A/N- There's a picture of me in the local newspaper reading a short story. There's a small caption below the picture, but below the caption, there's a large headline reading, "POLICE SEEK ATTACKER AT UNIVERSITY." It completely looks like I'm the attacker. It's hilarious. And the responses to Iggy's challenge were fantastic, by the way - I really don't think I'll look at bacon the same way ever again. Ever.

Irony: the hardest noun to fit into this story… was noun.

And thank you, Alexander Rybak, for your awesome lyrics that I shamelessy referenced.

Reviewer of the Week:

The District Sleeps Alone: The letters in "Jacob" can be rearranged to spell "Bacon", minus one letter.

Comment of the week:

My Dad: So by tomorrow you'll either have a boyfriend or a police report?


December 4th, 2009

Dear Diary,

"Fang, what's the most efficient way to hide a dead body?"

Oh, crap, it was going to be one of those days.

I opened my eyes and blinked. I was staring up at the ceiling, very aware that Iggy's head was less than a foot away from mine, since he was standing on the edge of the bunk bed below mine.

"Please tell me that this is a hypothetical situation," I said. I leave Iggy alone for one night, and the next thing I know, he wants to know how to hide a body. It was so typical.

He did a wooden laugh. "Hypothetical. Of course. So how would you do it?"

"I would find a shovel and go out in the forest and dig a hole and go with it. But the real question is why you need to hide a body in the first place."

"Hindsight is 20/20, darling. I'll be right back." He jumped down from the bunk bed and left the room. I highly doubted he'd actually killed someone (although I wouldn't put it past him). Chances were he had blown up something of Max's and needed to hide the remains.

I closed my eyes and tried to get back to sleep (it didn't happen, if you care to ask) before Iggy came back around an hour later. He jumped up onto the bed below mine and went back to his previous position.

"Fang, do you wear boxers or briefs?"

"Why can't you just say, 'Good morning, Fang, I don't have any illegal or perverted questions to ask you'?"

Think about it. The first question he asks me is how to hide a body; the second is if I wear boxers or briefs. I really hope that there isn't some sort of correlation between the two. (But why can't I ever wake up normally? I'm either eating a cockroach or naked or getting kidnapped or something else considered abnormal by general societal standards.)

"That's not the point," he said. "Answer the question."

"Well, Iggy, why don't you check for yourself?" I deadpanned. "Go for it."

"Are you aware incest is illegal?" he asked. "But then again, we're not biological brothers, and we've broken almost every other law out there…"

I decided that I might as well go along with it. "I always knew you had the hots for me. I know you can't keep your eyes off of my well-defined biceps, my chiseled jaw, my - "

Iggy put up a hand. "Okay, that was over the line. But really, what do you wear?"

"A G-string."

Point for Fang the smartass.

My answer didn't faze Iggy. "The one with the pretty flower design I gave you for Christmas last year, right?"

"Yeah. It's great. It keeps everything in place."

He snorted and grinned. See, Diary, this is how Iggy and I converse. I don't think a single day goes by without one of us making poorly-placed sex jokes or references. Messed? Yeah. Fun? Yeah.

He continued to try for an answer. "Alright, another hypothetical situation: your G-string snaps. Would you wear boxers or briefs?"

"I go commando. My motto is drop and go, you know?"

"Fine," Iggy said, taking a breath. "Let's say you had to wear boxers or briefs. Like, the world would just spontaneously combust if you didn't wear boxers or briefs. So which would you choose?"

"Why does the fate of the world depend on my underwear choice?"

"Because you're that cool. So which one?"

I was getting tired of my smartass replies, so I answered, "For the record, boxers. Man boxers," I added at the end. Not, like, flower-printed ones.

"I knew it!" Iggy shouted, thrusting a fist of victory into the air. The thing is, he didn't calculate in the fact that he was so high up, because he ended up punching the ceiling and making a small dent. Bits of plaster drifted down.

"Damn!" he said. "That would've been really intense."

He hopped down from the bunk bed and walked into the bathroom across the hall, no doubt to clean and bandage his heavily-bleeding hand. Only Iggy would injure himself for a potentially epic moment.

