FIVE

I woke up the next morning with a pounding headache. I'd made the lethal mistake of not only taking a long, hot shower after a crying spell, but then adding champagne, meaning my body felt something akin to a Brillo pad.

I reached for my phone instinctively, skimming over the paragraph-long text Dr. Martinez had sent apologizing for her terrible news and eyeing one from Fang about thirty minutes ago instead.

Starting breakfast, it said. Better get down here before Gazzy eats all the bacon. There was a second text just under it, simple and sweet: Drink the water. Take the Tylenol. I love you.

Fang had never been overly touchy-feely (feel free to fact check me in our prior sagas) and that didn't change all that much when we got together. I mean, sure, there was a component of the typical, routine touchy-feely that came with a relationship, but he wasn't sprinkling rose petals on the comforter and wining and dining me every night or anything. Still, he found ways to make me feel special and ways to solidify that he was seriously in this relationship; little moments like this still wooed me. I couldn't imagine a time when they wouldn't.

I sighed heavily and swung my legs over the side of the bed, wincing when my head began to throb. The aforementioned glass of water and bottle of painkillers sat next to the array of sleeping pills.

The invasive thought popped into my head before I was even cognizant of it: Take them all right now.

My hand recoiled from the glass of water. I felt my eyes go wide. No, I thought back. No. I don't want that.

The thought and the overwhelming feeling of hopelessness that had come with it were as gone as quickly as they came. My heart was still pounding in my chest, but I chugged the water and shoved that thought to the back of my mind along with all the other shit I couldn't possibly deal with at the moment.

I found the flock scattered around the kitchen. Iggy and Nudge were side-by-side at the stovetop, working on what smelled like a buffet of breakfast options. Angel and Gazzy were slicing fruit at the table. Fang sat with his laptop open in front of him, peering at it in a way I hadn't seen him do in years. I knew he was looking for leads. He looked up when I walked in, cocking his head slightly to the side.

You okay? he was asking.

I smiled back noncommittally, hoping he couldn't tell how passionately I was thinking absolutely the fuck not over and over again.

"Morning, sleeping beauty," Iggy called over his shoulder.

Gazzy looked up with a toothy grin and made an exaggerated sound of disgust. "You wouldn't say that if you could see her."

Apparently the bad blood from the night before had washed away. I cracked a smile at this but didn't have the effort to rib him back.

"Guess that's probably true. Everyone looks good as a shadowy blob. That sweatshirt is huge, by the way. You look like a clown."

"Nah. I'd say it's more like grunge, but make it fashion," Gazzy said sagely.

"Just how much Queer Eye have you been watching?" Nudge said.

"Hey!" Angel said, bumping her brother with her hip. "I think Max is beautiful. Fang thinks Max is beautiful."

I rolled my eyes at this and fought the blush that I knew was threatening to color my cheeks. Fang looked over his shoulder and offered that special smile of his and a wink. Gazzy made another sound of disgust and Iggy groaned.

"They're flirting, aren't they," Iggy deadpanned. "For the love of God and all that is holy, could you reign in all the pheromones? I can taste them."

"Ew," Gazzy lamented with a scandalized look.

"Bacon is done!" Nudge announced. She dabbed it with a paper towel and spun to place it on the table.

"Wait! I like the grease." Iggy grabbed a piece as she turned; she smacked his wrist.

"Hey!"

Iggy chewed noisily and sighed with pleasure, punctuating this Oscar-award-winning scene with a chef's kiss. "I've trained you well."

"Please," Nudge said. "Pinterest highkey taught me way more than you ever did."

Iggy wrinkled his nose. "What?"

"Teenagers," Fang said idly. Iggy laughed.

I closed my eyes and tried to freeze this moment, to bottle it; everything was about to change yet again, and the normalcy we'd managed to establish for ourselves would likely shrivel up and die with any hopes of getting it back.

Call me dramatic, but that evil voice in my head last night had been right. Optimism doesn't—and never would—suit me. So I let myself take a moment to revel in the routine, in the jabs and the joking, in the life we had made. For one last moment, at least. Before it was all gone again.

I felt Fang's hand on my shoulder before I noticed his presence but didn't open my eyes. As everyone else set the table, he brushed my hair away from my face. It was still partially damp from the night before.

"Everything okay?" It was an innocent question, but his voice was terse.

"No," I said. It was honest and steady. "It's really not."

I opened my eyes. His gaze was inquisitive and hard. He considered my words before agreeing.

"No, it's not. But are you?"

"Does it matter?"

"Of course it does."

"So if I say no?"

His curious stare softened, but he had nothing to say.

Although he wasn't looking at me, it was clear Iggy was wearing his signature I'm Listening Like a Freaking Bat face. Instead of putting me on the spot for being vulnerable, he groaned dramatically and dropped his fork loudly on his plate.

"Do you think," he said with exaggerated patience, "you could push whispering sweet nothings to each other off a little longer? Some of us are trying to eat."

