Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Rachel shouldered her way through the hallway like a charging elephant. Not as an elephant, though, and she thought she deserved a lot of credit for that, because it was very tempting to grow a trunk and tusks right now—or even better, some grizzly fur and claws.

But this was bullies at school, not yeerks inside Hork Bajir, so she stayed small and soft and pink instead.

Small and soft and pink, but not harmless.

"T.T.!" she shouted, and pushed her way between two boys in basketball jerseys. "Hey! I hear you're the person responsible for the bruise on my girlfriend's face today. Is that true, punk?"

Rachel was snarling as she grabbed T.T. by the back of his jersey and yanked him around to face her. He wobbled, taken off-guard by the sudden grab at least as much as he was by the unfamiliar snarl. Rachel's words came from lips that gleamed with shiny pink gloss, not fangs, but she felt like she was growling anyway as she spat the angry accusation at her prey.

T.T. didn't seem to realize that he was prey, nor that he was staring into the jaws of a predator who was poised and ready to rend him limb from stupid useless limb. Instead of cowering, or groveling, or slinking away in shame and fear, he laughed.

He laughed. At her.

"Your 'girlfriend,' right," he sneered. "Sure, I guess I am, then, if that's what you call that perver—"

He didn't get to finish his sentence, because Rachel's hand came out hard and sharp and sudden at his shoulder and pushed him backwards. T.T. hit the lockers with a rattle and gawped up at her.

He had the air of someone realizing for the first time that they weren't the tallest person in the room, and moreso, that they weren't in the least bit intimidating to the girl scowling down at him right now.

"What the heck, man?" he asked. More of a yelp, really. The noise did nothing to assuage Rachel's temper. Neither did the feeling of him squirming against her hand as he tried, and failed, to pull free. He looked and sounded like a rat more than a boy right now, and Rachel felt as though every instinct she'd ever acquired from any morph that hunted rodents, all the way back to Fluffer McKitty so long ago in Melissa's back yard, was screaming through her veins right now, urging her to go in for the kill.

She resisted, but she wasn't happy about it.

Instead she said, "I think that's my line. What the hell is wrong with you? Tobias never did anything to you, you jerk."

"He's a freak," T.T. retorted. "He's a freak and a pervert, and you're a freak and a pervert for dating him. I can't believe I was stupid enough to ask you out! You're sick, you're both sick, and he's—"

Rachel's hands slammed into the lockers on either side of T.T.'s head, silver polish glittering at the edges of her fists. The metal shook at the blow; the boy trapped between her hands shook harder.

"Call my girlfriend 'he' one more time, and I'll break your jaw into so many pieces that by the time you can talk again, you won't even remember how," Rachel hissed.

The crowd, which had been jostling close and jeering in traditional hallway spectator amusement, faltered slightly. Rachel wasn't following the expected script, but she didn't care. She wasn't interested in trading barbs and pouting and stomping off with her head held high while T.T.'s friends mocked him for getting yelled at by a girl. What she was interested in doing was taking T.T.'s head off at the neck, but she would settle—grudgingly—for putting her foot down hard enough that everybody in the whole freshman class would know better than to mess with Tobias again. That meant escalating beyond the normal parameters of a schoolyard tussle, but she wasn't bothered by that thought. Indeed, she would like nothing more than an excuse to escalate.

Maybe T.T. could see that in her eye, because he wasn't laughing now. Instead of trying to brush her arms away with some sarcastic comment (probably accusing her of being on her period, given his usual style of repartee) he pressed back harder against the lockers and said, "Uh."

It might have ended there, with T.T. mumbling an apology he didn't really mean and slinking away, knowing that the next time he stepped out of line Rachel would come crashing down on him like a ton of bricks (or more accurately, a furious African Elephant) and thus finding some source of amusement with which to fill his days between class and the basketball court other than bullying an innocent trans girl who had more important things to do than lower herself to fight back against losers like T.T. and his friends. It probably would have, if not for the crowd.

If not for the audience.

It was some kind of universal law, probably. Something like Newton's thing about gravity, or that Hubble one about an expanding universe that Ax and Tobias liked to argue about in between missions. Call it…yeah, call it the Buffy Summers Adolescent Altercation Constant: if a fight happened anywhere in a high school hallway, a crowd of spectators would materialize to watch it.

This crowd included the usual motley assortment of kids from freshmen to seniors, all of them jostling for a better view, most of them shouting commentary and insults of their own; but at the moment only three of those sneering spectators were relevant: Jonas, Mitch, and Luis. Like T.T., they were on the school's basketball team.

And T.T. couldn't risk looking weak in front of his teammates.

"You crazy bitch!" he shouted, and shoved out at Rachel wildly with both hands.

Rachel took the blows on her collarbone, went back a step, then came back hard, slamming T.T. into the lockers hard enough to knock all the breath out of him. He swore and rubbed the back of his head, which had impacted with the metal doors with a satisfyingly hollow clang. Rachel drew back one perfectly manicured fist, her eyes fixed on the tender bobbing of his adam's apple right where the stupid idiot had totally forgotten about protecting his throat.

"Rachel, don't!" a frightened girl shouted from the crowd. "He's not worth it!"

Rachel took her eyes off T.T. just enough to shoot a glance at Melissa Chapman, half-pressed through the edges of the crowd, her pale eyes wide.

"Who?" Rachel snapped. "Who do you think isn't worth it?"

Melissa looked hurt, suddenly, as though it was her that Rachel had slapped. "I'm talking about T.T., of course. He's a loser. You think I'd say something like that about Tobias?"

"No," Rachel admitted after a grudging moment's hesitation. And she didn't, not really. Melissa had been one of the first people at school to go along with Tobias's new pronouns, and had even gone thrifting with Rachel and Tobias a few times to help find skirts and cuter shoes. She'd been the first person they knew—outside the Animorphs, anyway—to start treating Tobias like a real girl.

No, Melissa wouldn't have said something like that about Tobias.

"Sorry," Rachel said, and some of the hurt left Melissa's face. "This guy just has me pissed-off."

Melissa nodded. "Yeah, totally," she said. "But he's, like, a loser whose whole personality is 'kind of okay at basketball.' So maybe, like, not someone worth breaking your nails on? Maybe?"

Laughter followed Melissa's words, some nervous and some in earnest. Luis and Mitch were among those laughing.

Rachel looked back at T.T., whose face was now a mottled mixture of fearful pallor and flushed embarrassment. He was trying to scowl at Melissa, but his eyes kept wandering back to Rachel, and the fear in them reminded her of a hundred fights with Controllers screaming at the sight of a lumbering bear or trumpeting elephant.

It was a good feeling, seeing that fear in his eyes.

Rachel dragged her hands away and stepped back. "You're right," she forced herself to say. "He's not worth it."

There was a sort of sagging feeling around her, as the tension of the watching crowd ebbed. T.T. sagged too, his shoulders heaving in a sigh of deep relief.

Rachel's eyes narrowed and she leaned in close, sharp and sudden as a striking snake. "But Tobias is worth it," she hissed in T.T.'s ear. "So don't give me an excuse, or it'll be a lot more than nails I'm breaking. Got it?"

T.T. stared at her, wide and wild-eyed. "Uh," he said. "Yeah?"

"Good," said Rachel.

She probably should have smiled sweetly. It was the kind of thing her mom did when she knew she'd won a case and was just waiting for the judge to confirm it, and she wanted to make her opponent squirm. It was a great signature to put on a victory. It was the kind of thing Rachel would have done two years ago, before she knew how it felt to have somebody's arm breaking between her teeth and somebody's guts smeared across her paws.

She stepped back and stormed away, the crowd scattering hurriedly around her.

She didn't smile.

# # #

She still wasn't smiling as she sat in Chapman's office twenty minutes later, wearily enduring the by-now-rote lecture that always followed an altercation like this. Rachel had wracked-up an impressive amount of disciplinary incidents already, in a little less than a year at Bay Shore High School. Most of them, unsurprisingly, involved her girlfriend, although Tobias herself was rarely a participant in any of the fights.

Well, except for the fights where somebody else decided to take a swing at Tobias, and Rachel decided to step in and stop them.

"They're not the people I need to be fighting," Tobias had explained, when Rachel had exploded one day about not understanding how Tobias could tolerate being treated like such crap without fighting back. "And I'm afraid that if I do start fighting, I'll lose control and forget that I'm supposed to be fighting like a kid and not an Animorph. It's not worth the risk. Besides, Rachel," she'd added with a weary smile, "I'm not like you. I'm already on everybody's list as a troublemaker, just for being me. And I don't have a stylish lawyer-mom who will come down on people like an elephant if they mess with me. It's better if I just keep my head down. And you know I can take a few punches. It's no big deal."

Rachel did know, she knew all of that all too well; but she disagreed with the part of it not being a big deal. To her, somebody taking a swing at Tobias was a very big deal indeed.

And it was getting worse.

They all knew why: all the bullies in school had been getting worse, ever since The Sharing had decided two months ago that the new recruitment numbers they had coming in weren't high enough to satisfy the Visser. And what better way to drive kids (and thus their parents) to The Sharing than to make sure they were miserable enough to be vulnerable?

It was Marco who had noticed the correlation, of course: Marco whose sharp little mind had immediately understood the cause. But knowing the Yeerks were doing something and stopping that something didn't always go hand-in-hand for the Animorphs, especially when it wasn't the kind of thing you could fix with an elephant stomp.

(Not that Rachel hadn't been tempted to try.)

So the bullies got worse, and life at Bay Shore High School grew more miserable for everyone, and—surprise, surprise!—more kids ended up feeling so beat-down and beleaguered that they were even willing to take Mr. Chapman's advice and check out The Sharing, and then…

Well, one way or the other, schoolyard bullies weren't their biggest problem after that.

Rachel wondered what the real Chapman thought about it. She wondered if he thought transferring from junior high to high school was a promotion for him as well as the yeerk in his head, or if he'd have rather been back with that drama as opposed to this drama.

There'd been fewer fights in junior high, anyway. At least, fewer that escalated from the sort of shouting and shoving that happened when you put a bunch of hormone-addled kids into one big building and then turned the tension up with things like tests and dates and dances to the actual full-blown fights you got sometimes now in high school.

Sometimes more often than not, if you were Rachel.

The one good thing was that after your fifth or sixth visit to the vice principal's office because you got into it with some homophobic jerk in the hallway, you had the script for these things down well enough that you could totally just tune-out and nod your way through it.

(The script had changed dramatically after the second time, when their prissy new principal had decided to bring the "wrath of god" down on Rachel and threaten expulsion. Mom showing up at school the next day to threaten the school with discrimination lawsuits and media coverage had nipped that in the bud, and the principal had backed-down on her little anti-lesbian crusade real fast.)

Now Rachel was "Chapman's problem," and if neither of them liked that, neither of them were going to escalate things out of their usual pattern, either.

It was pretty simple: Rachel got in a fight, Chapman gave her a lecture, Rachel pretended to be sorry, Chapman pretended to believe her, and she walked out with an appointment for detention and one more mark on her record that they both knew wasn't going to deter her from starting the whole cycle over again the next time somebody tried to put a bruise on Tobias.

"And as for Tobias," Chapman said now, and paused in the middle of his usual spiel, and Rachel wondered distantly if this was the day she was going to finally snap and punch her assistant principal in the face and get herself expelled for good.

She wasn't actually meeting his eyes right now, but Chapman wouldn't be able to tell: her gaze was fixed on the space between his eyebrows instead, right about where she figured his yeerk was wrapped around his brain. She wondered whether yeerks gave a crap about gender, either those of their hosts or of other people. She wondered if the words that were about to come out of Chapman's mouth right now would be the same ones he would say if he was running the show, the yeerk having no reason to say any different, or not.

It didn't matter. If one more person got Tobias's gender wrong in front of her today, Rachel was going to punch them whether they were a Controller or not.

"She," Chapman continued, and Rachel's fists relaxed a little at her side, "can join you in detention this time. And you're both lucky it isn't worse. You were always such a good kid before, Rachel. You need to think about the person you're becoming, about where the influences around you are leading you, and whether that's where you really want to go."

The lecture continued in that vein for a while, with the obligatory and expected sales-pitch for the Sharing playing a prominent role in Chapman's suggestions of where she could go to seek "better" influences, and Rachel made the right sort of noncommittal "I'm totally listening to and thinking about what you're saying to me" noises, but she was running on autopilot again now. This was all stuff she had heard before, so unless Chapman decided to throw her a curve-ball and confess to the fact that the "influences" he was talking about were really mind-controlling slugs, she didn't actually need to pay attention.

Then he threw her a curve-ball.

"You know, Rachel," he said, in the same amiable-but-disappointed voice in which he'd once lectured her and Melissa about leaving their bracelet-making supplies out where Fluffer McKitty could get his paws on the colorful threads, "there are plenty of folks in the Sharing who are in similar situations to yours and Miss Tobias's. The Sharing is, can be, a home to all. All sorts, I mean. You'd be safe there. And solidarity is important. You'd have a lot of people who would have your back during...tense situations, let's say, if you were part of the Sharing. I admit, your particular situation is not an area I'm really 'up' on, but I think the current term is...LGB people? The Sharing is a safe place for people like that. Like you." Chapman gave her a warm, bland smile. "We're still working on publicizing that aspect more, but it's true. Maybe you should consider it. Maybe you could even be involved with that, with helping other kids like you. You always used to be such a helpful girl, Rachel. I'm sure that sort of activity would appeal to you."

