Chapter 6

It wasn't long before we arrived at Danielle's house. It had been an unspoken decision that the meeting place was Jennifer's treehouse. When we arrived, Danielle and Keri were waiting for us.

"Cassidy's coming," Danielle said as we landed on the ground and changed back. Jennifer did the change in only about thirty seconds, whereas I took at least four times as long.

Jennifer patted her age-old companion on the head and started to go back to osprey. She turned to Danielle. ((Do you know what Sarah did?)) she said viciously.

Danielle shook her head and Jennifer launched into the story of my 'evil little trick.'

I waited for her to finish the story while petting Keri. She was a very affectionate dog, having not seen me or Jennifer in a week. She pushed her nose into my hand and looked up at me. It was sweet. I even kneeled down when she rolled over so I could scratch her belly. She was so carefree. She didn't have to worry about anything. Not about death, about invasions, about boys...

I looked up, realizing that Danielle and Jennifer had fallen silent. They were looking at me. Jennifer had finished telling her story.

"What?" I asked.

Danielle was examining my face. She wasn't stern-looking, but she didn't seem to be satisfied with what she saw. She was deep in concentration when Cassidy arrived.

((Hey everybody,)) the osprey said. She flew down into the field and landed. Danielle snapped out of it and turned to her. Cassidy was already turning back into herself and it looked a lot cooler than anyone else. First she grew, then her body started changing until she looked like some kind of harpy. But it took a long time. Longer than me. It was pretty how her skin and bodysuit still had feather patterns on them. Her legs formed into human legs, which was the least attractive part, aside from her beak, which sort of turned into big, pink lips before shrinking into her face. Her wings and tail disappeared, then her feather pattern.

I blinked. That was amazing. How had she done it?

"Sorry I'm late. The bird sort of wanted to go hunting..." She carefully avoided looking at me.

"Cool, we're all here," Danielle said.

I signed this to Jennifer.

Danielle jumped into business immediately. "I've overheard Leah and Kayla talking, and I think I've finally found something we can do to hurt the yeerks."

That perked my interest. No matter how close I got to killing myself moments earlier, a way to stop an alien invasion would forever brighten my day. "What is it?" I asked eagerly.

"Kandrona is that stuff they eat. It's like some kind of a ray, and they need a generator to make it. Leah said that there's a way to make very small, portable ones that can be placed in stores and houses all over the town so people don't have to go on ships or underground to get it."

"Underground?" Cassidy asked.

"Yeah. There's a whole pool of yeerks under the city. But we'll worry about that later. Right now we need to worry about these portable things."

"How can we destroy them?" I asked.

"That's the easy part," Danielle said. "They're bringing in a shipment tonight at about one o'clock. On the outskirts of town. Then they're going to load them up in a FedEx truck and deliver them to the houses. We can intercept them at the site and destroy the stuff."

((Do we know exactly where?))

"Yeah. We can wait in an ambush. If we go fast, we could be in and out, job done, in a matter of minutes."

"Sounds good," I said. "So we'll meet here at midnight?"

"That's what I was thinking," she said. "Then we can scope out the place and get in position before they even think about arriving."

((Good plan.))

We looked at Cassidy. She had been the most reluctant to help before. Apparently saving the world wasn't on top of her to-do list.

"I'll be there," she said.

"Good," I said. "Is that all?"

((Actually,)) Jennifer said, ((If you guys wouldn't mind sticking around, I'd like it if we could hang out a while.))

I was still in a sort of confused mood about Jennifer. I didn't know if she was really my friend or not, or if it had been right of her to withdraw from society. But I accepted her invitation.

Cassidy chose not to join the party. She said something about a date with Mark and took off.

It turned out that Jennifer was more interested in learning how to speak and read than just 'hanging out.' Danielle and I sat up in the treehouse, which had conveniently been stacked with some of Danielle's favourite books from a long time ago. There was Dr. Seuss and Franklin, then some more 'advanced' choices such as The Babysitter's Club and Goosebumps.

So the remainder of my afternoon was spent teaching the art of lip-reading and understanding the English language. I found myself wondering at one point how two-year-olds managed to pick up on this stuff. It seemed nearly impossible for Jennifer. Danielle was trying so hard to help. It was good, because I didn't want to try. Instead, I distracted myself by petting Keri and reading Are You My Mother? I remembered that book. It was one of my favourites when I was a kid.