I took a moment to contemplate the world of weirdness that I live in before jumping out of bed, skipping the ladder entirely for the coolness factor. I booted up my laptop and decided to post a new blog. It consisted of:

Iggy wants to know what's in my pants. I always knew he was interested.

-Fang

Don't you love it when things aren't in context? It adds so much more fun.

A few minutes later, while I was replying to some crazed fangirls who were probably breaking a few stalker rules, Iggy walked back into the room. He looked shocked, which is rare. "The proverbial crap has just hit the proverbial fan," he said.

"What do you mean?" Trying to get a straight answer out of Iggy is like trying to find a spelling mistake in the dictionary; impossible, but important.

"Walk into the kitchen. And before you get your hopes up, there's no bacon."

"If there isn't any bacon, why should I walk into the kitchen in the first place?" But my heart dropped when Iggy didn't smile. Something was wrong.

Whatever it was wasn't dangerous, since Iggy was physically calm and no one was being thrown out any windows. (I would love to throw someone out of a window. Visually, it's a very stunning effect.)

It is so sad that one of my life goals is to throw someone out of a window. I'm every physiologist's worst nightmare.

I walked down the hall, my hands stuck in my pockets. I decided to go with the cocky and arrogant look, since I know for a fact that I look completely cool when I do it. There were raised voices coming from the kitchen, and when I saw everyone in the room, I could see why.

The Flock and Ella were on one side of the table… and Jeb and Dr. M were on the other.

They were back.

Max had been right; she had seen them at the mall… and here they were now, sitting calmly while Max was leaning on the table, looking as if she wanted nothing more than to rip Jeb's testicles off.

Ooooh, there was totally a collective groan from every guy in the word right there.

"You say you're going to be back in early November and now it's December and you don't even call or email or anything! You just expect us to accept this all and move on!" Max shouted.

I noted that Jeb had (finally) shaved off the dodgy mustache, so it no longer looked like he wanted to jump me in a dark alleyway. He gave a saccharine smile and he reached over to the counter and started to peel an orange. "Max, we couldn't contact you for business reasons."

Max crossed her arms, and collectively, the rest of us did as well. Even Total glared at them. Max fanned her wings out a bit, too, for extra effect. "Explain. From day one. Go."

Jeb put his hands up; his orange was still half unpeeled. "Well, on day one, I was born…"

Max slammed her fist on the table; everyone, even Jeb, jumped back at the large sound. Max had never had an outburst like that. "Stop. Being. A smartass," she hissed.

Damn. This is the part of Max I'm actually sort of scared of. Think of Max and myself as springs; the more you push us down, the stronger we'll come back. The rest of the Flock can get angry, yes, but not to the same degree.

Jeb folded his lands over his lap. "I'm sorry," he said honestly. "I was just trying to lighten the situation. Now, let me see. To answer your questions: yes, I know about Itex's ability to mutate DNA. Yes, I work for them. Yes, I love Val. Yes, I came back for her. Anything I missed?"

"Do you know who's withholding Itex's funds?" Max asked. She was still fuming.

"Unfortunately not. And before you ask, I don't know where you should start."

…Damn. We had been searching for Jeb to ask him about that, and just like that, our one lead is shot down. This never happens on CSI.

"And thanks for asking – the wedding is on Christmas," Jeb continued with a faint smile on his face. Dr. M looked pleased.

"Christmas!" we all said. "Isn't that a little soon?" Nudge asked. "And isn't it weird to be cutting into others' family time?"

Jeb shrugged. "A lot of the people we invited are scientists, and lonely scientists at that. They have nothing else to do on that night."

I clenched and unclenched my fists in my pocket. It was just… tacky, in my opinion. "How many people are coming?" Angel asked, doing the whole "polite" thing. (Polite! Ha! Angel is the only one of us who is young enough to be polite. Small talk is just as important to me as only doing legal things. Psh!)

Jeb shrugged at Angel's question. He had finished with his orange and casually started to eat some blueberries from a bowl. This guy is totally going to make his fiber quota for the day. "A few hundred, I guess."

A few hundred!

