Disclaimer: Not mine. James Patterson's.
Please read and review! Thanks!! And please, criticism is Helpful with a capital H. So just tell me what you Honestly think of it - Honestly, ironically, also with a capital H. What a coincidince. Anyway, back to the story. Yeah, this is just a one-shot I did. Nice and Faxy. Hope you like it!
Shimmering
"Okay, everyone. Take a basket, find everything on the list, and we'll meet back here at in ten," I instructed. Earlier I had helped Iggy make a grocery list of everything we needed for a week. He had dictated, and I had written it down and ripped it into five equal pieces. Then I distributed one to everyone except Iggy who went with Gazzy.
"First one back gets an extra cookie tonight," I added. That would motivate me, at least. And besides, none of us liked to be in tight spaces like supermarket aisles.
We all split up, eager to win the cookie and get out of there. I headed off towards the fruits to grab a few boxes of strawberries and raspberries. Then I started walking across the store, scanning the signs and aisles for any hint of cereal. I finally found them six rows down and added three boxes of Cheerios and four boxes of Fruit Loops.
Max? I heard Angel ask in my head. Can I get stuff for smores? Please?
I groaned out loud, earning me a few quizzical looks from the people around me. I knew Angel's well enough that she would be giving me the Bambi eyes as she said this, and I could imagine her face well enough to fall victim to them.
Sure, honey I thought to her.
Thanks, Max!
Anytime.
I walked up a couple more aisles to find the spices. I tried to find the names on the bottles that matched the ones on the list, finding it surprisingly difficult. How did Iggy keep track of all this stuff? Just then Nudge appeared, turning onto my aisle.
"Hey," I greeted.
"Yeah, hey," she replied. "Oh my God, it's really hard to find this stuff! I mean it's scattered, like, everywhere! Whoever was doing the layout of this place had some serious problems."
"Yeah. Where are you on the list?" I asked. She pointed to a spot over halfway down. I frowned. I was only about a third of the way done with mine. "Speed shopper," I muttered, and I picked up my pace.
From there I zipped around the store, grabbing my food as fast as I could. Celery, onions, flour. I threw in a bag of chocolate chips on a whim. Finally I was done. I came around the side of the store, eager to see if I had gotten to our meeting place first. Nobody was there. I smiled to myself. Then I saw Fang coming around the other side of the store with the same gleam of satisfaction in his dark eyes. Then he saw me and we both narrowed our eyes at each other. I looked up at him, away at our meeting place, back at him, and at the same instant, we were both running. I nearly toppled over a startled-looking woman with a shopping cart as I pushed my way forward toward our meeting spot. Dang it, that boy was fast! And he made it there just before I did. I started laughing, out of breath. Fang didn't smile; he just looked pleasantly down at me with a certain gloat about him. I scowled at his nonchalant expression.
Soon Nudge arrived, then Gazzy and Iggy, and lastly Angel sauntered in.
"Everyone got everything?" I asked. Everyone nodded. "Okay, then. Let's buy this stuff and split."
We waited in line for a cash register. We dumped everything onto the conveyor belt and some guy in his 20's who looked like he'd rather be anywhere but here rang us up.
"That'll be ninety-four dollars and seventy-two cents. Do you have a Shaw's Rewards Card?" he asked in a dull monotone.
"No," I answered.
"You can get one free with a purchase of fifty dollars or more and your phone number, and you can save up to fifteen percent on all your groceries." He had obviously made this speech many times.
"Thanks for the offer, but no," I replied sweetly with a forced smile. He shrugged, and I paid with my MaxRide card. I thought I felt someone's eyes on me, but when I spun around, nobody was looking at me. Huh. Guess I imagined it.
I signed the receipt and we all grabbed some bags and left. We walked around to the back of the store and took off into the sky.
There really isn't anything quite like flying, and there really isn't any way to describe it. When you're flying you move through three dimensions, as opposed to walking where you're stuck on a two-dimensional plane. Gravity, your enemy on the ground, can be used to your advantage when flying. Plus, flying, simply put, is just plain cool. You have so much more space to work with, and the wind on your face and arms is like sticking your head out of a car window going really fast, but a lot better and quieter. Everything is so...tranquil when you're flying. We're avian enough to be able to do it, and human enough to be able to appreciate it. A good combo.
Except, of course, for all the bad things that come with it. Like Erasers and Flyboys chasing you day and night intent on your death. Or crazed, evil scientists who want you as specimens to stick you in dog crates and dissect you to see what they would find. Or huge corporations who hunt you down so they can take over the world and kill half the people in it. Or a man who at first appears to be your enemy, then frees you and you realize he's your friend, then disappears for a few years and you think he's dead, then shows up and turns out to be a complete traitor and an enemy after all, then tells you to blindly trust him and that you have to save the world, then turns out to be your dad...Yeah. Stuff like that.
