Waterwings

by James Patterson

  Typical family stuff. With a nonflock family.

  “Huh — why is Max in the kitchen?” Gazzy asked as he walked in. His face was flushed, hair permanently tousled from the wind. Clearly he’d been having a glorious, exhilarating time, coasting high above the world. And wasn’t that special for him.

  “We’re cooking,” said my mom.

  “She’s just keeping you company, right?” he asked nervously as my eyes narrowed. Nudge, Fang, Iggy, Angel, and Total all crammed into the kitchen and stared at the wooden spoon in my hand.

  “No,” my mom replied, trying to keep a straight face. “She’s cooking.”

  Quick, alarmed glances were exchanged among the flock.

  “Cooking… food?” Nudge asked. I heard someone murmur something about ordering a pizza.

  “Yes, I’m cooking food, and it’s great, and you’re going to eat it, you twerps!” I snapped.

  And that was how I spent my three days of forced rest. The flock saw all the Mayan wonders of the Yucatan, and I learned how to cook something besides cold cereal.

  So there was much amazement all around.

  But my wing healed, and soon it was time to leave. I was thinking of maybe going to South America.

  But the flock had different ideas. While I was healing, they’d taken a vote.

  They wanted to try Jeb’s Day and Night School.

  16

  “WE STILL HAVE NO SIGHTINGS of the girl Maximum Ride,” reported one scout.

  The team leader glanced up from the radar images on his desk. “What about the others?”

  “We’ve been tracking them for three days,” his subordinate confirmed. “We’ve triangulated their origination point to within a half mile.”

  The team leader looked up, but his frown was lost on the combat robot, who hadn’t been upgraded to recognize emotion.

  “What’s the fastest they were clocked at?” he asked.

  “The large dark one can achieve speeds of more than two hundred fifty miles per hour,” said the scout. “When they are aiming downward, they have been recorded at more than three hundred fifty miles per hour.”

  The team leader nodded, wondering why the upgrade also apparently hadn’t been programmed to use metric. He sighed. The history of these genetic mistakes was a litany of embarrassing failures. Even Itexicon — with its massive, global resources, the years of research, the trillions of dollars spent — had ended up a shattered shell, unable to stop six children. And the Erasers! People were still making jokes about them.

  When he’d first heard about the Erasers, he’d thought they were simply an amusing experiment. Despite their speed, relative intelligence, and overwhelming bloodlust, they’d proved quite ineffective. So they’d decided to dispense with the biological base and went to robots covered with flesh — inexplicably designed to look like Erasers. Then they’d made Flyboys — basically, Erasers with wings. All of which the mutant kids had already defeated.

  Since then, it had been basically the same old, same old — one generation of enhanced individual tracking and killing machines after the next. Given all kinds of fancy names, tweaked this way and that. None of them seemed up to the task.

  The team leader was truly surprised that Devin had failed. Truly, truly surprised. Devin had never failed at a job for as long as the team leader had known him. He’d lost a hundred dollars on that bet.

  However, there did seem to be a sufficient quantity of version 5.0 to perhaps stall or contain the mutated kids until someone better, smarter, more experienced, more focused came along.

  Someone like him.

  “Should we pinpoint their location and destroy them?” the robot asked.

  The team leader shook his head. “No. Just surveillance at this point.”

  He’d lost a bunch of good men in Mexico City, and he wanted payback.

  So did Mr. Chu.

  17

  MY DAY:

  1)Back in America. In one of the western states with all the ninety-degree angles.

  2)Wing still messed up; perhaps need longer than three days till it’s fully functional.

  3)Had to say good-bye to Mom and Ella. Many mushy tears, soggy hugs. All that stuff I love.

  4)Strong sense of betrayal by flock about Day and Night School. But without a 100 percent fly-ready wing, I couldn’t soar off in a huff the way I wanted to.

  5)Fang has hardly spoken to me for three days. He doesn’t seem mad — more like thoughtful. Watching me. What is on his freaking mind?!

