8

I was exhausted. Dreams, these days, seemed to haunt me, but they were always the same, each night tortured by one of two. The first was simply an echo of the dream I'd had the day I'd escaped from the school—small changes in the dream shifted each night, taunting me, crying out to me, and I could never figure out what those changes were. The second, and perhaps the more frequent of the two, was the one that also caused me to wake every time afterwards with terrified tears streaming down my cheeks.

It was always Van, pleading with me to help him as Bill and the other whitecoat mercilessly injected his arm with the poison that would kill him, the poison that was meant for me.

"No!" I would always scream, lurching forward to wrench him away from them, but I could never reach him. Somehow, no matter how close he seemed to be, he was always out of reach. Nearly every night, I would watch Van meet the fate that had been meant for me. Nearly every night, I would watch my best friend die. Nearly every night, I was awoken by my own screams.

This night was one of those nights.

It was around 2:45 in the morning when my own blood-chilling screams wrenched me violently from the nightmare. My body was sticky with cold sweat, my eyelashes wet with tears. This was the usual by now. Instead of wasting my time trying to go back to sleep like I had the first few days—it had begun after spending roughly two weeks with the Flock and had been continuing for about a month—I threw back the covers and made my way to the bathroom, not having to look to know exactly where I had to step over any miscellaneous items.

The cold shower water didn't help much to wash away the memory of the dream, but it did help take my mind off of it.

I sighed, trying to shake off the exhaustion. Drowning in the shower would really suck.

After nearly an hour of cold water pelting my back, I finally switched it off and climbed out of the shower, determining that I would go downstairs, make pancakes and bacon, and watch Disney Channel.

At least I can still keep some old habits, I thought to myself with a small smile. When I was a little kid and had nightmares, I would make myself an extra early breakfast and watch Disney Channel to get my mind off of it; the habit had remained, no matter how much I'd grown.

I found the ingredients for pancake batter easily enough, only taking a couple of minutes to search the fridge for the milk—which happened to be way in the back, so I spent the majority of those couple minutes removing and putting back the things in my way.

A few minutes later, bacon was sizzling merrily on the stove and pancakes were baking on the small pancake grill that Iggy often used. I switched off the ovens, loaded my plate, and began flipping through the television channels, searching for Disney.

I was happy to discover that it was playing an old rerun of one of my favorite shows.

Fang arrived downstairs and six o'clock, his usual time. He greeted me with a wary glance and a nod, which I returned before turning my gaze back to the television.

I felt the couch shift beneath me as someone sat down, and I looked to see Fang seated a couple feet down, looking like he didn't quite know what to do. I gave a mental shrug and looked again to the television.

"Wind?" he said finally, his voice quiet. I looked back at him, eyebrows raised in a prompt for him to continue. He paused to study me before plowing on. "I think I was being unreasonable when I said I thought you shouldn't stay. Like Max said, it wouldn't be right to throw you out on your own. I was wrong. I'm sorry."

I was so stunned by the apology that I didn't know what to say for a few moments. My mouth opened and closed in an attempt to force words into existence, but I ended up just waving my hand and saying, "No big."

He nodded and stood to leave, but paused when he reached the kitchen threshold, turning back to say something. I raised my eyebrows again.
"Yes?" I said curiously.

"I just…" he hesitated, seeming to be searching for the right words to phrase what he wanted to say. "I just wanted you to know you're welcome here, okay? You're kind of like a part of the family now."

This time, I was shocked into absolutely silence.

"A part of the family," he said. "You're always welcome here, okay?"


"So then you just sprinkle some salt on the yeast—no, you have to mix it together, otherwise the "boom" isn't nearly as satisfying—and pour a little olive oil—don't be shy—and here, give me the lighter… now run!"

The Gasman leaped to his feet and sprinted for a few feet before launching himself into the air with me hot on his heels. There were a few seconds of absolute silence before a shuddering boom shook the air. I spun in air and hovered, watching as an area in the trees was blown to smithereens. How Gazzy figured out how to prevent a forest fire, I didn't know, but the explosion all the same was amazing.

The Gasman laughed in glee, and soon I joined him, slapping him a high-five.

"That was awesome!" I shouted in excitement. "I love it!"

Gazzy grinned back at me. "Wait until I teach you to make portable bombs and grenades—then we'll be having some real fun!"

I felt the urge to laugh hysterically. I hadn't felt so excited about anything in my entire life, and I told Gazzy so.

"You, my friend, have a lot to learn, but we might make a bombist of you yet!"

"We?"

"Yeah, me and Iggy."

Somehow, that didn't surprise me. Iggy had a thing for cooking with fire.

"What about me?"

We turned in the air to see Iggy hovering a couple of feet away. Sensing my confusion as to how he'd known where we were, he explained, "I heard a boom and came to check in out, and I'd recognize your guys' voices anywhere."

