This chapter is really exciting, so hang on to your seat! Ha-ha. Anyway.. Back to the story. Please read and review, and enjoy!

Disclaimer: I don't own Maximum Ride.

Max POV

"AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!! SOMEBODY HELP HER!!!!!!"

It was recess period. There were less than three hundred kids in the school, and the backyard of the school was huge. The school paved one big chunk of area to use as the basketball courts, next to that were three jungle gyms and four swing sets built into the sand. The scream came from a small girl in a pink sundress. Her brown pick tails bounced around as she looked this way and that, screaming bloody murder. Since the only aid was a fifty year old woman half asleep on the bench next to the playground, I took the liberty of shutting her up. I spun her around and cupped my left hand over her mouth as I crouched down to her level. She was no less than nine years old.

"What are you screaming about?" I asked in a soft yet demanding voice.

She was hyperventilating as she turned toward the building and pointed to a dark figure standing on the edge of the two story school. My raptor vision allowed me to focus on the face.

It was Nudge!

"Hey Max!" Nudge screamed, waving at me, "check it out! The view is great from up here!"

A crowd was starting to form around me. Kids were pointing and squinting, trying to see what she was doing. I laughed and their faces. I saw Angel come down from a jungle gym and race towards me to see what was happening. Then Iggy and Gazzy came from a swing set. Dylan just watched from the top of a basketball hoop (I didn't even want to know how he managed to get up there). Total trotted up into Angel's arms. He looked at me, then looked at Nudge, and smiled while chuckling.

"Hey Nudge!" I screamed back. "What are you doing?"

"I'm going to jump! Duh!"

This started a commotion. Kids started screaming, running, calling for the principal (as if that would help) They were all so naïve. With all the noise, I couldn't hear myself think.

"SHUT UP!" I yelled over everyone. Once they all quieted down, I started again, "How on earth am I suppose to respond to her if you people won't be quiet?" I was really raising my voice now.

"Just tell her to get down from there!" someone said. I recognized the kid from my science class. He was one of those sensible kids who sucked up to teachers. I decided to make this the most interesting day of their school year.

"All right," I said to the kid. "Hey Nudge! Go for it! And hurry up! We haven't got all day!" Well, he told me to get her down, and down she will go.

If you've ever seen a panicky crowd, that was only one third of the chaos that arose throughout the playground. I swear I saw one kid dialing 911.

"Are you absolutely insane???" Screamed the kid, whose name I still hadn't cared enough to figure out. I laughed in his face.

"Nudge! After you jump, promise I get to go next!" I was really enjoying this. Hey, they had to find out our little secret sooner or later. Better if it was before gym class. I saw adults starting to pour out of the building. I hoped Nudge was waiting for a worthy audience for this.

"What is going on?" Mr. Kaden asked me, with a boatload of teachers and assistants behind him.

"Oh, my sister's going to jump off the top of the school," I said, all too casually. "Then I'm going next!" His face was turning red, then an odd color of purple. He started to give instructions to some aids as other teachers ran back into the school.

"Nudge! JUMP ALREADY!" My grin widened as she backed up then threw herself off the edge. Everyone but us six backed up, hoping to get out of the way.

Nudge freefell for a bit, then unfurled her long, gorgeous wings, and she swooped up right over the screaming crowd. I cheered and clapped, and the rest of the flock joined in.

"What the hell was that?" Someone from the crowd yelled, coming forward towards us.

"Nudge jumped off the building, then started flying," Gasman said casually, as if it should be obvious. "I was scared she was going to land right there, but then she pulled that swoop! That was awesome!"

The kid was taken back. He looked as if everything Gazzy said was in gibberish.

"So, she has wings?" The kid said hesitantly.

"Noooooooo. She used her arms to flap and magically hovered in the air." I said over sarcastically. "Of coarse she has wings!"

Without another word, I spread my thirteen foot long wings, and flew up to the roof. It didn't take me long to realize that Angel, Gasman, and Iggy were behind me. I spotted Nudge on the ground, being surrounded by her worried friends and classmates.

"Nudge!" Angel screamed, "Check this out!"

We fell off the roof one by one, then flew up into the air in a diamond formation. Then I did something really crazy. I folded in my wings and freefell for about twenty feet, right above a large pool of students.

NI spread my wings just as I gracefully landed in front of Nudge. It felt really good to spread my wings out like that. Nudge came up right to me.

