Aj: Okay, I think I finally figured out how to get my emails working again, but just to be sure, you guys should review. A lot. Because this too forever to type up and I blew off a lot of homework for this. Not complaining.
Okay, let me proceed to break your hearts. Starting now. Fax is back.
I had left the school and come home to avoid Fang. Now he was ringing my doorbell casually while I was attempting to not break down in a panic attack. He couldn't even give me one day alone. All I needed was one freaking day before letting back into my life while we make each other's lives as hard as possible. My time was up. Reality was knocking at my door and he wouldn't leave.
I leaned my weight against the door, covering myself from his line of sight, breathing heavily. I wasn't going to let him see me freaking out. Composing myself, I gathered up any courage I had left and grasped the cool metal handle, opening the door.
The click of the lock sounded like the click of a gun.
"Hey, Max." Fang replied coolly, his eyes drifting to my toes. He raised his eyebrows, but said nothing. I leaned against the door frame, crossing my arms. Time to play it cool and act like I hadn't been considering puking seconds before.
"Is there a reason you're here?" My voice was cold and strong. I wasn't going to let him affect me, not anymore.
He swallowed, possibly thinking about how much had changed so soon. I know I was.
"Can I come in?" He asked simply, just as Ella came bounding down the steps. I'm pretty sure I heard her snarl from behind me.
"No." He seemed to be expecting that answer.
"Max…I figured we could look through Maya's room for…" His haze drifted to Ella.
"Relax, she knows." I assured offhandedly. He nodded, relaxing slightly.
"I figured we could look through Maya's room for clues. You said that you found the pictures in her room, maybe we could find more." It sounded annoyingly reasonable and I cursed myself for not thinking of that earlier.
"Fine," I paused, knowing I would regret this, "You can come in."
He nodded, his face still impassive, and stepped inside warily. I turned around, about to head for Maya's room, when I saw Ella sticking her tongue out at Fang. I tried—and failed—to hide my smirk.
"Why do girls have so much freaking clothes!" Fang grunted, drawing himself from Maya's Bermuda triangle of closets.
"According to Nudge, a closet is a girl's portal of secrets. The more clothes you have, the more well kept your secrets are." I recited knowingly while sifting through the drawers in her desk.
He paused, craning his neck to look at me, "Seriously?"
I shrugged, "How the hell am I supposed to know? My old closet was just whatever I stuffed under my bed."
I figured I wasn't supposed to see the slight quirk of his lips.
"Okay then. Find anything in the drawers?" He asked. I scoffed, looking once more in disbelief at all of the crap Maya kept in her drawers. Lipstick, nail polish, blush, and a billion other beauty tools I didn't know the name of or couldn't pronounce.
"Not unless you're interested in a makeover." I held up a few tubes of lipgloss and eyeshadow as proof. He sighed in resignation, probably expecting that.
"You know, if Maya and Nudge were here, they would tell you purple isn't my color." He retorted. Scarily, he seemed to talk from experience.
"When did Maya go girly?" I asked offhandedly, "Back before…everything. She used to flinch at the sight of this crap." I asked, genuinely curious to know more about my sister's life after I was no longer a part of it. He pursed his lips and I mentally facepalmed. Maybe it wasn't the best idea to ask about my sister when we were currently in a blood war over pretending to be her. Smooth Max, smooth.
'A little bit after high school started. She was on cheerleading and becoming friends with Brigid and Lissa. It wasn't exactly a surprise when she started going girly." He spoke casually, as if he were discussing the weather. I wondered what was going through his head, but stopped myself. I probably didn't want to know.
"You must've been thrilled. Cheerleader for a girlfriend is every guy's dream, right?" I mocked, turning away from him as I searched under the desk. It may have just been my paranoia, but I could've sworn I felt his gaze on me.
"You'd be surprised," He said, "No. I wasn't foaming at the mouth at the thought of her being a cheerleader."
I smirked against my will, trying to imagine Fang: The emotionless brick wall, going googly eyed. I restrained myself from giggling maniacally.
"Really?" I challenged, "Not even a little drooling?"
"Hate to disappoint you. I was never around for her cheerleading anyways. Her friends were bitches." He shrugged carelessly. This time, I couldn't hold in a laugh.
"Yeah. They are. And cheerleading isn't even a sport." I agreed, flashing back to my brief time on the squad.
