A/N: Hi there! Looks like I'm going to be telling you another story today, children. Okay...so. Um, yeah. Been busy lately, so it's been a LONG time in between updates. I got the flu, and we went on a class trip to DC. Seems like I'm always busy. Not that I'm complaining. I like being busy, but it prevents me from letting my creative juices flow. Awww.... So, I guess I'll just get on with the story 'cause now I'm rambling and I sound stupid. Hehe
Chapter 2: Bad Chinese Food Can Sometimes Result in More Than a Stomach Ache
Max's POV
Clunk, clunk, clunk! I listened to the steady sound of the bus eating up the slippery asphalt of the road that led to Anne's house. Angel and Nudge were pouring over some magazines Nudge had snatched from the teacher's lounge, and Iggy and Gazzy were sitting quietly in the seat in front of me, which kept me on the edge of my seat. I kept waiting for something to go "Kaboom!" or the bus to suddenly be filled with a toxic gas of some sort. Fang was sitting, as he always did when we took the bus, next to Pretty Princess herself. I kept my eyes on the rainy windows, not conciously aware of what I was seeing outside. Through the burble of bus passengers, I could make out their conversation if I listened.
"Jeeze, and that science quiz we had yesterday? What a bore! I couldn't understand half of what they were talking about." Lissa gushed, using hand gestures to emphasize her obvious annoyance with sentences that didn't contain information about her. Therefore making said sentences pointless and unnecessary. A waste of paper.
"Really? I though it was easy." Fang said lightly. "I mean...if you read the directions through, the problems made more sense. They slip little bits of information in there." Lissa giggled. It annoyed me that she could get a more than one syllable response out of him.
"That's probably why I flunked it." she said, crowing with laughter. Fang chuckled too. I sat there, listening to them laugh about her pathetic science grades. I began to feel sick to my stomache. I don't get why this bothers me so much. Sure, she's decieving him and acting all nice, but she's not hurting him. I mean...she's perfectly nice to him. And he obviously doesn't annoy her. Maybe I should just stay out of it. I glanced back at them. Lissa placed her hand on his arm as they laughed over something else. He brushed a stray strand of hair out of her eyes when the wind from the open bus window caused it to flutter there. I glared. Nevermind. There was no way in heck I was just going to ignore this. I turned my back on them and resumed my status looking broodingly out the window. My reflection in the window looked so pitiful I started to laugh. I risked another glance back at them. They were still laughing about something. I grimaced and looked back out the window. I chuckled darkly again.
"Maybe I should go home and write a poem about it." I thought jokingly, thinking of Emily and her poetry book.
The bus rumbled to a stop about a block from Anne's house. The whole gang clambered off, and I tried to ignore the over-extensive goodbyes that streamed from Lissa's mouth. My sneakers made a loud sloshing noise as I waded through the series of miniture lakes in Anne's drive way. My face was hard and stony, and unfortunately percievable to the naked eye. In particular, Fang's naked eye. "What's eating you?" he asked, changing his step to match my own fast paced one. I was eager to get home. I bit my lip, and marched onward like a good soldier. I heard Fang sigh exasperatedly beside me. "Oh come on, Max. The silent treatment?! This is kindergarden material right here, Max." His arm shot forward to catch me by the strap of my backpack.
"Look...it's nothing important." I said, venom in my voice. "At least not to you." Fang released his hold on my backpack, his eyebrows raised.
"Jeese...PMS, or what?" he said mockingly, a hint of laughter ringing in his words. I nearly screamed in frustration. How could he be so insenstive?!
"Look...if you could take your eyes off of your precious Lissa for two seconds, maybe you could actually see that something was wrong. But since you've been so happy playing Helen Keller with Malibu Barbie, its your own damn fault that I'm angry!" We had reached the door, so I pushed it open and shot through, already halfway up the stairs by the time Fang's voice caught up with me.
