room, something I loved about this house when we moved in. I flopped onto my bed, feeling lazy and not exactly sure what was going to happen now.
I mean, seriously, this was possibly one of the weirdest things I'd ever done. I was having an alien friend "play" at my house. What would we do? It wasn't like he would know any of the games we could play. I mean, if he thought that my dad's advanced software-writing program was a game, how boring would things like tag or poker be?
We'd already talked at the library, and at Cinnabon, and on the bus. Halfway home, we'd lapsed into a sort of uncomfortable silence that practically screamed "What am I doing here?" Other than some fake chit-chat to fool any listening Controllers that we were just normal kids (or at least as normal a kid as Ax would ever appear), we'd barely spoken for the past half hour. It was weird and it was beginning to get on my nerves.
Suddenly, I noticed that there had been some scuffing sounds in the bathroom and that Ax hadn't come out yet, even though he'd been in there almost ten minutes. I bit back a snide remark about falling into the toilet, knowing that Ax wouldn't understand and that it might make the situation worse. Bracing myself for whatever might happen, I opened the door and poked my head in.
It took all the self-control I had, plus everything I'd ever learned from watching Jake, to not burst out laughing. Ax had demorphed too close to the tub, and was now halfway in it, with one of his dainty-looking Andalite hooves against the side of the toilet reservoir. The wall of the tub was too high, setting him off-balance, and his front hooves didn't look like they had the traction to push him up and out. He looked like he'd been very quietly, very slowly trying to extricate himself and had failed miserably, probably only making the situation worse. While I watched, his stalk-eyes snapped around to look at me and he faltered, grabbing onto the only thing he could reach: the faucet handle.
The shower came to life, spraying water all over Ax's back and shoulders. I dashed forward and reached, hoping to catch the sprayer-head before it fell, but didn't quite make it. Ax turned his head to look at me as I shut off the water. He was soaked and I was pretty wet myself.
"I can see that, Ax. Here, let me help." As I righted him and helped pull him out of the tub, I stifled the laughter that was threatening to make me explode. After a minute or so, he was out of the tub, but still dripping wet.
I
think he noticed the sounds I'd been making, because he said,
"Oh, no, it's nothing," I said, though the look in his almond-shaped eyes told me that he didn't believe me. "Just…never mind. Anyway, since we're both pretty wet now, I'll go get some towels for you to dry off."
I grabbed an armful of towels from the hall closet and made my way back to the bathroom. Is there any way this could get—no, Marco. You know what happens when you think that, I thought to myself. No need to tempt the gods of irony any more than necessary.
I offered a pair of towels to Ax, who stared at them for a moment before drying off his upper body. Leaving the other towels within easy reach, I went to go change into something dry. It was still a nice day out, even if it was a little too warm for early afternoon, so I picked some shorts and a tee shirt.
Then
I heard Ax's uncertain thought-speak voice.
Hoping against hope that no further misadventures had occurred spontaneously since I had left him there, I went inside.
Sighing with relief at the fact that no new chaos had suddenly erupted, I glanced about. It didn't look like anything was the matter…but Ax was looking at me. His tail and hindquarters were still facing toward the door, and he had turned slightly to look at me more easily with his main eyes. As I raised an eyebrow, I asked, "So Ax…what's up?"
"Oh, well then," I said, slightly bewildered. "I guess I can help you with that."
It felt weird. It probably looked even weirder. I'm sure the tabloids would have had an extravaganza with this one: 'Teenage boy gives alien a bath!' However, knowing that it was too great a risk to let him run around to air-dry, I grabbed a towel and ran it over his blue fur.
It took a moment to figure out that I wasn't really getting anywhere. The water was trapped in the fur and I had to really work to get it to come out. It took a little bit of time, but with some effort I was getting the job done. Really, it didn't seem much different from drying off a dog or an animal at Cassie's barn, except that this animal had a lethal tail-blade and was a thinking being.
Once I was almost finished, I looked over at Ax. His main eyes had closed, and his stalk eyes were lazily looking in other directions, so he couldn't see me. I briefly wondered why he would be doing that before I noticed that I'd stopped working. Ax began to open his eyes and I quickly pulled away. It was an awkward moment but it passed. Can this get ANY worse?
That was when I heard the sound of feet climbing the stairs, and the meaning of "a hell of a lot worse" suddenly became extremely clear to me. While I'd been busy drying off Ax's fur, my dad had come home. He was already halfway up the stairs. If he came into my room and saw Ax…no. I couldn't let that happen.
