A.N.: Wooww. I spend my Saturday planning a story then build up all my confidence and… no reviews. Well, I suppose I can't really complain, as that last chapter wasn't really a chapter at all. So I guess I still have another chance to get all excited about having people read my content.
Fact O' Chapter 1: As I didn't get any reviews, nobody gave me any more couple names, so here is FO'C1: Thomas Edison, inventor of the light bulb, was afraid of the dark.
Disclaimer: I just noticed I forgot to include one of these before. I don't own rights to anything within Maximum Ride (i.e. characters, ideas, etc.) however I do own the plot and content of this story.
BTW: Nicolás Martinez is the Fang in Ground-Breaking Epidemics and in Bite Me;Fang's name is just Fang. In Double Doors, the real Fang has based the character entirely on himself so the name does not change from his real name, Nick Walker.
Bite Me – Maximum Ride
Right. Um. Okay. Wow.
You know, writing a zombie survival guide is going to be a bit harder than I thought.
I guess I should start from the very end, yeah?
Of course I'm kidding – wait, you actually thought it was going to be that simple? You have a lot to learn, young grasshopper. If this is going to be difficult for me, I swear I will make it difficult for you too. Thus, we will start from the beginning…
Caught up and I can't feel my hands, no need to chase.
Can you relate? Can you keep up the pace, like you're dying for this?
And when you say- "I'm not okay; I left my phone in the cab, now you can't get me"
I'm only gettin' started,
I won't blackout (this time I've got nothing to waste).
Let's go a little harder, I'm on fire,
I won't blackout (I'm on my way).
At least the sound of Breathe Carolina's 'Blackout' is better than that damn beep tune my alarm clock used to play before I figured out how to sync my playlists to it.
Hang on. Since when have I had an alarm clock? Since when have I had a bed?
Oh right, this isn't a bed, it's a trash bag. As for the alarm clock, I can't remember where I got that, but it was probably about eight states over and didn't involve money. I don't think I've ever owned any of that stuff. All I know about it is that the bills are green and the coins are confusing.
Shifting off the trash, I roll onto my feet because I am a wizard like that and survey the area. I should probably remember everything I did last night, but God… I must've hit my head or something, possibly on a wall. Or a bus. :/ I'm in a fairly narrow road between two towering rows of buildings, intersected with a tall chain-link fence which TBH could only keep out something that doesn't have either average strength or opposable thumbs i.e. a Scottie dog – unless it had wings which, in my book, are not that unlikely.
I turned my attention to myself. My outfit wasn't exactly what you'd consider glamorous: a grubby white tank top, tucked into a pair of stained, worn shorts and to tie off the look, a disgrace to Converse everywhere. They were missing three laces, at least two of those unnamed metal circle thingies that the laces go through, the colour had faded and the soles were dangling; I could've tugged them clean off.
The state of my clothes and the stains on my bare legs – sweat, cuts, bruises, scars, scabs, dirt, blood – brought to my attention the reason why I'd set that alarm clock in the first place. I couldn't go to school looking like this. I know what you're thinking: so this random teenage girl who sleeps on a trash bag with century-old clothes and a million bruises is a schoolgirl? That can't be the whole story. No, of course it's not. After all, when has anything ever been that simple for anyone?
I may be an eighteen-year-old homeless fugitive, all alone in the big old 'Land Of The Free' *snort*, but I'm determined to get an education. I do believe I am currently enrolled to four middle schools and twenty one high schools that I never bothered to cancel when I skipped state. This latest one, in the middle of glorious NYC, is called David Sales High. Clearly, as I'm so experienced in being a runaway criminal and going to highschool at the same time, I must warn you beforehand that there's a lot of fakery headed your way should you decide to continue reading this. There's a big diff between going to school whilst trying to blend in and going to school whilst trying not to get found by the cops.
It's all about forgery. Forging a new name, appearance, personality – a new identity altogether. So, turn the page, if you dare.
