“Dude,” I said. “How dumb is it to live the rest of your life in a body that makes girls scream in terror? Your dating life is so over before it’s even begun.”
Ax said.
“Marco, man, come on,” Jake pleaded. “We need you.”
“Yeah, we haven’t had a good laugh all day.”
Who knows what finally reached him? Cassie’s gentle coaching. Tobias’s too-real fear. Jake’s pleading. My pathetic wisecracks. Maybe even Ax’s cold countdown. I’m not even sure any of our puny voices, thought-speak or not, got through.
All I know is that the hairy leg near me began to puff outward. Growing, growing — until it was a roach-colored wall. We ran to keep from getting squashed.
a Helmacron shouted.
Ax pointed the Dracon beam. he said calmly.
The Helmacrons’ marble eyes all turned to face Marco.
Then —
A rumbling of sound.
Ax informed us.
“Marco. Man! You are in serious doo-doo.” Jake tried to sound serious, but he didn’t.
“Ax, he probably can’t hear my voice, so ask him where we are!” I said. Then I smacked Marco on his growing human arm. Ridiculous. All less than an inch of me.
“ARFARFARFARFARF!” Cujo, in the hallway.
Then, a rumbling of sound. A massive human voice.
There was no way I could hear or understand Marco’s words, but I bet he said something like this: “Oh, man. I’m getting it from both sides! Everybody’s always blaming me! This whole thing is Rachel’s fault. If she hadn’t hit me in the first place, I wouldn’t have fallen and hit my head …”
“Ax, tell Marco to stop whining and thank us for saving him from a life under the kitchen sink!”
Ax did. Here’s what I know Marco said: “Remind me to send flowers after I save your sorry butts.”
Marco morphed a gull.
We clung to him. The five of us, and our five prisoners.
Marco explained to us where we were as he bird-walked out of the closet, hopped up onto the desk, and grabbed the camera with his beak. Then, we flew through the open window and headed toward Cassie’s barn.
Now that he was in morph, Marco could engage in two-way communication with Ax and Tobias.
he told us as we passed into bright sunshine.
“How’d you get away?” Cassie asked, via Ax.
Marco said.
“Please tell me you’re not going to be imitating the Helmacrons for the next two months,” Jake said.
Marco said.
Had we actually missed this guy? Hard to believe.
Cassie said.
“Yeah, and we’ll talk later about your brilliant decision to disobey orders.” Jake. “I just know you had a good reason.”
“I wonder what’s on that film,” I said.
Jake frowned. “We’ll never know. Developing it is too risky. We’ll burn it as soon as we get to the barn.”
We did.
Marco had hidden the Helmacron ship in the freezer, along with the blue box. Ax hooked everything up and forced the protesting Helmacrons to unshrink us.
Relief.
Then we let them power up their ship and take off.
“Promise us you’ll never come back to Earth,” Jake said as the Helmacrons hovered in front of the barn door.