My name is Chapman. The Yeerk in my head is named Iniss.

I hadn't spoken with Loren since that one meeting right after her accident, over ten years ago. But I was thinking about her and Elfangor a lot recently.

The biggest reminder was when her son enrolled in my school. I quickly found the face that went with the name on the roster. I never said anything to him, but I couldn't help but think of his mother every time I saw him in the hallways.

Later that psychic monster, Quantum Kindred, came to Earth. After searching all over the city for anyone who knew about the Time Matrix, the fact that it only focused on me seemed to prove that Loren's amnesia never recovered.

And then the Andalite ship crashed. There was now at least one Andalite hiding in the city. Knowing that made me think of that other, more-or-less good Andalite I used to know. And his wife.

All these years, Loren never contacted me either. She presumably never remembered me. I didn't expect her to. And without alien-fighting to keep us working together, our relationship completely evaporated.

But recently, it was like the universe was sending me reminders of her. Like it was trying to say, "Hey, it's been a FULL DECADE since you lost touch with your so-called-teammate. Don't you think you should do something about that?!"

It was true. I've been putting this off for too long.

I waited until one of Iniss' feedings. Once he was in the pool, I would use my alone-time to call Loren on my cell phone. It felt right to do this as my old self. As just-Chapman.

The call wasn't supposed to be anything dramatic. I didn't intend to reveal the secrets of her alien-filled past. This phone call was just reconnecting with an old acquaintance. Just, "Hi, you're not dead, right?"

But I was still uneasy.

Iniss spoke inside my head. [Brave enough to fight Taxxons. Nervous about a phone call. That is so human.]

[I can always leave you stranded in this pool, you know,] I replied darkly.

It was an old threat; I didn't really mean it. But even if I had, Iniss wouldn't have been intimidated. He indifferently left my ear and sank into the pool.

I left the underground cavern for better reception. On the building's ground floor, I stood next to a window and typed the number into my phone. I had looked it up earlier in the phone book: Fangor, Loren. All these years, she never left town.

It rang once. Twice. Thrice.

"Hello. This is Loren Fangor speaking."

I swallowed. "Hello, Loren. This is Hedrick Chapman. You probably don't remember me, but we used to work together, before your car accident." I paused. "You don't remember me, right?"

"No, sorry." She apologized politely, not guiltily. "I guess you know all about my accident. But if you were hoping my memory came back, it never did. All I know about my old life is what they told me at the hospital." She spoke simply. She wasn't sad about her memory. It was just a fact.

"I see."

If Iniss was in my head, he probably would have interrupted my thoughts with some snide remark about how my words were an odd choice for speaking to a blind - Oh, hell, I thought it anyway! I've been with him too long.

"You said we worked together?" Loren said.

"Yes, uh, with your husband, mainly. Al Fangor. We helped out with his projects sometimes."

"No one from before the accident ever calls me. I had the idea that he and I didn't have any friends from back then."

"Yes, well," I didn't bother keeping the embarrassment out of my voice, "'friend' might be more generous than I deserve. Knowing what you went through, I should have checked in more often. It was wrong of me to ignore you so long. I'm sorry."

"Hedrick-"

"Chapman, please. I never liked the name Hedrick."

Silence.

"Loren, are you there?"

"Yes. Sorry." She spoke like she was coming out of a daze. "That happens sometimes. I almost remember something, but . . . It's nothing clear. Just my mind wandering."

"I see."

"Why are you calling? I mean, I'm sorry if I'm accidentally being rude, but why now? What happened?"

"I suppose I'm calling because of your son."

"My . . . You mean Tobias?"

"I'm a vice principal, and Tobias goes to my school now. Every time I see him in the hallways, it reminds me how long it's been since I spoke with you."

"Are you sure he's my son? That Tobias?"

"Of course I'm sure. The name on the roster is Tobias Fangor. And he's the spitting image of you."

"I . . . I don't know what to say . . . How is he?"

There was something strangely unsettling about her tone. "In what way?"

"I'm not sure I should even ask this, but . . . Do you know where he lives?"

I narrowed my eyes. "Hold on. Are you telling me he doesn't live with you?"

"I had to give him away. I couldn't raise a baby after the accident."

"Yes, I knew that. But I thought - I just assumed it was temporary. You're saying you don't even know where he is?!"

