A/N: There's been hardly any Max for a while… so if anyone needs a Max fix, he's in this chapter! Though he should be in every chapter – what is wrong with me? Max is a very integral character in this story! He needs to be in it more! He's the main character's boyfriend for Pete(Best)'s sake! Okay, enough complaining about the lack of Max Fix, for this chapter is going into depth about something Sadie and Max should've discussed/researched already. And if I was in keeping with my unintentional pattern of updating every three days (since 2nd Jan) this would've been up on Wednesday! But here it is, so stop complaining, Has A Rubber Soul!

Chapter 16 – And Your Bird Can Sing

I stared at my laptop in shock. I knew we weren't the only ones, I knew it! I had searched up moon attacks, something I should've already done. You'd think that'd be my first step, to Google it. But there were other things on my mind… namely, an asshole by the name of Tim. And then this whole Prudence thing. I had nearly forgotten about my powers.
The findings on my computer screen had stunned me, and I thought that Max should know… but what if he had already searched it? Had he not bothered to tell me? Come to think of it, we hadn't really talked about what had happened to us… I hadn't seen him since we discovered it. Speak of the devil, as if right on cue, my phone rang and it was him. My stomach did a little excited flutter thing.
"Hello?" I asked as I answered it.
"Sadie," he breathed a sigh of relief. I had no idea why.
"Uh, yeah… so what's going on?"
"You really want to know what's happening?"
"Uh yeah, isn't that why you called me?"
"Oh, right, yeah… uh…"
"Max, is there something you want to tell me?"
"No, not particularly… actually, yes, there is."
"What?" I feared the worst.
"My Mum wants you to come over for tea tonight!" he gushed as if it was a big secret he had to get off his chest and I laughed.
"Oh, is that all?"
"Yeah… I'm sorry."
"Sorry? Why are you sorry?"
"You probably don't want to come and have dinner with my parents, do you?"
"Why wouldn't I? And any chance to spend with you, my darling."
"You'll come then?"
"I'll ask Mum…"

I quickly rushed downstairs to the lounge room where Mum was reading.
"Mum, Joan and Bob want me over for tea. Is that okay?" I asked her.
"Yeah, sure," she approved, "How are you getting there?"
I was stumped on that one.
"Uh…" I said, looking away. I quickly put the phone up to my ear to ask my boyfriend.
"Dad will pick you up," he laughed, hearing Mum's question.
"Bob's picking me up," I told Mum.
"Okay then."
I rushed back upstairs and into my room, closing the door.
"Oh, you don't know how much I need to see you tonight! I need you!" I gushed into the phone sappily. I could practically feel his weirded-out look through the phone. I squeezed my eyes shut upon realising what I had just said.
"Uh, that came out wrong…"
"I gathered."
"What I meant was, I need – no, I don't need y – I – uh…" I kept choking on my words and cutting myself off.
"Yes?" he sounded concerned. Like his girlfriend was going crazy.
"I need to see you tonight," I finally managed to spit out, even though that sounded just as bad as the first attempt, "I need to show you something."
"Oh, okay," he sounded indifferent at first but then I heard the smile, "We haven't seen each other since the discovery, have we?"
"No, that's part of the reason I need to talk to you…"
"You're feeling that pain too?"
"What?" I really didn't have any idea what he was talking about.
"You know… a pain… a dull ache, a hurting… obviously you didn't feel it."
"Yeah, I know what a pain is, but what are you talking about?"

There was a hesitation of seriousness before he elucidated.
"It was a dulled version of… the pain," he said seriously.
"The pain? What the hell is that?" I did not register what he meant at first, "Oh! You mean the pain that I felt more than you?"
"Just shut up about that," he said through gritted teeth, obviously tired of me going on about it.
"So, you felt it? When?"
"Today. I walked past the park like usual and I felt it."
"That's strange. Was there a light or anything?"
"Nope, nothing but me and the pain."
This was getting confusing and more complicated as we went along. What did the pain mean?
"That's really unusual… I haven't been feeling anything."
"Sadie, this whole thing is unusual."
"Yeah, you're right. Anyway, I really need to show you something."
"So you said."
"Yeah, that's why I'm glad to come over."
"Oh…" he sounded dejected.
"No, I want to see you too! And I would love to have dinner with your parents. There's just some important things we need to discuss."
"What is it?"
Worried. He sounded worried.

