Текст книги "Animorphs - 05 - The Predator"

Автор книги: Katherine Alice Applegate

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"What if ..." Cassie began.

We all looked at her. "Yes?" Jake asked.

"What if there was a way to get into Chapman's basement room – the secret room where he keeps the transmitter – without even going through the house? With almost no chance of getting caught?"

I felt my heart sink. "As long as it doesn't involve anything with an exoskeleton."

I'd meant it as a joke. But Cassie just looked at me solemnly.

"What?" I demanded. "A lobster again? How is a lobster – "

"No," she said. "Think smaller. Much smaller. Much, much smaller."

35 Chapter 8

" Ants . That was Cassie's brilliant idea. Ants.

See, ants could get into Chapman's basement. And ants could carry away the small transponder.

Ants.

This was what my life had come to. We ended up spending a couple of hours debating whether we should be red ants or black ants. I finally left in disgust. I didn't want to be an ant, red, black, or any other color.

I saw Jake the next day in school. I had just come out of history class, where I had blown a pop quiz.

I wasn't in the best mood.

I was opening my locker and muttering about the Mexican-American War, and how was anyone supposed to remember the difference between that war and the Texas war of independence.

"Hi," Jake said. "The answer is black. Turns out most of the ants near Chapman's house are black. Tobias checked it out."

I looked over Jake's shoulder to make sure no one was close enough to overhear. "Jake, I don't want to be a bug. I've been a gorilla, an osprey, a dolphin, a seagull, a trout, of all things, a lob ster . . . and I'm probably forgetting a few. Gorilla was fun. Dolphin was fun.

Osprey was fun. Ant? Not fun. Basically, bugs are a bad idea."

Jake shrugged. "I was a flea. That was no big thing." He grinned like he'd made the world's funniest joke. "Seriously, it was like nothing. I couldn't see anything. I could barely hear anything, just vibrations. All I knew was I liked warm bodies and whenever I got hungry I just poked a hole in some warm skin."

"And sucked blood."

He looked a little uncomfortable. "Well, it was Rachel's blood. Kind of. I mean, okay, it was cat blood, but Rachel was morphing the cat."

"Jake? Do you ever listen to yourself?"

"I try not to think about it," he admitted. "But look, we want to try and give Ax a chance to get home. And if he stays here he's a danger to us. We've got this big Anda – " He looked around to make sure no one could hear, and lowered his voice. "We have this big Andalite running around Cassie's farm. What if someone sees him? Any Controller is going to know what he is. And they're going to wonder why he's on Cassie's land."

I nodded. "Yeah. You're right. But I almost died the other day. I was almost boiled alive. I know you're the big hero type, Jake, but I'm not."

36 I grabbed my book out of the locker, slammed the door, and headed down the hall. Jake kept pace.

"You know what next Sunday is?" I asked him suddenly. I hadn't planned to say anything.

"Sunday? I don't know. What?"

"Two years, to the day. Two years since my mom died. And I don't know what to do. I don't know whether I should talk to my dad about it, or just let it pass. But I know one thing – this would be a really bad week for me to turn up dead."

I kept walking. He didn't follow me.

Two years.

She'd taken the boat out of the marina. She'd sailed it out into a rough sea. No one knew why.

She'd never done it before. We'd always gone out together, the three of us.

That night, after the high winds had blown past, they found the boat driven up onto the rocks.

The hull was shattered. There was no sign of my mother, except for a frayed safety rope.

They never found her body. The Coast Guard guys said that was not unusual. The ocean is a big place.

So is space, a voice in my head said.

Somewhere, very, very far away, a mother and father wondered what had become of their children.

For a long time, I made up stories about how my mom had survived. Maybe on a desert island or something. But I'm a realistic person, I guess. After a while I accepted it.

And after a while, Ax's parents would accept that he and his brother, Prince Elfangor, would not be returning. That they had been lost forever in space.

Lost fighting to protect Earth. To help the human race.

To help me.

