"Cass, do you mind if I come over to your house?" Rachel asked. "There's something I want to talk about."
She gave Cassie a certain look as she spoke, trying to wordlessly communicate who it was that she wanted to talk to. After all, mentioning the name of someone who was supposed to have disappeared, and especially implying that you knew just where they were, wouldn't be good for their security at all.
"Oh, sure," Cassie said, the expression on her face showing that she'd gotten Rachel's intended message loud and clear. "I'm sure my dad won't mind picking the both of us up."
"Good," she said, nodding sharply. "I'll go call my mom."
After the rest of the Animorphs who'd been present for this little briefing said their goodbyes and went their separate ways, Rachel tracked down a payphone and called her home. She was at least reasonably sure that her mom wouldn't have any problems with her going over to Cassie's for a bit, and while Rachel knew that she would have to come up with a plausible reason, she already had several in mind for times like this.
Besides, Cassie was one of her closest friends, it was only natural that she'd want to hang out with her when she could.
When she got through to her mother, Rachel wasn't surprised to hear the strain in the older woman's voice. Her mom took a lot of cases, after all. Talking over what she wanted to do, or at least what she was going to tell her mom that she wanted to do, Rachel soon had the permission she'd been looking for.
"She's fine with it," she reported to Cassie, when the two of them met up again.
"Good," the other girl said, nodding. "I tried to call my dad, but all I got was the answering machine. He's probably already on his way, so I'll explain things to him when he gets here."
"Thanks, Cass," Rachel said, as the two of them settled down on a bench to wait.
After about five minutes or so, Cassie's father arrived and Cassie explained that she had invited Rachel over to her house so that the two of them could talk. Rachel confirmed that she had told her mother her plans for the day, taking a vague sort of comfort in the fact that she actually had, and the three of them left the mall together. Even knowing that she was going to be able to talk to Shara when she made it to Cassie's house didn't make Rachel particularly enthusiastic about the drive up, though.
Cassie's dad did not have a good singing voice.
Once the trip was over, and Rachel found that opening the window on her side up all the way actually did do something to block out the noise, her, Cassie, and Cassie's dad all piled out of the pickup truck and made their way into the house. Rachel knew that this part was important for their cover, since the barn was mostly a place where people worked helping the sick animals, and no one but Cassie was particularly eager to do that, but she couldn't help wanting to talk to Shara sooner rather than later.
If there was anyone who'd be most likely to understand where she was coming from, it would have to be Shara; they'd both dove right into that situation without a look back, after all.
Once she, Cassie, and Cassie's parents were finished eating a snack and exchanging various small talk, Rachel happily said goodbye to them and turned her attention to her oldest friend. Only to see that Cassie was starting to prepare a couple of large sandwiches.
"You really think they're going to be that hungry?" she asked, keeping her voice low enough not to carry; she'd already guessed just who the extra food was intended for. Cassie had asked for her help in the barn, after all.
"Both of them always seem to be hungry when they're not sleeping," Cassie answered, as the two of them left her house and made their way out to the barn. "I think it has something to do with what happened to them. What they did."
"I guess that might make sense," Rachel said, inwardly fighting the urge to chuckle.
There was nothing inherently funny about the situation, and quite a few things that she could see were a pain in the butt, but it was kind of weirdly amusing that there were two groups that the Animorphs would have to call "they" or "them" for security. On the one hand, "they" could be the Yeerks, and on the other it could be the Radam. It was bound to cause some confusion sooner or later. She decided not to tell Marco about it; there were enough lame jokes in the world already.
When the two of them had made their way into the barn, Rachel let Cassie proceed her into the hayloft. Sitting back as her old friend talked to Slade and Shara and then handed over the sandwiches that she had made, Rachel found that the siblings were actually as hungry as Cassie had made them out to be. It was almost like watching Ax eat; well, maybe a bit more restrained than the Andalite had ever been around food, but not by much.
