Chapter 4
'Seeing is believing.'
Iggy
"That butthead" I said, my anger evident in my voice. Nobody was screaming and yelling and crying out – though it was obvious we all wanted to be doing so. There was a silence in the room and although I couldn't see or hear anyone crying, I knew we all were.
"This is my fault" I heard Angel's small voice next to me.
"No," Max told her, "You've done a lot of asinine things, but this is not your fault."
I felt guilty about everything bad that I'd ever said and done to Max. She was the best leader we would have and we needed her. I felt angry too, at Fang for doing such a thing, in such a cruel way. We needed Max to be strong and fast-thinking. But right now, she was crushed and lost and hurt.
Because Fang had gone.
I knew the flock wouldn't be the same without him. When I'd left the flock, my heart felt like it had been torn out. I felt lost, even more lost than I usually feel. And then when the flock had split, I'd missed everyone so bad and knew that we all felt that way. And then when Nudge had left it'd felt oddly quiet without our noisiest member.
The flock didn't function properly when anyone was missing. We needed to be all six of us, seven including Total. I knew that the flock wouldn't be the same with Max and Fang apart.
But I also knew that the flock wasn't the same when Max and Fang were together.
I didn't really know how I felt about Max and Fang, and their relationship. I guess at first I was kind of angry with them, maybe a bit jealous. Fang and I were both fourteen, physically similar and we were both people Max could trust. She could have chosen to be with either of us.
But she didn't choose me.
She chose the guy who wasn't blind, who wasn't handicapped. And it made me bitter. I remember how at first I'd tried to deny that there was something going on between them. I tried to hide it, tried to be oblivious to it, but I could no longer say that it was nothing when they'd kissed. I couldn't help envying them. I mean, it would be harder for me, to find someone. Who is going to want a blind mutant with wings? But neither of them has to worry about the whole wing problem seeing as they both have them, but what about me? What about Nudge? What about Angel and Gazzy? Angel and Gazzy are closest in age but they can hardly date, seeing as they're related. Max and Fang are sorted love-life wise, but they didn't think about the rest of us.
It's not really like I have feelings for Max or anything, I mean I like her and she's one of my best friends – its just… knowing they're together makes me feel excluded. In fact, it makes the whole flock feel excluded. And that's why one of them had to leave the flock for a while.
We'd tried making Max leave the flock but that didn't work at all. So it would have to be Fang. And we all knew this.
Even Fang, and that's why he'd left.
I suddenly felt exhausted and I sank down in the room listening to the remaining 4 people out of 5 in the world that I trusted.
More silent tears and tired sighs. I formed a picture in my head of what we all looked like right now; it was a mess.
Actually looking upon the painful scene would have made everything seem so much more real, and for now I wanted to pretend, to make myself believe that it wasn't true. Being blind made this easier.
For once in my life, I was almost glad that I couldn't see.