"Max! That was awesome! So much fun! Did you see the look on everyone's face when you dive bombed? That was so funny!" I realized Nudge still had her wings out too. I brushed some sand off her wing, then I motioned for us to go restart the teachers' hearts.

"Ms. Ride. I demand an explanation! Just because you have an advantage over the other students does not mean you can go and out them all in danger like that--" I stopped Ms. Hamilton before she really started to aggravate me.

"Please. We did not put anyone in danger! We were told we are allowed to fly during recess, and we did. Nobody got hurt, so why are we in trouble?"

Her jaw set. I'd never seen Ms. Hamilton so angry. "Don't start flying unless you give everyone else some sort of warning. Not everyone hear can handle such a surprise like that."

I said okay, then the bell rang. Time for our next class. Yippee.

On the way back inside, I asked Nudge why she waited so long to jump off the school.

"I was waiting for the teachers to come out. I mean, why not let the entire school know at once? It seemed like a good plan, but it turned out so much better! That was almost better than the time we were in New York and we went to that ultra fancy restaurant for Gazzy, and they wouldn't give us our orders so we flew out of there. Man that was so good! I love surprising people."

"Well, I don't think anyone will be sleeping through the next class." I said with a small laugh.

That afternoon, we were brought to our dorm rooms for the first time.

"No, I won't have it!" I was practically shouting at the woman at the front desk. Apparently you had to go to the main office to get your room numbers. "We have to have two rooms. One for the girls, one for the boys. That's how it's always been with us."

"I- I'm sorry. I have it set into my computer that you each share a different room with one or two roommates."

"Well, change it. We will not be separated." I said, slamming my fist on the table. Even though I seemed pretty mad and scary, neither Nudge nor Gazzy flinched next to me. They knew that I was only doing that to put the poor old woman on the spot, and they've seen me do this a million times. The rest of the flock were gathering all our stuff that was put into the rooms they wanted us in because they all knew I wasn't coming out of there without the answer I wanted. I was never one to lose an argument.

The woman typed something into her computer, then looked back at us.

"All right. I have two vacant rooms for you six-"

"Seven." Gazzy said, interrupting her.

"Excuse me? I thought there were only six of you."

"No, there's seven, including Total."

"Total?"

"Total's our dog," I assured her, "but please don't give him a doggy bed or anything like that. He likes to sleep on beds."

The woman raised her eyebrows and let out a long, irritated breath as she typed more information into her computer.

"You are in building four. Girls in room number eleven, boys in room number two." She said in a tight, all-business way.

I smiled sweetly, "Thank you."

"So, what did you think of your new teachers?" I asked Nudge and Gazzy on our way back to our dorm building.

"They were great! They all were really nice, especially Ms. Hamilton and Ms. Everheart." Nudge said excitedly.

"I had Ms. Hamilton for math. She's clever. This one kid was really late and gave this bogus cover story, and Ms. Hamilton found every lie in his story. It was so cool! But never be late for her class, let me warn you." Gazzy said.

I was really glad that they had a good first day. But inside, I was slowly shutting down again because I still missed Fang. I missed him so much. If he only were there with me.

"Max!" I realized that Nudge had been saying my name repeatedly now. "Max!"

"Oh, sorry, what?"

"How did your first day go?"

"Um… I don't really like Mr. Kaden. Every one else is alright."

"I didn't really like Mr. Kaden either. He was too uptight. I see why you must not like him."

"Maybe he'll grow on me."

We broke out into laughter.

As we walked into the building, I took careful notice of the place. I looked for all the exits and places to run. It was pretty big on the inside, I had to admit. There was a dining hall, a living room with chairs and couches, and two staircases each going up from either the left or the right side of the living room. I realized that there were a bunch of other kids in the building, most of them were watching large flat screen TVs in the living room. The news was on.

And coming up, a fifteen year old boy was charged with theft, harassment, and grand theft auto. This boy, who goes by the name Nick Ride, had broke a man's nose and arm then drove away in his car, along with all the stolen food he could stuff in his pockets. We will have more on the story when we return.

I froze in shock.

"Max, are you okay?" Gazzy asked me. But he sounded like he was much farther away than he really was. The name from the news report kept crawling back into my mind.

Nick Ride…

Fang.

Please review and tell me what you think!

I'm sorry to all you Dylan lovers, but I just had to put Fang in there!