#due to switching schools and his cray cray aunt

[lilacsolanum]

Animorphs October: Found Family

Set around a year after the war. Read on AO3.

I’m way cooler than all the other hawks in the forest, and it’s not just because of the whole sentience thing. What was way more important was my phone.

It wasn’t a phone as much as it was a very small, very light, very tight thought-speak capable device that people could call when needed. Cassie sort of forced it on me. I didn’t really want it at first, but she’s kept her promise to never give anyone but Loren the number. I always keep it on my ankle, and it zips into z-space like a morphing suit.

It’d gone off twice today, which was really weird. I mean, if only two people ever contact you, then it’s pretty wild when they do so at the same time. I called Cassie back, but got her answering machine. She was probably busy. I called Loren, and she answered right away.

“Tobias!” she said, bright and happy. Loren was always really quiet and reserved back in the Valley, but now that she’s sort of found her footing, she’d gotten a lot more confident. I guess she had been really twisted inside because of the way her family treated her when she lost her memory, and she didn’t have a ton of friends. Now she had more understanding of why her memory was lost, and had a community. All the parents had gotten pretty close in the Hork Bajir Valley, I guess. They kept in contact more than the Animorphs. Sometimes she even went out into the city with Eva, even if she found anything but farmland really overwhelming. I understood that more than anyone.

Loren was really changing. I felt proud of her, in a weird, distant sort of way. I mean, it’s not like I had any part in it, but I was just really glad she was using her friends for support and getting better. It’s more than I can do.

<Hi, Loren,> I said. The phone could understand my thought-speak. It was some Andalite tech that humans weren’t supposed to have yet, but Cassie had pulled some strings. I wonder if Ax helped her. I hope Ax is happy. I think about him a lot, but I don’t really contact him or anything. He’s back on Andalite now, and a Prince at that. He’d achieved all his dreams. I’d just bring him down.

“Happy birthday!” she said. I blinked and ruffled my feathers, even if she couldn’t see.

<Uh,> I said. <Thanks.>

That explained why I’d gotten two phone calls in one day. The passage of time had gotten a little skewed for me these days. I sort of wish it hadn’t. I hate it when people remember my birthday, and would have liked to have been more prepared. I feel like I have to pretend to be excited about it, put on a face to make others feel comfortable. In reality, I had no attachment to my birthday. It was just another day. It pretty much went unnoticed by my aunt and uncle, unless my aunt was dating someone and wanted to show off how great a parent she was. Honestly, those birthdays were the worst ones.

“Are you close to my place?” asked Loren.

I thought about it. I flew around a lot, sort of doing my own version of a post-high school road trip, except it was a sky trip and also I never graduated from high school. I was in southern California, though. I could be at Loren’s in a few hours or so.

I thought about lying, but before I could finish the thought, I found myself saying, <Yeah, I’ll be there around eight, maybe.>

---

I was there at 7:46, according to Loren’s microwave clock. I’d morphed human, of course. I never felt really comfortable being a hawk around Loren. It seemed sort of disrespectful, like, she’d carried me in her body for nine whole months and then what did I go ahead and do? I become bird boy. It sort of felt like wearing an itchy sweater grandma knitted for you so she wouldn’t be offended, except, you know. Way worse, and also super, super weird.

That didn’t mean I felt really comfortable as a human at all. I felt heavy and slimy and my mouth kept filling up with nervous saliva, which was disgusting. It was so foreign to me. My cheeks were just flooding with recycled fluid for no reason! I wanted to spit it out on the ground and get it all out of me, like I could empty myself of all the complicated hot chemicals that run inside my human body. I know my hawk form is complicated and gross to some, but they just don’t get it. It’s not at all like being human. I was all excess and hormones and adrenaline and I wanted none of it.

I sat very still on Loren’s couch. She’d given me a glass of milk, which was the only good thing about visiting Loren. I shivered with the taste of it. It was creamy and slightly sweet and cold. I sipped at it slowly, imagining it was cooling off my burning human body.

Loren had left the room. I shifted nervously, clutching the milk between my hands like it was a lifeline. Eventually, she returned with a giant cardboard box filled with brightly wrapped presents. I’m sure my face was as blank as always, but I felt a tensing in my shoulders where the ghost of my wings lay.

“What is that?” I said, feeling my body run into a really wired fear mode. I ignored it. One good thing about not really connecting to a human body is that you didn’t have to deal head on with all the dumb stuff it did.

“Your presents!” she said, smiling broadly and gesturing toward the box.

