Summary:
When Fang and Iggy have a bet over who they can get the goods from first: the new transfer student Maximum Ride or the hopeless romantic Nudge, what happens? And what are they gonna do when Lissa and Ella, the rulers of the school, start getting interested? Who will win, if any? Or will this bet come crashing down in their faces? High School AU. No Wings
The Bet
Senior Year, first semester
"No way man. Not even" came Iggy's voice walking up to the side of Fang. "The day you get a girlfriend is the day pigs fly." Iggy said while laughing. Fang was single all through high school even though some girls had asked him out; he rejected them. He was waiting for 'the one' and he had been setting his sights on the new girl. Ah, yes Maximum Ride, the new student at Skye High School that anyone who's everyone has been talking about. News travels fast in the small school of an even smaller town of Forks, Washington. Not only is she beautiful, she's smart and doesn't follow the crowd.
Lissa the so-called queen of this school intuitively knows Max is a strong person and intends to "befriend" her. Unfortunately, when Lissa thinks of befriending someone, she means making them bow down and staying out of her way. Max, of course, would never do that. So already on her first day at school she had made an enemy.
"Shut up," Fang quickly replied. "It's not like you could even get a girl. I mean who would wanna date" he used his arms to motion all over Iggy's body and then stopped at his face "that."
"I'm sure everyone wants a piece of the Igmiester." Iggy put his hands on his hips to add the dramatic effect. "They're either blind, or just don't know it yet. You know I'm prettyful."
"Guys!" Gazzy came running up to the duo so fast when Fang suddenly stopped, he ran smack right into his back and fell backward. "What the hell Fang?" Gazzy asked as he stood up and brushed the invisible dirt off his clothes. "Who just randomly stops in the middle–" He too now saw what was the cause of Fang's sudden halt. "Whoa." Just across the hall Maximum Ride had yet again ignored Lissa efforts at befriended her and walked right past her like she was nothing. "She's totally gonna pay for that later. But anyways, have you guys seen Sam?"
"No, why?" Fang simply responded.
"I heard he was trying to get with my sister, and I just wanted to talk to him." Gazzy really over-emphasized the word 'talk' but the guys got the point.
"Angel?" Iggy dumbly asked.
"Obviously." Gazzy said making a 'duh' face that was pointless since Iggy couldn't see it. "What other sister do I have?"
"Whatever." Iggy nonchalantly replied. "Fang we're gonna be late. Not that I care, but all the good seats will get taken."
Ding. Ding. Ding.
"Oh f–" Fang started, then remembered where he was and that a teacher might hear him. "Damn it" he whispered. "We're late." Fang quickly took Iggy and went to their first class hoping they would make it in time before their science teacher Mr. Moore noticed and locked them out of the class.
Monique or Nudge as everyone calls her, was having the absolute worst day of her life. More like worst month. Last week she was just told that her parents are divorcing and she has to choose who she wants to live with. Her boy– ex-boyfriend of two years recently broke up with her through a text message over a rumor he heard that she was pregnant and a cheating whore. To top it all of she was late on the first day of school. Her first period was the strictest teacher in the school, maybe even the whole city, was Mr. Moore. Ever since she decided she didn't want to hang out with Lissa as much anymore, bad things have been happening to her. But, Lissa was her friend. She couldn't be behind all of this.
"Shit, shit, shit," Nudge whispered as she sped-walked to her class. Luckily she saw Fang and Iggy and silently thanked whoever was listening that she wasn't the only one late.
"Dang it. Where is this place?" She heard from behind her. She stopped in her tracks to turn around and see someone she thought she'd never see again.
"Max!"
The person in question turned around to see her old friend Nudge walking up to her. "Hey Mo– I mean Nudge" Max greeted. "Good to see you. At least there's someone here I know."
"Good seeing you to but, since when do you go here?" Nudge quizzically asked.
"Since today." Max simply answered. "Well, um, J-Jeb got remarried to this doctor lady and we moved in with her and her daughter. Then h-he, had me transferred here."
"Okay, here." Nudge said and grabbed Max's schedule. "We actually have the same first class together. It's right down the hall. C'mon, we're already late."