  “School, school, school,” Nudge sang as she got ready. My mom had gotten her some stuff to put in her hair, and now it floated around her face in delicate, caramel-colored tendrils.

  Delicate, caramel-colored tendrils. I’m really starting to worry myself.

  Anyway. We all got ready. We were wearing clean clothes. We went to school with various levels of enthusiasm.

  The school was long and low and spread out, painted in dusty pastels so it coordinated with the desert. It was not fenced in. There was a ton of open space around it, plenty of places to take off from, land, escape from.

  Jeb stood by the car, knowing better than to try to hug any of us good-bye. I was almost inside when he called my name.

  “Max.”

  I went back over to him. “Please don’t impart any pearls of wisdom. I just ate.”

  He shook his head. “Just — beware of Mr. Chu. He makes Itex look like Sesame Street.”

  Then, while I stared at him, he got in the car and drove away, headed for a plane to California. Which cheered me up but only a little.

  We were met at the door of the school by a woman holding a clipboard. “Hello,” she said, smiling. Her smile reached her eyes, an important trait. “I’m Ms. Hamilton, Max. It’s good to finally meet you. Your mom and I went to college together. Welcome to the Day and Night School. I hope you’ll be happy here.” She paused, only momentarily taken aback at the sight of Total, trotting along by Angel’s side.

  Don’t hold your breath, I thought. That’s when it hit me: when had I last heard the Voice? I frowned, trying to remember. I couldn’t. It was ages ago, or at least a week. A week can seem like a really long time in my life. Was I down to just one personality inside my head?

  “First we need to test your knowledge, so we’ll know your strengths and weaknesses,” Ms. Hamilton went on cheerfully. “Then we’ll know what classes will be best for you.”

  Nudge skipped along at Ms. Hamilton’s side, glancing back to beam at me. I managed a slight grimace in return. We walked down a couple of hallways. There were exits at reassuring intervals. Through glass-paned doors, we saw large, sunny classrooms with small groups of kids in them. The kids looked happy to be here. Saps.

  Ms. Hamilton took us to an empty classroom. We sat down in chairs that were designed to accommodate the wingless. I shot pained looks at everyone who met my eye, letting them know that this was not my idea of a good time.

  I couldn’t believe they had decided to do this. It was like — my plans for our lives weren’t good enough anymore. They actually thought this situation would be better — which, I might add, included not being led by me.

  Now my stomach hurt, and I felt weighed down by a gray cloud.

  “First, we’ll see how you do at math.”

  I tried not to groan out loud. We’re street-smart, not book-smart. How many people had tested us over the years?

  “Math, okay, bring it,” said Total, hopping up on a chair. “Are we allowed to use calculators? Do you have some that are, you know, paw-ready?” He held up his right paw.

  Ms. Hamilton stopped and stared at Total. I snickered to myself. I had almost forgotten how much fun it could be to bait people. I sat up a little straighter.

  Then Ms. Hamilton smiled.

  At Total.

  “No, we don’t have any paw-ready calculators,” she said. “But you probably won’t need one for these questions, anyway.”

  Just like that, this grown-up had accepted the talk
ing dog.

  Four hours later, Ms. Hamilton told us that our reading levels ranged between first grade and twelfth grade and that we had amazing vocabularies. (Angel was not the one who read on a first grade level, and Fang, Iggy, and I were not, sadly, the ones who read on a twelfth grade level.) We spelled about as well as four-year-olds do but had off-the-chart visual memories. We were majorly lame at math but could solve most problems anyway.

  “In short, you’re very, very, very bright kids who haven’t had much schooling,” said Ms. Hamilton.

  I could have told her that before we’d wasted all this time. And she didn’t even know about the other stuff we could do, like hack computers and jack cars and break into most buildings.

  “Angel, you’re so far off the chart that we’ll have to invent a special chart just for you.” Ms. Hamilton laughed.

  “I thought you might,” Angel said.

