"Because we were so devoted to peace, we may have actually made the war worse," Ms.
Paloma droned on. "We'll never know for sure, of course. You can't really second-guess history." You can if you're an Ellimist, I thought. If you're an Ellimist, you can look ahead and see it all.
70 "Why not?"
It was Cassie's voice. I glanced across the room at her. She had that same look of confusion I'd seen the day before. The frustrated look, like she sensed something she couldn't quite grasp yet.
"Why can't you second-guess history? I mean, if you could go back and change things so that the U.S. was ready to fight earlier. ..."
Ms. Paloma sat on the edge of her desk.
"Because events are intertwined in ways we cannot always see, Cassie. Sometimes small things can make huge differences. You know, they say that a single butterfly, beating its wings in China, may affect the way the wind blows here in our country. A single butterfly beating its wings may make a tiny change that becomes a bigger change that becomes a tornado. The world isn't like math. It isn't just one plus one equals two. It's more complicated than that."
And then the oddest thing happened. Ms. Paloma looked right at me. Right into my eyes.
"Much more complicated than that," she said. "A single butterfly ... a single butterfly ... a single butterfly..."
The hair on the back of my neck was tingling.
Everyone was looking at her like she was crazy.
Suddenly, Ms. Paloma shook her head, like she was popping out of a trance. She smiled a confused smile. "Okay, well, anyway, you all have the reading assignments."
The bell rang and I practically jerked up out of my seat.
Cassie threaded her way through the kids who were rushing out of the room.
"Okay, tell me that wasn't weird," Cassie whispered.
"I thought maybe I was imagining it," I said. "Besides, who knows what's weird anymore?
I'm sitting there waiting for the ... you know who ... to suddenly zap us out of here."
Cassie nodded. "So why hasn't he?"
Out in the fast-moving crush of bodies in the hall, we made our way to our lockers. "I don't know," I said as I spun my combination lock. "We decided to say yes. We're giving him what he wants."
I popped my locker door open.
"Unless. ..." Cassie said.
"Unless maybe that wasn't the answer he wanted," I finished her thought.
71 "But it's nuts," Cassie said, frowning. "Every thing he did made it look like he wanted us to say yes. He appears the first time right as we're about to be swallowed by a. ..."
She looked around to make sure no one could overhear.
"Just as we were about to be swallowed. I mean, come on. Obviously he must have figured we'd want to bail."
"We might have," I said. "Except we saw that dropshaft. So we thought we could escape.
Otherwise..."
I stopped talking. I stared at Cassie. She stared back.
"He showed us that dropshaft!" Cassie said.
"Why?" I wondered aloud. "Why? What is he doing with us? He appears when we're desperate. He says he doesn't interfere and gives us a choice. Then he lets us see a way out.
What's that all about?"
"Then he gives us another chance. He shows us the future. He shows us ... you, basically.
You in the future. So we know for sure that we must have decided to stay and fight. And we know we lost. And all of that means we have to say yes and let him take us away. So why have I been feeling like I was missing something?"
The warning bell for next period rang.
"This is insane, as Marco would say." Cassie laughed. "Yeah. I have gym next period. At any moment I might suddenly be swooped away to another planet, but in the meantime I have to go play volleyball."
I watched her walk away. Then I hurried to my next class.
A single butterfly, I thought.
But how is the butterfly supposed to know when to beat her wings?
72 CHAPTER 18
I was back in the underground Yeerk pool. Trapped. Stuck to the Taxxon's tongue. But not a cockroach. I was myself, in my human body, only tiny. Stuck. About to die.
Ax was talking. "Yeerk pool. It's the center of their lives. Almost a religion. " I squirmed and tried to get away. I tried to change into something else. The bear. I wanted to become the bear. But I was stuck. All I could do was beat my helpless butterfly wings.
He showed us the dropshaft, Cassie's voice murmured in the back of my head.
I swirled down dark corridors. I flew wildly on butterfly wings, always chasing a light that never drew closer and yet never disappeared.
The Kandrona, I thought in my dream.
The light is the Kandrona. "The center of their lives. Almost a religion."
"No, not the Yeerk pool, really. The Kandrona. That is the center for them. That is their light."
"He showed us the dropshaft," Cassie said again, only now she was Ms. Paloma.
My eyes snapped open. I sat up in my bed. I was as awake as I'd ever been. I was electric!
"Hah HAH!" I yelled in the darkness of my room. "YES!"
Then I hesitated. Was I nuts? Was I just desperate? I ran through it all again.
"Got "em!" I whispered. "Oh, man, we got 'em! Got the disgusting worms!"
I shucked off the T-shirt that I wear to bed, and quickly slipped into my morphing outfit.
I threw open the window. Then I paused. It would be Saturday morning in a few hours. No school. But if my mom found me gone, she might worry.
I quickly scribbled a note saying I had gone for an early-morning run. That I might go over to Cassie's afterward.
And then I glanced at the picture on my desk. The one of three-year-old me on the balance beam, being held up by my proud father.
I could not tell the others.
We had already decided. We were going to say yes to the Ellimist.
We would let him take us to a place where there would be no battles and no need to decide.
If I told my friends what I suspected. . . . I felt the weight come down on me again. The weight of uncertainty and guilt and fear.
73 I looked at the picture of my dad and smiled. "What would you think of me, Dad, if I walked away, when I still had a chance to win?"
And then I morphed. My arms shrank. My skin began to flow into patterns of soft feathers that could ride silently on the night breeze. In a few more minutes, I was ready. The moon was bright in the sky. Dawn was still hours away. A perfect night for an owl. But I paid no attention to the juicy prey below me as I flew at top speed toward the woods.
"Tobias! It's me! Don't panic, but wake up!"
"What the . . . to Didn't I tell you about zooming up in - "
"Come on!" I yelled.
"Come on, where?"
"Don't argue, just come on. I know you don't like to fly at night, but just come on, anyway!"
"Rachel, have you lost your mind? Where are we going?"
"We're going to be butterflies, Tobias. We're going to Cassie's barn, and then we're going to change history. "
He opened his wings and flew alongside me, just a few feet away.
"Whatever you say, Rachel." Tobias said grumpily. "But what makes you think -- "
"I know where it is, Tobias." I interrupted him.
"Where what is?"
"Tobias? I know the location of the Kandrona. "
74 CHAPTER 19
Okay , it's three forty-seven in the morning," Marco said. "And I'm here, thanks to the fact that my dad is a sound sleeper who doesn't notice when I wake up screaming because an owl and a hawk have just flown through my window. So now maybe you can tell us all why we're here?"