I spotted Cassie up ahead, walking with some of her friends. She smiled vaguely when she saw me. We were supposed to kind of ignore each other in school, so no one ever figured out that Jake and me and Cassie and Rachel were hanging out a lot.

As I brushed past her I muttered, "Tell Jake I'll do it."

Sometimes I really hate having a conscience.

37 Chapter 9

I wonder why these people moved?" Cassie said.

"Maybe they didn't like living next door to a Controller who is part of a conspiracy to take over the world," I said. "Or else maybe they just don't like assistant principals. I could understand that."

We were standing in the backyard of the house next to Chapman's. It was empty. There was a "For Sale" sign in the front yard. It did make you kind of wonder why these people had decided to move. Not that Chapman ever acted strange. That's the big problem with Controllers – you can never tell who is or who isn't.

"It's convenient for us, anyway," Jake said.

It was night. The moon was high and full and bright, so we were hiding beneath a tree. There was a high wooden fence between us and Chap man's.

Ax was just changing from his human morph back into his Andalite body.

We had already acquired some ants earlier, at Cassie's barn. We were getting ready to do it. I was scared. Badly scared.

I guess the others were, too. Everyone was talking too much, the way you do when you're nervous. Cassie was shivering like she was cold, only it was about seventy degrees out.

"Tobias?" I asked. He was in the tree, just a few inches over my head on a low branch. "How well can you see?"

"I think I'll be able to see you as long as you stay aboveground," he said. "The moonlight helps. But I'm not nearly as good at night as I am during the day. My eyes aren't much better than yours in the dark."

"Swell," I said.

Jake glanced at his watch. "It's time. We know Chapman will be at the meeting of The Sharing, starting about now."

The Sharing is a "front" organization for Controllers. It's a way for Controllers to get together without anyone being suspicious. Supposedly, it's just a sort of combined Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. In reality it's a way for the Controllers to recruit willing hosts.

Yes, believe it or not, some people choose to accept Yeerk control.

We didn't have to ask how Jake knew about the meeting of The Sharing. Jake's brother, Tom, is one of them. A Controller who is very into The Sharing.

"You ready, Ax?" Jake asked. The Andalite had to be back in Andalite form before he could morph. Just like all of us had to be human before morphing into another being. Once Cassie had tried morphing straight from one animal to another. Nothing had happened. And Cassie is the best morpher.

38 "I am ready," Ax said.

"Everyone ready?" Jake asked.

"Yep," Rachel said.

Even she sounded tense. There was a bad feeling hanging over this whole thing. Or maybe I was just being paranoid.

"Okay," Jake said. "Soon as we're all morphed, we head across the grass, down along the wall, underground. We find a crack or a hole, and enter the basement."

"Yeah. Nothing to it," I said.

I concentrated on the ant I had acquired ear lier. There wasn't much to think about, really.

When I'd held the ant in my hand it had just been this tiny little dot. You could see that it had a sectioned body and legs, but that was about it.

The morphing began very quickly.

"Whoa!"

Falling! Falling!

That was the first sensation. I was shrinking rapidly. The ground was rushing up at me. It was like one of those nightmares where you are falling and falling but never seem to hit the ground.

I was still maybe a foot tall when my skin seemed to turn crisp, as if it had been burned. It became hard. Harder than fingernails and glossy black.

I looked over at Cassie and nearly screamed.

She was farther along than me. Only a foot tall and hard-shelled black all over. Glistening, ridged, plastic-looking skin.

Her legs were shriveling rapidly. So were her arms, although they had become longer, to match her legs.

The third set of legs was growing out of her chest.

And her face . . .

Her face was no longer human. Her head was sort of teardrop-shaped. Wickedly-curved mandibles were growing out of her mouth – huge, slashing, deadly-looking serrated jaws.

Her eyes had gone flat and dead. Just black dots. Antennae, looking almost like another set of legs, sprouted from her forehead.