"A sport that you sucked at," He reminded, "It actually made a lot of sense that you weren't after your failure at something that isn't even a sport."
"Oh bite me," I scowled, feeling under the desk until I felt an odd jiggle. Bingo. Using my nails to my advantage, I pried open the sliver of wood concealing a hidden pocket in the underside of the desk. Maya may have been cheerleader, but she was clever like a master criminal.
Partly because she was.
Carefully, I peeled the sliver back further until I felt a small, rectangular object fall onto my stomach.
"What was that?" Fang asked, turning away from the closet.
"That," I began, "Was our first clue."
Standing up, Fang quickly walked over to where I was lying on my back, picking up what looked like a fluffy pink book.
"Nice job, Velma." He said appreciatively, turning the book over in his hands. From where I was lying, I could still make out the big gold letters written in fancy cursive. Diary, it said.
We had found Maya's diary. Well, I did, but I'm not going to brag.
"Really, Velma? I found Maya's diary single-handedly, which could possibly be the best clue we have. You could at least give me something better than Velma." Nope. No bragging at all.
'Fine…Scooby." He smirked, obviously please with himself, "Let's open this up and find—"
"Whoa, whoa, whoa," I interrupted, sliding out from under the desk, "Are you insane? You can't just go through someone's diary. There are laws against that!"
He crossed his arms, "Name one law!"
"How about the law of shut your face!" I huffed, sitting up and blowing stray hairs out of my face. The amusement was clear in his eyes.
"Well there isn't anything important I've found in the closet. Unless you've got any other ideas, the diary's our only chance." He argued. Wait…had he missed something? I sprung up from the ground, bolting towards the bed where I had stashed the clues I had found after unlocking the box.
"What are you doing?" Fang asked, watching as I brought out the heavy box from under the bed.
"A while ago on my first night here, I found this box that had a bunch of stuff in it. One of those things was the box that had those pictures in it. You know, the ones that lead us to…the cave." I bit my lip, refusing to look at him as I crouched over the box, sifting through its contents.
"How did you find it?" He asked, looking down at the box.
I paused, knowing he would laugh, "It…um…it fell on me."
He snorted—totally un-Fang like—laughing as I grimaced. Yup, I was regretting every second of this.
"Oh shut up and help me look through—" I trailed off, noticing him not listening as he walked towards the closet. Great. When I wanted him to listen he doesn't, when I don't want him to listen he blames me for lying about pretending to be his girlfriend. Boys are so typical.
"What are you doing? Looking for a fancy new dress?" I sneered, putting aside the heavy jewelry box.
"Ha ha," He muttered, leaning down to pick something up. "Well, I see you picked up the sarcasm trait in your family."
I smiled cheekily before zeroing in on the dusty bundle of fur in his hand. Whatever it was, it was dirty, ripped, and one of they eyes were popped out. It almost looked like a zombie bear that was trying to dress up as an angel for Halloween.
"That's weird." Fang muttered under his breath, inspecting the corpse-like teddy.
"Creepy is more like it." I said, trying not to look at its dead eyes and thick black stitching.
"Please don't tell me you gave that to her for a Valentine's present." He took the time to roll his eyes at me before turning back to the demented bear, "As if. Maya hates stuffed animals."
I smiled slightly, "Yeah. She hated everything that made her feel like a kid. She grew up fast and wanted to keep growing up. On the flip side, I would play games all the time and make funny faces in mirrors."
"Like hide and go seek." He said wistfully. I felt my expression grow cold, "Wow. Surprised you remember this time around. Maybe that's progress."
I turned away from him, feeling his stare.
"Max, I-"
"You've sealed your fate."
I spun around, officially creeped out by the kid's voice coming out of nowhere, just in time to see Fang jump about a foot in the air. Normally, I would have laughed and made fun of him for as long as I could. I was too focused on the bear Fang had dropped. The bear that had made that noise.
"Maya was being watched." I whispered.
"I think the creepy Chucky bear made that pretty obvious." Fang hissed, trying to act like he hadn't jumped like a little girl.
"No," I said, rifling through the jewelry box until I found the ripped diary page. "Before I found this diary page. It was right before she disappeared. She thought she was being watched. The bear is proof that she was."
We let that sink in.
"What else is in the box?" Fang asked darkly, the panic and confusion poorly guarded.
