AN: Maximum Ride Halloween special. Haha.

Disclaimer: I do not own Maximum Ride. Seriously. I'm a seventeen year old girl, not a sort of wrinkly oldish man.

"I still don't understand why we have to do this," I said to Nudge, staring at myself in the mirror.

She sighed and answered, "Because it's fun and we never do anything fun. Besides, you already agreed."

"You attacked me with triple Bambi eyes."

For those of you wondering what's going on, it's Halloween and Nudge, Angel, and the Gasman have convinced me to go to some party at some kid's house.

So there I was, dressed as a freaking Eskimo princess, complete with brown dress, black leggings, and black boots. Nudge was a fairy and Angel was in an angel costume. I didn't know yet what the boys were.

"You look really good, Max," Angel said. In the two years since Fang left she hasn't been as bad as she was. She has definitely grown up some.

Nudge swiped something glittery across her lips and looked in the mirror one last time. "Okay, we're ready to go."

Resigning myself, I followed her and Angel down the stairs. Iggy, Dylan, and the Gasman were waiting in the living room.

"Where's Ella?" Angel asked. This party thing was Ella's idea. She invited us to go with her.

Iggy replied, "In her room. She was down here, but she said there was one more thing she had to do."

At that moment, the girl in question descended the stairs. She was wearing a vampire costume. That girl is too obsessed with those things.

Right, so Iggy was a zombie. The Gasman was Frankenstein's monster and Dylan was a pirate.

Ella told us to follow her and we walked a couple of blocks to her friend's house. Inside, she walked away without us. Nudge exchanged a look with Angel, shrugged, and then they disappeared into the crowd. The boys all went straight to the snack table, leaving me alone.

At some point, after I'd wandered for a while, two girls about my age approached me. "Hey, you don't go to school around here, do you?" one of them asked.

"No." I shook my head. "I'm Ella Martinez's half sister. I'm visiting her so she invited me along."

"Oh, that's cool," the other said. "Do you want to play Seven Minutes in Heaven with us?"

I nodded. "Sure, why not?" They led me to a circle of witches, goblins, vampires, and someone dressed as Scream.

"Everyone knows how to play, right? You spin the bottle, it lands on someone, you spend seven minutes with them in that closet." We all nodded. One of the witches went first.

A few other people took turns before it was mine. I spun the bottle. It went around and around, eventually slowing to a stop. On Scream.

I sighed and led the way to the closet. Once inside I stood without moving. I began cursing myself for getting in a situation like this. Kissing some stranger even for a second was starting to bother me.

"Right. Well, let's get this over with," I said.

He didn't say anything and it was so dark that I couldn't see, but a second later a warm pair of lips met mine.

I don't know what made me kiss him back, whoever he was. It didn't last long and then we stood in silence until our seven minutes was up. When the others opened the door, he had his mask on again.

Back in the circle I told them I didn't want to play anymore and went to find Ella.

"I saw you were playing Seven Minutes in Heaven with Charissa and those other guys," she said. "Was the guy you kissed cute?"

I shrugged. "I dunno. I never saw his face."

What do mean? How could you kiss him if we was wearing a mask?" She had a look on her face, as if she already knew the answer.

"It was dark, El," I told her.

Ella shook her head. "Nice, Max. Very nice. I'll ask around at school and let you know if he was."

"If who was what?" Iggy asked suddenly.

"The guy Max kissed. She doesn't know if he was cute."

He snorted." Max didn't kiss anyone."

Ella started to insist that I had and he argued there was no way it happened.

Scream watched Max from the other side of the room. Two years hadn't changed the way he felt about her. He wasn't sure why he'd asked Ella to get her here. He supposed he just wanted to see her.

Now he didn't know if he'd be able to leave.

I don't know if that's really how you play seven minutes in heaven.