The Disappearance

"So, what else is my daughter hiding from me?" my mother said, barely ten seconds after I had stepped into the house. "I really want to hear more about your double life, Rachel. How about you bring over more of your friends that I've never met before; they can tell me something about my own daughter."

She was mad! And not the ordinary mad; like when Sara sneaks snacks before her dinner. Her face was red, and her eyes burned with an intensity that might have sent David running for the hills. She was sitting on one of the arm chairs in our living room, but I was sure that she had been standing next to the window the entire time David and I had been talking. She started to bombard me with questions the moment I had turned the door knob. She was already in mid-rant when I walked into the house. I bet she had been dying to let it all out the moment David had brought up Tobias. Or maybe from the moment David told her that I was always looking "a bit down" at school.

"I'm not hiding anything, mom." I lied. "David's just a jerk."

"Oh, really?" she got up from her spot on the armchair, and folded her arms across her chest; the way I usually folded my arms when I was angry. "Tell me Rachel; why is it that I've never heard you talk about David before? That look in her eyes was terrifying. I never thought that my mother was ever capable of looking like that.

"Rachel, you've never mentioned David, and yet he seems to think that the two of you are close friends."

"Do I have to introduce you to every single person that I've ever met?" I said. "Mother, friends move away; people move on. Besides, I'm pretty sure David exaggerated our friendship. We were never as close as he says we were."

"And what's this I hear about you crying at school?" she demanded. It's as if I hadn't spoken at all. "Rachel, I thought I made it clear to you. If you want to talk about the divorce, you know you can talk to me anytime. You don't have to bottle up your feelings all the time!"

"I'm not bottling up anything!" I snapped. "David's a liar. I don't cry at school."

"Why on earth would he lie about something like that, Rachel?" my mother asked. "He said he had no idea that your father and I were divorced, remember? You need not hide anything from your mother!"

"I am not hiding anything! Why can't you get that through your head?"

"We both know that's a lie, Rachel!" my mother retorted. "You come home some nights, exhausted and bitter. You spend all weekend with Jake and Cassie, except for those rare occasions where you just lock yourself in your room all day; sleeping!"

My mother went on and on about my strange habits, growing a deeper shade of red with every breath she took; she reminded me of a radish, or maybe a turnip. She was telling me about how I was neglecting my sisters; avoiding responsibility, forcing Jordan to babysit Sara. Apparently, I was to blame for a lot of things that went wrong around the house.

"And who is this Tobias?" she asked. Actually, she sort of screamed. When my mother goes off on one of her little rants, her voice just gets louder.

"He's my friend, mom!"

"Oh, another one of your secret friends?" my mother mumbled.

"No, mother. He is not a secret friend." I rolled my eyes.

"Then why haven't you brought him over?" she asked. "It would be nice to meet this boy."

"I just don't feel like bringing him over!" I replied. He just pops by my window every so often…

"Where does he live?"

In a tree across town.

"He lives with his uncle." I answered. "But his aunt has joint-custody; sometimes, he'll live with her."

"What happened to his parents?"

He never knew his mother, and his father's an Andalite War Prince. His father's dead though; he was killed by a power-hungry alien slug in an Andalite's body.

"They passed away." I said quietly. "Tobias doesn't like to talk about it."

"Rachel, I want you to be honest with me." My mother looked into my eyes. "Are you dating this boy?"

"Mother!"

"Are you dating David, then?"

"NO!" I snapped. "I'm not dating any boys!" Just a hawk who can sometimes transform into a boy… "If you don't believe me, then you could just ask Jake, or Cassie. You can ask Jake's friend, Marco, if you want; they'll all tell you the same thing."

"Are you and your friends doing drugs?" She asked, lowering her voice so my sisters upstairs wouldn't overhear.

"I'm going to bed." I told her. "I am not going to bother talking to you when you're like this."

I walked away from my mother and started to make my ascent up the staircase. From the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of Sara and Jordan, hugging the bars of the stairs, eavesdropping on my mother and me.