Ground-Breaking Epidemics – Nicolás MartinezNicolás Martinez carefully closed his laptop and pushed on his desk, sliding backwards in his office chair. That was enough Max for one day. Actually, that was only enough Max for about five to ten minutes, because he could never get enough of the character that had been created when he was tiny and captured so many people's attention across the globe since then. However, homework calls, and so does a mother when she wants you to do it RIGHT NOW, NICOLÁS, OR YOU'RE GROUNDED FOR A WEEK. Not that he would mind being grounded; it would give him an excuse to avoid people and focus on writing this new story.
Though his parents didn't understand, and he didn't give enough of a crap to explain his passion to them, he felt that writing was his true calling. Apparently, so did his literally millions of online friends and fans, as he got mail on every site he was connected to every day from masses of them. If that wasn't motivation enough for him to keep doing what he was doing, he didn't know what was.
He slid a manila folder out from under his bed and opened it up on his desk, flipping through to find his latest English homework. You'd probably assume, since stories were his interests, hobbies, hopes and aspirations all rolled into one incredible package, that English was his favourite subject. You'd be wrong. The reason why he loved writing so much was because there are no restrictions, no boundaries – but in English class, they always tell you what the subject is. They always tell you what techniques to use and they tell you what to write about and they tell you how to write it and they tell you that if you want to stand up for your creative rights by refusing to submit to their stupid demands, well that's too bad, I'll see you after school at 3pm for an hour's worth of detention in which you will sit silently and do as I tell you or so help me you will be excluded, young man.
Of course, you're going to have to at least bend the rules of what you believe in during that detention so you don't get suspended or your father will be disappointed and give you that awful quietly disapproving look while your mother gets all riled up and says NICOLÁS, YOU ARE GROUNDED DURING YOUR SUSPENSION AND FOR TWO WEEKS AFTERWARDS AND DON'T YOU EVEN THINK ABOUT SNEAKING OUT OR I WILL STRIKE LIKE A COBRA YOU DISGRACEFUL DELINQUENT.
Double Doors – Nick WalkerNick Walker squinted at the same spot on the page for what felt like an eternity before placing his fountain pen neatly over the last sentence, covering it completely. He didn't want to see his mother's harsh words anymore; it was almost as crushing as hearing them slip out of her mouth as if she was saying something as easy as 'Oh, hello, how are you?'. Not that his readers had to know they were real – if anyone brought it up, he would just reassure them and tell them oh, of course she didn't really say that to me, my mom's an angel. And no, she didn't slap me afterwards… oh wait; you didn't say anything about a smack? No, I didn't say that either. She didn't slap me. Of course not. She's an angel.
Nick's mother was not abusive. She just got very angry very quickly, because she had such high expectations of her only child and simply didn't understand why he could never even reach them, didn't want to reach them, let alone exceed them. His father was just her sheep, paying the bills and putting food on the table and driving her around and agreeing with her in all the right places. He only bothered sticking around to be her yes man not because they had a son but because he adored her. Nick failed to see why.
TISCDCT – (Real) Nick WalkerMy best friend's signature knock pattern was so loud it reverberated through the house all the way up to my attic bedroom, where I was just about to finish the first instalment to my new story, Double Doors. I was aiming for it to feel like you were looking in on Max during her first moments of Bite Me, then zooming out into Ground-Breaking Epidemics where you were able to peek into Nicolás' life, and finally zooming out once more into Double Doors where you could get a feel for what Nick's life was like before everything was spun upside down and he was sucked into his own story.
I was so close to accomplishing that until Iggy decided to be typically American and knock for someone to open the door for him rather than using his own key which I knew for a fact was in his back left pocket right that minute.
I heard the door open and I was surprised for a second, because I wasn't expecting my mom to bother, and my dad was at work, wherever that was. Don't get me wrong, my mom was great 20% of the time, bearable 60%, but the other 20% was when she was ignoring me or giving me too much attention, if you know what I mean (i.e. yelling). Then I remembered she had been in a good mood that morning, and had had no reason to decide otherwise: her husband was earning money, her son was out of her way and she had the TV all to herself.
"FANGLES MY BABY!" squealed an obnoxious, barely male voice in my ear as a silver camcorder was waved in front of my face. Oh joy. "I am ready to save a recording of your naturally splendiferous features onto my camera so that I may download it onto your computer and upload it to the vast social medium known as YouTube!"
