Did your mother ever tell you not to judge a person by their cover? To the naïve kindergartner, sure, thats perfectly fine. Who cares about somebody's face or skin or name?
As you grow, it gets harder. Older people forget what their mothers told them and just run with it. If someone instantly appears, at first glance or word, to be weird or violent, then forget it, there's better people to associate with.
Take the name of a person, to begin with. Like Fang. What kind of a name is that? In the context of a verb or noun, they're the teeth of vampires or wolves or bats. Mythology's vicious creatures of the night, right? Bloodthirsty beings willing to lunge, attack, and sparkle for their prey. You are instantly led to believe that Fang, with such a name, is the same way.
Or how about Max? Maximum Ride. Sometimes, I wonder if she really is. Y'know, the maximum ride. Don't tell me that you expected me to talk about names and not bring up the obvious sexual innuendo that comes with hers? I can't see her, and I'm aware of how old that joke is, but I do. I wonder.
I wonder what it would be like to do so much.
Like, what it would be like to be Fang for the few months they were together.
I long to find out. Sometimes the feeling just hits me like a freight train in the midwest: fast, hard, and out of nowhere. Sometimes I can go days, even weeks without thinking about her that way. But usually, I'm just minding my own business, when something I think or someone says or does, and BAM. She's in my head again and I don't feel safe thinking around the others, although I'm pretty sure Angel knew how I felt.
But most of it is just wanting to find out (although once I know it'll become a drug and I'll need more of her everyday) what it would feel like (not just physically but mentally also) to hear her moaning my name, to feel her soft skin brushing against mine in ways that are entirely new, ways that were previously impossible to imagine. To feel her hands, her face, likely so soft, so lush, probably a smooth pale brown color, accounting for all the sun. Her hair against my cheek and her arms around my neck with my very own arms around her thin waist, with both of our already-rapid hearts beating rapidly in sync, preparing to burst out of our chests. Up in a tree or behind a tent or in a cave. I wonder if Max and Fang ever kissed in the air. Knowing them and their penchant for things like that, probably more than once.
Oh, how I wonder. I wonder so much.
Now, even, flying next to her, the air is tainted, tainted with these thoughts of her breathtaking eyes, her heavy breathing in time with mine, our faces touching, our breath intermingling. Totally intertwined, one single being, we'd be moving together in unison.
Oh, Max. "Oh, little did she know..."
Sometimes, I dream of you. Oh, Max, little do you know...
But there you go, making do with Dylan while also learning how to make do without Fang. What if you knew that my only attachment to your sister was that she shared your unattainable blood?
(I chose your sister, because it'd be too creepy, even for me, who's sinking this low anyway, to try to seduce your mom.)
Can't you see that when I grow silent, with my eyes closed, and my already pale knuckles losing whatever color they have left I'm not worried about Ella or pissed about Fang, or even fighting back angry screams and yells of denial at Angel's death.
That's actually me mourning. Me mourning you.
Because, Max, you'll always be stuck in this tiny little delusion. A world where everything revolves around you little once-perfect love rectangle: Max Fang Dylan Maya. The others, like me and Gaz and Nudge, we're just little controllable pawns, left to be dealt with later.
This is my mourning for any chance to love you the way you deserve to be loved. Any chance I had to love you, lost the morning you kissed a wounded Fang on an upstate New York beach, a year ago. Lost the morning when you became a person I don't quite remember anymore.
This mourning has yet to end.
I honestly don't know if it ever will.
Little do you know...