"So this is about Lissa, is it?" I froze where I was on the stairs. Turning around, I smiled icily and gave a heaving laugh.
"No Fang..." I said, sarcasm already dripping from my tongue, "it's about my potato farm." I ran the rest of the way up the stairs, and dove into my room, slamming and locking the door behind me.
Lissa's POV
I watched Fang trudge off of the bus after the rest of them, and felt the all too familiar tugging start in my gut again. I sighed and looked out the rain streaked windows to the glossy pavement below. I watched as SHE crossed the deserted road and he followed after her. I don't even know why he bothers sitting next to me. His mind is somewhere else half of the time, and I'm always afraid to think of where that somewhere might be. Maybe because I already knew the answer. I had tried everything. Making him laugh, small talk, school stuff. Nothing seemed to be able to hold his attention like SHE did. I wish he would stop glancing over at her all the time. I wish he would stop scrawling her name in the corners of his notebooks. And I wish he would mean it when he said that he would call later. It's always about HER. The perfect, beautiful, smart, everything I'm not, Maximum Ride. God I hated her, I hated her so freaking much! I pressed my wet cheek up against the cold, leathery material that covered the bus seats. I didn't know what was wrong with me these days. I'd be doing something, and suddenly I'd be crying. I could hear the younger kids laughing at the back of the bus. It was so loud. So damn loud! I wanted to scream at them to shut up, but they were so little. Finally, there was just so many voices, I couldn't take it any more. I stood up, and faced the back. "Shut up!" I yelled at them. A dozen little faces peeked out at me from behind the shelter of their seats. I sighed, and turned to sit back down. At least everything was quiet now. I chewed on my lip to stop the tears from coming out. The bus slammed on the brakes, and I flew forward, my face slamming into the seat in front of me and my tooth sinking right through my lip. "Shit!" I said a little louder than planned. The kids were peeking out again. "What are you looking at?" I aske bitterly, pulling a tissue out of the side compartment of my back pack. This was my stop, so I stumbled off, dabbing at my bloody lip. Right when my foot hit the ground off the bus, the rain started fall. "Of course!" I yelled in exasperation. The other guy getting off the bus turned around and stared.
"Are you okay?" he asked skeptically, pushing his shaggy brown hair out of his eyes so I could see that they were a sparkly green. I was mesmerized by them for a minute before I remembered the question.
"Yeah, peachy." I grumbled sarcastically before walking across the street. The boy retreated into the apartment building down the street on the other side. I rolled my eyes. Boys asked the most retarted questions. Letting myself in, I noticed that my mother's car wasn't in the garage yet. Good...I could finally have some time to myself. Not have that woman breathing down my neck. I dug around in the freezer for awhile until I unearthed some Neopolitan. Bowl of ice cream in hand, I headed up to my room, shut the door and locked it.
Max's POV
Out of anger, and lack of anything better to do, I decided to give Emily's poetry approach a try. I didn't expect the meaning of life to come to me, or my deepest thoughts to be transformed in an array of artful metaphores, but this was the best thing I could come up with so far:
Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Lissa is a mother effing bitch, how bout you?
My poetic talent was hardly something to envy, if not laughable. Okay...there was no question about whether it was laughable or not. The whole thing was a joke, but it did make me feel a little better. I even chuckled a little when I read it. I sighed and crumpled the paper. It'd been about half an hour since my spat with Fang, and though I was cooled down a bit now, I had no intentions of apologizing. He could be so ignorant sometimes! I hope he's feeling a massive amount of guilt and or confusion right about now, 'cause he deserves it. There was a loud rap on my door, which startled me. This caused my airborne poetry masterpiece to waver off course and miss my overflowing waste basket. I sighed again. "Come in!" I yelled, allowing my face to flop down onto my pillow. I felt the springs on my bed sink down as someone made themselves at home on my bed. Picking my head up from the confines of my pillow, I saw an expressionless Anne perched on the edge of my bed. I raised my eyebrows as she studied me like someone examining a bomb that could go off at any moment. I sat up and folded my hands in my lap to show her that I was prepared to behave like a civilized person might.
