He didn’t answer. Seeing as how he was asleep and all. I watched his breathing, slow and steady, the shadow of his abdominal muscles rising and falling under his bunched-up T-shirt. I tried to slow my own breath, but it thundered quick and ragged in my ears.
Before I knew what I was doing, I was out of bed with my own comforter. I felt sorry for him. Yeah, that was it. Really sorry for him. As anyone would.
The floor was freezing against my bare feet. I padded over to Dylan and carefully lay down next to him. He shifted, coughing, and I froze. After two long minutes, satisfied that he was still asleep, I curled myself into him, drawing my comforter over us both. I felt the warmth of his body against mine, his breath on the back of my neck, making the tiny hairs rise.
We fit like two puzzle pieces. Just like we were supposed to. The whole designed-to-be-my-perfect-other-half thing…
Gah.
But you know what? Just this once, I was going to shove away all my angst and confusion and fear and just focus on the present.
Which happened to be very warm. Maddeningly warm. My whole body felt tingly.
With that thought in mind, I pressed myself closer against Dylan’s sleeping form and closed my eyes, drifting into the sweetest sleep I’d had in a long, long time.
I wasn’t sure I ever wanted to wake up.
34
THE NEXT DAY at school was, predictably, a complete horror show.
Not for me (for once), but for Nudge, who’d been publicly spurned and ridiculed by Sloan, in front of all of the popular girls. In less than a minute, this new gossip was all over Facebook and Twitter.
About eight hours later I was rapping my knuckles against the door to Nudge’s room. As soon as we’d gotten home from school she had gone in there and locked the door behind her, and she didn’t come out for dinner. I couldn’t blame her—things had only gotten worse after Sloan’s scaredy-cat retreat.
God, I should’ve unleashed a can of whup-ass on him.
“Nudge? Come on, open the door. Let’s make popcorn.”
“Go away,” came Nudge’s weak voice. “Don’t wanna talk about it.”
“We don’t have to talk about it,” I said. Please, no—no more talking about it, I beg you. “I just want to make sure you’re okay. Open up, will you? We can make hot chocolate.”
After a few moments of silence, I heard her trudge across the room. The door opened.
Nudge’s face was stained with the tears she’d been holding in all day; rivers of mascara ran down her cheeks. Her big brown eyes were puffy and bloodshot.
I had no idea what to do. I’d already offered popcorn and hot chocolate. What else was there?
“It’s just getting worse and worse,” moaned Nudge. “First it was just stupid gossip. Now I’m an outcast. They all think I’m some kind of circus sideshow. As usual.”
“Come here,” I murmured, putting my arms around her. “I know it’s a drag to have everyone at school treat us like lepers”—to put it mildly—“but they’re just gullible, prejudiced jerks. Typical Avian-American prejudice.” I eased her head onto my shoulder, which I should have lined with paper towels first. “I’m really sorry Sloan was such a butthead,” I said soothingly. “But sweetie, he’s so unworthy. You deserve better than that. You deserve someone who’s going to love you, wings and all.”
I’d hardly ever seen such sadness on her face. “That’s easy for you to say. You have two guys who love you.” She looked up at me, and I didn’t know what to say to her. “I don’t have anyone.”
I swallowed nervously. Guiltily.
“That’s not true. You have us,” I blurted out, knowing full well how lame that was. The flock was awesome and all, but it just can’t be compared to the rapture of being loved, held, adored. In that… different way.
I quickly shook off the pleasurable shiver that shot down my spine as I remembered spending the night on the floor next to Dylan.
“Listen. Soon we’ll blow this Popsicle stand and move on, and then you’ll never have to deal with any of them ever again. Until we get rich and famous, and then you can have fun spurning them when they beg for your autograph.” I smiled, pulling her close, but Nudge wasn’t amused.
“I don’t want to move on,” she cried, pulling out of my arms. “Can’t you see that? I don’t want to ‘spurn’ them!” She made air quotes with her fingers, glaring at me. How had I become the enemy here, exactly? “I just want to—” Her voice broke, and she drew in a trembling breath. “I just want to be liked by them, Max!” And then Nudge burst into tears. Again. Crap.
