I’d hardly ever seen such sadness on her face. “That’s easy for you to say. You have two guys who love you.” She looked up at me, and I didn’t know what to say to her. “I don’t have anyone.”
I swallowed nervously. Guiltily.
“That’s not true. You have us,” I blurted out, knowing full well how lame that was. The flock was awesome and all, but it just can’t be compared to the rapture of being loved, held, adored. In that… different way.
I quickly shook off the pleasurable shiver that shot down my spine as I remembered spending the night on the floor next to Dylan.
“Listen. Soon we’ll blow this Popsicle stand and move on, and then you’ll never have to deal with any of them ever again. Until we get rich and famous, and then you can have fun spurning them when they beg for your autograph.” I smiled, pulling her close, but Nudge wasn’t amused.
“I don’t want to move on,” she cried, pulling out of my arms. “Can’t you see that? I don’t want to ‘spurn’ them!” She made air quotes with her fingers, glaring at me. How had I become the enemy here, exactly? “I just want to—” Her voice broke, and she drew in a trembling breath. “I just want to be liked by them, Max!” And then Nudge burst into tears. Again. Crap.
“Oh, sweetie,” I said helplessly, uncomprehending. I had spent very little energy in my life trying to be liked by anyone. “Come here. Come sit down,” I said, taking her hand and tugging her toward the bed.
Then I saw that the entire thing was covered with crumpled-up pieces of paper. A pair of scissors was lying on top of a stack of teen magazines, all of which had been mangled and cut to pieces.
“Nudge? What’s this?”
Nudge blew her nose miserably and gestured at a pile of blocky, badly cutout shapes. “Those are for my scrapbook.”
I picked up one of the shapes. It was a photo of a pretty teenage model, smiling brightly at the camera, wearing some sort of sparkly outfit with furry boots. “Blech,” I said, and put the photo down. The next photo was another pretty model. So was the next one. And the next.
“What kind of scrapbook are you making, exactly?” I asked Nudge cautiously.
Her bottom lip quivered. “I want to be like them. Like those girls.”
I raised my eyebrows. “You want to be a model?”
“No.” She sighed dramatically, rolling her eyes. “I want to not be a freak.”
“Nudge, normal is way overrated….” I began. Déjà vu.
“Oh, yeah, it’s superlame to just want to have friends, to just want to be kissed, like everyone else.” She laughed bitterly. “You sound like the whitecoats. Being lab experiments doesn’t make us better, Max. We aren’t enhanced, we’re mutants.”
Wow. I had to remind myself that this was not the sweet Nudge I knew. This was a love-scorned girl who had just been through a day of despicable bullying. I was lucky she wasn’t actually breathing fire.
“And if we were normal, there wouldn’t be people trying to kill us,” she pointed out.
“Well, probably,” I admitted. “But I guarantee you people at school would still do mean things to nice kids for no reason. That’s just the way life works.”
Nudge shook her head. “No. You know what? There’s only one answer to all our problems.”
This didn’t sound good. “What is it?” I asked warily.
She snatched the scissors off the bed and looked so utterly reckless that it sent me into a panic.
“Nudge!” I gasped.
But Nudge turned from me and eyed a poster on the wall—a publicity poster of the whole flock, from our days as a flying sideshow—and then, lightning-quick, she let the scissors fly with as much skill and fury as she’d displayed battling Erasers. With a hollow thud, the blades struck the image of Nudge’s wing and embedded themselves deep in the wall.
I swallowed, my throat suddenly dry. My own wings twitched under my shirt.
Then she clutched one of her normal-girl photos to her chest, her eyes fierce with determination. “The only answer to all our problems is getting rid of our wings,” she said. “Removing them forever. I’m gonna do it someday, Max. I swear it.”
35
FANG OPENED HIS eyes blearily. Above him was nothing but the clear night sky, dotted with millions of tiny glittering stars. It was beautiful.
It was quiet and calm, and yet for some reason he’d woken up.
He sat up, quickly scanning his surroundings for anything threatening, anything that might have made some sort of noise.
Nothing.
He still found it weird, nowadays, to wake up alone. Until this past year, waking up had always meant being flung into the noise and chaos of the flock.
The flock. Fang had thought that it would get easier, being away from them, as time went on. He’d thought wrong. He’d thought that they’d be fine—even better off—without him, and that it would be easier for him to pursue whatever mission he had if he didn’t have to worry about them. Now he wasn’t sure.
And then there was the gang. Fang sighed and lay back down, making hardly a sound on the dew-dampened grass. Why had he ever thought that would work? Why had he tried? The gang had gotten Maya killed.
Fang swallowed and closed his eyes. Maya was dead. And though Ari kept demonstrating a freaky, jack-in-the-box ability to come back from the dead, Fang was pretty sure Maya was gone for good.
And the others—he’d really let them down. Fang frowned and pulled his jacket tighter around himself, turning onto his other side. He wasn’t used to letting people down. He was used to coming through for people. He’d thought being on his own meant that he could make all the decisions by himself, that he didn’t need to rely on Max to do all the thinking. The bad thing was that he had no one to discuss decisions with, no one to bounce ideas off of.
Admit it, you idiot—it’s more than that. You miss her, Fang thought.
He sighed and rolled onto his back, restless. He was exhausted, thinking about it all. But not exhausted enough to fall back to sleep.
She doesn’t need you, he reminded himself. She has the Winged Wonder by her side. Maybe being on your own is just too hard?
No, he couldn’t think tha—
Fang.
Fang jerked, startled, and peered into the dark trees and shrubs around him.
Fang, nobody’s there.
Oh, man. The voice—or rather Voice—wasn’t coming from around him.
It was coming from inside him.
Not again. He had to wonder—was this the same Voice Max got? Where did it come from? Why was it appearing in his brain now? Sure, all of them had heard the Voice at one time or another. But Fang definitely didn’t want this to become an everyday thing.
Okay, what is it? Fang thought. What do you want?
It’s time to go, Fang, the Voice replied. She does need you now, more than ever.
Who needs me? he asked, but he already knew the answer.
Go home to Max.