Disclaimer: I would like to disclaim a couple of things at this point of the story:

*Maximum Ride and everything that goes along with it.

YAY! Okay, time to write again!

Chapter 4

I immediately started to do what I do best in situations like this: Babble nonsensically.

"Oh, you're Jay's mom? No way! I mean…I mean, Jay is…he's a cool kid, ya know? Yeah, he…um. Yeah."

Mrs. Simmons smiled. "Oh, thank you, sweetie. I'll get him down here do that you guys can catch up."

"What?" I asked breathlessly. Turns out if you act like a stupid person is more tiring than acting like a smart person.

"Does she remember?" she asked my mom.

I hate when parents do that. When they treat you like they're looking through a glass thing at you and you can't hear what they're saying. But I could totally hear for the record.

"What?" I almost yelled.

"You used to pal around together in preschool." Mom said.

"Oh, that's never come up in conversation before." I said pointedly at my mother. She shrugged. Nice answer, Mom. Thanks for the support.

"Valencia, my cat, Muffins is having terrible leg spasms. Could you check her out." my Mom nodded at Jay's mom. "Oh, Ella, you go say hi to Jay. He never gets visitors because he's so busy with things all the time. He'll enjoy seeing a school buddy."

They walked away, leaving me there. You know that feeling when you're being forced to walk into a room full of hungry lions? You don't? Well, I just found out.

My stomach clenched, but I made myself walk up the stairs as quietly as possible. The upstairs hallway had no cats-visible, at least. There were drawings of ballerinas and flowers all over the wall and a picture of a little girl with bouncy blonde hair and a little boy with oversized glasses and messy brown hair. I was guessing that was Jay because basically that was what he looked like now. His eyes were exactly the same also, giant dark eyes. And then there was this giant picture of a tabby cat next to them, which I guess was like the third child in this family. Ew, that's weird.

My feet made no sound in the hallway. Outside a loud crack of thunder made me jump a little. I breathed and walked forward a little. I saw a doorway on the left side of the hallway. It had a piece of notebook paper that said "Loading" and had a red bar colored in crayon underneath it. It was slightly open so I heard a voice.

"Destroy the force field."

Then a higher pitched voice, "No, don't do it!"

"But we have to." the lower voice said.

"No we don't."

And then it was silent.

Then I heard the low voice say, "I can't be in love with you."

I peeked in through the door. I saw something that was kind of disturbing. Jay was behind a shelf making the figures on top move and say stuff. Okay, this has brought my respect for him down to a whole new level that I did not think was possible to achieve. Ever.

"Yes, but-"

"Um…hi." I walked in. Jay jumped up and hit his head on the top of the shelf with a crack. "Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to surprise you. Are you alright?"

"Why the heck are you in my house?" he yelled, rubbing his head.

"Your cat was having leg spasms." I said quickly.

"What?" he gave me a confused look.

"My mom's a vet and your cat is like sick or something. I didn't mean to come here on purpose."

"Why are you in my room?"

I thought about that one, then put on a confidant face, "Why were you playing with action figures and giving them voices?" I asked smugly.

"Um…it's…you…" he stammered, his eyes getting wide and scared, "It's extra credit for a book report."

"No it's not." I tilted my head and crossed my arms.

"Okay." he said quietly. And that's when the awkwardness came. I averted my eyes and let my hands fall to my side. He nervously tapped his fingers on his desk. Whenever we breathed it was like the room just got a little bit more anti-social. I think Jay was breathing extra loud just to piss me off.

"Yeah I a…" he trailed off, "I mean…what?"

"I didn't say anything." I replied.

"Oh, I thought you said something. It must have been my mom or something. I think that's her calling me. Don't…don't touch anything." he ran clumsily out of the room and I heard him trip and crash in the hallway.

"Are you okay?" I shouted.

"Disregard the last few seconds." he shouted back.

I sat down in a chair next to his desk. He had all these sketches of people that were pretty good. They were really detailed and I started to recognize people from school. I saw Gary who was actually a girl with long blonde hair and bright green eyes. I immediately recognized Kate. He'd done a good job of portraying her, I must say. Then there were some people that I didn't recognize.

Then I saw a whole pile of Wikipedia pages. Do not touch his stuff. Well, technically this was Wikipedia's stuff so…

What happened next I really shouldn't have done. It was an invasion of privacy and it was bad and wrong. He'd kill me if he knew I was doing this. But, I was on a quest and sometimes you have to do stuff that's not so nice, right? Right?

I picked up the first page. It said "Chameleon" on top. There were pictures of the "highly specialized clade of lizards" whatever that meant. It was all about their eating habits and etymology and evolution.

There was some messy handwriting scrawled next to some of the notes. One said, "try this on Monday". It was next to the section about how some chameleon's could change color. There was a date written next to it from, like three years ago.

I wasn't suspicious anymore. I was almost positive. I had almost come to a final conclusion that I was correct. I mean, most of the time, I'm correct, so I shouldn't have been surprised. But, never had I come to a conclusion so out there and strange.

"What are you doing?" he asked. "Oh my gosh, get out of my room!" he said, pointing at the door.

