I was really tired. I felt like I could have slept for a week. But weekends were our good time. School days were tougher. And tomorrow, Sunday, was the end of the weekend.

I went downstairs. My parents had both just come in. They were carrying department store handle bags. They'd been shopping.

"Hey, Jake," my dad said.

"Honey, there are some more bags in the car," my mom said.

I brought in the bags.

"I'm taking off," I said.

My mom gave me a look. "Weren't you out all day?"

I shrugged. "I guess so."

"Would it kill you to have dinner with your family?"

"Is it dinner time?"

"It will be as soon as I make that salmon I picked up yesterday," she said. "You loved it last time I made it. I mostly got it for you."

Guilt. Great. I smiled. "Well, you didn't tell me that's what you were making. Marco can wait. I'm there."

We try not to use the phone very much. Phone lines are too easy to tap.

Plus I never know if Tom might be listening in. So I couldn't call Marco or Rachel. I'd have to do the research myself. If we were going to bust into Joe Bob Fenestre's massive home, we'd need some idea what we were dealing with.

I started on some homework while my mom cooked. Then my dad yelled up the stairs to say that Showtime was doing a rebroadcast of this fight that had been on pay-per-view. So I took my homework downstairs and worked on it with one eye on the TV.

Then we had dinner. The four of us. Like the old days.

My dad got off into some long, involved, really boring story about his work. And my mom asked me and Tom about school. Then my dad realized he'd forgotten some part of his boring story, so he had to tell that part over again. And my mom said she hoped we liked the clothes she'd bought at the mall. And of course Tom and I joked about how she'd probably shopped at Formerly Cool

Fashions "R" Us. It was an old joke we always used whenever my mom bought us clothing.

It was so normal. Tom and me. Our parents. My mom and dad squeezing each other's hands like they were on their first date.

I sat there afterward, stuffed with fish and rice and snap peas, and still stuffing my face with something called tiramisu, which is an Italian dessert soaked in some kind of liqueur.

I wanted to believe it was all real. Because, you know, that was the whole point of fighting. The whole point of taking risks and fighting the Yeerks was to protect boring, average, no-big-deal times like this.

I flashed back on being smeared across the ceiling of the plane. And I flashed on the time we'd almost been able to save Tom, down in the hell of the Yeerk pool. It made me mad. Mostly what people want is to be left alone. They just want to sit down and have a nice dinner and tell boring stories and tell jokes they've told a dozen times before.

But I guess there is always someone out there who thinks life, just plain old boring, sweet, everyday life, isn't enough. And that's when the killing starts. In this war it was the Yeerks. But there had been an awful lot of wars when it was just human against human.

What is the matter with people that they don't

know all that really counts is that people who love each other be able to be together, live in peace, learn, work, tell boring stories and dumb jokes? What do they think they're going to get that is better than that?

"You're awfully quiet, Jake," my mother said. "Thinking deep thoughts?"

I smiled. "I was thinking this was cool. We should all have dinner together more often." I looked at Tom. "It was nice. I hope nothing ever happens to us. I hope we'll always be together."

The Yeerk inside Tom's head searched Tom's memory. The Yeerk opened his memory and read it like a book. He played the strings of Tom's brain like a violinist squeezing perfect notes out of a violin.

The Yeerk found the answer that Tom would have made. It aimed Tom's eyes and made Tom's face smile sardonically. It opened Tom's mouth and made Tom say the words Tom would have said, if he'd been able.

"Hey, Mom, no more tiramisu for Jake. The liqueur is making him mushy."

I laughed the way I should. And I thought to myself, The day will come, Yeerk, when I will tear you out of his head and destroy you for what you've done to my family.

While I spent the evening with my family, Marco had been busy. He'd used the hack-proof program Ax had written for him to go back to the chat room. He told us about it when we trudged out to the woods at the edge of Cassie's farm. Tobias and Ax could both be themselves out there.

"Most of the same people were there," Marco explained. "There were some new names, but GoVikes, YrkHSer, Chazz, CKDsweet, YeerKiller, Carlito, MegMom, and Gump8293 were all there. The Gump kid was still talking about his dad. I get the feeling maybe he's getting ready to confront his father."

"We can't let that happen," Cassie said.

"Gump is a nine-year-old kid," I reminded

everyone. "He lives close enough. Meg, Chazz, and CKDsweet are all from out of town. Some of them way out of town. That leaves us with GoVikes-"

"-an idiot," Rachel pointed out.

"-YrkHSer, Gump, Chazz and, of course, Fitey777," I finished.

"YrkH8er is a Controller, right?" Tobias asked. "l mean, that's what he acts like. Like a Controller trying to pass himself off as an enemy of Yeerks."

Tobias was in a branch maybe ten feet over our heads. His talons sank deep into loose bark.

Cassie tilted her head back and forth like she wasn't too sure. "YrkHSer is someone named Edward Cheltingham. What was he? Thirty years old?

But you know what? I looked in the phone book this morning and there was no Edward Cheltingham. Only two 'Cheltinghams' listed and they were both female."

"So? He has an unlisted phone number," Rachel said.

"Maybe so. Or maybe Edward Cheltingham is as phony a name as YrkHSer,"

Cassie said. "Isn't it possible to get a fake ID and a credit card in some name and then open a WAA account?"

Obviously, that had not occurred to anyone except Cassie.

"Oh," Rachel said. "Great. A new level of difficulty. So this guy could be anyone."