I spotted our campsite down on the ground in the middle of the woods, and we all headed down towards it. We had set up six sleeping bags on the ground and a small campfire beside them. We cleared the brush away and Iggy lit the fire and started cooking. Gazzy was having an animated discussion with him about God knows what. I would probably be better off not in the know.
Meanwhile, Nudge got a game of Slapjack going. She, Angel, Fang, and I played. It was comforting to feel the warmth of everyone's hand, to know that they were safe and comfortable and having fun. In the end it was just me and Fang. After a long time of back-and-forth throwing cards onto the pile, I won. Nudge and Angel high-fived me. I grinned at Fang.
"That's for the cookie supermarket race," I told him, who rolled his eyes and stared at me with an amused expression. I got up, brushed the dirt off my jeans, and walked over toward Iggy, Gazzy, and dinner, which was almost ready.
Suddenly I realized that I was very thirsty, so I grabbed a water bottle and sat down in front of the fire, gazing into its crackling orange flames for a while. At some point I felt Fang come sit beside me. It was a strange sensation; I somehow managed to stiffen and relax at the same time. It created a feeling of elevation and acceleration.
"How long do you think?" he murmured.
"I don't know. A week at most. It depends on how soon they find us," I answered, not looking away from the dancing flames.
"It's too bad," he sighed.
"Yeah, it's beautiful here, isn't it? We can go somewhere else nice, though. The beach or something. France," I snorted.
"Cute shoes," he teased, pretending to think it over. I rolled my eyes.
"But this is..." I trailed off, not knowing how to articulate what we both knew I meant. It was beautiful here. The huge trees created a canopy high above us with bright white sunlight just filtering in between the cracks of the leaves, creating lines of light on the green blanket above us. And the trees themselves were...spectacular. The trunks were so wide that you could practically live inside one if it was hollowed out. And the contrast of the soft brown, the deep green, and the bright white was very comfortable and soft.
"Yeah," he agreed.
"Dinner's ready!" Iggy called out. I scrambled up, hungry, and got in line for food. It was, as usual, really good. We ate mostly in silence, except for a comment or two about this forest, the food, or our many tasks.
"Smores," Angel reminded me.
"Right," I remembered. "Smores. Everybody find a stick"
Everyone scuttled around, looking for the perfect stick. There was quiet laughter and conversation as we looked around. I found one that was pretty straight, a good width, and a good length after I broke the top off.
I stabbed a marshmallow with my stick and held it over the fire, turning it slowly until it turned golden-brown. Angel, Iggy, and Fang did the same, while Gazzy and Nudge just stuck theirs right into the fire until it was black and charred.
"How can you eat it like that?" I asked them.
"It's good. It's easy, it's quick, it's simple, and it's good," Gazzy replied. I sighed and reached for two graham crackers and a piece of chocolate.
"Mmmm," I sighed as I bit down into the smore. It tasted like Heaven. "Thanks Angel."
Angel smiled at me, well, angelically in response. I made a few more smores and then went to start getting ready to go to sleep.
"Ahem," Fang said, stepping in front of me and glaring at me with mock outrage. I stared back blankly. "Aren't you forgetting something?" he asked impatiently. It took me a second.
"Oh, right." I walked over to the food storage area and reached for the much-fought-over bag of my mom's homemade chocolate chip cookies. We were running dangerously low. I picked one out and handed it to him.
"Mmmm, this is so good," he teased me. I rolled my eyes and pushed him out of the way, stalking past him and back to the sleeping bags. Angel was looking at me curiously, but I ignored her.
"I don't know about you, but I'm about ready for bed," I told Nudge, Gazzy, and Iggy, who were still sitting on their sleeping bags. With grunts and complaints everyone started fishing for their pajamas in the big bag of clothes. I changed behind a tree and slipped into my sleeping bag. I jumped a little at the unexpected sound of Fang right behind me.
"I'll take first watch," he offered softly.
"Would you quit doing that?!" I asked him exasperatedly.
"Doing what?"
I groaned and rolled over. "Okay. Wake me up when you're done."
"'Kay." He plunked down on the sleeping bag beside mine. I could hear him breathing softly. Again, I had that weird feeling of elevation. It felt like my chest was being squished in from all sides. I rolled over again and took a deep breath, but the squishing sensation didn't go away. I had no idea what it was – frankly, I didn't even care – but it sure was annoying. And verging on uncomfortable. I sighed again.