"You realise you could've just said 'I'm ready to make a video'?" I deadpanned at him, spinning my office chair round and subtly nudging him to a respectful distance (arm's length, just to be safe) with my foot. He mimicked my deadpan.
"Yes, but where's the fun in that?" he replied, smile returning almost immediately. I rolled my eyes and the side of my lips quirked automatically as I turned back around to close the story tab on my desktop computer. Didn't want to give the viewers any sneak peeks of the first chapter, because Devon knows it would be leaked. There was a click from behind me to signal that the camcorder was rolling.
"Put your hood down, Fangykins. You look like a yob," Iggy demanded from behind me, and I turned to find the camera pressed up to my nose. "Ohmergerd, look everyone! He's got freckles!" He held down a button on the side which zoomed out and he backed up a bit so it was filming my whole body. The silence was awkward – I guess I had forgotten to write a script for my first video in eleven-ish months. Well, you couldn't blame me; my filmmaking was rusty those days.
I flicked my eyes up at Iggy for assistance. If he wanted to help me, the tension could dissolve in mere seconds. If he didn't, I was screwed. "Well, hey," I tried, looking at him again. It was clear by then that he was going to leave me hanging. "Uh, sorry for… vanishing? I guess?"
"That is not an apology Fanglepiggle!" Iggy furrowed his (though he denies the colour) ginger eyebrows at me. Thank God he didn't stay silent longer. "Repent your sins properly or I shall tell them about Tenderheart,"
I snorted (attractive *derp*). "Uh, Ig, Tenderheart is your favourite Care Bear." I raised an eyebrow at him, and then frowned directly at the camcorder. "He has a collection,"
"Don't feed them lies!" he shrieked and I was about to confirm that I was not lying and he did have a Care Bear collection when he cut me off. "My favourite bear is not Tenderheart. It's Funshine, duh,"
I paused before clearing my throat. "I hope that amused you guys, but weren't we going to go and pick the girls up from their house?"
"Yes! We shall traverse forth to the females whom we are referring to in possession of the splendid abodes and command them hither onto Sir Nickford's trusty steed and ride away into the bright abyss of filmmaking!" he exclaimed blithely. I swear, that guy had no shame.
"There was so much wrong with that sentence. Now, stop pretending you have a decent vocabulary and let's go," I rolled my eyes, grabbing my keys and phone off my desk and heading down the ladder out of my attic room. I didn't bother waiting for him or making any attempt to acknowledge my mom as I sped down the stairs and round the front towards my car – or Priscnelope, as Iggy insists on calling it. He couldn't choose between Priscilla and Penelope, and I wasn't about to agree to a combination that sounded like penicillin i.e. Penescilla.
In fact, I didn't agree to anything. I didn't understand why people got emotionally attached to machines at all, let alone enough to name them. Plus, if I had named the car myself, it probably would've been something boring and unimaginative but at least manlier than Priscnelope. Everything is manlier than Priscnelope.
In deep contemplation of manliness, I hadn't even noticed myself going into autopilot inside the black Peugeot 2008 and Iggy sliding into the passenger seat. I pulled out onto the road and hit the accelerate pedal, being a responsible and sensible driver and completely blanking Iggy out. Okay, so maybe I was ignoring him because he was consistently irritating, but I can still use an excuse if I want to. These are my memories.
Not long later, around ten minutes of Iggy yapping on and pointing the camcorder lens in weird places, we arrived at my friends' house. They were Iggy's friends too, but Iggy, being the naturally charismatic, in-your-face type person he was, had lots of friends. I had three: one of which was him, two of which lived in the house we were parked in front of. Our presence was rudely announced by Magnolia, who, on a whim, decided to leap out of the kitchen window like some kind of Super Pug and attack my car. Her loud, oddly low-pitched barking caught the attention of a pretty blonde, who rushed out of the house in the middle of drying her hands on a peach-coloured towel and started yelling.
"Maggie! Get back in the house!" she hissed frantically, glancing in the car at me then pointing back at the door. Small relief passed through her eyes as she noticed my sunglasses – I was looking upwards at her, but she probably assumed I wasn't watching because she couldn't see my eyes and my head was tilted downwards toward the cupboard on the passenger side; rifling for the mints Ella would undoubtedly claim. "Go find Ella, dumb dog, goooo!"
