I saw Rachel's face--my face--coming at me, and had no idea how to react. I mean, I was about to kiss myself in a weird way. In the weirdest way. I definitely didn't back off though, because there was a voice in the back of my head reminding me that it was Rachel controlling that body--the one that was about to kiss me. And I had been waiting to kiss Rachel for a very long time. I would have kissed Rachel no matter whose body she was in--Cassie, Jake, Ax...possibly even her grizzly morph.
Turns out I didn't get much of a chance, though. The second her mouth touched mine, there was a flash of light and I felt my self flying through the air. Again.
I landed with a splash in--what else--a mud puddle. But as I looked down, I noticed something. I wasn't wearing the girly jeans and fitted t-shirt I had been before. I was wearing baggy khaki's and a sweater. The clothes Rachel had been wearing. The clothes my body had been wearing.
No. It was too good to be true. It couldn't have been that easy.
I looked up. Rachel was about ten feet away from me, picking herself up from the--of course--soft patch of grass she had landed in.
Rachel. Blonde hair, blue eyes, amazing body (trust me, I checked).
"Well," she said, brushing imaginary dirt off her clothes. "That's a relief."
"Did you know that was going to happen?" I asked as I climbed out of the mud puddle.
"No," she admitted.
"Then..."
Rachel shrugged. "That was your body. Your hormones. Not me."
"But..."
"Let's just pretend it never happened, ok? It was a mistake. A fluke, actually. A result of alien forces butting into our lives, as usual, and it would never have happened under ordinary circumstances. And if you know what's good for you, you will never mention it again because--"
But Rachel was cut off because I, not wanting to lose whatever moment there possibly could be (even if it was created by alien forces) grabbed her by the shoulders and kissed her.
And let me tell you, it was a great kiss. All three and a half seconds of it before Rachel shoved me back and slapped me so hard my head swung to the side possibly fast enough to give me whiplash.
I really wished she would stop hitting me. That made the third time in one day.
Rachel stared at me in shock and possibly horror, and I knew why. It was because in those three and a half seconds before she shoved me away, she had been kissing me back.
And she definitely couldn't blame it on my hormones this time.
"Oh my God, this is not happening..." Rachel groaned before she started to morph to owl.
"Rachel, wait," I begged as she continued to morph. "Rachel, this is happening...RACHEL!" I gave one last yell as she flew off, leaving me and Baby Think-It-Through alone.
Baby Think-It-Through started to cry. I briefly considered joining her. Instead, I changed her damn diaper, loaded her up, and walked home.
When I got there I almost had a heart attack. My room was cleaner than it'd been in...ok, ever. I had never seen my room that clean. I had actually forgotten that I had blue carpet.
I opened a drawer. Turns out Rachel had assigned it as my underwear drawer. Before, all of my clean underwear had been in the laundry basket with all my other clean clothes. The dirty underwear had been on the floor with all the rest of my dirty clothes. My drawers had been full of...well, junk. Now I had an underwear drawer. And she had actually folded all of my boxers and stacked them neatly.
By color. I kid you not, my underwear was stacked in ROY G BIV order.
All of my sweaters, dress shirts, and dress pants were hung neatly in the closet. All of my books were in alphabetical order on the bookshelves that had previously displayed my collection of Buffy the Vampire Slayer action figures (now Buffy and her gang were nowhere to be seen). The bed was made, and clothes for the next day were waiting on my desk chair.
I checked under the bed. She had even organized my porn magazines--first in alphabetical by the name of the magazine, and then by order of release.
I changed out of my muddy clothes and into some fuzzy flannel pajama bottoms and a t-shirt (after I found them--it really wasn't that hard, turns out I had a "pajamas" drawer, too) and climbed into bed. I couldn't sleep, though. I needed to talk to someone about this--someone that could explain Rachel to me.
There as obviously only one person to go to.
I climbed out of bed, morphed to bat, and flew to Cassie's house. I landed on her window ledge and was about to thought-speak to her to let me in, when I heard voices.
Two voices. Both female. One, patient and understanding, was definitely Cassie. The other, angry and frustrated, had to be Rachel.
I leaned my little bat body closer to the window to hear what they were saying.
"Rachel, calm down," Cassie said. "What happened? I mean, you're back in your own body! That's good news, right?"
Rachel let out a frustrated grunt. "If I tell you, you have to promise me two things."
"What?"
"You can never tell anyone, and you have to promise not to laugh at me."
Ouch. Laugh? This isn't funny! This is passion! This is intensity! This is...woah, deja vu.
"I promise," Cassie said seriously.
"Ok," Rachel took a deep breath like she was Peter Pettigrew preparing to hack off her own hand. Come on, was it really that shameful to have kissed me? I mean, ok, she did have Tobias, but still. We're 16. It's not like this is something hugely uncommon. "I kissed Marco. I mean...he kissed me. I mean, we kissed."
"Woah!" Cassie exclaimed.
"But then I hit him!" Rachel added quickly.
"Hmmm," Cassie said thoughtfully.
"What do you think?" Rachel asked. "Is it a big deal? What does it mean? Should I tell him?"
