Max
Fang and I part ways and I try to find the office. After searching for a few minutes a tall boy with strawberry blonde hair, fair skin, blue eyes and glasses walks over to me and asks, "Are you new here?"
I nod.
"Are you looking for the office?" He asks.
I nod again.
"It's this way." He leads me to the office. When we get to the office he says, "Good luck." He winks at me and walks away.
I walk into the office and a lady at a desk beckons me over to her.
"Hi, how can I help you?" She asks.
"Hi, my name is Maximum Ride and I'm here to get my schedule." I say.
She looks at her computer screen and starts typing away. I have enough time to wonder where Ella went before a group of laughing teens enter the office. My sister is among them, smiling and laughing away with the rest of them. I'm happy to notice that Fang is also with them although I must admit he kind of sticks out. He's the only one wearing all black and he's then only one of them not laughing; he just looks completely neutral.
"Here you go." The lady smiles and hands me my schedule.
I start for the door but Ella says, "Ooh Max, can you wait for me?"
I wait by the door and check out my schedule to see what Mom signed me up for. First block is Spanish 3 (this will be an easy class, my mom is fluent so she can help if I need it, and I love Spanish), second block is AP English (I'm a little bit of a lit-nerd,) third block is a culinary class that despite my mother's good intentions I will probably fail (I suck at cooking), fourth block is Algebra 2, (I'm worried about this one too simply because math and I have a complicated relationship: sometimes I understand it and everything's okay, sometimes I don't understand any of it and it's like the teacher's speaking another language), fifth block is chemistry, sixth block is VA History (this is a required class in Virginia), seventh block is Creative Writing, and eighth block is a drama class. I let out a sigh of relief, I can handle these classes; especially AP English, Creative Writing and Drama. (I want to be a movie-script writer when I grow up, so these are the only classes that I consider relavent to my life.)
"Hey Max, which classes did you get?" Ella asks.
We trade schedules and Ella grins, "We have Algebra 2, and Culinary class together! Those are gonna be fun!"
I smile, "Yeah."
"Ooh Max, these are my new friends. This is Nudge, she's fifteen," she points to a girl with curly brown hair, coffee-colored skin and brown eyes who smiles and waves when Ella says her name. "This is Zephyr, but everyone calls him the Gasman or Gazzy. He's my age too." She points to a boy with light blonde hair that's spiked up with black and blue tips, fair skin and big blue eyes that seem to be full of mischief and feigned innocence. (I like to try to read people). "This is Igward, he's Gazzy's older brother. He's your age." She points at the guy who showed me where the office was.
"So, Igward huh?" I ask.
"My mother secretly hates me. I actually go by Iggy." He tells me.
"Oh and this is Fang." Ella says, pointing at Fang. "You were talking to him earlier, but I wasn't sure if you got his name." She tells me.
"Thanks Ella." I smile. She's weird but she's just trying to help in her own way.
A bell rings and the lady passing out schedules says, "That's the warning bell, does anyone want a map before you get to class?"
Ella and Nudge get maps. I don't get one because I don't want to target myself, but Ella hands me a map so I take it to be nice. We all leave in different directions, but then Iggy calls me over, asking what class I have first. I show him my schedule and he says, "Sweet! I know where this class is."
We start walking together and I notice Fang by himself so I ask him what class he has. He shows me his schedule.
"We're going that way. Do you want to join us?" I ask.
He nods.
"Oh yeah by the way, what's your name anyway?" Iggy asks, "Ella kept calling you Max right?"
"My name's Maximum, but I go by Max." I answer.
"Maximum? And you still made fun of Igward?" Iggy asks.
I shrug, grinning.
Fang looks amused.
Iggy turns to Fang, "What about you? Is your real name Fang?" Iggy asks.
"No." Fang says.
"What is it then?" I ask.
"Nicolas." Fang answers.
"Why do you go by Fang?" I ask.
"My twin sister used to say my teeth looked like fangs, so she called me Fang. I still like the nickname, so that's what I go by it." He shrugs.
"Is she here too?" I ask.
Fang looks straight ahead, face expressionless, but judging by the pain that seems to be in his eyes, I know I just asked a really stupid question.
"Okay, here we are." Iggy says, and then he stops abruptly. "Oh yeah, the schedules here are really weird: we go to the first four classes on Day 1's and last four classes on Day 2's. Today's a Day 1-obviously. It's sort of weird but there you go. Good luck." he adds, walking into a classroom.
It's loud and already full of students. I sit in the very back, not wanting to be around a lot of people at once. Feeling completely antisocial, I break out my favorite black writing notebook and midnight blue pen. Fang sits beside me, seeming to have the same idea, getting out a similar notebook. He brings out a pencil and starts drawing, eyes focused intently on the paper. I look at where I left off in my story and start writing until the bell rings. It breaks my concentration and startles me. I drop my notebook and Fang drops his too. We quickly grab at our notebooks and shove them into our bags.
Iggy looks at us and laughs, sitting beside me.