Fang rolled his eyes.

Despite its lighthearted preparation, breakfast itself was a mostly silent event. I couldn't remember the last time we'd been so quiet. None of us wanted to be the one to admit that our entire worlds, indeed, were going to change. The daylight made our conversation from last night feel far more real.

Gazzy, who was the first to finish eating, was also the first to speak.

"So… now what?"

I shut my eyes and pushed the all-encompassing feeling of I can't do this far, far away.

"That's what I'm trying to figure out."

"Not that I'm saying that I want to, but, uh… why haven't we, y'know, U-and-A'd the heck out of here yet?"

Fang took a long sip of his coffee. "They would've come here already if they knew about the house."

"How do we know that for sure?" Iggy pressed.

"Because Max's face is in the newspaper," Fang said irritably. "They're crowdsourcing. They only do that when they're out of credible leads."

"Then why can't we just stay here?" Nudge grumbled.

"And wait until either they ambush us or we run out of money and food?" Iggy said. "Not exactly a bulletproof plan."

She huffed out a frustrated sigh and dropped her head into her folded hands.

"So what do we have to do?" she mumbled into the tablecloth.

"I don't totally know yet," I admitted. "But I think the first step is to try to make ourselves look as different as possible, just so they can't connect our flock identities to our real-world identities."

Nudge looked up at this with newfound interest. "So what you're saying is…"

"We need makeovers."

She punched her fist into the air, looking decidedly less pissed off now. "Oh, yes!"

"You're kidding me," Gazzy deadpanned.

"Not kidding you. I hate it as much as you do, trust me, Gazzy."

"Not sure that that's possible."

"You were all for it last time!" Nudge said.

"I was eight last time. I got a faux-hawk and head to toe camo. Of course I was all for it."

"We have to look completely different," I said.

"Just how different?" Iggy asked cautiously.

"Completely."

"Like dye my hair different?" said Iggy.

I considered this. Iggy's most defining characteristics were his ginger hair, his blind eyes, and his height. Since we couldn't fix the last two, the first would have to go.

"I think so, Ig," I said. "As different as we can. I don't know many six-five flaming gingers that were blinded at the hands of science."

He sighed heavily. "Whatever. If I go brunette, you have to go with me," he grumbled.

"What about when your roots grow out?" Nudge said with a genuine look of horror. "You can't run around with roots!"

"We'll cross that bridge when we get to it, sweetie," I said gently.

I looked at Angel. Out of all of us, she and Gazzy looked the most different thanks to the aging process alone—Angel had only been six when we'd lived with Anne, meaning that, at eleven years old and tall for her age, she looked more like an adolescent than a little kid. Gazzy had gone from eight to thirteen; the change was even more drastic.

I couldn't stand the thought of either of them dyeing their gorgeous blonde curls, but we didn't really have a ton of options.

"Anything that makes us look even a little different is helpful."

Angel shrugged. "It's okay. I get it. It's just hair."

"Just hair? It's my signature feature! The ladies fawn over it!" Gazzy cried, fingering one of his messy platinum curls. His hair had resembled Medusa's for months now and he'd refused to cut it despite my begging.

Iggy rolled his eyes. "The ladies are fawning over Justin Bieber, but nice try, big guy."

Angel rolled her eyes back even harder. "Justin Bieber? You're dating yourself."

"What? You're telling me Biebs is washed up now? God, we're getting old. Next you'll be telling me iPods are obsolete." Iggy turned to Fang and I, looking highly alarmed. "Man, time positively flies when you're having fun, doesn't it?"

"Positively," Fang agreed drily.

We divvied up that morning to try to—as Iggy so poignantly phrased it—get our affairs in order. I hadn't set a date for our departure (mostly because, believe it or not, I still didn't have a master plan), but there were still things we could start to wrap up, however subtly. Nudge begrudgingly deactivated all of her social media accounts. Iggy and Gazzy withdrew all of their money from the stock market (don't even ask—I don't understand) before working on figuring out how to discretely dissolve Iggy's bank account. Fang and I worked on slowly erasing our adult footprints—all of our money (and therefore the flock's money) was in cash, but we had evidence to destroy at the house.

We didn't have much in the way of true personal items. We'd gathered some of our things from the E-house years ago. Old photos, sentimental knickknacks, assorted bomb supplies for the Gasman. I'd kept one of Angel's old bows—it was tacked on Fang and I's dresser mirror, along where he'd stuck the photo of the six of us at the lake, our movie ticket, and Angel's drawing.

I'd purchased us new backpacks after the fall of Vector. I always hoped we'd never need to use them, but it was long overdue. Fang, Iggy and I had selected true backpacking packs, ones that could accommodate carrying sleeping bags, large amounts of water, and days worth of essentials. I slid it out of the back of the closet and ignored the feeling of dread it gave me.

Instead, I expelled it all in a huge puff of anxious air. Fang, who was already filling his behind me, hummed in agreement.

