Author's Note: Okay, this chapter is superlong compared to the other chapters I've written… Enjoy! :D And review! :D
To answer a review question: Max and Fang are unofficially together, just like they were for the first 5 books in the series.
Disclaimer: Technically, Maximum Ride IS mine cuz I thought of it first! (Even though I was like two when the series first came out…) But legally, it's not mine. Boo-hoo!
Imagine, if you will, that you're standing on a deck, ten feet or so off the ground. You then climb up on the railing, balancing precariously on the edge, which means you are another four or so feet up. Your wings are relaxed, not pulled into your back, every feather dancing in the breeze. You flex your muscles, roll your shoulders, and toss yourself off the railing.
For a split-second, human instinct takes over and your brain is screaming at you. Why did you do that? Are you freaking suicidal? But then your wings unfurl gracefully, a yard from the ground, and you are yanked into the air. You flap quickly, rising almost ten feet with every downstroke. You look down and pretty soon, your toes are skimming the treetops. The wind is in your face, blowing your hair out of the way. You get to cruising altitude and soar, letting the wind take you forward. You look down again and you see people, as small as ants. For a second, you wonder what would happen if you were to just drop. You laugh out loud, the sound snatched away by the wind.
Doesn't even just thinking about it give you a thrill? That's just a glimpse of what it's like to be flying. It's a privilege I get to enjoy every day. It never gets old. I imagine it must be a thousand times more exciting for Ella, who's new to this. With every move, even on the ground, she can feel the weight of new wings on her back, reminding her that she is special, that she isn't limited to the ground. We don't really feel our wings any more than we feel our feet or arms, but to her, it must be a billion times more extraordinary.
Anyways. Done with Max's poetic description of flying.
The four of us, me and Ella in short-shorts and hoodies with slits for our wings, Iggy and Fang in cargo shorts and zip-up sweatshirts, arrived at the junior-high school at almost exactly two o'clock. Then we leaned against a car, pretending it was ours (a technique we'd developed a long time ago) and tried to peer through the windows to get a glimpse of the Flock members.
Anyone else would've only seen the reflection of the sun in the windows, but with our superacute raptor vision, we could actually see what was going on inside. I located Nudge first.
"Second window to the right of the door, first floor," I told them.
Nudge waved at us and started chattering to her teacher. I could actually read her lips saying, "Yeah, um, I have to leave now? I think Dr. Martinez called to tell you I was going to have to go, she's like my mom but not really, she's my sister's mom, but that doesn't make her my mom. It's sorta hard to explain, but we're going to her house now and my sister Max is already here to pick me up, and her boyfriend Fang—" Not the words I would use, but okay, "—and Iggy, who's sort of my brother, and Ella, she's Iggy's girlfriend but she's Max's sister, like, her real sister. It's sort of hard to explain, and when I say it like that it sort of sounds weird, but it's not like that, Ella and Max are the only real siblings, it's hard to explain…" I cringed as I read her lips. Jeez, it sounds like we're some perverted family who dates each other.
"Did she seriously just say that?" Ella squeaked, blushing red. Ah, so I'm not the only one reading Nudge's lips.
Fang tore himself out of a conversation with Iggy to say, "What?"
"Nothing," I said quickly, but I looked at Ella and said, "She makes it sound sooooo wrong, doesn't she?"
Ella made a face. "Now is a moment where I wish I didn't have raptor vision and insane lip-reading skills."
Fang gave me a look but shrugged when I waved him away with my hand. I was so not telling him what I'd just witnessed.
Anyways, the three of them came out of the school with empty hands. "We left our backpacks in our lockers, it's a four-hour flight, I don't think we're going to be able to carry all that weight, I mean, I know we used to carry backpacks, but now we're a little out of shape. I think I should start working out, I don't really want to be out of shape, especially with those weird robot-people on the loose," Nudge explained. When she stopped to draw a breath, I said, "Nudge, just do me a favor and never try to explain our family's relationships to anyone ever again, okay?"
She looked at me, all embarrassed. "Were you reading my lips? I know that came out a little funny, I'm sorry! Don't be mad at me saying that Fang's your—" I elbowed her. "Jeez, what was that for! Oh, never mind."
Now everyone except for Ella and Nudge, who knew what was going on, were looking at me funny.
"Okay, people, never mind," I said. "We're going to walk for two blocks, then into the forest, like we know what we're doing." That was the way we'd come. I was already stressing about someone seeing us and asking questions. I'd made the four of us tuck our wings into our sweatshirts, and the slits were long but very thin, so no one would see anything. I'd also told the kids what to dress in this morning—Nudge had on some cute jean bottom thing and a sweatshirt, Gazzy had khakis and a sweatshirt, and Angel had white shorts and…wait for it…all together now… a sweatshirt. See a trend? Sweatshirts are good at hiding wings and light enough to fly in but be warm in thirty thousand feet above Earth.