“Oh, sweetie,” I said helplessly, uncomprehending. I had spent very little energy in my life trying to be liked by anyone. “Come here. Come sit down,” I said, taking her hand and tugging her toward the bed.
Then I saw that the entire thing was covered with crumpled-up pieces of paper. A pair of scissors was lying on top of a stack of teen magazines, all of which had been mangled and cut to pieces.
“Nudge? What’s this?”
Nudge blew her nose miserably and gestured at a pile of blocky, badly cutout shapes. “Those are for my scrapbook.”
I picked up one of the shapes. It was a photo of a pretty teenage model, smiling brightly at the camera, wearing some sort of sparkly outfit with furry boots. “Blech,” I said, and put the photo down. The next photo was another pretty model. So was the next one. And the next.
“What kind of scrapbook are you making, exactly?” I asked Nudge cautiously.
Her bottom lip quivered. “I want to be like them. Like those girls.”
I raised my eyebrows. “You want to be a model?”
“No.” She sighed dramatically, rolling her eyes. “I want to not be a freak.”
“Nudge, normal is way overrated….” I began. Déjà vu.
“Oh, yeah, it’s superlame to just want to have friends, to just want to be kissed, like everyone else.” She laughed bitterly. “You sound like the whitecoats. Being lab experiments doesn’t make us better, Max. We aren’t enhanced, we’re mutants.”
Wow. I had to remind myself that this was not the sweet Nudge I knew. This was a love-scorned girl who had just been through a day of despicable bullying. I was lucky she wasn’t actually breathing fire.
“And if we were normal, there wouldn’t be people trying to kill us,” she pointed out.
“Well, probably,” I admitted. “But I guarantee you people at school would still do mean things to nice kids for no reason. That’s just the way life works.”
Nudge shook her head. “No. You know what? There’s only one answer to all our problems.”
This didn’t sound good. “What is it?” I asked warily.
She snatched the scissors off the bed and looked so utterly reckless that it sent me into a panic.
“Nudge!” I gasped.
But Nudge turned from me and eyed a poster on the wall—a publicity poster of the whole flock, from our days as a flying sideshow—and then, lightning-quick, she let the scissors fly with as much skill and fury as she’d displayed battling Erasers. With a hollow thud, the blades struck the image of Nudge’s wing and embedded themselves deep in the wall.
I swallowed, my throat suddenly dry. My own wings twitched under my shirt.
Then she clutched one of her normal-girl photos to her chest, her eyes fierce with determination. “The only answer to all our problems is getting rid of our wings,” she said. “Removing them forever. I’m gonna do it someday, Max. I swear it.”
35
FANG OPENED HIS eyes blearily. Above him was nothing but the clear night sky, dotted with millions of tiny glittering stars. It was beautiful.
It was quiet and calm, and yet for some reason he’d woken up.
He sat up, quickly scanning his surroundings for anything threatening, anything that might have made some sort of noise.
Nothing.
He still found it weird, nowadays, to wake up alone. Until this past year, waking up had always meant being flung into the noise and
chaos of the flock.
The flock. Fang had thought that it would get easier, being away from them, as time went on. He’d thought wrong. He’d thought that they’d be fine—even better off—without him, and that it would be easier for him to pursue whatever mission he had if he didn’t have to worry about them. Now he wasn’t sure.
And then there was the gang. Fang sighed and lay back down, making hardly a sound on the dew-dampened grass. Why had he ever thought that would work? Why had he tried? The gang had gotten Maya killed.
Fang swallowed and closed his eyes. Maya was dead. And though Ari kept demonstrating a freaky, jack-in-the-box ability to come back from the dead, Fang was pretty sure Maya was gone for good.
