The Reunion by K.A. Applegate

Author:K.A. Applegate
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2017-11-23T05:00:00+00:00

I lay in my bed, in the dark. Every few minutes I’d check the glowing numbers of the clock. Three fifteen. Three forty-two. Four-oh-nine.

I wanted to sleep. Needed to sleep. Couldn’t.

Ever have one of those nights? Where you’re exhausted, where you’d pay anything just to fall asleep? But the wheels in your head just keep spinning and spinning and spinning?

Imagined conversations. Me talking, explaining, arguing. Changing the words around, repeating them, rehashing them. Around and around in circles.

Me talking to Jake, an imaginary Jake. Explaining, with perfect logic.

Me talking to my dad in some fictional future, some nonexistent world where things were different and I could at last tell all the secrets I’d guarded with my life.

Me talking to my mom. Raging. Explaining.

Me explaining to my mom, as my mom, as my real mom, why I had to do it.

Me explaining to my mom as Visser One. Laughing, chortling, savoring my victory over her.

This is how I defeated you! I crowed.

This is how I saved you! I explained.

No choice. No choice.

I had to do it, Dad, you understand, right? What else was I going to do? Too much on the line. I had responsibilities. You know how that is, right? And besides, she was already dead to you. You’d already grieved, remember? You spent years just sitting in your chair, staring blankly, your life falling apart …

See, Jake? Don’t ever doubt me again. I did it, okay? I put the mission first. I saw the big picture. So just don’t ever doubt me again, because I did what had to be done….

Mom, what was I supposed to do? I saw all the plays. I saw all the pieces on the chessboard. There was no solution that freed you. There were only solutions that destroyed you. I had to. How else? How else to …

Die, you Yeerk piece of crap. Wither and die, and remember with your last, dying thought: It was for her. I killed you for her.

For Jake.

For my dad.

For …

Around and around, as the hours ticked away. As exhaustion sank deep into my bones.

Someday, if we won, if humanity survived, we’d be in the history books. Me and Jake and Rachel and Cassie and Tobias and Ax. They’d be household names, like generals from World War II or the Civil War. Patton and Eisenhower, Ulysses Grant and Robert E. Lee.

Kids would study us in school. Bored, probably.

And then the teacher would tell the story of Marco. I’d be a part of history. What I was about to do.

Some kid would laugh. Some kid would say, “Cold, man. That was really cold.”

I had to do it, kid. It was a war. It’s the whole point, you stupid, smug, smirking little jerk! Don’t you get it?

It was the whole point. We hurt the innocent in order to stop the evil.

Innocent Hork-Bajir. Innocent Taxxons. Innocent human-Controllers.

How else to stop the Yeerks? How else to win?

No choice, you punk. We did what we had to do.

“Cold, man. The Marco dude? He was just cold.

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