"Jay! I just looked at the Wikipedia stuff. You can tell me if anything is…" I trailed off.

"No, I can't tell you anything! I don't even know you! I haven't seen you since preschool and now you come back and…get the hell out of my room!"

"I'm so sorry." I said, quickly grabbing a piece of paper. "Here's my number. If you need to tell me something or anything or just talk or whatever in the next couple three weeks-"

"Not good, not good, notgoodnotgoodnotgood." he muttered to himself. "Okay, listen. There is nothing going on."

"Don't say that. I know what's going on because it's going on with me too." I said, feeling a little bit powerful in this situation. Mostly because Jay was leaning against his wall like he was going to feint.

"You…" he paused. "Wait a second, what's going on with you?" he looked up at me.

"Um…this is going to take some explaining." I mumbled. "Okay, so I'm 3% yorkie."

"Stop it, that's not funny." he said, with an incredulous look on his face.

"I'm not being funny, I have a tail!" I said.

"No way. Can-"

"I'm not showing you." I rolled my eyes. Even these kind of boys have perverted minds. "Listen, it was grafted into my DNA a really long time ago. And now I'm 3% yorkie. Here look at my canine teeth. I pulled down my lip a little and he gasped.

"Are you sure you're not just, like, a vampire or something?" he asked.

"I'm pretty sure vampires don't have tails." I sighed. Why are people so stupid sometimes? I've been trying to figure it out. "Anyway, so I just got this 'heads-up' notice from a guy named Jeb-"

"What kind of name is 'Jeb'?" Jay cocked his eyebrow.

"A weird scientist-y guy kind of name. And, as I was saying, I need to recruit five mutant people to be part of my 'group' of mutants." I said, feeling like an idiot.

"I don't know what you're talking about." he crossed his arms over his skinny chest.

"Yes you DO!" I shook his shoulders a little bit. "I know because I have proof. I've been doing some detective work about you because you were acting all weird in Science class."

"Maybe I just was having a bad day, Sherlock." he replied.

"Yeah but that doesn't explain why you have all this Wikipedia stuff about chameleons on your desk. By the way, Wikipedia can be edited by anyone, so that wasn't really a great site to look up stuff."

He opened his mouth to say something but I cut him off. "And it really doesn't explain why Mr. Gabriel, that weird freaky student teacher guy didn't want me to talk to you so he knocked me out." I finished and blew my hair off my face for dramatic effect.

"Wow. Alright." he looked a little hyperventilate-y and really pale as if he'd been running really fast for the whole day. "Okay. Um…I…why do you want me to be in your 'group'?" he put the air quotes around 'group'.

"So are you saying it's true and I'm right?" I asked eagerly.

He took a really deep breath. "Yeah, kinda. I guess." he looked to the floor. Before I could stop myself, I was hugging him around his middle.

"Yes! I knew I was right! Thank you thankyouthankyou!" I cried.

"Yeah, okay. Get off me please." he muttered.

"Oh my gosh. I actually found one! Oh my gosh we're gonna save the world! Oh my gosh this is so fantastic! Aaaaaaah!" I finally let go of him. If I was Max, I probably would have said, "Yeah. I knew it." and then walked out with my hair swishing behind me. But, that's not really me, as you can probably guess.

"Yay." Jay said in his dorky voice that I now loved.

"Okay, so…um…do you by any chance know any other mutants?" I smiled.

"Yeah, I go to a secret society called Mutant Teenagers Anonymous." he said sarcastically.

"Whatever. So, I'm guessing you're part…" I wanted to make sure that I had gotten everything absolutely right.

"I'm part chameleon. Like the lizard thing." he whispered. "Now be quiet. Someone's going to hear you."

"Who? There's no one else here." I said. And just so everyone knows, I was utterly and completely right. I had no flaws in my hypothesis. Score one for Ella! Yes!

"Well, there's my mom and your mom." he said.

"Of course, but…wait a sec, your mom doesn't know that you're part lizard."

"Part chameleon." he said. "And no. Does your mom know you're part yorkie?"

"Yeah, of course. She's my mom." I said, then regretted it, looking at his face.

"Well, my mom's a little different. I think it would better if I was 5% cat or something. You know." he said, gesturing to the picture of the cat.

"No offense, but that is a really weird picture."

"I was seven years old! Sue me." he said.

"I was talking about the cat, moron." I scowled. "But now that I'm looking at it…"

"Shut up." he said, but I heard laughter under his voice. Which was a good thing. I want to have a 'group' that loves me like Max does. That would be soooo cool.

"Well, I still think you should tell your mom. It's just something she should know." I said. "Hey, do you have like superpowers or something?"

"Do chameleons have superpowers?" he said, making fun of how it was kind of a stupid question. "Not really."

"I mean, I have really good hearing and my feet are really resilient. Also I have really great hair."

"Okay, well, I don't go near water because I have a few scales on my hands that are only visible when they're wet. I can roll my eyes opposite ways." he demonstrated.

"Ew, freak." I joked.

"And also, I can do this."

And suddenly, Jay disappeared.