"Yes, I know. It's my dad. Morph back as fast as you can and get dressed. I'll…distract him…somehow…"
I bolted out of the bathroom and came into the hallway just as my dad rounded the corner. He looked happy to see me, so I managed to conjure up a smile too. My acting skills had never been tested more—well, with the exception of Ax's little incident earlier. I groped to find something to say, but my dad beat me to it.
"Hey Marco! I didn't expect you back yet. Steve and I got finished with the calibration a bit early, so I thought I'd swing by here and maybe grab something to eat before the big event."
"Yeah, that, uh, makes sense," I said, feeling extremely stupid. "So…uh…how's the observatory thing coming?"
My dad raised an eyebrow, but said, "It's fine. The equipment for sun-observation is all ready now and they'll start it up in a little under an hour, though the eclipse won't happen until a bit after that." He paused, then asked, "Is everything okay, Marco?"
"Yes, everything's fine!" I said, probably a bit too cheerily. "Oh, by the way, I brought a friend over. We went by the library earlier and then decided to crash here for a little while. He's using the bathroom right now."
"Oh, is that your friend No?" He was, of course, referring to the only time he'd ever met Ax. I'd told Ax to only answer with "yes" and "no" and it led to an interesting and confusing conversation between him and my dad. However, since it was likely that he'd be seeing more of Ax now, I thought I should rectify that name situation.
"Oh, yeah, it's him, but about his name. He has a kind of…strange…sense of humor, and he was asking people to call him 'No' as a joke. His real name is Axle, but he usually goes by Ax."
My dad sighed, frowning, and said, "Kids these days. I don't think I'll ever get your humor."
Just then, however, Ax opened the door to my room, and for once he had managed to dress himself correctly without needing any help. Perhaps there is a God, I thought, ever so slightly sighing with relief. He stood there silently for a moment, not knowing what to say.
"Hello, Axle. It's been a little while." My dad suddenly got this excited look in his eyes. "Hey, do you think you guys would like to come to the observatory with me? It'll be excellent viewing out there, no tourists or media people or anything. And I'll take you out to dinner afterwards."
Surprisingly enough, Ax smiled that weirdly cute smile of his. "I would enjoy, oy, doing that. I have not seen an eclipse…like this before."
The two of them looked at me like it was decided. I sighed dramatically and asked, "If I said no, would it really matter? No, don't answer that. I'll go along. I've never seen an eclipse either, it might be interesting."
The ride to the observatory was thankfully uneventful. We made small talk, or at least the closest thing Ax could manage. He's like a fountain, bubbling up with random bits of information like what the first US patent was or what the world record is for the longest time spent in a sensory deprivation tank. No wonder he gets along with Zeke so well, they're both practically walking encyclopedias.
Thinking back on the events of the day, I realized that even though things had been hectic, sometimes downright chaotic, it had been a good day. Ax got to do something he almost never does, just hanging out. He probably doesn't think about it that way, but I think it might get kind of lonely for him out in the forest. Of course, he could always talk to Tobias, and they're basically best friends, but sometimes I think he just wants to get out and see something other than the forest. I guess maybe that was why he read so much, it was a way for him to escape.
Snapping out of my reverie, I noticed that my dad was looking at me strangely. "Marco, we're here. You don't want to miss the eclipse because you sat in the car too long." He started toward the observatory building, not waiting for me.
"Oh, yeah," I said. "Just…didn't notice what was happening, I guess."
"Are you feeling, nnnng, alright Marco?" Ax asked, frowning. He was getting better at using facial expressions. "You seem to be preoccupied with something."
I shrugged. "I'm fine. Let's go, we don't want to keep him waiting at the door."
It took a few minutes to get to where the astronomers were working on their equipment and chattering about settings and things. My dad introduced us and said that we were just here to watch the eclipse. His friend Steve, one of the head astronomers, lent us some ID cards that would get us out onto one of the balcony-type areas outside. We walked in silence as we looked for a good spot, finally coming to one on the top floor.
The observatory was built a few years back, off in the forested areas away from the city, sort of north and a little west of the mountains. A big rock formation was picked since it was set up above the trees and things, and part of the complex ran into the rock. The balcony we stood on actually connected to a little path up to a higher area on the bluff, where I saw what looked like a smaller, separate optical telescope dome a ways off.
"Marco, I believe if we follow, low, ollow, this path, we will find a better viewing position."
"Yeah, let's go," I said, not really minding where we went to watch the eclipse. I took the lead, looking on both sides of the path for a clearing or something. I almost missed the little trail about fifty feet from where we'd started, but it looked pretty well used so I decided to give it a look.
After a short walk, the trail opened out to a small clearing that went out to the edge of the bluff. A railing had been installed, thank goodness, because there was a long drop-off that made me just a little dizzy. Ax followed me in, looking around and nodding.
