Tokoloshe Monster beta-read this, and she continues to be awesome.

"Fang?" Nudge asked. "Don't you think we should do something other than, um…" She gestured at Lake Mead stretching out before them, the desert sun shining down on its surface. The two of them had stripped down to their undershirts and jeans, and now sat by its shore. Both of them had taken advantage of the isolation to unfurl their wings. "Like, sit here? I feel like we should go back to Max. What if Ella's mom turns out to be a psycho? Shouldn't we be there to help her? By her I mean Max, not Ella's mom, that's weird I wouldn't help a psycho. But wait; don't we have to get Ari? Shouldn't we be trying to get Ari? I mean the School could do a lot in like two days, and like I don't want Ari to end up as some horrible mutant freak just because we stopped to sit by a lake I mean we've already been through enough he shouldn't have to go through it too—oh, God, what about the other kids in the School? What about them? Can we help them oh my God I feel so sick. Those poor kids, what can we do to help them? Fang I think we should go on the news. I don't care if I get put in a zoo or something I don't want any more kids in cages. Oh my God would they put the other kids in the zoo?"

Fang nodded.

"You're sure? Even though they had spent their lives in cages?"

Fang nodded again.

"That's horrible oh my God. Fang, why are people so horrible? Do they hate us just because we're different? I mean we couldn't exactly help being born with freaking wings because of freaking scientists putting stuff in us why would they hate us for something we couldn't control?"

"They're scared," Fang said. He was reclining with his hands behind his head, using his backpack to prop up his lower back.

"They're scared because we're different? Well, that's stupid. Wouldn't all men, be, like, scared of women or something? I mean men and women are different. Shouldn't we all be like terrified of cats or something? Kittens are pretty freaking different from us, you know? God, people suck sometimes. What if you had two kids and one had red hair, would you freak out? Like I mean I would freak out if I had kids, because I'm like eleven and babymaking is gross, also I'm almost positive boys have some weird kind of virus, except you Fang you don't have like a virus I mean you don't act like you have a virus. I mean, neither do Gazzy and Iggy so maybe mutant boys are immune? Not that I would want to like make babies with a mutant boy. Oh my God I'm like eleven that's gross, boys are gross, but do you know what I mean? People are weird, Fang."

Fang nodded.

"Hey," Nudge said, looking towards her right where birds circled around the cliffs. "Are those raptors? Can we go check out their nest? 'Cause like they're birds, and aren't we part raptor or something, except all our wings are different colors but they're shaped the same? Hey Fang, can we go check out the birds? I mean we're like related to them, I mean we're like also part bird; maybe we can talk to birds? Can we talk to birds?"

Fang shook his head.

"Can I go swimming?"

Fang shook his head again.

"Not even if I take my jeans off so they don't get wet?"

Fang shrugged.

"Fine," Nudge said, "Be that way."

She wiggled out of her jeans and ran into the water in her leggings and undershirt. She had gotten the leggings at Goodwill. They were supposed to be for jogging, but she wore them all the time because they were blue and sparkly. Like, what if she was in a fight and her jeans got ripped up? She'd have something super-cute under it. Besides, like this she could pretend that she was a superhero, hiding her superhero suit underneath her clothes.

As the water closed over her head, she shut her eyes and then opened them before starting to swim off toward the center of the lake. Swimming in the cool water on a hot day like this calmed her down, helped her get her mind off stupid Fang and how rude he could be. Like, God, she was just trying to talk to him. What was his deal? Did he hate her or something? Did he wish that he were with Max instead of his annoying kid sister? Nudge frowned as she treaded water. What if nobody, nobody ever, wanted to talk to her? What if everybody ever just… hated her? Her stomach clenched and something bitter rose up into her mouth.

She shook her head. Focus on the mission, that's what Jeb and Max would have said. Except they weren't here.