I start to ask what's so funny when the teacher says, "Buenos Dias mi clase. Me llamo Señor Rodriguez." (For those of you who don't speak Spanish, he said, "Good morning my class. My name is Mr. Rodriguez.")
"Hola." Everyone responds. ("Hello". Everyone responds.)
He starts speaking in Spanish again and says he's going to take attendance. He calls out a few names and then calls, "Igward Fredrickson."
"Señor dude, don't you remember me? It's Iggy." Iggy calls back.
"Si, the one who didn't pay attention or speak fluently after two years, but still managed to pass the class." Señor Rodriguez says.
There are snickers and Iggy grins. "See, you do remember me."
More snickers and the teacher continues calling names.
"Nicolas Johnson." Mr. Rodriguez says.
Beside me, Fang stiffens. "It's Fang." Fang tells him.
"Fang?" he looks at the roster, "Oh, yes, okay."
More names are called.
"Maximum Ride." The teacher calls.
I raise my hand, "It's jut Max señor."
He nods, continuing the name list.
Class is normal first day of Spanish review type stuff: seeing what we remember from previous years, what we never learned, what we forgot, etc..) My mom is Mexican and lived in Texas near the boarder nearly all her life, so I've grown up hearing a lot of Spanish, and sometimes when she gets mad she says phrases in Spanish, so I know a lot of Spanish if you know what I mean. Anyway, the first day of Spanish is super easy, and I feel disappointed when the bell rings.
Iggy asks, "What class do you have next?"
"AP English." I answer.
"Nice. That's a legit class-or at least that's what I've heard. I'm lucky to make it into an honors class-not that I did this year. Good luck." he says.
Fang walks over as Iggy walks away. "What class do you have?" he asks.
"AP English. You?" I reply.
"Same." He answers.
I pull out the map and we barely make it to class on time. AP English has the same beginning as Spanish, only this time I'm excited to start the class. We start with a writing prompt. We have to create a hero character for a project we're going to start this week. My character is a seventeen year old girl with jet black hair and dark, emerald green eyes. She has a fiery spirit and is everything I want to be: nice, calm, interesting, loveable, and fun, but also, completely hard-core, tough, doesn't back down from anyone and doesn't give a crap about the negative things that other people say about her.
When the bell rings, Fang and I compare schedules again. I'm not sure why we keep pairing up like this, there's just something about him that makes me drawn to him, like some sort of unknown magnitude about him.
Fang
It turns out Max and I have almost every class together today with the exception of third block. She has culinary class then and I have AP Art. Yup, I like art. There's something therapeutic and calming about art that helps me to feel at ease instead of so messed up all the time. Anyway, I notice there's something different about Max. For one, she's one of the few people that I want to be around, for another thing, I feel drawn to her. I've never felt that way before. It freaks me out a bit because I hardly know her and I already want to be around her a lot. What if I get to know her more and she gets to know me more? Will she want to still hang around me if she finds out?
Anyway, there's this freaky red-headed girl wearing hardly any clothes trying to ask me out at lunch. I don't say anything, nothing to say. I'm hoping she'll just leave because she's squished herself tightly between Max and me and I hate people touching me at all. It's never a good thing when people put their hands on me at all. I look away, hoping she'll go away if I ignore her. Then I hear this squeal and I notice the red-head went from the bench to the floor. I look at Max and raise an eyebrow.
"What?" she asks.
I jerk my head to the red-head and look back at Max.
"Oh, that, that's no big deal. She tried to push me off the bench, but it didn't work out too well for her." Max shrugs.
The red-head mutters some rude names under her breath
"What did you call me?" Max questions.
The red-head starts speaking Spanish. Max starts doing the same thing. I speak Spanish relatively well, but I don't know what they're saying and I never exactly learned the extra-curricular words, so I can only imagine the English translation of their words.
Max laughs at something the red-head says. "Dude, that's not even how you say it." Max laughs.
The red-head huffs and stalks away.
"Nobody messes with Max." Max's sister Ella, informs us.
I smile inwardly, Max can definitely hold her own. Judging by the huge group surrounding by the red-head, most girls would have shied away from the red-head, but Max didn't. That's awesome.
The bell rings and we have to part ways for third bell. I love art and I can already tell this is going to be one of my favorite classes. Of course, there's this tugging sensation in the back of my mind telling me that I want to get out of here and find Max. Part of me actually wants to listen to it. I don't know what's wrong with me.
Algebra 2 is my fourth block class. I'm happy to see Max again, of course I don't act like it. I act neutral like I always do. Math isn't my favorite subject at all, but it isn't so bad. It's actually quite amusing, especially when those brothers, Iggy and Gazzy sneak actual stink bombs into the classroom and they let them go off right in the middle of class. This causes the entire class to have to grab all our stuff and evacuate the classroom. Everyone already knew who did it, apparently the two brothers have a reputation for this sort of thing.