Her waist was pinched tight. Her lower body swelled till it looked as big as a watermelon.

39 I didn't want to watch. Because I knew that all these same changes were happening to me. I knew it. I didn't want to think about it. I just wanted it to be over. I wanted the changes to be done.

Suddenly, all around me, huge, raspy spears shot up out of the ground!

Grass! I was diminishing to true insect size. The rough, sharp shafts that were rising all around me were just blades of grass. They weren't growing. I was shrinking.

One exploded directly under me. I tumbled, end over end.

And then my eyesight failed. My eyes simply stopped functioning.

I was blind!

Blind, and falling, rolling, cartwheeling down the side of a blade of grass.

I was standing upright. I knew that. I had stopped falling.

But I was blind.

No, not completely blind. It was not just blackness. But my eyes saw no detail. I could see patches of light and areas of darkness. But they were misty and fragmented, and my ant brain was not interested in them.

No. The world was not about sight anymore.

It was all ... something else. I knew I was getting something. Something ... a sense. A feeling, almost.

Then, I could feel ... I could feel my antennae waving. Waving back and forth, searching.

Searching ... no. They were smelling.

My antennae were smelling. I was looking for a scent. Several scents. It was not like human smell. Not like Jake had described dog scent when he'd morphed his dog Homer.

That kind of scent is full of possibilities. Subtleties.

This was different. I was looking for just a few scents. Just a few smells.

I tried to prepare myself. I had been through this before. There is usually a time, a brief few seconds, before the animal mind appears with all its fear and hunger and intensity. I needed to be prepared. Ants were tiny and weak. Surely their fear would be extreme. I would have to be – Then, wham!

The ant's mind erupted inside my own!

There was no fear. None.

40 There was no hunger.

There was no ... no self. No me.

No me.

No ...

My antennae swept the air. Strange. Not home. Not the colony.

Enemy territory.

Smell them. Smell their droppings. Smell the acrid odors they smeared along the ground to mark their boundaries.

"How are you guys doing? It's Tobias. How are you guys doing?" Strangers. The smell of others. They would come. There would be killing.

Killing. Soon.

Move.

"Jake. Marco. Rachel. Cassie. Answer me. It's Tobias. Talk to me." I began moving. My six legs picked their way nimbly. I was a nearly blind insect, picking his way through a forest of giant saw-edged grass blades.

Food. The smell of food. Find it. Take it. Return to the colony with it.

Change direction instantly. Move toward the smell of dead beetle. Others around. Us. Ours.

They had the right smell. They were not enemy.

"You guys are heading the wrong way."

Moving faster now. Feet feeling each blade of grass. Antennae sweeping the air, searching for the scent of the enemy. Searching for the scent of the dead carcass that we had to find and return to the colony.

"Listen to me! You are going the wrong way! The ant minds are controlling you!" Close now. The scent of food was stronger.

Mandibles working. We would touch the carcass. We would judge its size. If it was too big to carry, we would hack it into smaller pieces and carry the chunks to the colony.

"You have to take control! You have to fight! You have to get a grip!" Or enemies would come. And kill.

41 The smell of enemies was everywhere.

There. We had reached the dead beetle. I scented the air. I touched it with my legs, touch ing again and again to learn the size.

I? My legs?

Confusion.

"Fight! Fight it! You have to get control!"

It was big.

The others were with me. I opened my cutting mandibles wide and bit into the beetle, slicing tough shell, biting into meat.

"– listen to me. You are losing. You have to fight!"

Fight?

Suddenly, I realized that there had been some thing ... a sound. Yes, not a smell. Not a smell.

Not a feel.

"You are humans! You are humans. Listen to me. You are not ants. Fight it! Fight it!" Yes, not a smell or a feel. In my head.

My.

Me.

Marco.

"AHHH!" I screamed inside my own head. Tobias said later that it scared him half to death.

He thought I was being killed.

That wasn't it at all. I had been reborn.

"AHHHH! AHHHH! AHHHHH!"