Once the two of them had finished their food, and Slade had lay back down to rest, Rachel followed Cassie as she lead Shara over to a more secluded section of the hayloft. It was well hidden from anyone else who might come inside, like either of Cassie's parents, and as Rachel settled down facing both Cassie and Shara, she noticed that the other girl was starting to look a bit groggy.
When Shara yawned and shook herself the way Rachel remembered doing at times when she was trying to stay awake under difficult circumstances, Rachel leaned forward slightly.
"Hey, are you okay?" she asked, feeling a bit worried.
"I should be fine," Shara said, holding up her hand in front of her mouth as she yawned again. "Unless you want me to do something too strenuous, like go out for a jog with you or something," Shara said, with a wry sort of smile.
Rachel chuckled. "No, nothing like that," then, remembering just what it was that she'd come here for in the first place, she sat back up. "I wanted to ask you something, though."
"Oh? What is it?" Shara asked, running her fingers through her pale blonde hair in an obvious effort to straighten it.
"That man we helped rescue yesterday; his name was George Edelman," she said, saying his name almost as an afterthought. She figured Cassie wouldn't be too happy with her if she forgot the man's name while she was talking about him; especially after the talk they'd been having earlier. "Anyway, what did you think of him?"
"I don't honestly know what to think of him," Shara said, bringing her right knee up to her chest so she could curl her arm around it. Her eyes went a bit distant, as if she wasn't really speaking to anyone else in the room anymore. "He must have been in a lot of pain, if he thought suicide was his only way out."
"Suicide is never really the answer, though," Cassie said.
Rachel agreed; there were a lot of good reasons why suicide was called the coward's way out, and not just because whoever did it didn't have to deal with their problems when they killed themselves. Judging by the way Shara laughed, something that sounded more like a dog barking than any sound a human would normally make, she didn't really agree.
"Oh, I don't know," she said, leaning forward slightly so that her bangs fell over her eyes. "If what you're dealing with is too much, and you know that you'll never be able to escape it, I don't see any shame in dropping it."
"That's-" Cassie started to say, then paused. "What do you mean, Shara?"
"Sometimes, I think-" she shook her head. "It's stupid; I really shouldn't be thinking about it. Was that all you wanted to ask me about, Rachel?"
The look on Shara's face made it clear that she didn't want to talk about what was bothering her, which was just fine with Rachel. Everyone was entitled to their own secrets, thoughts that they didn't want to share with anyone; things that were too personal to share, and she wasn't going to pry into anyone else's anymore than she'd let someone else pry into hers. Cassie, though, obviously wasn't going to let something like what Shara had just said go like that.
"What were you going to say before, Shara?" Cassie asked, looking worried.
"Nothing, Cassie," the other girl said, smiling like she didn't have a care in the world; she was good, Rachel noted. If she hadn't been right there while Shara was talking, she might have actually believed that Shara didn't have anything to hide. "Thank you so much for the food; it was delicious."
"You're welcome," Cassie said, not seeming deterred in the least. "Now, would you mind telling me what's going on with you? You didn't really mean what you said about dying, did you?"
Shara sighed, the carefree look vanishing from her face as if it had never been there at all. "You don't give up easily, do you?"
"Not where my friends are concerned, no," Cassie said solemnly.
"Your friend," Shara echoed, and then chuckled softly; and kind of bitterly, too, Rachel thought. "Maybe you shouldn't think of me that way; it's not safe."
"Safe?" And now it was Cassie's turn to repeat something Shara had said, Rachel thought; she didn't know if either of them would see the humor in the situation, especially under the circumstances, but she thought it was kind of funny. "What do you man, it's not safe? You might be a bit different than us, Shara, but I wouldn't say you're dangerous."
"I'm more dangerous than you think, Cassie," Shara said. From anyone else, including her Rachel admitted, those words would probably have been some kind of a threat; but Shara sounded more depressed than anything as she said them. "If Darkon manages to connect with my mind, even for just a few seconds, he's going to be able to find out where I am, and maybe even where I've been. Then none of you would be safe. That's why," she paused, turning to look back over her right shoulder at Slade. "It probably would have been better if all of us had died back there. At least then he wouldn't have had any forces on this planet."