Chapter 51

"Happy Valentine's Day!" Nudge screeched, shaking me violently. "It's time to wake up! Wake up, wake up, wake up!"

I groaned, blinking my eyes open. "No."

Angel was sitting on top of me, bouncing up and down. "Nudge says we get candy!" she said, cuddling that huge pink bear we'd made Jeb buy her at the party supply store.

"Nudge, don't give her too much candy," I muttered, pulling the covers back over my head. "I'm going back to bed."

"You have to get up, because we have school!" Nudge proclaimed, throwing back the covers, which landed on top of Angel, and shaking my arm. "Come on, Max! Come on! Don't you want to see the box I decorated for Valentine's Day? Don't you wanna see the cookies that Iggy baked? Don't you wanna eat candy? Don't you wanna read your poem to your class?"

That last one made me grimace. "Definitely not."

"Get up!" Gazzy shouted, running into the room. "It's Valentine's Day!"

I pulled my blanket back over my head once more and decided that Valentine's Day was officially my least favorite holiday.

~~::~~

"Does anyone know any Valentine's Day songs?" Nudge asked on the bus ride to school. "There are Christmas carols, so there should be Valentine's Day carols!"

"There aren't any Halloween songs," Fang pointed out, looking annoyed. He had a sloppily-painted black shoebox sitting on his lap. Jaz was sitting next to him, sticking little heart stickers all over it and occasionally glancing up to beam at him.

I made a disgusted face at her, then looked at Daisy, who was sitting next to me. "You did a really good job of decorating your Valentine's Day box," I said, looking at her box. She had some fancy looking pink container with lace and ribbons on it. Girly and definitely not my taste, but you could tell she'd worked hard on it.

"Thanks!" Daisy replied, grinning at me. "Yours is very nice too!"

I looked down at my box. I'd insisted on decorating it myself and had kept it out of the hands of Nudge and Gazzy, who had taken the liberty of decorating Iggy's box with both Disney princess and superhero stickers. They'd also colored it with every marker that they could find – it was definitely one of a kind. When they described it to Iggy, he just burst out laughing.

As for my box, I'd painted it blue and added little white cloud stickers all over it. I'd never been much of an arts and crafts girl, but I figured anything was better than having Ariel and Superman plastered all over my box.

"Oh! We thought of a Valentine's Day song!" Nudge yelled as I thanked Daisy for her compliment. "It goes to the tune of Jingle Bells."

Nudge counted to three, then she and Gazzy began singing – aka screaming – "Candy time! Candy time! Candy all day long! Oh what fun it is to eat candy all day long!"

Everyone on the bus turned around to glare at them. From the front, the bus driver shouted, "Keep it quiet back there!"

I couldn't help myself – I burst out laughing. So did Jaz and Daisy – even the corners of Fang's mouth upturned a little bit.

Iggy, however, was wistfully staring out the window – or at least looking like he was staring out the window. He looked like he was in some dramatic movie.

I leaned over across the aisle and poked him. "Hey, Ig. Is everything okay?"

"Huh?" he asked. "Yeah. Everything's fine."

"You're unusually quiet," I replied, smiling. "Worried about reading your poem in front of the class? I promise I won't laugh at you!"

Iggy shook his head. "No, I was just thinking about the poem that you wrote for me. I can't wait to see what it says."

"Uh…" I trailed off. "Yeah. Of course. I bet you can't wait."

As the bus pulled up to school and everyone scrambled to get off, dragging huge bags of candy and toting pale pink, red, and purple boxes, I thought to myself, What's Iggy going to think when he hears my poem?

~~::~~

"And now, we will present our poems," Mrs. Jenkins announced as everyone finished passing out candy. I stared at my box – I desperately wanted to eat all of the candy in there, but Mrs. Jenkins said we had to wait until we got home to eat it.

"Would anyone like to volunteer to go first?" Mrs. Jenkins asked, looking around the room. Then I had a brilliant idea. If I ate my candy, Mrs. Jenkins would send me to the principal and I wouldn't have to read my poem! Considering I was used to the "Max, you need to behave" speech from Mrs. Ruiz, the principal, I could just tune it out and not have to worry about presenting my dumb poem.

I opened my box as loudly and obviously as I could, reaching for a lollipop and holding it up. "I'm going to eat this candy," I whispered to Iggy.

"Maxine! Thank you for volunteering!" Mrs. Jenkins' words were not the ones I expected to hear.

"I didn't-" I started, but she cut me off.

"I heard you say something to Jeff, so I assumed that you were saying that you would love to present your poem first," Mrs. Jenkins told me. I could have sworn she was smiling evilly. One day, I was sure, we'd find out that she was spying on us for the School.

