When I was four, I ran away.

I was at the supermarket and my mom refused to buy me a gumball from the machine. It was a "waste" she said, even though the carrots she stuck in our cart seemed like an even bigger waste to me. And they probably cost way more quarters.

Furious, I sprinted from the store and out into the crowded parking lot. I could hear my mother screaming my name, but I had just suffered a grave injustice. The gumball machine was shiny and yellow, with flashy lights and a twisty slide that the gumball rolled down when you turned the crank. It was amazing and my mom was being so mean.

So of course, I had to run away and teach her a lesson. She was gonna be really sorry for not letting me have a gumball.

"Cassie! No! CASSIE!"

My mom couldn't see me as she ran through the packed lot. I was kinda little for my age, I was even able to shimmy on my stomach underneath some of the cars. Over my head, I heard people shouting my name.

"Cassie! Oh, my God! Cassie! Where are you!?"

"There's a little girl running around over there!"

"Stop her!"

I emerged from under a pickup truck. Maybe it was time to stop this. I was feeling really bad. Lots of people were making a fuss now, and probably my mom might start to cry or something if I didn't go back. I didn't want my mom to cry.

I turned around.

"LOOK OUT!"

I didn't see the oncoming van. It started to beep its horn too late. The people around me tried to stop it, and they were all yelling at me, trying to get me to move out of the way. It was too late, too fast. I was too little, and the driver didn't see me frozen in place.

It hurt a lot, but only for a second. Then I barely felt anything at all. I was lying on the pavement, motionless, in a puddle of something sticky and warm. Then I was in the hospital, unable to see or speak or move anything. I could barely hear, but I knew my parents were crying. I knew the doctors were shaking their heads sadly. I knew this wasn't right.

This is wrong, I thought.

"What's wrong?" my mom asked impatiently. She had one hand on the shopping cart and the other was digging in her jeans pocket, trying to find her grocery list.

I looked up her startled, my heart pounding, with tears in my eyes. I didn't quite know how to explain what had just happened. I was only four years old.

So I just cried hysterically. Made a scene in the vegetable aisle. My mom grimaced.

"All right, all right, fine. You can have one gumball. Just one."

She handed me a quarter. When I still didn't stop crying, a blonde girl just as small as I was stomped up to me and held out her hand.

"Gosh, if you don't want it, give it to me!" the girl's blue eyes were too large for her head, and they looked even scarier as they glared at me.

"Rachel!" her mother cried, rushing over and grabbing her hand.

"What? She's being a baby."

"Apologize! Right now!" her mother demanded.

Rachel looked at me in the least apologetic way possible.

My mom patted me on the head. "It's all right. At this age, anything can set them off. And honestly, the way Cassie was carrying on, your daughter wasn't entirely off base."

Rachel's mother smiled. "My daughter has a bad case of runaway mouth sometimes. Once she starts kindergarten next week I'm going to be getting so many calls from her teacher, I already know."

"Oh, Cassie's starting kindergarten too! At Milford."

"Who's class?"

"Mrs. Barone."

"Rachel's going to be in her class!"

As they chatted over the vegetables, Rachel poked at me to get my attention. When I looked at her, she held up her own quarter, then nodded at the gumball machine.

"I'm not supposed to leave my mom."

"It's right there."

She wasn't wrong. The gumball machine was in plain view. So we scurried off, Rachel bragging about how she ran away from her mom and dad all the time because they fought a lot, and from her little sister because Jordan was just a baby and cried all the time. I nodded and chomped on my candy as she talked, not really understanding everything but mostly impressed at how fast she could talk and how much she had to say.

I got in trouble for leaving my mom, of course, but it was fun. And I had completely forgotten all about what had upset me before.

When I was thirteen, I stood in a shopping aisle comprised almost entirely of tampons.

"Well?" Rachel asked.

"I...don't think so."

"You've been getting your period for a whole year, Cassie. We're about to start high school. I think you can handle tampons now."

"It's just...they go inside? Like, just up and in there?" I blushed, as if all of the pharmacy's security cameras were focused on us. The pharmacy security guards were probably all in that little office someplace, watching their screens and laughing at me.

"Duh."

My hands practically trembled as I reached for the junior tampons. It was an attractive pink box. Cute, even, despite what they actually contained. Uterine juice absorbers.

I cringed.

"Oh, come on, don't be a baby," Rachel taunted me. She had her hands on her hips, like she was some kind of Tampon Commander. My best friend actually got her first period two months after I did. I technically had more experience than her, even if it didn't seem like it from the horrifying situation unfolding before me. "You are a woman. Your panties do not need to feel like padded diapers. It's time to graduate to tampons."

"I...guess it can't hurt to try them out," I said hesitantly. "Right? It doesn't hurt?"

Rachel waved her hand dismissively, which meant absolutely nothing. I wasn't entirely sure that girl could even feel pain.

"Fine."

"Awesome!" Rachel said triumphantly. She snatched the box from my hands. "But don't get this brand. Get that one. The black box with the rainbow thing."

I pursed my lips. "But the pink box is like, half the price."

