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My name is Cassie. The war ended a year ago, and I still don’t know where I’m going from here.
I’m sitting at the beach with my feet in the sand and my head lolling back, and I’m watching as people arrive. It’s the one year anniversary of the day that the yeerks left Earth, and there’s going to be a bonfire tonight. A bonfire attended by every surviving member of The Sharing in our area.
Jake asked me to go, since I’m one of the only Animorphs to not be a publicly known face. I agreed, on the condition that this would be the last time I ever did anything for him. I want out of all this. I have for a long time now, but I couldn’t until the war was over. I only even agreed to come to this ceremony, or whatever you want to call it, because I figured I’d be the only person to have an open mind about it.
So here I am. The sun is just starting to dip past the clouds, and the sky, and the ocean, are lit up all orange. It’s like something out of a painting of Miami Beach, except it’s real and it’s right in front of me. I never got to appreciate things like this back during the war. It’s so weird, thinking of it like that. If it was a war, then I was a soldier. I don’t feel like a soldier. That implies I was fighting for something other than survival.
Right. The event, or the ceremony, or whatever. I never know what to call these things. I look over to the spot on the beach where they’re setting up. There are three or four people piling up wood and making a bonfire. More are parking their cars, or walking over by foot. I stand up and knock the sand off my legs before walking over to get a better look.
I recognize a few of them. Some by name, some only by face. I went to school with a few of them, and I remember others from the yeerk pool. It’s so strange, seeing them as themselves, instead of being piloted by someone else. The expressions on their faces, the little tics they have, they’re all natural. No performances necessary.
I grab a piece of firewood and add it to the pile, saying nothing. A few of the others, the former controllers, start greeting one another. I watch out of the corner of my eye as two girls, both with jet black hair, hug and ask how the other is doing. It’s weird how excited they all are for this, right? It feels like it ought to be. But I watch, an observer on the inside, as more and more people show up. Upwards of twenty, maybe even thirty or forty in total. Most of them are around my age, give or take a few years. Some, like me, don’t say much at all. They look nervous to be here. I’m sure it brings back some bad memories.
I stick around, after the sun has set and the fire is lit. People are just… talking. Making smalltalk, catching up with friends, up until a girl with kinky brown curls blows a whistle. She uses a megaphone to talk, and I don’t think I’ll ever forget what she says.
“So… One whole year, huh? Crazy, right?” She laughs, and runs a hand through her hair. She’s practically trembling, but she looks so confident in spite of that. Looking around, I realize just how many of them are the same way. “Well, for those of you who don’t know me, or don’t remember, my name is Lee. I was fourteen when I joined The Sharing. My best friend, Alisson, invited me. I didn’t realize it at the time, but Alisson was a controller. She… She died, towards the end of the war. A lot of people did. Guess we’re the lucky ones, huh?”
A few people cough, or clear their throats. It’s so sad, listening to her tell her story. They all have similar ones, don’t they? Friends who lured them in, often against even their own will, in order to infest them with yeerks and add them to the growing number of human controllers. But Lee forces a smile, and she presses on, searching through the crowd with her big brown eyes.
“Alisson was a voluntary. I wasn’t. But once I joined The Sharing, it didn’t even matter what I wanted. The yeerks took over my mind, and my body, and they controlled my every action for five whole years. And I just want to take a moment to say, whether you were infested against your will or with your consent, you’re welcome here. This isn’t about that. This is about control. The control we lost, and the control we’ve regained. It’s been a year since we regained control over our bodies, and this is a safe place to discuss that. So don’t be afraid to talk, okay? Don’t be afraid to heal.”
She sets her megaphone down on a towel and hugs a boy I don’t recognize. I stick my hands in my shorts pockets and sigh. I don’t know what I’m doing here. I don’t really belong, do I? I wasn’t part of The Sharing. I wasn’t infested, at least not for very long. But before I can turn to leave, I feel someone tap on my shoulder.
I turn around, and find myself face to face with one of the most beautiful girls I’ve ever seen. She’s got these bright, shining green eyes and a mess of short red curls on top of her head. There’s a slight gap in her teeth, and she’s wearing an oversized flannel shirt over a bikini top and jean shorts. I feel my heart skip a beat and I… I don’t know why.
“Hey,” She says in a voice that’s all warm and comfy and just so easy to listen to. “Sorry, I just noticed you and I was like “hey, I don’t remember her from any Revival meetings! I should go introduce myself!” So, uh… hey.”
“Hey,” I say back to her. I rub the back of my neck and force a smile. “I’m Cassie.”
“Cool,” She says. “I’m Bex.”
“What’s Revival?” I ask, hoping that it doesn’t completely blow my cover.
“It’s this weekly thing down at the local community center,” She explains with a friendly smile. “A bunch of former Sharing people get together and talk about stuff. Being controllers, trying to get our lives back together, figure out who we wanna be now… That sorta thing.”
“Fixing what The Sharing broke,” I say without meaning to. She grins even wider, and punches me lightly in the shoulder.