Max was with Ella's mom, Iggy and Gazzy and Angel were back in Colorado, and Ari was stuck in California. That's not what the Flock was supposed to do. Flocks weren't supposed to split up. They were supposed to stay together and be strong and support one another, the same way that families stuck together.

She bit her lip and dived back underneath the surface of the lake, swimming underwater with long strokes. She could go for ten minutes without needing air, two minutes more than Max and Fang. Ari had to breathe after three minutes. Why? Why were any of them—

When her feet touched the bottom of the lake, she crouched for a moment and launched herself up. As soon as her head broke above the water, she breathed in air that she wouldn't have needed for at least five minutes. All around her was flat—the ground, the sky. The cliffs were like mountains from this perspective. She could fly higher than them; see things that most people wouldn't be able to see.

Nudge swam for the shore, pulling herself out of the water and plopping down next to Fang. Grains of salt and sand clung to her leggings, her skin, her hair, her wings. "Don't you think we should go back and look for Max? Don't you think that would be a good idea? I'm worried about her and it's getting late and I just don't want her to get hurt, you know, what if she ends up—are you paying attention to me?"

Fang nodded.

"God, you could at least show it," Nudge groused, and folded her arms over her chest. "Anyway, look, we can grab Max and haul tail and maybe steal a car or something so she isn't flying on a bad wing, I just don't want to sit here doing nothing, because mad scientists are experimenting on my baby brother like right now, you know?"

"We're not stealing a car," Fang said.

"How else are we going to get around with Ari?" Nudge demanded. "Jesus God, Fang," she paused to pull out one of her last energy bars out of her bag, unwrap it, and shove half of it in her mouth. She continued talking through crumbs. "It's like you don't even think about the future." She rolled her eyes, but then her gaze focused on the horizon. "Hey, are those birds? 'Cause they look like—Fang! It's Iggy and Gazzy and Angel! Ohmigodwhathappened? They were supposed to stay with Jeb!"

Fang shrugged.

Nudge grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him, pushing him down into the sand. "Noooo, you can't just go all Mister Stoic on us here, something happened! Sometimes I just want to hit you, Fang, you know? You don't ever act like anything bothers you and I don't know how you feel about anything!"

Two pairs of feet thudded behind them. Nudge spun, only to see Gazzy collapse face-first onto the sand. He didn't even try to tuck his wings in. Angel groaned and stumbled over to him, pulling on his arm. She fell down too, face-planting into his back.

Iggy landed last, a good couple of meters behind them. Nudge headed over to him, half-jumping over one of Gazzy's wings. "What are you doing here? Max told you to stay back home!" But once she was closer, she saw what a wreck he was. His eyes were shadowed and he looked pastier than usual.

And when he spoke, he sounded exhausted. Even though he was snapping. "What does Max think she's doing? Why the hell aren't you guys in the air?"

Nudge's stomach twisted as she thought of how Max had ran after she had been shot, favoring her injured shoulder, looking ready to pass out from the pain. Fang had had to half-carry her. "Max got hurt," she said, staring at her bare feet.

That was when she noticed that Iggy was covered in dried blood from the knees down.

"Oh my God! What happened to you? Are you okay?" Even to her ears, her voice sounded high-pitched. "Oh my God, are you still bleeding?"

"Nudge. I'm fine." Iggy blinked a few times. "Just tired."

She launched herself at him then, wrapping her twiggy arms around him and squeezing tight, standing on her tiptoes so she could rest her chin on his shoulder.

He wasn't dead, and neither were Gazzy and Angel, and they could meet up with Max and get Ari and go back to Jeb, but…

"What made you leave?"

Iggy tensed, his muscles going stiff under her arms.

"…May I examine you?" Dr. M asked. "It's not every day that I get a patient with—well, with wings. I want to know more about you, so if you show up again hurt in some other way I'll know what to do." She swallowed.

