Shopping with the Enemy || Rachel & Tom
Rachel was not looking forward to this. Ordinarily she loved the mall, loved shopping trips -- but not this trip. Not with Tom. Or more accurately, with the Yeerk inside her poor helpless cousin's head. But it was either she went or he'd ask Cassie, and Rachel wasn't about to risk that. Maybe all Tom's Yeerk wanted was to buy a present for Jake to keep his Host's mother happy -- probably, because Rachel knew that Tom had traded his cooperation for a promise to leave his family uninfested, and surely that included his little brother's new girlfriend. But maybe wasn't definitely, and Rachel had decided that if anyone was going to get in a car with a Yeerk, it was going to be her.
Unlike most of the team, she wouldn't hesitate to take his head off and pull the slug out with her bear hands if she had to.
Right now she was stuck hesitating -- waiting -- outside the back entrance to the school, the one that led down to the parking lot for student cars. She fidgeted while she waited for Tom; the week-end's horrific mission to the Pool still had her on edge and sleep-deprived, and she'd have been anxious about this shopping trip under ordinary circumstances. Right now she was just about ready to turn into something with fangs and bite the first person who talked to her. Instead she tapped her feet, drummed her fingers on her arms, chewed her lip, readjusted her backpack -- anything to work off some of that nervous energy.
Rachel was sure that her fidgets were intense enough to be obvious from space, and she was glad she had decided not to ask Tobias to fly back-up for her. With luck Tom would just think she was impatient to get this over with...
"About time," she said when she saw him, to make it clear. "Less than six hours 'til the stores close, you know! Time's a-wasting."