"Ah, lovely. I just love students interrupting my class." Mr. Moore greeted Nudge and Max. "Since you four we're not able to simply come to class on time I will be choosing your seats." He ended up assigning Max to sit in the very front next to Iggy and Nudge to sit in the back next to Fang. "Perfect. I expect none of you talking during my lesson. Understood?" They silently nodded, none of them daring to make a sound.
"Okay, class that's the lesson and as a gift to you all from me you will all be having a semester project I'm assigning now." Everyone quietly groaned at the sound of that. "I want a memoir of your favorite historian or important history character or country" said Mr. Moore. "If you pick a country I want a time line from the 1900's 'til now. Choose your groups now – unless you're choosing to work alone – no more than four members – or I'll choose for you." The whole class quickly scurried like roaches into groups of three and fours.
Nudge waved for Max to come hither and as soon as she rose to join her friend an arm grabbed her. "Hey, wait," Iggy said as he too stood up, "why don't you join my group? With Fang and me."
Normally, Max would've punched anyone who grabbed her like that in the face, but since this boy seemed to be blind, which she still wasn't sure she believed, she let it pass. "Sorry. I'm already gonna be with Nudge" she replied.
"Well if it's just you two then maybe we can be a group of four?" he asked.
"Sure, why not" Max said. "Let's go over to their table." Max –sort of– lead Iggy to meet with their friends. She noticed this 'Fang' character give her a little glare, but she wasn't sure as most of his hair was covering his eyes. "Okay, well any ideas for what we could do for the project?"
Nudge way too eagerly said "oh! I know! Why don't we make a movie? We can go shopping for costumes and talk in funny accents and we'll have a whole bunch of ex–" Fang conveniently for the group put his hand on Nudge's mouth to get her to stop talking and calm down.
"Wow." Max said while laughing. "You still haven't changed Nudge."
"You haven't either," she managed to respond after getting Fang's hand off her mouth. The latter and Iggy both had looks of confusion on their faces until Nudge addressed it. "What's with your guy's faces?"
"Wait, so, you two know each other?" Iggy stated finally joining the conversation.
"Well, duh." Nudge responded as if it were the most obvious thing. "We were neighbors and went to school together before she moved away… and now she's back."
Max nodded her head to confirm the truth. "Hey, what happened to–"
"Class. The bell is about to ring. I gave you enough time to discuss the project and I expect you all to have it sorted out." Max got annoyed she was interrupted, but she didn't want to get in trouble with the teacher again, so she shut up. Mr. Moore continued, "Write the name of you and your group members on this paper as you leave."
Ding. Ding. Ding.
"Yeah, we had so much time to discuss our project." Fang said as everyone started grabbing their stuff and heading to their next class. "I don't even think that was five minutes, Jerkface." He didn't know why but he heard Max lightly laugh at either something she saw or what he said. He was hoping the latter. If she thinks he's funny that's just one step closer… "What's your next class?"
"English," Max said. "With Mr. Fox."
"Me too, I'll show you where it is. Later guys."
Second period flew by pretty fast and sooner than expected it was lunch time. Thankfully Skye High School had an open campus lunch allowing the students to leave temporarily. "It's right that way." Fang said pointing towards the parking lot.
"Thanks." Max wondered for a little before she figured out which car was Nudge's, which should have been obvious. The only car in the parking lot with light pink 'sparkles' on the circumference of the vehicle. If it hadn't been for the fact her car was a 2013 Mustang, she would have refused to get in it. Before she got in the passenger seat she happened to notice the bird wings on her dashboard cover. "Other than the obnoxious pink, this is actually a pretty cool car." Max was supposed to be elbowed in the stomach, but since backing out of the parking lot took two hands and most of Nudge's attention, she missed,ending up hitting her elbow against the side of the passenger seat. "I was just kidding Nudge."
Their laughs got lost in the echo of the music turning up. "So, what do you want for lunch? We have to be back for third period at twelve-forty."
"You already know Nudge."
They both started grinning and said in unison "Taco Bell!"