I only thought, like, celebrities had weddings like that, since they cost so much money. Or maybe Jeb was a celebrity! (Now that I think of it, he could probably be a popular cross-dresser in Japan or something cool like that.)

"I didn't know a few hundred people actually cared for you," Max said. "Then again, I'm surprised anyone does."

Uh oh. This was going downhill as fast as the stock market. (Zing!)

"Excuse me, Max?" Dr. M said, venom creeping into her voice. "Apologize."

"I don't apologize for things I meant," Max answered. She smirked, and the whole situation prompted Jeb and Dr. M to stand to make eye level. The tension skyrocketed, and everyone else in the room felt totally weird.

"I'm…going to… go pee, or, er, something that doesn't require my presence here…" Gazzy said, escaping down the hallway.

"And I've got to, you know, call some… girls…," Iggy said. He made a did a really just say that? face before disappearing down the hall along with the rest of the Flock, who made equally bad excuses.

I stayed leaning against the wall.

Jeb motioned his head at me. "He's not leaving?"

"I have a name," I said.

Jeb acknowledged his mistake and turned to my cordially. "I'm sorry, Fang. But this is a bit of a family matter."

"Fang and I are family," Max nearly spat. "He's my brother."

HER BROTHER?

The brother position is even worse than the best friend position! I mean, there's still the slightest chance a girl could get together with her best friend, but her brother? On the outside, I was still showing my cool, calm, and collected persona, but on the inside, I was screaming, "I'm your lover and not you're brother!"

That would make a cool country song title, Angel interrupted from her room. I could sense the mirth in her voice.

"Shut up!" I said.

Sadly, if you re-read Max's last line, Diary, it sounded like I just denounced Max. She turned to me. "What?" she asked.

"I mean, shut up about this whole thing!" I said, facing Jeb and Dr. M. "You're missing the point!" I said. "You made a mistake, now own up to it, and fix the problem. Can't you understand how many times we've been betrayed? That's how I learned to count."

Actually, that was a complete lie. I learned to count when I was younger by watching how many times one of the whitecoats picked his nose.

Jeb sighed and his shoulders slumped. "Fine. Max, we're sorry, and I know you're feeling animosity towards me, and I should expect that. But up to Christmas, let's at least fake being nice, okay?"

"I can do fake," Max nodded.

There was a pause.

Normally, at such a pause, something cool would happen, like have a llama crash through the window or something, but no such luck.

Dr. M clapped her hands together. "But there's so much work to be done before the wedding! I can't wait to work on it with you, Max."

Max's face softened. I could tell that she was happy for her Mom, but she couldn't get over the fact that her future husband was as sketchy as the homeless dude who tries to sell me watches at the bus stop.

"Fine," she breathed. She looked like she wanted to say something else, but she just swept down the hallway in that Max-like way that always makes it seem like you can't breathe. I followed after her as she went into her room; no one else was there.

I'll take a moment to describe the room, since it was a juxtaposition of three different styles of people. (I used the word juxtaposition! That's five freaking syllables!)

On Angel's side of the room, there was every type of stuffed animal, from a wolf to a cat a bunny rabbit that looked surprisingly rabid. Above her bed was a picture of none other than a shirtless Jacob Black. (I know, I know, she's six and she has a picture of him. You know, part of me wishes I could be a werewolf just for the amazing body.) She had random posters everywhere, too, like tap-dancing pineapples and a whale with glasses that was riding on a turtle through clouds. People will make anything nowadays…

On Nudge's bed were tons of preteen magazines and a half-finished Madlibs book. There were some lima beans and cheesy bacon fries on the polka-dotted bedspread, too, and I really didn't want to know how they got there.

And finally, Max's bed was neatly made, with all of her belongings tucked away in a backpack at the foot of her bed. She was lying there, looking everywhere but at me. I was surprised that she chose to speak first. "We should just check ourselves into a mental institution and be done with it," she said. "I've accepted I'm insane. It's so much easier."

"I'm sorry I didn't believe you at the mall," I said, meaning it, and trying to get her out of her self-pitying mood.