"Rachel Katherine Berenson, you look me in the eyes and tell me the truth!"

If she wanted the truth, she could have it. But it wouldn't be my fault if she couldn't handle it.

"Fine mom, I'll tell you the truth." I said, turning to face her. I backed down a few steps. "I'm fighting a war against a parasitic race that's trying to enslave the human race. You, Sara and Jordan are in danger of being infested by Yeerks. The Yeerks slide into your ears and take over your entire body; you become a controller. And it's not just you: Jake's brother Tom is a Controller. Principal Chapman and his wife are controllers; as are a whole bunch of our friends and neighbours. And it's not only me who's fighting. Jake, Cassie, Marco, Tobias and an Andalite named Ax are all part of an underground resistance known as the Animorphs. I'm an Animorph as well; we can transform into animals.

"And if you want to know more about Tobias, here it goes: he's the illegitimate son of Elfangor, the alien who gave us this incredible power. Ax is Elfangor's younger brother, which makes Tobias his nephew. And Tobias isn't a human; he's a hawk. He spent too much time in morph, and now he's trapped. That's why I don't bring Tobias around.

"And David—that guy who just had dinner with us a few minutes ago—he was an Animorph as well. He found the device that gave us the power to morph, and the Yeerks wanted to get it; so they took his parents. We had to make David one of us. But David betrayed us. He tried to kill Tobias and Jake, your nephew, and once impersonated Sadler! David turned out to be more trouble than he was worth, so we trapped him in the body of a rat, and we ditched him on some island.

"And, as you can see, David is back now, and he has more power and plenty of information on me and my friends. He's probably out there, right now, plotting to kill us all! But that's all fine and dandy, as long as I'm not doing drugs. Well, I'm not doing drugs, mother; because I would never be able to get high with such a busy schedule. Is that what you wanted to hear?"
I had said it. I had just told my greatest secret to my mother, and my sisters were witnesses to the whole conversation. I hadn't just said it in my head; I really just let it all out. I couldn't help it, I was so overwhelmed. I had too much on my plate with David's return; I couldn't handle my mother constantly badgering me about boys and drugs. I couldn't imagine what my mother would say to that!

"Dammit Rachel! If you're just going to make up ridiculous stories, then I don't want to see you for the rest of the night. Just go to your room!"

I shrugged and walked up to my room, avoiding the looks that my younger sisters gave me. I would have to worry about my mother some other time. The conversation wasn't over; it had just been delayed for another few hours, until my mother found the strength to yell at me some more. Right now, I had to worry about David. Jake and the other had to know about David's return, and about the Observers that were supposedly watching our every move. I didn't plan on going to sleep tonight. I had to get to Jake. And I had to check on Tobias, just in case. David tried to kill him once; he may try to do so again.

The second I walked into my room, I opened my bedroom window. I then stuffed my comforter with a few pillows, just in case my mother or sisters walked in to check on me. It was completely cliché, and I doubt that it would ever fool anyone—no human is that lumpy—but I didn't have the time to worry about that. I tore off my day clothes and put on my morphing outfit. To think, earlier today I didn't think I would need it; Jake told us that we had the day off… I focused on the morph at hand; the bald eagle.

Morphing is…weird; obviously. It doesn't hurt—if it did, one would probably die during the attempt—but you expect it to hurt every time you morph. It's unnatural; people were not meant to change their entire DNA structure to become something completely different. And it isn't something that most people can control. One moment, your face will change, and the next thing you know, you're shrinking. Though, my friend Cassie is an estreen—someone with the rare ability to control the morphing process; emphasis on the rare. The rest of us Animorphs are just awkward.

The first thing to change were my arms; both changing from dangling appendages, into the large wingspan of a bird of prey. My skin darkened to match the brown colour of the eagles. The feathers popped out into 3-D, and covered whatever was left of my human arm. I noticed that more feathers started to grow from other parts of my body as well. My bones were rearranging; growing larger or smaller to match the structure of wings. I imagined what I must look like. I must have resembled a harpy.