Loren spoke softly. Somberly. I had trouble telling what kind of emotions were behind that voice. "I think . . . They must have explained it to me at the hospital. But those early days, there was so much going on, and I was hurt. It's a blur. By the time I recovered enough to live on my own, I couldn't remember the names of who he went to live with. I honestly didn't know how to find him."

"But surely, you could call child services and have them figure it out, couldn't you?"

She paused a long while. "Maybe you're right. Maybe I could have tried harder. But I wasn't even sure if I should contact him. I figured, wherever he was, he was living a normal life without me. So what good would it do to drag him back into my problems?"

Now it was my turn to pause a little. "That's . . . disturbingly similar to the reason I never called you all these years."

"His foster family must remember my name. I figure if Tobias wants to get in touch, he will."

"And he really hasn't?" I asked incredulously. "After all these years, no one from your old life has called you, even once?!"

Another pause, followed by her small, restrained voice. ". . . Just you."

.

"HOW was this allowed to happen?!"

Later that night I was pacing angrily in the kitchen. Alison was there, chopping vegetables as she listened to me.

"She had no idea Tobias was living with her own sister and her brother-in-law! She didn't even know she had a sister, because they never bothered to visit her after the accident! Loren always said they were jerks, but not one word in ten years?! What is wrong with that family?! And what the hell was social services doing all this time?! They just dumped Loren's name in the round file and forgot about her!"

Alison hummed in response.

"After everything that woman has done for this city! People don't know how invaluable she was during the Skrit Na Civil War! Or the invasion of the Scarlet Liars fleet! Every human in this city should be on their hands and knees thanking her! But instead, they treat her like Andalites treat vecols!"

I stopped pacing and stared at Alison's back. "And you know what the worst part is?" I angrily tapped my chest. "I did it too! I'm just as guilty as all those other idiots who abandoned her! I could have called her any time and fixed this, but I didn't! I'm the exact same, self-absorbed, jackass I was when I was eighteen!"

Alison hadn't said anything. She just kept chopping vegetables.

I narrowed my eyes. "Dear? You and Niss. At least ONE of you is listening, right?"

"Loren was separated from her son. You feel bad. Repeat, repeat, repeat," Alison said casually.

[See? They're listening,] Iniss said dryly. He'd also been hearing my thoughts on the matter since leaving the pool, and he didn't hide how tired of it he was.

I had no friends.

Alison shrugged. "I wasn't gonna interrupt. I'm letting you vent."

I walked up next to her. "Don't treat me like a tantruming child. This is serious. Loren might have been right not to try and regain custody, but she didn't even know where her son was. Can you imagine if we were cut off from Melissa like that?!"

She put down the knife and sighed. "Are you gonna reunite Loren and Tobias?"

"I intend to try."

"Then just do it!" She turned to face me with an easy smile. "Darling, I can give you excuses on how you were too busy with your own family to worry about Loren's, but I'm not going to, because it doesn't matter! There's no point in ranting about what happened in the past. So focus on what you can do now. That's how you make things better."

And Alison proved once again I was wrong about the no friends thing.

I let out a breath and smiled faintly at her. "I love how you just cut through all the nonsense."

[Hey!] Iniss protested in my head. [She just said what I've been telling you all afternoon.]

[Yes, but she said it better.]

Iniss did the mental equivalent of an eye roll.

.

The next day. Lunch period. The cafeteria.

My dark shoes clacked against the linoleum, though the sound was drowned out by the dozens of noisy students. I wore a suit and tie, as usual. Even in my off-hours, I can't remember the last time I wore casual clothes.

I walked with purpose, scanning the rows of tables and children. Soon I found my target. Tobias was one of five kids sitting at a table at the far end.

There are so many students each year that it's impossible for me to be familiar with all of them. But by coincidence, I did know most of the group he was with.

Sitting next to Tobias was Rachel. I knew her as one of Melissa's best friends. They shared a gymnastics class and she visited the house many times in the past. I liked Rachel. Good manners, dignified, but not a suck-up. A very confident young lady. I also sensed a hint of anger issues beneath her surface, but hopefully she would grow out of that.

Sitting across from Rachel was Marco. I knew him as Eva's son. Eva was a good friend, and I hated admitting this, but I've never liked Marco. He was snarky and sarcastic. Disrespectful to authority. Never took things seriously. Always talking back. Had an extremely high opinion of himself that was in no way justified.

In other words, exactly like me at that age.

But his grades were also good enough that his behavior didn't really warrant an intervention. His teachers mostly just put up with his class-clowning.