Rachel stared at Chapman, and she knew that the only thing keeping the horror off her face was the fact that she had gone so rigid with shock that she was now making no expression at all.

"Oh," she said. "Yeah, okay. I'm definitely considering that, Mister Chapman. Thanks."

The only reason she wasn't swearing inside her head right now was because she couldn't think of any words bad enough to say.

Everything else Chapman said passed by Rachel in a daze, she responding to the rest of the oh-so-concerned lecture on blind autopilot and he making sympathetic noises with the mouth of his human meat-puppet until he finally let her go. Rachel left the office and turned left, unthinking, and walked down the hallway until there were two full corners and one set of swinging doors between her and the yeerk. Then she thumped backwards into the nearest wall and slid down it until she was sitting on the floor.

She stayed like that, knees drawn up almost to her face and her hands dangling limply off the bent, denim-clad peaks of them, without moving or speaking or even truly thinking until another body joined her against the wall.

"Hey," said Tobias. "You okay?"

Rachel leaned sideways until her shoulder was resting against Tobias's. "No," she said. "But it's not stuff we can talk about here. Are you okay?"

"It was just one punch," Tobias said. "And not even a good punch. I'm fine."

"I'm sorry," said Rachel. They both knew she wasn't talking about the punch, or the resultant bruise on Tobias's face.

"I wish you weren't," Tobias said softly. "I wish you didn't have to be."

"Yeah, well." Rachel tossed her hair back over her shoulders and glared up at the fluorescent lights that lined the ceiling. "Maybe if I throw enough jocks into lockers, neither of us will have to be sorry or fine for a while."

"I don't need you to fight my battles for me."

"I know that," Rachel scoffed. "But I like fighting for you." She paused, then added grumpily, "Although I like doing it more when I don't have to keep both paws tied behind my back."

Tobias let out a strangled sort of sound that might have been a laugh under better circumstances. She shook her head, then leaned over until it was resting on Rachel's shoulder. "You're going to get in trouble," she said.

Rachel winced. "I already did, I think. And I think I got you in trouble with me. Sorry."

"Rachel." Tobias grinned. "You have to know by now that 'in trouble beside you' is my favorite place to be."

Rachel managed a watery laugh. "I did kind of notice that, yeah. Thanks."

"You don't have to thank me."

"I know." Rachel smiled and wiggled an arm until she could slide it between Tobias's back and the wall, and curl it around her waist. "But I like doing that, too."

They were still grinning when Jake came around the corner and hissed, What did you do!? in a way that somehow made no noise, yet still managed to sound disappointed.

"Not as much as I wanted to," Rachel retorted, and levered first herself and then Tobias up off the floor.

Tobias dropped her eyes to the floor, letting her hair slide forward to act like a thin shield against Jake's glare. Rachel met her cousin's eyes straight-on, unabashed and unwilling to pretend otherwise.

Jake huffed an exasperated sigh. "Well thank goodness for that!" he retorted waspishly. He looked around carefully as he stepped closer, then dropped his voice low and said, "I think the you-know-whats would have maybe managed to put two-and-two together if T.T. got eaten by a bear in the middle of the hallway!"

Rachel shrugged. "Habitat loss is going to result in more frequent and dangerous encounters between humans and animals every year," she replied flippantly. "Ask Cassie, she talks about it all the time."

"I know she does," Jake said, sounding like he couldn't decide whether to be amused or annoyed and was managing to thread the needle between them both. "That's not the point I'm making and you know it."

"The point you should be making is that we're all late for class, and Tobias and I already have one detention. We shouldn't risk adding more for loitering."

Without waiting for Jake to answer, Rachel grabbed Tobias's hand and pulled her down the hallway towards history.

Jake sighed, and let them go. He didn't need to say that this conversation wasn't over; Rachel knew that as well as he did. What Jake didn't know was that when they did finally get somewhere safe enough to talk for real, the stakes of that conversation were going to be a lot higher than the dangers of Rachel's temper running away with her.

Again.

# # #

"The Sharing is going after the gays."

Those were the first words out of Rachel's mouth the minute the door to Cassie's barn swung shut behind Jake and Marco. She could see Jake startle, the breath he'd drawn to begin the obvious lecture catching in his throat and coming out as a choked, "What?"

"Chapman," Rachel explained. "When he dragged me into his office before I could give T.T. the butt-kicking he deserved, he told me that I ought to join the Sharing."

"That's not new," Marco said, levering himself up onto a hay bale almost as tall as he was (which wasn't saying much, from where Rachel was standing). "And that doesn't prove anything about anything. He gives every kid who comes through his office the same spiel about how much good the Sharing would do in their life. College transcripts, connections, good influences, blah blah blah. I could give the sales-pitch for him at this point, if I wanted to gag myself."

"Yeah," Rachel said impatiently, "but he said, The Sharing was a 'home for all sorts' and that they were still working on 'publicizing' that, so I probably didn't know, but 'people like me' were welcome and safe there. People like me, and like Tobias." Rachel could feel her fingernails digging into her palms, but it was a dull sort of ache. Her nails were too blunt right now to really draw blood. "He said they were working on it," she repeated, disgust half-strangling her. "Working on making sure the gays know that The Sharing will 'have our backs' and 'keep us safe.'"

"Oh no," said Cassie, in a voice gone so quiet with horror that it was almost swallowed by the noise of her parents' patients rustling in their cages.

"Yeah." Tobias offered a thin and mirthless smile. "Isn't that great?"

"Hang on, he's gotta be bullshitting you," said Marco, leaning forward and dangling over his knees. "The Sharing has made their bones on being 'family friendly.' If they start actively promoting themselves as a home for the scary weird queers, every soccer mom and good ol' boy dad will flip their lids. They'd have a mass exodus of Middle America before you can even say 'rainbow flag.'"

"No they won't," said Jake tiredly. He slouched back against the hay bale beside Marco and let his head flop backwards into the straw. "They can't leave. Remember?"

"The 'full members' can't," said Marco. "But the ones who haven't actually been infested yet—"

"—are becoming fewer and fewer every year, as the Yeerks speed-up the 'recruitment' process," Jake said bluntly. "They must have done the math and decided that they'd gain more people than they'd lose, or they wouldn't do it. It's all a numbers game to them."

"Numbers, and opportunity," said Tobias. "They always go for the vulnerable people. Folks who are looking for connection, security, companionship. Folks who are in some kind of trouble. Folks with nowhere else to turn."

Rachel squeezed Tobias's hand, hard enough it probably hurt. Tobias squeezed back.

"The Sharing is pretty good at being convincing," Jake acknowledged in a voice like a crypt-door swinging shut.

"And they're probably counting on the fact that they have enough clout on their side now that they can sell all those suburban moms and dads on the idea of the gay community being family friendly," Cassie added tiredly. She winced. "At least…"

"At least parts of it," Marco agreed with a sigh. "The parts that clean-up well enough and mind their p's and q's and don't force anybody to think about anything too differently than they already do; the parts that are just as willing as any Straights to throw the weirder and less palatable of their fellows under the bus for the sake of assimilation and a comfy life in the suburbs. They aren't likely to be filming promos in the Castro, after all. But they get enough 'family friendly' gays like Ellen on their side…then they can walk the line between being straight-edged enough to sucker Middle America, while also having enough semi-radical bonafides that they'll actually seem cool to everybody else, too. This is really, really bad."

He slumped back against his haybale and let himself collapse into it until it seemed like the only thing holding him upright was the wall of straw behind him.

"Right now," Cassie continued, "the fact that the Sharing is a little too family-friendly to be cool, even with the celebrity endorsements they have gotten, is maybe their biggest weakness. People think they're nice, but dorky."

Tobias winced. "If they can get counter-culture appeal, even quietly on the down-low, then…"

"It's the same reason why they wanted Jeremy Jason McCole so bad," Cassie said glumly.

"And why we worked so hard to stop that happening," said Rachel.

"Yeah, but this is that on a way bigger scale," Cassie lamented. "Maybe the biggest we've dealt with yet. Fighting the war is important, of course, but this—this is part of the war, too."

"Hearts and minds," said Jake, looking grim and thoughtful and a dozen years older than his actual age.

"Not to mention warm bodies," Marco added bluntly, dragging his head out of the hay enough to scowl bleakly at them all. "The yeerks already outnumber us about a billion to one. If the Sharing can convince folks that they're both family-friendly enough to trust with their kids, and subversive enough to attract all those awesome weirdo gays and artsy-farts from places like San Fransisco…recruitment will go through the roof."

"It's a good thing Visser One ended up in a straight-laced suburban lady like your mom," Tobias said, giving Marco an apologetic look as she spoke. "If that yeerk had been exposed to queer culture and subversive norms to start with…"

"We'd already be screwed," Rachel finished for her. "But we aren't, yet, which means we have to stop this before Chapman can get it up and running. But how do we do that?"

"Oh man," said Marco, suddenly straightening up again, as though re-energized by an unseen bolt of lightning. "You," he said, pointing at Rachel. "That's why they want you."

Rachel arched one immaculately waxed eyebrow at him. "I know," she said, "that's what we literally came here to tell you. Try to follow along, Marco."

"This will be on the test later," Tobias added in an undertone, and chuckled mirthlessly.

Marco flapped his hands at them both. "No, no, you aren't listening. I mean, that's why they want you. Rachel. You're their Jeremy Jason McCole."

Rachel brought the second eyebrow up to join the first. "I may dress the part, Marco, but I'm not actually a tv celebrity," she drawled.

This time Marco rolled his eyes. "No, duh, but look at you. Look at you!" Marco sprang free from the haybale and bounced forward to walk around Rachel in a half-circle, his hands held out like Vana White revealing a puzzle. "You're perfect."

"Thanks."

"I mean, look at you. You're pretty, you're fashionable, you've somehow managed to keep decent grades despite spending most of your free time fighting an absolutely exhausting war, which totally doesn't make the rest of us look bad or anything, thanks; you have a good family but not too good; you look like you just walked out of Central Casting—for crying out loud, you're even blonde!"

Rachel folded her arms and scowled at Marco. "What does my hair color have to do with anything?" she asked sharply. "And Tobias is blonde, too!"

Tobias tugged a lock of hair forward and made a show of inspecting it. "Well what do you know," she drawled, "so I am."

Cassie snorted and Jake rolled his eyes.

"You're not listening," snapped Marco. "Nobody's listening! Just look at yourself, Rachel! Come on. You're the whole reason Chapman's doing this!"

Rachel felt cold, like someone had just poured ice-water down the back of her shirt and out through the inner core of all her bones. "Excuse me?" she said, in a voice that sounded like it was coming somehow from a lot further away than her own lips. At her side, her hands curled into fists.

She took one step forward, and Marco drew back quickly.

"I'm what?" Rachel demanded.

Marco met her eyes without flinching. There was no teasing or sarcasm in his gaze for once, but only bleak and sober pity. "I think you're the reason why Chapman's come up with this whole thing," he said. "Seeing you and Tobias being, you know, the way you are—I bet that's where he got the idea in the first place."

"I don't think that's true," Cassie protested quickly. "We know the Sharing targets anyone vulnerable, anyone feeling alone, and queer folks—especially kids just starting to understand themselves, kids either experiencing bigotry for the first time or maybe experiencing it from within the very community that has always stood with them against bigotry before, kids who don't have any other support network to fall back on yet—those are people who are especially going to be vulnerable, because of the societal ostracization that too often goes hand-in-hand with queerness. Maybe less so here in California than in the rest of the country, sure…but it's everywhere, that kind of hate." Cassie wrapped her hands around her arms and shivered, although the day was warm and the barn was muggy with the doors shut. "Having somebody tell you that 'no, you're welcome here, we'll support you,' when you're feeling attacked…that's alluring." She shook her head. "There's no way the Sharing hasn't been targeting gay people long before Rachel and Tobias came out."

"Yeah," Marco agreed, only to continue ruthlessly, "but Chapman getting to see this in his own halls every day has to have escalated the interest. You know it did. Especially because…" He paused, and winced, and said, "Well, look, no offense, Tobias, but you're not really a great poster-child for anything. Shitty home life, no parents, plus trannies are always harder to make palatable to white-picket-fence soccer-moms than the 'good gays' who toe the line and just want a white-picket-fence all their own, 'honest-to-betsy-we-do!' They want to assimilate, and that's not as scary or confusing as people who want the freedom to be themselves, to be different, instead. I mean, you haven't even picked a girl-name yet, you're still going by Tobias. Nobody outside this barn knows what to make of you. You're part of the 'Freaky Gay Scene' that keeps the suburbs up at night. But Rachel…"

It was Cassie who saw where Marco was going. "Rachel is basically Miss Teen Ellen," she said tiredly, slumping forward to drop her head into her hands.

