LA LA LA …

On with chapter 10!

Disclaimer: Whatever, I have no imagination at the moment. Max Ride = not mine.

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I've cried and I've cried

There were nights that I died for you, baby

I tried and I tried to deny

That your love drove me crazy, baby.

--Bon Jovi

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Chapter 10: Fang P.O.V.

Lying down on the bed, Fang was staring at the ceiling. It was six in the morning and he had only gotten about three hours of sleep. But he wasn't tired.

Downstairs, someone was in the kitchen. Fang couldn't tell who it was, but he was resisting the urge to go down and get something to eat. He was starving.

Last night, Fang had met Rob, his step-dad. Fang had decided that he was pretty cool, considering the only dad-like figure he ever had was Jeb and look what a party that had turned out to be.

After Max and Jeb had left yesterday, Fang got to know Danica a little better. She was nice, but he didn't completely trust her yet. He knew that to begin with, that it would take some time. Out of the entire flock, it was Fang who had the hardest time trusting people. After everything that happened with him, he knew it would take a while before he could completely open up to his new family.

Pushing back the covers, Fang climbed out of the bed. Making his way downstairs, he saw that Danica was making breakfast. He wondered why she was up so early if she didn't have to go to work or anything.

She turned towards him when he entered the kitchen. She smiled.

"Good morning," Danica said.

Fang nodded and went to go get a mug. He poured in some coffee.

"Did I wake you? Or were you already awake?" she asked.

Fang sat down on a stool at the island. Her back was to him as she was flipping over the other side of the omelet she was making.

"No, I was awake," he said after he took a sip of his coffee.

"Do you usually get up this early?" she asked, taking the pan and turning to face him.

"Mostly," he said as he watched Danica carefully replace the omelet on her plate. She smiled.

"Can I make you anything? Are you hungry?"

Fang almost smiled. "I'm always hungry."

Danica smiled and looked up at him. "Ok, what sounds good?"

"Anything's fine."

She talked while cracking the eggs into the pan.

"So, tell me about the School," she said.

"It was bad," Fang answered, looking down into his coffee mug.

"What happened?" Danica asked.

Fang was silent for a few moments. "I don't want to talk about it," he said quietly after a few moments.

"I'm sorry. Don't feel pressured to talk about anything. Forget I asked," she said sympathetically. "Sometimes, I get a little overboard with the questioning. I majored in psychology. Steph calls me her personal shrink."

Fang hesitated before asking. "Is Stephanie your real daughter?" Fang already knew the answer, but he wanted to know the story behind it.

"No," Danica said. "She's Rob biological daughter, but I raised her like one. I consider her my own daughter. She's fifteen, going to be sixteen in December."

Fang nodded and poured himself another cup of coffee.

"I met Rob after Stephanie was born. Her mother was going to give her up for adoption, but Rob had wanted to keep her. Stephanie doesn't keep in touch with her mom that much. I don't think she minds it though," Danica explained.

Fang nodded again and Danica set his plate in front of him.

She took a seat at the corner of the island, sort of next to him. Her hand was propping up her head and she was staring at Fang curiously.

"So," Danica said after a few moments. "Tell me about yourself."

Fang swallowed, not knowing where to start. He wasn't good at this whole, let's share our emotions thing. He didn't like talking about himself. It made him feel uncomfortable.

Fang was quiet, taking huge bites out of his eggs, trying to think of something to say.

"Tell me about your family," Danica said.

Fang looked up. Most people didn't pick up on his hesitation easily.

"Sure," he said.

Over the course of at least an hour, Fang had talked the most he had ever talked in one sitting in his entire life. He didn't remember ever saying so much. He talked about the flock and their powers and their personalities and everything. Fang was so talkative that he was beginning to scare himself. Rob had even come down for breakfast and was listening in.

"What about Max?" Rob asked now. "I didn't meet her yesterday."

Fang shrugged. "She's Max. She likes to be in charge." Fang was trying to keep this particular subject short. He didn't really want to go into descriptive detail about Max. He didn't think that would help him any.

"Well, you'll meet her soon. She and Jeb are coming in a half hour or so. What time is your flight?" Danica asked.

"Nine thirty," Fang answered.

"So they should be here soon," she said and Fang nodded.

At that point, Mike came bounding down the stairs.

"Hey, Fang!" he said, gripping the edges of the countertop while he bounced up and down next to Fang's seat.

"What?" Fang said.

"Come, on! I wanna show you my game! Come on!"

"Alright, alright, I'm coming," Fang said, and followed Mike down the stairs to the family room.

"Look, it's this real cool video game, see?! And you use the wheel, and get to drive a car, and hey, Fang? Are you watching?" Mike said, tugging on his shirt.

"Yeah, I'm looking," Fang said.

"Ok, here," Mike said, shoving a plastic wheel at him and then pressing the button on the TV to turn it on.

"Wait, how does it work?" Fang asked the little boy, who was practically jumping up and down with excitement.

"You press this button, ok?" he said, standing on the couch behind Fang, peering over his shoulder.

"Hey, let's sit down, alright?"

"Yeah, ok, Fang," said Mike, but he was still standing; now navigating through the screens of the video game.

Fang had picked up that this kid was a handful last night during dinner. Mike had pretty much used up every excuse a four year old could think of for not eating his meal. And then after, he had tried to make his bedtime even later than already compromised.

Now, Fang listened to him scream and shriek as he steered his car on the TV. At least he had gone from standing on the couch to practically sitting in Fang's lap. But Fang didn't mind.

