Max POV
I walked down the crowded streets of L.A, feeling ironically lonely. Sometimes I forgot what was so appealing about this city. It was full of a bunch of wanna-bes and con men. Then I remembered...I was one of those people. The city had nearly four million people living here with more moving in each day. You could come hear and be whoever you wanted to be. Except I came here with the opposite motive than everyone else; to not be noticed, to blend in. And for the last year that's exactly what I've been doing.
The whole flock had started splitting up almost five years ago. Nudge was the first to go, opting for some sort of boarding school in the East. Iggy was close to follow, being hired out by the military to build bombs and other pyro-maniac things. Angel and Gazzy found their parents and, considering how young they were, they actually had a chance at having a semi-normal lives. That being said, they went to live with their parents. And then four years ago Fang and I slowly started drifting apart. I started making more and more public speeches raising awareness about the School and other dangers in the world. Then Fang got recruited into the New York Times. One of us always seemed to be gone. Then a year went by and we just...stopped seeing each other. No emails, texts, phone calls. No nothing. A little over a year ago when I turned 18 Ella and I's mom decided that she wanted to be a veterinarian that worked with endangered species in Africa and set us up with an apartment in L.A. It worked out because I did a lot of my work in L.A and Ella had graduated early and was going to UCLA.
I kept in touch with everyone else. I've even seen Angel and Gazzy quite a few times, only seeing Nudge once. But it was different with Fang. It was too painful to keep in touch with him without being able to see him.
My phone rang in my back pocket, making me scramble to answer it.
"Ella?" I answered.
"No, it's Greg," the voice on the other side of the phone corrected.
"Why are you using Ella's phone?" I asked, irritated.
"I was wondering if you could babysit tonight..."
Greg was Ella's boyfriend and the bane of my existence. He had a baby of his own that his ex-girlfriend dumps on his doorsteps every weekend while she goes out and parties. He also thought that it was okay to dump her on our doorstep whenever he wanted to go out drinking with his buddies. And because Ella was such a sweetheart she accepted (much to my annoyance). But this was the first time that he had grown the balls to ask me to do it alone.
"Hell no," I objected. "Hire yourself a babysitter."
Frankly, I didn't hate children...I was slightly afraid of them, especially babies. First of all, they cry and you have to figure out just what they want. Second...more comes out the back end than you put in the front end and that's just creepy. I just don't do babies.
"Just this once?" He pleaded with me.
"No," I snapped. "Tell me, what are you going to do tonight that's more important than spending time with your daughter?"
Ella would kill me for talking to her boyfriend like that, but she would never find out because he knew that if she found out that he had been asking me to baby-sit she would kill him. Ella had a class on Friday nights for the next two months so I had no idea what Greg was going to do for those two months.
"I just need a break," he said. "Hang out with some of my friends."
I rolled my eyes. He was a trust fund baby. Sure, he wasn't Bill Gates rich, but he hadn't done real work a day of his life. He was going to college now, but I knew that half the time he ditched class and the other half he was sleeping off the hangovers. His daughter, Jackie was the only thing that gave him a reason to be sober a couple days of the week.
"You hung out with your friends-owwww.." I winced. "I have to go."
I had tripped on a piece of concrete jutting out. All of the papers that I had been carrying for my meeting at 2 this afternoon were scattered across the sidewalk. I ran a series of humanitarian projects out of my office just down the street from here. Why couldn't I just walk one block in wedges without dropping or tripping. What was the use of avian DNA if I couldn't walk straight in fashionable shoes (I wouldn't care, but come on people, it's L.A). As I scrambled to grab every piece of paper that I could, my "birdy" sense went off making me freeze.
My head whipped around to find anyone suspicious, especially erasers. What can I say? Old habits die hard, even after five years of no trouble. After taking a shaky breath, I almost convinced myself that there was no one around. That is, until I backed into someone, in which case I blindly snapped into fight mode. First I jabbed the person in the nose in order to cause enough pain for them to be distracted long enough for me to determine whether or not I could take them in a fight. Second, I went towards the esophagus, but a hand blocked me last second just like they knew exactly what my next move was going to be. That made me panic even further. This person either had really good reflexes or had a training of some sort.
My papers were completely done for. I had dropped them in my panic. I could faintly hear them fluttering down the street. I went for the lower stomach, but was blocked there as well. The person grabbed my shoulders and shook me.
"Geez, Max, I know you're mad at me but in public?"
Every muscle in my body tightened at the familiar touch. Memories flooded over the dam that I had constructed over time in my mind. I didn't know whether to be elated or pissed.
"What the hell are you doing here Fang?"