Marco nodded. "She's perfect," he said, his voice sharp and merciless. "Beautiful, charismatic, confident, well-dressed, white. And like I said, everybody loves blondes!" He resumed his circling, walking around Rachel and counting off his points on his fingers as he spoke. "Not Jewish enough that anybody needs to pay attention to that. Successful parents, sweet little sisters, the whole family supportive—to various degrees—of her 'lifestyle.' But the divorce means that all those other suburban soccer moms and dads can go, 'Oh, we don't have to worry about our kids turning out like that, because look, this is what happens to broken families!'" he said, in a grating faux-falsetto. "'Our bland little Marys and Johnnys and Annas aren't going to end up that way, because we're going to raise them right! But oh, isn't it nice that Rachel gets to have a nice life, even though she's a dyke! I totally support her and her lifestyle, because I'm a nice progressive modern parent, and of course I'd do the same for my kid, but even more of course I'll never have to because they'd never turn out like that, because I'm a better parent who won't let that sort of thing happen!' Now she's doubly non-threatening," he sneered, dropping back into his normal tones. "Plus, mom's a lawyer and dad works in TV, so she's halfway to having her own P.R. team already. The absolutely perfect poster kid for this sort of thing.

"Sure," Marco continued, ignoring Rachel's increasingly-vocal noises of disgust, "her girlfriend is more of a weirdo—but Tobias is shy, too. She they just keep her in the background, playing the prop of the 'Artsy Gay' that our Little Miss Lesbian Teen America here fell head-over-heels for, and let Rachel keep focus while Tobias serves as background set-dressing to hold her hand. They could have gotten the two of you out of a Casting Call and not done much better."

"Except they didn't get us," Tobias said, quiet but fierce. "We're not in the Sharing, and we're not going to be."

"And when they figure that out, Chapman is gonna be irritated as crap I bet," Marco retorted. "I'm sure he thinks he has this one all sewn-up, nice little P.R. coup to show the Vissers. Why would you decline, after all?" Marco gave an expansive shrug. "Rachel is already buddies with his daughter, so he's got an in; and neither of you have any better offers to take you in and shield you from the cruelness of jerks like T.T. and Dana and all of them, do you? Of course, the fact that half your bullies are part of the Sharing too, out there spreading misery through the world of high school in order to drive unsuspecting teenagers right back into the arms of the same people who sent them out to be dicks in the first place, might make that offer seem a bit suspect upon a closer look…but by the time anybody gets a closer look, they're ear-deep in a Yeerk Pool and out of chances to turn around."

"Rachel," Jake said, in a voice of such studied placidity that it slithered through the room like a honeyed lash. "Rachel, you need to calm down."

Rachel spun to glare at Jake, and only then realized that there was brown fur on her arms and claws jutting out of her hands. She growled, low in her throat, a noise that was more bear than girl, and forced herself to take a deep breath.

Tobias put a hand on her shoulder—larger now than it ought to be, and taller, wearing a thin coating of coarse brown hairs—and squeezed, hard. Rachel let the tight grip ground her, and slowly sank back into her hairless human skin.

She flexed her hands a few times, making sure that she felt fingers instead of paws, and trying not to feel too bereft about the lack of claws.

"I'm calm," she muttered.

Marco snorted, and Cassie hid her mouth behind her hand.

"Okay, no, I'm not calm," Rachel snapped. "I'm pissed as all heck. But I've got a grip on it now. So, I'll ask again: what are we going to do to stop this?"

"Let's just be clear about what exactly it is we'll be trying to stop," said Tobias. She sounded strange, her voice eerily calm after Rachel's snarl. "If the Sharing does this—if they can really pull this off—then in the process, they may end up ultimately doing a lot of good for the gay community."

Rachel turned to stare at her. Tobias's face was devoid of expression, her tone as scrupulously neutral as Rachel's mom's when she was overseeing an argument between Jordan and Sara about which take-out to get for dinner.

"Doing this, the Sharing will inherently promote acceptance," Tobias continued coolly. "Not on purpose, no; but as an inevitable side-effect of their actions. And with the size of the mouthpiece the Sharing is developing, and the absolute loyalty of their members no-matter-what, they could advance the cause of queer acceptance faster than anybody else in the world, if we just stand back and let them."

"So what are you saying?" Marco demanded. "That we should be okay with this happening for the sake of the greater good?"

"No," Tobias said. There was no hesitation in her answer, and no trace of doubt or neutrality now. She met Marco's eyes with a blazing stare. "Because it's not acceptance unless you really truly can be yourself, and having an alien slug controlling your brain is about as far from being yourself as it's possible to get. There is no greater good that comes from slavery and deception." Tobias shifted, turning to look at the others one by one, pausing for a moment to make eye contact with each of them before she moved on. "I just want to make sure we understand all the layers before we commit ourselves to this, because I don't want us realizing it later once we've already started and getting upset about it then."

"Once we've started doing what?" Jake asked.

"Stopping the Sharing from supporting gay people," said Tobias. "Making sure that everybody knows that when they say 'family-friendly,' they only mean for the right kind of families. Making sure that there is no place for tolerance, no acceptance, for queerness in The Sharing's message or methods. Letting people's bigotry do our work for us, and drive folks like Rachel and I far away from everything the Sharing offers. For good and bad."

Cassie swallowed. "Good and bad," she repeated. Her voice was shaky as she spoke. "Yeah. You're right, Tobias. This isn't the sort of thing where you want to figure out the trade-off of your actions belatedly."

"But there isn't any question about doing it," Rachel declared fiercely. "Because Tobias is right. Yeah, the Sharing might do some good for the gay community if we let them do this, but only in order to do something a thousand times worse as a result. If it's a trade-off, it's one where the value is obvious." She grimaced. "Maybe it won't be to everybody, but that would only be because they don't really understand what kind of bargain they'd be making. Anybody who does, who really understands what the yeerks are, would agree with us. It doesn't matter what the yeerks claim or offer, it's not worth the cost. Ever."

"Of course not," said Cassie, although she looked troubled. "But Tobias is right that we have to understand the cost of what we're doing, too. Because there is a very real cost here. The queer community has already been through so much, and here's something that could make things better for them, and we're committing ourselves to stopping it. That's not a small choice, or a painless one."

"But it is necessary," Marco said.

"Of course it is!" said Cassie. "I know that. I'm just saying—it's good that we're talking about, acknowledging, the reality of our choices in advance for once."

Everyone winced a little, and Rachel looked away so she wouldn't have to meet Cassie's eyes. There were a lot of situations she could have been referencing—if she was even referencing one specific event at all, and not just the Animorphs' general bad luck of ending up with their backs to the wall and no good choices to get out that would let them sleep peacefully after—but Rachel was only thinking of one thing.

She didn't regret what they'd done to David, what they'd had to do. Rachel would have happily killed him outright, for what he'd tried to do to Tobias, and threatened to do to her. But they hadn't really talked about what life trapped as a rat would mean, for David—they hadn't had time, and they hadn't really wanted to talk about it, either, any of them—and she knew that it bothered some of the other Animorphs, still.

The only thing about David that still bothered Rachel now was the fear that somehow, someway, he'd come back someday, and she'd find him standing over Tobias's body again, laughing that horrible broken laugh of his. And this time—this time, maybe they wouldn't be fast enough.

But Ax had assured her repeatedly that nothing could restore the morphing power to a nothlit. David was gone for good. They were safe.

Tobias was safe.

Cassie was talking again, and Rachel wrenched her attention back to the present and away from that little island with its screaming ghost.

"I'm not really sure how to go about…I don't even know what you'd call it. Smearing The Sharing as anti-gay, I guess?" Cassie said with a helpless shrug.

Marco laughed mirthlessly. "To most of America, that 'smear campaign' would be a positive."

Rachel rolled her eyes. "Yeah, Marco, we know. That's like, the whole point."

Cassie scrubbed her hands over her face, like she was trying to rearrange her brain through her fingers. "The idea of The Sharing being the thing that finally wakes America up to homophobia being bad is making my head ache," she mumbled. "The worst part is I think they actually could do it."

"Imagine if the yeerks are what overturns the Defense Of Marriage Act," Rachel said bitterly. "I think I'd vomit."

"Should we let this happen, then?" Jake asked. "This pro-gay movement by The Sharing, I mean?" He looked confused, troubled rather than thoughtful, which was the only reason why Rachel didn't deck him for the question. He rubbed his face. "I mean…it was just a few years ago we finally stopped kicking people out of the military for being gay, and then only if they hide it. And that's like, the best thing we've done for the gays as a country so far. That's not great."

"None of it's great, Jake," Tobias said, with a smile that held absolutely no joy. "But acceptance 'won' through the yeerks wouldn't be acceptance at all. Not really. And the cost? No way." She shook her head. "I can't think of anything less queer than having your whole identity, your whole self, controlled by somebody else. It's bad enough when the world tries to tell you what you have to be, when the biggest thing you have to fight is other people's expectations when they look at you. To have that sort of outside-control forced on you from the inside…" She folded her arms in over her chest and looked down at the barn floor.

"Yeah," Rachel agreed, "maybe not everybody would understand that accepting yeerk help is a bad bargain no matter what, but I'm pretty sure most gays would get it."

Tobias shuddered. "Like being back in the Closet, but in every single aspect of your life, even down to every last breath you take," she said quietly.

"And there is no Hell worse than that," Jake nodded.

Cassie stepped up beside him and squeezed his hand. He squeezed back, but the grim look on his face did not lighten.

It was Marco who eventually broke the silence, saying, "Do you hear wings?"

They all looked up and watched as the sixth and final Animorph, in harrier-morph, soared in through one of the barn's high loft windows and spiraled neatly down to the floor, where he began to demorph.

They all looked away, even Cassie, because morphing wasn't ever pretty, although bird-to-Andalite wasn't bad, as morphs went.

Ax eventually climbed up to all four feet and looked around, his stalk-eyes roaming the barn while he ran his main eyes over the other Animorphs and took in their unhappy expressions.

<I apologize for my lateness,> Ax said in their heads. <What have I missed?>

It didn't take too long to bring Ax up to speed, at least on the salient points, those being the activities of The Sharing and how the Animorphs had decided to embrace humanity's penchant for hate and intolerance to counter them. They didn't bother to get into the moral discomfort of opposing pro-gay activities for the sake of the greater good. Ax wasn't from Earth, and the only things he knew about how American society viewed queer people was what he had picked-up from Tobias since she started her transition.

He wasn't too keen on anything that made his shorm unhappy, but he didn't "get" humanity's history with homophobia, either. Considering that the first words out of Ax's mouth the first time he'd morphed human had been "I chose to be-be-be-be-be male," it hadn't been all that much of a surprise to Rachel when he'd rolled with Tobias's new gender without even blinking his eye-stalks, although Tobias had been worried enough about his reaction that she'd delayed coming out to him for a full week while she worked up the nerve.

But apparently, while Andalites were incredibly sexist (at least towards their own species; aliens seemed to get a pass, for reasons that Rachel had never enquired too deeply into for fear of wanting to punch Ax afterwards) and deeply committed to the gender binary, they were not at all transphobic, at least if you were willing to neatly fit yourself into the other side of that binary instead. Rachel didn't know if that was a result of their morphing tech giving them a different perspective on the bonds between mind and body, or something inherent to their culture.

Tobias probably knew. She spent a lot more time talking to Ax about Andalite culture and society than any of them, even Cassie. But Rachel didn't really care about the nuances.

Ax had their backs these days. That was all that really mattered.

Now he said, <Yes, this is a most dire situation indeed. Potentially of even greater concern than the Journey Jackson McCool incident.>

"Jeremy Jason McCole," Rachel and Cassie corrected in snappish unison. Marco snorted.

Ax bent one eye-stalk in the Andalite equivalent of an acknowledging nod. <Yes, thank you. I presume you have a plan for addressing the situation, Prince Jake?>

"Don't call me prince," Jake said, as automatic as had been Rachel and Cassie's response to Ax's butchering of Jeremy Jason McCole's name. "And it's less a plan right now than an agenda, I guess."

"The anti-gay agenda," Marco muttered to himself, with another snort.

Everyone else rolled their eyes or ignored him, except for Ax, who simply waited patiently for someone to explain.

"We don't know exactly how we're going to do it yet, but—"

"Ooh!" Cassie said, throwing a hand up as though she was still in class. She immediately dropped it back down, looking abashed, but the excitement in her eyes was too bright to be dimmed by mere mortification. "I've got one! An idea, I mean. Rachel, your dad," she said, turning away from Jake to face Rachel and Tobias again.

Rachel frowned. "My dad? He's not even in town anymore, how's he going to help?"

"He still feels bad about not being as, uh, as supportive as he thinks he should have been when you came out, right?"

"Right," Rachel said slowly. "He's still in the 'awkwardly overcompensating' phase, it's really…" She grimaced. "Awkward."

"Right!" said Cassie, still looking excited. "Well, what if you complain to him about The Sharing?"

Rachel raised both her eyebrows. "Excuse me?"

"Complain to your dad about how The Sharing is too 'family-friendly' to be friendly to kids like you and Tobias, and you…I don't know…" Cassie frowned, searching for the right words.

Marco jumped in, seeing where she was going immediately. "You wish that people understood that the 'squeaky-clean images' of these sorts of organizations come at a cost to real people, people who don't 'fit their mold' or whatever—people like you and Tobias here. If your dad does a segment on that, or even just mentions it in a broadcast…or, heck, mentions it to some colleagues who decide that kind of muck-raking would make good ratings for them…"

Jake gave a thoughtful nod. "It's a risk, telling your dad anything that might make him look into The Sharing too deeply, because if he looks too deep the yeerks might decide to just grab him to shut him up, but if it's a casual sort of thing talking about more groups than just The Sharing…"

"Throw in the Salvation Army, too," Tobias suggested darkly. "Those people are jerks."