"I'm teaching Wind how to make bombs!" Gazzy said excitedly. I didn't think it was possible to bounce in mid-air, but the Gasman was proving me wrong. "She's totally one of us!"

I grinned. "What can I say? My favorite movies always have explosions. My parents would never…" I trailed off as the boys' grins faded at the mention of my parents. "Um… nevermind. I'm starving. I'm gonna head back to the house to grab some grub," I muttered awkwardly, swerving around to head back towards the Flock.

I wasn't kidding about being hungry, though; ever since the genetic engineering, I could eat roughly seven square meals a day, and that was if I was being lazy and not burning calories. The meals Iggy cooked were impossibly huge, and when Max went to the grocery store, I couldn't help but wonder how we paid for it all. A part of me doubted that they earned the money.

When I reached the house, I folded my wings and dropped straight toward the deck, head first. I flared my wings at the last second and pulled up. It hurt, but Max, who was helping me to get better at flying said that my muscles just needed to get stronger. I landed on the deck jogging, so I just kept going to the door until I slowed down.

Angel was eating strawberries—her favorite—at the dining room table with Total, and they both looked at me as I slid the glass door shut behind me. Angel finished chewing, swallowed, and then said, "Don't take their reaction to heart, Wind. None of us really knew our parents—except for Iggy, but that didn't work out—so we're all a little jealous that you grew up normal. Don't worry, they'll get used to it."

Resigned by this time to her habit of tapping into other people's thoughts, I just nodded wearily and went to the fridge, pulling out a bag of grapes, various melons, a few apples, and a pineapple to make a fruit salad. I'd never been partial to junk food, though the other Flock members ate plenty of it. They were still recovering from shock when a couple of weeks ago, I'd politely refused a family size bag of potato chips, opting instead for a large bag of trail mix, which was one of my favorites.

"You know," Total mumbled around a mouthful of strawberries, "you never did tell us your story. Where did you come from? Did you grow up in the School?"

I shook my head and began slicing a cantaloupe into bite-size pieces. "No. Two erasers stole me from my home in Pennsylvania a few months ago. They took me to the School, but I didn't know it then because I'd been knocked out early on in the kidnapping. They put me in a bag.

"It's scary, you know? Waking up in a cramped cage with broken bones and a severe concussion, having no idea where you are and why. I was terrified.

"There was a boy maybe a little older than me in the cage next to me. I think he was injected with the DNA of some kind of fish." I smiled a sad smile at the memory. "His name was Van.

"They liked me, the whitecoats. I wouldn't say they treated me well, but they didn't perform many experiments on me beyond the DNA injection, and I got fed more often than the others.

"There was one whitecoat who seemed to care for me. His name was Bill. He called me by my name instead of my number, and when they assigned me the name of Whirlwind, I think he had something to do with it. He was kind of like a big brother.

"One day, the day I escaped, I had a dream. There was black all around me, and a voice. It told me I was running out of time. Van woke me up and told me the whitecoats were going to kill me because I had the dream. I escaped when they opened my cage and started flying. I finally passed out in the air after a few hours, and woke up here. You know the rest."

There was silence for a few moments before Angel asked, "What was life like before the erasers took you?"

I smiled sadly. "Life was really good. My parents really loved me and my brother, Travis. God, I miss him, even if he was the biggest pain in the butt to ever be born. I used to have this really fat cat called Winston. Before I met you guys, I thought nobody could eat as much as he could. I spent a lot of my time with my best friends, Annabelle and Macey. We would spend our time watching CSI or prowling the mall for a good pair of jeans. I really…" I choked on the memories. "I really miss all of that."

By the time I'd finished, my fruit was all chopped and sliced, but I didn't feel hungry anymore.

"You shouldn't dwell on the past," Angel said finally, her eyes soft with silent concern. She was strangely mature for a little kid. "Max says that thinking about things that aren't possible anymore is unhealthy. It's better to look to the future instead."

"That's right, kiddo," Max said as she rounded the corner. She must have sensed that something was wrong, because she looked sharply at Angel and said, "What's wrong?"

Angel's eyes bore into Max's for a couple of minutes as silence settled over the room, and finally max softly muttered, "Oh. I see." She looked to me, appearing to be at a loss for words.

"It's okay," I mumbled, putting my fruit salad in the fridge for later. "I'll get over it someday." Max stopped me as I tried to leave.

"That the things, though," she said. "You won't get over it. You're always going to miss them, Wind, always going to wonder where they are and what they're doing. It doesn't go away. It won't ever go away."

I resisted the urge to snap at her. "If I'm always going to feel like this, then there's no point worrying about it. I might as well get used to it," I said wearily. I really just wanted to go take a nap, nightmares be damned.

"Look at me, Wind," Max said, and I raised my eyes to hers. "Let us help you," she told me softly, looking sincere.

"One never learns to stand on their own two feet if they're always depending on others to hold them up."

"And even the strongest of buildings have support."