"I heard you had a rough day at school today." she began. I groaned. How did she find out about these things? "What happened?"
"Nothing out of the ordinary. Just the usual self-absorbed princesses pushing all my buttons again." Anne gave me a knowing look.
"Ahhh...I remember when I was in middle school. All the cliques and heartbreaks, and lets not forget the homework." She nudged my shoulder playfully. I attempted a smile, but it came out as more of a grimace. Anne sighed. "Alright, I'll stop with the lame jokes. I just thought you might need a hug or something. Or at least some chocolate ice cream." She pointed to a bowl sitting on my dresser, which she must have put there when she came in. This time, I really did crack a smile. "There's the smile I've been looking forward to all day." I rolled my eyes. Anne's so called 'motherly instincts' sometimes kicked in at the wierdest times.
"Thanks." I said greatfully, giving her a quick hug and then running over to the dresser to claim my prize. Anne laughed at the way chocolate seemed to be the key to my heart.
"Hey," she said suddenly, "I got an email from school about some strange Chinese lady that's supposed to visit your school tomorrow?" I groaned.
"Thanks for reminding me." I said sarcastically.
"Oh, it sounds like fun." Anne said wistfully.
"Hey, if you wanna go in my place, be my guest." I offered, only half joking. She chuckled.
"Unfortunately, I think I have something important I have to do tomorrow. What was it again? Oh yeah...work so I can afford to feed you children." She joked. I rolled my eyes and flicked some of my ice cream at her. Sadly, she was also armed. She quickly flung a large pillow at me, which was big enough to crush me. Well....maybe I 'm exaggerating just a little bit. She then left so that I could be alone with my ice cream. Yummmmmm...
The next day, I had still not forgiven Fang for our argument. I hadn't spoken to him all last night, or this morning, and things weren't looking any better by the time lunch rolled around. When I walked into the lunchroom, I caught sight of Fang. He wasn't sitting at his usual table, but at Lissa's table. They were both laughing, and just the idea of the two of them joining in casual conversation over cafeteria lasagna made me sick to my stomach. I joined my friend, JJ, in the lunch line, never taking my eyes off of them. JJ's honey colored gaze followed my own chocolate brown one. She grinned knowingly. "Lissa bugging you again?" she asked.
"How'd you know?" I said sarcastically as the smiling cafeteria lady plopped a ladle-full of indistinguishable goo onto my tray. I studied it in awe, wondering how someone could take a food like lasagna and transform it to look like an animal had taken a crap on your tray. I followed JJ to the table where the rest of our friends sat waiting. Katie was sick today, so we were short one. Halfway to the table, I noticed Emily sitting alone again. She was reading a different book than the one yesterday. This one was smaller, and less intimidating. I paused. JJ stopped short as well.
"What's wrong?" I didn't say anything for awhile, I just watched Emily pour over her book. She hadn't even touched her food yet.
"I'm...uh...gonna sit with another friend of mine today, okay?" I said, starting to move towards Emily's corner table. JJ stared at me for a minute, but then shrugged and retreated to our usual table. When I reached Emily's table, she didn't look up until I was seated. And when she did, she looked surprised. "What? Am I not allowed to sit here anymore?" I asked playfully, poking at my "lasagna". She shook her head.
"No...you can sit here whenever. I just...I don't know. I thought--I was afraid...It was only a one time thing or something." She muttered. I laughed.
"Of course not. Once a friend, always a friend. Unless...you try to kill me or something." We both grinned at that. "So..." I said, looking for somthing to discuss. "What do you think about this Chinese woman that's supposed to enlighten us today?" She groaned.
