Chapter 47

Within the week, Daisy was back at school. She walked in right in the middle of our math lesson. I thought Mrs. Jenkins was going to yell, "We don't come in late in the fifth grade!" but she didn't.

That's because everyone was surrounding Daisy, bombarding her with questions.

"Hey Daisy, what's the whole story?"

"Daisy, why did you wander off on the field trip?"

"Why was your dad hiring people to kidnap you, Daisy? That's kind of weird, don't you think?"

"Hey!" someone yelled. Jaz jumped in front of Daisy, holding her arms out to her sides. "Let's leave Daisy alone for now! She probably doesn't want to talk about it, right?"

I looked at Daisy, who had her head down and her arms wrapped around herself. She nodded glumly. Even though I wanted to ask her all the same questions as the other kids in my class, I didn't.

Everyone kind of backed off and Jaz led Daisy to her seat. Mrs. Jenkins cleared her throat.

"Welcome back, Daisy," she said. "We all missed you, but we can save the conversations for later. Now, does anyone know what to do for this problem?" she asked, pointing to a boring math problem that she'd written on the board.

I wasn't paying attention. Instead, I was looking at Daisy. All the questions that had been going through my head for the last week repeated over and over again.

I frowned, resting my chin on my hands. I had to talk to Daisy.

~~::~~

"Have a good recess," Mrs. Jenkins said as everyone ran out of the classroom. "And NO RUNNING!"

Of course, that didn't make anyone stop running. Especially me. I was headed after Daisy, who was walking towards the bathroom.

"Hey Max!" an annoying voice shouted from behind me. I groaned. Of course Jaz had to get in the way of my questioning.

"Jaz, go away!" I told her as she stopped next to me, panting for breath. "I have secret things to take care of."

"Secrets?" Jaz asked. "I love secrets!"

I rolled my eyes. "Well, here's a secret. Get lost!"

Jaz shook her head. "Max, that's not a very good secret."

I sighed in exasperation. "Well, I'm going to-"

"Going to do what?" Fang asked from behind me.

I jumped. "Don't just do that!" I yelled at him.

"Do what?" Iggy asked, next to him.

"I'm going to ask Daisy some questions," I told them. Great, now Jaz knew my secret plan. "I'd say you could come, but she kind of went in the girls' bathroom."

"That means I can come, right, Max?" Jaz asked me, grabbing my arm and jumping up and down. "Because I'm a girl!"

"Really?" I asked her sarcastically. Someone had too much sugar today. "I had no idea."

"Bye!" Jaz yelled to Iggy and Fang as she pulled me off to the bathroom. "We're going to do secret spy stuff without you!"

"Spies are supposed to be quiet," I told her, remembering the last time Jaz tried to be a spy. That hadn't turned out so well.

Jaz pulled me into the bathroom and we looked around.

"She's not in the stalls," Jaz reported, looking under the doors.

I pulled her away. "Don't do that! What if someone's in there?"

"Nope, no one," she concurred. "Now what?"

I peeked out of the doorway, looking for Daisy. There were kids running around playing tag and jumping rope, kids drawing with chalk, and kids kicking a soccer ball around, but no Daisy.

"There!" Jaz shouted right in my ear, pointing. "Under that tree, all alone, looking really sad."

This time, I started pulling Jaz over there. We were joined by Fang and Iggy.

"Are we going to talk to Jaz?" Iggy asked, walking close to Fang, his hand on his shoulder.

"Yeah. Um, and maybe make her feel better or something," I said, even though I wasn't that good at making people feel better. I'd fight a bunch of Erasers over talking about mushy feelings any day.

We reached Daisy's tree, and she looked up when she saw our shadows. She frowned, looking away.

"I don't want to talk about what happened," she said softly.

I frowned. Okay, so what happened must have been really hard on her. Duh. But I tried to figure out a way to get her to talk. "Maybe talking about it will make you feel better," I suggested.

"You don't know what you're talking about," Daisy sighed, wiping her nose on her sleeve. "I said I don' t want to talk."

Jaz sat down next to her. "Will you talk about it with me? How about they leave?"

"Hey!" I said, but Fang put his hand on my shoulder and nodded.

Daisy hesitated for a moment. Finally she looked up at Jaz and shook her head. "No thanks."

I sighed. "Okay, whatever. It's not that big of a deal anyway. Come on, Jaz-"

"Wait," Daisy interrupted. "I was going to say that I guess you all can listen."