I blinked. “I don’t need any presents,” I said. Some voice in my head reminded me that that wasn’t the right response. Loren probably was looking for some sort of excitement or appreciative noise. But what I said was true, and it’s how I felt, and sometimes that’s the thing that comes out of my mouth first.

She didn’t seem to mind. “I figured you’d say that, but I thought it would be fun just to open them. Here --”

She thrust a package out to me. It was weirdly shaped. Flat, but bulging out in the middle. I took it gingerly, then stared at it.

“Open it!” urged Loren, her eyes dancing with mischief.

I started to move it around in my hands, then stopped. I looked up at Loren. “Do I have to rip it open?”

Loren blinked, her cheerful expression seeming to falter a little. “What? What do you mean?”

I shrugged. I think I was blushing a little. “I really don’t like the sound wrapping paper makes when it’s torn, and I. I sort of think it hurts? The whole thing sort of rubs me the wrong way, I guess. So I like to open up gifts by pulling apart at the tape.” I also got a really weird satisfaction rush from seeing a completely whole piece of wrapping paper, but this was all already so weird, and I felt that’d confession would be a step too far. “My au- uh, Brandi, she hated when I did that. She said it took so long, and that I should just rip it.” She also said I was making up that it hurt, but that seemed like another thing I shouldn’t say to Loren.

“My goodness, Tobias, no! Open it up however you like!” said Loren, her voice going all high like she was shocked. I felt bad for bringing up my aunt. She always got upset when I said anything about her. I quickly started to peel off the tape, opening the package as fast as I could.

When I took the wrapping paper off, I saw a pacifier.

I had so little idea of how to react that I actually had a reaction. My mouth dropped, just a little. “I, um. Are you -- is this, like, like you’re pregnant? So you’re telling me I’m going to be a big brother with this pacifier?”

Loren burst out laughing. I was still really confused, but her laugh soothed me, just a little. She didn’t always laugh back in the Valley, so when she did it, I felt really comforted. Like, if Loren can go through all that she went through and still laugh, then maybe things aren’t so terrible.

“No, not at all. Good guess, though. Alright, here’s my plan,” she said, sounding really proud, like Cassie did when an animal they thought wouldn’t make it finally got released back into the wild. “You and I didn’t get to grow up together. Right?”

“Yeah,” I said. I shifted a little, yearning for a feather to preen. I don’t remember how to fidget in my human body anymore.

“So that means I missed nineteen birthdays,” said Loren.

“Uh,” I said. “I guess.”

“So I got you nineteen presents,” she said. “One for every year I missed.”

I didn’t react. It’s not just because I’m bad at reacting, it’s because I just went completely blank. It was like every brain function I have just sort of stopped and stood in awe of this woman, and the fact that she actually cared anything about me.

She paused, searching my face. “I know you don’t really want even a normal present, nevermind, like, a pacifier. I’m going to donate all this stuff when we’re done. I just thought it’d be a good memory.” Then she dug into the big box again. She pulled out another present and thrust it at me. “Here,” she said. “This is for your second birthday.”

Somehow, I ended up with the present in my hand. Somehow, I opened it. My human self, as terrible as it is, had completely taken over. My fingers deftly pulled at the wrapping paper. I did like fingers. Fingers were really good. I wish I could have wings and fingers at the same time.

I pulled out some sort of plastic ring with rotating primary colors. I looked up at Loren. “What is this?” I asked.

“A teething ring,” she said. “I went shopping for a lot of the early stuff with Eva. She said two years teethe, which is why they’re notorious monsters. They’re all in terrible pain. They get stuff to chew on for when the pain is too great. Well, Eva said two is a little old for that sort of teething ring, but, you know. Close enough.”

“Oh,” I said. That’s all I could say. I was still in emotional stasis, still more concerned about my fingers than I was the objects in front of me. “Um. Next one?”

Year three was this cool little pop up tent I would have loved as a kid. Year four was a set of those really big Legos. Year five was crayons, because I would have started kindergarten, and they were name brand and everything. The set even had one of those crayon sharpeners in the back. I always wanted one of those. Year six was a toy dinosaur. Loren told me she’d done her research, and knew I had a major dinosaur phase. She’d probably talked to Cassie. I just asked for the next present.

That’s all I could do. Open the presents, set aside the perfect rectangle of paper, and then set aside the gift. I didn’t have enough voice to say thank you. I couldn’t tell Loren how much I loved the crayons.

