Chapter 2
Too late. We all scrambled quickly away from our table by the edge of the pool, to no avail. Gazzy dove into the water at over one-hundred fifty miles per hour, creating a splash that sent water fifteen feet into the air. The water then rained down all over us, Iggy, and the blond beauty who had been interviewing Gazzy for the past thirty minutes. Her gorgeous never out of place wavy blond mane now stuck to her head like a wet t-shirt on a size D supermodel. Good thing she had just put up her laptop while she went to get her third Evian in the past hour. Of course, her pure bottled water now had some deep chlorination to it.
Allow me to explain the tall blond banana. Her name really was Anna. I think at one point she told us her last name, but I'm not a huge stickler for details. Besides, Anna Banana just kind of stuck. Especially because her long, tall white body made her look like a long skinny banana. And her head was typically in a stretched out position giving her a little curvature to the top part of her frame. And… she always seemed to wear yellow. Like today. Today's outfit of choice was a canary sundress with brown polka dots making her look like an overly ripe stretched out banana. But enough on the banana thing. I was getting hungry and I had just eaten lunch an hour ago.
Anna Banana stifled an astonished scream while Nudge chastised our own fair-skinned blond eight soon to be nine year old.
"Gaaazzzy!" Nudge squeezed water out of her chocolate mane. She had recently had her long hair coifed in about fifty long braids that flew out of her head like twisted yarn waving in the wind. "I was just about to get married!"
"He didn't get the board, Nudge," Angel reassured her. "Just knocked a few pieces off and the cards are a little wet but that's okay. We can just start playing over here." She redirected Nudge to a series of tables on the outskirts of the pool.
"That was totally awesome!" Gazzy cried out as he surfaced. "I'm going to do that again!" He leapt out of the pool and smacked a high five with Iggy.
"How about we stick to the interview, Gaz," I reminded him. "Or are you done pretending your Superman?"
Gazzy smiled broadly. "But I am Superman." His face drew in momentarily and his eyes darted about. "No – wait. I'm Super Gasman." He took a heroic stance, pointed his finger in the air, and scrunched up his face.
"Ewww, Gazzy! That is just gross!" Nudge grabbed her purse – yes, Nudge now carried a purse – and almost flew to the other side of the pool.
Gazzy had just demonstrated his skill – for the sixth time since lunch. He couldn't really freeze the world, but his ability to stink up the planet could be loosely interpreted as some sort of force field, I guess. No one would want to be anywhere near him when he lived up to his chosen name. Gazzy could do a few other things though. Had a talent for mimicking anyone or anything. In fact, he had the lanky banana chick thinking Jack Nicholson was in the house when she first arrived.
Oh – and Gazzy could fly. We all could. Some genius super-scientists decided to try a little science experiment with our embryos before we were born – graft avian DNA into them. And hey – it worked – how about that? The six of us had wings, could actually fly, possessed raptor vision, la, la, la… You get it – we were part bird. Guess that's why Hollywood was mucho excited about making a movie about us. Hence the interview. Yeah – the never-ending interview.
For the past two weeks, the flock and I had been coming to some fancy schmancy hotel in Los Angeles, telling our life story to Hollywood's finest screen play writers. Okay – the playwrights came on occasion. Mostly, the big wigs sent their secretaries or interns or gofers or whatever to talk to us. I think Anna Banana was an aspiring playwright. And I say was because the gleam in her eye that she entered the hotel with was immediately doused with Iggy's and Gazzy's immaturity and my exceptionally polite behavior.
"Well, there goes another one," I huffed, glaring at Gazzy. Anna Banana was gone along with her laptop and her bottle of Evian. Any hopes of not getting a Jeb lecture about our cooperative natures walked out the pool gate with her too. I think this was the seventh person that StarLight Productions had sent to talk to us. And now tomorrow we would meet number eight. Lucky us.
"Yeah, too bad," Iggy loosely replied. "She was pretty hot."
"Oink," I retorted to our lanky red-headed pig. My face flushed a new shade of red. "And just how would you know?" Never mind. I didn't want to know how he knew. I knew how the blind kid knew.
Uh-huh. Iggy was blind. Wasn't always this way. Actually had his sight for a good first half of his life, then the same evil genius scientists decided to try to enhance his night vision. Whoops.
My mom, the super wonderful Dr. Valencia Martinez, had been scoping out places that might actually try vision restoration surgery. So far it had only been performed on animals – with moderate success. Considering Iggy was roughly part animal, he was willing to give it a shot. Guess he figured his eyesight couldn't get much worse.
"Come on, Max," I heard Nudge whine. "It's your turn." Nudge and Angel had reset the board at the far corner of this spacious patio. They were sprawled out over a wrought iron table, the game of Life and its fifty trazillion pieces dotting every inch of the glass covering.
I turned to face them and found myself staring at Fang. I hated when he snuck up on me like that. How long had he been standing behind me?
He smirked, my face softening with his smile. He grabbed my hand, squeezed it once, then walked us toward the rear of the pool yard. He pulled out my chair and I blushed at his gallantry.
Did first love get any better than this?
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