"What's the matter?" Tobias cried.

"I ... I ... I lost myself," I said. "I was gone. I was lost. I didn't even exist."

"Get out of that morph!" Tobias said.

But I could hear the others now, snapping back into reality. Becoming again. Crying.

"What kind of creatures are these?" It was Ax. He sounded terrified. Terrified. "They have no self! I was lost! There was nothing to hold onto. They are not whole. They are only parts, like cells. Just pieces. What kind of foul creatures are these?" 42 "Listen. You guys morph back," Tobias said. "This sucks. This isn't right."

"Hive," Cassie said, sounding shattered. "They are social insects. Part of a colony. A hive. I should have guessed. I should have known. Ax is right. Each of us is only a part. Like a single cell within a human body."

"Guys? I see other ants. They're coming your way," Tobias said.

"How far away?" Jake asked. "Can you see them up there?"

" I'm not in the tree. I'm right here. I'm standing right over you. You're only a few inches from my right talon."

"I don't want to have to do this all over," Rachel said. "Let's do this. Let's get it done."

"Are we all in control now?" Jake asked.

One by one, we said yes. It was only partly true. Yes, I had gained control over the ant mind.

But it was still there. It was powerful in a totally new way. It was the simplicity that made it hard. The ant was a piece of a computer. Just a tiny switch, a part of a much bigger creature – the colony.

"Guys?" Cassie's "voice" in my head. "lf you try, you can kind of use these ant eyes – a little, anyway. If you concentrate you can notice light and dark. It's like watching a really, really bad black-and-white TV that's almost all snow. And you can only see what's right in front of you. But you can almost see a picture."

She was right. I could kind of see. But nothing I saw made any sense, anyway. I could recognize blades of grass. But a long, sloped wall that seemed about six feet high was a mystery to me.

"Someone just ran over my talon," Tobias said.

The wall. Tobias's talon.

"That's good. You're heading in the right direction^ Tobias said. "You're coming up on the fence."

If there was a fence, you couldn't prove it by me. I saw nothing. The bottom of the fence was seven or eight body lengths above me. Irrelevant.

"I don't want to go into Chapman's yard," To bias said. "It would look fishy if anyone saw.

Just keep going in the same direction."

We did. I barreled through a forest of grass. Then, very suddenly, it ended. We were out of the grass and racing across a moonscape of boulders, each the size of my head.

In my ant brain the alarm bells were still ring ing. Enemies! Enemies! Their scent was every where.

43 But it was not fear I felt from the ant brain. It was not capable of emotion, or anything like emotion. It simply knew that there were enemies close by.

And it knew that it would come down, sooner or later, to kill, or be killed.

44 Chapter 10

We hit the wall. I knew it was the concrete wall of the foundation. I knew, logically, that just a foot or so over my head, the wall became wood siding. But I could not see that kind of distance.

What I saw and felt and "smelled" was that the horizontal world had simply stopped. Reality had a corner. The entire world, as far as I was concerned, was a corner between concrete and sand, one vertical, one horizontal. The concrete was full of cracks and pits big enough for me to climb inside of.

"Head down," Jake reminded us. "Look for a way to follow the wall down."

"There's a tunnel here," Rachel said. "But it ... smells . . . bad. Real bad." She was right. I found the tunnel, too. It was one of theirs. It belonged to the enemy.

"I know there is an enemy. I can sense it," Ax said. "But who? What?"

"I don't know," Jake said grimly. "Let's just hope they're not around." We headed down the tunnel. The smell of the enemy was powerful. Their stench wrapped around us. We were an invading force. We were going deep, deep into enemy territory.

The tunnel was narrow. Boulders brushed constantly against my abdomen. My legs kicked some away. Others had to be moved aside. I should have felt cramped and claustrophobic, with the earth all around me, and my friends close ahead and behind me. But my ant mind was at home in tunnels.

I was traveling down. I knew my head was pointed down, but gravity seemed less important than it did when I was human.

