Four pairs of eyes turned toward me, pleading. The flock waited for my decision.
“Yeah,” I said wearily. “Getting out of here sounds good.”
The flock responded with the biggest smiles I’d seen in weeks.
But as we raced through the house gathering our things, Total weaving between my legs, barking orders about packing techniques, two thoughts wouldn’t leave my mind: Where is Dylan? And: What about Jeb?
I didn’t know why Dylan had done what he’d done or where he’d disappeared to, so there was nothing I could do about the first question, regardless of how confused and devastated it made me feel. But Jeb was here, out in the Oregon air, unconscious, with broken ribs that I’d caused. If we left him, he would freeze during the night.
I was helping Angel and Nudge carry their bags to the chopper when I finally made my decision. I flagged down my mom, who was turning off the lights and shutting the front door. “Wait—we need to bring Jeb,” I blurted before I could change my mind.
“What?” Angel hissed, recoiling in surprise.
Iggy was indignant. “Max, he wanted to kill Fang, we can’t just—”
“We can’t just leave him out there to die,” I cut him off. “He saved our lives once, and we owe him this. No matter what he’s done.”
Sometimes being a leader isn’t about winning. Sometimes it’s about doing what’s right, instead of what’s powerful.
“We’ll keep him under lock and key,” my mom agreed, giving me a look that said I’m proud of you. “He’s a sick man, but not an evil one.”
She immediately set about tying up Jeb’s hands and feet while the rest of us loaded Fang into to the chopper on a makeshift stretcher. Total had to be forcefully scooped and carried into the back, protesting all the while that he couldn’t go anywhere that might be too far away from Akila. Mom reassured Total that Akila would be waiting for him at the place we were headed. She refused to divulge anything further.
The pilot started the helicopter, and the deep noise of the blades filled our ears as we fastened our seat belts.
I sighed as the chopper lifted off the ground and we left everything—all of our emotional baggage, Ari, a hundred dead Erasers, and the empty house in Newton—behind us. I wondered briefly what the neighbors would think of the mess we’d left in our wake, and couldn’t help smiling.
73
WE WERE FIVE hours into a very long flight on Nino Pierpont’s fancy private jet when Fang’s eyes finally fluttered open.
“Fang!” I shrieked. I was so ecstatic I almost kissed him right there, in front of everyone. Instead I settled for hugging him tightly, like my life depended on it—way too roughly for his injuries.
“Max?” he croaked. “What… happened?”
I took a deep breath and told Fang that he had been hurt really badly in a fight, and that when the fight was over, he was unconscious. I told him that Ari had been taken down in the fight, but I didn’t mention Dylan. I told him how my mom had come for us, how it turned out that, in the end, Jeb was just another stupid whitecoat who had lost his mind. I was breathless, talking as fast as I could. I was afraid if I stopped talking, even for a second, I’d start sobbing again.
“Whoa, there.” Fang smiled and reached up, tracing a hand down the side of my face, winding strands of my hair around his fingers. “Stop talking and let me just tell you how great it is to wake up staring at your face. Okay?”
That was maybe the most direct thing Fang had ever said to me. A lump formed in my throat. “Okay,” I croaked.
“Okay, so… it’s really great to wake up looking at your face.” He blinked, like his eyes were still trying to focus. “It’s… beautiful, actually.”
The lump in my throat got bigger. Way bigger. “I thought…” I whispered, tears pricking my eyes. “I thought you were never going to wake up.”
“Come on. You really thought I’d leave you right when things were getting interesting?” Fang gave a gruff little laugh that sounded more like a cough. “Not in a million years.” His eyes turned serious then, and he took my hand, bringing it to his cracked, swollen lips. “I’ll never leave you, Max. Not ever again.”
My heart leaped. I squeezed his hand and nodded. “Me neither.”
For the rest of the flight I didn’t budge from Fang’s side. Sometimes I just sat there and watched his bruised face as he slept. Sometimes I woke from my own dozing to see his dark eyes watching me, as if I were a stranger and he was meeting me for the first time. And the whole time, awake or asleep, Fang never let go of my hand. Not once.