Fifteen minutes and the duo is back at the school. Nudge not wanting to mess her car up made Max wait to eat until they got back. They wasted no time finding to a tree to sit at. "Come on, Nudge. It's not even that high. It'll be just like old times."
"Fine, but if we get yelled at by a teacher, I'm so blaming you." By the time she was done speaking Max was already sitting at a slightly high branch.
"Toss the food up."
"Are you crazy!?" Nudge jokingly inquired.
"I'll catch it!" Nudge tried aiming as perfectly as she could at threw the bag of food towards Max. When Max caught it, Nudge let out the breath she didn't know she was holding. "Come up!" Doing as she was told she made it up to Max's area.
"I'm up, now give me my food." They ate with a comfortable amount of speech that inevitably came from mostly Nudge. According to her, Max needed to know everything that she missed those nine years ago. "So, what happened to you?"
"N-nothing," Max responded a little too quickly. "Nothing happened". She started cough-choking on her food to create a diversion but Nudge saw through it.
"Max. You don't have to tell me if you don't want but I'll always be here for you. You know that right?" Nudge tried to reach over and put her arm over Max's shoulder to try to hug her, but as she scooted over a loud deep voice startled her causing one of their brownie-cakes to drop out of the bag.
"Damn it, Fang!" Nudge shouted relieved it was only his obnoxiously deep voice and not an actual teacher. "You did that on purpose! And Iggy, gimme back our brownie."
"Hmm," Iggy mumbled pretending to contemplate it. "How about a trade?" Hair was in his face but from what Nudge could see he was totally making one of his signature perverted faces.
"You want me to trade you for something you stole from us. Are you serious?"
"Yes, I'm serious." Iggy said in a high pitched female tone that caused Max to guffaw out loud, so she accidentally spit out some of her food.
"No."
"Then" Iggy started, "no deal!"
"Okay, that's it!" Nudge dauntlessly jumped down from the tree– given, they were only sitting about fifteen feet up and as a cheerleader, she's been thrown a little higher than that. Fang smirked slightly, pulled out his phone and set it to record.
Nudge tried to tackle Iggy but he must have somehow heard her coming and sidestepped. She figured any attempt at getting close to him would fail, so she threw rocks in front of him and went around behind him. Perfect. He heard the rocks and started walking backward. There! An opening. Nudge ran up behind him and tripped him. Unfortunately, it worked but backfired. He ended up dropping the brownie and reaching for something to hold on to. That something just happened to be Nudge's shirt. They both ended tumbling down into the grass and accidentally smashing the brownie-cake.
Thanks to gravity, Iggy ended up on top of Nudge; both in a pretty awkward position. "Iggy?"
"Yeah?"
"Get off of me!"
"Oh, right" he said as he started to realize their position. "Wait, are you sure you don't like it because then maybe we could–"
For the first time in forever Nudge had enough of someone else talking and smacked Iggy right off of her. He's lucky I didn't just hit him in the face with a brick she thought to herself.
"Ow!" Iggy yelped as he rolled away. "Was that really necessary Nudge?" He started rubbing his face where her hand had impacted it, trying to soothe the stinging.
"My dessert was destroyed because of you," she said while wiping her clothes off. "Perfect! Now my clothes are all grassy."
"It's not like grass is gonna kill you," Iggy mumbled to himself lucky she was too distracted to catch it.
"Well," Fang interrupted "thank you, you two for that. I'm sure my blog followers will love this video." Iggy didn't really care about it that much. Surprisingly, Nudge let it pass. There were more embarrassing videos of her on his blog. Like the time her freshman year in the cafeteria she laughed so hard milk came out of her nose.
"Why don't I go to your house after school today Nudge?" Max said jumping down from the tree with their bag of trash like it was nothing. "We didn't have much time to talk about it in class"
"Actually, not my place. Uh, my parents are um," she quickly had to come up with a good reason for her not to come over "having a business dinner. Yeah. I'm not even supposed to come home 'til like around eleven." Max nodded her head believing her. "Fang, what about you?"
"What about me?" he replied.
"Your house?" she said. "Do you think we can we all come over to work on the project?"
"Sure," was his simple response. His parents were hardly ever home so what would it mattered. It's not like they cared who came over. He doubted they would even be home tonight. Or the next night; or the night after that...