"I'm sure we can make a whole list," Rachel drawled. "But how's that going to help? The Sharing wants people to know they're gay-friendly now, so having that kind of media coverage on their supposed homophobia just gives them the perfect opening to deny it, and about-face into a pro-gay P.R. stunt. We'd be doing their work for them."

"Only if they're ready for it," Jake countered. "You said Chapman told you they hadn't 'gotten that publicized' yet, right? Probably because they're trying to ease into things carefully."

"Probably they'll want to start with the kids, the palatable-to-the-suburbs ones like you, Rachel," Marco added with a sour smirk. "You're a lot less threatening than some purple-haired, tattooed adult artist from the Village or an aging Drag Queen from the Castro or handfasted gay druid couple coming in to bring the property values down with their re-wilding garden plots. Well," he amended, "you'll seem less threatening, to people who don't know you, anyway."

Rachel rolled her eyes, but Cassie and Tobias both chuckled.

"Even for the yeerks, who have perfect control of their own members, them coming out as openly pro-gay is a risk," said Jake, pulling them all back on track as usual. "They'll have to be careful to balance the new pro-gay rep they want to build with their existing base as a 'family' organization, or they run the risk of driving away more recruits than they attract. So we strike early, put them on their back foot. Even the truth can be a problem if it leaks too early."

Marco gave Jake a knowing look. "This is some old-timey war strategy, isn't it? Your voice always does that thing when you start pulling crap out of your history books."

Jake's cheeks darkened but he stuck his chin out stubbornly and refused to meet Marco's eye. "So I've read up on some of the propaganda techniques used by various military units over the years, so what? It's useful information."

"Of course it is," Cassie said mollifyingly.

<Yes,> Ax agreed, the tone of his thought-speak voice grave. <Andalite Cadets are also encouraged to study the tactics and strategies of successful campaigns and their commanders. It is very useful knowledge.> He slumped a little and added, <Even when it is about your big brother, and the whole class spends the lesson with one eye-stalk fixed on your face.>

Tobias winced and gave Ax a sympathetic pat on his flank. "Well, regardless of where Jake's getting his info from, it's a good point. If we can rush the yeerks on this one, we force them to play defense. Maybe even force them to have to choose between protecting their old rep at the expense of scrapping the new plan."

"We could also print up some…what's the word…'zines?" Cassie ventured tentatively. "Take them into San Francisco and hand them out at the, uh, the counter-culture bookstore co-ops and stuff? Get some word-of-mouth spreading through the Gay Community of how The Sharing is all a bunch of, um, Squares and Straights and stuff?"

"Cassie," Rachel asked, "do you know how to make a 'zine?"

"Well." Cassie deflated. "No."

Jake gave her a consolatory elbow-nudge. "It's not a bad idea, though. Spreading the word through the, uh, the Community."

Speaking of squares… Marco mouthed, too quietly for Jake to hear him. Rachel snorted.

She cleared her throat and said, "Sure. Tobias and I can, like, start making sure we complain loudly about it whenever we're somewhere we'll be overheard by the right folks. And I'll mention it to mom, too. She's not as awkward about me being bi as dad, but she's still in 'prove myself' mode, which means she's ready to lecture at the drop of a hat. She'll at least have everyone at her hairstylist's and nail salon aware of The Sharing's 'anti-gay agenda' before the week is out."

Despite her flippant tone, Rachel was glad (if a little embarrassed) that her family had rallied around her the way they had. Even little Sarah, who totally didn't get what the big deal was, was now having all her Barbies get married to other girl Barbies instead of to any Kens, "Just like my sister and her girlfriend will someday, 'cause two dresses is better than one anyway, who wants to marry a stupid old boy in his dumb old suit?" and would throw a fit if any of her playmates said it wasn't allowed.

(Mom had had to step-in on a number of playdates when less-progressive parents objected. There were now three families that Sarah no longer went on playdates with, two because Naomi refused to let any of her children into "houses so rife with hatred," and one because the family had declared all the Berensons to be "agents of Satan" and now refused to speak to any of them anymore. First grade was quickly becoming the new local front of the culture wars.)

"That's something for sure," Jake said, with the sort of crooked smile halfway between admiration and exasperation that anyone in the family wore when the subject of Naomi's verbal fierceness came up.

"What about Melissa?" Marco asked.

"Melissa?" Tobias repeated.

"Melissa Chapman," said Marco.

"Yeah, duh Melissa Chapman," said Rachel, rolling her eyes. "Why are you bringing her up?"

Marco rolled his eyes right back. "She hangs out with you and Tobias all the time these days, right? Do you think she'd be willing to find some kind of public forum and say some unflattering things about her dad's organization and its 'bigoted standards' or whatever?"

Rachel and Tobias exchanged a long look of silent communication. Eventually Rachel said, "I can't pressure Melissa to get involved in this. Not with this being her dad's project, and both her parents Controllers. If she starts causing problems for them…if the yeerks decide to infest her because of it…I can't be the reason why she gets a yeerk in her head after everything. I can't." She shook her head, breathing deep to fight back the burning sting of tears burgeoning at the back of her eyes.

Rachel had cried a lot over Melissa's situation. She wasn't going to do it now, in front of everyone. She wasn't.

Tobias took her hand and gave it a squeeze, which did not help Rachel want to cry less, but she took a deep breath and held it until the tears went away.

"Yeah," Tobias said. "We all know we need to be careful with stuff involving Melissa, same as with Tom. We can't get her involved in this."

It was probably a low-blow to invoke Tom's name, but Jake took it stoically.

"Right," he said. "So Melissa is off the table as a resource. What else do we have?"

<It is unfortunate that you cannot offer these humans an alternative to The Sharing's efforts,> Ax said, and everyone froze.

"Ax!" Cassie exclaimed. "That's brilliant!"

<It is?> Ax swiveled his stalk-eyes and looked around at their shocked and staring faces. <I thought it was most regrettable.>

"No, no, it would be—except that we can," Marco explained. "At least for the kids in school with us. One of those…those…" He snapped his fingers a few times, as though trying to summon the words his mouth wasn't delivering.

Rachel supplied them: "A GSA," she said. The deflated feeling that came over her whenever she thought about Melissa's family started to lift. "A Gay-Straight Alliance. There are a bunch of schools with those now." She smirked. "Bay Shore not having one was one of the things mom brought up when she was tearing the principle a new one for threatening to expel us, actually."

Marco's grin had so many teeth, he might have been halfway into wolf morph. "Oh yeah? Nice. That means the school can't stop us setting one up."

Jake snorted. "Not unless they want to face The Wrath of Aunt Naomi 2: You Really Should Have Learned The First Time."

They all laughed, even Rachel, except for Ax, who still just looked confused.

"It's a school club," Tobias explained. "An after school activity thing—"

"Or before school," Cassie interjected.

"No!" Jake, Rachel, and Marco all yelled.

Tobias snickered while Cassie gave an unrepentant shrug.

"An activity thing," Tobias continued, gesturing first at herself and Rachel and then at the rest of them, "where kids who are some flavor of queer, or kids who have friends or family who are, or who just think queer people deserve to be treated like human beings and want to help, can get together."

"Also kids who are questioning what they are and trying to figure it out," Cassie added.

Tobias nodded. "Right, or that. It's somewhere people can get advice or information or just a reminder they aren't alone, basically."

"Solidarity and community," said Cassie.

<I see,> said Ax. He scraped one blue hoof against the ground. <Those are very good things to have, when one feels alone.>

"Yeah," Tobias said. "Yeah, Ax-man, they are."

Jake cleared his throat. "So, just to be clear…are we really proposing that we take our incredibly overloaded schedules of high school-plus-yeerk-war, and add regular after-school club meetings now too?"

"Yep!" Cassie said, with so much fake-pep that she might have been angling to add cheerleading to her schedule as well.

"You don't have to be involved," Rachel snapped.

"Nope," Jake said, "I'm on board. I just want to make sure we all know that this is crazy. We know this, right?"

"Oh Jake, buddy." Marco stretched onto his toes to sling an arm around Jake's shoulders. "We're the Animorphs. We don't do sane."

Even Ax laughed a little at that one.

Chapter Text

It was Cassie who pointed-out the biggest hurdle to starting a GSA at Bay Shore High.

"You can't have a school club without someone to run it," she said. "Someone to run it officially, I mean." She paused, and when they all stared at her blankly, she clarified: "We need a teacher."

"Oh, crap," said Rachel.

Tobias made a face. "I can't imagine too many parents being super-happy with whatever teacher steps up to start a 'turning all your children gay' club."

Ax drew all four of his eyes into a frown. <I was unaware that that would be the function of this after-school-not-before-school-activity-thing. Do you even have the technology to do such a thing here on Earth?>

"We do not," said Marco.

"Despite the hysterical protestations of every born-again jerkface in all fifty states," Rachel muttered.

<Then I do not understand.>

"It's a thing that bigots say to drum-up fear against people like us," Tobias explained. "They claim that part of the 'gay agenda' is 'turning kids gay' somehow, so they can spread panic and make more people scared and eager to vote against us, to 'protect the children.' Except for children like us, I guess, who don't count and aren't worth protecting."

<I see,> said Ax, looking a little flattened. <They lie to engender terror?>

"Got it in one," said Marco.

"Do the Andalites have technology that can do that?" Jake asked, blinking. "Turn people gay, I mean? Not engender terror. Or lie. You don't need tech for that."

<Not that I am aware of,> Ax admitted. <Although I suppose it is possible that it was discussed on a day when I was not paying complete attention. I did not always, ah…>

Marco flapped a hand dismissively. "Well, we know the yeerks have technology that can make anyone pretend to be gay—or straight—if they want them to, and that's called a yeerk in the head. But the legitimacy or not of the orientation of whatever spokespeople The Sharing will inevitably start trotting-out to make their case for them isn't the issue right now. What we need to figure out is what teacher we have who'd be willing to back us on this club in the face of PTA-backlash."

"Mr. Tidwell would do it if we asked him, I bet," Cassie mused. "If we explained why we need it."

"No!" Rachel, Marco, and Tobias all said at once.

"Uh," said Cassie, looking taken aback. "Why not?"

"We can't get Tidwell involved," said Marco. "We're going to be competing with The Sharing. Even if Tidwell and Illum wanted to help us, how long would it be before Chapman stepped in to give them new marching orders? Tidwell's not exactly in a position to say no, you know. If he's the teacher overseeing it, it'll be a month at most before our GSA gets absorbed right into the Yeerks' recruitment efforts anyway, leaving us right back where we started but worse."

Tobias nodded. "Yeah, that's pretty much what I was thinking too," she said. "Sorry, Cassie."

"Same here, totally," Rachel lied. She pulled on an apologetic smile as well, not wanting to admit to Cassie that she was way less sanguine about the whole "Yeerk Peace Movement" thing than Cassie was. The last person Rachel wanted involved in this was somebody with a yeerk in their head, even if Mr. Tidwell really did seem to like having Illum there now.

"Okay," Cassie said, sighing even as she gave a reluctant nod. "That makes sense, actually, even if it's a bummer."

"Also, just because he's managed to become b.f.f.s with his alien puppeteer doesn't mean that Tidwell's automatically going to be down with the gays," Marco added. "We gotta make sure we ask somebody who's both not a Controller, and not a homophobe."

Jake nodded. "Good point," he said. "Although the former's the one we have to make absolutely sure of before we ask. If we put the idea to somebody who's a jerk, they'll just say no."

"Whereas if we bring a yeerk on board, we're screwed six ways from Sunday."

"Thanks for that, Marco," Rachel said, rolling her eyes. "Okay, so we set up surveillance and vet our candidates first. We've done that before, we can handle that."

<I do not know how to recognize whether or not a human is a 'homophobe,'> Ax admitted politely, <but I am very capable of following humans around in morph and observing their activities to ascertain whether they are visiting any of our known Yeerk Pool entrances. I would like to volunteer to assist in this part of the plan.>

"Thanks, Ax," said Jake. "Okay, so let's make a list of teachers we think might be on board with founding a GSA, and then we'll work out a surveillance schedule to clear them from being Controllers before we give them the pitch."

"At least that will give us time to work out what we want to say," Cassie said, searching for an upside. "Maybe we can even try feeling-out some of them ahead of time, so we can take the ones who absolutely wouldn't go for it off the list and save ourselves some time watching them?"

"I can take a bunch of teachers off the list right now," Tobias said glumly.

"Yeah," Rachel said, scowling. "Anyone who can't even remember to call you a girl gets kicked off the list automatically, just for starters."

Marco raised his hand. "Please can we take Mrs. Neimer off the list too?" he begged. "Please, I cannot be in a club that has that woman in charge. I beg of you."

Rachel snorted. "Ditto," she said. "Mrs. Neimer does not even go on the list."

"What's wrong with Mrs. Neimer?" Jake asked.

Rachel and Marco exchanged wry glances. "Well, Jake," Marco said carefully, "the thing is, she's kind of a massive jerk to everybody who isn't a straight-edged white jock boy. Those dudes get to be teacher's pet, and everybody else gets to be…not that."

