"Did you ever see a llama, kiss a llama, on the llama, llama's llama, tastes of llama, llama, llama—"

"Shut up, Elli!" I yelled, holding a pillow over my head to block out Elli's cheerful morning call.

"…duck." I groaned and yanked the blankets over my head again. What was wrong with that girl?! "Charlie, you silly sleepyhead! Wake up!" Great, now she was quoting Charlie the Unicorn. How much worse can it get?

"Fine!" I screeched, jumping up and glaring at her. For some odd reason, she started giggling. "What?" I demanded, wild-eyed. She just laughed some more and pointed towards my head. I turned to look in the mirror and I almost screamed at what I saw there. My hair was a mess. Like, sticking my head out a car window for 5 hours that was going at 120 miles per hour, and then rubbing a balloon over it until it turns all static-y, messy. I turned around to see Elli covering her mouth with both hands, attempting, and failing, to keep the endless line of giggles from streaming forth. Suddenly I heard a loud 'Oof!'. Elli had fallen on the floor from the strain, and now she was tenderly rubbing her wings where she had landed on them. I gave her a 'Ha!' look. She grinned sheepishly.

"I guess all that flying kinda takes it out of you, huh?" I rolled my eyes at her.

"Thanks for noticing, Einstein." She stuck her tongue out at me right as my mother peeked her head in. Elli dashed behind the bed to cover her wings, which had been fully extended when mom walked in. I still had a blanket wrapped around my tightly folded ones, so I was safe. Mom didn't seem to notice, and said in a slightly exasperated tone, "Girls, the school bus will be here soon, and you're not even dressed yet!" Surprised, I looked at the clock. Sure enough, it was almost 6:15, and the bus came at 6:30. I leapt up to my feet and grabbed some clothes before running to the bathroom to change. I heard my mom go down the stairs quietly, muttering about how scatter-brained her daughter was. I'm glad she didn't know about the new raptor hearing. I got dressed quickly and ran into my bedroom to find Elli already clothed and staring at her wings in horror.

"Alex! How in the heck are we supposed to hide our wings?" She exclaimed. My eyes widened when I realized what she was saying. How were we supposed to do that? I pulled my wings tightly against my back, but they still stuck out some. We couldn't go to school like this! What if—

"I got it!" I looked over at Elli, startled. She was grinning at me, and then showed me her now completely bare back.

"Wha?" How did she do that? She came over and showed me how I had to flex my back a certain way so they could pull all the way into it. I'm not going to explain it, because it sounds kind of gross, but we finally figured it out. I looked over at the clock and blanched. 6:25.

"We have five minutes, El!"

"Crap!" She jumped up and started searching for her stuff. "Alex, it's not anywhere! I can't find it, and my project is due, and if I don't have it Mr. Sawyer is going to kill me!" she wailed.

"Elli." I said, trying to calm her down.

"And if Mrs. Roccing doesn't get all of my papers today I'm going to get a detention,"

"Elli." I said again, somewhat louder.

"And then Mr. Adams is going to murder me if I don't have my essay today,"

"Elli!" She turned and looked at me, wide-eyed. "It's on your back." She turned her head, and there, amazingly, was her book bag. She grinned in embarrassment.

"Oh."

"C'mon, let's go." I ran down the stairs while Elli hopped on the banister and slid down, jumping off in front of me. I rolled my eyes and flung the door open, and we raced out, barely catching the bus. Our old, wrinkly bus driver, Mrs. Cooke, glared at us through heavy, baggy eyes. We smiled innocently and plopped down in our seats near the middle of the big yellow Twinkie.

"Oh my gosh, it was hilarious. No, no, get this. After he fell, he tried to get up, and he…it's too funny, I can't…" I shook my head at Elli. She was busy reenacting the scene of Dorky falling on his face to our friend Jacob, but she edited it to make it seem like we were only a house away, instead of seven. I couldn't help but notice that even though he was chuckling, it was more of a nervous laugh and he seemed rather twitchy. Elli went to steady herself on his shoulder, but he flinched away suddenly. Interesting…

"Alex? Aleeex? Earth to Alex! Alex? ALEX!"

"Huh?" I started, looking around.

"It's alive!" Elli proclaimed, waving her hands wildly. I rolled my eyes at her.

"What?"

"You were kind of spacing out there, buddy. I just thought I'd let you know that there's a pop quiz in front of you, and there's only five minutes left to finish it."

"Why didn't you tell me earlier?" I whisper-yelled, knowing Mr. Banner would kill me if he heard me. She shrugged.

"I tried, I really did. You must've been having a really interesting daydream. Was it about Jacob?" She grinned and tried to give me a knowing look. I hit her in the head and started working on my quiz. "Aha! I was right!" She smirked triumphantly. "When's the wedding?" I glared at her, and growled,

"Why aren't you working?"

"I got finished like 20 minutes ago. It's easy." She leaned back and propped her legs up on the desk, only to yank them down as Mr. Banner came by with a ruler. I forgot to mention; we may not seem like it, but we're super nerds. But we're not like Dorky. Not even close. We're pretty intelligent, we just choose to use our gifts for things like annoying others and out-witting our teachers, not academics.

