Our Broken Days
Chapter Two
I woke up still tangled to Fang, his wings still around us both. I looked at his face; it's so calm, so peaceful like this. Jeez, he really looks like a little kid like this, not a fourteen year old. I used to be taller than him, but these past few months he changed a lot. His wingspan went from being two feet smaller than mine, to almost a foot bigger. And he got taller too; my nose is now where his chin is. I smiled to myself thinking about him. We started getting really close this year. I don't know what has happened, really. When we escaped and found this empty home, we promised that we wouldn't fall for each other, not to ruin our friendship or anything. But since a couple months ago, we started breaking that promise. We would be acting like a couple of lovers sometimes. And even though I wasn't supposed to, I really liked it like that. The way he holds me is just so… right, you know? The way his body fills the hollows of mine, and vice-versa. My heart skips a beat when he looks at me, with those dark, impassive eyes. I could never tell what's going on behind those eyes, unless he wants me to know. I loved the way he could just read me; know what I'm thinking with one glance, like it's smeared across my face. I really want to tell him how I feel. I really, really do. I spend almost every night thinking on how I'm going to tell him, well if I'm not having a nightmare, that is. But I think that this is the day, I'm gonna tell him… maybe. The thought of telling him sends hot chills down my spine and I shiver, waking him up. His eyes flutter open and he looks at me.
"What are you smiling about?" he asks.
"What? I not smiling!" I say covering my mouth.
"C'mon" he says as his face gets closer and closer to mine until our noses are touching. "What are you thinking about, Max?" we are so close his lips lightly brush mine as he speaks. I unfurl my wings beneath his, creating a smaller space for us. This is it. I think, I have to tell him, right here, right now.
"It's okay, you can tell me anything" he says. My heart is hammering against my ribs, threatening to explode out of my chest. I take a deep breath to steady myself, though it doesn't do much good.
"Hey, you know that promise we made, when we escaped, to not fall for each other?" I ask, words tumbling out of my mouth like prickly pine needled falling from my tongue.
"Yeah, I remember" he responds. I can feel his heart beating against his chest. It's beating as fast and as hard as mine. That's good….right? His hand grabs mine and he laces his finger through mine and squeezes. And I squeeze back. I bite my lip and look into his eyes.
"You wanna break it?" I (finally) ask. He just smiles, the edges of his eyes crinkle. His black hair almost covers his eyes.
"I thought you'd never ask." He says, and then he leans down and kisses my cheek.
"Really?" I squeak out, at a loss for words.
"Yes. I wanted to tell you first, but I just didn't know how"
"I -" but I get interrupted by an enormous grumble from my tummy.
"You hungry?" Fang says, laughing.
"Yeah" I say.
"Me too" so he gets up, retracting his wings into the small hollows we have in our backs, through the big slits in his soft, black shirt. He leaves and hangs a left to go toward the stairs and into the kitchen. After he left I think: What the frick just happened? I can still feel the pressure of his chest against mine and the softness of his lips brushing against mine. I felt awesome to get this off my back, to finally tell Fang about this. And it felt awesome-er to find out that he feels the same way. I lightly touch the spot on my cheek where he kissed me, smile, take a deep breath, retract my wings, get up, and head out the door, looking forward to the rest of the day.
I entered the kitchen and Fang was cooking up some pancakes. I may be a girl, but trust me; you do not want me to cook. I do better with fighting things. You see, in the School, they put me and Fang through a series of… well, let's just say… classes, of fight training. Their motives, I have no idea why, I hope those idiots noticed that if they did this, then we would be able to kick their asses, right? Anyway, they put us through this so we would learn how to defend ourselves and fight. When they crossed our D.N.A with a birds', we sort of developed some strange qualities with this, like being stronger and faster than the average, oh… I don't know… about three fully grown men. As in, if a normal man punched someone else in the chest, it would just probably knock the wind out of the guy. But if one of us were to punch you in the chest, we would shatter your ribcage. So they might as well put our strange abilities to good use. So we learned how to fight, and let me tell you right now, I have a damn good right hook, so if you mess with me, or Fang, I will hurt you. Anyway we spend our days here in the Middle of Nowhere, Arizona; flying through the air, and training ourselves to fight further than those nit-wits at the School did, so when they finally find us and show up here to take us back to the labs so they can do more ridiculous experiments and tests on us, we can kick their sorry, sadistic butts.
"Pancake?" Fang asks.
"Sure" I say. He plops a perfectly fluffy pancake down onto my plate as I sit down in one of the mismatched chairs around our square white table. I put a pat of butter onto my pancake and pour syrup onto it. As I much on my pancake, sitting across from Fang I think: What ever happened to my parents? Surely I was born somewhere from someone, because I'm pretty sure those bastards at the School can't be smart enough to create a baby from nothing. Then suddenly I drop my fork onto my plate, and look up at Fang, who has a 'what-the-hell?' expression on his face. "Fang…" I say, "You ever wonder what happened to our parents?"
"Yeah, sure, lots of times, because I figured that those bastards at the School can't be smart enough to create a baby from nothing" he answers.
"Exactly" I can't believe that I haven't thought of this before. "Well, do you want to find our parents?"
"Yeah, we should totally do that! Find out who we actually came from. That would be so awesome!" he says, his eyes lighting up.
"Yeah, but the question is, where were we born?"
"In a hospital?"
"Probably, but there are billions of hospitals around the country, we can't just crash into every hospital there is and ask if they have our birth certificates."
"Yeah, so the only place that would have our birth records is…." His eyes widen is horror as he realizes the answer to the question.
"The School" we say in unison.