And here’s the weird thing: Even with all the awful stuff that had gone on, that was still going on, I felt content. I felt whole.
I felt right.
I wasn’t afraid of anything anymore. With Fang and the flock by my side, I could face anything. Come what may.
“So, where are we going, again?” Fang asked, yawning. He squinted out the window.
“To the one place in the world where you’ll be safe,” my mom said, turning around in her plush seat a few rows ahead of us. “To paradise.”
Book Four
PARADISE
74
SIX BIRD KIDS and one very jet-lagged flying dog stepped off Pierpont’s plane into glorious sunshine and tropical humidity.
We left Jeb on the plane; my mom said that this place had a medical team who would deal with him, and that they knew to keep him under guard.
“Just a short walk to your new home,” my mom said, and soon we were parading after her through the welcome shade of the rain forest.
I looked around me, struck dumb with wonder. Vines snaked up towering trees fuzzy with neon moss. Birds twittered and trilled all around us. Through a window of branches, we could see distant cliffs falling sharply to a beach of bleached sand and turquoise water.
My mom was right: If you looked up “paradise” in the dictionary, this would be it.
“Whoa,” I breathed.
“To our new life,” Fang said, threading his fingers in mine, his smile implying so many things we hadn’t been able to put into words: Together. Our new life together.
I grinned, dizzy with the possibilities of this place.
“Oh, my gosh!” Nudge said breathlessly. “Iggy! Feel the moss on the trees. Everything is lush and gorgeous and so green. And there’s parrots!” she squealed. “That’s the noise you hear above, that weird cackle. There are tons of ’em—blue and red and yellow. They’re huge!”
Gazzy flew up to join the parrots and started swinging from vines, Tarzan-style, and Iggy zoomed up after him, deftly maneuvering through the trees.
“Quickest way to ruin our first day in paradise? Scraping your feathered butts off the jungle floor!” Total yelled, and Gazzy hung upside down by one foot, giggling maniacally.
“Ooh, I bet there are waterfalls, too,” Nudge continued, ignoring the boys. “Tropical paradises always have waterfalls! Don’t they?”
My mom smiled indulgently. “They do, and there are.”
“Tree house!” Gazzy yelled from above. “Oh, man! You guys, look at all the tree houses!”
The tree houses were camouflaged so well that I hadn’t noticed them at first, but he was right—now I could see their shapes forming a village high in the jungle’s canopy.
A village just for us.
“They have our names on the doors!” Gazzy yelled. “Nudge, this one’s yours.”
“Really?” Nudge bolted up there as fast as her wings would carry her.
Nudge’s tree house was the most chic-looking of all the tree houses: ultramodern, with sleek, clean lines. It was minimal—almost delicate—and seemed to be held together by nothing more than sap. “A canopied bed!” I heard Nudge exclaim from inside. This was followed by a “Gazzy! Off!” I snorted with laughter.
“I think that’s yours over there, Total,” my mom said, pointing to an enormous mansion of a tree house.
“Mine?” Total asked, gaping upward. “Oh, Dr. M! Look at those g
lorious arches, the Grecian lines! Plush, with understated elegance and seaside charm,” he gushed. “So classy! So regal! It’s so… me.”
Just at that moment we heard a bark—and it wasn’t Total’s high-pitched yap, but the joyful call of a much bigger canine. A wet nose peeked out from between some of the tree-house branches above.
“Akila!” Total was off in a flash to be reunited with his furry lady love.
Wow. They really have thought of everything, I thought.
Laughing, Angel, Fang, and I followed my mom farther down the path.
“This is you, Max.” My mom nodded up at a mammoth banyan tree.
My new home was almost impossible to see if you didn’t know it was there—the perfect hideout. At the top of the towering trunk, a canopy of leaves reached for the sun.
“It’s beautiful,” I said in awe.