"Yo Maya, you ready to go?" Iggy called through his open window, closer to the sidewalk than me.
"Sure, hang on, let me get Ella," she replied breathily, slightly flushed as I pushed my glasses up, slung my arm round the back of my seat and watched her, having tossed the mint packet onto the dashboard. Maya, 1/3 of my friends, hurried back into the house in which further yelling could be heard emanating from three female residents – I guess Dr Martinez was home.
Not a minute later, Maya reappeared, tailed closely by una chica bonita hispana. They shared a Spanish mother, but Maya took after her dad, who was born in DC, and Ella's dad was born in Barcelona, so Ella's Hispanic heritage really showed. The girls hopped into the back of the car and I started off again, looping back to my place.
"Mint me." Ella's normally feather-soft voice was cold and hard as she demanded a mint – this girl was as sweet as sugar and honey, but trust me, you did not want to get between her and her mints. I hastily pushed a POLO out of the packet and held it backwards, feeling it ripped from my hand. I looked up at the mirror just in time to see her smile before burying herself back into her iPhone.
"Soo… what exactly are we gonna be doing?" Maya chipped in over the silence – which I was actually rather comfortable with – aiming it at no one in particular. Once I had soundlessly established that I was happier keeping my mouth shut, Iggy stepped in to explain for me.
"Well," he started, "as Fang-chan here has been on an extended vacation from his fans, we decided to make a whole ton of videos promoting this new story he's writing. Clearly I am the only interesting thing about his videos, so I suggested we bring it up a notch and add some new people in. You two were the only ones he would agree to invite,"
"I'm not sure you realise this, but I'm the guy who does the writing, Iggy. Your best works include 'The Chipmunk Who Was Really Lost', 'My English Teacher Forced Me to Write This Story' and 'Where's My Toast?'"
"Yes and I'll have you know I am extremely proud of those literary feats," He informed me stiffly, popping the buckle of his seatbelt out as we pulled onto my driveway. Ella snorted in the back (she only ever emerged from her technology when Iggy was talking. It was probably very cute, but I was always too introverted to notice).
"By the way, when's the sequel for that coming out? We never did find out where your toast was," she asked, sliding out of the car and putting her phone in the back pocket of her grey skinny jeans.
"I've actually been working on that recently. Spoiler alert: my butter was under the couch," I was just about to put the key into the lock when Iggy pushed past me, smirking. I hadn't even noticed the door wasn't locked until that point.
Ella huffed as she made a discreetly rushed entrance after him – probably not wanting to be separate from her favourite ginger too long. "Aww man. Okay, just don't tell me where the jelly was. I want it to be a surprise,"
I felt Maya's presence beside me, watching as the two disappeared upstairs. "They grow up so fast, don't they?" she sighed, placing a sarcastic hand over her heart. I chuckled quietly, waving her in, and she blushed under my gaze. I bolted the door behind us and followed her up two sets of steps to the attic, where Ella was already helping Iggy set up the tripod. She was positioning it by the wall as he fixed the camcorder to the top. It once again hit me how at ease he was in a social environment. I felt admiration, sure, but no jealousy – the main reason I was reserved and unsociable was simply because I enjoyed it. I preferred my own company to others', even if that was considered distant and abnormal for a teenager.
"So what are you planning on discussing first, Fang honey?" asked the aforementioned socialite, squinting as he fiddled with some buttons on his camcorder and chewed on his thin black lip ring. I didn't mention he had one, did I? He said it made him look 'edgy'. I said it made him look 'self-conscious'.
"I think we should do a Q&A. I posted on the blog yesterday that I'd started writing something new and I got a lot of questions," I answered, starting up my computer to check the blog for story queries.
"Right-o. Shall we begin?" We didn't get a chance to answer before he started recording.
"God, I hope your fans like us. I am not ready for hate-mail," Maya sighed after we'd finished filming, grinning from her perch on my desk. Dr Martinez had called them to go home for dinner, so Ella was downstairs with Iggy, 'getting a drink' *cough* flirting *cough* before they left. I casted a half-smile in her direction, trying to reassure her, to which she responded with a full one.