My head was the next part of me to change. I wasn't facing the mirror in my room—not that I would even try to look at my hideous reflection—so I can't really describe the changes. I felt strange though; I could feel my skin bubbling and stretching. The middle of my face jutted outwards, and my soft red lips became the sharp beak of an eagle. My shoulder length hair turned stark white and started to shrink back into my skull. I could feel my eyes beginning to change; in shape and in quality. My senses heightened tenfold. I could see a fruit fly buzzing around my bed post, and I could hear Sara praying in her bedroom.

Next came the shrinking. But it's not what you would expect shrinking to feel like. I felt as though the floor was rushing towards me, and not the other way around. My torso changed shape. Feathers grew where feathers shouldn't be growing and some…other parts of me shrank away as though they had never been there at all. Soon enough—maybe a minute or so later—I had morphed into a fully grown, adult bald eagle; the largest bird of prey in North America. I stretched my newly acquired wings to their full length, and cocked my head to the side. Then, I took off from the ground and flew through the open bedroom window.

The thermals weren't nearly as great as they would have been during the day. It has something to do with the sun, and the heat that rises from the ground; producing an updraft. Tobias knows more about the science of thermals than any expert on birds or nature. I sometimes wonder how Tobias knew as much as he did about stuff like that. Was this all information that he was aware of before becoming a hawk—during his life as a friendless boy, who spent most of his free time in the library, reading books—or was it something he picked up after he became a nothlit?

A nothlit is a term used by Andalites to refer to someone who has been trapped in a body that is not their own; one of the consequences of overstaying the two hour limit. Tobias was a prime example of what happened when you broke this crucial rule. But I'm almost positive that Tobias intentionally overstayed the time limit. It sounds like a horrible thing to say, I know. Why would someone want to spend the rest of their life as a bird? What you need to realize is that Tobias' human life was awful. He was constantly being picked on at school, and he was being neglected and abused by his aunt and uncle. He told me some stories about his childhood, in confidence; I couldn't blame him for wanting some sort of mistake. Maybe things were reversed in Tobias' situation. Maybe he was really a hawk, trapped as a human.

I realize that I probably should have gone to Jake's first. Jake was, after all, the leader of the Animorphs; however reluctant he may be. But I just had to know; I had to see if Tobias was alive. Just ten minutes ago, David had said that he wasn't afraid to attack the people I cared about, if he wanted to hurt me. He would use Tobias to get to me. I guess it's odd; me thinking of a boy before thinking of a blood relative. It felt as though I was choosing love over duty. But it didn't seem strange to me. I knew how I felt about Tobias when I believed David killed him. I felt like David had killed me, personally. I would not let that happen ever again.

When I was within range of Tobias' meadow, I started to call out to him in thought speak.

((Tobias, are you awake?))

I waited for his response. But there was none.

((Tobias, are you there?)) I asked again.

He could have been sleeping—hawks don't hunt at night. I tried to keep myself calm, to think rationally. But I couldn't shake off the image of a golden eagle bearing down on a defenceless red-tailed hawk; it seemed too real to me. And, the more I thought about it, the more I started to panic. It seemed like David was always one step ahead of me; first appearing out of the blue, waiting for me in my house, and now he has gone after Tobias. I should have followed David, instead of going inside to fight with my mother.

I flew over the meadow, scanning the area and looking for any sign of Tobias. It wouldn't have made a difference if there had been five, or six, or a hundred other red-tails in that meadow; I would have been able to pick out Tobias in that sort of crowd.

((Tobias, where are you?)) I cried desperately. ((Tobias, please answer me!))

Tobias didn't answer. I started to fear the worst. I panicked. I had to find him. I landed on the ground and demorphed. Once I morphed back into my human body, I began to morph into a great-horned owl. If David was out there, he would be expecting me to be looking for Tobias. He would be on the lookout for something unusual; like a bald eagle flying around town at night. I had to keep a low profile.