  I’d been here five hours, and so far I hadn’t really wanted to take anyone apart. Weird.

  But that didn’t mean I wanted to stay at the Day and Night School.

  Was I the only one?

  18

  “SOUTH AMERICA,” I said coaxingly. “It’ll be warm. They have llamas. You like llamas.”

  Nudge crossed her arms over her chest. “I want to stay here.”

  We were in her room at a safe house that belonged to the school. It wasn’t a bad setup. God knows we’ve had worse. But it was still part of a bigger confining situation, and my skin was crawling.

  “How long do you think it will take another suicide sniper to find us?” I asked.

  Nudge shrugged. “This place is out in the desert. And Ms. Hamilton told us about all the safety measures — the alarms, the lights, the radar. This is what we’ve been looking for.”

  A year ago I would have ignored what Nudge was saying and just browbeaten her into getting up, throwing her stuff together, and bugging out.

  And it would have worked. But we’d been through a lot in the past year. There had been a couple of times when the flock had almost split up. The stuff I had done to make sure we’d survive when the others were little was not the same stuff that would work now. I needed a new way to bend them to my will.

  Only problem was, I didn’t have any other way. And Nudge had found something she wanted even more — more than me, more than the flock, maybe even more than survival.

  She wanted to learn.

  “I’m tired of being scared, Max,” she said, her large, coffee-colored eyes pleading.

  “We all are! And as soon as we finish our big mission, we’ll be able to relax. I promise!”

  Note: I mentioned the Big Mission, the apocalypse, the end of the world, and so on. Basically, I’m supposed to “save the world.” As in, save the entire freaking world. Jeb said everything that had happened to me, to us, was to toughen me up and teach me survival skills. In a way, everything seems like part of that plan, like it’s connected. Like we have people trying to kill us partly because they think we’re genetic mistakes, dangerous experiments that have gone wrong and so need to be eliminated — and partly because other people think that if I save the world, it’ll cut way into their profit margins.

  I have to believe that if I keep trying to figure out the bigger picture, it’ll all make sense. If it doesn’t, I’ll be ready for a loony bin. And as hard as all that was for me to accept, it had to be even harder for the younger kids.

  “I just want to fit in,” Nudge said. She looked down at her tan feet, side by side on the new, clean carpet. “I want to be like other kids.”

  I breathed in to the count of four. “Nudge, most of the other kids here seem like spineless, gullible weenies who wouldn’t survive one day on their own,” I said gently.

  “That’s the point!” Nudge said. “They don’t need to! They’re not on their own — people take care of them.”

  “I’ve always taken care of you and the others as best I could,” I said, stung.

  Nudge’s eyes softened. “But you’re just a kid yourself.” She brushed her fluffy hair behind one ear. “Max, I want to stay.”

  Time to get firm.

  “We can’t stay,” I said briskly, standing up. “You know that. We have to go. This has been, well, not fun exactly but better than a punch in the gut. But it’s over now, and we have to get back to reality, however much that might suck.”

  “I’m staying.”

  Had I heard her right? Nudge was always on my team. She was the agreeable one. Sure, she talked a whole lot and had a weird interest in clothes and fashion, but she was my… Nudge. Almost never in a bad mood. Never fought with the others.

  “What?” I said, my mind reeling.

  “I want to be normal. I want to be like other kids. I’m tired of being a freak and having to run all the time and never being able to settle down. I want a home. And I know how to get one.”

  My chest felt tight, but I forced myself to say, “How?”

  Nudge mumbled something, her hair covering her face as she looked down.

  “What?” I asked again.

  “If I don’t have wings.”

  This time I’d heard it, though it was barely a mumbled whisper.

  “Nudge, you come with wings,” I said, not even understanding what she meant. “You’re the winged version. There’s no optional Nudge with no wings.”

  She mumbled something again, which sounded bizarrely like, “Take them off.” Then she was crying, and I sat back down and held her. Her tears got my shirt wet and her hair kept tickling my nose so I had to keep blowing little puffs of air to keep it away from my face. I was so horrified by what she’d said that it took a couple minutes to come up with something.