I froze. What would happen if I said 'no?' Would she tell me to take care of my own freaking shoulder? Kick me out of her clinic and her house? Jeb had told us, time and time again, don't trust them if they're not family. Dr. M and Ella were hospitable but they weren't family. They weren't the be-all, end-all. So the right answer, the one I should have given, was no. But the answer that I felt would help me more in the long run was yes. If I got onto the good doctor's good side, well, I wouldn't be wondering where to stay while my wing healed up. It would only take a day or so, but a day or so meant a lot when there wasn't a roof over your head.

"Sure," I said, and unfurled my wings. "Go ahead."

She started with the basics—blood pressure, heart rate, eyesight, hearing—the stuff that Jeb would do every month or so, to make sure that we were still in good shape. The examination didn't tell me anything I wasn't already aware of: my blood pressure was low (typical, I spent roughly three hours a day training), my heart rate was low but loud, I had air sacs in addition to lungs (to help me breathe more efficiently when I was flying), and larger-than-average spaces between my collar- and shoulder-bone. As she measured, she chatted. Turned out that the bullet had passed cleanly through my shoulder and wing, no shrapnel or bones to worry about. I had caught a lucky break.

After all the measuring was done, she weighed me. "Five-eight and one-forty, right?" I asked after she wrote down the numbers.

"One-thirty-nine," she said. "I'm surprised at that—If I had to gauge your weight I'd put you at fifteen pounds lighter, maybe more."

"My wings account for about fifteen percent of my body weight," I told her. "Most people don't think to add them."

If you want to get technical about things, I'm underweight or close to it—all of us are. We have to eat a lot just to maintain our weight, and when you factor in training, that number gets even higher. But we're almost all of us at a weight healthy enough not to cause alarm.

Except for Nudge, constantly hungry and constantly talking. Standing at 5"4, she weighed in at a hundred pounds after a big meal. If she bent over, I could see her ribs and her spine reaching through her skin like they were trying to get out. It worried me sometimes that she wouldn't be able to eat enough to grow like the rest of us had. Even though she had spunk and put up a good fight, an Eraser or two could outmuscle her without much trouble. And I couldn't impress it enough on her—she had to win, she had to keep winning, she couldn't ever, ever afford to lose. One of the first lessons I had learned from the School was that weakness meant death. It didn't matter if you were strong twenty-three hours of the day, that one last hour was when you would die. You couldn't lose anything, not even for a second.

"And that's it!" Dr. M closed her notebook with a clap, making me jump. "Oh—sorry about that. No loud noises."

"No, it's okay. I'm just on edge after…" I made my hand into a finger gun and mimed firing it. It was actually because of years of living in a cage and being tested by mad scientists, but I figured that she wouldn't need to know that.

"Well," she said, "Given your higher body temperature but lack of fever symptoms, I'm willing to bet that you run at a faster rate than usual. So while I can't tell you how long it'll take for your shoulder to heal, I can say that it should be less than a week."

"I'll be fine by tomorrow evening," I told her.

Her eyes widened. "That's so cool! Increased metabolic rates and regenerative capabilities!" She cut herself off. "Sorry. …Here, come on, let's go back to the car."

I didn't fall on the walk back, but I did have to walk a lot slower. My shoulder wasn't bleeding as much anymore, and my wing had already begun to scab over. On our way out, Dr. M picked up the X-rays. "You can take them, if that's what you want. But if you let me have them, I'd keep them in a safe place."

You can't trust anybody that isn't family, Max. Like this woman was a mad scientist? I scoffed at the Jeb-voice in my head. Please. I could tell what a mad scientist looked like, and she wasn't one. So I made an executive decision based on what I had already observed—you know, like a good leader would. "You can keep the X-rays," I told her.

She was grinning when she got into the car. "So," she said as she started the engine, "Are there any others like you?"