"If the positions were reversed, I wouldn't have believed you," she said. "But I wanted them to come back so much, but now that they're here…" Her voice sharpened. "You know what? You can't get your heart broken if you don't give it away. Have you ever thought that love isn't worth it? That it costs too much?"

"But someone is always willing to pay..." I muttered. And honestly, her ideas scared me.

It was because she was right. If you never gave yourself up to another person, then they couldn't break or betray you. You'd be safe.

"I get it. But Max… come on." She looked up at me. I smiled softly and sat beside her on the bed. "That's not the point of life. The point is to take risks. In the end, it's worth it to give your heart to someone, because they'll give theirs to you." She didn't say anything so I switched tactics. "Turn that frown upside down!"

She pushed me. "That was cliché."

"But why won't you smile? There's got to be a way…if only I could have, like, a Fang doppelganger, then there could be two of me, and there'd be twice the awesomeness."

She did smile weakly, which was my goal. "Thank you, Fang. Really." She paused. "This is a random topic change… but do you ever wonder what your real name is?"

For some reason, that really caught my attention. My mind snapped back to my dream with that woman in white, when she had taught me how to dance. "Why do you ask?"

She shrugged. "Sometimes it feels like my life is a lie. We don't know our names or ages or birthdates. We don't know anything."

"That's not true," I said, re-adjusting my position and looking at the poster of tap-dancing pineapples. Was that even biologically possible…? "Things like that don't matter in the long run. Your name is Maximum Ride, you're fifteen, and you're birthday is July 27. Done." I was going to stop there, but I continued. "And my real name? It's Alex."

I had figured it out a while ago. It only made sense; I still didn't know who the woman was, but I sensed that I would figure it out later. Max grinned. "Alex? I like it; it's fits. But there's no way I'm not calling you Fang."

"Obviously. I'm glad it isn't, like, Fitzwilliam or something like that."

"True, true."

And just like that, the conversation ended.

I sat with her a little longer before leaving her alone with her thoughts. I decided to spend the rest of the day watching over Jeb and Dr. M, which was a bad idea. I'm sure they would have jumped each other if I wasn't present. They had a few heavy make out sessions that I was madly jealous of, actually.

…That is so pathetic…

But the real shocker of the day was at night, when everyone was gathered in front of the TV except Nudge. I went to go and check up on her to make sure she wasn't, like, planning Iggy's death or something.

I knocked on the door, and she called me in. She was sitting at the desk, staring at a laptop screen intently. "Hey," she said absently.

"Are you okay?" I asked. "What are you doing?"

She finally turned towards me. "I found this great website. I signed up for an account a week ago – my name is NudgeWantsFudge. It rhymes! How great is that?"

I was worried – for all I knew, she had signed up an account on some porn website. "But what exactly is this website called?"

"You should try it. It's called 'fanfiction'."

For some reason, that word brought to mind twisted images and horrible ideas. Strange. "What's fanfiction?"

Nudge sat up straighter and gained an air of professionalism. "It's exactly what it sounds like. People write about authors' characters and stuff like that. So, in a fanfiction, I could, say, have Bella hook up with Jacob instead."

Hmm. Interesting. "Have you written anything?"

"Not yet, but I will. I've already read some great stories – you would really like it. Do you want to see my account?"

I was curious, so I looked over her profile information and such. Basically, Nudge was a thirteen-year-old girl living in Alaska who liked pie, apparently. I saw that there were tabs at the bottom of her profile, so I went over them.

I leaned over Nudge's shoulders and read some of the authors' names in her "Favorite Authors" list. Some of them were:

FANGBANGER, Iamsosexyxoxolove, Lily Bunker the Radish, Booger Bunny, Mrs. BluesClues, Philip The Muffin-Eating Alpaca, Phoenix Fanatic (for some reason, I mysteriously shivered at that name. Creepy), Edward-Cullen-is-Sexy, Abeyance, watdoesstrumpetmean?, Charlie the Constipated Walrus, Proshute!!11!!!one!!!!, My Name is Bert the Orange Bacon What Puppy, Grrness Monster, Fitzy the Dusty Fairy, FrankenKitty, Chippytheprehistoriclizard, Jimmy John Joe the Clown, Bobthepurplefireeatingdragon, and BACON4LIFE.