"At least they aren't the same ones. Mine was covered in blood stains. And all sorts of other shit I couldn't identify."

I pulled the bag out of the closet and stared at it for a long moment before propping it against the bed and standing and turning for the door.

"Need air," I said by way of explanation.

"Max," Fang said gently, but I waved him off.

"I am fine. I just don't want to do this right now."

He was frozen, bent halfway over to his bag, and I knew he was debating whether or not to follow me.

"Leave me alone. I just need some space. It's not you, it's me," I said lightly.

Fang rolled his eyes but went back to packing.

"Max," Fang said when I was halfway out the door. I turned. He was walking toward me.

"If you don't get off my back, I swear to—"

He gave me a deep, toe-curling kiss. I leaned into him, feeling myself fill with those too-familiar butterflies. His hand found the small of my back, nearly spanning my entire waist, and pulled me into him.

"I love you," he whispered.

"Mm."

His other hand found my hips and they both dipped lower before landing in the back pockets of my jeans.

I laughed against his lips and swatted his chest.

"Down, boy."

"Sorry," he said, shrugging. His eyes were light and playful. "It's not you. It's me."

I left him to pack and wandered down the hall. Nudge's door was ajar, so I poked my head in, expecting to find her with one headphone in, deciding which nail polishes made the cut to come along with her. I'd dropped the essentials only argument years ago when I realized that to Nudge, these things were essential.

Instead, I found her crying softly into her pillow. I stepped into the room immediately. She looked up, obviously mortified, and wiped her face fervently.

"Max! Knock much?"

"What's wrong?"

"Oh, I don't know," she snapped. "Just working on uprooting my entire life for the millionth time."

I cringed at this and truly marveled at my own stupidity. Of course. I sighed and turned to leave the room, knowing this was a battle I could never win.

"Wait! Wait, wait." She groaned and pushed herself up from her pillow. "Come back. I'm sorry."

"It's okay. Really. I get it. I'll go."

She patted the bed next to her. I sat but refused to meet her eyes.

"I know it's not your fault," she said quietly, picking at her pilling comforter. "I know we have to do this. And I know it's not fair for me to be mad at you. I'm not even mad at you. I don't know what I'm mad at."

"Jeb? The School? The world? I've lost track, at this point."

She cracked a smile at this. "The universe, maybe."

"Yeah. I don't know what role Jupiter plays in all of this, but we're gonna make it pay for sure."

She laughed lightly and met my gaze, looking sad.

"I just don't want anyone to get hurt," she admitted. My eyes flitted to her bicep, where the scar from her gunshot wound shined in the sunlight streaming through her window. I had matching ones to my shoulder and back. My stomach flipped at yet another thing to feel guilty over.

"Angel's still having such a hard time," she added. "I know she talks to Fang, but there's a lot she doesn't tell you guys. Because she doesn't want to worry you."

I fought the screaming voice in my head saying, What do you mean? Tell me everything, telling me to sprint to Angela's room and demand answers from her.

But Nudge had told me this in confidence, and I think I'd always known deep down that Angel had more demons to her than she'd let on.

"Fang and Iggy have their shit. I know Iggy does, and I know Fang has talked to you."

I scoffed at that; Fang had opened up to me a handful of times, and even those times were hardly breakthrough moments for his psyche.

"And you," she said finally, shrugging. I braced myself for whatever was coming. "You're the strongest and bravest person I know. You did so much for all of us for so long. You never took care of yourself, never took a minute to let yourself do anything but focus on the flock and the mission and trying to get us safe and stuff. When we got here it was like, 'Holy shit, I don't think I've ever seen Max actually relax.' And it was so awesome for all of us to see."

I tried to organize the emotions I was feeling, compartmentalize them: shame, embarrassment, gratitude, love.

"What do you mean, all of you?" I asked warily.

She rolled her eyes. "We talked about it. We do care about you, you know. You're not the only one who looks out anyone. We all look out for each other. Including us kids looking out for you guys," she said drily. "And it was like this huge relief for all of us, to see you be able to stop worrying. Even the hard times that came after, it was like, 'Okay, she's finally dealing with this.'"

I'm not sure what sort of face I made, but she blanched and continued hurriedly, "But none of that matters. What I'm saying is that I don't want this to end. I don't want us to have to go to that dark place in our heads again. I don't know how I'm gonna deal with it."

My heart broke at this. I pulled her into me, marveling at how much she'd grown and warring with how badly I wanted to just let her continue to live her life the way she was, however irrational it was.

I swallowed thickly and said, "We're gonna deal with it the way we always have. Together."

She nestled her head into my shoulder, taking deep, calculated breaths. When she spoke, it was almost inaudible.

"I'm scared, Max. And I… I haven't been scared in a long time."

Me too, I wanted to say. I wanted to nestle into her shoulder; I wanted to extract some of the strength she was showing from her and use it for myself.

But I didn't say that. I didn't say anything. I just rubbed her back, hushed her sobs, and wished us all anywhere but here.