I'll skip the details; morphing an owl wasn't really much different from morphing the eagle. When I had finished the morph, I took off and started to think of placed where I could find Tobias. There weren't many places for him to go, really: there was his meadow and Ax's scoop. He might have been at Cassie's barn, but that wasn't very likely. I doubt if he had ever visited Marco or Jake at night, the way he would visit me. I couldn't picture Tobias pecking on Marco's window, asking him to go flying with him; they just weren't that close. So I flew to Ax's scoop in the woods.

I could see Ax's scoop; it was a good ten feet away.

((Ax, are you awake?)) I asked, flying towards his little home in the woods. ((Ax, can you hear me?))

There wasn't an answer. Did David get to Ax, as well? No…no, that was definitely impossible. Ax was a trained aristh in the Andalite military; he could handle David in any morph. I mean, Ax has gone tail to tail with Visser One himself, and he always managed to come out of that alive. David may have been a threat, but he would never have the balls to take on Ax alone. Ax was alive; I just had to get his attention.

I landed near Ax's scoop. It really wasn't much to look at; basically an Andalite-sized hut. Ax kept a lot of personal belonging in his scoop; the most precious of these possessions being his television set. The guy was a member of a race of super-intellectuals, but the simplicity of television fascinated him.

((Ax, it's me, Rachel!)) I cried. ((Ax, please wake up! Tobias is missing!))

((I can hear you Rachel.)) Ax said. He stepped out of his scoop. I'm not adept at reading Andalite facial expressions, but I could tell when someone is tired. ((What is so urgent?))

((Tobias is missing.)) I repeated. ((I couldn't find him at his meadow.))

((Rachel, I am quite certain that Tobias is safe.)) Ax said sagely. ((Perhaps he is trying to ward off an owl that has strayed too far into his territory. He tells me that happens a lot.))

((No. I think he's in trouble.)) I shouted. ((We have to go look for him))

((Rachel, you must calm yourself. Tobias is fine.)) Ax promised.

((Ax…you have to trust me on this…)) I said quickly. ((Can you promise to hear me out?))

((What is it that I must, "hear out", as you say?))

((David's back.)) I said.

((Rachel, that is impossible.)) Ax assured me. ((David is a rat. You know this.))

((He's not a rat anymore. He got off the island.)) I said. ((He can morph again. He's back!))

((That simply cannot be.)) Ax argued. ((There is only one being I know that is powerful enough to help David. The Ellimist would never help David.))

((The Ellimist didn't help David; neither did Crayak.)) I snapped. ((Something…else helped David. You have to believe me. David was just at my house. He had dinner with my entire family; I was there!))

((Forgive me, Rachel,)) Ax sighed. I could tell he was very tired. ((But you are delusional. David has not returned.))

((Ax, David told me—right to my face—that he would not stop until he has killed us all. He said he would hurt our families. I know he tried to kill Tobias tonight. Come on, we have to find them!))

((Clearly, you are not thinking, Rachel.)) Ax sighed. ((But, if it is of the utmost importance to you, I will help you look for Tobias. But, I think it would be wise if we discuss this with Prince Jake. While I am almost positive that you are wrong about David's return, we must tell Prince Jake.))

((Alright…but use your great-horned owl morph,)) I replied. ((I don't want David to think we know he's up to something…And let's try to fly apart.))

I didn't wait for Ax to complete his transition to great-horned owl. I was so anxious; I took off for Jake's house while Ax was half-way between bird and alien. All I could think about was Tobias. He was probably asleep when David barred down upon him, taking on the appearance of the golden eagle that he loved so much. The thought of David and Tobias made me all the more determined to get to Jake's place quickly.