"It's not anything, really. I just want to see you."
"Well, any time at all, all you've got to do is call and I'll be there."
I giggled. It was so cute when he lyricized his words to me! And with that being one of my favourite songs from A Hard Day's Night, it was even better!
"You're so adorable," I giggled giddily to him.
"I am?" his voice squeaked on the last word.
"Yes, and you know it Maxwell!"
"Well, I suppose…"
"Don't get conceited…"
"I'm not!"
"Okay! Just saying!"
"Okay, so Dad is leaving to pick you up now, get ready."
"Okay. See you soon snookums."
"Snookums?"
"Maxy?"
"Maxy's cute."
"Yes he is."
He laughed and said goodbye and then we hung up. I hurriedly got ready to go over to my boyfriend's house for dinner. This was a first.

"You wanted to surprise me!" I cried when I saw Max arrive to pick me up as well.
"Is it a crime to want to see my sexy Sadie?" he was leaning against the car with his ankles crossed over. He made my heart beat faster – sexy Sadie, he said. Apparently I'm sexy…? We're only fifteen! I can't possibly be sexy and Max can't possibly be thinking of me in that way. Well, I guess I was named after the song.
"No, of course not," Mum came up behind me, answering him. I had my back to her, watching Max not her.
"Hello Mrs Parkinson," Max courteously greeted her.
"Oh Max, I've told you to stop it with that nonsense! It's Martha! No Mrs Parkinson rubbish. Will you still be calling me Mrs Parkinson when I'm your mother-in-law?"
I stiffened. Max looked taken aback. Max and I locked eyes for a moment of panic, but he quickly recovered.
"Maybe."
Maybe? What was he talking about? He flashed Mum his signature dashing smile and glanced at me ever-so-slightly. I slowly turned my head to look at my mother behind me. She winked at Max and chuckled as she waved and turned around to go back inside.
"Bye kids," she farewelled, "Have fun!"
She went inside and I turned back to look at Max who had his head bowed down sheepishly. He looked up at me without tilting his head and did a small smile, as if he was hoping that I wouldn't kill him.
"What was that?" I asked him with my arms crossed.
"What was what?" he asked innocently, still hardly looking up.
"That!" I pointed to where my Mum had just been standing.
"What? Aren't I allowed to converse with my future mother... in... law...?" he said the last three words one at a time, flinching after each word but smirking at the end. He probably thought I was going to hit him… which was tempting.

I stormed past him to the other side of the car where I got in with a scowl on my face.
"Oh, come on!" he pleaded, getting in the other side.
"What where you talking about back there?" I practically screamed.
"Why? Don't you want to get married?"
"Married?" Bob piped up, alarmed, from the front seat before Max could even finish his sentence, "What's this marriage talk?"
"Hi Bob…" I greeted coyly, "Uh, nothing, Maxwell's just being stupid."
I glared at Max from the corner of my eye, and slightly emphasising on 'stupid'.
"Marriage is no stupid matter, Max," Bob continued on, "It's a very serious concept. When two people are very much in love, they can decide to legally bind themselves together in the form of marriage…"
"Dad, seriously," I could tell Max was very uncomfortable, "We're not stupid. We know what it is."
"… and after getting married, a lot of people go off and make babies…"
"DAD!"
"… but sometimes marriages don't work…"
Max was looking very uncomfortable at this point. His cheeks were a soft crimson colour – the first time I had seen him blush! Now I know what makes him feel awkward… and he looked oh-so-adorable in that shade.
"… and people get divorced…"
A giant, loud crack of thunder sounded then. There were no storm clouds. Oh, I wonder how that could've happened…

