James Patterson - Maximum Ride - The Angel Experiment

The stick Fang was holding snapped in two, his knuckles white in the darkness. I saw pain in his dark eyes. Pain and sadness, and the reflection of our fire.

I cleared my throat. “What about me?” I’d always dreamed of having a mom. Even-and this is so awesomely embarrassing that I’ll never admit I said it-hoping that someday she would show up and be so wonderful and marry Jeb. And take care of all of us. I know. Pathetic, isn’t it?

Angel blinked up at me. “I didn’t hear anything about you, Max. Nothing. I’m real sorry.”

“Ican’t believe it,” the Gasman said for the thirtieth time. “They gave us away. They must be sick. Sick jerks. I’m glad I don’t know them.”

“I’m sorry, Gazzy,” I said for the thirtieth time, digging down deep for my last shred of patience. I totally, totally felt for him, but I had reached my limit about thirteen times ago.

Anyway, I ruffled his fine, light hair and hugged his shoulders. His face was dirty and streaked with tears. I wished we could just go back to our mountain house. The Erasers knew where it was, had swarmed all over it. We could never go back. But right now, I so wished I could just stick Gazzy under a hot shower, then tuck him into bed.

Those days were gone, baby.

“Angel? It’s late, sweetie. Why don’t you try to get some sleep? Actually, we could all use an early night.”

“I’m going to sleep too,” said Nudge, her voice still thick from crying. “I just want this day to end.”

I blinked. That was the shortest sentence I’d ever heard her utter.

The six of us gathered around. I held out my left fist, and Fang put his on top of it, and everyone else did too. When we had a stack, we tapped the backs of one another’s fists with our right hands.

We always do it, wherever we are. Habit. Angel curled up in her spot, and I covered her with my sweatshirt. The Gasman lay down next to her, and then Nudge settled down too. I knelt next to her and tucked her collar around her neck.

I almost always go to sleep last-like I have to make sure everyone else is down. I started to bank the fire, and Fang came and helped me.

“So maybe you were hatched after all,” Fang said. The six of us had always teased one another, saying we’d hatched out of eggs.

I laughed drily. “Yeah. Maybe so. Maybe they found me in a cabbage patch.”

“In a way, you’re lucky,” he said quietly. “Not knowing is better.”

I hate the way he can read my mind, since he doesn’t even have mind-reading abilities.

“It leaves all the possibilities open,” he went on. “Your story could be worse, but it could also be a hell of a lot better.”

He sat back on his heels, watching the fire, and then extended his wings a bit to warm them. “A teenager, jeez,” he said in disgust. “She was probably a crack addict or something.”

He never would have said that if the others were awake. Some things we trusted only each other to understand.

“Maybe not,” I said, covering the fire with ashes. “Maybe she was a nice kid who just made a mistake. At least she wanted to actually wait the nine months and have you. Maybe she would have kept you or let a really nice family adopt you.”

Fang snorted in disbelief. “On the one hand, we have a mythical nice family that wants to adopt me. On the other, we have a gang of insane scientists desperate to do genetic experiments on innocent children. Guess which hand I get dealt?”

Tiredly, he lay down next to Gazzy and closed his eyes, one arm over his forehead.

“I’m sorry, Fang,” I mouthed silently.

I lay down myself, reaching out my foot to touch Nudge, putting an arm around Angel. I was too tired to worry about my brain attack earlier. Too tired to wonder how we would find the Institute in New York. Too tired to care about saving the world.

“Yo!” I said loudly. “Up and at ‘em!”

You’ll be relieved to hear that my brief descent into weary lack of caring was totally gone by the time the sun fried my eyelids the next morning.

I got up, started the fire going again-because that’s the kind of selfless, wonderful leader I am-then started affectionately kicking the flock awake.

There was much grumbling and groaning, which I ignored, instead carefully balancing a pan of Jiffy Pop popcorn over a branch on the fire. Popcorn for breakfast! Why not? It’s a grain. It’s like, like, grits, but with high self-esteem.

Plus, no one can sleep through the machine-gun sound of popcorn popping. Soon the rest of the flock was gathering glumly around the fire, rubbing sleep out of their eyes.

“We’re headed for the Big Apple, guys. The city that never sleeps. I think we’re maybe six, seven hours away.”

Twenty minutes later, we were taking off, one by one. I was last, after Angel, and I ran about twenty feet, then leaped into the air, beating my wings hard. I was maybe ten feet off the ground when it happened again: Some unseen force shoved an unseen railroad spike through my skull.

I cried out, falling, then smacked into the ground hard enough to knock my breath away.

I curled up in a fragile ball of pain, holding my head, feeling tears dripping down my cheeks, trying not to scream.

“Max?” Fang’s gentle fingers touched my shoulder. “Is it like before?”

I couldn’t even nod. It was all I could do to hold my head together so my brains wouldn’t splatter all over my friends. A high, keening sound reached my ears. It was me.

Behind my eyes, bursts of red and orange flooded my brain, as if fireworks were exploding inside me. Then it was as though someone had jacked a movie screen directly into my retinas: Lightning-fast images shot through me so fast it made me feel sick. I could hardly make any of them out: blurred buildings, fuzzy landscapes, unrecognizable people’s faces, food, headlines from papers, old stuff in black-and-white, psychedelic stuff, swirly patterns…

I don’t know how long it went on-years? Gradually, gradually, I realized I could move, and as soon as I could, I crawled over to some bushes and barfed my guts up.

Then I lay gasping, feeling like death. It was a while before I could open my eyes and see blue sky, puffy white clouds-and five worried faces.

“Max, what is the matter with you?” Angel said, sounding as scared as she looked.

“Think you should see a doctor?” Fang asked mildly, but his eyes were piercing.

“Oh, yes, that’s a good idea,” I said weakly. “We need to let more people in authority know about us.”

“Look,” Fang began, but I cut him off.

“I’m okay now,” I said, lying through my teeth. “Maybe it’s a stomach bug or something.” Yeah, the kind of stomach bug that causes brain cancer. The kind of bug you get when your whole genetic makeup is about to unravel. The bug you get before you die.

“Let’s just go to New York,” I said.

After giving me a long, level look, Fang shrugged and motioned to the Gasman to take off. Reluctantly, he did, and the others followed. “After you,” Fang said, jerking his thumb toward the sky.

Gritting my teeth, I got to my feet and ran shakily, opening my wings and leaping into the air again, half braced for another explosion of pain. But it was okay. I still felt like I might hurl, and I thought about how awful that would be in midair.

“Are you okay?” Nudge asked once we were airborne. I nodded.

“I’ve been thinking about my mom and dad,” she said. Her tawny wings beat in unison with mine, so we just barely missed each other on the downstrokes. “I bet-if they’ve been thinking I died eleven years ago, then I bet they would be pretty happy to see me again, right? I mean, if all this time they wished I had gone home with them and grown up-then they would be pretty happy to see me, wouldn’t they?” I didn’t say anything.