"There's a side tunnel up here," Rachel said. She was in the lead. Big surprise. "There are a couple of side tunnels. It's starting to branch out. Should I YAHHHH!"

"What? What?"

"Oh, oh, oh. An ant!"

"What? Rachel!"

"He's running! He's running away. It's okay. It's okay. He was smaller than me. He ran off down a side tunnel."

"I guess we're the baddest ants in the tunnel, I said, trying to joke away the sudden clutch of very human terror.

"Let's hope so," Jake said.

"I feel air," Ax reported. "A breeze. Down this next side tunnel."

"Follow it," Jake said.

45 Quickly we were out of the sand boulders and in a canyon. That's what it seemed like, anyway. Like a deep, deep canyon. A crack in the concrete foundation.

We clambered over craggy rocks and squeezed along the narrow crack. All the while the breeze grew stronger.

Then we were out of the canyon. We were on a flat, vertical plane.

"I think we're there," Cassie suggested. "I sense open space all around. Air. And it's dark."

"Okay. Morph out. But be careful."

"Wait! Get horizontal first," I said. "Humans can't cling to walls, and we don't know how high up we are."

"Marco's right. And someone should go first."

" For once , I volunteer," I said. I couldn't wait to get out of that ant body.

First I moved away from them. It was totally dark, so I didn't have to watch the changes in myself. But trust me, feeling them was bad enough.

Once I was human again, I began to look for a light. Then I froze.

My huge, human feet could crush my friends!

I stood perfectly still and ran my hands along the wall. Nothing. Nothing. A bulletin board. A desk! Phone. Some kind of machine, probably a fax. There! A lamp!

The sudden light was blinding. I blinked and covered my eyes with my hand. As soon as I could see, I looked around. I was in a very small room, like a windowless office. I was alone.

Then I looked down at my body. Arms. Legs. Feet. Yes! Human! Completely human.

"We see light," Jake said. "I know you can't thought-speak now, so, if it's safe, flick the light."

I could see them now. Four tiny ants, huddled against the corner of the wall. It took my breath away.

Had that been me? I had been one of them? Down there?

I flicked the light. Seconds later, they began to demorph. I turned away, and focused on rifling the desk.

"That was gross beyond belief," Cassie said. She was the first to complete her change.

"Yeah," I agreed.

46 "I don't want to do that again," she said. I could hear the shiver of fear and disgust in her voice.

I didn't answer. I was too scared to want to talk about it. If I talked about it, it would become real, you know? Better not to think. Better to shove it out of my mind.

"This is the place," Rachel said when she had grown eyes and a mouth again. "I recognize it.

Chapman's office. I was a cat when I was in here, but this is it."

"Let's get this done. In and out," Jake said nervously. "Ax? Find that transponder."

Ax, now fully Andalite again, immediately began removing a panel from the thing I thought was a fax machine.

I continued looking through Chapman's desk. Nothing much there. No papers. No files.

Ax looked at me and smiled in that way Andalites have of smiling with just their eyes. He touched a small cube I thought was a paperweight. The paperweight lit up and projected a picture into the air in front of me.

"Cool," I said. "A computer, right?"

"Yes. A computer."

I poked the air, pointing at a symbol that looked like it would be a folder. It opened. The document was written in some totally alien alphabet.

"You can use a computer?"

"Sure. Why not? This is a few hundred years more advanced than ours but – "

"Stop!" Ax said suddenly. "Go back to that last document."

"You can read this stuff?"

"Yes." He stared intently. "lt is an announcement. The Yeerks have an important visitor arriving soon. Visser One."

"Visser One? That would be like Visser Three's boss?"

"Yes. Visser One is more powerful than Visser Three. Just as Visser Three is more powerful than Visser Four. There are forty-seven Vissers in the Yeerk empire. Or so we believe."

"Great," I said. "Forty-seven. Not all like our friend Visser Three, I hope."

Ax was back at work getting the transponder out of the faxlike machine. "No," he answered.