"How come you keep winning?" Fang asked, about four or fives races later.

Mike giggled. " 'Cause, I'm better!"

"Oh, that makes sense," said Fang, and Mike beamed.

"Hey, Fang," Danica's voice came from the top of the stairs. "Max and Jeb are here."

Mike turned to face Fang. "Who's Max?" he asked.

"The girl you met yesterday. Remember?" Fang replied.

Mike scrunched up his face, thinking. "Was that the one with the yellow hair?" he asked.

Fang almost smiled. He hadn't exactly realized that Max hair had gotten lighter. It always gets light in the summer and to other people it must've been noticeable. It bothered Fang how he hadn't seem to have realized.

"Yeah, that's the one."

"I liked her," Mikey said. "She was very pretty."

Fang paused, not knowing how to respond to that one. Thankfully, he didn't have to, as Max came running down the stairs.

"Hey," she said. "Hey, Mikey. Whatcha playing?"

Mike beamed. "Oh, it's this awesome game where you have a car and everything! Its so cool, and I was playing with Fang, and guess what! I won every time!"

"Whoa," Max said, giving Fang an incredulous look. Then she turned back to Mike and raised her eyebrows. "Every time?"

"Yeah! He's really bad," he said and Max laughed. Then she turned to Fang, still smiling. But Fang noticed a frantic look in her eyes and he began to worry in that overprotective way he has.

"So," she started. Fang pulled his eyebrows together. "Jeb's upstairs. And we don't want to be late for our flight."

"Who's Jeb?" Mike asked.

"Do you remember the man that was here with Fang and me yesterday?" Max asked.

"Oh, yeah, I remember." Mike frowned. "I don't like him. He's real scary."

Max glanced at Fang and smiled. "Yeah, he can be pretty freaky sometimes."

"Yeah," Mike agreed. "Really freaky."

Max laughed and Fang had to bit back a smile. As Max started to usher Mike up the stairs, Fang strayed behind until he heard Mike reach the top. Then he grabbed Max's wrist.

"Wait," he said, pulling her back down a step.

She looked worried. "What's wrong?" she said, and then glanced down at her hand, and Fang released his grip.

"You ok?" he asked.

Max nodded. "Fine. Let's go. We're going to be late."

"Wait," Fang said again. "There's something you want to tell me." He could tell by the look in her eyes that she wanted to talk about something. It was only a matter of prodding it out of her.

"No there isn't," she said, looking confused.

"Max," he started but she cut him off.

"Look, not now, alright? I'll tell you later."

"Max now is perfect. Unless you want to talk about it in front of Jeb."

Max sighed and then looked him straight in the eye. "Uh," she said. Then looked back down. "I think I know who the Voice is," she said quickly, as if to get it over with. Fang's eyes widened a fraction of an inch.

"Jeb accidently let it slip when I asked him about being the Voice, or using the Voice, or whatever, and he said 'Well, she and I both think…' then seemed to catch himself. Do you know what this means?" she hissed, under her breath. "It means the Voice, the real one, is a woman!"

Fang honestly had no idea what to do. This was all Max's territory. He would give Max advice in anything she ever would dream of asking him, but the Voice was something he had no clue about. He didn't know how it worked, or what it said, and Max was very reserved about it. She didn't like to talk about it much.

"Who do you think it is?"

"Well, I'm pretty sure it someone who knows me," she said. "Just by the way it talks about things. It like they know me inside and out. Which in this case, they probably do…. But I think… it might be Anne."

Fang's eyes widened again. "Anne?" he asked, surprised.

"It's the only one that makes sense," Max explained.

"Anne?" Fang asked again.

Max was quiet for a few moments. Looking down at him, Fang caught a sense of panic and worry in her eyes. He never really entirely knows everything Max was thinking or feeling 24/7. It bugged him, only because she was so reserved. With the things that mattered, really mattered, she kept things bottled up inside. Fang had thought that the Voice might be helping her deal with things her own way. Since it hadn't been around much lately, Fang figured that it was because Max had been coming to Fang.

But, if Max's theory, that Anne was the Voice, then Fang was furious. He didn't want her in Max's head. It made sense, for Anne to be the Voice. But Anne was poison.

"Anne's in jail," Fang reminded her.

Max thought about this for a minute. "Right. I forgot about that." Max bit her lip. "Whatever. Let's just go to the airplane and get on a plane and get out of here. We'll deal about this later. We'll deal about everything later."

Max started to march right back up the stairs with fang right behind her. Worried about Max, Fang hoped she was wrong about Anne. Max hadn't been coming to Fang about her problems lately. He didn't mind so much, but he hoped that she had been finding some way to deal with them. If she didn't, she was going to crack.

And Fang had a feeling he wasn't going to be there for it.

AHHHH MAX FIVE COMES OUT TOMORROW!!!!

Well, I am so sorry for such a late review. I wanted to get it out before the fifth book comes out. So by about two hours, I have reached my goal. YAY!

But I did get it out quickly…ish. I need to start a schedule.

I hope this chapter is good. Fang is such an awkward character that I had honestly no clue what to with him and his parents. And his brother. It was weird.

So, this is seriously the third time I wrote this chapter. The first one was a mess, so I just kinda took parts of it and then completely rewrote it. And then, way back before I updated chapter nine, I finished this hoping to update two at once.

But then, stupid me, clicks the little X button in the corner and the little "do you want to save your changes" thingy comes up, and I'm like "oh, wait, I forgot a disclaimer" so I click NO, and then eight pages get throw away into cyberspace.

Yes, I am an idiot. I have realized.