"We were very worried," my father said in a soft, quiet voice.
I sighed. I could feel the guilt welling up inside me. I hate it when they say they've been worried. See, I understand about worry now. I feel worry all the time for Rachel and Jake and the others. Sometimes I lie in bed at night and worry for the whole human race.
"I'm really sorry," I said.
"Where. Were. You. Young. Lady?" my mom asked, doing her one-word-at-a-time voice.
"I was just with Rachel," I said. "And Jake."
My parents exchanged a look. My dad put his hand over his mouth. He was hiding a smile. At the same time, he was trying to look extra stern.
My mom leaned back and put her hands on her hips. "You know we have discussed your dating," she said, "and I thought we decided you were still too young."
"Dating?" I said weakly.
My mom sighed. Then she shook her head. "Maybe it's time for us to have another talk about the birds and the bees."
I swear the blood drained out of my whole head. Then it came rushing back into just my cheeks and neck so that they burned. "Urn . . . I'm not dating."
"It's nothing to be ashamed of," my dad said gruffly. "You're a normal young girl, you have certain . . . interests, certain . . . fascinations, a natural . . . curiosity."
At this point I wanted to dig a hole right in the living room floor, crawl in, and pull the rug over me.
"All we're saying is be honest with us," my mom said, all stern again. "Do not make us worry about you."
"Absolutely! I swear! I will never make you worry again! Can I go now?"
I raced from the living room into the kitchen. I wanted to make myself a sandwich, carry it up to my room, and try to do at least some of my homework.
And I really did not want to be subjected to a big talk abut boys. Good grief!
I was just getting the turkey from the refrigerator when a thought occurred to me. I tiptoed back to the kitchen door and pressed my ear against it.
"See?" I heard my mother say smugly.
"You were right, as usual," my dad said.
"It's the only way. Let's face it, Cassie works so hard already, what can you do? You can't give her punishment work or make her stay in her room."
"We have a very cool kid."
That kind of gave me a warm feeling. Your parents have to love you. But I felt as if my parents liked me, too. As a person.
"Yes, we do have a cool kid," my mom agreed. "But on those rare occasions when she screws up the only way to really discipline her is to embarrass her."
They both laughed. Hah-hah-hah.
"Next time we can tell her we're going to have Jake and his parents over to discuss rules for their relationship," my mom said.
More laughter. Hee-hee-hee.
"Or as a backup plan, we could threaten to take her in to Father Banion for a family discussion about intimacy." That was my dad's suggestion.
So much for my warm inner glow. So my parents knew I liked Jake. And they knew that any discussion of that fact would embarrass me to death.
Parents. You can never completely trust them.
I finished making my sandwich and went upstairs. My room was a disaster area. I am not a neat person. I went to my desk, moved some of my junk aside to clear a work space and opened my binder to find my — Backup plan?
That's the phrase my dad had used. And Visser Three had said it, too.
Backup plan? Why would the Yeerks want a backup plan? After all, they'd penetrated the big secret of Zone 91 and it was a toilet. True, they had not understood what they'd seen, but they obviously knew whatever it was wasn't a Yeerk ship or a weapon.
So why would they still be interested?
I shook it off. Who cared now? We'd wasted enough time at Zone 91.1 had better things to worry about. Like homework. And the discovery that my parents knew more about me than I wanted them to.
I did some homework and I went to bed. At four o'clock in the morning, I woke up. I sat bolt upright and stared into the darkness.
"So it's a toilet," I cried. "That's not important. It's an alientoilet! An alien toilet! That's the point!"
Of course! Even if it was just a toilet, it meant the government had proof of life on other planets. Proof that the Yeerks did not want them to have.
The Yeerks were invading Earth. One of the reasons they were getting away with it was that no sensible person would ever believe it. Even if I went on national TV and announced that aliens were invading, who'd ever believe me? Even if I morphed right in front of people, they'd figure it was just some other kind of weirdness.
But if the government came out and said, "Look, we have proof that aliens exist," then people would start listening. People might even be prepared to believe that the Yeerks were among us.
That's why the Yeerks couldn't just forget about Zone 91. They couldn't allow the government to have any kind of proof of alien life.
There was a backup plan. That's what the visser had said.
And I suddenly had a pretty good suspicion what it was. Tomorrow evening at nineteen hundred hours, The Gardens would be full of people who worked at Zone 91. Just like the sign-up sheet at the base had said.
I was willing to bet the Yeerks would strike then. What better place to grab some key people from Zone 91 and fill their heads with Yeerk slugs?
Well, there were probably plenty of better places, actually. But Visser Three was not known for being patient. And the trip to The Gardens would be his soonest opportunity to strike.
Chapter 22
The Gardens is a combination zoo and amusement park. The two sections are separate, of course. Roller coasters and bumper cars on one side of an artificial lagoon, and animal habitats on the other.
I've spent lots of time at the zoo part of The Gardens. I've spent very little time on the rides. I don't like roller coasters.
From the air it all looks smaller than it does from the ground. Down on the ground, walking along the pink-and-green concrete walkways, it seems endless. But from the air in owl morph, you can see how the pathways curve inside each other like a circular maze. You can see the edges of the park and the world beyond The Gardens.
You can see the endless neon golden arches and Best Western hotels and water slides and putt-putt golf courses.
Of course, in owl morph you can even see the mice cowering down inside the dark bushes. In owl morph there isn't much you can't see.
The Gardens at night is two very different halves. Down below us, the tigers were prowling the limits of their wooded, moat-ringed habitat. And the camels were dozing. And the sea lions were huddled together on their blue-painted concrete island. And the monkeys were sleeping and fussing and occasionally picking bugs out of their ears and eating them.
Over in the amusement park, however, it was a flashing neon extravaganza. The Tilt-a-Whirl was a blaze of blue; the merry-go-round was red and yellow; the roller coasters were wild dragons of racing sequential lights.
I saw a flash! It was the log ride. They shoot photographs of the people in the logs as they fall down the final drop. I heard screams of giddy excitement and fake fear.
In addition to having wonderful eyes, owls can hear a mosquito's wings beating from ten feet away. Tobias was not so lucky. He didn't have an owl morph, so he was his usual red-tailed self. Red-tails don't see or fly well at night.