Jake blinked. "Are you serious?" he said. "How come I've never noticed her doing that?"

The others all found something else to look at, except for Ax, whose stalk eyes were looking back and forth between the rest of them with bewildered confusion.

"I don't know, Jake," Rachel said eventually. "I guess you just, uh, must have not been paying attention. Probably too busy focusing on, uh, the lessons and stuff."

"Anyway," Cassie said, with the slightly-manic air of one determined to change the subject no matter what, "what we really need is a list of good possibilities, not a list of bad ones. We get that together, we can sort them by priority, and then arrange the surveillance schedule. Maybe we can even get Erek to help us watch, so we can get through the list faster."

"Okay," said Marco, holding up a finger, "but I have one more name to black-ball before we even get started. We absolutely, positively, one-hundred-percent, no-way no-how, can not ask Nora. Is everybody clear on that?"

General laughter, some more sympathetic than others, met this statement.

"Sure, Marco," Tobias said, biting her lip to half-restrain a grin. "I can't imagine why you wouldn't want your step-mom to oversee our GSA, but I guess we can cut you some slack and remove Ms. Robinnette from consideration, since you've asked so nicely.."

"I don't know," Jake said, tapping his chin thoughtfully. "It could be a really good bonding opportunity for the two of you, Marco…"

"I," Marco said, scowling at Jake and pointing finger-guns at him with both hands, "will kill you."

Jake chortled.

"Okay, okay, seriously though," Rachel said, struggling to muster up a straight face from somewhere as she rummaged in her backpack, "we do need to figure out this list." She popped the cap off a gel pen and flipped to a fresh page of her rainbow-colored binder. "Give me some names, come on, who's first?"

# # #

Six days later, they had narrowed their list of possibilities down to three, and had confirmed two more Controllers (and two more bigoted jerks) among the Bay Shore High School staff.

"At this point, it's probably more of a surprise that Chapman hasn't just made yeerkification part of the mandated school In-Service Day activities," Marco grumbled.

"Ugh," said Rachel, "don't say that out loud, somehow the idea will make it to him and he'll start."

"Who's to say he isn't already working on it?" Marco retorted darkly.

"Enough," said Jake. "Stop freaking us all out and focus, please."

"Why?" Rachel said glumly. "What's the point? Sure, we can maybe keep The Sharing from recruiting quite so many kids here as they would otherwise, but what good does that really do?"

"It'll make a big difference to those kids," Tobias said. "And not just in regards to The Sharing, either. This is good, this is a good thing. How often do we get to say that about stuff we do as Animorphs and really, completely mean it?"

"I'd feel better about that if it wasn't coming at the expense of doing other crap that's bad," Rachel grumbled. "Not that we're having much luck with that, anyway."

It turned out that it was a lot harder to get rumors to take root than it seemed on tv, or when you were the one being whispered about in the hallways; at least when you were just five average kids from California (and one from outer-space). Even the Chee hadn't been much help, thanks to their habit of avoiding positions of power, although Erek promised they were doing their best with the rumor-mongering.

(Rachel wasn't sure Erek had really understood what they were asking him to help with, though. When your opinion of human society's best traits topped-out at "usually nice to dogs," you probably didn't get a lot of the more complicated nuances going on there.)

And the phone call to Rachel's dad that they had hoped would kick-off a whole exposé on secretly-crappy organizations with "wholesome" reputations had only resulted in a lot of awkwardly over-sympathetic noises, and a care-package containing a new Maybelline eye-shadow palette that hadn't been officially released yet to stores, a rainbow-gem tennis bracelet, and a stylish jean jacket with a labrys flag on the back.

(Admittedly the jacket was very cool, and Rachel was excited to wear it as soon as the weather got cold enough to make long sleeves feasible, but her looking amazing didn't do anything to stop the yeerks. If it did, they probably would have won the war a year ago.)

"Actually," Marco said, leaning back on his hay bale and twisting a straw like he was conducting music, "our undercutting The Sharing's initiative here, at Bay Shore High, might do a lot more damage than you think."

"Huh?" said Jake. "How so?"

Marco gestured to Rachel where she was sitting cross-legged on a different hay bale between Cassie and Tobias. "Think about it," he said. "If this is where Chapman means to start the whole thing…if Little Miss Teen Ellen over here is supposed to be the poster child for the thing…then yanking the rug out from under them here…"

"...might just get the whole project tanked," Rachel finished for him. She frowned over Marco's favorite new nickname for her, but had to admit that he had a point (at least about the rest of it). "It's not like Visser Three is known for patience when it comes to hiccoughs in his underlings' plans."

Tobias snorted. "No, definitely not."

"So no pressure," said Cassie, grimacing. Rachel patted her on the shoulder.

"Don't worry, Cassie, we got this," she said, grinning so hard she was sure nobody would be able to see her own uncertain wince.

"Before we go any further, we should talk about the elephant in the room," Jake said. "No, not you, Rachel."

Rachel stuck her tongue out at him but Cassie (traitor) laughed.

"I mean Melissa," said Jake, and Cassie stopped laughing. "If we do manage to get this GSA-thing up off the ground…what happens if Melissa wants to join? She's friends with both you and Tobias, Rachel. So she might. But we're setting this whole thing up to counter her dad's assigned mission from the yeerks. So that could be bad news for everyone if she does."

Rachel frowned. "So what, you think we should tell Melissa she's not allowed to join?"

Jake squirmed. "If it's for her own good…not to mention ours, as Animorphs…"

"That kind of goes against the whole point of a GSA, though," said Cassie. "It's supposed to be, like, a safe and inclusive space or whatever. How would we exclude Melissa in a way that, you know, didn't just sound stupid or mean?"

"Tell her no teachers' kids?" Marco suggested. Rachel thought he was probably joking, although with Marco sometimes it was hard to tell.

"You remember that 'teachers' kids' includes you now too, right?" said Jake.

Marco made a face. "Et tu, Jake-us?"

Tobias ignored their byplay. "Nobody wants to see Melissa get hurt," she said thoughtfully. "But we know she's not exactly…close, with her parents these days. So if she wants to join and help, I don't see where that'd be a problem. For her or us." Tobias shrugged. "Melissa already isn't in The Sharing, so her parents' yeerks must not mind having her uninvolved in the stuff they do. That might even be part of the bargain they made in exchange for her parents behaving. And it's not like the GSA will be involved in Animorphs-related activity that Melissa could inadvertently blab to them about, either."

"That's true," Rachel said, frowning. "Well, not beyond the fact that it'll hopefully be making it harder for the yeerks to recruit more kids. But nobody else in the club will know about that part."

Tobias nodded again and said, "So Melissa being in the GSA, if she even wants to be, shouldn't cause any problems for her or us. If her parents tell her to quit, she can decide then whether she wants to go against them or not—but if she does, it'll be seen as normal teenage rebellion, not Animorphs-related stuff. So she should be safe."

Rachel grimaced again. That should was doing a lot of heavy-lifting.

"And," Cassie pointed-out with an apologetic wince, "if Chapman does say he wants Melissa to quit, and we think it would be dangerous for her to go against him, we could always use the argument that we think she should quit, to keep him happy for the sake of the club as a whole, since he's assistant principle and could theoretically make life hard for everyone."

"Gee, what would that be like?" Marco muttered. The others ignored him.

"Pardon me, Prince Jake," Ax said. He was currently in human-morph, sitting on the floor and making short-work of the plate of cookies that Cassie's dad had made for them all. "But is not the point of this endeavour—en-deh-vorr—the fact that the yeerks wish to present themselves as pro-pro-pro-pro-gay now? Surely having Chapman oppose the Gay-Straight Alliance Club at his own school would conflict with that appearance, no? No-no-no?"

"That's true," said Rachel, brightening. "We don't know exactly why neither of the Chapmans ever tried to get Melissa involved in The Sharing, but her being a member of the GSA when Chapman is trying to present his own organization as pro-gay, even if she's not a Sharing member, fits the narrative he'd be trying to spin. So while he might be mad that she's helping us and not them, he can't really do anything about it without coming off as a hypocrite…"

"And if this works, and The Sharing reverts to 'too family friendly to be pro-gay,' and he wants Melissa to quit then, we can deal with that as it comes up," Jake declared.

"It should be Melissa's choice, either way," Cassie said firmly. "We won't ask her, or pressure her, to help us; but we shouldn't say no if she decides she wants to on her own."

"Cool," said Marco, and took his life in his hands by leaning down to snag a cookie off the nearly-empty plate. "Teachers' kids officially allowed…even the ones not as cool as me."

"That's settled then," said Jake, with one of those stern leader-nods that meant he was mentally checking-off a point on his inner battle strategy. "So, next question: which teacher do we rope into this plan?"

They looked at the three remaining names on Rachel's list, its once-tidy surface marred now with many multicolored cross-outs and scribbles, and glittering green doodles of slugs that Tobias had put beside the names of their newfound Controllers.

To Rachel's surprise, it was Cassie who spoke first. "I think we should ask Ms. Paloma," she said quietly. "I think…she just gives me good vibes. You know?"

Rachel frowned and gave her friend a speculative look. Cassie sounded like there was something she wasn't saying aloud, but Rachel decided not to press her. "I don't have a problem with that," she said. "Ms. Paloma has always seemed pretty cool, for a teacher. Tobias?"

Tobias shrugged. "The one time she messed-up gendering me, she looked like she'd just swallowed a handful of hot nails, and she hasn't done it since, so I'd say she seems like a safe bet on the 'doesn't hate the gays' front, at least. Whether she'll be willing to risk the potential blowback of angry parents, I have no idea…"

"But the only way to find that out is to ask," Jake said. He stood up and dusted hay and cookie-crumbs off his hands. "Okay," he said, "let's go talk to a teacher."

"Um, Jake?" Cassie bit her lip to hold back her smile. "You want to go now?"

"Yeah, sure, why not?" Jake said, brow furrowing in confusion. "We're in a P.R. race with the yeerks, no sense wasting time. And it's not like we don't know where she lives by now."

"Right," Cassie said slowly. The others were starting to grin now too. "But don't you think she might be a little weirded-out by that fact? Especially if we show up at her front door without warning after school hours?"

"Oh," said Jake. He sat down again. "I didn't think of that."

"We noticed," Marco drawled, and used his piece of straw to muss Jake's already-mussed hair some more. Jake tried slapping the straw away, which didn't do his hairstyle (such as it was) any favors.

"We'll ask her tomorrow after last bell," said Rachel.

"Yeah," said Jake. He finally grabbed Marco's straw and threw it off the side of the hay bale, then ran his fingers through his hair, trying (failing) to restore order. "Yeah, good plan. So, uh, Ax…any more cookies left?"

"Mmshhunsh, pwinssh Jahhhhk," said Ax.

"I think that's a no," Marco whispered.

Jake sighed.

# # #

Rachel found herself unaccountably nervous as she stood in front of the door to Ms. Paloma's classroom. Ms. Paloma was one of the teachers they knew best, as she had once taught social studies at their middle school, and had only transferred to the high school last year. She had been nice enough in middle school, and had seemed pleased to see her former students again in her classes here at Bay Shore High, and anyway there were two more names of potential club-sponsors on the list to try if she proved to be a bigot or a dud.

There was no reason to be nervous.

"We don't have to do this if you don't want to," Tobias whispered to her.

"Yes, we do," said Rachel. "And I'm fine." She wiped her sweating hands on the sides of her skirt and knocked on the door.

"Come on in!" Ms. Paloma called from inside.

Rachel exchanged a glance with Tobias, who gave her an encouraging smile and a thumbs-up, then opened the door and pushed her way inside.

The classroom looked weird with no other students in it, somehow both too big and too small. The maps on the walls seemed lonely, and the desks—all of which had been knocked slightly askew by hurried departures after the last bell—loomed like an invisible audience watching them in judgemental silence.

Rachel led the way to Ms. Paloma's desk at the far side of the room.

She was a middle-aged lady about a decade or two older than Rachel's mom, her dark hair done up in a bun which was now beginning to unravel (she needed stronger hairspray, Rachel thought absently, and made a mental note to casually suggest a better brand sometime) and her round face was scrunched up behind a pair of narrow glasses framed by colorful beaded chains. She was smiling as she looked up from the papers in front of her, the pen in her left hand gone still.

"Rachel, Tobias, Cassie…hello, ladies. To what do I owe the pleasure?"

Rachel pulled out what Marco called her "megawatt smile" and said, "Hi, Ms. Paloma! I hope you're not too busy to talk to us for a few minutes, even though school's over. My friends and I want to start a student club, you see, and we were hoping that you'd be willing to be our faculty advisor, maybe?"

Ms. Paloma looked intrigued. "A history club?" she said.

Rachel winced inwardly, but didn't let her smile dim. "No," she said, "sorry. Um, I think there already is a history club, isn't there?"

"There was," Ms. Paloma said. "We ran into scheduling issues with basketball and the school play last year, and had to disband, I'm afraid. Too many students just couldn't fit it in anymore."

"Oh." Rachel suppressed another wince. "Sorry," she said again.

Ms. Paloma waved it off. "Well, if it's not history you're looking for, what can I do for you?"

