Nevermore: The Final Maximum Ride Adventure (10 page)

He looked big and strong and vulnerable and really, really… appealing.

I flicked off the light and threw my pillow down to him. It landed on his face.

“Thanks,” he said again, pulling the pillow off and bunching it up under his head. “This is just for tonight.”

“Better be,” I muttered, then drifted back to the thoughts that had been eating away at me. Everything that Ari had said had been growing larger in the quiet of the night.

“Dylan?” I said after a few minutes.

“Hmm?”

“What did Ari mean, about ‘cease and desist’? Why
would he come looking for you if you’d never even met him before?”

Dylan didn’t answer for such a long time that I thought he’d fallen asleep. Finally, he sighed. “I don’t understand any of it. I never understand why anyone involves me in anything.”

I rolled my eyes. I had little patience for self-pity, and if I’d had another pillow, I would’ve chucked that at him, too.

“He said not to worry about Dr. Gunther-Hagen,” I pressed, my voice sounding small and shrill in my ears. “Maybe he meant you shouldn’t worry about being my perfect other half, like Hansy said. Maybe he meant you should stop pursuing me.”

“Maybe,” he said quietly, and my heart thundered in my chest. I was glad I couldn’t see his face in the darkness. “But I can’t, Max. You know I can’t.”

We were quiet again, each of us listening to the other’s breathing. Finally, Dylan exhaled, long and slow. “Good night, Max.”

I stared at the ceiling, willing my thoughts away from his body, his breath. “Good night, Dylan.”

33

IT WAS A pretty complete list. The kind of list one makes when one cannot fall asleep because one’s thoughts keep swirling through one’s brain like a bunch of sparrows on crack. I put down my notebook, rolled over, and gazed at the floor.

Dylan had rolled over onto his other side and was facing the opposite wall, his quilt balled up at his feet. He was a turbulent sleeper. Unlike Fang, who was quiet and self-contained. I started to add that to the list, but then thought,
Who cares?

I frowned at Dylan’s sprawled limbs. He couldn’t possibly be comfortable. He was probably cold.

“Hey… you cold down there?” I whispered, leaning over the edge of the bed.

He didn’t answer. Seeing as how he was asleep and all. I watched his breathing, slow and steady, the shadow of his abdominal muscles rising and falling under his bunched-up T-shirt. I tried to slow my own breath, but it thundered quick and ragged in my ears.

Before I knew what I was doing, I was out of bed with my own comforter. I felt sorry for him. Yeah, that was it. Really sorry for him. As anyone would.

The floor was freezing against my bare feet. I padded over to Dylan and carefully lay down next to him. He shifted, coughing, and I froze. After two long minutes, satisfied that he was still asleep, I curled myself into him, drawing my comforter over us both. I felt the warmth of
his body against mine, his breath on the back of my neck, making the tiny hairs rise.

We fit like two puzzle pieces. Just like we were supposed to. The whole designed-to-be-my-perfect-other-half thing…

Gah.

But you know what? Just this once, I was going to shove away all my angst and confusion and fear and just focus on the present.

Which happened to be very warm. Maddeningly warm. My whole body felt tingly.

With that thought in mind, I pressed myself closer against Dylan’s sleeping form and closed my eyes, drifting into the sweetest sleep I’d had in a long, long time.

I wasn’t sure I ever wanted to wake up.

34

THE NEXT DAY at school was, predictably, a complete horror show.

Not for me (for once), but for Nudge, who’d been publicly spurned and ridiculed by Sloan, in front of all of the popular girls. In less than a minute, this new gossip was all over Facebook and Twitter.

About eight hours later I was rapping my knuckles against the door to Nudge’s room. As soon as we’d gotten home from school she had gone in there and locked the door behind her, and she didn’t come out for dinner. I couldn’t blame her—things had only gotten worse after Sloan’s scaredy-cat retreat.

God, I should’ve unleashed a can of whup-ass on him.

“Nudge? Come on, open the door. Let’s make popcorn.”

“Go away,” came Nudge’s weak voice. “Don’t wanna talk about it.”

“We don’t have to talk about it,” I said.
Please, no—no more talking about it, I beg you.
“I just want to make sure you’re okay. Open up, will you? We can make hot chocolate.”

After a few moments of silence, I heard her trudge across the room. The door opened.

Nudge’s face was stained with the tears she’d been holding in all day; rivers of mascara ran down her cheeks. Her big brown eyes were puffy and bloodshot.

I had no idea what to do. I’d already offered popcorn and hot chocolate. What else was there?

“It’s just getting worse and worse,” moaned Nudge. “First it was just stupid gossip. Now I’m an outcast. They all think I’m some kind of circus sideshow. As usual.”

“Come here,” I murmured, putting my arms around her. “I know it’s a drag to have everyone at school treat us like lepers”—to put it mildly—“but they’re just gullible, prejudiced jerks. Typical Avian-American prejudice.” I eased her head onto my shoulder, which I should have lined with paper towels first. “I’m really sorry Sloan was such a butthead,” I said soothingly. “But sweetie, he’s so unworthy. You deserve better than that. You deserve someone who’s going to love you, wings and all.”

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.