Well I made the grand decision to stay home today and do nothing. Be grateful. Because this chapter will be longer. Oh and I just noticed it now, but last chapter was a perfect 2,000 words. I'm a genius. :D Lol no not really.

And since I have loads of time to write this, I'm actually going to answer people. Not that you care, but y'know. :)

fnickforever-Hehe it's connected to that. . .it was stuck in my head and I was humming it as I wrote the last chapter, and I was like OOH THAT'S PERFECT. :)

evilcookie-THANK YOUU :) That means a lot to me, because there's a lot in my story that could be improved :) So thank you!

Cindy- The Obsessive Reader-I'm still wondering why I ended the chapter like that. I wrote it at like midnight and I don't even know why I ended it like that. Lol oh well. :D

Fowlmaniac-Wow, pictures of fax machines? Now I'm cracking up. Oh, and where's my flying pony?

Sierra156-I would've published it like that! Good thing I was skimming through, for once, and I caught my mistake. Lol I could just imagine that now - 'I followed Fag back inside.' Now I'm cracking up hysterically. Again.

Oh and another tidbit about my life you probably don't care about; today I had to do one of those security check things where they give you the twisted-up words and you have to write what the words are? Yeah, those. And one of the words was Jeb. xD That was random.

Disclaimer: Gosh, people, I don't own Maximum Ride, okay?

Okay, yes, yes, I know. The amazing indestructable Maximum Ride passes out because she's terrified of some stupid bully grabbing her arm.

But I can explain.

Picture this; it was twelve years ago, in our old house in Montana. I had just turned three years a few months ago. Ella was two.

My mom was pregnant with twin boys. My mom and dad were planning on naming them Omega and Ari. I don't know why, I guess they wanted them to be unique.

A week later my dad took all of us to the hospital. I didn't know what was going on, but it looked like Mommy was in pain and I started crying because I was scared. Ella didn't know what was going on either, and she started crying too.

"It'll be okay, girls!" Daddy yelled from the front of the car. He sounded stressed. "You're going to have two new baby brothers!"

Ella and I stopped crying and listened to Daddy in interest. He told us about how Mommy was going to go to the hospital and have twins. They were going to be boys. He kept telling us about our new brothers all the way to the hospital. We were hooked. When we finally arrived at the hospital, Ella and I clung to each other as we tried to follow Daddy. Doctors took Mommy away and we started crying again. Daddy sat with us in the waiting room and calmed us down

It was hours later when a doctor finally came and told Daddy that he needed him to come with her right away. Daddy smiled and took me and Ella's hands and followed the doctor to Mommy's hospital room. We were so excited.

The doctor finally reached the hospital room and turned around. "You shouldn't bring your daughters with you," the doctor said.

"Why not?" Daddy asked.

"I'll get a nurse to take care of them," the doctor said. "But you should go in there."

"Alright," Daddy agreed.

Ella and I were scared, but we followed the doctor to a playroom. We sat there with the blocks and Barbies and other toys for a long time, before Daddy came to get us. He was pale and it looked like he'd been crying. I'd realized twelve years later that it had probably been an act.

"Hi Daddy!" I bubbled. "Do I get to see baby brothers?"

Daddy sat down next to Ella and I. "No, sweetheart," he said softly.

I started crying again. "Why?" I wailed.

"Something went very wrong and your brothers. . .are sick," he explained.

I remember going home. Mommy couldn't stop crying. She sat in the backseat with me and Ella and held us and cried. We didn't know why she was crying, but we cried too. Even though I was just a toddler back then and barely knew what was going on, it was a sad memory.

Fast forward three years. I was six, Ella was five. Two years ago, our parents had told us the truth, thinking we could handle it; our brothers had died. Something had gone wrong and they'd died shortly after they'd been born. There had been more tears, of course.

Anyway, three years later Ella and I were watching TV when the phone rang. Our mom answered. I hadn't though much of the phone ringing at the time, but know I thought about it a lot. Actually, I'd started thinking about it a lot because of what happened next.

There was the sound of something dropping and cracking open in the kitchen. My mom shrieked and ran upstairs, yelling "JEB!" at the top of her lungs.

Ella and I turned to each other.

"What happened?" Ella wondered, looking worried.

"I dunno." We walked to the bottom of the stairs and looked up. We could hear yelling from Mommy and Daddy's room.

"I'm scared," Ella whimpered.

"Me too," I said. We'd gone back to the couch and watched Spongebob until Mommy and Daddy came downstairs. Mommy was shoving clothes at Daddy and yelling at him to get out. Ella and I watched with huge, worried eyes.

"Max!" Daddy called.

"Don't you dare drag Max into this!" Mommy warned. I toddled over to them and stood next to Mommy. Daddy crouched down so his eyes were level with mine.

"Max." He took my hand.

