Disclaimer: I am not JP. I do not own Maximum Ride.
Chapter 7 – The Circus Tour
Fang POV
Grace smiles and waves as we walk out of the grocery store into the hot summer air. I roll my eyes. In our first trip to the store, she's already made friends with the store owner. If a suspicious man in a white van offered her candy and a ride home she would agree in an instant. She 'doesn't believe' in stranger danger.
We're carrying two jugs of water each back to the trailer. We're almost there when Max comes around the corner. As soon as she sees her, Grace sets down one of her jugs and waves. Max cocks an eyebrow at her but waves. Grace walks over to her, dragging her jugs behind her, and the two girls have a quiet conversation. I watch them suspiciously. What is Grace up to now? Grace turns and waves me over.
"What's up?" I ask.
"I'm going to give Max a tour of the backstage of the Circus." Grace announces happily.
"Fine. I have to feed Charlotte anyway." I agree. She grins at me. I lead the way back to the Circus. Behind me, I can hear Grace happily chatting away to Max. Poor girl.
"Ugh! Dylan is such an idiot!" Grace exclaims as she storms into the Animal Tent. I toss the last fish in the bucket to Willie, our sea lion, and look up.
"What did he do now?" I ask. Grace and Dylan have an ongoing rivalry. Not that he and I get along well, but he and Grace get along much worse. Grace goes out of her way to make him look bad and he goes out of his way to find insults that will make her cry. She's not crying this time, but she is pretty mad. An angry blush stains her cheeks and I almost expect steam to start coming out of her ears.
"He said I wasn't flexible! He said my act was lame. I'd like to see HIM dislocate his arm and lay it flat across his shoulders." Grace exclaims. I have to bite my tongue to keep from pointing out that she's not supposed to be doing that. Our parents forbid it the only time she brought it up.
"Your act is amazing, Grace." I tell her truthfully. "Dylan is just jealous because all he can do is twirl devil sticks." I rest a hand on her shoulder briefly. Grace looks like she's calming down. She cracks a smile.
"Yeah, he doesn't know how to preform 'impossible feats' or be brave and preform with a huge scary lion in the ring." Grace says. Talking more to Max than me. I turn away and roll my eyes. She's back and so is her determination to get me a date with the 'cute blonde girl with the weird best friend'.
"Sorry, Dylan really gets on my nerves. In case you didn't realize, this is where we keep the animals. The sea lion is Willie and our lion is Charlotte. We used to have a Rottweiler. It found a new home… how many cities ago was that, Nick?" Grace asks.
"A hundred and twelve." I say.
"Yeah, we miss him. He was technically Dylan's dog, but he liked me better." Grace tells Max proudly.
"Stop gloating. That was two years ago." I say. I pull packages of meat out of the cooler and unwrap them. Then I toss the meat to Charlotte who savagely tears it apart and eats it. Max looks a little shocked at the sight of our lion eating.
Grace taps her shoulder. "Come on, Max. I want to introduce you to my cousins, Gazzy and Angel. Nick, are you coming?" I rinse my hands in a bucket of water and I follow the girls.
We find them in the Circus tent. Gazzy is practicing his fire breathing and Angel is climbing all over the aerial hoop.
"Grace, help! I can't get down." Angel says when she sees us. "And someone won't help me." She gives her older brother a pointed look. Which he pointedly ignores. Grace laughs at them and shows Angel how to climb down.
Angel walks up to Max and smiles sweetly. "I'm Angel. Who're you?"
"I'm Max. I can't get down from that thing either." Max confides to her.
Angel grins. "I like you, Max. Fang, are you gonna marry Max?" It takes me a second to realize what's happened.
"Grace." I say threateningly. Grace looks at me with her 'innocent face' which is a clear sign that she's behind this.
She turns to Max. "You might want to go home. It's going to take him a while to catch me." She takes off running. I wave goodbye to Max and follow her. After all, someone has to teach my little sister a lesson.
I have no idea what happened here. I had a plan. Then I started writing the chapter and things changed. Well, hope you enjoyed it anyway. Thanks to my reviewers.
R&R!