We all sat down around Daisy. I smiled at her, trying to be comforting or something, but it probably didn't work because she looked freaked out and stared at Jaz instead.

"Well," she said. "When I was in the hospital I heard my dad talking on the phone. He probably thought I was asleep or something, but…" She started sniffling, and Jaz put her hand on Daisy's back sympathetically.

"Go on," Jaz said gently. I figured I'd let Jaz do the encouragement.

"So he was talking on his phone and he sounded really angry. He was yelling half the time. He kept saying, 'No, you weren't supposed to kidnap my daughter!' and 'You idiot!' and things like that. And then I realized that my dad was the one behind all of that."

She rubbed her eyes before continuing. "I guess that was on the news, so everyone knows that. But then he kept talking and he said something about… about how they were supposed to kidnap the bird kids or something and I thought, Maybe he's talking about Max. But I didn't know there were others, and that got me thinking…"

Fang and I looked at each other. Daisy knew about my wings, but she didn't know about Fang or Iggy or anyone else in the flock.

"Oh yeah, Fnick and Iggy have wings too!" Jaz blurted out unhelpfully.

"Jaz, you little-" I screamed at her, tackling her.

Daisy looked really uncomfortable. "Well, anyway, I guess I know now. Um… and so I remembered that my dad… he had asked me to do something. He told me to call him when I was able to get you alone on the field trip. He didn't say why."

"And did you do it?" Iggy asked. "Is that why the Erasers came?"

"NO!" Daisy cried. "I wouldn't do anything like that! I kept looking at Max the entire time wondering what to do because I didn't know what my dad wanted to do to her, but I remembered my sleepover and knew that it wouldn't be anything good…"

She started crying. I looked away awkwardly as Jaz patted Daisy on the back and hugged her.

"It's okay, Daisy," she said. "You can tell us."

"Well," Daisy said, wiping tears from her face, "we were on the hike and that's when I saw those scary wolf people… um, what were they called again?"

"Erasers," I told her, my fists clenched.

She nodded. "Right, Erasers. They grabbed me and said, 'Where's the girl and her friends?' and I figured they were talking about Max and that my dad had sent them and I told them, 'I'm not telling you where Max is!' Then they laughed and they hurt me and… the next thing I remember is being saved by you guys.

"And I thought about that when my dad was talking on the phone and he said that the Erasers were supposed to kidnap you instead. And… do awful things to you, like they did to me. But the worst part was that it was all my dad's idea!" Then Daisy started bawling again.

"Oh jeez…" I murmured. "Daisy, I'm really sorry about all of this…"

"It's not your fault," she blubbered through her tears. "It's not your fault!"

Then I did something I thought I'd never do. I leaned over and gave Daisy a hug. A really awkward hug, but still.

She was still crying as she clung onto me. I was starting to think that this wasn't a very good idea when she finally let go.

"Thank you, Max," she said through her tears. "I do kind of feel better after talking about it."

"Uh…" I said. "Hey, I heard there was a school carnival coming up! Want to go to that?" Anything to end the mushy feelings.

Daisy managed a smile. "Okay."

Suddenly Mrs. Jenkins came running over. "Maxine, we do not make our classmates cry in the fifth grade!" she yelled, then helped Daisy up. "Miss Wells and I are going to go sit on that bench over there, and you are going to think about what you have done!"

"Harsh," I muttered as Mrs. Jenkins led Daisy away.

Fang smirked at me. "Did Max just give someone a hug?"

"What?" Iggy shouted in shock. "I can't believe I missed that!"

"Ah, shut up," I told them, pushing both of them.

Iggy grinned. "Oh, there's the real Max again!"

I stood up. "Come on. We still have five minutes left of recess," I told them. "And I am going to climb this tree!"

"Oh, me too!" Iggy said as he and Fang stood up.

I gripped the trunk of the tree and began climbing up, grabbing branches to help me up. When I reached the top of the tree, I looked around, grinning. Okay, so it wasn't as cool as flying, but since flying wasn't exactly acceptable at school, this was the second best thing.

"You've gotta come up here!" I yelled down to Fang and Iggy. "You can see everything from up here!"

"Let me up, then!" Iggy called back sarcastically and I laughed.

That's when Mrs. Jenkins's voice came booming across the playground, almost making me fall out of the tree. "MAXINE RIDE, we do NOT climb trees in the fifth grade!"

I rolled my eyes. "Some things never change."