Mommy wrapped an arm around my shoulder and pulled me close. "Don't listen to Daddy, sweetie. He lied to you. He'll lie to you again."

I looked back to Daddy, confused.

"Max, please believe me," Daddy begged. "Do you ever think I'd do something like that?"

I looked up at Mommy. "Get the hell out of here, and leave my daughters alone," Mommy spat.

I cried so much that night.

Fast forward again - five years this time. I was eleven, Ella was ten and just starting up with her clothes/makeup/boys obsession, and I'd already been doing gymnastics for five years, and soccer for two. I'd just started ice skating a couple months ago, and swimming.

My mom sat me down at the kitchen table and said she wanted to talk about my dad. I'd been so shocked - we'd never talked about him.

"You remember when I forced Daddy to leave?" Mom said, her eyes sad. "And he wanted you to believe him, but you didn't know what it was about?"

I nodded numbly.

"I never explained why," Mom continued. "Do you want me to tell you?"

I nodded again.

Mom gave me a small smile and took a deep breath, beginning her explanation. "Remember when we thought that Omega and Ari were dead after they were born? It turns out they weren't. Jeb had hired secret agents to act as nurses and take them away. The agents hid my sons and your brothers, and told everyone that they had died. But really, the agents took the babies to a secret facility and waited there for Jeb. Jeb went there when we were all asleep and experimented on my baby boys." She gulped in a huge breath of air, looking like she was trying not to cry. She sped up their aging so that Omega was fourteen and Ari was seven. They enhanced Omega - gave him extra speed, strength, intelligence, the whole bit. They fused Ari's DNA with lupine DNA - which is basically wolf genes. Ari was what they called a recombinant-DNA experiment, because they recombined his DNA. Ari had the ability to look mostly human, but change into a terrifying wolf-man."

I couldn't help it - an image had wormed itself into my brain then. When I had been eight years old, I'd started imagining what my brothers would have looked like. They would have had brown hair, like me, but lighter eyes, like my Daddy. They would have been adorable, funny kids. I'd thought about it countless nights when I should've been asleep.

"They thought their skills were perfectly equal. They though that if put in battle, they could've gone at it for ages and neither would've won. So they tested it. They put them in a big arena with nothing but their bare hands to fight with and told them to fight. So they did." Mom's voice got all choked up then. "And Omega's skills were too much for Ari and Omega ended up killing his own brother. A few months later there was an explosion in the lab and Omega died too. That was when one of Daddy's agents called, in hysterics. Without even listening to see who was on the phone, he said, 'Jeb, come quick. There was en explosion and it killed Omega!' That was when I ran upstairs and got the full story from Daddy. And that was what he was talking about when he was begging you to believe him."

I was frozen. As I had grown up, I'd learned it was important to stay stong and not let things get to you. But this just. . .tore me apart. And to this day it was hard for me to trust anyone, or be strong whenever it seemed like someone was threatening me. Sure, I could beat the stuffing out of pretty much anyone, but sometimes it was too much and I was so terrified that I just shut down whenever I felt threatened.

I woke up in an unfamiliar place. I kept my eyes closed, but I could just feel that it was an unfamiliar environment. It smelled different. Whatever I was laying on felt weird and scratchy. The light hitting my closed eyes was turning everything into a red haze under my lids.

I opened my eyes and blinked painfully against the sunlight streaming in through the window. I tried close the blinds while keeping my eyes closed and ended up sliding off whatever I was on and landing on the floor with a painful oof.

I got up and looked around. Oh, ugh! I was in the nurse's office. In one of those closed-off rooms with the smelly, itchy cots that kids go to when they claim to have a stomach ache or whatever.

I tentatively walked back into the main nurse's office. The nice-looking Nurse Patti looked up from her paperwork.

"Oh, hello!" she squeaked. "How are you feeling? You were carried in here a little while ago by a couple very tall boys." The young nurse arched her eyebrows at me and smiled. "The dark one said that he wasn't sure what had happened and to ask you when you woke up."

"Oh, um. . ." I scratched my arm uncomfortably. "I'm not really sure. One minute I was just fine and the next I woke up here."

"Maybe your blood sugar got too low?" she suggested.

I shrugged unhelpfully.

"Hmm. If that's the case then you should probably chomp on some gum or something. Did you eat breakfast this morning?"

"Yes."

Nurse Patti tapped her chin and dug around in her purse and handed me an unopened pack of Trident gum. "Here. Gum has sugar, and normally I'd say don't chew it, but this is a special occasion." She winked at me as I took the gum. "I don't have any Hersey's or anything for you, so gum is the next-best thing."

"Oh. Thanks." I forced myself to smile.

"No problem. It's lunch time now, so your should probably head on down to the cafeteria."

Oh, crap, it was already lunch time? Wow.