"Ugh...I try not too. I don't want to be enlightened!" She practically yelled. I knew she was only playing around, but many people swiveled in their seats to see what was going on. She just smiled at them all. The rest of lunch period was pleasantly uneventful. When we dumped our trays, we noticed all the students were being herded up to the gym. We looked at eachother in question, and were forced to follow the rest of the group like a couple of lost sheep. We were shoved onto the bleachers. I ended up sandwhiched between Emily and a mildly attractive boy I think was in my biology class. As the people in front of us took a seat, a short Chinese woman came into view. She was skin and bones and looked like she should be working in a dumpling shop. As the chatter of chaos died down, the woman opened her mouth to speak. I noticed a small microphone by the corner of her small lips.
"Hello." she said in a thick Chinese accent. "My name is Atsuko Kanagawa. I come today to speak to you about acceptance." She took a breath for dramatic effect. Or maybe she was just old, and out of breath. Either way... "Acceptance is such a powerfull word. It changes thoughts, actions...It changes the world. To achieve acceptance of everybody in this world would be the single greatest accomplishment on this planet. As humans, we are born to love and be loved. And to love, you must accept." The rest of the lecture, was powerfull, I will admit. But not really my cup of tea. When it was over, I saw many kids with faces you have after you watch about two minutes of the history channel. Like you've just been spoken to in a foreign language. The Atsuko woman was packing up a bag of things by the wall. The rest of the kids were clambering off the bleachers. Emily nudged me, telling me to get a move on. I hurriedly followed the boy in my biology, trying to get off as fast as possible. Everyone was starting to shove everyone, and if I didn't hurry, I'd end up burried under a pile of angry teenagers. Yikes! The kid jumped up, and I tried to follow suit. I didn't notice the person standing below me until I'd already made a jump for it. I samshed into the person, and fell to the floor in a red blur. When I opened my eyes, I was face to face with Lissa who was also on the floor. Under me. I had jumped right ontop of her.
"Bitch!" she squealed, trying to shove me off of her. I rolled out of the way of the oncoming stampede. Lissa picked herself up angrily, and stalked towards me.
"Oh great..." I thought to myself, "I'm in for it now." She stopped right in front of me, and put her face right up close to mine so that I could feel her breath on my forehead.
"Why can't you just stay away from me, Max?! My world would be SO much easier if you just got out of my life for good. You're always embarassing me, and making fun of me. God! Just go away" she practically yelled. Emily shrank into a corner like a scared animal. She obviously wasn't very good with dealing with this sort of stuff.
"Get out of my face, Lissa." I said through gritted teeth. When she didn't budge, I put my hands on her shoulders and steered her gently away from me. Allright...she kind of ended up in the trashcan behind her, but she was totally asking for it. She squealed as she tripped backwards and sank down into the depths of the can. I could see her legs thrashing around in there, and everyone was laughing. I'll admit I joined in too. She popped up red faced with tears in her eyes.
"Maximum Ride, you are a freak of nature! A freak, and a real bitch too! You'll die alone someday, you freaking weirdo!" She yelled. I just stood there and stared back into her fiery green eyes. Sparks practically flew from them, she was spitting mad. The little Chinese woman came bustling over as Lissa angrily freed herself from the trashcan.
"Girls, girls!" she shouted. "Did you not just listen to a word I just said?" She had a strange look in her eyes. I cocked my head to the side, wondering why she was interfearing with this.
"No, actually I didn't." Lissa said bitterly under her breath. It wasn't very loud, but I have a feeling the woman can hear better than she lets on.
"Please...you must get along. We are born to love and be loved."
"Yeah, whatever lady." Lissa said angrily, starting to stalk out of the room. I had obviously put her in a bad mood. "Why don't you go home and eat some wontons or something." She dashed out the door, her shoes clicking down the stairs. Even her footsteps sounded angry. The woman turned to me.
"You must love everyone. No one deserves to be treated with such hostility. Put yourself in their shoes." Okay...she was really starting to get annoying.