“It suits you,” Fang said from behind me, his breath making the hairs on my neck stand up.
I looked at the brittle, gnarled roots snaking all the way up and around the trunk, creating a hard, protective layer for the tree’s core. Maybe Fang wasn’t so far off.
“How do we get in?” I asked.
My mom turned and smiled at me. “You fly.”
75
I COULD FLY in here, I thought breathlessly. Inside my own house.
The tree was completely hollow. The ceiling was made of thick protective glass, but it was all the way up top, near the banyan’s broad, glossy leaves. Strips of sunlight filtered through the canopy, reminding me of old, dusty churches with swallows darting among the rafters.
Angel stayed with me to explore the place after Mom had taken Fang somewhere—who knows where; maybe a floating tree-house hospital in paradise?—to remove the bandages from his quickly healing wounds. As we explored, all kinds of cool little details caught our eyes. The furniture looked like the tree itself had just grown naturally into rough, chairlike shapes, and tunnels from the main room led to elaborate balconies with comfy hammocks. It all looked kind of haphazard, but at the same time beautifully, thoughtfully designed.
Someone knows me very well, I thought.
I pressed a button on one wall and a metal ladder spiraled silently down to the jungle floor below. Mechanical. Fancy.
I soared upward, the wood circling around me in a blur, and found the latch to a door in the glass ceiling that lead to the roof. There was a small balcony high above the jungle’s canopy where I could see everything: the towering cliffs on the other side of the island, the sea lapping against the sandy coast… and, of course, it was an ideal spot for spying on my wayward flock.
The perfect perch. Angel and I sat there together for a moment.
I was dreaming of long days of swimming, cliff-diving, soaring above the most beautiful place I’d ever seen, so I was surprised to suddenly catch sight of Angel’s distant, unsettling look.
“What, honey?” I said gently.
She looked up at me urgently. “I want to stay here forever,” she said, gripping my hand tightly. “Max, I never want to leave.”
“You won’t have to, sweetie,” I promised her. I peered at the banyan’s sturdy silhouette and beamed. “None of us will ever have to leave again.”
I felt so much relief as I said it, knowing it was true. But Angel was still staring at me, like she didn’t want to let me out of her newly recovered sight. Her eyes were huge in her little face, and she seemed pretty spooked.
“Angel?” I said uneasily. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah,” she said, but it came out as a stressed little squeak. “It’s just… nothing.”
I put my arm around her. “I know you’ve been through a lot lately, but that’s all over now. You can trust my mom. We’re thousands of miles from anyone who would hurt you, and totally off the radar. It’s safe here. Really.”
Angel let out her tense breath and smiled. “Thanks, Max.” She walked over to the doorway. “I’ll be at my tree house if you want to find me.”
As I gave Angel a quick good-bye hug, I noticed that a thick branch connected my home to another tree house. I shimmied across it, wondering which member of the flock’s butt I’d have to kick in the mornings, weighing the pros and cons of waking up to Nudge’s sugary pop music versus being downwind of Gazzy’s infamous morning emissions.
Instead, the bold, black letters staring back at me from the wooden plaque on the door caused a helpless little squeak to come out of my mouth: DYLAN.
Does. Not. Compute.
That name on the door was like a hard fist to my stomach, and I felt all the stuff I’d been so good at swallowing come back up: Anger that he’d almost killed Fang in front of all of us. Hurt and confusion over his complete freak-out. Shame for all the stupid, fluttery feelings I’d felt when he looked at me with those ocean eyes of his. Clearly he was not my perfect other half. Everything came spewing out like some sort of emotional vomit.
Romantic, huh?
And because the universe just loves to screw with my emotions, I felt a hand on my shoulder right then, and I nearly jumped out of my skin. Was he…?
“Don’t worry, Max,” my mom said, striding past me.
I exhaled. The ladder—I’d left it down.
With one hard wrench, she pried the nameplate off the door and tossed it out of the tree like yesterday’s garbage. “That sign will be replaced.” Mom sighed.