"Only Visser Three has an Andalite body. Only he can morph. Visser One has a human body, I believe. Ah. Here, I have it."

He held up a tiny, shiny disk. No bigger than a pea.

47 "Okay, let's get out of here," Jake said. "Put that thing near the crack. We won't have to carry it as far. Everyone, morph back. Let's bail."

It was the moment I dreaded. I didn't want to return to that ant body. It made me want to cry, just thinking of it. But there was no other way. If we tried to sneak out of the basement by going up through the house, we might be caught.

"Boy, I don't want to do this," I muttered. But at the same time, I focused on that ant shape.

And as I watched, my friends began to change.

Once we had shrunk back to ant size, the transponder seemed enormous. It was far bigger than we were. Standing beside it, feeling it with my legs and antennae, it felt about as big as a two-car garage.

"Everybody says ants are incredibly strong for their size," Cassie pointed out. "Let's see if that's true."

It seemed impossible, but Cassie, Rachel and Ax managed to lift that monstrous load off the ground.

I mean, it was like seeing three people walking down the street carrying a city bus. That's how big it was. But it's true what they say about ants. For their size, they are some strong little bugs.

When we reached the vertical wall, the three of them had to push it ahead and roll it up the wall, like some gigantic steel donut.

We reached the crack. They shoved the transponder in. Jake and I were in the lead.

It took all five of us to drag that thing over the crags of the concrete canyon. But we made it through and back to the dirt tunnel. The transponder was so big it blocked the tunnel. It was like a spitwad in a straw. But with Ax, Rachel and Cassie behind pushing, and Jake and I clearing boulders – grains of sand – out of the way, we made progress.

It happened suddenly.

There was no warning.

One second the tunnel ahead of me was empty. The next second it was full.

Full of a charging, racing army of ants.

Enemies, my ant brain said.

Now the killing would begin.

48 Chapter 11

"They're behind us!" It was Rachel, yelling.

"Breaking through the side of the tunnel!" Cassie screamed.

"They're everywhere!"

"Help! Help!"

"Arrrrgggghhhh!"

The speed of the attack was incredible. The force of the attack was impossible to explain.

There were hundreds of them. Ahead. Behind. Flooding up from side tunnels. Bursting from the walls.

"My leg! They bit off my leg!"

"Oh, oh, oh! My neck. Oh, help me!"

There were three of them on me. They were pulling me, trying to force me down so they could tear me apart.

Tear me apart!

A fourth scampered over my head, brushing my antennae. He locked his mandibles on my narrow waist. He was trying to bite me in half.

There was no defense. We could not win. We would all be dead in a few seconds.

They were machines. Absolutely without fear. Unstoppable.

"Morph!" I yelled. "lt's the only way! Morph!"

One of my legs came loose, torn away. Ripped out by the roots.

"Aaarrrgghhh!"

"No! No! Help me!"

I could feel my waist being sawed through by grinding sharp mandibles.

A searing liquid was fired at me. Poison. They were stinging me. Stinging me again and again, and ripping me apart.

Human. I wanted to be human again. Please, just let me live long enough to become human again!

"Morph!" Jake's voice. Then, "Aaaaahhhhh! No! NO!" My waist would snap. The mandibles would not release me.

49 Then, suddenly, the pressure around my waist was gone. Instead, I felt the sandy soil pressing against me.

I was growing!

I couldn't breathe. Sand blocked the air. Pressure. Then, the ground around me opened up. I swear it was like climbing up out of a grave. The air! Fresh, clean night air!

I exploded up out of the sand.

Jake was on top of me, pushing against me as he grew. And the others, who had been only inches away in the tunnel, also pressed together in a rapidly growing heap of misshapen bodies. I tried to squirm away, but it was awkward. I was only half human.

But at last I lay there on the ground, staring up through human eyes at the stars.

"Are you guys okay?" It was Tobias.

"Cassie?" Jake asked.

"I'm okay," Cassie said.