"Well, Fang and Nudge—" Wait. What was I doing? Trusting this woman not to go to the news was one thing. Giving her X-rays of my mutant bodywas another, but talking about my Flock? Well—she had already seen Fang and Nudge. She would put two and two together. "Yeah, they're winged. I don't, in a general sense, know if there are any others like me." That was true. Jeb had never mentioned other bird kids, and I had never asked. As far as I knew, neither had the Flock. None of us had hit our "questioning the meaning of life" phase yet—except maybe for Fang, judging from the amount of black he wore.

"I'm guessing that you're acting as the parent," she said.

I laughed. Me, a mom? Hell no. There would be no way I could keep the entire Flock in line. "Um, more like… a big sister."

"Well, I'm just glad that your big-sister instincts kicked in to save my daughter," Dr. M said. "Speaking of, do you mind waiting back at home with her while I go out and get some stuff? I have a surprise for the two of you."

"S-sure," I said as we pulled up next to the house, trying to ignore the growing feeling of nervousness. "Not a problem." I mean, it wouldn't be, right? Ella seemed like a nice kid—weird around her mom and with a penchant for getting in trouble, but a nice kid. We wouldn't have a big problem with each other. We would get along fine, except for the whole wings thing.

Right?

"No," Nudge said, shaking her head, eyes wide. "No, I don't believe it. Somebody messed up, somebody missed something. There's no way that's possible!"

"Nudge, I'm sorry," Angel said, and took her sister's hand. "We all saw what happened."

The older girl let out a small, choked noise. "Don't say that, Angel! Don't ever say that! We're proof; we're living proof that the impossible happens. You can't let yourself think that just because something looks a certain way, that it's set in stone for all eternity—I mean, if astronauts had that attitude then we'd never have been on the moon and Max wouldn't have chosen her last name—oh God, Max."

Iggy knelt so he was eye-to-eye with her and put a hand on her shoulder, rubbing it gently with his thumb. "Hey, hey, it's okay. Now how about you tell us what happened to Max?"

"She got shot," Nudge sobbed. Her face went back into her hands. "She was running away from some guys and they shot her in the shoulder and now she's back with some vet lady."

"Breathe, Nudge. Take a deep breath." Iggy moved his hands from her shoulders to her wrists, and pulled her hands gently away from her face. "Okay, now talk to me about eagles. Talk to me about… golden eagles."

"Golden eagles," Nudge said shakily. "Latin name Aquila chrysaetos, which is actually really pretty and what I would name a kid. I wish my name was Aquila. Or Chrysaetos. It's just so pretty…" She swallowed her tears and kept going, Iggy's hold on her firm. Concrete. She focused on that, the way his hands were wrapped around her wrists, anchoring her in the real world, in the present moment, and not her thoughts. "Dark brown, golden feathers on the napes, build large nests in cliffs. Wings are long and broad, designed for long-term flight, fifth-largest in-in-in extant eagle species. On the tips of the wing the feathers look like fingers. Might be confused for raptors if you're stupid, because they're a lot—a lot bigger. Five times the weight of the buteo family, which is saying a lot." She sniffed. "I think I'm okay now, Ig."

"Okay?" Iggy repeated.

She nodded. "Okay."

He let go of her hands and turned to Fang. "Where's Max?"

Fang said, "She told us to stay here."

"That's not what I'm asking you," Iggy told him. "I'm not asking you what she told you two to do. I'm asking you where she is and why she isn't here."

"Like Nudge told you, she got shot because she was fighting and now she's getting it fixed up," Angel said. Her voice was quiet but still had an odd lyrical quality to it, a soothing sound that contrasted with the topic she was discussing.

"Where?" Iggy asked, eyes darting from one source of noise to another. "Where was she shot?"

"In the shoulder but it also clipped her wing," Nudge said, the words coming out in a tearful rush, "Okay so there was this girl, and she was like my age and she was getting bullied by these guys and they were huge, okay, like not tall like you are Iggy but like tall like Fang is and muscular and fat I guess, and they were bullying her, so Max was all let's go save her! And then Fang was all like no, but fine, so we went in and kicked butt and got her out of there, but one of the guys he had a gun and he shot Max and then we went home with the girl and her mom's fixing Max up now… and now… and now…"

Before she could go on, Iggy spoke. "Youlet Maxstay with a stranger?" His eyes were fixed on Fang—or, to be more accurate, Fang's mouth.