And the others—he’d really let them down. Fang frowned and pulled his jacket tighter around himself, turning onto his other side. He wasn’t used to letting people down. He was used to coming through for people. He’d thought being on his own meant that he could make all the decisions by himself, that he didn’t need to rely on Max to do all the thinking. The bad thing was that he had no one to discuss decisions with, no one to bounce ideas off of.
Admit it, you idiot—it’s more than that. You miss her, Fang thought.
He sighed and rolled onto his back, restless. He was exhausted, thinking about it all. But not exhausted enough to fall back to sleep.
She doesn’t need you, he reminded himself. She has the Winged Wonder by her side. Maybe being on your own is just too hard?
No, he couldn’t think tha—
Fang.
Fang jerked, startled, and peered into the dark trees and shrubs around him.
Fang, nobody’s there.
Oh, man. The voice—or rather Voice—wasn’t coming from around him.
It was coming from inside him.
Not again. He had to wonder—was this the same Voice Max got? Where did it come from? Why was it appearing in his brain now? Sure, all of them had heard the Voice at one time or another. But Fang definitely didn’t want this to become an everyday thing.
Okay, what is it? Fang thought. What do you want?
It’s time to go, Fang, the Voice replied. She does need you now, more than ever.
Who needs me? he asked, but he already knew the answer.
Go home to Max.
36
“IS SHE IN trouble? Are the others okay?” Fang demanded aloud, sitting up, alone in the darkness. What’s going on? he screamed inside his head.
But the Voice stayed silent, in that incredibly annoying way it had. It was gone. For how long, he didn’t know.
Go home to Max.
He had no idea if something was really wrong, but he couldn’t exactly ignore the Voice, either. When Max heard her Voice, she pretty much always listened to it. His Voice was saying that Max needed him more than ever.
He pretended he didn’t feel the way his heart was speeding up with excitement and anxiety, just thinking about going back.
No doubt his replacement would still be there, being all Dylan-rific and glaring at Fang with narrowed eyes. Well, too bad. What choice did Fang have? None. He would’ve liked to have just taken off right then, raced back to the flock. To Max. To see that she was all right. But Fang’s wing had been bothering him more and more, and he definitely wasn’t in flying shape yet.
So he’d be patient. He’d find the nearest town and then get on the Internet. He would do some research before he went racing back to the person he kept trying to leave.
Two hours later the sun was just beginning to rise, and Fang was seated at a computer in an Internet cafe. He sipped from a Styrofoam cup of coffee as the Google home page loaded.
Then he typed in two words: Maximum Ride.
37
INSTANTLY, RESULTS POPPED up on the screen—1,704,890 of them in 0.43 seconds. The very first one was an article titled “Winged Children Attend Private School!” Oh, great. Looked like more of that successful “keep a low profile” stuff was going on.
Fang clicked the link and began to read.
As it turned out, the article was a piece from the private school’s own online newspaper, the Newton News. It spewed out a bunch of glorified info about the flock, accompanied by a hilariously cheesy photo of them posed around the school’s marquee, beneath a banner welcoming “Maxine and Co.” Fang almost snorted—and then he saw that Dylan had his arm casually thrown around Max.
It was surprising how much that hurt. Especially on top of the news that Gazzy had blurted out in Paris—that Dylan had been “designed” for Max, and that they were eventually supposed to go out and create little Maxes and Dylans. The concept was still impossible to swallow. Still tasted like crap in his throat.
Fang logged off the computer and dumped his half-finished coffee in the trash. It may have been corny and lame, but the Newton News article had given him one thing: the exact location of the flock.
His Voice had told him to go to Max, even though it sure didn’t seem like she needed him, all safe in her cushy new digs, with her new boyfriend. Didn’t the Voice know how much it hurt Fang to see her? Didn’t it know how much he hurt her every time he left?
Maybe it did. Maybe that didn’t matter. Maybe something bigger than just the drama of Max and Fang was happening.
At any rate, he knew he had to listen to his Voice.
He had to go back to Max. Whether she wanted him there or not.