The thunder seemed to startle Bob a bit, for he stopped with his rant. It startled me a bit, too. I looked at Max, who was looking uncomfortable. He looked at me with an awkward look, confirming that he was the source of the sudden thunder.
"What the…?" Bob was confused, "There's not a cloud in the sky! It's sunny! Where did that thunder come from?"
"Dad," Max warned softly but firmly.
"I mean, you can never tell with the weather these days with global warming and such…"
"DAD!"
Bob actually stopped this time.
"Dad, can you please stop with your rant and rave about marriage? We know all this. You're making us kind of uncomfortable back here…"
"Oh? Good! I was trying to talk you out of marriage."
"What? Dad, we were never-."
"MARRIAGE is a very important commitment, and I was trying to tell you how much of a commitment it is and what it entails."
"Dad, we know everything. We are not, I repeat, not getting married. How could you think of such a thing? We're only fifteen!"
"Well that was the conversation as you got in the car, so…"
"We didn't bring it up Dad, Martha did."
"Martha?"
"Yes."
"So what, now she's trying to coax you into marriage?"
"No, she just made a passing comment about it and Sadie took it seriously."
"Like I said, marriage is a serious commitment."
More thunder. God, this was getting even more awkward. Luckily just then we pulled into the Edison's driveway, sparing us from any more discomfort.

We went inside without another word. Joan peeked around the corner, wearing an apron and wiping her hands with a tea towel.
"Oh, hello Sadie!" she greeted me.
"Hey Mrs Edison," I replied.
"Oh, come on now Sadie, no Mrs Edison! It's Joan to you!" Max and I glanced at each other and smirked. Oh, déjà vu!
"You might even be Mrs Edison one day."
Okay, DEFINITE déjà vu. I could see Bob making hand motions near his neck – he was warning his wife not to say it. Too late.
"Is something wrong…?" she looked between the three of us.
"We'll let Dad fill you in on that one," Max said, patting his mother on her shoulder as he passed her to go up the stairs. I followed him into his room. This was the first time I'd been in there. Even though I spent all of Wednesday at their house I never saw his room. It was actually very neat. He had a Beatles poster on the wall above his bed and his laptop lid was open… with a picture of me as the background!
"Hey!" I exclaimed, pointing to it.
"What's wrong with it?" he wanted to know, looking dejected.
"It's… me!"
"Is there a problem with that? You are my girlfriend after all."
"I look ugly!"
"You never look ugly."
It was a birds-eye picture of me having just woken up when we lived in the shops – I realised that then was the only time we had taken pictures of each other. I walked over to his docking station next to his bed where his iPhone was docked. I clicked play and Old Brown Shoe came on – he was listening to them! I smiled at him when I heard it.
"Okay, so what was so urgent that you needed to tell me?" he asked, sitting in his desk chair and swinging around to face me.

I closed his door and stood in front of him nervously.
"It's about us," I said, looking at him with uncertainty. I saw confusion and fear flicker across his face.
"What do you mean?" he asked, his voice cracking.
"No, not anything like that! God, no!" I reassured him and he put his hand across his chest, "It's about us."
"I still don't get it."
"What we are."
"Uh… humans…?" I didn't know if he was being a smart arse or if he didn't realise what I meant. I focused on him, making his chair spin around and frightening him slightly at first.
"Oh… that's what you mean," he realised as his chair came to a stop.
"Yes. Have you ever searched it?"
"No, it never crossed my mind. Have you?"
"Not until this afternoon… that's what I wanted to talk to you about. My discoveries."
"And what did you find out, Sherlock?"
"I think I better show you."
I walked over to his desk and with a wave of my hand rolled him away. I bent over his desk.
"Hey!" he smiled whilst scowling. I opened up a web page on his computer and searched 'full moon attacks', clicking on the first article.
"Here, listen to this," I said to him matter-of-factly, "It says, 'Last Sunday night at Garden Plaza Shopping Centre, a freak full moon attack happened at approximately 8:57pm. Shoppers were evacuated, however some unfortunate people were within the area of the light and passed away. Astronomers are investigating the reasoning behind this rare attack. However, this is not the first reporting of moon attacks. Reports go back as far as 1931, occurring in many cities including Shanghai, Cape Town, Ecuador, Madrid, London, New Delhi, Singapore and now Brisbane. There have been some rare survivors, the attack seeming not to have an effect on them.'"

