Disclaimer: Not mine. JP's.

This is just a one-shot I've been thinking of for a while. I was reading part of School's Out Forever and began to wonder where Angel came out in everything. I started thinking about what it must be like for her - always knowing things about everyone but keeping them inside. I started thinking about how much harder her life must be than the others in the Flock, in certain ways. The idea formed itself into a one-shot after a while, and I finally had to sit down and write it.

So here it is, Angel's POV.

Please read and review! Thanks!!

-Max

Confessions of a Six-Year-Old Mind Reader

No one ever said life was easy.

And I should know. I'm living proof.

My name's Angel. That's it. Just Angel. I'm six years old, and for as much of those six years as I can remember, I've been either kept at the most horrible, horrible place called the School, where a bunch of sickos who call themselves scientist do all these cruel tests on me, observe me and keep me locked dog crates.

Oh yeah, and I have wings. It's funny how I always forget to mention the most important things at the beginning.

Basically, the whitecoats (that's what me and my family call the scientists) somehow made me two percent bird when I was a baby. I don't think it's even occurred to them that I'm a person. It's like we're animals in a zoo or something. A zoo with cages half the size of the animals, where the animals are starved, operated on, and tested in a lot of other painful ways. I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to remember. Not now, anyway.

Instead I'll talk about my family. Well, that's how I think of them. I guess technically they're not. But they really are. They're my family, just not my relatives. There's a difference.

They were all at the School too. That's how we all know each other. They also have wings, and everything. We escaped together. We stick together. No matter what. Like a real flock – that's what we call ourselves. The Flock. It's been like that as long as I can remember. I don't know who came up with the term.

Max is my mom. Not technically. She's fourteen, the oldest. She's everything that's not in my real mom – my mother, I guess. But I'm getting ahead of myself. I'll get to that part later.

Fang is fourteen too. The dad figure, I guess. Not exactly the warm and squishy kind, anyway. Not on the outside, anyway.

Oh, that's the other thing I forgot to mention. I can read minds. I'll tell you about that after I finish telling you about my family.

Iggy is really sweet. He's more of a big brother than anything else. Fourteen, again. I feel bad for him, though, because he's blind. He's good at it, and he jokes about it, but I know how he really feels.

Nudge is a big sister to me. She's eleven. She likes to talk a lot, which is fine with me. It doesn't really make that big of a difference, hearing things out loud or in people's heads. I'm used to it. She's really nice, a great friend, though.

And Gazzy is my real brother. As in, blood related. Same parents. We're the only ones of the flock like that. We have that special connection. He can be funny, sometimes. He understands me in a way the rest of the Flock can't, though, and I understand him the same way.

That is – our parents sold us.

I'll give you the abridged version.

When I was really little, a whitecoat called Jeb Batchelder helped us escape. He lived with us in this really cool, remote house until I was four. Then he left. Gone. Without a word. Everyone was really upset, but we managed. Two years later, Erasers came and kidnapped me.

Erasers are another... invention of the School. They're human–wolf combinations. Really bad. They work for the School, and they took me there when they kidnapped me.

They did a lot of bad stuff to me there, but I was able to learn a little about our backgrounds. One whitecoat that was taking me into a room to be tested on was looking at our records and thinking about it around me. And I found out that my parents sold Gazzy and me to the School for money. Just handed us over.

That's why Max is my mom. She cares about me, loves me. She would never, never, never do a thing like that. She thinks of herself as my mom, too. And she takes care of me like a mom would take care of her daughter.

And I've spent some time thinking, and I've realized that I'm okay with it all. I could never leave Max and the Flock, even if my mom was the greatest mom ever. I don't need a mom, when I have Max.

It's been harder for Gazzy.

He was so intent on finding our parents. He loves the Flock too, but I don't think he ever really thought it out. He always dreamed of having someone to always have a snack ready for him after he came home from school, someone older who would take care of him and love him without having to worry about being kidnapped or killed every time he went to bed.

He's slowly accepting it, though, I think. I can't be sure.

You see, my mind reading doesn't work the way everyone thinks it does. It's not as easy as taking one look at someone and knowing exactly what they're planning to do next Saturday. Or, as is more useful for us, whether they want to kill us or just want to chat.

I hear words. That's how my mind reading works. I only get part of what people are thinking, because people don't only think in words. A lot of the time people aren't thinking words at all.

Usually, people think in images, what they're seeing. They also think what they smell, or feel, whether it's feeling emotions or feeling a piece of paper in their hands. And a lot of the time, people don't have to actually think the words to know what they're thinking about. I don't get those kinds of thoughts.

I can also hear in someone's mind the words someone is saying. So, if someone's listening to music, or having a conversation with another person on the phone, I can listen to the music or hear both sides of the conversation.

And when people do think in words, it's rarely ever a coherent sentence. It's often a string of words that makes sense to the person thinking it. I have to try to piece it all together, though.

People don't seem to get it, though.