Suddenly, I forgot how to go to sleep. It wasn't that I couldn't fall asleep; it was that I had forgotten how to altogether. I couldn't remember what position to get in, what to think about, how to breathe right for it. It was kind of unnerving. What was happening to me?
So instead I settled for staring up at the stars. They were so bright here, and there were so many of them. So many more than you could see in a city. It was like someone had spilled salt all over a black tablecloth. I started looking for shapes in the stars. I found geometric shapes: a perfect circle, a perfect triangle, a very straight line; and I also found figures: a pencil writing on a piece of paper, a face, a pair of sunglasses, a car, a giraffe. But when one group of stars became a half-dog-half-person, I closed my eyes and attempted sleep again. Without success.
I don't know how long I lay there, not thinking about anything in particular. It got pretty boring, and I never relaxed. I should really have been taking the watch; I wouldn't have had to put any extra effort into the staying awake part of it.
It felt like I had laid there for an eternity. I had no idea what time it was when I heard a small rustle of movement beside me and soft padding footsteps on the ground. I was confused. At first I thought Fang was done with his watch, but then why was he running in the opposite direction?
I silently slipped out of my sleeping bag and got up. I heard the faint beating of wings against air. Confused, I started to run and followed him up into the sky.
Flying is amazing at any time. But there really is something to be said for flying in the middle of the night. Everything is so dark and still and silent. It's like time has frozen in a calm serenity of darkness and with only you streaking across the sky, nobody watching you or even knowing that you're there. It's one of the best ways I've found to center yourself, completely alone. I reveled in the solitude. It wasn't that I didn't like being with the flock, but sometimes I just needed to escape. To feel completely alone and be myself at its truest form, without the mask of bravery and leadership I always had on in front of the little ones.
It made me feel so alone that I forgot that I wasn't actually alone.
I was so busy thinking about the many wonders of night flying that I forgot I was following Fang.
I tried to be as quiet as possible, soaring rather than flapping. I flew almost noiselessly, whereas Fang wasn't bothering to be especially silent. Not that he wasn't already. To anyone on the ground, we were two large birds streaking across the sky, one at the other's tail. Figuratively, of course.
Again, I became so engrossed in my own thoughts that I didn't notice when the small whooshing noise in front of me stopped. As soon as I heard it – or didn't hear it, rather – I whirled around and started backtracking.
I stopped when I heard a rustle of leaves coming from one of the trees, and I peeked through the leaves to make out the dark figure of Fang sitting on one of the branches. His legs were dangling off the edge, with his elbows on his thighs and his head in his hands. He raised his head so that his hands were now below his closed eyes. He had removed the façade of indifference, his emotions of pain and confusion very apparent on his face.
He looked so...human. I wanted nothing more than to wrap my arms around him and comfort him.
So, instead, I just hovered there for I don't know how long, staring at this other side of Fang I had never seen before. I felt almost guilty for intruding on a personal moment like this. Almost. But my shock and curiosity were much stronger than any traces of guilt I had.
"It's a good thing a swarm of Flyboys didn't just sneak up on us," I calmly called out in a normal voice.
He could hear me well enough, and his head shot up like he'd been electrocuted, some shock of his own clear in his eyes.
"Neglecting guard duty much?" I asked, then flew over to sit next to him.
He just kept gaping at me like I was the first person he'd seen after being stuck on a desert island for ten years.
"What? Snap out of it. I'm still Max. Do you need me to give you the code or anything?" I asked, in case he thought I was another clone or something.
"Why are you here?" he finally managed. It was too dark to be sure, but I thought I saw a bit of red coloring his cheeks.
"Just coming to see why you chose to endanger us all by taking off into the night when you thought we were all asleep."
"Oh." That word seemed to hang in the air for a moment.
"Fang, what's wrong?" I finally asked, unable to contain my curiosity.
He didn't respond. He just stared at me with an unreadable expression on his face for what seemed like ages, then looked down again. I'm sure my face held a look of only curiosity and concern.
"You can tell me." He just sighed in response.
"It was nothing. I was just...taking a breather. It was nothing."
I glared at him, and he understood my unspoken message that his excuse didn't cut it.
"I had to do some thinking."
"And you can only think in a tree in the middle of the night."
"Well..." Fang said, shifting uncomfortably. I waited patiently until it became clear that he was not planning on expanding on that thought.
"Fang," I began again, all hints of sarcasm gone from my voice. "You okay? You looked upset." I put my hand on his arm where he was leaning back on it. He closed his eyes.