I stopped reading the article, stood up straight and turned to look at my boyfriend. He had a stunned look on his face.
"We're not the only ones," he concluded.
"Exactly," I agreed.
"There are others? What does this mean?"
"I think it means that the moon randomly attacks people, but there's only a few 'survivors', like us… and they probably have powers too."
"This is… big."
"Max, are you having problems too?"
"Problems?"
"With your powers?"
"What do you mean problems?"
"I've been having difficulties… like, I can't just move things without a second thought or anything, it's more like a muscle that needs to be strengthened. You know what I mean?"
"Yeah, same for me. It takes a fair bit of concentration to do something."
"Yeah, and it's uncontrollable sometimes, like nerves or emotions or excitement sets it off. For example you in the car before."
"Yeah, and you when you realised about your powers!"
He laughed, remembering the incident from yesterday… yesterday? Was that all?
"It's weird that we only found out yesterday, isn't it?"
"I know! This is all very new. We need to learn how to control our powers. And of course we can't go around just doing stuff… people would see and become suspicious."
"Okay, so no conspicuous doings."
"So… what's been happening at school? Did you talk to your friend about the picture?"

Prudence. He had to bring her up, didn't he? Then again, he didn't know about her.
"Prudence," I sighed, plonking myself down on his bed, "I tried talking to her but she pushed me away angrily, which is so unlike her. She was very distressed and upset. We discussed it and tried to talk to her until Molly, my other friend who's in our group, finally got something out of her. We didn't hear what she said and Molly wouldn't tell us, instead storming off!"
"Wow, everyone's keeping everything from you," he observed.
"I know! Prue wasn't even on the bus this afternoon – she catches my bus, you see."
"Ah."
"She's avoiding me. I think it'll probably only be Anna, Patrick and I sitting in our spot on Monday. You met Anna – she helped us escape."
"Yeah, I remember. So Tim's suspended?"
"Yeah, for three weeks, thank God! Oh, guess what I did to him?" I wriggled around excitedly.
"What?" a small and curious smile forming on his lips.
"Oh, I just…" I motioned with my hand, taking possession of Max's hand. He was taken aback at the sudden uncontrollability and autonomy of his hand.
"Oh, wow, that's… oh! Please, stop! It feels so strange!"
We suddenly heard a choking sound from outside the door. We both snapped out heads at the same time, me mentally letting go of his hand. If it weren't for our super hearing, we wouldn't' have heard it. In fact, we didn't even hear the prying parent come up the stairs, which we should've. We then realised that whoever it is had probably heard the last thing Max said – oh, God! Max and I both went red at the realisation and I mouthed 'shit!' at him. The fact that the door was closed, Please Please Me was playing (oh, how convenient!), we were both in here, and Max had just said what he said probably made it seem very suss...

"It's Mum," Max whispered, inhaling sharply through his nose. He picked up on her scent! He marched over to the door. I quickly rushed over to the computer chair, making it look like I was on the computer – which I actually was before.
"Mum?" Max asked his mother angrily as he opened the door to reveal her kneeling in front of it with her ear against where the door just was. I could smell lovely aromas coming from downstairs.
"Oh, Maxy!" she exhaled, grabbing his pants, obviously relieved that her son was fully clothed.
"What the hell are you doing?"
"I, uh, was just making sure that you were alright!"
I was spinning from side to side a bit on the chair.
"Well we're fine."
"That's good."
She looked past her son at me. Max turned his head to look at me as well. I smiled innocently at her – one of those over smiles where your bottom lip sticks out and down slightly. It was a tad embarrassing…
"Okay, well I just thought I'd let you know that dinner will be ready in about ten minutes so you should finish up what… you're… doing…" she trailed off, realising the inappropriateness of what she just said, "OKAY!"
She stood up and flashed us a grin before skipping away and down the stairs.