38
FANG DIDN’T WANT to admit to the little surge of exhilaration he was feeling at the idea of actually going back to the flock. Home. He had tried to put Max out of his head for so long, but for him, “home” would always mean wherever Max was.
It was still barely light. It galled him that he couldn’t fly, and instead actually had to hike out to where the main highway passed the town.
He shook his head, thinking of Ari and his cronies. He wouldn’t be surprised if the price on his own head was so high that it had infiltrated the backwoods of Middle America, too—Fang knew any driver on the road could be a threat, and it was incredibly stupid for him to hitchhike. But with his painful wing, what choice did he have? He was in the middle of No and Where, and he had no hope of catching a plane or a bus—or even of stealing a car—in this place. He had to get back to Max, so hitching it was.
After an hour and a half spent trudging along with his thumb in the air, Fang’s head snapped up at the sound of wheels far down the road. A yellow convertible was speeding down the highway, music blaring.
This time, the car pulled to a slow stop just ahead of him, and he jogged up to it. Three beefy-looking guys peered out of the convertible at him, and Fang felt a twinge of anxiety.
This is stupid, a voice inside him said, and he couldn’t tell if it was the Voice or just his own rational thought.
“Need a ride?” the driver asked gruffly over the metal music thundering out of the speakers.
Fang glanced down the road. Not a single other car in sight.
“You heading west?” he asked the driver, frowning.
“Yeah.”
Fang sighed. The next city was at least twenty miles. It was now or never.
“Then yeah, thanks,” he said, hopping into the backseat. Before he’d even sat down, the driver jammed the pedal to the floor. Fang surged backward into the seat, his wing throbbing.
“Hey, watch it!” Fang snapped irritably, but the driver just stared straight ahead with a tight-lipped grin.
The guy in the passenger seat and the guy beside Fang both stared at him intently, their muscles bulging in their tight T-shirts, their faces twisted into weird expressions.
They looked… hungry. Almost like—Fang’s mind balked at the possibility—Erasers?
Or was he just seeing things? It was hard to tell. He didn’t trust his own judgment anymore. After Star and Kate’s betrayal, everyone seemed suspect.
He stared into the pockmarked face next to him, at the thick neck running up to a crew cut.
No.
They didn’t have the right amou
nt of feral wolfishness marring their features to be Erasers. These guys were definitely human. Ugly as all get-out, but human.
So why were they acting so funny? Maybe they were just ’roid heads, Fang thought—crazed on testosterone. He was just being paranoid, that was all.
It’s called careful, you moron, he imagined Max chiding him. Always trust your instincts. Paranoia is our way of life.
But Fang’s wing hurt, and he was tired, and at the moment there wasn’t a better option than these shady characters. Shady human characters, who he could surely take if it came down to it.
Barely five minutes later, the convertible skidded to a stop. “Wow! A scenic overlook!” the driver shouted with over-the-top enthusiasm. “Whattaya say, boys? Should we get a closer look?”
Fang’s eyes snapped open. Something was off.
These guys didn’t exactly seem like the postcard type.
39
THE THREE GUYS hopped out of the car and strode toward the signs warning pedestrians to keep back from the railing.
“Check out this wicked cliff, fellas,” the driver said to his two grinning buddies. They laughed as if he’d just told the most hilarious joke they’d ever heard. “Hey, kid,” he called to Fang, “why don’t you come over here? I think you’ll really wanna see this. You know, up close and personal.”
Fang, leaning against the convertible, shook his head. “Nah, I think I’m fine right here, thanks.”
He assumed a more defensive position and crossed his arms, but even that small gesture made him wince as his wing bone bent awkwardly. What was wrong with him?
The driver grinned. “How’s that wing, Fang? Must be giving you some real trouble if you’re stooping to hitchhiking. Really slumming it.”
“I’m sorry, do I know you?” Fang asked as casually as possible, but he eyed the trio warily. His instinct had been right. They knew who he was, and they were out to get him. But he could take these guys. If he could fight Erasers, he could definitely handle a few juiced-up punks.