"Listen..." I said, trying to be gentle with my words, "I appreciate that you came here to make this whole speech thing, but I don't need someone to preach to me about how to live my life. I can take care of myself and I can make my own descions. So just...stay out of it." And with that, I left her. Standing there in the middle of all the kids exiting. And when I left...she had the STRANGEST look in her eye. Almost like she knew something I didn't.
Lissa's POV
I burst from the gym, just about angry enough to kill. My feet hammered down the stairs as I tried to escape. All the laughter was ringing in my ears and I couldn't rid the sound from my head. I felt I would go crazy if I didn't get out. I finally made it to the refuge of the girls bathroom, and proceeded to lock myself in the stall. The tears poured freely now, down my cheeks and neck. My makeup would be ruined, but I tried not to care. Everyone would laugh at me anyways. That's just the way it is in this jungle we call middle school. I sniffled, feeling quite pathetic. What I don't understand is why she can't just leave me alone? What did I ever do to her to make her hate me so much. Well...I'm sure there was a few times when I wasn't as nice to her as I could have been, but other than that... I mean...I never did anything too terrible to make her hate me to this extent. She just ruins everything! She steals Fang away from me, and she always embarasses me in front of everybody with her clever comebacks. I sometimes wish that I was as clever and nice as she was. Maybe than Fang would like me the way he likes Max. Maybe then, I could finally be happy. No! There was no way I was jelous of Maximum Ride. The only reason anyone likes her is because she's an orphan or something, and they all pity her. Speaking of which...why does Fang like her? I mean...they're brother and sister sort of. Aren't they. Well...step brother and sister. Or whatever it is they are. Still...its wierd. Maybe there's something more to this after all. A dirty little secret perhaps? Well...I guess I'll just have to do a little digging around. I smiled at my cleverness for noticing something like this. I heard someone enter the bathroom and decided it was time to leave. After a quick makeup fix, I made my way to my locker to get my books. God! I was so hungry right now. I would kill for something to eat. I was on a diet, so I hadn't eaten breakfast, and all I'd had for lunch was a Coke and a little Chex Mix. When I wrenched open my locker, something fell to the floor. Picking it up, I realized that it was a fortune cookie.
"What the heck?" I muttered to myself. I must have put it in my backpack at some point. Either way, it was food and I was starving. I tore the wrapper off, feeling only slightly guilty that I was cheating on my diet. When I cracked it open, this is what the fortune said.
Open your eyes and see what has always been right in front of you
I snorted. Okay than...apparently I needed glasses. I shoved the cookie in my mouth, grabbed my books and then dashed off to class.
Max's POV
After abondoning Chang Lee or whatever her name was back there, I ran to my locker to get my books. I was steamed about Lissa. She always overreacts to everything, and she blames me for even the stupidist things. It gets so freaking annoying after awhile! I can't believe she thinks it's me whose causing all the problems. Can't she see that it's all her? She just pushes, and pushes until I feel like I'm about to burst! I took a deep breath. I didn't have time to stew over this. I had class, and if I was late for another, they'd surely call Anne and then I'd be in deep shit. I opened my locker, and something tumbled to the floor. It was a fortune cookie! Anne or somebody must have slipped it in my backpack this morning. I picked it up and tore the wrapper off. Cracking it open, I pulled out the tiny slip of paper with the tips of my fingers. This is what the small print said:
Open your eyes and see what has always been right in front of you
I rolled my eyes. I think I've been enlightened enough for one day. Shoving the fortune cookie into my mouth, I grabbed the books I needed and then made my way to class, still trying to get the thought of the Chinese woman's strange look out of my head.
A/N: Sorry that took so long to update. Really, I am. I guess I'm partly lazy and partly busy. :( Sorry, no excuses. I'll try to get the next chapter up faster, but the minute I promise something, it won't happen. That's what I get for being so lazy. Again...apologies to all. Pease forgive me. ^.^ Aww...how can you say no to that? Thanks to all those people who put this story as one of their favorites, or marked it so they would know when I update. Really appreciate it guys, thanks for everything. :D
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