Nudge positioned herself between the two boys before Fang could speak and tried to start talking, but Angel shook her head.

"She told us to stay here," Fang repeated.

"Well, the situation's changed, hasn't it?" Iggy snapped. "I'm not going to get into why you made that stupid-ass decision in the first place, but now you're going to fix it. You're going to take us to that house, we're going to get Max out of whatever situation she's in, we're going to steal a car, and then we're going to use the car to get Ari. And then we're going to find somewhere new to goddamn live, because Erasers stormed the house!"

"Or we can accept that Max is the leader and the one making decisions," Fang said. "I took Nudge out because I had to think about her, and now we have the other kids." He paused. "And we're not stealing a car."

"Excuse me?" Nudge turned to face Fang. Her voice had stopped shaking, and her eyes were bright with anger and tears. "I'm just as good in a fight as you are! I can kick just as much butt as you do, and just because I'm younger or whatever doesn't mean that I'm a sack of potatoes for you to drag around. Don't treat me like I'm not capable, because I am. I can outrun you, outfly you, and even though I don't have super-long, lustrous emo hair, that doesn't mean that I'm just a kid sister!"

Fang shrugged. "Your ability to kick ass in a fight is paralleled only by your inability to keep quiet," he said. "If we're going to get Max, you're staying back with the kids."

Nudge began to cry, and wiped away the tears angrily as she spoke. "I can too shut up! At least I can communicate plans, unlike somebody who just relies on dragging people around by their arm! What are you going to do if you get Max, grab her shoulder and drag her out?"

"Who said anything about not bringing Nudge?" Iggy demanded. "Of course we're bringing Nudge. We're bringing the Gasman and Angel too; splitting up has done nothing good for us." The three older bird kids were standing now, forming a rough triangle. At such close proximity, the half-foot height difference between Nudge and Fang was obvious, but she was still holding her own.

"See?" she said to Fang, crossing her arms and popping out a hip. "I'm coming, because we're a Flock. We're not a group of random mutants that meets up to battle evil, like the X-men or whatever. We're a family, and that means nobody gets left behind or forgotten."

Fang sighed. "Fine."

The three of them turned to the Gasman and Angel. Angel had her hands over her ears and her eyes scrunched shut, and the Gasman had his arms around her. "Are you three done fighting?" he asked.

Nudge blinked. "Y-yeah."

"Good," Angel said. She could have cut glass with that tone. "Because I'm scared and nervous too, and you guys just act like I'm a little kid and you can talk about me and what you're going to make me do in front of my face."

"Sorry, Angel." Iggy was the first to say it, and Nudge was a second behind him. Fang nodded.

"Now," Iggy said, "where's Max?"

I was sitting on Ella's bed, trying to ignore the itch in my healing wing. Unfortunately, there wasn't much to look at. Ella's room was on the small side, with a blue-white-brown color scheme. The only piece of furniture aside from the neatly made bed was a small bookshelf filled with authors I didn't recognize.

"Listen," Ella said. "I'm sorry about… about earlier."

"When you were fighting with your mom?" I asked. When she nodded, I shrugged my uninjured shoulder. "It's okay, it's not like I understood any of it."

She blinked. "But you're… sorry. It's just that you look, you know, Hispanic. Kinda."

That gave me pause. None of us really knew what we were, aside from "part bird." Nudge was black, I was some kind of brown—along with Fang, who might have been part Asian, and the others were white, or at least mostly white.

It was a mess, really, but a mess that didn't bother most of us. Unless it was a rainy day and we were stuck in the house and Nudge wanted to play "guess where we might be living if we weren't mutant bird freaks."

