Chapter 7

After a while (I couldn't tell you how long. I had been in some sort of lovelorn coma.) I picked myself up and flew back to the house. By then Fang was up as well. I couldn't even look at him, though he sought my gaze. I looked at Dylan instead, punishing Fang with each loving glance.

"Max, can we please just talk?" Fang pleaded. I brushed past him without a second thought. No, I was on at least my twenty-fifth thought by then.

I swept majestically into my room, where I collapsed rather un-majestically onto my bed. Then my mom came in. Finally! I thought. She sat down on the bed and I poured out the whole story to her.

"… and now I don't know what to do! I want to give Fang a second chance, but I also want to make him suffer for a while." I finished, feeling as though a great weight had been lifted from my chest. No one knew the full extent of the story except me. It felt amazing to let someone else in.

"Hmmmm…" she pondered as I waited for her advice, "Maybe you should give him the silent treatment for a day or two, then hear what he has to say. But make sure you're not angry anymore before you talk to him." I nodded energetically, agreeing with her plan. We talked a while longer, and then she just held me for a long time. I loved having a mom.

I talked and flew with everyone except Fang for the next three days. By then my anger had cooled. I still felt hurt, but I wasn't angry. Well, I'm always angry at something, but I wasn't feeling very angry. I counted it as good enough.

Fang looked up as I approached him, seeming surprised that I was doing so.

"You wanted to talk to me?" I said, a little bit stiffly. Maybe I wasn't as not angry as I had thought.

"Um, yeah." We ambled outside and plunk down on the edge of the canyon.

"I wanted to explain to you what happened that day. I didn't want you to think that I kissed you, turned around, and kissed someone else." I blushed, because that was exactly what I had done. "You kinda disappeared somewhere, and Brigid came over and asked if I would fly for her. I said yes, because I didn't have a good reason to say no. So we headed outside and go to…"

"We all know where you were.' I broke in, feeling my anger rise every time I heard her name.

"No, we actually started out actually pretty close to here. Anyway, I flew for some time, then Brigid called me down. I didn't know what was going on, so I landed. She said she had to show me something over by where you guys found us. So she dragged me over there, then looked at me kinda funny. Then she kissed me. And that's it." He finished. I was speechless with joy, because it really was against his will.

"What are we going to tell everyone else?" I queried.

"We'll tell the flock the whole thing, but everyone else can think whatever they want." He answered

"Okay." I said, then we kissed, very much not against his will.

So my dual-guy love life was back on track, sort of. Well, it was on the same track that it was on before. It doesn't really matter that that track was toward imminent doom, does it?

Anyway, we spun the story for the flock, including Dylan and my mom. Dylan had a look on his face that suggested that he just drank lemon juice the whole time. I was in MAX 3 FANG mode, so I found that pretty funny. The rest of the flock looked so relieved, which made me think they were on Team Fang. It'd make sense.

That night Total and Akila arrived home for the wedding. No one was really crying except Angel (a little bit), and Total got all huffy. Then he called us into the living room and announced that Akila was going to have a litter of puppies. We all said "Awwwwww…" and the boys made some suggestive and rather annoying noises, then we all went to bed. It was like midnight by that point in time, because Total had been considerate enough to book an eleven o' clock flight. I mean, really.

I dreamed that I turned into an Eraser, like I had in the past, and the entire flock ran away except Fang and Dylan. No answers there. Then Dylan tried to fight me and Fang tried to put me in a dog crate and the whole dream just went downhill from there. I'm not going to go into specifics, but it involved the flock stuffing me into a wooden box and mailing me to the School. Except they forgot to put in air holes, so I woke up feeling like I was about to suffocate.

Apparently Dylan heard me panting, so he crept into my room. I tried to tell myself that this was super-creepy and Fang was so much better for me. Then he spoke

"Max? We need to talk." Holy crudola. 'We need to talk' were the absolute last words I wanted to hear. That meant he was going to either a) ask me who I was going to choose b) bash Fang or c) tell me the good things about him. Or something else even worse. This would, of course, be worse.

"You know the story Fang told us about him and Brigid?" he said. I nodded, hoping this was a dream too. "Well he was lying. I was looking out the window and I saw him and Dr. B go out. He was flying around like he said and then he landed and kissed her. He kissed her. Just thought you should know." He kissed me and left.

I was going to kill them both.

I've gotten some comments about this and let me just make it clear. This is not Mylan. I admit it might seem like that now, but it's not.