When the final bell rings for the day and everyone gets out of the school way faster than they came in. I make my way to the bus and see that Max beat me there. There are almost as many people as there were this morning, so I ask Max if I can sit next to her again. She says it's fine so we talk just like we did on the way to school. It's weird how quickly I've become accustomed to talking to Max when I hardly know her. I mean, I've only recently started to talk to my foster mom and I don't say much. I don't want to get off the bus again, but I have to when we get to the bus stop. We part ways and I'm surprised that I'm anticipating the next time we'll get to talk.
What is wrong with me? I wonder as I walk home.
Max
As soon as we're out of earshot Ella asks, "Do you like Fang?"
"What? Of course not! We just met! Besides, I just broke up with Sam. Remember?" I say.
Ella grins. "I definitely remember that. He was an idiot."
"There's more to life than being smart." I give her a look. Ella never knew what Sam did but she still never liked him much. She has good intuition about people, but he was still my boyfriend, so I feel like I must defend him.
"Yes, but Sam was a stupid jerk, therefore a worse breed of idiot." my sister laughs at her joke. I can't help but laugh at her joke. Sam was a stupid jerk and an idiot; Ella just doesn't know the half of it.
When we get to the house, Mom asks us a million and seven questions and Ella gives her a million and five answers. Mom makes me answer some questions too.
Then of course Ella goes, "Max met a guy. She has almost all her classes with him."
Mom smiles, "Oh really? Well, I'd really like to meet this boy. Okay honey?" Mom says. She knows what happened with Sam and she doesn't want it to happen again.
"Okay." I agree.
Then Angel comes in the house and I notice that we've been talking for around an hour or so. We all greet Angel with big hugs and lots of kisses on the head.
Fang
I get to the house feeling surprisingly good. It's an odd feeling that I decide to shake. It's pointless and probably won't last, so why bother allowing myself to feel good when I know it's just going to somehow be taken away? Anyway, I'm there by myself for a little while so I decide to draw a little before I do homework. I grab my notebook out of my bag and lie on the floor. I open the notebook and there's a bunch of writing. I frown, This is not my notebook. I think.
Then it hits me. This is Max's notebook. That's why Iggy snickered when we dropped our notebooks. He knew I took Max's; which means that Max has mine.
Oh. Crap. I think.
My gaze falls back onto the notebook. I wonder what she wrote. I'm not normally a snoop but, I start reading the notebook. It isn't a diary, if it were then I would have stopped reading it, but like I said it isn't, it's just a bunch of stories. They're really interesting, but a lot of them are very sad. They all have characters who have abusive fathers or some sort of other kind of horrible circumstance. A few of them are about happy things like romance, but the further I get into the notebook, the darker the stories are. Some towards the end are just depressing. She has this thing nearly entirely filled up, so after stopping for dinner and homework, its midnight by the time I'm finished with it. There's no denying Max is a great writer, but it seems like Max has a not so happy past too.
Max
After dinner I start doing the very miniscule amount of homework the teachers assigned us. It's easy stuff: a review worksheet for Spanish, a free-writing assignment for English that we only need to start tonight, look over the recipes for culinary class, and absolutely nothing for Algebra 2. I also need my mom to sign a bunch of stuff, but I already got her to do that. When I'm done with my homework, I decide to write for a little bit. I grab my notebook and lie on a clear spot on the floor. When I open the notebook, I know right away that it is not mine. There are drawings all through it. I'm wondering who could have possibly made such beautiful drawings and how I could have their notebook in my possession Then I remember Spanish class. Fang had a notebook just like mine. When we dropped our notebooks, we must have taken each others by mistake. That's why Iggy was snickering; he knew we took the wrong notebooks.
Curiosity causes me to look through the notebook. Fang's drawings are all impressive. Some are sad. There's one where he drew himself in the rain, tears brimming his eyes, and a mixture of rain and tears dripping down his face. At the bottom of the page it says, Forever alone. It looks really sad. There are skulls, people fighting, violence, collages made of words, and lots of other drawings. Very few of them are happy. There's a few at the beginning of a girl with dark brown hair and brown eyes who kind of looks like Fang, only a girl. She's in multiple drawings, always smiling or laughing, sometimes with Fang. I look for more drawings with the girl, but they just stop in the middle of the notebook. There are three drawings that really stick out to me: the Forever alone drawing, one where there's a house broken to pieces, and then there's one with a sword through a broken and bleeding heart with the words: Never love under it. His drawings are breath-taking and heart-breaking. It looks like Fang has a tormented soul too, but it seems like he's had to go on a rough journey all alone. It makes me wonder about his past.
Chapter 3 Preview:
Fang
I walk to the bus stop and when I get there I see a man harassing Max. He grabs her arm and attempts to drag her away but I scream, "Leave her alone!"
The guy stops for a second to look at me and Max yanks her arm away from the man's grasp. The man lunges for her but I jump on him, knocking him down. I've been fighting for years so even though the man is bigger than me, I have just as much chance at winning the fight as he does. The man pushes me off him and punches me in the stomach. My breath leaves and I think I make a sound like, "oof!".
"Fang!" Max screams.
So, how was this chapter? Did it completely suck? Was it okay? Please review! Reviews of all kinds are highly appreciated!
Thanks for reading.
~Kay~