"I mean, I might be," I said. "But—"

"But you're mostly just from Maine?" She asked, and we grinned at each other. As the grins faded, awkward silence crept in, and I struggled to find something to talk about.

"So, um," I said. "You're in…"

"Going into seventh grade," Ella said, and then added, "But I tutor eighth-graders for English." She smiled.

I fumbled for words. It was obvious that she was proud of it, but what was I supposed to say? "Good for you"? "Maybe you could tutor me"? What grade was I even supposed to be in, in normal-school years? I settled for something nice and non-confrontational.

"How is middle school?"

She shrugged. "Some of the boys are jerks. Some of the girls are, too. And everybody says it gets worse in high school. But I do have some friends, and I'm in clubs."

"Clubs?" I had seen TV shows about them, on lazy Saturdays, but I had never been in one. Mutant, remember? Wings and a public school education don't mix, so Jeb gave us classes at the E-house.

"Yeah. I'm in JSA and GSA and I take MMA outside of the school—oh, and Lit Club." She drummed her fingers on her leg. "It's not, um, not a lot. There's a kid, Sanchez, he's taking high-school classes already so he can take the APs and get a scholarship. He's a genius. He wants to go to MIT."

I nodded like I knew what half of those letters stood for.

"Hey," she said, uncrossing her legs and standing up, "I could make you coffee, or something. We have coffee. And my mom said that she was making a surprise, right?"

"Yeah."

"Okay, yeah, we'll make coffee."

The surprise was chocolate-chip cookies, which Dr. M, Ella, and I made together. That's right. I, Maximum Ride, made something—without burning it, or putting in too much sugar, or forgetting to turn the oven on, or turning the oven on too early. And the best part? We made them from scratch.

"These taste like heaven," I groaned, shoving one into my mouth. It was still hot from the oven, and it just about melted into a heavenly mess of chocolaty goo.

Ella giggled. "Try dunking it in coffee."

I did, and let me just say this—if there's something beyond this life, I hope I go there when I die, because they'll have an unlimited supply of fresh-baked chocolate-chip cookies dunked in coffee. As my eyes were rolling back into my head, somebody knocked on the door.

"I'll get it," Dr. M said. "Ella, go to your room. Max, you go with her."

Ella nodded and walked off. I stood up, still dizzy. Dr. M had done a lot for me, putting her neck on the line by taking in a strange kid off the street. I wasn't going to just let her face a potential lynch mob headed by Shotgun's parents all alone. "I'm staying right here," I said.

A muscle in her jaw twitched. "Fine," she said. "But you're staying where you are." She headed for the door but didn't open it. "Who's there?"

"Hey! It's the kids who were with the girl that got shot! Um, can you let us in so we can make sure that you—mmf! Gecherhanoffmamouf! So we can make sure that you're not some kind of—no, I can handle this—evil child kidnapper? Or, like, a mad scientist or something? Haha, that would be ridiculous, right? I swear we're not armed."

I blinked. What were Nudge and Fang doing here? I had told them to stay away. I had told them to leave, and wait for me. What had they deemed so important that it couldn't wait a day or two? Jeb had left me in charge and it hadn't taken them more than a day to ignore that.

"Let them in," I said. "I know them."

This was going to be good.

When Dr. M opened the door, my jaw dropped. It wasn't just Nudge and Fang. No, that would have made too much sense. It was freaking everybody.

"What are you guys doing here?" I snapped. "I told you to stay back at the E-house!" I could have gone on, but then I noticed them—actually noticed them. Nudge and the Gasman's eyes were puffy and red, and Angel was softly crying. Fang's jaw was tight and Iggy looked like he was three seconds away from punching the first person in his way. "What is it?" I asked, making a conscious effort to modulate my tone. "What's wrong?"

Iggy swallowed. "Jeb is dead."

It's been a while since I wrote this chapter, so I don't really have much to say. What do y'all think of it?