Tell me? Tell me what? Oh...she means Tobias. I felt a sinking sensation in the pit of my bat stomach. Was Rachel going to tell Tobias? Cause if she did, I could see that ending with a red-tailed hawk dive-bombing my head. Or maybe he would go all out, morph to Andalite, and just decapitate me.
"Rachel, what happened with you and Marco when you guys were in the past? I still haven't heard much about that."
"Oh..." Rachel mumbled. "It's not that big of a deal. I, uh, upset this guy and he came after me with a gun."
"And that's how you two died? He shot you both?"
Rachel sighed. "Yeah, that's basically it. Except, um, he wasn't going to shoot Marco, just me. But then...Marco jumped in front of him."
I heard Cassie's soft gasp. "And that's why Marco came back first?"
"Yeah," Rachel admitted. "We didn't know that we had to die to come back, you know? And so he shot Marco...and he was just laying there. And I could tell he was dead, and I didn't know what to do. So when he lifted up his gun to shoot me....I just waited. And..." I heard Rachel's voice break, like maybe she was trying not to cry. "I wanted him to shoot me. Because there was this guy, and he tried...he tried to..." A definite sob.
This was the third time in a week I had witnessed Rachel crying. A big surprise considering that up until this week, I wasn't even sure she had tear ducts. What was also surprising was how much I wished I could make everything better for her. Because, while it was a relief to know that Rachel was, in fact, human, it was scaring me a little to realize how much her pain caused me pain.
"It's ok, Rachel," Cassie began, but Rachel cut her off.
"No, it is NOT ok!" she yelled, and Cassie didn't even shush her so she wouldn't wake up her parents. "Some asshole tried to rape me while I was stuck in time-travel hell, and I killed him. And then, when his brother came after me, he killed the only friend I had with me. And that was the first time in my life I have ever just wanted to die."
There was silence between Rachel and Cassie. Me, I could feel my heart (even if it was 100% bat) twisting painfully at Rachel's confession. I wanted to hold her and take away all the bad stuff she was feeling...
Oh my God, I am so far gone.
"I think you should tell Tobias," Cassie said finally.
And I had been coming to ask her for advice? What the hell had I been thinking? She gave the worst advice ever! Tell Tobias?! Did Cassie want me dead or something?
"You should tell Tobias," Cassie continued, "Everything you just told me, and I think he'll understand."
Rachel snorted. "How could he understand? I don't even understand."
"Obviously you have just had an unbelievably upsetting ordeal, and Marco was the one who was there with you," Cassie explained. "We all know Marco has feelings for you--"
"Wait," Rachel interrupted. "You all know?"
Exactly what I was thinking. I mean, yeah, I had always joked about it, but even I hadn't realized what I felt about Rachel until that day (was it really only two days ago?) I had sat in Home Ec, wishing so hard that the teacher would call my name as her partner.
"Of course everyone knows," Cassie said. "I mean, maybe we didn't all see him jump in front of a bullet for you, but I don't think anyone would be that surprised that he did. Anyway, you know how Marco feels about you. And you were emotionally broken up, and then he sacrificed himself to try and save you...It's natural that you'd feel some sort of connection with him."
"And you think Tobias will understand that?"
I didn't wait to hear Cassie's explanation, though. I flew away from the window and towards home, my little bat heart breaking into pieces the entire way.
Of course that was what had happened. Those three and a half seconds of kissing had all been the result of Rachel's traumatic experience. I had been her weak moment. Her mistake.
I got back to my room to the unwelcome sound of Baby Think-It-Through crying at the top of her artificial lungs. I wanted to drown her in the bathtub, but managed to control myself enough to feed her until she stopped crying. I had just climbed back into my bed when I heard a tapping at my window.
I groaned and walked over to the window. A great horned owl was perched in the window box my stepmother had planted with marigolds that had just started to sprout up.
"Cassie?" I asked, figuring she was there to warn me to watch the skies for homicidal hawks. Of course, it was mostly her fault that I was going to have to keep one eye to the sky.
(No,) Rachel said.
I opened the window and she hopped inside and on top of my dresser. Which, now that I was looking at it, seemed especially shiny and dust-free. "What are you doing here?" I asked her. She didn't respond, just started to demorph.
"Look if you're here to try and let me down gently or something, you don't have to bother," I said. I had to stare at the floor. For some reason, I couldn't look at her as I said this. "I went to Cassie's tonight to talk to her, and I overheard you guys. I know that I was just taking advantage of what happened when we were back in time. I know you don't care about me at all."
"You heard that?" Rachel asked in surprise once she had finished her demorph.
"Yeah," I nodded.
She nodded too. "Ok, then," she said. "But that's not why I'm here."
Rachel moved closer to me, slowly at first, but then all of a sudden there was no distance between us. Before I could even stop to wonder what she was doing, she was kissing me again--but this time, really kissing me. Her arms were around me, pulling us as tightly together as possible, and her tongue was brushing my lips, trying to get into my mouth. Before I could worry about the fact that I had no idea what I was doing, I had opened my mouth and our tongues were together and half of my brain was worrying that she could tell I had never done this before (unless you counted Rebecca, who had refused to pry her lips apart because, quite possibly, French kissing hadn't been invented yet), even though the other half was too deliriously happy and crazy-dizzy to think anything at all.