"Yes, this will provide a good view of the eclipse. Clipse," he said, then muttered to himself, "Psss. What an interesting sound…"
A joke nearly popped out of my mouth, but I held it back. Ax wouldn't know what I was talking about, being an alien and having his weird foot-digestive-system thing that only Zeke seemed to understand. We stood side by side, looking out at the forest surrounding the bluff and waiting for the eclipse to begin.
"Marco, I was thinking, inking, king, about you recently," Ax stated suddenly. "I remembered that you went on a date, daaate, with someone. I did not hear how it went."
I couldn't stop a smile from coming to my face, because as alien as Ax may be, sometimes he's just an awkward teenager like the rest of us. I mean, with anybody else I would have just shrugged it off as normal life, you know? But with Ax, I felt like I could relate to him a little more. I might not always understand him and why he did things, but when you peeled off all the layers of society and culture and manners and just looked at who we were, there wasn't a really big difference between us.
I'm starting to sound like Zeke, I thought. Or maybe Tobias. Come on, Marco, get a grip on yourself, philosophy is for excessively serious people.
I sighed. "Not real great, Ax. Leila, like most people of the female persuasion, is impossible to understand. She said she liked me because of my sense of humor, then ended the date early when I started telling jokes that were actually funny."
Ax gave me a sidelong glance. I had noticed he was beginning to use more human facial expressions ever since Zeke had commented about it. I wouldn't have thought about it normally, but Zeke was right—part of what made Ax's human morph so…weird…was how his face only registered basic things like frowns and smiles. Otherwise it was usually blank. By itself, that wouldn't be a big problem, but in combination with the slightly off way that he said words and his bad habit of playing with sounds, he came across as a little too weird.
"Okay, fine. I give in. This time it wasn't the complex infrastructure known as the female mind. We went to a classical music concert and during the intermission I…made fun of the composer." Ax turned a little more, but had to rebalance himself for a moment. I took the hint. "And the conductor, the musicians, the audience, and the concert hall. But they were good jokes!"
"I see," Ax replied, obviously not understanding at all. Then again, most humans didn't understand my amazing humor, so what did I expect? Suddenly he became inquisitive. "What is 'classical, assic, cal, music?"
Before answering, I glanced up to the sky. The moon had just begun to cover up the sun and the sky had started to darken. After I watched for a moment, I said, "Classical music is…well…it's music written for instruments like the piano and violins and stuff." Looking back at Ax, I realized that that probably didn't mean much to him. "Well, I don't listen to much classical stuff, so you'd be better off asking Zeke or maybe Cassie. But basically it's music mostly without words that uses older types of instruments and writing."
"Oh." He, too, was staring up at the sky now. The sun was almost completely covered, and the thin crescent remaining was slowly being swallowed up. The light was kind of eerie, really, silvery and watered-down looking. I could see the details of things really clearly, but colors faded and overall shapes were harder to see. Finally, the moon was completely covering the sun, and a silver-white halo formed around it.
"It's beautiful," he said, too distracted by the sight to play with sounds.
I wasn't much better. "Yeah…you must get to see a lot of these on your homeworld."
"Actually, we don't. Only two of our moons are large enough and close enough for total eclipses. And since my homeworld is in a binary star system, sometimes the second sun makes it too bright to see an eclipse clearly. Earth is much better."
Not having anything to say (I mean, what do you say to something like that?), I settled for just watching. It really was beautiful, eerie and mysterious and yet amazing and mesmerizing. Without really realizing either of us had moved, I found myself standing almost shoulder-to-shoulder with Ax. Though, because he was taller than me by a healthy margin, "shoulder-to-upper-arm" would've been more accurate.
It took another moment to realize that I was holding his hand, with its strong but gentle grip. Even more bizarrely, I didn't immediately pull away. Maybe it was because of the eclipse. I don't know. But it felt right, standing there next to him. Time felt weird, slow, suspended while we watched the sky, like we were the only people in the world.
Then the totality began to pass. (Contrary to popular opinion, I don't always sleep through science class.) "Let's go, Ax," I said. He nodded silently and followed me back to the observatory.
We parted awkwardly, both of us walking a little distance off. I knew that what had just happened wasn't normal, probably should have rung some little alarm bell in my brain, but it didn't. My feelings were all over the place, and I couldn't get them sorted out. Finally, I just took a few deep breaths and pushed it out of my mind. I don't need to deal with this right now. I'll just talk to Cassie or Jake. Solid, boring, dependable Jake always knows how to fix my moods.
But I couldn't completely block out a little thought that came out of some dark corner of my mind. You can't hide it forever. Whatever that meant.