After she left, Max exhaled exaggeratingly and came over to me.
"I thought we'd given ourselves away!" he joked, playing along.
"We can't let her know that we were actually doing what she thought we were."
"Okay, my lips are sealed," he 'zipped his lips and threw away the key'. I giggled giddily.
"So what did you do after you possessed Tim's hand?" he asked, sitting down next to me and returning to the previous topic.
"I made him punch himself," I shrugged and said it like it was no big deal.
"You didn't!" his eyes widened and he looked elated.
"Mhm, I did."
"That's awesome!"
"I know… especially when it's in front of the whole class."
"What about us using our powers in public?"
"Oh, come on, you think they're going to look at this arsehole hitting himself and think 'oh, I think Sadie might somehow be doing this?'" I said the imitation in a weird voice.
"No, but they can see your hand movements."
"Oh, true."
We were both sitting next to each other on his bed, leaning back on our hands and looking up at the glowing Beatles faces on the ceiling – how cute! The lovely smell was overwhelmingly delightful and with my heightened senses I could tell what aromas I could smell.
"What's your Mum cooking?" I asked him.
"I don't know," he replied, sniffing, "She said it was a surprise. But it smells like…"
"Basil," I finished off, smelling exactly what he was smelling. We both had our noses in the air, sniffing. We probably looked funny.
"Yeah, yeah, and beef mince…"
"And tomato…"
"Tomato soup…"
"White wine…
"Onion."
"Glass Onion."

We listed the ingredients we could smell and I just had to say glass onion. As I said it we looked at each other out the corner of our eyes and I smirked.
"Olive oil…" Max continued.
"Turkish bread…"
We then looked at each other and concluded at the exact same time, "Spaghetti!"
We smirked, trying to hold back our excitement. Not really excitement that we were having spaghetti but excitement that we had just determined what was cooking by identifying each individual ingredient… and simultaneously too.
"This is cool," I said slowly.
"Yeah, it is."
"We can actually identify individual ingredients… and from all the way up here!"
"We're more powerful than we thought."
"Oh, come on, we always knew we were powerful!" I scolded playfully.
"Yeah, but not this powerful!"
"Okay, true. But it's only been two days!"
"Technically five…"
"Yeah but we didn't know about this when it happened, did we?"
"No… do you reckon it happened straight away? Or did they develop a few days later?"
"Well, I could see really well in the dark when I came to find you… then there was the electric shock whenever we touched."
"Yeah, what was that?"
"I don't know… maybe just something that happens when two moon people touch each other."
"Moon people?"
"That's basically what we are, isn't it? Unless you can think of a better name."
"No, that's pretty much it. Maybe… it has something to do with the fact that I can control lightning."
"Could do. It's like we can hear everything, see everything, smell everything, feel everything and… I don't know, taste everything?"
"Yep. Every little thing."

"I think it must be an extra muscle or something… you know, being able to do what we can. It's like using an unknown muscle to force things to move or make it rain or something and using a similar, if not the same muscle to see, hear, smell or taste extraordinarily!"
"Maxy…"
"Yes?"
"We are super! We can do anything! We can be superheroes!"
"Oh my God, you're right!" he exclaimed, standing up and looking around amazedly, "We are! We are awesome! No one else has this power! What could we do…?"
Oh no – I seem to have created a monster… a power-hungry monster.

A/N: How did I come up with Old Brown Shoe you ask? I was listening to it at the time! I always have my iPod on shuffle on my docking station – on shuffle of 250 Beatles song of course. And I can name every single one of them and the album they're from when they come on!
Haha, I actually searched full moon attacks and it came up with some horses (including Davy Jones') being attacked on full moons.
Anyway, what did you think of their discovery? And I laughed so hard when I wrote the part about Joan listening through the door! I hope you did too! And now Sadie's turned Max power hungry! I wanted them to have dinner in this chapter but I had to upload seeing as its quarter to three in the morning on Sunday morning, so… oh, and this officially becomes the longest chapter so far, beating out Chapter 7 (one of my faves)... and anyone have any idea why a line adds about 378 words to the story? So anyway... please review!