"Don't worry about it. They'll love you,"
"Yeah, as long as they don't think you're his girlfriend." It's funny how Iggy always chooses the worst moments to appear. "He has literally millions of female admirers, and I would advise you don't get between them and their GDA of Fangy goodness, or they will pounce on you and tear you to pieces,"
Maya's glare was ferocious, but to someone who had spent their life imagining and drawing sketches of what Maximum Ride's glare would look like, it didn't particularly faze me. Iggy, however, was a different story – his eyes widened and he visibly gulped as he sat on the floor next to the tripod, crossing his legs. The half-Hispanic teen apparently found this a sufficient reaction, smiling smugly as she turned to her full-Hispanic sibling. "We gotta go unless we want mom to give our pizza to the dog,"
"I doubt she would. Mom's a vet; she'd have a heart attack if the dog ate something that wasn't specifically tailored to dogs," laughed Ella. Maya's face dropped into a frown of mock puzzlement.
"Then why didn't mom have a heart attack when Maggie ate my sock, or when Maggie ate my phone case, or when Maggie ate my slippers, or when Maggie ate my homework, or when Maggie ate my earphones, or when Maggie ate my –"
"Okay, okay, we get it: Maggie eats a lot of your things. It's only because you're a cat person," Ella spat out the last two words like they were a mouthful of lemon juice. I kind of agreed; dogs were friendlier and more loyal, and dog people were just more approachable than cat people. I chuckled a little and turned back to Maya, addressing her as opposed to Ella so it wouldn't look like I was taking sides on the argument.
"D'you guys want a ride home?" I asked, and she shook her head.
"We're cool. We'll just walk – it's really not far," she smiled tentatively, which gave me the impression that she wanted to talk to Ella privately. I wasn't going to object; the subject would probably be really girly and awkward. "Bye Iggy," she added, sliding off the desk and walking toward the stairs on the other side of the room.
"Who cares if Maya wants to be Little Miss Fitness Freak? Seriously, it's almost ten. I could use a ride –" Ella's sentence was cut short when Maya grabbed her elbow and started dragging her down the stairs. Just before they were out of view, Ella yelled, "Well bye, I guess!" The door slammed a minute later, and then there were two.
Iggy sighed, flopping forwards and sprawling out on my floor. "How 'bouts I stay for the night and we edit the footage together tomorrow?" he suggested.
"C'mon Igs, you know I can't cope with your company for too many hours at a time," I yawned, plopping myself down on the black sheets of my bed. He chuckled without opening his mouth, causing his body to bounce slightly on his stomach.
"Mm, I know," he nodded, banging his chin on the carpet, "but you'll be asleep for a few hours, so that counts as a break from by unbearably fabulous personality, right?"
I paused, weighing it up. I would have to endure said 'unbearable fabulous personality' for longer, but I wouldn't have to wait for him to get here tomorrow, my mom wouldn't bother yelling at me in front of him and it would give her the impression that I was trying to be more social. All in all, I saw more pros than I did cons, so I gave him the go ahead. "I guess so." I grunted grudgingly, "You'll have to call your mom, though,"
"Actually, I don't. I told her when I left that I was sleeping over here 'cause I knew I'd be able to convince you to let me," he smirked at me sideways and I rolled my eyes. I should've known. "So anyways, how much of the story have you written so far?"
"I'm finished with those six Bite Me chapters; I'm just working on the G-B E and Double Doors counterparts for them now. In fact, I was about to finish the entire first instalment when you showed up."
"Mm, cool. By the way, your mom was humming a Britney Spears song and wearing floral oven mitts when she let me in."
"That is so… weird." I said, yawning again.
"Yeah, weird."
"Totally weird."
"Really, really weird."
"Weird like… a... a meerkat… riding a uni… a unicycle."
"Weird like – wait, what?" I didn't get to answer, because I was already falling asleep, and the last thing I saw was Iggy smiling contently as he reached for a permanent marker.
Oh God. Moustache time.
A.N.: I yawned so much writing that last part. And three times whilst writing these two sentences. XD
Next chapter will be up as soon as possible, can't say when, and I'm not sure it will be as long as this one (4185 story words, 4429 words overall – this took up 9 Word doc pages !_!). I'll do my best :)
