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<Would you like to explain why you morphed?> Jake demanded. <Why you morphed when I told you it could kill us?>
<I plead the fifth.>
Jake, to us. <If I were a real general, I’d court-martial his sorry ...>
Then, from a jumble of alien parts, a Helmacron shouted. <Hah-HAH! No doubt you thought we were killed by the transforming of our pitiful hostage. But we are still alive! We shall rule the universe yet!>
And before any of us - Jake or Cassie, Ax or Tobias, before even I - could do anything to stop them ...
The Helmacrons fired in unison.
…
<Marco!> Cassie cried again. A wrenching sound, horrified, full of pain.
<He can’t answer you, Cassie,> Jake said, his voice strangely flat.
“Look, I know you’re mad, so just – out with it. Let me have it. I’ve got it coming.”
Jake said nothing – just stood there, tall and impassive, staring not-quite-at-me, his eyes fixed somewhere over my shoulder.
We were in the woods just on the edge of Cassie’s property, just the two of us. I’d dragged him there because I’d seen the thunderstorm brewing on his brow even as he negotiated with the Helmacrons, and I knew it would be for the best if I took whatever tongue-lashing I had coming as soon as possible, but I didn’t want any of the others to see, especially if it got as ugly as I suspected it was going to.
“What, are you going soft on me?” I snarled, trying to provoke the reaction I was sure was coming, trying to feel the – what, anger? Resentment? Self-righteousness? – that I’d felt before, when I’d chosen to save my own life over everybody else's. That choice felt remote and unreal to me now – a horrific impossibility; an action in which I didn’t recognize myself. A desperate part of me wanted to find some shadow of that person I could relate to, because maybe whoever that had been wouldn’t drown in the things I was feeling now. The shame. The terror. The creeping certainty that this was it - the moment I had always feared would come, when I finally crossed the wrong line and irrevocably shattered Jake’s trust in me.
Jake shifted and crossed his arms, his face set in that opaque way that was as heartbreaking as it was infuriating. There had been a time when Jake’s feelings were always written on his face – when he couldn’t even lie properly, and I’d had to lie double for the both of us – but that was a long time ago.
“Fine. You’re right, okay?” I snapped, changing tack, figuring if he wasn’t going to do it, I could just yell at myself for him instead. It was better than watching him not care at me. “I fucked up. I shouldn’t have disobeyed you. It was stupid, and selfish, and – and reckless, and I don’t know what I was thinking. It was the wrong move. I’m sorry. You have every right to be mad. I – ”
“I’m not mad.”
Jake’s voice was soft, pitched so low that it shouldn’t have carried to me at all, except that every cell of my body was tuned to his frequency, so instead it hit me like a train.
“...what?”
“I should be, but I’m – ” he broke off with a sharp inhale, and with devastating clarity I realized that he was only stonewalling me because he was trying not to cry, and I’d taken three steps toward him before I knew I was doing it.
“Whoa, hey, easy, man, don’t – ”
Jake’s gaze shifted an inch, his eyes finding mine, and I froze.
“You were dead, Marco,” he said, his voice a half-choked rasp. “For almost two hours, you were – two hours, man. I couldn’t even – Rachel had to – ” He made a horrible, frustrated sound, like an animal in a trap. I wanted to reach out to him – to say something – but I couldn’t move, pinned in place by the way he was looking at me.
“Any other body,” he muttered darkly. “Any other morph, and – ” He tore his eyes away from mine, burying his face in his hands. Muffled, he went on: “You’re right. Morphing was stupid. It was. But they shot your heart, Marco, and I can’t – I don’t know how to be mad about something that saved your life.”
Somewhere in the back of my mind, a tape was unspooling, the whole conversation I’d thought we were going to have littering itself across my gray matter like so much garbage. I crossed the last little distance between us and pulled his hands away from his face so that I could press my forehead to his collarbone, and I felt it – the moment when he broke around me like a wave against the rocks, and suddenly I was terrified for an entirely different reason.
“I’m okay, man,” I said into his chest, offering no resistance as his arms went tight around me. “I’m okay,” I said again, hugging him back as best I could. “We’re all okay. It’s – we’re fine, dude. We’re fine.”
“I thought that – ” he murmured into my hair. “I thought – ”
“Not this time," I told him, "so shut up. I’m fine.”
He half collapsed, leaning his weight into me. He had always been bigger than me – heavier – but I’d be damned if I let that matter when he needed me so I bore it without complaint, holding him steady until finally, slowly, his trembling subsided and he pulled away.
“Sorry,” he said, wiping at his eyes with his palms. “Sorry, I just – sorry.”
I was still a little shell-shocked, watching my All-American Golden Boy best friend – my Fearless Leader – struggle to put himself back together. Maybe it shouldn’t have been a surprise. After all, this was Jake, who’d slept on my bedroom floor every chance he got for a year after my mom disappeared. Of course my death would matter to him. But there was something about seeing it – about being confronted with the reality that if I died, this was what waited for my best friend – that shook me to my core. Ever since my dad fell apart, I had known that anybody – even Jake – could lose it, but it was something else entirely to learn that Jake could lose it because of me.
I wouldn’t have chosen it. It was too rich for my blood. But that’s life, sometimes.
I gave him a minute to collect himself, and then I took his hand in mine and leaned my shoulder against his.
“Stay over tonight,” I said. “We’ll hang out like old times, yeah?”
He let out a long, slow breath. “I have to check on – ”
“No, you don’t,” I cut in softly. “They’re all fine, Jake. You’re the one who’s not fine. So you’re going to come home with me, and Nora is going to get us a pizza because she’s a soft touch, and I’m going to kick your ass in Mortal Kombat until you start calling me names and trying to shove me off the bed. Okay?”
He made a noise that might have been a laugh, and I felt the world coming back into focus around us. “Okay,” he said, squeezing my hand. “Fine, yeah, you win. Good idea.”
“Of course it is,” I said, squeezing his hand back. “That’s the only kind of idea I have.”