This is my very first story… so please go easy on me! Ha-ha. Hope you all enjoy it!

I don't own Maximum Ride or any of the other characters. You can thank James Patterson for that.

Max POV

I laid in my bed, my eyes still puffy from crying. How many days has it been? I couldn't remember. I felt like my heart had been ripped out of my chest and thrown off the face of the earth. Actually, maybe that would be less painful.

Fang was gone. Gone! Out of my life. Probably for forever. His letter said we could meet again in twenty years or so. Could I wait that long? Twenty years seemed like ten thousand lifetimes compared to the six-- possibly seven now-- months we'd been through.

"Max?" said an all too familiar voice, belonging to the last person I wanted to see at the moment. "Max? Can we talk?"

I looked up at Jeb. He seemed sincere, but he was the person who told me to never trust anybody. Not trusting people saved our butts a lot in the past. I should have gave him the dirtiest look I could manage. But no. I was too depressed to care if he wasn't trustworthy.

Even though I didn't have the energy to put on a dirty look, I did have the energy to sit up. Jeb walked over and sat next to me on my bed.

"Max, it's been two weeks now." That's how long it's been? Wow. It seemed like much longer. "The flock is worried about you. Your mother is worried about you. You can't even imagine. You're still the leader of this flock. Start leading. If you keep this up, Angel's going to become the new leader, and you wouldn't even know it."

Angel had been wanting the position for a while now. When she kicked me out and took over not too long ago, well, it was disastrous. Let's leave it at that. Honestly, I had almost forgotten about the flock. Almost. They were all I had left. Jeb was right (you can't imagine how little times I even thought that in the past six months). I needed to start taking action. I couldn't repeat my mistakes. The flock needed me.

I nodded at Jeb, then got up to get dressed in clothes that were actually clean. No, I didn't bother to speak to Jeb, thank you very much. That's just how stubborn I am.

I got dressed in one of my old tank tops, my jeans, and a white sweatshirt after Jeb left the room. After one look in the mirror, I could tell why everyone was so worried about me. I was a mess. I attempted to brush my knotty hair, then gave up and pulled it into a ponytail. After brushing my teeth and washing my face, I looked somewhat decent.

Not many of you might know this, but if you happen to sleep in your bed for two weeks straight, you end up with a lot of extra energy.

In the living room were Angel and Nudge, playing something on the computer, the Gasman, sitting on the couch with Iggy's ipod, Dylan, reading a magazine on the armchair, and Total, doing who knows what? I peeked over to see my mom and Iggy cooking something in the kitchen that smelled great.

"Hey! Look who decided to wake up. Morning sunshine," Total said. Yes, Total was a dog. Yes, he could speak. Buy you know what? He could fly too! And he really knows when to put his two cents in.

"Max! Hi, how are you feeling?" Nudge asked, looking over her shoulder. I could tell that she was being really careful with what she said because she almost never spoke a sentence that short.

"I'm feeling… fine," I uttered. How was I feeling? I wasn't going to say excellent, or absolutely miserable. I could say, "I'm feeling hunky-dory" but I didn't want to be sarcastic, or mean. I crossed the carpet and sat down next to Gazzy. He looked at me suspiciously. I gave him my most convincing smile, and he relaxed a bit.

"Glad you're feeling better, because Dr. Martinez and I made lunch," Iggy said, coming into the kitchen with a steaming plate of… tacos? Yes, he and my mother made tacos. Yum.

"Lunch?" I asked, looking for the wall clock, "What time is it?"

"Almost four thirty. You slept like a rock all morning. And yesterday too. And the day before that, and--"

"Okay, I get it." I said, taking a soft taco from the top of the platter. There had to be over two dozen tacos on the plate! I almost felt bad, realizing that my mom and Jeb might actually not get more than one taco because A: the flock eats like they have nine stomachs each, and B: I felt like I had nineteen empty stomachs. The taco was delicious! Leave it to Iggy and my mom to make the best damn Mexican food on the planet.

I was up to my third taco when Jeb dropped the bomb.

"So, now that Max is back with us, I was thinking that you guys should go to school. For real this time." I nearly coughed up my taco. If I had a nickel for every time someone wanted us to enroll in school…

"Oh, that would be so great! Can we do it Max, please? I know how much you hate school, but it would be so much better than the home-schooling you tried to make us do. I mean, no offense. It was an okay idea, but it pretty much went downhill from day one. Don't you remember how great school was back in Virginia? Well, besides the whole crazy teachers trying to catch us thing, and the Anne thing, and the whole relationship issue this… But this could be different! As long as we don't have to wear any stupid uniforms again, and--"

"Nudge! Please! Let me think," I said, trying my best to sound like I wasn't about to say no. Actually, I wasn't. I was really considering it. Nothing was really holding us back. I was about to look up to Fang, when I realized that he wasn't even there. No Fang. No right hand man I could look to when I needed another opinion. I could have asked Dylan… ha-ha, yeah right! I could have asked Iggy, but we didn't have the connection, the bond that Fang and I shared. Maybe school would take my mind off of him-- off of everything. School had never worked out for us before. Then again, nothing really had worked out for us period. What the hell. It would make the others happy. I saw happiness glow in Angel, who was obviously reading my mind, but clearly didn't want to spoil the surprise for the others.

"Yeah," I said finally. "What would it hurt if we gave school one more shot?" I could think of a lot of things at that moment.

I was overwhelmed by a roar of cheers, especially from Nudge.

"Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you!" Nudge said, squeezing me until I couldn't breathe. It warmed my heart to see the five ecstatic faces from the flock, and the one utterly surprised expression from Jeb. I shrugged with one shoulder at him. He obviously wasn't expecting that answer from me. I bet he even planned out an entire argument in his head.

"Okay, Jeb. What school did you have in mind?" This was the dreaded question I was afraid to ask.

Jeb hesitated for a moment. As if he was carefully choosing his words. "The Day and Night School. In Utah. You know the one."

I had known it. We were suppose to go there a while back, but ended up not. I was too focused on finding my mom who was, at the time, kidnapped by the evil Mr. Chu, and kept in an underwater layer. We had to go through a whole military training coarse just to get on a special submarine to rescue her. Yeah, like we could have fit school into that schedule.

I agreed to school without argue. Okay, with little argue. All I'm saying is that we should be allowed to fly during recess!

The next Monday morning, we headed off to school with all new supplies, backpacks, clothes, and no uniforms. We boarded the privet jet that would take us to Utah. It was no different than any other privet jet we've been on. Not that we've been on many. The ride wasn't that long. We arrived in no time. The Day and Night school looked exactly the same. Dusty pastel colors to make the outside walls blend in with the endless surrounded desert. Ms. Hamilton, my mom's old college classmate, waiting at the door with a clipboard in hand. I almost got a sense of déjà vu with everything the same. It should have been almost normal, going back to school.

But of coarse, nothing was as expected with us. Everything pretty much went downhill as we walked through the front doors.