Swallowing my fear, I took out everything in the box. A blank looking disc, a no longer locked jewelry box, a weird looking flashlight, an envelope with torn up shreds of paper, and a long white and brown speckled feather.
Curious, Fang reached for the flashlight.
"It's not going to work when the lights are on," I said matter of factly.
"Then turn the lights off. I have a feeling." I shrugged, still not knowing why he would bother with the flashlight out of everything. For me, I would have picked up the feather. The feather that was here when Maya was missing, when I was in the hospital, when Brigid went missing, and when Nudge disappeared. But maybe I'm just overthinking things.
I flicked off the lights, emerging ourselves in a thick coat of darkness. For a few seconds, it was silent.
"Well are you just going to be anticlimactic or was there a point to me turning the lights off." I sassed, hands on my hips even though he couldn't see it.
"God, do you ever shut up?" He all but whined. I could hear a few clicks of metal against a soft surface, but nothing happened.
"No. Haven't you learnt that by now? I may have been pretending to be Maya, but still acted like me." I countered, just as a stream of purplish blue light filtered from Fang's side of the room.
"It's a black light." He stated, swishing the beam around the room. I'm pretty sure he was pretending it was a lights aber. At one point, he put the light on me. My light blue tank top and white shorts glowed painfully bright and from the mirror next to me, I could see my teeth were glowing.
"Wow, Max, wash your teeth much?" He snickered, obviously spending way too much time with Iggy and Gazzy.
Like the oh so mature person I am, I stuck my tongue out at him. He moved the light away from me to shine on the box. From my spot on the other side of the room, I could see the appearance of glowing white writing on the CD that wasn't there before.
"Play me."
Well, I didn't know dvd's could be bossy. I flipped the lights on again while Fang picked up the dvd.
"There's a laptop on Maya's makeup studio," I said, pointing to the desk. He nodded, taking the dvd out of its sleeve and stealing the chair for him to sit in. What a gentleman. I followed him to the desk, sitting on my knees as he slipped in the disk.
"What are you expecting?" He asked somberly, tapping his finger against the silver touchpad, building a steady rhythm.
"Maya living a double life as a secret pop star and having unicorns in her music video." I replied, staring in anticipation as the video buffered.
"Okay. Let's hope for that."
The air around us seemed to have an omnipresent chill. We were prisoners of silence staring at a glowing blue screen. A streetlight flickered, humming with electricity. The scene before us as the video played was an empty street, covered in the blanket of night with only the moon and the crackling streetlight as a relief. The air was silent, the rush and cacophony of city life long forgotten in this enclosed neighborhood. About a hundred feet away, there was a lone person walking quickly, her back turned to the camera. In the moon's glow, her natural blonde hair looked silvery white, bouncing slightly against her dark peacoat.
The screen flickered, a wall of static morphing the scene until it was another scene. Now fifty feet away, the same girl, only slightly older, sat in a classroom full of rowdy teenagers. Next to her, a mocha skinned girl with a wild mane of frizzy curls chattered away happily. The girl sat at her desk, seemingly isolated from the rest of the room, pulling at the blue ribbon holding her curly ponytail together. The ribbon matched her cheerleading uniform.
"What the—" fang began, but the screen flickered, switching to black for a pregnant pause. The scene was now ten feet away from the girl, racking slowly back and forth on a swingset in a hypnotic rhythm. Instead of being behind her, the viewer was to the side, showing off her profile that consisted of high cheekbones, a soft slope leading to her nose, and full lips. Even though I wanted to reject the idea, it was Maya.
"Who's taking the videos?" I asked quietly, not loud enough to overpower the stranger's shallow breathing.
"Whoever they are, they're getting closer every time." He answered morbidly, a slight growl in his voice. For who knows how long, someone had been watching and videotaping his girlfriend and he couldn't stop it. Now, she was gone and might never be coming back.
The scene changed one more time, now only a foot away from a girl locked in slumber. She looked peaceful, her long eyelashes fanning her pale skin. Her hair was spread out in a wild halo around her head. I recognized the bed as the same bed in our dorm.
"They watched her sleep?" The disgust in his voice was evident, shutting the laptop closed angrily, his nostrils flaring. I stood off to the side, my arms crossed, silently staring at the laptop.
"No," I replied softly, "That was me"
He turned to face me silently, not daring to break the silence. He met my eyes, more compassion and understanding held within their depths than I could remember.
"How do you know?" He asked, coming to stand by me.
