The Stranger by K. A. Applegate

frustration. “I’m sick of this! I had him!”
    Cassie came over and put her arm around my shoulders. “It doesn’t matter. That’s a Visser Three who doesn’t exist yet.”
    â€œI’m so sick of this,” I said again, a little more softly. “What’s the point? What’s the point in anything? We know the future now. We know what happens if we decide to stay and fight.”
    I felt lost. The last ounce of energy just seeped away from me. It was too much. Too many things to deal with. And what was the point? What did it even matter what I did?
    I flopped down onto the grass and pine needle–covered ground, and rested my head in my hands. I was done. Done trying to make sense of a world where I could be jerked back and forth like a puppet.
    The six of us just lay there on the floor of pine needles for a while. Staring. Thinking. Letting it all sink in.
    It was over.
    The war was done. And we had lost.
     Ax said halfheartedly.
    â€œNo,” I said flatly. “You know it’s not a trick, Ax. At least not the way you mean. If the Ellimist wanted to force us to do something, he has more than enough power.”
    â€œWe need to think this through,” Jake said wearily.
    I shrugged. “You think it through. I’m tired of thinking. I was just about to vote when the Ellimist dragged us off for his little show-and-tell. I was about to be good old Rachel and vote no. I was going to be tough, one more time. But I’m changing my vote. I’m not going to end up as a Controller. That’s not going to happen. Not to me. If that means I’m running away, too bad. I change my vote.”
    You know what? At that moment of surrender, I felt good. I wish I could say I didn’t. But I felt a wave of relief wash over me. No more hard decisions. No more danger. No more having to be brave.
    â€œThat makes it Cassie, Rachel, and me, in favor,” Marco said. “Three to two, unless Ax is voting.”
     Ax said.
     Tobias began.
    â€œAre you changing your vote, Tobias?” Jake asked him.
    
    We all just sat there, staring at nothing. We were going to do it. We were going to abandon the fight. We all knew it.
    Jake hung his head. “Ellimist?” he said softly to the air, “We have decided. The answer is yes.”
    The Ellimist had said we would be transported immediately, once we decided. I expected my next breath to be drawn on some distant planet.
    But nothing happened.
    Nothing at all.

I can’t tell you how weird it was, going to school the next day. Sitting in class, trying to pay attention while my teacher, Ms. Paloma, talked about what led up to the Second World War.
    â€œMaybe if the United States had been ready to fight earlier,” she said, “the war would have ended earlier and fewer people would have been killed. But our country wanted peace.”
    I just kept looking at her and wondering, Was that your skeleton draped across the desk?
    What was the point of going to school? What was the point in anything? I had seen the future. I knew how it all turned out. The human race was done for. Finished. That was where all our long history led — to a Yeerk pool.
    â€œBecause we were so devoted to peace, we may have actually made the war worse,” Ms. Paloma droned on. “We’ll never know for sure, of course. You can’t really second-guess history.”
    You can if you’re an Ellimist, I thought. If you’re an Ellimist, you can look ahead and see it all.
    â€œWhy not?”
    It was Cassie’s voice. I glanced across the room at her. She had that same look of