34
I TOOK A big step back and found myself against a wall. “Whoa!” I said, holding up my hand like a traffic cop. Pod-Ig and Pod-El stopped. I smiled. “Give me a little space here. Please. I need room to read this stuff.” I turned the flyer over, and they edged away.
“We’re going outside again for a sec. Maybe you guys should go tell Gazzy about saving the world,” I suggested. “He didn’t look totally convinced.” Ella nodded eagerly. I felt kinda bad for sicking her on the Gasman, but if he’d been immune to her brainwashing up till now, I figured he was safe.
I watched through the window as they drifted toward the kitchen. My knees were shaking, and I could feel my heart racing.
“So, we’re all agreed that the lovebirds are totally, like, programmed, right?” I huffed.
“Affirmative,” Total said, nodding.
I sighed, annoyed. “So basically, in the middle of all this other crap, we’ve gotta go take out Ella’s flyer-wielding ‘friend.’ I have a can of whoop-butt at the ready for the cool kid who sucked out my family’s brains,” I said.
“Agreed,” said Dylan.
“So, we should go to the school tomorrow, right?” asked Angel. “Ella said everyone was going to meet these guys.”
“Yep,” I said glumly. I mean, I don’t go to school voluntarily as it is. So to go so I could track down the people who had sucked out my family’s brains made school even less appealing, if that’s possible.
“And Max,” said Angel, ever the bearer of bad news. “There’s something else.”
“Something else besides this?” I didn’t know how much more I could take.
“Are you talking about that video?” Total asked. Angel whirled around and glared at him.
“What video?” I asked.
“Fang’s… blog,” Total whispered, licking a paw casually, the way he did when he was embarrassed.
My jaw dropped. “Someone had better start talking!”
35
“WHAT VIDEO?” I asked again, my eyes like daggers.
Total flopped down on his belly and rested his head on his paws.
“Angel?” I pressed.
“I may have seen something on Fang’s blog,” she admitted reluctantly.
“And you didn’t tell me?!”
“You made us promise never to mention his name!” she said. I hate it when they throw unhelpful details in my face.
Dylan stepped away looking a little wounded, and I actually had to keep myself from pulling him back toward me. As if I didn’t have enough to deal with—now my heart felt like it had been run through a meat grinder.
I gritted my teeth. “Show me.”
Angel went in the house to get our laptop, then brought it outside. I watched over her shoulder as she called up Fang’s blog and clicked on a video link. I held my breath while it played. It was grainy, poor quality, like it had been shot on someone’s cell phone. It showed a hotel room and several older kids sitting around, some watching the news on TV in the background. I stared at their faces but hadn’t seen one of them before.
Then Fang and someone else came into the picture. The camera panned up to reveal her face, and I gasped. There I was, in a strange hotel room! Fang was grinning in that slightly crooked way that made my heart beat faster, and I grinned back and aimed a can of Cheez Whiz at him. He playfully opened his mouth, and the other kids laughed. Then the on- screen me actually shot Cheez Whiz into his mouth. We laughed some more, then I shot Cheez Whiz into my own mouth.
Except that it had never happened. I had no memory of that day. Weirdly, on the TV they were watching, the date that had flashed in front of the news was… today. Just a few hours ago.
I stared at Angel. “And I don’t remember this cute little scene because…?” Then it hit me, before she even answered. And my stomach dropped down somewhere around my knees.
“Max II.”
Angel nodded and paused the video.
