whitecoat in my daymare. He let out an “
Then he rushed back at me, nothing like the thoughtful, eager-to-please guy he’d been when we’d first met. Where was he learning how to fight like this?
He whapped me on my side with a powerful wing, making me spin. I’d actually never been hit by a wing before. It’s feathery but packs a surprising punch.
“Oh, you can stand me,” Dylan said as I righted myself. “You’re just afraid to!”
“You’re a delusional freak!” I shrieked, trying to drop down to him so I could kick the side of his head. But he feinted and swung to the left, then he grabbed my ankle and yanked hard. My wings bent up painfully. I went horizontal so I could box his ears. He sucked in a breath and let go of me, then I managed a weak kick to his arm.
I got it now. That’s where he was learning to fight: from me!
“Why can’t you just get out of here and leave me alone?” I bellowed.
“I can’t!” Dylan shouted back, his face twisted with an anger I’d never seen from him.
“You can,” I said through gritted teeth. “Just point your wings that way and flap!”
“No, I mean, I really can’t!” A look of confusion crossed his too-good-looking face. Suddenly, he lost all bitterness and just hovered in the air near me, his wings working smoothly and steadily. He rubbed one hand across his chin. “I actually can’t,” he said, calmer now, looking at the ground far below us. “And you know why, Max. Don’t make me say it.” He sounded vulnerable, frustrated.
I’d been told that he had been created—literally created—just
“I know
“Never, Max,” Dylan said. “I’m programmed to imprint on you. You know it. I can’t fight the urge to be with you, no matter what.”
“That’s why you’ve been stuck to me like glue?” I said. “Because you have to?!”
Dylan frowned at me. “Yeah. I think.”
“You think?”
Suddenly his gaze was piercing, haunted. “I think I’d want to be with you even if I were programmed to do the exact opposite.”
There was nothing I could say to that. Instead, I folded back my wings and dropped fast to the ground.
5
AH, THE GOOD OLD DAYS, when we were running for our lives, eating out of Dumpsters, getting into life- and-death battles on a regular basis, unable to trust anyone…
That was before I’d found my mom, the woman who had supplied my second X chromosome. I don’t usually live with her. I’ll always be part of the flock first, and Valencia Martinez’s daughter second. Amazingly, she understands that. I love the fact that she exists and cares about me. But as I stepped into her house, I felt a burst of nostalgia for the days when life was hard and dirty and dangerous.
“Taste,” Nudge said, shoving a still-warm cookie at me.
My stomach was churning from my little aerial battle with the Cloned Heartthrob, and I wanted to say no.
But she stuck the cookie into my mouth, then peered at me anxiously as I tried not to gag. “Your mom’s teaching me how to cook. Too dry? Too chocolaty?”
“Too chocolaty is an oxymoron,” Iggy said from the couch, where he was sitting next to my half sister, Ella. “Okay, go on. You were just at the part where Tarzan kills the big ape.”
Ella grinned at me, then found her place on the page and continued reading to Iggy. (He’s blind. Lab accident.) As amazing as it was for me to have a real mom, it was equally amazing for me to have a real half sister. I’d been sharing her room at night for the past week, and the conversations we’d had in the dark, when everyone else was asleep, made me feel like a normal teenage girl. That is, until she started talking to me about her crush on Iggy. Then I felt like I was listening to her talking about my son. Who’s the same age I am…