“Exactly. We should use that as a tagline. We actually set this whole thing up,” She tells me, gesturing to the fire. “Lee, Travis and I started meeting up a few weeks after the yeerks left. Eventually we decided to make it a formal thing.”
“And everyone here is part of it?” I ask, watching all the people. It’s still so weird, knowing that they used to be infested. That they’ve only been in control of themselves for a year.
She laughs and shakes her head. “I wish. No, it’s only about fifteen of us. We’re hoping this could lead to more people giving it a shot though. And if not, that’s cool too. I get that joining a new group can be scary. Especially one with so many familiar faces.”
She looks out at the ocean, and I follow her gaze. The orange wash over the sky and the water is gone. They’re more of a dark, dark blue by this point. I can practically see the starlight reflected in the waves as they crash gently against the shore.
“I was fifteen when they got me,” Bex says unprompted. She looks at me, and her smile is gone. Her soft, full lips are twisted into this grimace, like she just ate a whole lemon and is suffering from the sourness of it all at once. “All my friends were part of it, and I didn’t want to lose them. I freaked when I found out about why they were acting so different, but… it didn’t really matter, in the end. I spent the next few years with that slug in my head. It got my parents by the end of the year.”
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper. I worry for a second that she didn’t hear me, but then she tilts her head and smiles again.
“It’s cool. I’m me again, and that’s what matters.”
My voice gets caught in my throat, and I don’t really know what to say. Now more than ever, I feel like I don’t belong here. But next to Bex, I feel like I understand a whole new side of the war. The part we don’t talk about nearly enough.
“What was its name?” She asks. I look at her, and she sees that I don’t understand. “Your yeerk. Or yeerks, plural, if you had more than one,” She explains. “It tends to help, being able to tell someone their name. Not sure why, but it does. Mine was Igniss Two-Naught-Seven.”
I pause for a second, and then a name rolls off my tongue.
“Aftran. Aftran Nine-Four-Two.”
She nods, and wraps an arm around my shoulder and then pulls me in close. It’s… comforting. Her holding me like this. And I don’t know why I said Aftran’s name. She controlled me for less than a day. Hardly even an hour. But in that time, I knew what it was to lose control. To be paralyzed, and watch as someone else used my body to do as they pleased. It was terrifying. But I also learned so much about her in that brief time. So much about the yeerks, and why they do what they do. I can’t even stop myself from asking about it.
“Is it weird to… to feel sympathy for them?” I ask. Bex looks at me, and this time she’s the one who’s confused. “Aftran was blind without a host. She didn’t even want to fight, or anything like that. She just wanted to taste food, and listen to music, and see colors and shapes and…”
I drift off. I must sound like a sympathizer to her. Like I had willingly given myself over to the yeerk. I had, technically, but only so I could set her original host free. I look at Bex, and I see that she’s staring at the ocean with a troubled look on her face.
“Igniss loved the ocean,” She whispers. She sticks her foot out, and the water washes over it. “She made me walk down to the beach every weekend, just so she could enjoy the water. I hated it. But now… I don’t know if it’s a piece of her that got stuck in me, or if it’s me developing my own appreciation of it, but I like to go down her sometimes and just enjoy the waves.”
She looks at me, and she looks so lost. “I think there’s a lot we take for granted. But now that we’re free, we can appreciate it all so much more than we used to. And the opposite is true too…”
“How so?” I touch her arm, my fingers brushing against the warm, soft fabric of her flannel shirt. She smiles weakly and laughs.
“They always tried to make us act normal, you know? Unassuming, unnoticed, all that. I never used to date. Anytime a guy would ask me out, I’d say no. But once I was infested, that went out the window.”
“And you didn’t really like the boys the yeerk made you date.” I finish the thought for her, and she nods her head again. She clenches her fist so tight that her knuckles go pale, but then she reaches up and brushes the back of her hand against my cheek. I can feel myself go all warm. Why? She’s just being friendly, right?
“Now that I have control again, I…” She sighs, and looks into my eyes. She hangs her head and takes a step back. “Now that I have control again, I wanna date the people I really like. The girls I really like.”
“Oh.”
Her face falls, and she runs a hand through her messy curls. “Shit,” she mutters. But then I take a step forward, and I reach out and take her by the hand. She looks at me, and this time I smile at her. There were a lot of reasons things didn’t work out between Jake and I. But I think I know the biggest one now.
“After this is over, do you wanna go grab something to eat?” I ask, my voice quiet and trembling. This is uncharted territory, but already it feels more right than anything that’s come before.
“Yeah,” she says, smiling again. “I’d love that, Cassie.”
I don’t know how to tell her that I’m actually one of the Animorphs. Formerly an Animorph. But I will. I don’t feel comfortable keeping that a secret from her. And I’ll tell her more about Aftran; about how she led the peace movement, and became a nothlit. But I’ll also tell her that this is my first time being with another girl. My first time even testing these waters, doing something I never really realized I could do.
My name is Cassie. The war ended a year ago, and I’m not the only one figuring out what’s next.