She gave me a look. "Cassie, you are putting this in your vagina."

"Oh, my God, Rachel, would you shhhh?!" I hissed frantically, casting anxious glances up and down the aisle. We were alone, but I was certain everyone in a block's radius heard her talking about panties and vaginas and oh God.

"Trust me, when it comes to tampons, it's a premium worth paying."

"But - "

"Like, okay, which would you rather have up your vag, a Pinto or a Lamborghini?"

"That is literally the worst analogy."

"You know what I mean."

"God, okay, fine!" I cried, grabbing the fancy-looking black box of expensive tampons. "Just stop talking! Forever! Please!"

"I had to get the point across," she smirked. "With some of these cheap brands you might as well just stick a wad of Kleenex up there - "

"Rachel!"

"Okay, okay, I'm done," she laughed, thoroughly pleased with the fact that steam was coming out of my ears. As we walked over to the checkout line, Rachel rubbed soothing circles into my back. "Tell you what. Since you're being brave and trying this, I won't force you to go to the mall with me tonight."

"Really? You'll spare me?" I said dryly.

"Yeah. We'll go look at sweaters some other time."

"Greeaaaatt…"

Suddenly, I felt my stomach clench. Rachel paused her babbling monologue about stuff that thankfully wasn't about my vagina.

"You okay?"

I rotated the box around in my hands anxiously. There was a nagging feeling at the back of my mind, telling me I was doing the wrong thing. That something was going wrong, and I had to fix it. I glanced out the windows of the pharmacy. It wasn't quite dark yet, but I was for some reason acutely aware that it would be soon. And that when it did get dark, I wasn't supposed to be here. I was supposed to be somewhere else.

"Yeah, I'm okay, I think..."

"Next!" the cashier called.

I went forward and the guy rang up my tampons, without even giving me any weird looks. I guessed girls went to pharmacies to buy tampons like, all the time.

We went to my house, and got off the bus just as the sun set. My parents were home, so of course they had Rachel stay for dinner. Afterwards, while they settled on the sofa to watch some news story about kids setting off illegal fireworks at an abandoned construction site, Rachel and I scurried to the upstairs bathroom.

"Ready?"

"I think so?"

Rachel handed me my first tampon and herded me into the bathroom. Then, thankfully, she left and closed the door. I halfway expected her to watch me do it, she was that bossy sometimes.

I held the small plastic tube in my hands and just stared at it. I closed my eyes to calm my nerves, but I was too anxious. Why was this bothering so much? Girls did this all the time. Normal teenage girls, just like me.

But I wasn't a normal teenager. Was I? Neither was Rachel. Or Marco, or that kid Tobias. Or Jake.

Oh, man, this was definitely not the time to be thinking about Rachel's cute cousin. But I couldn't stop. He, Rachel, Marco, and Tobias - who I barely even knew - were stuck in my head. Images, unspoken words, things I didn't understand but at the same time, I did.

Why was I even thinking about them? I was sitting on the toilet with my pants down.

Jake yanking me along, tears in his eyes. My stomach twisted in knots as we ducked under a bulldozer. I threw up. They were shooting at us. Shooting lasers. Marco, Rachel, and Tobias had run off in another direction. Where they okay? Where they captured?

The box fell off the sink, scattering little white packages across the tiled floor.

"Are you okay?" Rachel called through the door.

No. No, I wasn't.

This is wrong, I thought.

"Seriously, what's wrong?" Rachel asked, sounding concerned. I realized I'd broken out in a cold sweat. We were next in line for checkout. We were…?

"What?"

"You kind of spaced out just now."

"I did?" I was confused. We were still at the pharmacy. We hadn't left yet. I was still holding my box of tampons. Had it all been a weird daydream? Already, I was starting to forget it.

"I just...felt really strange just now."

Rachel frowned at me. "Are you really that hung up about this?"

"No! I mean, I don't know. I just feel like…Did you ever just feel like…something was wrong?"

"Next! Helloooo? I said next!" The obnoxious acne-ridden college kid called me up to the counter.

Rachel was staring at me. "You mean other than that cashier's complexion?"

"I mean...I feel so weird right now."

"Cassie, look, if you're that concerned about it, you don't have to do this," she said quickly. "I was really only teasing. It's not that big a deal if you want to stick to the pads."

"I…"

"Get it?" Rachel smiled softly. "Stick to the pads?"

It was funny, but my hands were still shaking. We had to go. We had to get out of there.

"I said next!" the cashier called again impatiently. Rachel gave him the finger and pulled me out of the line.

"It's fine, Cassie. No big deal. Sorry if I was like, pressuring you," she said, genuinely apologetic. She took the box of tampons from me and placed it on a shelf next to some chocolate bars, in plain view of the impatient cashier who would have to put it back during closing.

Almost immediately, I started to feel better.

"It's okay."

"No. Really. I was a jerk," Rachel insisted. "Come on, let me take you to the mall."

My eyes narrowed.

"I'll buy you ice cream at the food court," she assured me. "Jeez, I said mall not orthodontist. I didn't mean to get you all worked up like that, I just want to make this up to you."