It puts a lot of pressure on me. Everyone expects me to have all the answers, because I'm around people who do. But it doesn't always work like that. And it makes me feel bad, makes me feel like I'm letting everyone down. Like I'm always putting them in danger.

And it all makes me want to curl up into a ball and close my eyes and forget it all. Makes me want to never have to see any of it ever again. Makes me want to give up.

But I know that I can't.

I can help them, so I have to stay strong, like Max. I wish I could be like her. Strong, brave, determined. I hope I'm like her when I grow up. I just feel so weak sometimes, and I can't admit it to anyone.

There's a lot of things they don't know about me. Things they don't know that I know.

I think they forget that I can read minds sometimes.

I know a lot of things. But I'd never tell them.

Like, I knew about Jeb. I knew he was going to rescue us from the School long before he did. The plans were already forming in his mind. And as soon as he got us out of there, I knew he was going to leave us someday. When he did, I was upset that he was gone, but I knew that he wasn't dead. I knew that he'd gone back to the School. And I knew that also knew that he'd come back some time, and that he wasn't bad. Max still isn't convinced, but I've already seen it all. I've seen his thoughts, I know.

I knew that Max was supposed to save the world.

That was all before he figured out how to shut his mind down, though. He figured out how to block me, and was perfecting it a little while before he left. When I saw him again for the first time in two years, he'd got it down. It was too late though. I already knew.

That's not all I know, though.

I know about Max and Fang.

I know how Max feels about Fang. I know how Fang feels about Max. And it's so, so frustrating to see them how they are. I don't need to be able to read emotions to know how they feel. And they just aren't willing to accept it.

I know about the time in the cave, and the time on the dock. They were both thinking about it a lot. More articulately in their thoughts than usual.

I also know that Max told Fang she loved him. And how Fang felt about that.

I don't know what to do with Fang. Everyone who meets him immediately categorizes him as Mr. Dark, Emotionless, and Silent. Which he tries really, really hard to be on the outside.

But on the inside he's hurting. Torn. Confused.

He knows he loves Max. He thinks Max has made it clear that she doesn't feel the same way. He feels like me sometimes – like he wants to give up. But he never shows it. He always forces himself to stay strong. To ignore the rush of anger when he sees Max smiling at some other guy too brightly. To ignore the pang of happiness and love he feels every time he sees Max smile at him, or the way she looks at the rest of the Flock when she's being really comforting and motherly. He tries to be her rock, but he doesn't understand that she wants so badly to see some of the emotion that he keeps hidden.

But I wouldn't dare tell either of them this.

Max always tells me not to read other people's thoughts. And I try really, really hard not to.

But it's kind of like being paralyzed with your eyes somehow stuck open, with a person standing right in front of you, telling you not to look at them.

I try not to listen, but I still hear.

I know that Iggy feels useless because he's blind, and that he's bringing us all down, holding us back. How out-of-the-loop he feels all the time. Like he doesn't fit in with the fourteen-year-olds and like his best friend is just a little over half his age. How lost he feels.

I know that Nudge feels like we don't want to be around her because she talks too much. How she wishes she could be certain that she's wanted with us.

I know that Gazzy feels like he's a burden. How he feels like a bad combination – young enough to be trouble, and not having a talent that's really useful to the Flock when we're in a sticky situation. Which was part of the reason he wanted a permanent home.

I know that Max and Fang sometimes think I'm scary because of my abilities.

I know that Ella likes Iggy.

I know that Iggy's always thought of himself as Max's brother, and that the idea grew on him when he met Ella.

I knew that Ari loved Max. As more than a sister. That is, before he found out she was his sister. That knowledge didn't completely stop his feelings for her, though.

The worst part of it all is seeing how a lot of the time, everyone wants the same thing, but they're too stubborn and afraid to get it. How people refuse to accept what they know is true.

I'd never tell them any of this, though. Least of all Max. She'd think I was weak or bad. I don't want her to think of me like that. I want to be her little girl. I don't even want to know all the stuff I do. But I don't really have a choice. I can't help knowing.

I just try to ignore it. I try to let it all wash over me. I try not to let it bother me.

It's hard sometimes, though.

Sometimes it's all too much. Sometimes I don't know how to get up and face the next day. I don't know how, but I do. I go to sleep at night. Sometimes, anyway. And I get up and live another day.

Life can be painful.

Life can also be beautiful.

I guess it's that beauty that gets me through. The knowledge that that beauty exists. That it will be there tomorrow, if I look hard enough.

The beauty of friendship. Of love. Of warmth. The beauty of the feeling I get when I sit over a makeshift stove in the middle of the woods, joking and laughing with my family. The comfort I feel when I curl up in Max's lap with Total on one side of me and Celeste wrapped securely under my arm. The happiness and relief and satisfaction we all radiate after escaping the School intact. And the knowledge that humankind is a better place to be because of it. Because of us.

No one ever said life was easy, but sometimes it's that difficulty that makes it worthwhile.