Rachel's hands were roaming down my back, and then they were under my t-shirt. I pulled back in surprise.
"What?" she asked.
"I just...I mean..." I stammered, fully aware of how lame I sounded. The first time a girl had ever made an attempt to get under my clothes, and I was questioning her motives. "What's going on? Cassie said--"
"Cassie was wrong," Rachel cut me off, and pushed me down onto my bed.
Rachel climbed onto my bed with me, and then she was laying on top of me and kissing me again. This time, when she went to pull my shirt off, I didn't stop her. I was too nervous to try and take hers off, but she did it for me. This has to be a dream, I couldn't help thinking as she continued to kiss me. But then, there was no way I could be imagining all of these details--the softness of her hair and skin, the scratchiness of the lace on her bra, the cinnamon taste of her mouth. And most of all, the overwhelming heat that was coming from her. I could feel it everywhere our bare skin was touching--it was making me dizzy.
It also made me brave. Brave enough to slide my hands up her back to the fastening on her bra. I waited for her to slap me, and when she didn't, I unfastened it. By some miracle (or the hours I had spent practicing on a bra I bought from JC Penney's when I was 13) it unhooked easily, and she allowed me to pull it off her.
And ok, granted, there was nothing I hadn't seen before, but trust me, it was a completely different experience from this perspective.
Rachel pressed herself against me, and I savored the feeling of her bare chest against mine. She kissed my neck as her hands slid down my stomach and began untying the drawstring on my pajama bottoms.
"Rachel?"
"Yeah?" She asked, sitting up a little so she could see my face.
If this was really going to happen, then there was something I needed to say first. I know it seems incredibly...well...girly, but for some reason I had to get it out there.
"I lo--"
"Waaaaaaaaahn. Waaaaaaaaahn."
Rachel and I both groaned.
"They programmed it to do that," I said.
"There's no other explanation," she agreed as she climbed off me and reached for the doll.
There was a knock on my door. "Marco, if you don't shut that doll up, Nora and I will do it for you!" my dad threatened. The knob started turning.
Rachel's eyes went wide. She grabbed her shirt and bra and dove into my closet a millisecond before my dad entered the room. I grabbed my comforter and pulled it over my lap so my dad wouldn't see anything suspicious. Not to mention extremely embarrassing.
"Uh, hi, Dad," I said, hoping my face wasn't as bright red as it felt.
My dad walked into my room and sat down on my bed. "Marco," he began, and I could tell this was going to get very bad very quickly. "Nora was telling my about this Baby Stop-And-Think--"
"Baby Think-It-Through."
"Oh, right. Anyway, it seems like a very good program your school has going on, but it's made me think. Now, I know you haven't been very active with girls yet..." My head was about to explode from the shear irony of it all. "But I think that day is probably coming soon, and I wanted to make sure you didn't have any questions."
"Questions?" I said. My voice cracked slightly.
"About sex. Particularly methods of protection against STD's and pregnancy, but if you have any questions about the mechanics of things, I'd be happy to answer those as well."
Oh, god. I was going to die. Rachel was witnessing me having The Talk. At five o'clock in the damn morning. What the hell was wrong with my dad?
"You do have the basic idea of things, right?" he asked.
"Uh, yeah," I said. "I took biology last year, you know..."
"You only got a C+," Dad reminded me.
"Well, that was the one part of the class I stayed awake for."
Dad grinned. "Ah, like father like son," he said. "You know, your dad was quite the stud back in his day. Don't tell Nora, but she wasn't the only date I ever got from those parent-teacher conferences..."
Why? WHY?
"Also," Dad said, turning more serious. "I want to know what really happened between you and that girl yesterday. That cousin of Jake's."
"Oooh...I thought I explained everything yesterday."
"Well, I thought maybe there was some stuff you didn't want to tell the police or say in front of Nora...Were you dating her?"
"No."
"Well," Dad said awkwardly. "We've decided that it'd probably be best if you spoke to a counselor." I had seen that one coming. "We found an excellent one. You'll be visiting her at nine in the morning every day of your suspension, and probably for a little while afterwards too, depending on how things go."
"That's fine, Dad. Uh, I promise I'll keep Baby Think-It-Through quiet, but I could really use some sleep." I lied.
Dad smiled at me kind of sadly. "Ok, Marco. Good night." He left the room.
Rachel came out of the closet. Unfortunately, she had put her shirt back on. "Did I mention I'm sorry about getting you suspended for two weeks?"
I shrugged. If it had in any way led to this night, it was more than worth it.
Rachel sat down on the bed next to me. "Before we do anything else, I need to think about some things, ok?"
I nodded. So did I. I'd never done the whole affair-with-your-buddy's-girlfriend thing before. If that's what this was. It was a good thing she'd decided to stop and think things over. At least, that's what I kept trying to convince myself.
Rachel and I sat next to each other in silence for a while, until she finally said, "I'll talk to you tomorrow." Before she left, she kissed me quickly on the lips.
That had to mean something. Right?
