Hello!

How are you all doing today? I missed you all. :3

You will probably get tired of hearing this, but how about that last chapter, huh? Barney is vicious.

Well here is some more horror for Maya. Can you guess what day it is at Roosevelt High School? That's right. I'm not telling you. :)

So read and review, you delightful people that I adore!

Chapter four: Pink, and pink, and pink, and…pink.

Ever since I could remember, I'd always judged the time in the morning based on whether Max was still sleeping or not. If she was up, I was either in good shape or late. If she was still sleeping, I had a good three hours left. Max had always been the early bird—the only time I ever heard her snoring was when I got up in the middle of the night to pee. I was more of a sleep-till-twelve girl myself—Max thought I was mental. Doesn't it bother you to sleep that late? she'd always ask, giving me a strange sideways glance. Are you crazy? I'd always respond. Sleeping is one of the best things in the world! She would always eye me like I was slightly off my rocker, and then go back to whatever she was doing. That was about as far as our interactions went. Such was the nature of our relationship—awkward and unsisterly. If we didn't have exactly the same amount of gold freckles dusting our identical noses, no one would ever suspect we were related, let alone twins.

I'd always been jealous of Max—partly because she was more sociable, partly because she'd always had better reign over our identical mass of frizzy blond hair than I did, partly because she was friends with the people I'd admired forever, because she got to kiss Fang on a regular basis and all I got to do was imagine whether his lips were as soft as they looked. I was jealous of her because she got all the things she wanted without trying. Everyone wanted to drop everything and help her. It was so not fair.

I remember that once I'd tried to fool everyone into thinking I was Max when I was in the seventh grade—and for a few glorious days, I had succeeded. Max had been in Hawaii visiting Dad, and I was leading her beautiful life. Fang sent me notes in Study Hall and gave me piggy-back rides (this was back when I was already distinctly aware of my painful crush on him, and he and Max were still just besties), and I got to hang out with the popular and gorgeous Nudge. I got to tease cool Iggy and not get yelled at. I got to watch "The Notebook" with Nudge and Angel at a sleepover and offer Angel my Ben and Jerry's Cherry Garcia ice cream when she cried. I got to have a water fight with the legendary Gasman. And everyone said hi to me in the hall. It was like heaven. To make things even better, Sam, the only person who would have ever been able to tell that I was Maya and not Max, was home sick with the flu, knocking him out for an entire week. Not one person suspected that I wasn't who I said I was. In fact, I think I was better at being Max than Max was.

And then Max came home from Hawaii, and in typical Max fashion, she blew my whole lie with the words, "Hey, Maya. That shirt looks cute on you."

The worst part was that I don't think she did it on purpose. Max was a genuinely nice person, as far as I could tell. But of course, that meant that Fang drew his arms from around me mid-hug, just as we were celebrating our victory over Nudge, Angel and Iggy's team in a pillow fight. It meant that Iggy gaped at me as if he'd gone blind (hehe) and Gazzy and Angel stared at me in confusion. Nudge asked me if she could have the bottle of nail polish she'd lent me back.

And even two years later, I still wanted to be Maximum Ride as much as Courtney DiLaurentis wanted to be Alison!

Talk about an obsession.

I couldn't figure out what the big deal about Max was anyways. I pondered it during my shower as I savored the feel of warm water running down my back, accumulating in my hair and making it curlier than usual. It flowed past my backside and pooled at my ankles. I looked down at my legs, the tools that had gotten me on the track team last week, when I saw a flash of purple in the water.

Barney, I thought, suddenly going cold. He's out to get me. He's back!

I quickly rinsed my hair and body and wrapped myself in a towel, grabbed a bottle of moisturizer and barreled out of the bathroom.

That was when I realized how stupid I was being.

Stupid, I reprimanded myself.

But the terrible memory of my creepy dream floated through my brain as I dressed in another nondescript top and jeans. One thought nagged in the back of my head—I felt as if I knew that angel of death from somewhere.

Stupid, I repeated. Where on earth would you have met an angel of death? Stupid.

I reluctantly faced the mirror to untangle my now-dry mass of white-blond curls, ready for the worst. They did not disappoint—my hair looked like a hamster had nested in it. I brushed it the best I could and stuck a red bow in it for good measure. I looked like a color-blind freak.

It suddenly hit me why Fang liked Max and not me. If I continued to dress, as Sam so fondly put it, "like a hobo," why should he pay any attention to me at all? It wasn't as if Max dressed any better than I did, but she managed to pull off cute Elmo shirts and skinny jeans a heck of a lot better than me.

So I unearthed what I called the "Unforgivable Box"—a box full of girly, tight clothes that I had vowed never to wear—and pulled out a pair of skinny red jeans, so tight that I had dubbed them Edward Cullen Jr. They clung to me like a creepy stalker, inhibiting my ability to move. The bloodsucker part came from my suspicion that the color of these jeans might have been chosen to hide the terrible consequences that befell whoever chose to wear them. I grabbed a tight black Hello Kitty shirt I was had gotten for my birthday. Suddenly, the bow in my hair looked kind of cute, now that it was paired with matching clothes instead of baggy blue jeans and a wrinkled green top. In fact, I looked as pretty as Max did.

Prettier, I told myself smugly.

She was sitting on a stool as I got downstairs, eating cereal—the only food she knew how to make—and riffling through a bunch of mail.

"Hey," she said as I came in. A red bow was also placed jauntily amidst her shining curls, which obviously looked better than mine. I felt my ego deflate. Hers hung sleekly down her back, and mine frizzled around my shoulders, even though our hair was the same length.