Year seven was a Jenga set. Loren had got it because Eva told her Jake and Marco used to love Jenga. She said she wanted to play it with me. The idea of playing a game where a tower would suddenly and loudly crash made me feel tense, but maybe it would have been fun with Loren. Year eight was a rock polisher. That was really nice. Year nine was a bike. An actual bike. She brought it in from the hallway. Some lucky kid was going to love that thing when she donated it. I didn’t tell her I never learned how to ride a bike. It’d just make her upset.

Year ten was this sort of toy microscope that was something close to a real microscope, just made out of plastic. I should have been so happy, because that was a really cool gift, but I just kept worrying about how much money she spent on me. It was really weird feeling, especially since most of her money was technically mine. I gave her all the spoils from my rewards and royalties and life rights. What was I going to do with it? Pierce my beak and wear the Hope Diamond? I had no reason to feel guilty, she had plenty of money, she could do something big like this. I mean, it was for a good cause at the end of the day, right? But I felt guilty anyway. I felt really, really guilty, and almost shamed. This must have taken so much work to organize. Maybe her money was sort of mine, but her time wasn’t, and she’d used so much of it for me.

I still couldn’t bring myself to really say anything.

Loren was starting to look sort of deflated. I couldn’t blame her.

Year eleven was a really cool, really fancy art set. I once told her I used to draw, and I guess she remembered. This one was really great. I had no possessions, but I wanted to keep this set. I wanted to put it in some storage locker and live the rest of my life knowing it was there for me, smooth and new and shining and waiting for whenever I wanted to use it.

Year twelve was a version of Trivial Pursuit designed for seventh graders. I didn’t tell her I was still in fifth grade when I was twelve. I got held back for missing a ton of school one year when my aunt made me stay home for almost two months, then I got held back again because both my aunt and uncle lost some paperwork in a school transfer that lead to me repeating fourth grade. I never brought it up, so all the other Animorphs thought we were the same age. Only Loren really knew, and only because she knew the exact year she lost her memory. I guess she never knew I was in the same grade as the others. Probably because I dropped out of school when I was fifteen and started mouse hunting.

The next present was a copy of A Wrinkle In Time. Loren wrote “For Tobias. Happy thirteenth birthday. From, mom.”

I set it next to me quick, like it was burning my skin. “I need to demorph,” I said, and ran out the door. I didn’t need to demorph, not at all. I had plenty of time, but I desperately, desperately needed to fly.

---

It was late when I got back to Loren’s. I morphed right on her doorstep, and rang her doorbell three times. She came out in pajamas. Then, I did something I’d never really thought to do before.

I hugged her.

I never really liked hugs. My aunt would make me do them when she was done screaming at me, and the hug was always some symbol that she was absolved of all guilt and everything would be fine going forward. Only Rachel ever made me feel okay with an embrace. I tried not to think about Rachel these days, but as I held Loren, I sent a thank you out to wherever she is now. I hope she heard. I could never have hugged Loren if it hadn’t been for Rachel.

“A Wrinkle In Time is my favorite book,” I said against her shoulder. Her body sort of shook, and I think I heard a sob.

We pulled away from each other. I took a deep breath. “I love it,” I said. “I love all of it. I love all of it so much that I don’t know how to tell you.”

She smiled at me, and her eyes were shining like she had tears in them. “I love you too, Tobias. I love you more than I ever thought I could love anyone.” She leaned forward and grabbed me again, holding me a lot closer than I had held her. She even rested her head against my chest. It was a little much, but I bore it, because she was Loren.

We were never going to be mother and son the way Eva and Marco were, or Jean and Jake, or Michelle and Cassie. Loren was right, we hadn’t grown together. I didn’t know her as a parent in the same automatic way that I see in other families. She had never hung my drawings on the fridge, never kissed away my bruises, never walked me to the school bus. But she was a mother all the same, my mother, my family, and she made me feel loved. She had bought me a dinosaur. She had bought me a bike. She had bought me my favorite book.

I felt something strange and hot on my face. I tensed, assuming it was some sort of weird human decay thing, and then I relaxed. I was just crying. I’ve never cried because I was happy before.

Loren let me go and smiled at me. “I know you get nervous when you’re around people too long,” she said, gently. It wasn’t accusing like it sometimes was when Cassie said it. It just was. “But you know you can come see me whenever you want, right? You know that?”

“I do,” I said.

“Good,” she said. “Because I need practice reading, and I have no idea what this book is about. I’d love to read it together.”

I laughed a little. I don’t normally laugh outside thought-speak, but the idea of a mother stumbling through some of the longer words while her son patiently waited was sort of funny in a dark, twisted kind of way. I guess that’s what our family was. Funny, dark, twisted, but us, and we loved each other for it.