Ding Ding Ding
At the sound of the bell signaling lunch was over, they all started grabbing their stuff. Before she left Max got Nudge to point her to her next class. Leadership. We didn't have any leadership classes back in Arizona. I wonder what it is Max thought as she walked up the step to the "SAC" student activities center. She walked through the door and was met with a painted mirror in front of her and an empty desk to her right.
"We're back here!" came the voice of an adult. "You must be Maximum, I'm Ms. Anne Walker." The woman greeted her. She seemed friendly enough and a little familiar but Max ignored it. "Have a seat." There were two large tables pushed together and the chairs were surrounding them. There were only four other kids sitting down. She sat down in the back corner near the window. "Now everyone's here."
The teacher lectured for about ten minutes about the class and then told some interesting funny stories about McDonald's. Then had all of the students say something about themselves to "get to know each other better". Max didn't really pay attention that much until it was this little girl's turn. She couldn't be any older than twelve! How is she in high school already?
"I'm Angel Walker and I'm a senior." What? No way! "Although I'm only thirteen, I'm number one in my class, have a four point oh GPA, and I've skipped four grades." Is that even possible? "After I graduate as valedictorian, I plan to major in zoology. I also would like to have a minor in theater." This girl is literally perfect and a genius! "I'm also the captain of the Hi-Q team."
Max was the next and last person to talk but she was so blown away by this Angel girl. She didn't really enjoy talking about herself anyway, especially to complete strangers, classmates or not. "Er, I'm Maximum but I go by Max," she started off. "I'm a senior and I just transferred here today from Arizona. I like, no, I love food, basketball, and video games." The other four students started laughing. "I hate bullies and I always cheer for the underdog. That's it."
"Well, that was just lovely." Ms. Walker said. "Since it's only the first day of school I have nothing for you guys today, so the rest of the class do whatever you want and" she started getting up and moving to the fridge that was right next to Max "here. Have some M&M's. Get as many as you want but if anyone asks, it wasn't from me." Wow. That was pretty easy, Max thought And she has free candy for us? I think I'm gonna love this class.
Max spent the rest of the period eating several bags of M&M's and thinking of ideas for her history project. When the bell rang she quickly grabbed two more bags of M&M's and shoved them down her pocket. Okay, now where's the gym. I knew I should have came early for that stupid tour.
"The gym is straight across the quad. You can't miss it." She looked for the sound of the voice and realized it was Angel's.
"Uh, thanks but how did you know I needed to go to the gym?"
Angel had a slight look of panic on her face then quickly hid it. "I just, I mean, you said you liked basketball earlier and all sports are during last period, so I just guessed you had it." Max, unsurprisingly for Angel, believed her.
"Oh." Max was relieved. For a second she thought Angel was gonna say she read her mind. "Thanks, bye." Angel giggled but then covered it up with a cough/ Once outside the student activities center they went their separate ways.
Basketball class was challenging to say the least. It's only the first day and the teacher, well she preferred being called Coach, was killing the class. "If you can't take it, then change your schedule now! I will not be dealing with you complainers." Coach Smith yelled at the tired, gasping teenagers. "If you want to make the team then you better start showing promise!"
"Not if you're planning on killing us" this boy who stopped next to Max mumbled.
"I know right?" Max said. "I love basketball but I don't want to die playing it."
The boy laughed. "Wait, aren't you that one new girl who stood up to Lissa? Max?"
Rumors about her little encounter with Lissa are already spreading? That can't be good. "I mean, I saw her bully some kids earlier today, taking their lunch money." Max despised bully's with a passion. And she thought Lissa was pig-headed anyway. Who would ever want to be friends with that? Who cares if you'll become popular, it's not worth it. "She said she wanted to be my friend, but I would never be friends with someone like that."
"Ah, I see. Do yo-" He was about to ask her something else before Coach Smith's whistle signaled their small break was over.
"Partner up! Chest passes now!"
They didn't say anything. All they did was look at each other and they knew they'd be partners. The boy, who she later found out is named Gazzy, was funny and entertaining. He really reminded her of Iggy. She would bet they're the best of friends. They were way too alike to not be.