  “Nudge, getting your wings taken off won’t make you not a bird kid,” I said. I am not at my best in situations like this and mostly just wanted to smack someone and say, “Snap out of it!” So I was really stretching here. “Being in the flock is more than just about having wings. You’re different from other people all the way down to your bones and your blood cells.”

  She sobbed harder, and I backtracked quickly.

  “What I mean is, you’re special, every bit of you. More special than any other kid in the whole world, including the ones you want to be like. You’re beautiful, and powerful, and unique. Kids without wings don’t have your strength, your smarts, your determination. Remember that guy in the junkyard when we were stealing those bits of cable? Whose idea was it to hit him with a two-by-four, huh? Yours!”

  Nudge sniffled.

  “Remember when Gazzy was really starting to imitate things, all the time, and he kept sneaking up on us and making a police-siren sound, and we’d always freak? Who was it who taped his mouth shut with duct tape while he slept? You.”

  She nodded against my soggy shoulder.

  “And what about that time we tried to shoplift underwear from Walmart, and the store manager was chasing us? You ripped a fire extinguisher right off the wall and hurled it at his feet, didn’t you? He went down like a lead balloon, and we got away.”

  Nudge was silent. I was congratulating myself for averting disaster when she said quietly, “There’s a difference between being special and being a total freak. I’m a total freak. And I’m staying here.”

  19

  “THEN SHE SAID that she is a total freak and that she’s staying here. After everything I came up with, everything I could think of, she said she’s staying here.”

  My voice seemed unnaturally loud in the quiet night air, and I lowered it. Next to me, Fang leaned back against a huge boulder that was still warm from the day’s sun. After my unsuccessful emo-weep-apalooza in Nudge’s room, Fang and I had flown out into the desert, to a bare place where we could see anything coming from miles away.

  Fang frowned and rubbed his forehead. “She’s confused,” he said. “She’s just a kid.”

  “You know we have to go,” I said. “What if she really won’t come with us?”

  The moon lit the contours of his face. His e
yes were the same color as the sky — just as deep, just as dark.

  “How can we force her?”

  He’d said “we,” which made me feel better. But the hard truth was that we couldn’t force Nudge. “Even if we made her come,” I admitted, “she’d just hold it against us. She’d be mad.”

  Fang nodded slowly. “You have to want to be with someone, or it doesn’t work. You have to choose.”

  I searched his face, wondering if we were still talking about Nudge. “Uh, yeah,” I said awkwardly. I was just about to say something really important about Nudge, and it flew right out of my mind. “Um, and she…” I tried, but my voice trailed off as I got lost in the intensity of Fang’s expression.

  He leaned closer. When had he gotten so much bigger than me? Four years ago he’d been a skinny beanpole! Now he was —

  “I choose you,” he said very softly, “Max.”

  Then his hard, rough hand tenderly cupped my chin, and suddenly his mouth was on mine, and every synapse in my brain shorted out.

  We had kissed a couple of times before, but this was different. This time, I squelched my immediate, overwhelming desire to run away screaming. I closed my eyes and put my arms around him despite my fear. Then somehow we slid sideways so we were lying in the cool sand. I was holding him fiercely, and he was kissing me fiercely, and it was… just so, so intensely good. There aren’t any words to describe how good it was. Once I got past my usual, gut-wrenching terror, there was a long, sweet slide into mindlessness, when all I felt was Fang, and all I heard was his breathing, and all I could think was, “Oh, God, I want to do this all the time.”

  Gradually our kisses became less hungry and more comforting. Our arms relaxed as we held each other in the cool desert air. Our breathing calmed, and my thoughts began to sort of connect to each other again in comprehensible chunks. I started my inevitable hysterical freak-out, but I tried to do it very quietly inside my head, because this had been so special, and I didn’t want to ruin it. Like I usually did.