I shook my head. "There's nothing to make up! I said it was fine!"

Now that the box was out of my hands, the nagging, unsettling sensation was gone. It was like the universe had righted itself, which was a really, really weird thing to feel in association with tampons.

"Uh-huh. You know, Jake did mention he was going to hang out at the mall arcade tonight."

"Ohhh…" I paused. "On second thought, I think I'd enjoy some ice cream."

When I was sixteen, the world ended all over again.

I suppose technically the world stopped ending after we defeated Visser Three, but that's not how it felt at Rachel's funeral.

The thousands of mourners at the memorial all wept, prayed, and held their candles to the sky. I knew it was all they would be talking about for a very long time. The Animorphs' touching eulogies to their fallen friend.

Everyone was sad, I was sure. Even strangers were legitimately devastated, not because they knew anything about Rachel, but because she was such a relatable hero. A young, smart, beautiful woman, so brave and strong, taken too soon. America just loved a good tragedy.

It was worse for us. Her friends and family. It wasn't just a hole in my heart, it was a gaping black wound that sucked everything I had into the immeasurably vast emptiness of space.

"Are you okay?" Jake asked quietly. I had absolutely no answer, least of all to him. I blamed him. Maybe I wouldn't feel that way forever, but right at that second, I did.

So I nodded silently and looked away from the boy I not so long ago thought I would marry. But then again, not so long ago, I thought this stormy-eyed Marco would tell jokes at the reception. I thought this somber and silent Ax would morph human and shove his head into our wedding cake. I thought at the end of the night, Tobias would get down on one knee and pop the question to his own girlfriend. And I thought the pile of dust in that urn would be my Maid of Honor.

This is wrong, I thought, my stomach feeling tight. My knees getting weak.

"Cassie?" Marco asked cautiously.

This is wrong, I thought harder. I saw Tobias's shadow on the stage. He landed next to Rachel's urn and looked at her mother. Rachel's mom nodded yes, and I told him yes, but my mind screamed no.

"Come on, the limo is out back," my mother was saying. "You don't have to stay. Let's just go home. You need some rest."

This is wrong. Everyone was supposed to visit my old barn one day, reminisce about old times. Jake would cross his big arms and look around thoughtfully, as Marco made fun of him. Rachel would make a snide comment about how it still smelled the same. Tobias would perch himself in the rafters and keep his eyes on the sky, remembering where the best thermals were. Ax would look at the last stall and be grumpy about that one time he got sick and I made him sleep there as I turned him into a Controller.

But we weren't speaking to each other. We had already grown apart. Once, we were all each other had. That had only been days ago, days ago since we were family. Now we couldn't even look at each other.

"She's okay," my father told some concerned onlookers. "Cassie just hasn't been getting a lot of sleep. She needs rest. It's been a long couple days."

This is wrong. I'd never seen Rachel at a funeral, but I imagined she'd be bored. A grand production like this might give her some amusement, but eventually she'd want to just pay her respects and leave as soon as possible. Probably to go flying. Nothing made you feel more alive than flying. And nothing was more alive than Rachel. This is wrong.

[Cassie?] Ax was trying to get my attention now. [Are you all right? Your parents - ]

"This is wrong," I said desperately. "This is wrong."

"It is, sweetheart," my mom said sadly. "It is. I'm so sorry. Let's - "

"You don't understand!"

My dad signaled some of the guards and they formed a circle around my parents and I. My friends stepped back and allowed us to pass. I trembled as my dad practically carried me to the limo, the guards and my mom fending off the onslaught of intruding cameras and reporters. I saw my friends angrily join in as the rush of paparazzi tried to get pictures of me.

"This is wrong!" I repeated. They needed to hear me. Someone needed to hear me. The Ellimist or Crayak or whoever was above them on the hierarchy of the universe. I always had that sixth sense. It had been that way my entire life. When I felt something was this horribly wrong, it usually was. Deep in my gut, I knew the universe was going to eventually right itself. It had to!

Any minute now. Rachel would be back. Maybe we'd be back in the woods. Or maybe all the way back to before the Yeerks discovered our identities. I would even have been okay if we'd been back on the Pool ship. As long as the universe fixed itself. Any minute now.

"This is wrong! This is wrong!"

My dad tucked me into the back of the limo and helped my mom in with us. They cradled me as I wept. The limo began to pull away and drive us home.

"This is wrong…" I whimpered, rocking against my mother. When there was no answer, no change, I tried again. And again. And again. "This is wrong. This is wrong. This is wrong."

"I know, baby," she said. "I know. I know..."

A/N - I like to think that Cassie lived her entire life like this, with an intermittent feeling that something was off. And that she somehow knew she was different, even if she couldn't remember all the timelines-gone-bad. It was why she always seemed to be right, and she was usually so unwavering in her right-ness even if everyone (including me) thought she was unreasonable and crazy. Unfortunately, sometimes life feels wrong because it's supposed to be wrong :-(

P.S. Sorry for the sads!

P.P.S. Uh, shameless plug for my other fic The Morning After where Rachel doesn't actually die and their friendship is as strong as ever?