Nudge waited for Max to shower in the school's locker rooms. "So, how do you like Skye?" she nonchalantly asked as Max started drying off and putting her clothes on. "See any cute boys today?"
She pulled her pants on and said "It's interesting. I think I'll like it here." Instead of brushing her hair she just ran her fingers through it and put a beanie on. "And I wasn't even looking at the guys, so I wouldn't know".
"Oh Max" Nudge laughed, "we both know you and Fang were so checking each other out." Max visibly blushed then hid the look. "See! You just blushed!"
"Okay, okay! Maybe I think Fang is kind of hot. So what? And what about you" Nudge put on an innocent confused look. "You and Iggy act like a married couple! How are you two not together?"
On the inside Nudge was slightly smiling but on the outside she just put on the most disgusting face she could muster. "Iggy, is an obnoxious, pyromaniac, annoying blubbering idiot. He's not even that funny."
"Uh-huh, sure." Max said while tying up her shoes. "Denial! And you didn't deny that he's 'hot'"
Nudge quickly started blushing. "Okay, maybe he is, but he's still obnoxious." Once Max finished they both headed to Nudge's car and we're on their way to the mysterious Fang's house.
"Hmph," said Lissa who got out of her shower from having a long cheer leading practice. "So, little Maxine wants Fang. Guess I'll show her who's boss" she said to herself while smirking. She quickly pulled out her phone to text her current best-friend.
It's go time Ella. Come over tonight. We have things to do.
~Queen B
Time went by faster than anyone had noticed. They only spent the first hour actually doing their homework. The other three hours they spent chilling and rummaging through Fang's food supply. By eleven p.m. Nudge was on her way home after she dropped Max off. Iggy had planned to spend the night at Fang's.
"Bro, you've gotta get that." Iggy said referring to Max, while stuffing his face with a sandwich.
Fang smirked. "Why?"
Iggy replied in a no-shit tone "You know why."
"Hm, maybe not. She doesn't seem like my type. And maybe I just want to be single this year."
"Shut up. You've been single all three years!" Iggy started grinning when he got a devilish idea. "Actually, how about a bet?"
A bet? Fang's interest was piqued. "What?"
"You get laid by Maximum Ride and get her to admit to being your girlfriend and it has to be before we graduate." Iggy was smirking by now.
"What? What the hell is this? Fucking mission impossible. You know that'll never happen."
"Okay, fine." He thought to himself for a minute or two before he finally came up with something. "Go out with her and if you actually start falling for her by prom, then you lose."
"Alright, but, I'm not doing this alone."
"Hm?"
"You too, with" Fang thought for a second, "with Nudge."
"You're fucking kidding right?" came Iggy's immediate reply.
"Nope." Fang couldn't stop smiling from the look of horror on Iggy's face. "Either you do it too or no deal. Besides, I mean, I know you can't tell but she's actually pretty hot."
"Damn it. Fine, deal." The two friends shook hands. With this bet, it was going to be an interesting year.
Official Schedule
Name: Maximum Ride ID: 629743
Class: Senior Age:17
Semester I
Class ... Teacher
A Day*
1 DC US Govt ... Mr. Moore w/ Ig, Fang, Nudge
2 English 4 ... Mr. Fox Fang
3 Leadership ... Ms. Walker Angel
4 Basketball 2 ... Coach Smith Gazzy
B Day
5 DC Astronomy ... Mr. King
6 Cooking 1 ... Mrs. Weasely
7 Theater 1 ... Mr. Fox
8 Out*
*Not sure how it works at other high schools but at mine, we have four classes a day (1.5 hours each). So instead of going to 8 classes a day and having a butt-load of homework, we go to A and B classes every other day. And lunch is right after 2nd/6th period
*Out means you have no class that period and unless you're part of a club, group, or activity that happens that period or meets after-school, you have to get off campus. Basically, you get to go home early or come to school late.
A/N There's a poll on my profile for this story concerning the way it's written, please vote on it (or just review/comment your answer). :D
Would you prefer this story the way it is, (in 3rd person) or alternating 1st person points of views?