Then there was Jake. I knew him only tangentially as Rachel's cousin and Tom's younger brother. Nice kid, but unremarkable. You could probably put his picture in the dictionary under the word 'AVERAGE'.

The last person there was a short black girl . . . Her, I did not know. She might have been one of the friends at Melissa's last birthday party, but I couldn't remember. As vice principal, the fact she wasn't on my radar meant she was a decent student who never got into trouble, so good for her.

The five were leaning over their trays and chatting quietly. But when they noticed me approaching, they immediately fell silent. They straightened up and watched me cautiously as I walked up to the table.

[Oh, talking about something they don't want the Vice Principal to hear,] Iniss mused. [That's interesting.]

Maybe a little, but I didn't really care. I filed it away for later.

I looked down at Tobias. "Mr. Fangor, would you ple-"

"Wait, hold up," Marco interrupted me. One more reason to dislike him. He grinned at Tobias. "Your last name is 'Fangor'? What kinda name is that?"

"Your first name is 'Marco'. Don't tease," I told him.

Marco fell silent. Rachel smirked at him.

I ignored them both and looked back at Tobias. "Please stop by my office after school today."

He looked up at me very calmly. "Am I in trouble, sir?" His tone was polite but guarded and, strangely, made me think of his father.

"No. If you were in trouble, you'd be coming now, and I wouldn't be saying please. I just want to talk." I glanced over the whole group. "Enjoy your lunch."

I walked away, leaving them to gossip on what this could be about.

.

The end of last period. I had some papers spread out over my desk when the knock came at my office door. I actually finished a few minutes ago, but it's good to look busy for the students. "Come in."

Tobias Fangor walked in. He was thirteen. Average height, but very thin. His hair was long and dirty blond. He was unmistakably Loren's child. Most of his features came from her - that was probably for the best.

The boy had no idea what an oddity he was. A mixed-race, first-generation Earthling. An anthropological wonder.

Biologically, he was a normal human. Half his genes came from Loren. And the other half came from the nothlit body Elfangor created using DNA samples from multiple humans. (I wasn't one of them. I made Elfangor acquire people the hard way.) But a paternity test for Tobias wouldn't correctly match to any of those humans; only the strange mixture that was Alan Fangor.

Elfangor's Andalite DNA was lost forever when he went past the two-hour time limit. There wasn't even a trace of anything alien in Tobias. And yet . . .

He sat down. "What's this about, Mr. Chapman?" His voice was soft. His expression was guarded. Not quite blank, but close to it.

I've worked with enough children to recognize the tropes. This boy was probably being bullied.

I've done a lot to reduce bullying since becoming vice principal, because I do not tolerate that nonsense in my school. I've suspended those morons Andy and Pat more than once. But I'm aware there were still minor instances where I wasn't looking. There always are.

Not that Tobias would ever admit it or ask me for help. He was polite around authority figures, but he never expected help from them.

Gentle and courteous on the surface, while bitter and battle-harded underneath. I had to be imagining it - projecting - but I kept thinking that there was so much of his father in him.

I clasped my hands together on my desk. "I didn't call you here as the vice principal. This is actually a personal matter."

"Personal?" He raised an eyebrow.

"I knew your parents, Tobias," I said plainly. "We worked together a long time ago. After your father died, I fell out of touch with your mother. My fault, mostly. I admit that. But recently, I reconnected with her . . . Were you aware that she's searching for you?"

Tobias blinked. Then he blinked a few more times. He seemed unsure how to respond - which seemed a bit strange to me, considering it was a yes-or-no question.

Finally he replied, "You talked to my mom?"

[Ugh, not quick on the uptake, is he?] Iniss muttered.

I ignored Iniss and gently answered Tobias. "I'm not sure what your guardians told you, but the reason your mother never contacted you is because she literally didn't know where to find you. She's also under the impression that you don't want her to contact you. It's your decision, but honestly, I think she would really like to hear from you."

He was taken aback. Uncomfortable. It was the most emotion I saw from him thus far. He was quiet for a long time, and then he asked, "Is this for real? You found my mom? And you're friends with her?"

"We're past that. Try to keep up," I replied, starting to lose patience.

"But . . . I don't . . . Why wouldn't she know where to find me?"

A sinking suspicion. I narrowed my eyes. "Tobias, what exactly did your guardians tell you happened to your mother?"

He looked troubled. He didn't like talking about this. "Not really anything. I never knew what happened to her. I didn't even know she was alive."

[You . . .] Iniss was stunned. [Didn't it occur to you to find out?!]

