I recognized the sound. It was purring. I was purring.

Melissa put her arm around me and drew me close. The physical contact made me a little anxious. It made the cat in me want to leave. But then she started scratching my neck and behind my ears. I purred a little louder and decided to stay for a while.

"I don't know what I've done," Melissa said.

It startled me to realize she was talking to me. Did she guess the truth? Did she know I was human?

No. She was just a girl talking to her cat. "I don't know what I did," Melissa repeated. "Tell me, Fluffer McKitty. What did I do?"

"Rachel, what are you doing in there?"

"Tobias, I have plenty of time."

"You have less than an hour. Don't push your luck. Jake is practically having a fit out here.

He's telling me to tell you to get out."

"Not yet . Melissa needs me."

I had stopped purring. Probably because I was preoccupied, arguing with Tobias. I started purring again. I felt Melissa needed me to purr.

60 She was still crying. Still scratching slowly behind my ears.

"What did I do, Flutter?" she asked again. "Why don't they love me anymore?"

I felt like my own heart would break right then.

Because I knew now why Melissa had stopped hanging out with me. I knew why she had become more withdrawn. And I knew how little hope there was for her.

My stomach turned and twisted.

Next time Marco asked why we were fighting the Yeerks, I knew I would have a whole new answer. Because they destroy the love of parents for their daughter. Because they made Melissa Chapman cry in her bed with no one to comfort her but a cat.

It was a small answer, I guess. I mean, it wasn't some high-sounding answer about the en tire human race. It was just about this one girl. My friend. Whose heart was broken because her parents were no longer really her parents.

"Look, Rachel, I told Jake what you said. He said to remind you that you have a job to do in there. You're not in there to com-"

"Tell Jake to shut up, Tobias," I said angrily. "l'll come out. I'll come out. Just not yet." I purred as loud as I could.

Melissa cried. And it came to me, like a vision: All the children all over, whose parents had been made into Controllers. And the parents whose children had been taken from them to be turned into Controllers. It was a terrible image. I wondered how it must feel to see your parents stop loving you.

After a while, Melissa fell asleep. I got up and padded down the stairs to the pet door.

It was chilly outside. My friends were all wait ing. They were also a little mad at me for making them wait and worry.

"You only have ten minutes to spare, Rachel," Jake said. "I hope it was worth scaring us all half to death. Did you at least discover something useful?"

"Yes. I discovered plenty. I discovered that Chapman has a way to communicate directly with Visser Three. I discovered that Visser Three is pretty hot to catch us, although he still thinks we're Andalites. And I decided something, too. "

"What?" Cassie asked me.

"I decided that I don't care what it takes, or how many risks I have to run. I don't care what happens to me. I hate these Yeerks. I hate them. I hate them. And I will find a way to stop them."

61 Chapter Fourteen

That night and the next morning, I barely got any homework done. In math class that day I got the first C I'd gotten in a long time. My grades were starting to fall because I was busy trying to save the world. Or at least to save my old friend.

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.