"Me, too, Jake, thanks for asking," Rachel said.

We were all alive. All in one piece. Four humans and an Andalite.

I looked down and saw the disturbed sand, where we had pushed our way up and out. Thou sands of ants, almost too small to see, were racing wildly around.

There, too, in the dirt, was the transponder. I picked it up.

Rachel was stomping the ground back down, trying to flatten it out so it wouldn't look strange.

"Jake?" I said. "Let's not do this again any time soon."

He nodded shakily.

"One day I'm a lobster. Then I'm an ant. I fig ure the next step down the evolutionary ladder is a virus or something. And I just want to say right now, I'm not doing it. I am not going to become phlegm, even to save the world."

It wasn't much of a joke, but there was a kind of lame little laugh from everyone. And Rachel stopped stomping the ants – I mean, the ground.

That night, when I went home, I took a shower. I found the head of an ant. It was still locked onto the skin of my waist.

Lots of people think only humans fight wars. That only humans are murderous. Let me tell you something – compared to ants, human beings are full of nothing but peace, love, and under standing.

50 A month or so after the experience with the ants, I picked up a book about ants. The author said, "If ants had nuclear weapons they would probably end the world in a week."

He's wrong. It wouldn't take them that long.

51 Chapter 12

I was cool. I was fine. I slept okay. There were dreams, but I just put them out of my mind.

When I got up the next morning, I ignored the fact that my dad's eyes were red, like he'd been crying. He was getting worse, not better, as we got closer to Sunday. To the second year anniversary of my mom's death.

But I had to put that out of my mind, too. I had to put a lot of things out of my mind. It was getting to be a habit.

I saw Jake in the hallway at school. I pretended not to notice him.

I saw Rachel, too. She had a dark look in her eyes. Like she hadn't slept. Like something was really wrong.

Even Cassie seemed grim. It had gotten to all of us. It's not so easy to just forget terror. It's not easy to just ignore the memory of your leg being ripped off.

Of being dismembered. Torn apart.

One of these days, I thought, one of us is going to go crazy. Totally, lock-me-up-in-a-rubber-room nutso. It was too much. This wasn't how life was supposed to be.

One of us would snap. One of us would lose it. It could happen, even to strong people.

I knew. It had happened to my father. I used to think nothing could ever destroy him. But my mom's death had.

He used to be an engineer. A scientist, really. He's incredibly smart. We had a nice house. We had a nice car. I used to live practically next door to Jake.

I know all that stuff isn't important. I know having things isn't what life is about. But it was still hard when my dad just stopped going to work. Jerry, his boss, tried to be nice. He gave him a couple of weeks to deal with losing Mom.

But a couple of weeks was not enough.

My dad's a janitor now. Part-time. He gets jobs with a temporary service. He unpacks boxes at department stores. That kind of thing. But I don't care what kind of job he has. That doesn't matter.

What matters is that when I lost my mom, I lost my dad, too.

See, people can snap. People can lose it. I know.

I cruised through the morning classes. No big deal.

At lunch I ended up at a table with Rachel. She didn't seem to notice me. She was just hunched over her meal, eating mechanically.

52 A girl named Jessica came walking past with her tray. She bumped into Rachel, which made Rachel drop her fork. It splattered down in the food on her tray.

I don't know if Jessica did it deliberately or not. She's the kind of girl who thinks she's tough.

"Watch it!" Rachel snapped.

"What?" Jessica demanded, acting outraged. "Are you yelling at me? Don't give me any of your mouth, I might have to slap it for you." Then she shoved against Rachel's back.

In a flash Rachel was up, out of her seat. She spun around. She grabbed Jessica by the collar of her sweatshirt and pushed the girl back against the next table.

Jessica probably outweighs Rachel by fifty pounds. But it didn't matter. Rachel had her on her back, on the table, scattering dishes and food everywhere. Rachel leaned over Jessica and in a voice of cold steel, said, "Don't. Touch. Me."