I managed to almost completely finish my test before it was snatched out of my grasp by an irritated Mr. Banner . He was about to start a lecture on the importance of paying attention in class, looking straight at Elli and I, of course, but the bell rang just in time. I breathed out a sigh of relief and grabbed my books before dashing out of there.

"Elli, come on, this is important." I yanked insistently on her arm, trying to get her to move. She was talking to our friend Hannah, and she wouldn't budge. She sighed and waved to Hannah before walking off with me.

"What?"

"It's about what I think is wrong with Jacob."

"I didn't see anything wrong with him. Except that he's in luuuuuuuurve." She smirked, turning to me.

"Shut up, this is important." I said, rolling my eyes. "And he isn't in love with me," I added, grumbling. Her smirk only grew wider. I smacked her in the back of the head. "I'm serious about this!"

"Okay, okay. What's wrong with Jake?"

"Were you not listening the other thousand times I told you?" I asked in disbelief.

"Not really, no." She was so stupid sometimes.

"Well, what I was trying to say was that I think Jake has wings, too." I whispered, so the other kids walking down the halls wouldn't hear us. We were some of the late stragglers heading towards the bus after school, but we weren't in a hurry like them because we were planning on flying home. We wanted to have much flying time as possible so we could get used to our wings.

"It does kind of make sense," she trailed off, thinking. "He was really jumpy in Language Arts today, and he barely even laughed when I told him about Dorky. What person in their right mind doesn't laugh at that?"

"One who just went through a really traumatizing experience. I.E., one who just got wings."

"Hmm…yeah, I guess that could do that to a person. We just took it better than…others. But how can we know for sure?" I was about to answer when out of the corner of my eye I saw Jake running towards the nearby tree line.

"You know, we could just follow him." I grinned. Elli agreed and we ran towards him, but I could've sworn I heard her mutter something about me being a stalker.

"You're stalking him, too, Elli."

"Against my will!" I gave up and told her to be quiet as we neared the grove that I saw him dart into. We crept silently through the woods, stopping abruptly as we caught sight of him. He was facing towards us, but he must not have noticed we were there because he continued with what he was doing, which happened to be removing his shirt. Elli fake wolf-whistled.

"So this is why you wanted to follow, eh?" she whispered, wiggling her eyebrows. "You really shouldn't stalk people, you know. How do you think Jake would feel if he knew you were watching him undress? Pretty violated, I'd say." Then she caught sight of his dark brown wings.

"That's why I'm following him." I smirked. I guess I said that too loud though, because Jake suddenly froze and looked towards the bush me and Elli were hiding behind.

"Who's there?" he called, barely hiding the fear in his tone. "Come out!" I turned to Elli and she shrugged, standing up.

"Whazzup, Homie J?" I snickered as I joined her.

"In translation, that means, "Hi, my fellow bird-kid." He looked back and forth between us, wide-eyed.

"Guys, this isn't what it seems…" he stammered, literally shaking. Taking no mercy on the poor boy, we snapped out our wings in their 15-foot glory.

"Yeah, well, this isn't either, I guess." Elli grinned, watching as he looked at us in awe. "Unless you're talking about McDonald's Chicken McNuggets. Then you're right; they're not what they seem." He seemed to break out of his trance at that.

"You guys, too?"

"I know, their chicken is disgusting. Honestly, it's amazing how they get so much business. It's like they get their food at a sewage plant. It's—"

"Yes, we have wings." I interrupted, before she could get into a huge rant about how much she hated McDonalds. Don't ask why.

"But…how?" he looked utterly confused.

"You're not that special, Jake. Well, you are, but in a different way."

"No, I meant, how did you get wings?"

"Oh, that. Shooting star."

"Are you sure? 'Cause I wished for an X-box 360. Instead, I got these." Well, that was different. But, you never know with these things.

"Ah, well, that's the past. But we've got wings! Isn't that awesome?" I couldn't help but squeal. I was still so excited about it.

"Yeah, but everyone's going to think I'm a freak. I can't hide them very well. How did you guys do it?" He obviously didn't try hard enough. It wasn't that difficult to figure out. I rolled my eyes and proceeded to show him how to get them to fit entirely into his back.

"Aww, it's bird love! First comes love, then comes dating, then comes the hatchlings from the raptor—"

"Elli! Don't even think about saying what I think you are going to say!" She paused for a moment, grinning, and then opened her mouth to give a tart reply.

"What did you think I was going to say, Alex?"

"You, you, ugh..." I said, unable to think of a response that she wouldn't find perverted.

"That's what I thought." Elli said smugly. Jacob just stood by and watched as we bickered like two starlings over a worm, appropriately named.

"Let's just fly home before Jake calls the Insane Asylum on us." Jake suddenly got a weird look on his face, as if he was ashamed of something.

"What?" I asked, immediately getting suspicious.

"Uh…I can't exactly…um, completely, entirely, at all…fly yet."

Ok, so there you have it! Another Fleet member! ( I found that on Wikipedia, it's another name for Flock). How will Jake's first flying lesson go? And when is the plot going to show up? Find out in Chapter 3! (and yes, I know that was extremely corny).