"Hi," I replied grumpily. I shoved a cinnamon bun, a treat Mom had left us yesterday before heading to her vet's office, in my mouth and chewed grouchily.

And that's when I noticed that Max was wearing a supercute sequined top. And it was pink.

Max never wore supercute pink sequined tops!

I eyed her suspiciously. Had someone replaced her in the dead of the night? And did this have anything to do with The Dream?

Then I realized that this was the stupidest question I had ever asked myself in my whole entire life.

I shook my head and continued to scrutinize Max like she was a ticking time bomb. Oblivious to my stare, she continued to munch on her cereal, flicking a pesky curl out of her eyes. She didn't emit a high-pitched giggle, bat her lashes, or flip her hair, so I decided the coast was clear.

But I still didn't like this at all.

What were the odds of Max and I dressing nicely?

On the same day?

Next to none, I knew.

It was when I arrived at school that I realized what the whole thing was about. Pink flyers were tacked up everywhere. Pink and red streamers hung from the ceiling and sparkles were littered across the floor and the walls. The funniest part was that I hadn't even noticed it until Sam sidled up to me, grinning.

"So, you caught the memo, huh?" He gestured to the hallway.

"What memo?" I stared at him.

"Are you blind?" He asked doubtfully. "And when was the last time you wore a bow in your hair?"

I glanced around the hall. All around us, people were pairing up, squealing to each other or exchanging long, passionate kisses.

Actually, it looked like every day, except that everything was decked in unnatural shades of pink and red. One girl had even died her hair the-Little-Mermaid red, and her best friend was sporting a hot-pink hairdo.

"What's with all the pink?" I muttered, rubbing my eyes. Maybe if I looked for too long, the color would become imprinted behind my eyelids.

Sam ogled at me. "Are you trying to be stupid?" He threw his arms in the air. "Wake up, Maya! Look around!"

I ignored his meanieness and took a second look. A huge banner had been hung across the hallway. It read, "Happy Valentine's Day!"

I blinked. It was only when Max walked into my view, Fang twirled her around, and they kissed (too long for my liking) that I registered what was happening.

"It's Singles Awareness Day," I breathed in horror. Sam looked to the sky.

"Now she gets it!" He patted my arm. "Come on. Let's get out before Lissa and her crew get here."

"Yes, let's," I agreed. We dodged couples and friends saying cutesy things to each other and made our way to our lockers. I'd always been happy that our lockers were next to each other.

"Oh, by the way, Maya," Sam added. "I got you something."

My head shot up so fast I almost banged into his locker door. "You did?"

"Here," he said, awkwardly shoving a white teddy bear at me. "Happy Valentine's Day." He looked almost shy, pacing from foot to foot.

"For me?" I stared at him incredulously.

I observed him. He was looking at the floor, a lock of his sandy hair falling into his hazel eyes. He looked…cute. For the first time in my existence, I realized that Sam was a boy.

"Sam!" I threw my arms around him. "Thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou!" I laughed, and on a moment of pure whim, I kissed him on the cheek. He smiled and his arms went around me.

"By the way, cute bow."

I could almost see my blush pop up on my cheeks. When Max blushed, her cheeks painted themselves with a lovely rose color, and she ended up looking like a painting of some beautiful girl three hundred years ago. When I blushed, two huge splotches of red splattered across my cheeks and I looked like I had ran into a wall. Now I could feel myself reddening, and I buried my head into Sam's neck to keep him from teasing me again.

I drew away from him once my blush had subsided. "Wait, let me get you something." I rummaged around in my locker. My hand brushed something. Nope, gym socks. No, extra pads. Aha! I withdrew five dollars.

"Here," I said triumphantly. "Now you can buy those delish cupcakes at lunch that they sell on Singles—Valentine's Day. What do they call those, again?"

"Love muffins," he snorted. "Most ridiculous name ever."

"You're telling me," I confirmed. "Come on, young one, let's head to class."

We started off to English, our arms around each other like we always did. Somehow, today things felt a little different.

No, they didn't. On the way to class, I spotted Fang, looking especially cute in a black button down shirt whose top button was carelessly undone, a rose in chest pocket and his black hair looking soft. He was hugging Max from behind, a long, white-blond curl tickling his nose where he had his face buried into her neck. Max was smiling, her eyes loving.

Ew.

I felt a stab of jealousy. Fine. I bet Fang didn't give Max a cute teddy bear.

I saw a glimpse of white fur peeking out of her back.

Oh, great.

I also saw a glimpse of something else before we rounded the corner. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the barest bit of pink hair, of cold blue eyes, of rosy lips twisted up into a menacing smile.

It's that girt from the mob! I realized, my heart pounding. And then, just as quickly as I had seen her, she vanished.

Am I going crazy?

I shivered as Sam and I crossed the threshold of Mrs. Segherdal's English class.

So? How about that, huh? Especially since that Valentine's Day dance is coming up, and we have all sorts of torture planned for our favorite little clone.

*evil laugh*

ALSO, pleeeeease review my story "A Maxerella Story" because I updated a chapter that has 15000 words (twenty-six pages on Word) and I've only gotten eight reviews.

Poopy, right?

Anyways, expect great things from our friend Renee next time. Tune in for the next chapter.

P.S. Tallulah Grace, if you didn't catch the reference, that pink-haired girl was you. :) You can be one of the ringleaders of the mob.

And anyone who reviews can stick in a little description of themselves so that they can be featured in the mob!

Luffles (that means love in gibberish),

~AmiRide and Renee135