I started getting a weird sense of déjà vu. I was doing exactly what I had done the last time I thought David murdered Tobias; flying around in a blind rage, searching for David with murder in my heart, never stopping to consider the possibility that Tobias might have been alive. But I couldn't help but doubt that David had failed to kill Tobias a second time. David didn't strike me as the sort of person who didn't learn from his mistakes. Besides, I'm sure David had months and months to think about where he had gone wrong the last time.

I landed on Jake's windowsill. I started pecking at the window pane, crying out to him in thought speech. ((Jake, wake up!))

In the dark, I could see the silhouette of a tall boy, crawling out of bed and walking tiredly towards me. He opened the window and poked his head out.

"Do you have any idea what…"

((David's back!)) I interrupted. ((I think he's trying to kill Tobias again.))

"What do you mean David's back?" Jake asked. "That's not…"

((Don't you dare say it's impossible!)) I snapped. ((He's back, and he has his human body back as well. We have to find Tobias now!))

((Prince Jake…Rachel appears to be distressed.)) Ax said. He sounded out of breath, even in thought speech. I'm not sure if it had something to do with my waking him up at a very early hour in the morning, or if he had tired himself out trying to catch up to me. He landed on a tree branch by Jake's window, as I seemed to be taking up most of the space on the windowsill.

"Rachel, you must have had a bad dream or something." Jake suggested. "Or, maybe you're feeling restless…because we haven't been doing a lot about the Yeerks lately."

((David was in my house!)) I screamed. ((He had dinner with my family. And he told me that he wouldn't stop until he's killed us all! David is back!))

"You have got to calm down!" Jake said seriously. He was speaking to me like he was my leader, and I was disobedient subordinate. "You aren't making much sense right now."

((Jake, I wouldn't have come here tonight if I wasn't completely certain that Tobias was in danger.)) I said. ((You have to believe me. David is back!))

Jake swore under his breath and rubbed his temple with one hand.

"Alright, Here's what we'll do," he began. "Ax…I want you to go to Cassie's and tell her about our…situation. I want everyone to meet back at Tobias' meadow in twenty minutes.))

((As you wish, my Prince.)) Ax said.

As Ax flew away from his spot on Jake's tree, Jake mumbled, "Don't call me Prince."

((Jake…what are we going to do?)) I asked. ((I mean, with David back…))

"We're going to get Marco." Jake said, interrupting me. "You can tell me all about David on the way there."

((We'll go great-horned owl,)) I said to him. ((We don't need David on our tail…we probably should have told Ax to tell Cassie…))

Jake said nothing in response, but started morphing. Within minutes, the two of us were flying towards the Hork-Bajir valley to get Marco. I was filling Jake in on the last three hours of my life, telling him about how and why David returned; making sure to include all the details about the Observers and this new game, and how David openly threatened my family.

((Another game, huh?)) Jake said. ((And we're supposed to be competing with each other for a spot on this Observer's team?))

((Apparently. David seems to think that he's already been chosen.))

((This doesn't make sense.)) Jake sighed. ((Why would they choose David, of all people?))

((I don't know.)) I said. ((He says he doesn't know either. He must have something they want.))

((I mean, I could see Crayak doing something like this. He's twisted enough to use David to get to us. But these Observers…it seems very odd, to tell you the truth. We know nothing about them, and neither does David, apparently.))

((So, you believe me, right?)) I asked. ((You think David's back?))

((I'm not sure.)) Jake admitted. ((I know that you wouldn't make up something like this. And maybe you weren't imagining it.)) He paused. ((But I don't think David's back; not really. This has to be some kind of trick. This all seems like something the Drode would come up with.))

((So, you think that the Drode sent an illusion to trick me?)) I asked, trying to keep my voice level. ((Jake, it wasn't an illusion. I saw the real David—in his human form! Jake…you weren't there. If only you could have seen him. The way he looked at me…Jake, there was murder in his eyes!))

((Maybe…)) he sighed.

((If you want, we can turn around and go back to my house. You can ask my mom.))

((We're not too far away from the Hork-Bajir valley,)) Jake told me. ((There's not much point in turning back now.))