I agreed with the sentiment, so I relayed it out loud. And I added, "She's in the phone book, Tobias."

I realized a second too late how badly I put my foot in my mouth. Tobias didn't wince or get angry at me. His eyes just sort of . . . glazed over. It was like he couldn't see me anymore. Slowly, his gaze sank downward.

Dapsen.

Softly, I said, "I'm sorry. That was unnecessarily rude of me. You were a child. It wasn't your responsibility to find her."

Looking at something about a thousand feet below my desk, he whispered, "They said she didn't want me."

"They're liars, and they don't deserve to keep you."

He didn't respond. He looked like a wounded animal.

"Your father, Al, was killed in a car accident. The same accident gave Loren a traumatic brain injury, or TBI. She's blind. She has memory problems. She needed years of physical therapy before she could take care of herself, much less herself and a three-year-old. Neither your relatives nor social services kept her informed on what happened to you. It wasn't her fault."

He lifted his head. "So now what? She wants - what? - she wants me back? She wants me to visit?"

"That's not the question. The question is: What do you want?"

He stared.

.

After a long phone call with Loren, the following day, I parked my car in the unused driveway of Loren's small house.

I turned off the engine and looked over at the passenger seat. Tobias held his backpack in his lap, and had his other meager possessions in two bags in the backseat. He stared silently at the house.

"You okay?"

He didn't respond.

"It's not too late to back out if you're nervous," I told him. "We can just go. I could drive you to your uncle's or something."

"I'm not going back to him. Or my aunt," he said, voice hard, not looking at me. "Ever."

I did not ask if Tobias' aunt and uncle abused him. Their reaction to Loren's injury already told me more than I wanted to know.

[For two humans who obviously didn't want to raise a child,] Iniss thought, [they didn't try very hard to send him back to his mother.]

The whole situation made me angry. Iniss was just weary. Together, we evened out into irritated.

Tobias still hadn't made any move to leave the car. We just sat there.

"If we're doing this, can we do it soon?" I asked. "Because my daughter's doing a gymnastics exhibition at the mall today, and I told her I'd be there." Iniss thought it'd be boring, but this was for my daughter, so he'd deal with it.

"Do you really think this will work?" Tobias mumbled. "She's disabled. She doesn't even remember me."

"I don't know if this will all work out. No one knows," I said bluntly. "You couldn't live together eight years ago. But at least now she can feed herself, and you're old enough to know not to stick your tongue in electric sockets . . . If it doesn't work out, call me and we'll find some other arrangement for you."

Tobias finally looked at me, suspiciously. "Why are you helping me so much?"

I shrugged a little. "Because it's right." I added, "Besides, I owe Loren. Your father too."

"What was my father like? You knew him, right?"

"Yes. In fact, you could say I'm one of the only people who really knew him."

"You were friends?"

"Wouldn't go that far."

At his curious expression, I added, "I respected him, on a good day. But we were always butting heads. He was very self-righteous. So am I, of course. But he was also . . . right . . . an annoying amount of the time."

"Did he have any family? Do I have more uncles, or grandparents?"

Iniss and I conferred for a moment, deciding on the best lies and the best half-truths to tell him.

"I don't know," I said at last. "Al completely cut ties with his family and his old home. He wasn't born in America, you see. He came from very far away."

"Where?"

"He wouldn't talk to me about the details. All I know is that he was a solider. He was forced to fight people who didn't always deserve it. One day, he got sick of it all. The fighting. The propaganda. He was so sick of his old life that he left everything behind and ran away to start a new life here. He never looked back."

The words had an effect on him I didn't expect. His hands trembled a little, and he seemed to turn pale, but I couldn't tell. He turned his head away too quickly and looked out the window, up toward the sky.

"Tobias?"

He didn't say anything for a long time. Which was kind of a thing with him, but this seemed more serious. He stared at the sky silently.

Finally, in a cracking voice, he said, "I . . . I almost ran away too . . . I mean, I didn't. I wouldn't. But I was thinking, more and more, how nice it might be if I didn't look back and just . . ."

He turned forward again, face serious. "Never mind. Doesn't matter."

"Al didn't just run away. He ran to something. That's the key. He wanted to live his life with Loren - and you."

Tobias didn't reply. But he finally got out of the car.

Author's Notes: And so, Tobias never became a nothlit.

Also, in case anyone was wondering, Elfangor really did die when Chapman thought. He wasn't the Andalite that crashed at the construction site.