"Um," said Tobias. "We were thinking, um…"

She trailed-off and gave Rachel a helpless look. On Rachel's other side, Cassie was doing a fair impression of one of her parents' patients right before the car came around the corner of the road and hit them with its high-beams.

Rachel decided the best plan was charging straight ahead. (It worked on yeerks. Mostly.) She lifted her chin, made sure her smile wasn't wavering, and said, "We want to start a GSA. A Gay-Straight Alliance."

Ms. Paloma looked startled, but she wasn't turning red and shouting for them to get out of her classroom and take their filthy deviant ideas with them, so Rachel kept going.

"My mom pointed-out that it seems a real shame that Bay Shore High doesn't have one, and after thinking about it, my friends and I had to agree. So we've decided we want to start one. To, you know, to promote acceptance and, uh…"

"Community," Cassie whispered.

"And community. And stuff like that. For people who, uh, who don't have that."

"Also questioning," Tobias whispered, on Rachel's other side.

"And for people who might be questioning stuff about themselves," Rachel added. "To help them, um, find answers. And, uh. And to try and counter bullying and. You know. Stuff?"

Ms. Paloma looked at them in silence for several minutes. Rachel resisted the urge to fidget. Cassie and Tobias did not.

At last Ms. Paloma said, "There will be a lot of people—like your mom, Rachel—who will think this is a good thing, something that our school community needs." Her voice gave no indication of what she felt herself, and her expression was so calm and blank she might have been one of Rachel's dad's co-anchors stoically reporting on a natural disaster or political upheaval. Her dark eyes were very steady on Rachel's face. "There will be a lot of people, probably much louder people, who will be very angry about you doing this. Are you all prepared for that?"

Rachel stuck her chin out. "We are," she declared.

"Are you?" Cassie asked gently. "We understand if you don't want to get involved in that kind of, um, noise. We won't take offense."

Tobias nodded. "It's a lot to ask, we know."

Ms. Paloma was silent for another long minute. She looked down at her desk, and the red pen in her hand, and the pile of worksheets in front of her, but Rachel didn't think she was really looking at them.

This time, none of them fidgetted, although Rachel figured they all wanted to.

Then Ms. Paloma said, "It is. But it shouldn't be." She looked up. "Yes, yes let's do it."

Rachel cheered, then clapped her hands over her mouth. "Sorry!" she whispered.

Ms. Paloma laughed at her. "Just this once, I think I'll let it go," she said, and grinned.

# # #

Surprising no one, the principal hadn't acted thrilled at the idea of Bay Shore High starting its very own Gay-Straight Alliance. She also hadn't done anything to stop them (possibly because memories of her previous confrontations with Rachel's mom were running through her head at high speed and making her want to retire and take up a less stressful career, like bomb defusal or international politics) so now, here sat the Animorphs (minus Ax) in Ms. Paloma's classroom at the end of the day, with a host of posterboard and markers, drawing up the signs that would announce their first meeting that Friday.

"Jake," Marco had said at one point. "You know how posters work? Like, with the whole 'big, bold, and attractive to the eye' thing?"

Jake looked up from his markers. "Yeah?" he said. "So?"

"So-oo," said Marco, drawing the word out into at least three syllables, "maybe you want to make yours look a little less like…that?"

Jake threw a marker-cap at Marco's head. This promptly began a back-and-forth barrage of colorful plastic tubes, which ended only when Cassie leaned over and said, "Oh, wow."

Jake and Marco froze and turned to look at her. "What?" said Jake.

"Um, nothing," said Cassie. "Nothing at all. Don't mind me. Just, uh, just…coloring away here, haha!"

Rachel and Tobias exchanged a look. Then they put down their own markers, and the long banner they were in the midst of creating to hang over the classroom door, and walked over to look at Jake's desk.

Cassie, now firmly back in her own chair, had her head down and was coloring furiously.

"Oh," said Tobias.

"Wow," said Rachel.

"What?" said Jake defensively.

"Jake…" Rachel winced. "Jake, what is this supposed to be? A poster or an essay?"

Jake looked at his piece of posterboard, with its slightly slanting block of text—small, one colored, and sloppy—and thought about it for a while. "Yeah," he said eventually, "okay. You're right. I suck at posters."

Marco cackled. "What is this?" he asked, now that he could take a proper look without being pelted by plastic. "Are you writing like, a manifesto?"

Jake shifted uncomfortably. "I just thought, like, it would be helpful if we laid-out the positive benefits of a GSA for anybody who might not know what it's supposed to be…"

Cassie coughed in her hands and bent lower over her desk.

"Yeah," Rachel said slowly. "Okay, that's not a bad thought, Jake. But maybe uh…not so much for a poster. At least not for advertising in the hallway. We could, like, stick it by the classroom door or something maybe so people can read it when they come in, I guess? Yeah?"

Jake sighed and handed his marker over. "Okay," he said. "I'll just color in somebody else's lines once they draw them. How's that?"

"That would probably be best," said Tobias in a strangled voice. Despite her visible efforts to bite her lip hard enough to hold back her smile, she was grinning.

Jake sighed again and picked up his attempted poster. He flipped it over and shoved the blank side towards Tobias, then sat back to wait for somebody to hand him something to color.

Rachel managed to only laugh at him a little as she returned to her own seat.

They had dragged seven of the desks into a sort of loose circle, so they could share the markers and spread their posterboard out across the ostensibly-wooden surfaces. Also so that Rachel and Tobias had enough room to lay out the long banner that read GAY-STRAIGHT-ALLIANCE in big letters that Tobias had carefully measured out and Rachel had even more carefully snipped loose with a pair of pink-handled safety scissors.

Tobias was now drawing two large rainbows to attach to either end of the letters, while Rachel worked on finessing the cutting on the curves. She was having some problems getting them as smooth as she wanted, because she kept getting distracted with looking over to see what Cassie was drawing on her stack of posters.

There were flags, rainbow flags, but not just the classic rainbow. Rachel recognized her own bi-flag, of course, and Tobias's trans-flag, and the labrys flag; and the pink triangle she knew from both history classes and her grandparents' stories about the Holocaust; and the overlapping coupled male/male and female/female symbols were pretty self-explanatory. There were other designs she didn't know, though, and she was intrigued.

The blue, black, and white one with the red heart was intriguing in its combination of stark, dark colors and cute heart, but it was the one with several brown stripes and a black bear-paw on it that was especially drawing her eye, although Rachel was (mostly) sure that Cassie hadn't drawn that as some kind of allusion to Rachel's favorite battle-morph, just like she didn't think that Cassie had drawn the big yellow bird with triangles of red, yellow, and black-and-white checks behind it in honor of Tobias's favorite morph of red-tailed hawk.

(For one thing, it didn't really look like a hawk. Although Cassie wasn't much of an artist, so that might not mean anything.)

However, there was also one flag with blue, red, and black stripes with a yellow pi -symbol in the middle, and Rachel was absolutely certain that Cassie hadn't drawn that to show solidarity with the school's mathletes. Same with the big purple lambda sketched in the bottom-right corner.

Rachel was just making up her mind which one to ask Cassie about first when Jake said, "Uh, Tobias? Not to be a jerk or anything, but why have you drawn a bunch of flowers on this poster?"

He held up a posterboard that had been handed to him to color-in. Around the "First Meeting! Bay Shore High GSA! Friday, Room 204. Queer? Questioning? All Are Welcome!" text that Cassie had carefully printed in the center, Tobias had drawn several flowers.

Tobias shrugged. "I don't know, actually," she said. "Cassie asked me to draw those for her."

"Oh!" said Cassie, looking up from her own poster. "Yeah, I figured Tobias would actually be able to make them look like the right flowers, and when I tried…well…"

She moved the poster she was working on to show an apparently abandoned one with a big, messy squiggle of green and purple in the top corner, and grimaced eloquently.

"It is nice to have an artist among us," Jake acknowledged. "But I mean, like, why flowers?"

"Lavender is a big icon of the gay community," Rachel said. "Like, the 'Lavender Scare' and 'Lavender Menace' and all that? But I don't know about the rest. Maybe Cassie just thought the lavender looked lonely?"

She looked at Cassie, who laughed. "No," she said, "no they're all icons. See, the green carnation there? That's from Oscar Wilde, he used to wear a green carnation in his lapel, as a signal that he was gay; or maybe it became a symbol because he wore one so much? I'm not sure, actually, I just know that it traces back to him."

"I get the pansy, too," Tobias said drily. "No further explanations needed there."

They all snorted or rolled their eyes. Cassie gave a little shrug. "Yeah," she said. "Well, okay, so the rose here?" She leaned over to point at the half-colored flowers. "That's the same as the pansy, except in Japan. I guess they call themselves the 'rose tribe' or something? There's a Japanese word for rose they use, too, but I can't remember it. Bar...something? I don't know. Sorry."

"Huh," said Jake. "I guess I never thought about different places having different symbols for stuff."

"The lily is from Japan too, that's for women. I think that's called yuri? Or yuki, maybe? Sorry," Cassie said again, wincing. "I'm pretty crap at other languages."

"Well that's one more Japanese word than I know," said Tobias, "so kudos there, I guess."

Cassie grinned and moved her finger down the poster. "Violets come from Sappho, the poet. Also I guess there was a big protest in Paris when they tried to censor her stuff, and everybody wore violets?" She shrugged again.

"Jeeze, Cassie. How do you know all this?" Marco asked, looking a little overwhelmed as he studied the scattered bouquets that Jake was dutifully coloring-in.

"I've been reading up ever since Rachel came out," Cassie said. "Queer Studies is kind of a niche field, yeah, but there are some really cool books and essays out there if you look around. The Nazis didn't burn everything, and of course it's not like research stopped when the Institute of Sexology got burned, there's been loads more done recently. I think Berkley even has a course? Or at least, I heard there was talk they were going to be starting one, now I can't remember if they did or not…"

"Wait, Nazis?" Jake's head swiveled around. "Start over. What do they have to do with anything?"

"Oh, just, uh, you know, with the book burnings and all?" Cassie shrugged apologetically. "The Berlin Institute of Sexology was one of their main targets, actually, 'cause they were trying to quash all that knowledge about, like, gender and sexuality and stuff that Magnus Hirschfeld and his people were working on…"

"How did I not know about that?" Jake looked stricken.

"Uh-oh," drawled Marco. "Now you've done it. Something about one of the World Wars that Jakey-boy doesn't know? Man, we're never hearing the end of this…"

"Shut-up," said Jake, flushing and giving Marco a shove. Marco smirked and pushed him back.

Cassie hid a smile behind her hand. "I can give you the names of some titles if you want to check them out, Jake," she offered, raising her voice a little over their roughhousing. "Most of them you have to get through interlibrary loans, but everybody I talked to at the town library about it was always super helpful and really eager to get the books I asked for."

The shoving match jerked to a halt as Jake turned to stare at Cassie in horror. "This club is gonna have homework?" he cried.

Cassie's grin was now too big to hide. "Only if you want it to," she said.

Jake dropped into a seat and slumped back. "Ugh!" he said. "Now I am wondering why I came."

Tobias twitched one shoulder in an awkward shrug. "You can leave, if you want…"

"No." Jake sat up so quickly his chair shrieked. "No, absolutely not. I don't—I mean, uh, unless you want me to, I guess? Sorry." He grimaced. "I know it's not 'about' me. I just mean, like, I'm not going anywhere. Uh, unless one of you guys tells me to. Girls. Sorry. You know what I mean."

Rachel snickered, and Tobias bit her lip. Cassie was now hiding her mouth behind both her hands.

"Well," Marco said, giving his hair a studiously casual flip, "I'm not leaving even if some you do tell me to. Because unlike Jake here, this is about me."

Rachel rolled her eyes. "And why is that, Marco?"

"Because," Marco said, repeating the hair-flip for anyone who might not have seen it the first time, "I'm a bisexual. So that's like, double-gay or something." He frowned. "Right?"

"Uh…I'm not sure how you're making that math work, but sure," said Tobias. "Close enough."

Rachel laughed, but Cassie was looking at Marco thoughtfully.

"Are you for real right now, Marco? Or are you still joking?"

"What," said Marco, slouching back against the wall and trying to look unconcerned, "you don't think I'm cool enough to be as bi as Little Miss Teen Ellen here?"

"Can we go back to calling me 'Xena'?" Rachel sighed. "I actually liked that better."

"Does that mean Tobias is Gabriel?" Marco shot back.

"I'm completely okay with that if so," Tobias said.

"Marco," said Cassie.

Rachel winced. They all winced. Cassie was going to be a great—and terrifying—mom someday. She had The Voice down already.

"Okay, yeah, sure: I'm not joking." Marco's light brown cheeks were very dark now, despite his attempts to play it off with his usual devil-may-care swagger. "Obviously. My jokes are funny, thank you."

"Since when?" Jake asked.

Marco leaned over and socked him in the arm. "Since always, straight-boy."

"I'll make a note," Jake deadpanned. "Add it to my homework. Marco…is…bi…and…funny," he mimed writing on an imaginary notebook in his hand. He leaned down and pretended to squint at what he'd just written. "I'm not so sure about that last part, actually…do you have any corroborating sources?"

"My source is your mom," said Marco.

They all laughed then, because it was so terrifically un-funny they couldn't help themselves.

