A/N: Hello everyone! Welcome to my first MR fanfic! Some things to remember while you parooze this excellent story:
- All human and IGGY CAN SEE! (He was blind because of experiments, so if the School didn't exist, he would be able to see.)
- Fang, Max, and Iggy are 17 year olds in their junior year of high school; Gazzy and Nudge are 15 in their sophomore year; and Angel is 14 in her freshman year. Fang is older than Max!
Review please! I'm not smart enough to own something like Maximum Ride.
Life has a real way of sucking sometimes. Like the morning of my seventeenth birthday, for instance. Why? Because I was sitting at the kitchen table, alone. Don't get me wrong, I'm not the kind of girl who needs ten million people giggling about how cool it is that I'm seventeen. I'd never even liked my birthday that much. But it would be nice to have someone acknowledge it, you know? And my dad, my own father, didn't even remember. He was just motoring around the room, flapping his gums about some new science experiment he was doing that would make us a million more dollars. Why it would make that much of a difference, I really don't know. If it was me, once I got to a million, I would pretty much be set for the rest of my life. But not my dad, no way. He just had to be a gazillion-aire and solve global warming and all that jazz.
"Max, have you even been listening to me?"
"To tell you the truth, not really, no," I said bluntly. Jeb glared at me, his mouth contorting into a spiral. (Yeah, I call my father by his first name. That's what happens when you see him like, once a week. It's not that big of a deal. Get over it.)
"Don't take that tone with me."
"Don't talk to me about things I don't want to hear, then!" We engaged in an intense staring match. My eyes traced the vein pulsing in his forehead, and I smirked. You know that feeling when someone's just pissing you off really badly and you'll do anything you can to piss them off right back? Then you know my relationship with Jeb. My little 'attitude problem' as a principle had once called it, was not due solely to the fact that my birthday was going ignored. That was just a teensy part of it. Nope, seventeen years of neglect and bitterness were channelled right towards my father every morning.
"You'll be late for school, Maximum."
"Oh no, you used my full name! Isn't this the part where I get really scared and burst into tears?" Jeb's eye twitched.
"I'm serious, Max, get to school! I'm not taking any of your crap right now! This is a big moment for me and I will not hesitate to punish you as harshly as need be if you ruin it." "What, you gonna lock me in my room all week? This is enough of a prison Jeb, don't even bother."
I didn't have time to block his fist.
As much as I hate him, Jeb had some pretty good aim. His hand connected immediately with my left eye, and my face burned with a strange embarrassment, just as it did every time he hit me. Maybe it was because somehow, I knew that I pushed him to it. I basically asked him to make me his punching bag every second we were together. Maybe, deep down inside of me, I knew it was my fault. All of it. The punching. The lack of a mother. Everything.
"Um. Iggy, Gazzy and Angel are giving me a ride today." Jeb's huge exhale of breath resonated through the room. "I'll just, uh, wait outside for them," I managed. My feet faltered over the hardwood floor, twisting in impossible directions. I grabbed a black vest from a hook on the wall, stuffing my arms into it as I ran outside. My school tie hung loosely around my neck, and I reached up to unbutton the first button on my suffocating shirt. I yanked it out of the waist of my neat, navy-and-green plaid skirt. Instead of my usual converse, I jammed my feet into the first pair of shoes I could find: a ginormous set of dark gray, suede boots that slouched down when I put them on. They had been a gift from some partner of Jeb's, so they reached up to the fashion-accepted height of just over my kneecaps.
I could still hear Jeb's careful, calming breathing from outside, so I forced myself to focus on the cars streaming by. My eye pulsed, and I ran my fingertips over the tender skin. What would I say happened this time? Not that anyone would notice. Would they? Iggy was sure to. He was my pyromaniac of a best friend who seemed to have a natural affinity for healing and wounds. Seriously. The boy could be a witch doctor. (Wizard doctor? Warlock doctor?) Maybe he would remember it was my birthday. I didn't need him to, though. Jeb was more the issue. But he hit me. A lot. So should he really matter? Like, other than in a self-defense kind of way?
"Birthday girl! Maaaaaax! Maximum? Max!" Gazzy's head hung out of the window of Iggy's beat-up Jeep. His angelic blue eyes twinkled with mischief, as they always did, as he surveyed my admittedly large house. Well, Jeb had forced me to live in Greenwich, CT. (I write about what I know… And I have a great wealth of jokes at my hometown's expense, I promise you.) What else would I expect?
"Shut your trap before you catch flies, Gaz. You've seen Max's house before," Iggy's voice rang from the driver's seat. I laughed.
"May I pleeeeeaseeee have shotgun, Gaz? For my birthday?" I pleaded. Gazzy smirked.
"I don't know, Max, I'm feeling kind of gassy. The front seat tends to make me feel better." I rolled my eyes.
"Never mind," I muttered. When Gazzy, er, let one rip, it was literally deadly. Like, you could not breathe. There's a reason we called him Gazzy. "Immature pig."
Angel, in all her innocence, sat perched in the back, smiling. "Happy birthday, Max," she grinned, holding out an envelope. I blushed uncharacteristically and fumbled with the seal. I didn't need this much attention on my birthday. That girl was just too sweet. Inside was a long, thoughtful letter that you would expect to be written after years of not seeing each other, rather than like, a day. I was at Iggy's house all the time, so his siblings had become mine. I patted her arm graciously, never one for much physical contact. She clapped lightly to herself and turned to the window, lost in her own world.
"So my sister revealed her lez-crush on you?" Iggy inquired sarcastically.
"I can still hear you, you know!" Angel insisted. "You're not a very good big brother, James." Iggy's face blanched. If you ever met Angel, then you knew that the effect she had over people was unearthly. It was like some outside force was begging you to please her. In a way, her name was the epitome of irony: a devilish angel. Still, you couldn't help but love her.
"You know I didn't mean it, Ange." Iggy laughed nervously.
"Mm-hmm." That was it. She just sounded so.., entitled, so bratty that the car was silent for a few seconds. It wasn't the first time it happened, either. Since she started high school, everything had had something in it for her. She knew how to work people to her advantage, that was for sure. And she'd been taken in immediately by all the mini-Lindsay Lohan's at our school. Was I bitter? Of course not. I just missed the girl that got Iggy and I to play Candyland with her for three hours straight.
In the distance, Ingenium Academy for Gifted Students hovered on the horizon. I groaned inwardly at the sight of the gorgeous stone mansion rising in front of me. The picturesque setting was ruined by the slutty girls lounging around in way-too-short skirts, flirting with stoner jocks who had forgotten to tie their ties the correct way and had either cocaine or powdered donut powder all over their neat blazers. It was absolutely horrific. How had the world become so… this? I wasn't sure I wanted to know.
And so began my seventeenth year of absolute torture, drama, and misery.
A/N: R & R please! Btw, I made up Ingenium Academy. If anyone takes Latin, you know what it means. Thanks for reading guys! The next chapter will be up soon, and Fang and Nudge will be introduced then!
