She didn't say it in a mean way. More like a joke.
I made a smile for her. "That must be it," I said. "It must be that whole teenage thing."
She shrugged. "You know, when I was your age and feeling upset, my mother, your gram, would always just say, 'You don't know what unhappy is, you're just a kid.' Like anything a kid would feel would be less difficult or painful than what an adult would feel."
"That's probably true," I said, not really listening.
"No, it isn't," my mother said firmly. "In a lot of ways being a kid is worse than being an adult. You have the same things to deal with: friends, temptations, love and hate, and all that.
Only you don't have the two great weapons that adults have to help them."
I cocked an eye at her. "What two great weapons?"
"Well, the first is experience. Experience maybe doesn't make you smarter, but it means you can think, 'Hey, I had something like this happen once before, and I survived.'"
"Okay, I'll ask: What's the second great weapon?"
She looked right at me. "You are, Jake. Because as your mom, I can look at you and think, 'Oh, man, as bad as I feel right now, as bad as things may be, at least it isn't as bad as being a teenager.'"
I laughed. It was a tired, weak laugh, but it was something.
"You know, X-Files is on. You used to love that show."
The next day at school I was still feeling bad. It's nice that my mom and dad care about me. It's nice that they sympathize. But they don't understand, and they can't understand because for them everything is about my age.
How can they help me make life-and-death
decisions? How can they help me keep making those decisions when I've made mistakes?
How can they help me make decisions no human being can ever make correctly - like deciding what to do with Fenestre?
I looked around for Cassie. We'd left it on pretty bad terms. But after a while I realized she wasn't there. Wasn't in school.
I suddenly knew where she was.
I made my way to the roof of the school building, cursing under my breath because I knew I was going to get busted for skipping second period. Then I morphed to my falcon and flew away.
I wasted some time going to Gump's house, which was stupid. Cassie would have waited till he was away from the house. So I searched around for the nearest elementary school and headed there.
The kids were at recess. One little boy was way off by himself at the far end of the playfield. There was a dog with him. At least, the average person walking by would think it was a dog. I knew it was a wolf.
As I watched, the little boy patted the wolf and then walked back to his classmates.
The wolf watched him go, then jumped the fence and faded toward some nearby trees.
"Cassie," I said.
She looked up, surprised. I landed on the
ground and began to demorph. She resumed her human shape, too.
"That was Gump, I guess."
"Yeah."
"What did you tell him?"
"I told him I was a magic, talking wolf. He didn't exactly buy that. I guess by his age they're pretty much past the point where they believe in magic."
"Yeah, I guess so."
"I told him not to go to that chat room again. I told him . . ." Her lip quivered suddenly. "I told him not to talk to his father about Yeerks.
Told him not to . . ." Her voice was strangled. She gritted her teeth and squeezed out the last few words. "I told that little boy not to trust his father."
There were tears running down her face. I guess they were running down my face, too. One of the things Cassie and I share is that we trust our parents, unlike some people, I guess.
"What a terrible thing for me to do," Cassie said. "What a filthy, disgusting thing for me to do."
"It was the best you could do," I said. "It was all you could do. I guess it's hard to fight evil without doing some along the way." Maybe there was a little "I told you so" in my voice.
Cassie just walked away. I let her go. Not
everything can be settled. Not everything can be smoothed over.
A few days later they showed a fire on the TV news. It was a very big story because it was this huge mansion.
The mansion belonged to billionaire Joe Bob Fenestre. Fenestre was safe.
No one was hurt.
I remembered warning him that he was safe only as long as he stayed in that house. Now it was no longer possible for him to stay in the house.
Did the mansion burn down on its own? Or did someone start the fire that deprived that evil creature of sanctuary?
If someone set the fire, there was a long list of suspects. Visser Three. Cassie. One of the others.
Me.
I guess you'll never know.
I make mistakes. I fail sometimes. Sometimes I'm just plain stupid.
Sometimes there is no right answer to the problems we face, but what can you do but keep trying to figure the answer out, anyway? What else can you do?
About a week went by after the fire before I went to Cassie's house. She was in the barn, taking care of the sick animals.
I didn't ask her any questions, and she didn't ask me. I helped her put a splint on a deer with a broken leg. It was nice because, you know, it was just a good thing to do, no second-guessing, no doubts.
And after a while Cassie and I started talking and even laughing. The others came over and we talked about flying. But instead of flying, we stayed there and shoveled the manure out of the barn.
The six of us shoveled dirty hay, and Marco made dumb jokes, and Ax tried to eat a cow pie, and Rachel moaned about Cassie's pathetic taste in clothing, and we were us again.
For now.