I knew now what had happened. Why Melissa and I weren't friends anymore, at least not close friends. Something had gone terribly wrong in her life. Her parents no longer loved her. They pretended to, they sounded like they did, but Melissa knew it was all wrong.
Every time I thought of it, I felt like my insides were burning up from the anger. I guess I knew a little bit about what she was feeling.
When my parents got divorced, I worried that maybe that meant they didn't love me anymore.
I was wrong. They still did. I don't see my dad as much as I would like to, but he does love me. My mom loves me. Even my sisters love me. Love is pretty important. It's like wearing a suit of armor. It makes you strong.
On my way out of math class, Jake came sidling up next to me. "Meeting later, okay?"
"Yeah. Whatever. Where at?"
"The church tower, where we were the other day."
"Okay. But it's a long walk."
He turned around to face me, walking backward and grinning. "So, don't walk," he said. He waved and headed off down the hall.
Two hours later I was in the air. Let me tell you something: Getting that big eagle body off the ground isn't easy. It is definitely work. I wondered if my human body got any of the aerobic benefits of the exercise.
Once I got clear of the ground, I was able to catch little gusts of wind to climb higher. But it wasn't till I made it above the trees and the school buildings that I started getting a good, solid breeze that helped lift me up.
When I finally got high enough, I spotted Tobias. His reddish tail feathers were like a beacon.
"Man, that was a workoutea" I said when I got close enough.
"Tell me about it. Follow me. The mall is an excellent place for thermals."
"The mall? Why the mall?"
"lt's all that parking space. See, the concrete gets hot in the sun. The concrete, the cars, the buildings themselves, they're all hot. So there's almost always a nice warm updraft." 62 "Flying is like the nicest thing in the world," I said dreamily.
"Yes, it is," Tobias agreed. "One of the nicest things. But there are things you miss, too.
Sitting back on the couch with a can of pop and a bag of chips and no school the next day and something good on TV. That's a good feeling, too. "
He didn't sound like he was feeling sorry for himself. Just like he was mentioning something that happened to be true.
"There's the church tower. I see another bird heading toward it. And I think I see Cassie coming out of her morph. "
"Down we go," Tobias said.
Ten minutes later I had morphed back into my human body.
"You know what we need?" Marco said. "We need to coordinate these morphing outfits. I mean, Cassie's wearing green patterned leggings and a purple stretch top, and Jake's got on those awful bike shorts, and Rachel is stylish, as always, in her black tights. Put it all together and we look pretty scruffy."
"What do you want?" Jake asked him. "You want us all to wear blue with a big number four on our chests? Become the Fantastic Four?"
"The Fantastic Four plus the amazing Bird Boy," Tobias added.
"No way," Marco said. "Not Fantastic Four. I'm thinking more an X-Men kind of thing. It's not about being identical, it's just about having some style. Right now, if anyone saw us, they wouldn't think 'Oh, cool, superheroes," they'd think "Man, those people do not know how to dress.""
"Marco," I said, "I think it's time to get over this fantasy of yours. We are not superheroes.
This is not a comic book."
"Yes, but I really, really want it to be a comic book. See, in a comic book the heroes don't get killed. I mean, okay, they killed Superman that time, but it was only temporary."
"Can we deal with reality here?" Jake asked. "We have business to discuss."
"What's the matter with combining green and purple?" Cassie asked Marco.
"It's a major fashion no-no," Marco said.
"Been reading Vogue again, Marco?" I teased.
Jake put his hand over Marco's mouth. "People? And I use the term loosely. We need to decide what we're doing next."
Marco pried Jake's hand away. "I want to decide what we're not doing next. I should be spending more time with my dad. You know, he's still messed up over my mom. . .."
63 Marco's voice always cracked whenever he mentioned his mom. He'd start out sounding tough and all, but his voice would end up with that little break, that little wobble. It had been two years since his mother disappeared. They said she drowned, although they never found her body. His father had fallen apart. It was the main reason Marco was so reluctant to be an Animorph. He was worried that if anything ever happened to him, his dad would just give up totally.
I could see that Jake was about to say some thing impatient. And I was feeling the same way, like Marco just needed to deal with reality.
But Cassie put her hand on Marco's arm. "Don't ever let any of this get in the way of spending time with your dad," she said earnestly. "He needs you. We need you, too, Marco, but your dad comes first." She looked at Jake, then at me.
"There isn't much point in doing any of this if we forget why we're doing it."
I thought about Melissa. And I thought about my mom and dad and how great it was to have them, even when they got on my nerves.
"Cassie's right. When you get home, tell your dad you love him, Marco." I blurted it out with out thinking about it. It wasn't the kind of thing I normally say.
"Thank you, Doctor Rachel,"Marco said.
He said it snidely, but I could see he knew what I was talking about. Then he was suddenly all business. He rubbed his hands together. "Okay, let's get serious here. How are we going to go about getting ourselves killed next? Turn into flies at a frog convention? Morph into turkeys at Thanksgiving?"
"I want to go back in," I said. "Back into Chapman's."
"Why?" Jake asked. "We learned a lot already. We -"
"We didn't learn the location of the Kandrona," I pointed out. "That's what we need to do, sooner or later. The Andalite made it pretty clear to Tobias that the Kandrona is the weak point for the Yeerks. The Kandrona sends out the rays that are concentrated in the Yeerk pools. If we destroy the Kandrona, we hurt them bad."
Marco raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Excuse me, Rachel, but what is a Kandrona? I mean, we know what it does, but what does it look like? How big is it? For all we know, the Kandrona could be the size of a lighter and be in Visser Three's pocket."
"That's not the impression I got from the Andalite," Tobias said.
"Whatever," Marco said impatiently. "The point is: How do we destroy something when we don't even know what it is?"
64 "That's why we have to follow the one lead we have," I said. "Chapman. Chapman communicates with Visser Three. The two of them know where the Kandrona is. If I can spy on them, maybe I can figure it out."
They were all staring at me. Marco looked at me like I was crazy. Jake looked thoughtful.
Cassie looked worried, like she wasn't sure about what I was saying.
Tobias turned his fierce, intimidating hawk's stare on me. "Are you sure you're just going back to spy on Chapman?" he asked me privately.