"Maya had a habit of always putting her hair in a ponytail while she slept. She had this theory that your hair is what gives you nightmares. If its loose, expect to see the boogeyman. The others were her. The last one…that was me." I continued to hug myself, trying not to shiver at the idea that somebody had not only been watching me sleep, but recording it as well.
Fang observed my movements carefully, gauging my reaction. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw his hand inch closer to mine before retreating backwards.
"What do you remember the most about Maya?" I asked calmy, looking towards him thoughtfully. He looked surprised, but spoke anyways.
"She was smart. She always seemed to know what to do, how to do it, and when to do it." He began, looking at my expression before continuing, "She was optimistic. She always thought that something better could happen or she could push herself to be better. She was mature. That also lead to her being stuck up and expecting everything from everyone. She was always looking for approval from others. In comes Lissa and Brigid. After that, well, you've heard how she became. I'm not even going to try denying who she was anymore. She wasn't perfect. It would be insulting her for me to keep acting like she was perfect, like we were perfect together."
He seemed to be overtaken with old memories as he spoke.
"Wow," I exhaled, "I'm the exact opposite. Sure, I always fought for things I wanted, but that was because I knew if I didn't it would never happen. And I'm more of an impulse, go with the flow type of girl…if you haven't noticed by now. Oh, and that mature thing? As if. I act like a three year old when it comes to chocolate chip cookies."
I stated bitterly, strolling away from him casually to pick up the diary I had placed on the bed.
"Why are you asking me this now? We just saw—"
"Because I want you to know I'm not Maya. And I never will be." He gaped, obviously confused, "Fang , why are you here? Hours ago we were trying to burn each other, hours before that you wanted me to go and never come back and now you've been looking at me and talking to me like before you found out. What's your deal?"
He stood silent, but I could tell he was coming up with an argument.
"I came here to look for clues to lead us to Maya. And I had time to think. I had time to see how harsh I was and I'm—"
"You're not willing to accept she's not here. First you tried taking it out on me and now you're trying to act like I'm still her. Like I never told you." I argued, trying to keep from raising my voice. First sign of trouble and I had no doubt Ella would come leaping into action with a full can of pepper spray.
"Why did you tell me?" He breathed. It was the first time I had ever known him to sound lost.
"I think you made it pretty clear that I should have told you earlier." I paused, "And that's why I'm not going to let you forget. I'm not Maya. I don't want to be Maya! I'm Max. Either you choose to accept it or you can grab that box and we can do what we should have done from the start."
"And what is that?"
"We be done with each other. For good. When you look at me, you see Maya. When I look at you, I see…" I paused, breathing in as I looked down at my feet, "We'd both be better off staying out of each other's lives."
He stared at me for a thousand years, not saying a word. I didn't know what I was hoping he would say. I didn't know what I wanted to say. Our relationship until this point resembled a cracked plate. To cut off ties with each other would seem like the safer option.
Was safer always better?
I stared back, analyzing his motions, attempting to decipher his thoughts. His eyes locked onto mine. For a moment I saw a writhing pain reflected in his eyes that I didn't know was possible. Before I could blink, it was gone. And he had reached for the box.
His decision wasn't me.
So I couldn't keep choosing him. I had finally gotten the closure I needed to rip him from my life. I could find Maya and then make my own choices, living as me.
Biting my lip, I tossed Fang Maya's diary. He caught it in both hands, looking at me questioningly.
"You sure?" he asked. Whether it was the diary of the situation, I would never find out.
I nodded stiffly, trying to take a card from his book and show no emotion. It worked.
He turned to leave, taking his time, before I stopped him.
"Fang," He turned back to face me, "Do you really think that whoever did this to Maya and Nudge could be one of the flock?"
There was fear in my voice, undisguised and unashamed. The fear of being betrayed, yet again, by someone I cared about. As much as I hated to admit it, Fang was the only one who could relate.
His voice was cold as he replied, "I don't know who to trust anymore."
He pushed the box under one arm and moved to open the door. Before he could leave, I mirrored his tone and said, "At least we agree on something."
Aj: I gave you Fax. Sort of. And now its ripped apart again. Remember the last time that Max and Fang had their little feud at the cave? Well...now we're in even worse shape. You're welcome.
The more you guys review, the quicker Max and Fang speak to each other again. Fang's POV next chapter? See ya guys soon!
-Aj.