"I didn't know you were doing research on queer stuff, Cassie," Tobias said, when they'd all settled down again.

Cassie ducked her head, like she usually did when she was blushing, even though the light in there wasn't good enough for any of them to see it on her complexion. "Oh, uh, yeah, well, I was curious…so…" She winced and looked up. "Uh, sorry that I said it was, um, when Rachel came out that I started. I know you came out first, just…"

Tobias smirked. "Yeah, technically, but only by what, two days? I think you can be given a few days' leeway to think about stuff before you decide to start diving into a whole new specified area of academic study."

Rachel tossed her hair. "Whatever," she said. "I would have come out first, only I didn't discover I was bi until you told me I was dating a girl. I started this race with a handicap."

Cassie laughed. "It's not a race, Rachel."

"Yeah, but if it was, I'd totally have been…"

The door opened. They all froze, and turned almost as one to stare.

Rachel knew she wasn't the only one tensing, the only one running through a quick mental rolodex of which morph to use if whatever walked through that doorway was a threat. She frantically thought-back through their conversation. Had anyone mentioned anything incriminating? Sure, Tobias had only realized she was trans from morphing, but it's not like they'd been talking about that. Surely none of them would have slipped-up and said anything about the Animorphs in school, even if it was after school?

But if it wasn't Ms. Paloma come to check on them (and why would Ms. Paloma be opening the door to her own classroom like she was afraid it might bite her if she moved too fast?) then who else would be hanging around like this…?

The door creaked open, and Melissa Chapman stood there in the opening.

"Er," she said, "hi?"

Her pale cheeks were flushed cherry-red, the color off-set even more starkly by the light purple of her t-shirt.

Rachel opened her mouth to say hi back, but what came out instead was, "Melissa—your shirt!?"

Melissa managed to blush even redder. "I found it at that thrift store at St. Anthony's and Main, the one where Tobias got the cool plaid skirt? I, uh, I went back and bought it the next day, without you guys."

"Okay, but, like…do you know what…?"

Melissa raised her chin defiantly. "My dad used to teach history," she said sharply. "I know how to research old slogans and movements and stuff."

Rachel blinked a few times. "So, you're wearing a Lavender Menace t-shirt because…?"

"Uhh, because I'm gay, Rachel, duh!" Melissa snapped. "Is that okay with you?"

"Melissa!" Rachel exclaimed, bounding up out of her chair and across the room. "No way! Are you kidding? That's so cool!"

She grabbed Melissa, yanking her friend into the room, and swung her around in two circles before she let go and set her down on her own feet again.

"Are you serious right now? Why didn't you tell me!"

"Um," said Melissa. She was still blushing, but now she was smiling too. "I guess I'm telling you now?"

Rachel laughed. "Okay, fair. And that's awesome." She frowned. "How did your parents react?"

"No idea," said Melissa, with the sort of confident false-carelessness that Rachel remembered all too well from her own coming-outs. Melissa waved at the half-finished banner. "I guess we'll find out Friday?"

"That's so badass," Marco observed from his desk with an admiring sigh.

Melissa shot him a look like she wasn't sure if he was joking or not, but Marco only batted his eyelashes back at her, which did nothing to answer that question. Rachel, who was used to Marco, ignored him.

"Ugh," said Rachel, "I wish you'd told me right away. We could have got those shirts together."

Melissa mustered up a tremulous smile. "So you're not upset, then?"

Rachel's jaw dropped. "Dude, why would I be upset!?"

"I don't know," mumbled Melissa, looking down and twisting a long strand of lank ash-blonde hair around her fingers. "I guess I was afraid you'd think I was, like, copying you or trying to steal your thunder or something…"

"Rachel has more than enough thunder," Jake said drily. "More than enough. If you want to steal some of it, absolutely none of us are going to stop you. Please, go ahead. Take bunches. Oodles, even."

"Very funny," Rachel snapped at him, but everyone else was chuckling, even Tobias. And, well, it wasn't like she could argue.

Instead of trying (she did know a losing battle when she saw one, contrary to what everyone always said about her) Rachel tossed her hair over her shoulder and grabbed Melissa's hand, pulling her friend further into the room and over towards the collection of Animorphs and arts-and-crafts strewn across the conjoined desks.

"Come on, then, you can help us with these posters. Your handwriting is way better than Marco's, for starters. And it sounds like you maybe even know some of the same symbols as Cassie, so you can help the rest of us figure out what to add to our posters to make them look cooler."

"Sure," said Marco, "but can she possibly match my mad stick figure skillz? I think not."

Melissa giggled. "Oh, no, a challenge!" she lamented, and reached for some of the scented markers. "How will I ever live up to Marco's mad skillz?"

"A question we all ask ourselves daily," Tobias deadpanned, and they all laughed.

"So, Melissa," Marco asked, waggling a marker at her. "How long have you been gay?"

Melissa paused over a big purple "S" and shrugged. "Um, I guess forever, right? Isn't that what they say, that you're just, like, born this way or whatever?"

"Okay, then how long have you known you were gay?"

"Oh." Melissa's pale cheeks turned pink. "Well, um." She ducked down, letting her hair slide forward in front of her face, and mumbled something.

"What?" said Marco.

"What?" said Rachel.

"I said, um, a while, I guess," Melissa admitted. "I don't know. It wasn't like, a big 'surprise! You're gay!' revelation or anything. It kind of…crept up on me."

Marco nodded sagely.

"What about you, Marco?" Cassie asked.

"Me?" Marco blinked. "What do you mean, me?"

"When did you figure out you were bi?"

"Oh, you know, just…whenever." Marco twirled his marker between his fingers, fumbled and dropped it, and dove out of his chair to retrieve it before it could roll all the way to the blackboard. He came up with blazing cheeks and a too-casual shrug. "I guess…when Rachel told us she was bi?"

He shot a glance at Melissa, then looked away again. They all knew the details he was leaving-out, the ones he couldn't say in front of any non-Animorph, so none of them pressed him on those.

Jake did say, "Wait, but when Rachel told us she was bi, you were like…" He waved his hands around in what he probably thought was a very descriptive pantomime, but mainly made him look like he was trying to tread water in midair.

"A little startled?" Cassie suggested diplomatically.

"I believe your exact words were, 'wait, that's allowed!?'" said Tobias.

"So I'd never heard of bisexuality before, so sue me," Marco retorted. "I mean, like, as something other than a joke, you know."

"And all of a sudden, your life snapped into perfect clarity around you?" Rachel said sarcastically.

Marco grinned and shrugged. "Well…actually, yeah, pretty much."

Jake snorted. "So while you were sitting there bluescreening, and we all thought you were trying to deal with the fact that Rachel was bi…"

"I was in fact having a small silent gay crisis of my own, yes, thank you, can we move on?" Marco complained. "It put a few things in perspective, that's all. Not a big deal."

"Kind of a big deal," said Tobias.

Marco rolled his eyes. "Okay, fine, kind of a big deal. Kind of a big, cool, 'wait I'm allowed to actually jerk-off to dudes for real and not just, like, ironically now?' deal. We get it. Let's move on."

Cassie made a face. "Please, let's," she seconded.

"Ew," Melissa agreed.

Marco dropped back into his seat and resumed coloring. His cheeks were still a little flushed, but he was grinning, too.

Rachel could empathize. She remembered how cool it had felt to let that truth out there the first time. And the second, and the third, too.

It was still pretty cool, actually.

"Okay, Cassie!" Marco said suddenly. "Your turn! Tell us: when did you know you were straight?"

"Uh-oh," observed Melissa, smirking crookedly. "Shoe's on the other foot now."

"I guess that's fair," Cassie said calmly. "However, I'm not sure I can, because I'm not sure I am."

Everyone stopped coloring in unison.

"What?" said Jake.

Cassie capped her maker and carefully set it down. Rachel didn't think that anyone else noticed that her hands were shaking. It was so slight as to be almost imperceptible, but Cassie had incredibly steady hands. She needed them, working with animals at the Clinic with her parents like she did. And right now, those steady hands were trembling.

"Well, you guys know I've been reading up on this stuff," Cassie said. "And the more I read, the more I got to thinking…well…" She shrugged. "Like, before Tobias started to transition, I never really thought about gender as a thing before, you know? Like, it just seemed like more of those silly fashion-rules that I'd never really given a crap about trying to figure out either (sorry Rachel). And I know that sounds ridiculous! But I just hadn't, before. Until all of a sudden I did start thinking about it, and then reading about it, and I realized…um. Well, I think 'agender' would be the word, actually? For me, I mean. If I were going to pick a word."

"Agender," Rachel repeated. "And that means…?"

"Without-gender," Tobias said. "Or genderless. Yeah?"

"Yeah," said Cassie. She drummed her fingers on the desk, then snatched them back and shoved them into the pockets of her overalls. "Yeah, that's—that's right. That's how I…how I feel. About it. Gender. Me. You know."

"So you're not a girl?" Melissa asked.

Cassie shrugged. "I'm just Cassie," she said. "Isn't that enough?"

Rachel leaned over and grabbed her in an awkward chair-hug. "It's awesome is what it is," she said.

"Thanks," said Cassie. She glanced up nervously, and then down again, but not quickly enough to stop everyone from seeing that it was Jake she was looking at. "I, uh…I don't know if that makes a difference, me being…being just Cassie…"

"Well, as far as I can tell, you've always been Cassie," said Tobias. "So I'd say, no."

Rachel squeezed her shoulders tighter. "One hundred percent no," she agreed.

"Why would it make a difference?" Jake asked.

Marco raised an eyebrow. "Does it make a difference to you, Big Jake?" he asked.

Rachel could feel Cassie go tense against her arms, and she scowled. Trust Marco to go straight for the jugular like that. And people called her ruthless!

Everyone seemed to hold their breath, staring at Jake and waiting for his answer.

Jake just blinked back at them, apparently bewildered to find himself the object of so much attention.

"Uh," he said. "No? Why would it?"

"I guess…I mean…sometimes," Cassie stammered, now very much not looking at Jake, "sometimes people think differently about people when they, uh…when they turn out to not be the gender that people always thought they were…"

"Yeah," said Jake, and made a face. "We've all seen that with Tobias. Some people are jerks for no reason. It's really stupid."

"And sometimes," Marco said smoothly, "when you're dating somebody who changes genders, it can throw you for a loop. Or so I've heard, anyway." He grinned, flashing his teeth like a paparazzi's camera bulb. "Sometimes people have great, big, stunning revelations about their sexuality." He waved at Rachel, who stuck her tongue out at him. "And sometimes…" Marco's grin vanished. "Sometimes they don't."

Jake did not look any less confused at this explanation. "Okay…?" he said.

"They're asking whether or not you're still comfortable dating Cassie now that you know she's not a girl," Melissa said tartly. Then she frowned, and spun to lean forward past Tobias and Rachel to look at Cassie. "Should I still be saying 'she' for you?" Melissa asked.

Cassie shrugged. "That's fine," she said. "I don't have anything I'd like to be called better. I don't really think it matters to me either way, honestly."

Melissa nodded. "Cool, okay." She turned back to Jake and demanded, "So?"

Jake was now absolutely crimson-cheeked, blushing so badly that the flush had almost reached his hair. "I don't…I mean, I'm not really…I mean, I guess we're kind of dating, but…"

Melissa slanted a glance at Rachel and mouthed, Is he kidding right now?

I wish, Rachel mouthed back.

Melissa rolled her eyes so hard they looked like they were on the verge of popping right out of her head.

Tobias smothered a snicker in her sleeve.

Jake was still fumbling for words. "I mean, not to say that we're not dating, just, like, we've never…I wouldn't want to presume, like, without a…a conversation about…I mean…which isn't to say that I don't want to be…dating, I mean…but I don't know that I'd, um, that I'd use that word for, uh, for what we are. If we are. A we. That is. Um."

"Help," said Marco, his voice wheezing with suppressed laughter. "I can't even mock that, it was so tragic. Somebody do something before I die. Please."

Jake managed to turn somehow even redder.

It was Tobias who managed to swim through the tide of contact-embarrassment enough to say, "I think you are. Dating. That is. The two of you. Yeah."

"Yeah," Rachel agreed faintly.

Marco just nodded, his teeth latched tight in his lip to hold in his wheezing breaths.

"I would, um. I wouldn't. That is. Mind. Uh, if we are. Sure. Yeah," said Cassie.

"Just kill me," Marco whimpered, and hid his eyes behind his fingers.

Melissa turned to Rachel in abject horror. "Are they always like this?" she asked in a carrying stage-whisper.

"No," said Rachel, forcing herself to keep a straight face. "Sometimes they're worse."

"Oh my god," Melissa groaned.

"Shut-up," said Jake. "We're not—that isn't—it's not—you…"

Marco put a hand on his shoulder. "Stop talking," he said. "Please."

"We-can-totally-be-dating-if-you-want-to-be-dating," Cassie said suddenly, all in a rush.

Jake looked up, his face split in a grin bright enough to power a small city. "Yeah?" he said.

"Um, yeah," said Cassie.

"Okay," said Jake. "Cool."

Cool, Marco mouthed, and hid behind his hands again.

"So, the important thing here," Tobias said, after a few minutes of watching Jake and Cassie grin stupidly at each other while the rest of them exchanged wordless grimaces, "is that everybody's happy with the outcome of this conversation. Congratulations, Jake and Cassie."

