Nevermore: The Final Maximum Ride Adventure

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. Deja 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.

36

“IS SHE IN trouble? Are the others okay?” Fang demanded aloud, sitting up, alone in the darkness. What’s going on? he screamed inside his head.

But the Voice stayed silent, in that incredibly annoying way it had. It was gone. For how long, he didn’t know.

Go home to Max.

He had no idea if something was really wrong, but he couldn’t exactly ignore the Voice, either. When Max heard her Voice, she pretty much always listened to it. His Voice was saying that Max needed him more than ever.

He pretended he didn’t feel the way his heart was speeding up with excitement and anxiety, just thinking about going back.

No doubt his replacement would still be there, being all Dylan-rific and glaring at Fang with narrowed eyes. Well, too bad. What choice did Fang have? None. He would’ve liked to have just taken off right then, raced back to the flock. To Max. To see that she was all right. But Fang’s wing had been bothering him more and more, and he definitely wasn’t in flying shape yet.

So he’d be patient. He’d find the nearest town and then get on the Internet. He would do some research before he went racing back to the person he kept trying to leave.

Two hours later the sun was just beginning to rise, and Fang was seated at a computer in an Internet cafe. He sipped from a Styrofoam cup of coffee as the Google home page loaded.

Then he typed in two words: Maximum Ride.

37

INSTANTLY, RESULTS POPPED up on the screen—1,704,890 of them in 0.43 seconds. The very first one was an article titled “Winged Children Attend Private School!” Oh, great. Looked like more of that successful “keep a low profile” stuff was going on.

Fang clicked the link and began to read.

As it turned out, the article was a piece from the private school’s own online newspaper, the Newton News. It spewed out a bunch of glorified info about the flock, accompanied by a