WOAH! This is, like, the longest chapter I've posted yet! I hope you like it, all you readers who are like "Gah! You're chapters are WAAAY too short!" I love you all so much! And I hope you really really like this chapter since it's, like 1,400 words long! Please review. But only if you want to ;)

Chapter Nine

Fang

I still could hardly believe that Allison and her mom had let me live with them for two and a half years already. Although, I only spend about half my time there. I ate dinner and slept there, but during the day, when Allison was at school, which she returned to after a few nights of my prompting, I went out and worked on my little side job of preventing scientists from doing evil things, saving the world from global warming, and other assorted odd jobs. The kids around the world were doing a really good job of protesting pollution and things like that.

Both years I'd spend here, Allison and her mother had insisted on celebrating my non-existent birthday. It helped that Allison and I shared a birthday, even though hers was her actual date of birth and mine was just the day after Max decided she wanted to be fifteen.

I still regularly posted on my blog. I wanted so bad to send an email or something to Max, but I was afraid that that would make everything so much more complicated. She needed a clean cut from me. If I reminded her that I was gone, especially after this long, it would probably only make things harder.

So that's what I was currently doing: sitting on my bed in my tiny room, typing away on my laptop. The bed was directly across from the door, and beside it was an old-fashioned desk with an old-fashioned lamp, which I sometimes used to work on my laptop. Other than that, it didn't had much use to me.

There were no windows in my room, which I hated because it meant that I had no quick option of escape. But beggars can't be choosers, so I just took what I could get. The walls were painted gray, and the floor was covered in a light wood. Pretty plain, but I'm not exactly all for neon colours, so it worked just fine for me.

There was a light knock on my door. I recognized Allison's special knock of three fast knocks, and two slow. I looked up from my laptop to the door.

"Come in," I said. The door cracked open, and Allison's heart-shaped face peered inside.

"Oh, sorry. Are you busy?" she asked. I shook my head no, looking back at my laptop. She opened the door more, stepped inside, and closed it behind her.

"Good," she said, sitting down across from me on my bed and beaming. She held up one of the mugs in her hands. "I brought some hot chocolate."

I half-smiled and took the mug from her hand. "Thanks," I said, glancing at her for only a second before looking back at my work. I was answering some of the comments on my blog. The kids were working so hard at improving the planet. No one would ever underestimate a child again. They were the ones who had the power to save the world from its impending doom. They were the ones who would—

"Nick?" Allison's mother hollered up the stairs. I set the laptop beside me and went to the door, popping my head into the hallway so I could see her at the bottom of the stairs. Just like she always did, she smiled when she saw me. "Pizza or pasta?"

"Pizza," I responded almost automatically. Ever Friday she asked me that question and every Friday I give her the same answer.

"Okay," she said. I was starting to wonder if that woman was slow or something, then revised that thought to maybe she was just being hospitable. She walked back toward the kitchen, and I stepped back in my room, sat on my bed, and put my laptop back on my lap. Across from me, Allison was still sipping her drink.

"Um…Fang?" she asked nervously. I peered up at her over my laptop.

"Yeah?" I said after a pause. It was obvious she needed prompting to finish her thought. She still didn't say anything, so I closed the top on my laptop and looked directly at her. "What's up?"

"I was…wondering if you…had any…plans for…tomorrow night?" Allison stumbled over each word, ending in a question, like she was unsure she whether she should have asked. I tried not to look as suspicious as I feel.

"Probably not," I said finally. "Why?"

"Well, it's the second week of April, and my school does this…dance ever second Saturday of April…"

"And?" I prompted. Allison's cheeks flushed bright red and she looked down into her mug.

"I was wondering if you wanted to…go to the…dance with me?" she finally said. I had to bite my tongue so I wouldn't laugh out loud.

"You and me? Go to a dance?" I managed to say. The entire idea just seemed so crazy, I couldn't think of a logical way to understand it. I hated public things. But being elbow-to-elbow with hundreds of teenagers in a dark, loud room?

"Yeah, that's what…I thought. I figured it might be nice for you to…get out and do something fun," Allison said, her voice barely more than a whisper. She was always so shy when she asked people to do things for her, especially after her parents split up. I could only imagine how hard it must had been for her to work up the courage to ask me to a dance.

And it was just one little outing…

"Alright," I said. Her head shot up so she could look me in the eyes, probably to see if I was lying. One side of my lip quirked up into my signature, bad-ass half-smile. "How bad could one dance be?" I added to enforce that I was serious. Allison's eyes lit up.

"Really? Then you'll go?" she gushed. I shrugged. How bad could it be?

The dance in itself wouldn't have been so bad, if it hadn't been for the fact that I was totally stressed out the entire time. Always checking over my shoulder for white-coats, always watching for suspicious-looking freak people.

The gym where the dance was was really big; high ceilings, huge floor space. The room was completely dark other than a few lights that spun around the room. There also weren't that many people. There were still way to many for comfort, but it wasn't half as bad as I thought it would be. I let Allison mingle most of the time and just stood by one of the walls. Eventually, Allison finally returned with a glass of punch in both hands. She stood a few feet away from me, looking around confused.

"Fang?" she said.

"I'm over here," I called. She turned, faced where I was standing, but still looked confused.

"Over where?" she asked. I stepped forward and relief washed over her face.

"How did you do that?" she asked. I was about to ask what I did, but then remembered my nasty habit of occasionally turning invisible. So I just smiled at her instead.

"I'm so glad you agreed to come," she said. I shrugged.

"It's not too bad," I said.

"Oh, that's good! I'm glad you like it!" Allison said, beaming. "So I was talking to Brad just a minute ago, and you'll never believe what he told me! He was talking to Jamie, and she tells him that Terry heard Megan say…"

And there she went, into a full-out spiel of everything that she'd found out from other people in the forty-five minutes we'd been here. I tried to sort of tune her out, like I did every time she bombarded me with gossip.

She was just about to move on to a new topic when a familiar voice sounded from behind me.

"Oh. My. God. Nick?" it said, making each word its own sentence. My body stiffened and my blood ran cold.

Lissa.