"Yeah, congratulations on catching up with the program that the rest of us have been watching for, like, three years now," Marco added with a dramatic eye-roll.

"Shut-up," Jake said absently, and swung a casual fist at Marco's shoulder.

Marco fended the blow off with flapping hands and then froze, his head cocked to one side thoughtfully.

"So does dating somebody agender mean Jake isn't straight?" he asked.

The others exchanged looks, then eventually all turned to face Cassie.

"Oh, why is everyone looking at me like I have the answer to this?" Cassie asked.

"You're the one who's done all that research," Rachel reminded her. "So, does it?"

"I don't know," said Cassie. "I think only Jake can decide if Jake's straight."

"We have to wait for Jake to make a decision that's based on personal realization, and not—" Marco interrupted himself with a cough, probably remembering just in time that Melissa was in the room, and that made this a terrible time to talk about the sort of confident decision-making that Jake was an expert in. "Not something basketball-oriented?" he said instead. "We may be here a while."

Melissa laughed, but Rachel was too relieved that Marco had managed to cover for his near-slip to do more than grin.

"Hey," said Jake, sounding wounded, but not like he thought he was in a position to argue.

"We can help," Tobias offered. "With, like, questions to help you think it through. If you want us to, Jake?"

"That is what the 'questioning' bit on all these posters we've been making means, after all," Cassie said, with a brave little smile.

"Uh, sure?" said Jake. "Thanks, I think?" He mainly looked confused, but Rachel figured that was a huge step up on how most teenage boys would react to having their straightness questioned in public, which was a good sign for his ability to roll with things if Cassie decided she wanted to go public with her gender identity.

"Well, who all have you liked? Aside from Cassie, I mean? Start with that."

"I'm not following," said Jake. His brows drew into a tight furrow. "I've never dated anybody but Cassie before. Obviously. Which you all know. As I've only just, like, figured out that I'm dating her, even. So…?"

"Ye-es," said Marco, drawing the word out slowly like he was speaking to a very small or stupid child. "But Tobias isn't asking who you've dated. She's asking about, like, crushes. You know, on other girls in class—or boys? What celebrities you've thought are hot? That sort of stuff."

Marco looked thoughtful, his brow furrowed in a frown and his eyes fastened on Jake's face with a speculative sharpness that Rachel associated with battle-plans more than she did any other interactions she'd ever witnessed between her cousin and his best friend. She shifted in her chair, suddenly curious.

"Yeah, who's your Jeremy Jason McCole?" she prompted. "We know Marco favors the Baywatch girls—"

"—and guys," Marco interrupted petulantly.

"And guys," Rachel amended with a roll of her eyes. "But I can't actually recall any conversations with you drooling like an idiot over someone so far out of your league they might as well be living in outer space. So, go on: let's figure this out. Who've you liked, Jake? Who do you look at and go, 'wow they're hot!'? Boys, girls…teenage mutant ninja turtles? Go ahead, no bad answers."

"Just Cassie," Jake insisted. "Honestly, I never really got the whole celebrity-crush thing that people do." He shrugged. "I don't know any of those people, so why would I want to, you know, kiss them or whatever? That's gross. I don't want to be with anybody that I'm not friends with, ever."

Marco leaned forward, batting his eyes dramatically. "Does that mean you'd date me, Big Jake?" he cooed in a saccharin sing-song voice.

Jake met his fluttering gaze without flinching and gave Marco a very deliberate once-over. "Hmm," he said, with an expression as deadpan as the wooden bust of George Washington atop the map-cupboard. "Well…I guess I might."

For a moment, no one moved, save to blink in a sort of stupefied limbo as brains refused to process the words they had just heard. Even Marco looked blank, and for once seemed to be caught utterly without a single sarcastic word to say.

Then a grin cracked through Jake's stoic mien and he said, "If you weren't so totally obnoxious, anyway." He slouched back in his chair, his eyes dancing with mischief. "You being you, I think I'd rather walk into traffic on the freeway first. No offense."

Marco cracked up, followed quickly by Rachel, both of them laughing hard enough that they had to cling to their desks to remain upright. Tobias snorted and Melissa coughed a little giggle into one hand.

Cassie, smiling slightly, waited until the noise had died-down a little, and then said, "Have you ever heard of demisexuality, Jake?"

Jake stopped grinning. "Uh, what?" he said. He blinked. He frowned. He looked around, like he'd just been caught by an unexpected test and was hoping someone nearby would have the answers he'd forgotten to study. He looked back at Cassie and frowned harder. "No? I don't think so?"

"It's one of the things I read about," Cassie explained to all five of the sets of curious eyes now staring at her. "It's pretty new, or at least the term is. If I've got it right, it kind of means, like—somebody who only feels a, uh, a romantic or uhh…or s-sexual, um, interest in somebody after developing a friendship first. So like, people who don't get passing crushes on strangers or acquaintances—or celebrities—the way most people do, because for them the emotional bond has to come before anything else can, um, develop. Basically?"

No one moved, or spoke. For a long time Jake stared at Cassie in blank-faced silence. Then he said, "Oh."

As though that word had broken some sort of spell, they all stirred again. Rachel opened and closed her mouth a few times, but could think of nothing to say. Tobias regarded Jake with a thoughtful, birdlike tilt of her head, and hummed quietly under her breath. Cassie ducked her own head and scratched at the back of her neck. Melissa chewed on a pale strand of hair and blinked at Jake.

Marco started to laugh. "No way," he said. "No way. Are you telling me that Jake—Big Jake, our fearless leader, the most whitebread-of-all-whitebread boys this school has ever seen—that this Jake is, in fact, not Straight?"

Cassie shrugged without raising her head.  "I think that's up to Jake," she mumbled.

Everybody turned to look at Jake again.

He shrugged also. "I mean…that sounds like me?" he said, in a voice heavy with bewildered uncertainty. "I kind of thought that was, uh, how everybody was, and all the stuff about like…Baywatch and Cindy Crawford and whatever was, like…a joke?"

"Cindy Crawford is never a joke," said Marco, so seriously that it was impossible to tell if he was actually being serious or not. "And neither is Baywatch. How dare you, sir?"

Jake ignored him. "So, um…I guess…if what Cassie said is, uh, like a thing…I guess that thing is me?" He shrugged and looked at Cassie. "If that's okay?"

Cassie smiled at him. "Of course it's okay," she said. "If it's who you are, then it's great."

"Okay," said Jake. He smiled back. "Cool. Okay, then. I'm, uh…I'm that."

"Demisexual," Cassie told him.

"Demisexual," Jake repeated. "Yeah, okay. So, that's uh…that's me, then. I guess. Yeah. Demisexual."

"Well I'll be damned," said Marco.

"I mean…" Melissa smirked wryly and spread her hands wide. "Aren't we all? Technically speaking? If you ask anyone who claims to be in a position to know, anyway…"

"You said it, sister," drawled Tobias. They high-fived while the others laughed.

"To our Rainbow Damnation," Rachel declared, holding up a fistful of markers like she was making a toast.

"Hear, hear!" said Marco, and they all leaned across the desks to clink markers with each other, even Jake.

The rattling plastic sounded for a moment strangely like music. Rachel could feel something warm and fizzing well up inside of her, racing out all the way to the ends of her fingers, making them tingle. She looked around at her friends, and the scattered sprawl of markers and messy half-done posters that covered the desks between them, and the unfinished banner with its drying paint and sequins, and she couldn't imagine any sight ever making her happier.

Maybe this club wasn't just about beating the yeerks at their own game. Maybe, just maybe, it was also something more.

Rachel cleared her throat and turned back to face Melissa. "Okay, but here's the most important question of all," she said. "Super, super important. More than anything else we've talked about yet so far. You gotta tell me: was there another one of those vintage Lavender Menace shirts there?"

Melissa laughed. "We can go look," she said. She smiled shyly at Tobias. "All three of us, if you girls want."

Rachel grinned. "Freaking awesome," she said.

# # #

Friday afternoon saw Rachel standing with her hands on her hips and a calculating frown on her face as she assessed the banner hanging over the door of Ms. Paloma's classroom.

Gentle arms slinked around her waist and a tousled blonde head leaned over to rest on her shoulder.

"Hey," Tobias said. "What's wrong? Having second thoughts about this?"

"What?" Rachel startled, wrenching her attention away from the vibrant banner to look down into her girlfriend's anxious brown eyes. "No, of course not, Tobias. I just can't get this darn banner to hang straight and it's driving me nuts."

Tobias's face twitched, like she was getting ready to start morphing. She raised one hand to cover her mouth, and then the other. Soon she was bent over in the middle of the hallway, laughing so hard her eyes were leaking. She leaned one elbow on the stepladder that Rachel had been up and down seven times so far without success, trying to keep from losing her balance completely and sinking to the floor.

"What?" Rachel demanded. "What!?"

"You can't…get the banner…straight?" Tobias wheezed. "That…that seems…pretty suitable…to me…"

Rachel stared for another second, and then she got it. Laughter came out of her in a howl, and she doubled-over also, one hand stretched out to hang onto the doorframe and hold herself upright against the tremors of hilarity. The delicate gems on her bracelet glittered like a rainbow emerging from a storm.

Marco's head eased around the edge of the door, and he frowned at them. "Would you two ladies get it together?" he complained, in his best faux-responsible-adult voice. (It sounded a lot like Jake.) "We are on a schedule here. What is the meaning of this inappropriate hilarity?"

"Rachel can't…get the banner…to be straight!" Tobias gasped.

Rachel just giggled, too consumed by her own tears of laughter to do anything else.

Melissa's face leaned out to stare at them from the other side of the open door.

"Huh?" she said.

"The banner!" Tobias tried to explain, waving a hand vaguely in the direction of the rainbow-colored sign hanging over the door. "It's not straight!"

Melissa blinked at them. "Well," she finally said, totally deadpan, "I guess it's in the right place too, then."

She shook her head and stepped back inside as Marco's face twisted up into an expression of outrage. "I was going to say that!" he exclaimed indignantly, disappearing to follow Melissa inside. "You can't keep stealing my lines like that!"

"If you want to be the funny guy around here, you're just gonna have to be faster, Marco," Melissa retorted.

Marco made a noise like an outraged seagull.

Rachel took a deep breath and forced the giggles aside. Beside her, Tobias was peeling herself off the ladder and wiping at her streaming eyes.

"Told you the waterproof mascara was a good idea," Rachel said, grinning.

Tobias gave her a look. "Like either of us would ever wear mascara that isn't?" she retorted.

(It had only taken one dolphin-related mishap to teach them both that lesson.)

Rachel grinned wider. "Still," she said, and reached out to tuck a lock of hair back behind Tobias's ear, exposing the purple bangles hanging there. "We look great."

Tobias smiled, the rainbow glitter-shadow that Rachel had painted on both their eyes that morning shining like a promise under the high school's stark fluorescent lights.

"We do," Tobias agreed. She held out a hand. "So hey, you ready for this?"

Rachel took her hand. "Let's do it."

Together, they walked through the door and into the first meeting of Bay Shore High School's brand new Gay-Straight Alliance.

<EPILOGUE>

As the Animorphs meandered down the sidewalk away from Bay Shore High that evening, Marco walked a little faster than the others. He was grinning as he walked, and as they crossed the street towards the bus stop he rubbed his hands together with undisguised glee. "Man," he said, "I can't wait to get to the barn today so we can talk to Ax."

"Ax?" Rachel raised her eyebrows. "Why do you want to talk to Ax so much?"

Marco raised his eyebrows right back. "What are the odds that every single one of us Animorphs here would turn out to be gay, huh?" He answered his own question before any of them could speak, smiling toothily and declaring, "Pretty darn low. Pre-tty darn low. Which means, duh, we gotta talk to Ax."

Jake frowned. "I'm not sure I'm following you," he said. "I don't think Ax is really going to care—"

Marco flapped his hand dismissively. "Dude, you're not listening. Pay attention to the odds, man! What are the odds that out of the five of us original Animorphs, every single one is some flavor of queer?"

"Probably pretty low, yeah," agreed Cassie, looking thoughtful. "I think it's generally held that only about 5 or 10% of the population is gay, although those numbers are hard to verify due to closeting and self-doubt and internalized homophobia, so we don't really know what—"

Marco waved his hands to shut her up, too. "Right, the odds are crazy. Which means…? Anyone?"

Rachel exchanged a look with Tobias, and then with Cassie, and then with Jake. They all three of them looked back blank-faced and shrugged, as helplessly confused as Rachel.

Marco made an exasperated noise. "Seriously! Think about it. Are there gay Andalites? What would the equivalent even be for them? I don't know. But at this point I'm willing to bet money that whatever the closest thing to gay is for Andalites, Ax is gonna turn out to be one too."

For a moment, they all stopped walking and stared at Marco.

"That…" said Jake.

"That would be pretty…"

"Crazy odds, right?" said Marco.

"Crazy odds," Rachel agreed. She felt a grin start to spread across her face to match the one on Marco's. "Oh man," she said. "Oh man, Marco, imagine if you're right. How crazy would that be!?"

"I know!" said Marco. "So come on, don't you want to find out? What are we waiting for—let's do it!"

<THE END>