"Max! Wake up!"
The pounding on her door (what an overly optimistic term…it was really more of a huge piece of thick bark she'd found on the forest floor and leaned into her doorframe. To open it, you merely had to take it out and put it somewhere else) lasted all of 9 milliseconds before it was shoved open and fell onto her bed, narrowly missing her feet, with a dull thump.
"What the—" she muttered, and blinked against the bright morning light and Gazzy's shadowed outline in the doorway.
"Get up, get up!" He jumped onto her mattress closely followed by Angel and pulled down her blankets.
"Jesus, what the heck are you people waking me up for? And give me back my blanket." The summer nights were too warm to use much sleepwear, so Max wore a pair of black bootie shorts that Ella had given her and a black tanktop that didn't even come close to covering her bellybutton. In fact, it was more of an elongated sports bra, but without the bra.
Which was why she needed her blanket back. Immediately. Especially when she heard footsteps and Iggy appeared in the doorway holding a frying pan that from which emanated the mouthwatering smell of scrambled eggs with fried tomatoes and onions.
"Sorry," he mumbled, looking ashamed of himself, "I didn't know they'd wake you up."
"Why exactly did they?" she snapped, while yanking her blanket out of Gazzy's hands and pulling it up to her chin. She considered covering her blushing face too, but then decided that she was angry at Izzy and covering her face wouldn't make her look intimidating enough.
"Well, I had this idea…" He gestured with the frying pan, and a brief fleeting feeling of worry shot through Max that he would spill the fried eggs on her mattress. If there was one thing she was incapable of, it was laundry.
"Freaking fabulous idea." Fang interrupted loudly and shoved Iggy to the side with a grin on his side. He was wearing the jeans Nudge had designed and the white polo shirt. Max noticed with a small amount of pleasant discomfort that it was extremely tight-fitting and extremely well cut.
The way they both leaned in the doorframe like they did, Max could tell that Iggy was still an inch or so taller than Fang. She tried to suppress a smirk, but failed.
"Why are you grinning?" Gazzy pouted. "We haven't even told you yet."
"She's comparing Iggy to Fang and realized that Iggy is taller." Angel announced casually. Max felt her smirk break into a fullblown grin.
Iggy couldn't help but snicker. Fang scowled.
"Size doesn't matter." he said, crossing his arms over his chest, making his biceps bulge. Max didn't let herself become distracted; she was too busy trying not to laugh at the ridiculous irony of what he'd just said. Nobody cared more than Fang about size. Angel was giggling. Gasman was trying to figure out why.
"Whatever," she chuckled. "What was the idea? Why am I awake?"
"Eh…eat breakfast first." Nudge suggested quickly and threw a glance at Iggy. She looked cautious.
--
Half-an-hour later, the flock sat around the dining table and stared at Max, who stared at Iggy. They'd looked silent and nervous all through breakfast, and she was starting to become really suspicious.
"Alright, spill it. What's going on?"
"Okay," Iggy took a deep breath. "We want to see the Niagara Falls."
He said it, short and to the point.
She took a moment to remember what the Niagara Falls were.
Then she took a moment to wonder if she was delusional and had just imagined the words that had come out of Iggy's mouth.
"Pardon me?"
"Well, Max, look at it this way," Gazzy spread his hands out in an innocent gesture, trying to look persuasive. "We have wings." She had the feeling somebody –Iggy or Fang –had told him this reason and he now thought he could persuade her with it, though he probably had no idea what it meant.
For a moment, nobody said anything while Max looked at him in incomprehension.
"And this relates to anything how…?"
"Well, we're not going to school are we? What does that leave us to do?" Fang leaned back in his chair, his black eyes serious. She hated how he managed to sprawl in that chair and still look so good, how her heart kicked up a gear just because he was holding her eyes with his like that.
He reasoned partly with his gaze as he continued, "We're not on the run anymore, and that leaves us two options; either go to school and try to live a normal life, or two, come up with a better option."
"And the Niagara Falls are the second option?"
"Indirectly, yes." His lips twitched into a smile at one corner. "We have wings, Max! And no parents to go to school, the government sure as hell won't force us. We can do whatever we want! Don't you want to see the world? It's open only to us. We're citizens of nowhere, barely considered human by the general populace, and formerly labeled as experimental matter, so no law applies to us. No law in the world."
It was strange to see Fang say this. Fang, the dark tall boy with wings, the sarcastic, cold one. The proud, but also teasing one. Fang who know had that spark in his eyes…
"I don't…" she didn't know what to say. "How did you come up with this?" she finally asked weakly.
He shrugged.
"I'd already had the vague idea. But Iggyy was reading a National Geographics magazine about elemental explosives to Gazzy the other day, and the article after the one he was reading was about the Niagara Falls. Angel said it was very pretty. Nudge said it would be so cool to go. And then Iggy made a suggestion."
"And when did this happen?" She didn't mean to make the words sound so sharp, but something in her twinged and hurt. They'd already thought this out, already yesterday while goofing around, modeling things, and she hadn't heard a word about it. She, the motherbird, leader of the flock! Where had she even been when they all sat together and read National Geographics?
Probably sitting by the lake and philosophizing pessimistically about her duties to the flock and the fact that not being with Fang when he was this close to her already was going to give her a complex.
"A few days ago." Iggy said vaguely, very quietly, as if he was scared that saying it louder would cause her to lose it.
"Wow." She didn't know what to say.
They watched her, she watched her heart.
"Excuse me for a moment." The tone was strangely formal. She left the table abruptly, disappeared in her room for a moment, then re-immerged having put on a proper shirt.
Nobody said anything as she walked out onto the little landing platform and jumped out of their sight. A moment later, they saw a streak of black, shoot through the air at her super speed, and she was gone.
"She doesn't want to go."Nudge fingered the tabletop dejectedly. Gazzy watched her chocolate colored fingers picking at the wood.
"I think we did something wrong." Iggy said hesitantly. Fang threw him a glance, then stood up. Without another word, he followed Max out the window.