"Yeah," he sighed. "I am now."
We sat there for a long moment, each of us lost in our own thoughts.
"Do you want to tell me what was bothering you?" I asked slowly.
"No." No hesitation there.
"Will you tell me?" A pause.
"No."
"Fang." I put on my best stern-adult-whose-commands-you-don't-question voice, which had never worked on him in the past.
"What?" he asked innocently. I rolled my eyes, though he probably couldn't see it.
"Tell me," I commanded.
"Max," he breathed. I was overcome with the absurd-yet-burning desire to hug him again. To touch him. To comfort him, whatever his problem was. "There's so much I'd love to tell you. But I can't."
"Why?" I was genuinely confused now.
"Max, I've tried to tell you before. And you just run away. And I can't...I can't stand it if that happens again."
Oh no. This wasn't going to be another mushy-gushy, heart-to-heart, rainbows-and-flowers discussion, was it? Ugh.
Just go with the flow, Max the Voice told me. Not Angel. The Voice. The unidentified voice in my head that sounded exactly like my dad, Jeb, but wasn't. I can't deny the fact that it's been helpful at times, but in situations like this, it was most certainly not.
"Oh." The word seemed inadequate, but it was all I could think of.
Fang breathed in deeply, then released it shakily. His hands were in fists, his knuckles white, his nails digging into his skin.
"Fang, you know why." He didn't answer me. "You know why, right?"
"I think that's pretty obvious," he replied bitterly.
"Good, because for a minute there I thought you thought I didn't like it." I watched him carefully, gauging his reaction.
His head whipped up, his eyes wide. His knuckles became, if possible, even whiter against the bone. He looked stunned...and utterly bewildered. My heart rate went into double time.
"Then...why?" he asked, his voice barely more than a whisper.
"Well, firstly," I began, horrified at the wetness that was beginning to pool in my eyes. I tried to keep the tears out of my voice. "I'm pretty sure we don't feel the same way. About each other." I took a deep breath.
"Wait-" Fang interrupted, but I cut him off.
"Second, think about what it would do to the flock. We can make this work because we all value each other equally. But what would happen if we all start picking favorites? If some people have more friends and some people are outsiders? How will we be able to stay a flock if they know we feel like this about each other?"
The tears were really coming now. And much to my dismay, I think they leaked into my voice. Fang's hand came up on my back, and my stomach did the weird squishing thing again.
"Angel?" Fang pointed out. I ignored him.
"And also, we're on a mission. We're supposed to be saving the world. And if my life begins to get swayed by personal desire, so will the whole saving-the-world thing. And that would be bad," I finished, gulping.
"Well as for the second thing, there's Angel, so that's out the window. And your logic on your third point is tragically flawed. It would only, if anything, increase your desire to save the world. So we can keep living in it." He smiled at me, and suddenly everything seemed a lot brighter.
"What about the first one?" I countered. He frowned.
"Well, even if you don't feel as strongly as I do, maybe we could still-"
"Fang, you idiot!" I cried out, exasperated. I shook my head, disbelieving. Did he forget everything? "Yes, you've kissed me. That doesn't mean anything. Obviously, you have some feelings for me, yes. But just for what I am on the outside."
"Uhh, I hate to break this to you, Max, but we're kind of mutant bird freaks who are on the run and haven't showered or cleaned up our outsides in days and who stink to high Heaven right now." I glowered at him, but otherwise ignored that comment.
"You say you want to be with me, but every time any other pretty girl comes, you're either off kissing her, or flirting with her, or who know what else. Remember Lissa? Brigid? You just want to be in a relationship. You don't care who it is." My voice had gotten loud by the end; I was angry now, and I was still crying.
"Brigid? What does Brigid have to do with anything?" he asked, confused and angry as well.
I just raised my eyebrows.
"And I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that comment about not caring who I'm in a relationship with, because that's just so blatantly false. But Max, Lissa was just...I don't know. I honestly can't remember why I thought that was a good idea at the time. And I guess I was kind of curious what your reaction would be when you found out. If I'm being perfectly honest. But do you remember Sam? And I mean, I've seen the way you act around anyone of the opposite gender within five years of you."
My mouth dropped open at this. I was too shocked by this to even put together a good response.
"What on Earth..." I began, but didn't even know how to continue. Where to begin? "Fang, how can you even say that? I've told you I love you! What have you done? Kissed me as well as at least one other girl and flirted with all the rest!"
I was very mad by now; all the calm and peacefulness of the night before had vanished. Fang looked taken off-guard.
"But you were on Valium! You said that was the Valium talking, not you!" he protested.