“Uhhh,” I groaned, totally incapable of any other response. I clenched my jaw and concentrated on pushing every stupid thought of Dylan back down again.
“Fang! Up here! Come see your house,” Mom called from the balcony. She looked back at me with… what? Pity? “I’m sorry, honey,” she said, giving my arm a squeeze. “He wasn’t… expected.”
76
“THERE’S SOMETHING ELSE you need to know,” my mom said when we all met up again, and Fang’s eyes flicked to mine.
Was it all too good to be true?
“What?” I asked uneasily.
“Let me show you,” she said, and then she called the rest of the flock to join her.
After a short, brisk hike through the jungle, during which my anxiety steadily grew, the flock finally emerged to face the spectacular cliffs we’d seen from our houses. My heart leaped. I couldn’t wait to dive over the edge and weave through all those crazy crevices, the wind surging through my feathers.
But before I could take off, my mom put two fingers to her mouth and let out a crisp, high-pitched whistle. A signal. The flock looked around, confused. The place seemed abandoned.
Then slowly, tentatively, people started emerging from the surrounding trees and from fractures in the rocks. I remembered what Angel had said about my mom earlier, that she was a traitor, and had a moment of panic. Hostiles?
I immediately took a defensive stance and the flock followed suit, ready to attack, but then I realized something.
“There aren’t any adults,” I said, relaxing. “It’s all kids.”
Their expressions were serene, welcoming, and as they came closer I saw scales, tails, metal arms.
“They’re mutants!” Gazzy squeezed Iggy’s arm.
“Yes,” my mother answered. “All enhanced kids. Just like you.”
As if to punctuate her words, a girl who looked about eight years old unfurled a pair of speckled black and gray wings, laughing to her friends. They all soared upward ten, twenty, thirty feet.
“Just like us,” Nudge whispered, echoing my mom.
Even Fang was grinning. It was impossible not to. After so many years of being experimented on, of doing what everyone else wanted us to do, of running, running, running, we were finally in a place where we belonged.
“Max,” Mom said, and I followed her gaze to the jungle behind us.
There, with a ginormous grin on her face, was my half sister.
“Ella!” I squealed as she barreled into me for a bear hug. I hadn’t seen her since our mom had her rescued and squirreled away from the 99% cult, who almost had her brainwashe
d. Back before Angel disappeared.
In the middle of our embrace, someone tapped on Ella’s shoulder and she turned around to see Iggy, looking shy and totally lovestruck. Her face lit up in a huge grin and she leaned in and kissed him, right there in front of all of us, and then Iggy wrapped her up in a long, tender hug.
Watching them, I was drunk with love and hope and happiness all at once, and as the other mutant kids on the cliffs started cheering, I looked at Fang standing beside me, silent and strong. His fingers found their way to mine and his smile said everything I couldn’t.
We were finally, truly home.
77
THEN THE PARTY started.
We walked into a hidden cove with lush green foliage surrounding a breathtaking waterfall, just like my mom had promised. I was waiting for unicorns to come galloping out and fairies to start singing.
Nudge waded into the water, grinning as two girls her age chatted her up, their wings unfurled proudly around them. She looked so happy, so comfortable in her own skin.
Iggy did a perfectly executed back dive with a half twist off the cliff, slicing the shallow water next to Ella with minimal splash, and I thought she was going to faint right there.
Even Angel was looking more like her former self, laughing and splashing with Total and Akila as the Gasman torpedoed into them underwater.
Fang and I were seated with Mom and Nino Pierpont at a wooden table off to the side, watching the festivities. Pierpont looked impossibly cool in his deliberately rugged, undoubtedly expensive trekking outfit as he watched us wolf down a huge meal of braised pork and paella, prepared by his bustling team of private chefs. If there is a way to our hearts, it is definitely though our stomachs—which is why I was getting a little nervous.
“So, what’s the catch?” Fang asked, obviously thinking the same thing.
Nevermore: The Final Maximum Ride Adventure Page 16
