Disclaimer: Me no owny Maximum Ride. All belongs to James Patterson.
It all started on a lazy Saturday morning. Mom was out to the store, according to her note, and we were left to fend for ourselves as far as breakfast was concerned. We all – Nudge, Gazzy, Angel, and I, that is – got up and to the living room at about the same time. I made a beeline for my favorite chair, and Angel and Gazzy curled up together on the sofa.
"Max, I'm tired," our cousin Nudge moaned. "Can you make breakfast today?" She was draped awkwardly across a puffy recliner.
"Why?" I whined. "I'm no good at cooking! I've burned water!" The sad truth.
"All we need is toast or cereal or something simple like that! How could you screw that up? Besides, you're the oldest. Seventeen! You're almost a legal adult – that makes you almost required to feed us." Nudge pleaded. I felt the need to point out that she was only a year younger, but held my tongue. "Please, Max?"
Gazzy added, "Yeah, Max, please?" Of course the eleven year old boy would agree to food. Angel bobbed her head in agreement. My own siblings, ganging up with my cousin on me. It was sad.
"Fine," I grumbled, "I just hope I don't burn the house down, 'cause we're out of cereal." I dragged my butt off of the sofa and faced my siblings. "And I hope we don't regret this."
I meandered into the kitchen, and after mucho de struggle, found the ingredients for toast – bread, a toaster, and butter. (Paper plates and a knife, too, but that doesn't count as much.) I turned around to grab the bread, knocking over a glass of water. It sloshed across the table and the glass rolled off, shattering on the floor.
"Oh, crap," I muttered. I quickly swept up the broken fragments and then grabbed a rag and started to mop up the liquid. Angel walked in while I was ringing the cloth out in the sink.
"Nudge sent me to make sure you didn't set the kitchen on fire or anything. She said that only you could end up burning the house down trying to make toast." She said innocently.
I rolled my eyes. "Puh-lease. I'm not going to set anything on fire." Nudge and Gazzy walked in and stood behind Angel. I reached behind me and plugged the toaster in, not paying much attention. "Even I couldn't-"
"MAX!" Nudge shrieked. "It's on fire!" I crossed my arms.
"Oh, ha-ha, very funny. Mock the awesome one, why don't you?"
"Uh, Max?" the Gasman said timidly. "It really is on fire."
Noticing the unusual heat on my back, I flipped around. Lo and behold! The toaster was in flames. This really wasn't helping my 'Max is always right' theory. My eyes went wide. "Oh, my god! HOW? All I did was plug it in!" Seriously? Was the whole universe purposely trying to prove me wrong?
Nudge didn't handle the whole flaming toaster thing well. She started running around like a chicken with its head cut off. "What should we do? What should we do?" She darted to the phone. "We should call 911! That's it!" Then she stopped and dashed toward the fire extinguisher. "But what if they come too late and our house is burned to the ground? We've got to put it out!" Back to the phone. "But we shouldn't take care of this! Trained professionals should do it!" Back to the extinguisher. "But if they come too late we could be dead! Oh, no, oh, no, oh, no!"
While this was happening (Gazzy, Angel and I watching her run back and forth, slightly amused) one of the cabinets caught on fire and the fire alarms started going off. Nudge panicked even more, Angel started to cry, Gazzy looked worried, and I calmly walked over to the fire extinguisher and sprayed the foam onto the cabinet and toaster.
"There. Problem solved." I stated. "Now we just have to wait for the fire department to get here, tell them it's all right, and clean up this mess." I gestured to the burned and blackened part of the kitchen with foam dripping onto the floor.
About two or three minutes later, a couple fire trucks pulled up in our front yard. We went outside to meet them. Nudge was in hysterics, and Angel and Gazzy were comforting each other.
One of the men walked up to me. He had dark eyes and darker hair. "Is everything all right, ma'am?"
"Everything's fine, thank you. Just a brief toaster fire while Mom's out." I answered. He looked at me funny.
"Um… how?"
I snorted. "I asked the same thing when I saw that it was burning. I have absolutely no id-" A [very recent] memory struck me.
I turned around to grab the bread, knocking over a glass of water. It sloshed across the table and the glass rolled off, shattering on the floor.
The toaster and its plug were on the counter.
Total. Facepalm. Moment.
I cleared my throat, my face heating. "Yeah, I have no idea," I said to the fireman. Well, I wasn't going to make myself look like an idiot, was I? No, I'd leave that to Nudge, who was still blubbering, if a little less when she noticed that some of the 'cute firemen' were watching her like she'd lost it and others like she was overreacting. She was particularly eying the strawberry blonde one.
The corner of his mouth twitched up a bit. "Okay, then, we'll just check the place out to see that it's all clear, and then we'll be on our way." He dipped his head toward me, winked, and then he and his buddies thoroughly examined the kitchen.
Finally they were done – we had been given the all clear and a strict lecture, to which my loving and supportive family ratted me out and promised to never let me cook again. The dirty rotten–
The dark haired fireman was in front of me again. "So," he said, "no idea, huh?" My mouth opened and closed like a fish.
I huffed. "Well, it was kind of their fault," I said. "They know better than to let me cook. Serves them right for being so lazy."
He chuckled. "You're quite the character."
I shrugged. "I try." A few seconds later I said, "I never got your name."
"It's Fang." I raised my eyebrows.
"Well, Fang, you seem a little young to be a firefighter." And he did. He looked… about my age, actually.
"I'm seventeen." I was right. "I help out at the station when I can. They let me come because it wasn't a very big flame and I could 'use the experience'." He rolled his eyes. "They think of me as an ignorant kid."
In the corner of my eye, I saw the strawberry blonde flirting with Nudge. My eyes narrowed. "And him?"
Fang followed my gaze. "Oh, Iggy? Don't worry, he's harmless. We've been buds forever. He's a bit younger." I visibly relaxed. We talked for a while longer, about school and things like that until it was time for him to go. Nudge came over as we were saying goodbye.
"I so wouldn't mind seeing him again," she breathed. I rolled my eyes at her, but smiled. I turned back to Fang.
I stuck out my hand, "I'm Max, by the way." He took it in his large, calloused one; I was expecting him to shake it.
"I wouldn't mind seeing you again, Max," Fang murmured in his deep voice, instead bringing my hand to his lips. His eyes twinkled roguishly. Nudge squealed. And they went on their jolly old way.
I calmed my breathing and overly wide grin before joining the others in the living room. Nudge was babbling about me and Fang and the strawberry blonde firefighter – Iggy.
"Well," I drawled over her description of his 'magnificent blue eyes'. She quieted. "Who's gonna tell Mom?"
"I'm not doing it," Gazzy said. He looked at Angel.
"Don't look at me! She can tell her," she gestured to Nudge.
"Oh, no! Max is the one that started it!" I cleared my throat.
"There's only one way to settle this."
Angel bolted upright. Gazzy and I immediately recognized the look, and as soon as Angel finished counting to three, all three of us screamed in sync, "Not it!" It was a ritual that worked quite well for telling Mom things, because most of the time she heard us yelling 'the dreaded words' and came up to check it out herself anyway.
"Nudge is it!" I pointed. She stared openmouthed.
"What? Who settles things like that? You're acting like six year olds!"
"Doesn't matter. You're it."
We argued for a bit longer, but it was three against one. We finally lapsed back into silence that was only broken by the occasional comment on the weather or shapes we found in the bumps on the ceiling. Then I sat up, grinning mischievously.
"I'm still hungry," I stated. "How about some toast, Nudge?"
Oh, I would do this. Anyway, hope you enjoyed my little oneshot. I thought it was cute. R&R.
~Lizzie