"Oh, and did you really expect me to own up to something like that?" I asked condescendingly.
"So...you meant it, then?" he asked, more subdued. I was not.
"No, my subconscious has no freaking idea what it's talking about! I mean, seriously, did you really think it was making that stuff up?"
"You love me?" he asked incredulously.
"No freaking duh!" His lack of energy in our argument just made me angrier; I wasn't done yelling at him, and he was making me feel guilty about it now. Darn Fang and his annoying calmness.
"You love me," he said slowly.
"I thought we'd already established that," I mumbled, looking away. I began to realize what I'd just admitted to, and I felt the inevitable red begin to paint my cheeks.
I could feel Fang's eyes on me, staring. Out of the corner of my eye I could make out a few emotions. Shock, confusion, something else I didn't recognize...
"And so we've come full loop," I announced glumly. Not only had I just made my life a few shades darker by turning Fang down and had a fight with him, but I had also told him I loved him. I really hadn't meant to do that.
"I didn't know...I thought...if I'd have known this, then I would've told you much earlier. I..." He clearly hadn't been listening to me. I sighed.
"What is it, Fang?" I asked, trying to hide my chagrin with annoyance.
"I just...wasn't expecting that."
"I'm sorry," I mumbled. Fang jumped in his seat.
"Don't apologize! What are you apologizing for?"
"You know what. I mean, I didn't mean to...say that. I mean, I thought you knew. I know you don't...feel the same, and that's completely fine." Not. "I was just trying to say that-"
"Max! No! What do you mean? I don't pretend to have any idea what you're talking about or where you're getting it from. I love you. I love everything about you. And I have no idea how you could think for a minute that I don't."
My face slowly lifted as he spoke, a brilliant smile illuminating my face. My breathing came quicker and the stomach-squishing feeling relapsed stronger than ever. I was allowing myself to believe him, which was not a good thing. But at the moment, I really couldn't care less.
As soon as he saw my reaction, he matched my smile with a blinding one of his own. It wasn't fair that someone's smile should be that beautiful, should have that effect on me. It was like light poured from every inch of him, warming me all the way through. His dark eyes were warmer than I'd ever seen them, warmer than I'd ever seen anything. I was being sucked into them, drifting in them for miles and miles. I floated there, blissfully happy.
I leaned forward and wrapped my arms around him, holding him tight against me. I clung to him fiercely, and he held me back just as strongly, but somehow still tender. I never wanted to let go. I didn't care about anything else. I just wanted to stay there forever. I was truly losing it.
He pulled back and stared into my eyes, and I knew what was coming, we both leaned forward a bit, and our lips met in the middle. At first it was soft, but then the next thing I knew, my hands were in his hair, pulling him closer. Our lips moved together in patterns that I knew I had never felt before but still felt somehow familiar. One of his hands was at the small of my back, one in my hair.
He broke the kiss for some air, and then his lips crushed mine again. I fell back on the branch, lying down almost, and Fang was leaning over me, his eyes hungry and full of passion. Suddenly, all the urgency was gone. For both of us. The kiss became much softer and sweeter. There was still passion, but in a more subdued way.
I pulled away and looked into his eyes for any sign of discomfort. I found nothing but happiness and eagerness. His black hair fell over his forehead, hiding one of his eyes. He was breathing hard, and he was smiling the smile that could light up a whole forest in the middle of the night. Or this one, at least.
I bit my lip and laughed a little, still disbelieving. I had waited so long to hear those words from Fang, and now that I had, everything was going by so fast. It felt like a movie. This is what happiness was. Everything was shimmering; everything had a glow to it.
The whole world was shimmering.
Everything was perfect.
"You never told me, though - why did you come here? In the middle of your watch?" I was still curious. I wasn't angry as perhaps I should have been. No, I was far too happy to be angry. He sure did pick a good time to break the rules and endanger everyone's life.
"To think. I was watching you lying there and I was trying to think of how to approach the subject without you running away from me again. But I couldn't think with you there, throughout the day and then even when you were asleep. Everything was muddled. So I came here. And I thought about you, and how I should tell you, and if I should tell you, and basically I just wanted to make sense of everything I had bottled up inside me."
I appraised him for a moment before responding to him.
"You're talking a lot tonight." He laughed, and the shimmers in the air grew more pronounced.
"You bring that out in me. I feel like I can truly be myself around you," he murmured.
"I know what you mean." It was exactly the same way I felt around him. And I was finally able to accept the fact that I was in love with him without embarrassment or a need to suppress it.
"Maximum Ride," he said, light shining from his smile, "you sure are one amazing girl."