"Thanks," I mumbled again, and walked out. I took one look at the gum and carelessly shoved it in my back pocket. I didn't really like gum, but sometimes it was okay.

Everyone at my lunch table was eating silently, worried expressions on their faces. Well, except Fang, who was always emotionless. But I knew him so well, that I could decipher the meaning behind his tightly clenched jaw, the slight flicker of emotion in his dark eyes. He was worried.

"Hey," I muttered as I pulled my chair out and sat down. I was exausted, even after my little nap in the nurse's office.

"Max!" everyone seemed to shout at once. Fang didn't say anything, but bumped his knee against mine under the table. When I turned to look at him his onyx-colored eyes were full of relief.

"I'm fine, I'm fine, jeez!" I laughed as J.J., Nudge, Tess, and Carolyn all jumped up to give me a hug at the same time. "I need air!" I choked out. The all smiled at me and returned to their seats.

"ZOMG I WAS SO WORRIED!" Nudge blurted. "I mean - " Tess clapped a hand over Nudge's mouth, effectively cutting off her words.

"Okay, so picture this," Iggy interrupted. "Fang comes to the table, the big emotionless rock as always, sits down and says 'Max passed out.' I mean, way to be wague, but seriously Max, what happened?"

"The nurse thinks it was from low blood sugar," I said lamely.

Gazzy snorted. "Oh yeah. That's it. As if you don't have like six chocolate donuts for breakfast everyday."

"Oh shut up, Gaz," I muttered, glaring playfully at him. "I do not."

"When I got home from Robbie's house half the cookies were gone," he pointed out.

"It was Fang, I swear!"

"Yeah right."

I grabbed a roll from Nudge's plate and tossed it at Gazzy. He caught it in his mouth and grinned triumphantly around the mouthfull of doughy bread.

"Like a boss," Gazzy said, his mouth still full with the roll, so it came out sounding something like 'Ike uh boff.'

"Eew," Carolyn muttered, scrunching her nose up.

"You're such a girl," Iggy complained.

"Maybe it's because I am a girl," Carolyn pointed out.

"Yeah, but Max doesn't act that girly," Iggy countered. "I mean, she's like one of the guys! But you're all girly-girl."

"Thanks, Ig. So I'm a guy now," I muttered.

Iggy rolled his pale blue eyes. "You know what I mean."

I grabbed a handful of peas from J.J.'s plate and started throwing them at Iggy with amazing precision, if I do say so myself. He was trying to catch them in his mouth like Gazzy did, but he was failing miserably and the peas were just bouncing off his nose and chin every time he tried. Soon enough he had peas all over his lap and a bunch of peas had scattered all over the table.

Fang chuckled and grabbed my hand. By now, it felt like a routine. I just had to hope that no one noticed. His thumb rubbed soothing circles on the back of my hand, and I relaxed slightly. Dylan was no where to be seen, I was surrounded by my best friends, and Fang was amazing at calming me down.

I guess you could say things were perfect, even though I was still shaking inside from my flashback earlier.

"Are you okay?"

NOOOOOOOO. It took everything in me to not scream and pass out again. But I couldn't help it. It was as if I had remembered everything clearly when I was passed out in the nurse's office. And now I was even more paranoid and protective.

"Uh, yeah," I mumbled, not looking up.

"What happened?" Dylan demanded.

"Low blood sugar," I said.

"But you screamed, like you were terrified of something."

I shrugged. "I don't know. I was thinking about something when you grabbed my arm and I guess that scared me and I passed out. The nurse thought it was low blood sugar. I'm going with the one that has a medical degree."

"Okay, I get that. So are we still on for Rita's today?"

"Uh, I think so. Is it okay if Fang comes with us?"

Uh oh. I'm in big trouble. I was supposed to cancel my plans with Dylan, but now I'd just gone and made it worse.

Dylan's turquoise eyes darkened. "Why?"

"He's. . .protective. He's like my big brother and he's my best friend. I go everywhere with him and we usually walk home together. He wasn't happy when I told him I couldn't walk home with him today. So I figured this way we could still hang out and I wouldn't be ditching Fang."

Actually, I'd just made that all up now, but hey, it works.

"I guess so," Dylan said reluctantly.

"Is something wrong with that?" I asked innocently.

"No, no. It's just that I thought it would just be us."

"Sorry," I muttered. I slammed my locker and walked off to science.

Well, I'd just made that situation considerably worse.

Why am I always posting at like 11 at night? It might not be for you guys, you might be in different time zones, but. . .it's bothering me how I always update at 11. Urrrghhhh.

And I'm sorry if I don't get to post tomorrow or Friday. It takes me forever to pack, and I'm leaving on Saturday. I'm trying to convince my mom to let me bring the laptop, but it's not looking good, seeing as we'll be on the beach most of the time. . .

So sorry if this is my last update for a while :(

-dancerxforlifex3