I read over the list again. "Dear God, these people have issues," I said.

Nudge nodded sadly and reached over to her desk and started to liberally apply some chapstick. "You have no idea. Do you know what a lemon is?"

Hmm. Nudge must have gone daft or something. "Yeah. A citrus fruit."

She snorted and nearly ate the chapstick she was still applying. "No – you know what? Give me a second." She clicked a few times and grinned.

"Read this," she said, and pivoted the laptop towards me.

AND THAT WAS MY BIG MISTAKE.

EW EW EW LEMON EW.

I won't tell you what I read, Diary, because honestly, it will haunt my dreams for eternity. It involved Harry Potter, Hagrid, Hedwig, a jaguar, and liberal amounts of cupcakes.

Nudge didn't tell me that a lemon is not a small evergreen tree native to Asia. A lemon, apparently, is a highly descriptive sex scene between fictional characters. There are plenty of nouns and adjectives I could use to describe it… but…just…no. Some things should not exist. Fanfiction is officially one of them, hands down.

I stumbled back from the screen in horror as soon as I read the line, The fluffy pink couch was smooth... smooth as the skin on Harry's bottom…

"What the hell!" I shouted. I kept stumbling backwards, since believe me, I have a very descriptive mind. And, adding to the horribleness of the situation, I hit one of Max's backpacks and fell onto her bed. Nudge laughed as I put my head in my hands, groaning.

"Just glue my eyes shut, please," I said, rolling over and over. "The image won't go away!"

"Welcome to the world of fanfiction!" she cackled. "Once you come in, you don't come out."

Stupid, damn fanfiction…

"One second, I'll be right back," Nudge said, standing and still grinning. "But I'll leave the story open, so if you want to finish it…." She left after that, although I have no idea. Maybe she wanted to do the girly thing and fart when no one was around.

As she left, I still couldn't get that picture out of my head. Ughh... the chunky peanut butter reference was just too much…and that poor, poor hamster…wait a second.

Hey, that was weird.

As I was rolling around, I noticed that the mattress felt a little strange in a certain place. It was like I was in the middle of that princess and the pea fairy tale or something.

I got off the bed, and after checking the hallway to make sure no one was coming, I heaved up the mattress with one hand. I dug my hand around underneath- and my hands met something. I pulled it out, and you know what it was?

A diary.

My heart was pounding as I realized I just found Max's diary.

Oh. My. Goodness.

But there was no way I could read it. It would be a horrible breach of privacy. If someone found my own diary, I would hunt them down and kill them before they could tell anyone about it. The paper holds every secret. Max would never forgive me. It's not like I could just open it…and suddenly know everything she wants…and likes…

I ripped it open to the first page.

It read:

July 1st, 2009

Dear Diary,

I can't believe I'm writing in a diary. Diaries are meant to express emotions, something I really don't have. I mean, sometimes I feel like a total emotionless brick wall. But today we learned that Fang is supposed to die on June 1st, 2010. That's exactly eleven months.

What am I feeling?

I know what I'm feeling, but I just can't write it, because that's making it true, and I can't deal with that now.

How could I ever tell Fang that – oh, crap, the fire alarm just went off, and the last I knew, Iggy was trying to make a soufflé with gasoline. Gotta go.

-Max

Woah.

Holy macaroni, that was crazy.

I thought about it while I got ready for bed, which is where I am now. First of all, how crazy is it that both Max and I refer to each other as emotionless brick walls? It's official; we're soul mates. Second, Max's entries are just as short as Nudge's stint as a mime. Third, what was she going to tell me?

There's part of me that thinks Max was going to confess her love for me and blah blah blah. The part of me that believes that is also the part that believes in unicorns and fairies and cute kitties and free parking on Saturdays.

The thing is, it would've been totally cool if Max was about to profess her love for me.

But of course, that would never happen. Remember, this is my life, not some Disney movie with wishes and dreams and happy endings.

…Disney has totally given me unrealistic life goals. I want to be the prince, and Max to be my princess.

-Fang