Nevermore: The Final Maximum Ride Adventure

that I’m ready to see what’s out there for me. In fact, I think I hear Fang calling my name now. He sounds so far away….

You guys? I don’t want to, like, freak you out at this point in our journey, but I think I’m starting to see that famous light at the end of the tunnel that you always hear about. This is where we part ways, I’m afraid.

Before I go, even if you’ve rolled your eyes at every bit of cheesy advice I pulled out of my butt when the flock needed some pep in their patooties these last few years, know that I mean this last little nugget from the bottom of my not-really-so-cynical little freak heart:

Save your world. Love it, protect it, and respect it, and don’t let haters represent it.

Don’t leave the saving to anyone else, ever, because, exhibit A—why, hello there!—it’s way too much for one person. And if you want to skip out on the responsibility train, my whole life—and death—will have been in vain.

It’s yours. It’s all yours for the taking!

You’re not going to waste it now, are you?

Epilogue the Last

THE

BEGINNING

One

WHEN I OPEN my eyes, everything is dim blue wonder. Playful shapes of light dance across my vision, diving, and dipping, then merging into shadow. I thought heaven would be brighter.

I’m spinning, and I watch in bug-eyed wonder as my hand moves in front of my face in slow motion, my fingers leaving streaks like sparkler trails in the dark as my eyes try to adjust to their movement.

I can feel the air as I push and poke, think I can taste the sound of what blue feels like—a whale’s warbling echo.

Or is that singing?

Of course my angels sound like strangled whales.

It’s wonderful feeling weightless, free. Almost like flying, but without even having to move—floating toward an easy, carefree eternity of being rocked like a baby, free of all burdens and responsibility. I actually sigh with relief.

Wait a minute. I just sighed. I’m… breathing?

Underwater?

I’m alive?

“Max,” I hear a voice call from above. What a magical sound that is.

Hmm? I think. Voice, is that you pestering me again? Do not disturb. Busy floating. Call if you want to talk rainbows.

A disembodied hand grasps mine and pulls me upward.

Are you there, God? It’s me, Max.

“Max!” The voice is clearer, immediate.

The water cradles me closer. Am I moving at all? Is this real?

My eyes trace slowly, lazily up the hand that’s entwined with mine, the squared fingers tan and vaguely familiar. And strong. Like the arm and shoulder the hand is connected to. The face finally registers just as we break the surface.

As does shock.

Thrashing, I stupidly suck in a huge breath through my nose, instead of using the gills I developed long ago. The harsh air rips through my lungs, and I double over, coughing and choking out water.

“I told you I would come back for you,” Dylan whispers, rubbing my back.

Two

FANG, DYLAN, ANGEL, and I sit perched on a large, exposed ridge of rock that rises high out of the water. We’re alive. A little soggy and a lot banged up, maybe, but still living, breathing.

Survivors.

Hawks soar above us, diving through the narrow crevices, their long brown feathers mirroring my own. As the sun warms my face, I long to join them.

I peer out over the vast strangeness of the landscape, a charred wasteland: the island, now broken up into hundreds of smaller islands, with narrow inlets snaking in and out of them; the spindly remaining trees, branchless, barkless, standing straight up like frightened soldiers with an army of dead brothers at their feet; the hardening ash, swirling into surreal silver spirals, hot air belching out of cracks in the crust to form thermal pools; and an unfathomable high-tech city of luxury, sealed in caves that are now buried below the turquoise water.

It’s been only a few hours since the Split—when the gash in the sky severed this new world from the old one—but we swam and limped and swerved into our new existence feeling changed.

But we haven’t changed, really; the rest of the world has. And somehow, this new world makes sense in a way that the old one never did.

Fang’s tying a singed but sturdy branch to my wing with a scrap of his T-shirt, creating a splint. My wing, though still painful, is already healing before my eyes. Because it was made to. We are not fragile creatures, after all.

And that is why we’re still here.

Dylan is watching Fang’s movements—deft, efficient—but there’s no threat there. Something has shifted.

In all of us.

“I read about something like this happening in Russia,” Dylan says, answering the question we’re all asking in our heads: What, exactly, was that thing that split our world in two? “The Tunguska event, I think it was, in the early twentieth century. A meteor exploded near the earth’s surface and wiped out miles and miles of forest.”

I can’t help but notice how confident he sounds, how he doesn’t look down when he talks, how he’s no longer embarrassed about his interest in science, his love of books. He’s just eager to share the knowledge that will help the group survive. He knows, as we all do, that we can use any help we can get.

“This seems a lot bigger than that one, though,” he says. “I wonder if anything like this is happening elsewhere—like a ripple effect or something. Just look at the sky. I’ve definitely never read about anything like that.”

The sky has taken on this bizarre, Technicolor hue that warps and shimmers like some psychedelic black-light poster—totally surreal. Yet… it feels familiar, somehow. Like I’ve been dreaming about it every night of my life, but I’ve just forgotten my dreams each day on waking to the life in which I have been trapped.

I keep thinking how amazing this place is going to be to explore by air.

Dylan stands up. “We should probably start combing the perimeter for possible other entrances to the caves. The main line I took everybody through is now underwater.”

“I’ll check out the tree-house village,” Fang says. “See if there’s anything left, start the rebuilding.” He gives my hand a tight squeeze, but that desperation, that urgency between us is gone. No insecurities. Max and Fang. Fang and Max. No longer a question. We just are.

Angel and I sit together on the edge, watching the guys soar through the air. We don’t need to talk, because everything is understood. The weirdness that had come between us is gone, and since resurfacing I haven’t heard a word from my Voice, trying to tell me what to do. There’s no leader now, no power. We’re all working—quickly, efficiently—together.

It’s well documented that I’ve never been very good at school or any of the other junk normal kids are supposed to slog through. That’s because I’m not normal, and never have been. None of us are. But in this postapocalyptic world, on this tiny, wrecked island, I have a feeling we’re going to excel.