I was drawn from my childhood memories of reading with my mom when my stomach made a loud noise of discomfort. Danielle looked at her watch.

"Six-thirty. I guess it's supper time," she said. "You guys have any preferences? I think the choice tonight is the a-la Pop Tarts or zeee Kraft Diiner." She said Kraft Diner with a heavy French accent, making Jennifer (as Keri at the time) and I burst out laughing, despite being six hours from a deadly mission. And despite the fact that Jennifer didn't actually understand until I explained with signs.

((I'll take the KD,)) Jennifer said.

"Ditto," I said.

"Cool. You wanna come give me a hand Sarah?"

I looked at Jennifer. She was changing back to herself. Keri was still a little afraid of the whole process, so she had made herself at home in the corner, growling. They would need a little time to spend with each other anyway. "Sure," I said.

We had only just descended from the treehouse when Danielle jumped on my case. "Did you do that on purpose?" she asked.

"Do what?" I asked.

"Ignore the osprey. When you were coming out of your dive. Don't try to tell me you were joking. Not even you're dumb enough to wait till the treeline to pull out. The instincts are there for a reason."

"Duh. I know that," I said.

She looked at me, waiting for me to elaborate. Normally I would have gotten mad at her for worrying about me. I suppose it was something Jennifer and I had in common. But Danielle just wasn't the kind of person you could get mad at. And she wasn't worrying about me, I reasoned, she was worried that it would interfere with her plans. Because I convinced myself she was being selfish, I could bring myself to tell her the truth.

"Look, the osprey never did anything," I said. "I backed up and told it to take control and nothing happened. I could barely feel it until I had withdrawn all the way."

"Really?"

"Yeah. It was weird. I'll just have to learn how to do it myself," I said. "How hard can it be? Besides, it's not like I'm going to be diving all the time. Flying is about getting from A to B. Not a big deal. I won't need instincts for other animals, I can just use them."

"Okay," she said. "Just make sure you always practice with an animal before using it. Have you tried the tiger yet?"

"Yeah," I said. "It's not so hard to use."

"Good. That means we're all set for tonight."

We made small talk about predictions for how long it would take Jennifer to learn how to understand English. Neither of us mentioned the big IF: if we lived. We were casual about the mission. We told ourselves it would work. We weren't allowed to act afraid.

That didn't stop us from actually being afraid. I was terrified. Dying on impact was one thing. Being shredded to death by a dozen or so blades was a different matter. I found myself wondering if I was going to regret that I hadn't dug my beak into the ground about a foot or so.

We arrived at Danielle's house. We had only just walked into the back door when we were greeted by the sounds of a guitar.

"Hey Maaaaaark!" Danielle called teasingly. "How was your date?"

Mark appeared at the bottom of the steps. "Great! And how was yours?" he paused. "Oops! I forgot—you didn't have one. Hey Sarah. I'd ask you how your week's been, but I don't think I need an answer."

It was a welcome change from the way everyone else greeted me. I smiled a little, then reverted to my depressed act.

"You don't have to," he said, coming upstairs with his guitar. "You and I both know she wouldn't want you to act like that."

I found that a little rude. Mark hardly knew Jennifer. "How would you know?" I asked.

"You know," he said, "you're not the only one who knew her. We heard everything she ever had to say from you, and unless you were just lying about what she said, she was a pretty cheery person."

I sort of admired that he could give me the hard truth and in a way insult me while making me feel better.

"That's why everyone was so surprised on Monday," he continued casually, moving past us and up into the living room. "She just didn't seem like that kind of a person." He sat on the couch and picked a white-gold dog hair off the fabric and examined it closely before discarding it.

Keri's hair.

He strummed his guitar experimentally. "Any requests?"

I was glad that I could drop the depressed act. Danielle and I went up to the kitchen. She opened the French doors between the two rooms so we could talk to her brother.

"What's that song you played yesterday?" she asked.

"The Singing Twilight," he replied. "Learned it from the composer himself."

I assumed that the 'composer' must have been one of his friends or teachers.

"Play that one," she said.

So he played. As Danielle and I pulled out two boxes of Kraft Dinner, Mark played the most beautiful song I have ever heard. It was slow, classical style, but with a sense of liveliness. Like someone was sad, but they still had hope.

Like us.

I could tell why Danielle liked this song.