I slowly pushed back my chair and stood up as sluggishly as I could, taking my time. I looked at the clock – an hour left of school. I guess that no matter how much stalling I did, I'd just have to read my poem.

Then I thought to myself, Max, don't be ridiculous! It's just a dumb poem. If you can beat up Erasers, you can read a bunch of words to the class.

I strode to the front of the room, unfolded my paper, and read out loud, "'What is Love?' Written by Maximum Ride." I glared at Mrs. Jenkins, sure that she had to get my name right sooner or later.

I stared at the paper. The first sentence written on there, courtesy of Nudge, was Love is when you see someone and you can't breathe because you know that they are meant to be yours. "Iggy's gonna love that!" she'd said.

That mushy stuff wasn't me. I didn't write that. And I knew that everyone else in my class – at least Fang, Iggy, Jaz, and Daisy – knew that too.

So instead I said, "What is love?"

I paused to think before continuing. "Love is when you care about someone a lot. When you would do anything for them because you want them to be safe. Love is my family. Love is my friends. Love is everyone around me. Except for… well, bad guys. But that's okay, because I'll protect the ones I love from them.

"Love is when you feel so happy that you could fly miles up into the sky and never come down.

"Love is when you see someone and you can't stop smiling.

"Love is all around us, and within us, and within me.

"Love is what I feel when I see the people I care about, and love is me protecting them."

I thought that I was done, but then I had one last thought. "Love is what keeps us alive."

The class started clapping, and I sat down, blushing furiously. Talk about embarrassing. I was never going to say anything like that ever again. But at the same time, I was kind of proud of myself.

"That was… nice, Max," Mrs. Jenkins said. She looked pleasantly surprised – I think that was the first time I'd ever seen her look pleased with anything I did.

One by one, the other students in my class went up and read their poems. Jaz's went something like "I love Fang, he's so cool. I love Fang, I'm glad he goes to our school." I rolled my eyes. That poem was almost as bad the one that Nudge had helped me write.

Then Fang went up and read his poem. At first I thought he was a really good poet, until I realized that his poem was one of the ones I'd found on the internet. Mrs. Jenkins looked like she had heard that poem before too, but I guessed she decided to let it go for now.

Daisy's poem was all about how she loved her friends and family – and she smiled at me when she read a part in her poem about how her friends saved her life. I smiled back – it was nice to have Daisy as a friend rather than an enemy.

Finally, it was Iggy's turn. "Jeff?" Mrs. Jenkins asked. "If you don't have your poem memorized, you can have someone else read it for you."

Iggy shook his head. "Uh, it's okay. I left it at home. Sorry."

I glanced at him suspiciously – just this morning, I could have sworn I'd seen him packing it in his backpack, along with all the cookies he'd brought for our class.

Just then, the bell rang. "Well, I'm going to be marking you down in the gradebook," Mrs. Jenkins told him. "Class dismissed – have a nice weekend, everyone!"

As she walked back to her desk, she turned around and smiled at me – something she'd never done before. "You too, Max."

~~::~~

"Okay, what was that?" I asked Iggy, grabbing his arm as we sat down on the bus. "You're always a good student. And I know you didn't forget your poem at home."

Iggy slumped down in his seat, his head against the window, his face bright red. "I don't know what you're talking about."

I rolled my eyes. "You know, Iggy, you can be a real stubborn pain in the butt sometimes. Tell me. Now."

He sighed before grabbing his binder out of his backpack, tearing out a sheet of paper, and pushing it at me. "Here."

I glanced down at the paper – it was the poem he'd written, probably typed by Nudge the computer genius, or Fang. Glancing through it, I saw it was all full of references to how much he loved me.

"Uh…." I trailed off.

"Nudge said you'd written a love poem to me, so I wanted to write one to you. But then… well, your poem was nice, but it wasn't just about me. I got embarrassed. I didn't want to read it out loud. I thought you loved me."

"Listen, Iggy." I put my hand on his shoulder. "I do love you. And I love Fang. And I love Nudge, and Gazzy, and Angel, and Jeb, and yes, even Jaz."

Iggy sniffled, wiping his nose with his sleeve. "So what you're saying is-"

"We're eleven years old," I told him. "And of course I love you. But that's for when we're older. For now… let's just stick to simpler stuff, yeah?"

Iggy nodded, smiling a tiny bit. I hoped it was a real smile. "Yeah. Okay!"

I grinned. "Love you, Ig."

"Love you too."

"I love all of you!" Jaz yelled, throwing her arms around us from the seat behind us.

Iggy burst out laughing. I laughed too.

Scratch what I said earlier – Valentine's Day wasn't so bad after all.