Before long, we were in the forest. We jogged for about a mile before climbing some trees—the kids find it hard to take off without a running start and surrounded by trees—and took off.
It was the middle of the day, so we had to get up into the clouds superspeed. Unfortunately, there were no clouds. I was already sweating buckets from nerves.
"Okay, guys, we get up as high as possible as fast as possible," I said. "There aren't any clouds today, so we'll just have to hope that if anyone looks at us we'll just look like hawks from that distance. Or they won't see us at all."
Everybody nodded. We shook our wings out so that the feathers could align again and took off into the air, one by one.
Fang and I were the last ones on the ground. "Stop stressing," he told me. "We're gonna go see your mom. You should be pumped."
"I am pumped," I said with a weak smile. "Just nervous right now."
We took off. I swear, it never gets better than this! I hit my overdrive speeds, soon catching up to Ella, who'd been the first in the air. Once we were at our usual height of twenty-five thousand feet or so, I started to relax and enjoy flying.
"Take it easy, guys," I called. "We haven't done this for a while, so we're gonna keep a slower pace."
Fang flew up closer to me, so close, in fact, that his pure-black wingtips were brushing my tawny feathers. I swear, every time he touched me, sparks flew from my wingtips and all through my body.
"So what was up with Nudge?" he asked me.
"Curiosity killed the bird-kid," I quipped, and he nudged my wing with his. "She was just trying to explain all of our…relationships," I said. "It ended up sounding like we were a perverted family where the sisters and brothers all dated each other, the way she said it."
"Ah." Fang grinned at me so unexpectedly that I dropped a few feet. He dropped to my level and we flew together for a while.
It was six by the time we actually crossed the Arizona border, when we were supposed to be at my mom's house. I wasn't even out of breath, but I could tell that Gazzy, Angel and Ella were struggling with the long flight.
"We only have about half an hour more," I called out. It wasn't really that long, by bird-kid time, and sure enough, half an hour later we were looking for a safe place to land. We ended up dropping into a clump of trees, pulling our wings into our sweatshirts, and tiredly (in some cases) jogging two miles to my mom's new apartment building.
You're probably thinking, "You've been flying for four hours and still manage to jog over two miles?" but you have to remember that we're genetically enhanced. Two miles on land is no more than two miles in the air, which takes us like two seconds. Well not really, but…
We met my mom outside the building. After all the necessary hugging, crying, et cetera, she led us inside.
We'd all been in the apartment a couple of times before, so we knew the drill. My mom's apartment is pretty big, with a kitchen, living room, two bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a study, but it usually ends up being a huge camp-out in the living room anyways. Angel and Gazzy, as the youngest and the siblings, usually shared the second bedroom while the rest of us slept in the living room. That's how it was going to be this time too.
"Can we just get it over with today?" Gazzy asked my mom, shaking out his wings. Usually, even at home, we keep them plastered against our backs so we don't get out of practice and make some mistake in public (coughcoughEggycough). But since this was considered a vacation, they could do whatever they wanted. It was only a bonus that mom loved seeing our wings.
"We can go anytime you want," Dr. Martinez answered graciously.
"So who votes we go today?" I said. Almost everyone raised their hands. This kind of stuff makes us nervous. It happens when you grow up in a lab.
"We can go right now," my mom said.
"You guys mind if I fly?" I asked suddenly. The flight here was intoxicating and I couldn't wait to get more.
Dr. Martinez looked a little uneasy, probably because of the recent robo-people attack, until Fang got up from the couch. "I'll go with you," he said.
"It's three miles due east from here," my mom instructed. "You'll see it."
"'S there a fire escape or something?" Fang asked.
"Yep, out the guest bedroom," Angel piped up. "You can take it straight to the roof."
We did just that, slipping our sweatshirts on and forcing our wings through the slits at the same time. Then we took off, the wind whipping our faces, et cetera, et cetera. It only took five minutes to get to the animal hospital. We found a good place to land and met my mom by the entrance.
One by one, the Flock members got their arms x-rayed. Then we sat down at the computer as my mom electronically scanned them through.
She started from youngest and went up. "Angel, you're clear, sweetie. Gazzy…you're fine. Nudge, you don't have anything…Ella, you're clean." She stopped at Fang and Iggy's x-rays. "You have chips like Max's, but they're more towards the surface. Either they were inserted later or just not as deep."
"So the first generation has chips," I said, wondering what to make of that.
Iggy started freaking out. "What? I have a chip? What am I supposed to do now? I'll have to move into a cave and become a hermit, battling evil forces to keep you safe… Fang, man, we must distance ourselves from the ones we love NOW!"
Fang cracked a smile and rolled his eyes. "I'm rolling my eyes, Ig."
"Iggy, you're overreacting," my mom said. "Your chips are, for some reason, a lot more operable than Max's was." She examined the x-rays for some time, tracing lines and thinking, than she said, "There's virtually no risk at all in removing these chips."
"Good," I said briskly. "Then we operate tomorrow."
Click. Click. Click that button!