“He has issues,” Nudge whispered knowingly out of the side of her mouth. I laughed.
“Okay, guys,” I said. “New agenda. Forget looking for our parents. We’ve hit a dead end. And besides, I don’t think I could bear to give one of you up again right now. How about moving on to saving the world?”
“Yeah, let’s get out of here,” said Total, looking up at me.
“But where to?” asked Nudge.
“I’ve been thinking about that,” I began.
“Florida,” said Angel.
“What? Why?” I asked.
“I just feel like Florida is where we should go,” Angel said, shrugging. “Plus, you know, Disney World.”
“Yes! Disney World!” said Gazzy.
“Swimming pools, sunshine—I am so there,” Total agreed.
I looked at Fang. He shrugged. And actually, I didn’t really have any other plan.
Go with the flow, Max. Ride the flow.
After that pithy nugget from my Voice-turned-travel-agent, I said, “Well, okay, then. Florida it is. Grab your packs.”
PART 5
BACK TO SAVING THE WORLD
96
“I see. You had a plan.” Jeb poured himself a cup of coffee.
“Yeah,” Ari said sullenly. He wasn’t sure if Jeb was mad at him or not. Sometimes Jeb didn’t seem mad, but then it would turn out that he was. Ari hated that.
“You were going to steal Max for yourself.”
“Yeah.”
Jeb took a sip of his coffee. “And why were you going to do that?”
Ari shrugged. “I just want to have her to myself. I’m tired of chasing the others. I don’t care about them.”
“But you care about Max. How old are you now?”
“Seven.” Which was another thing. Jeb never remembered his birthday. “But I’m big. Bigger than you.”
“Yes.” Jeb made it sound totally unimportant. “Ari, I’m proud of you.”
“Wh-what?”
Jeb turned and smiled at him. “I’m proud of you, son. I’m impressed that you made a plan for yourself, and that you chose Max.”
Ari felt like the sun was shining warmly on his shoulders. But—was this a trap? He looked at Jeb warily. “Oh, yeah?”
“Yes. You’re only seven, but you’re thinking like a grown-up. It’s incredibly interesting. Tell you what—I want to see where this takes us. We’re going to find out where the flock has gone, and when we do, you can put your plan into action again.”
“My plan?”
“Yes, your plan to steal Max. I’ll help you make it happen. We’ll take out the rest of the flock, but you have to grab Max. Where were you going to take her?”
“A place.”
“We’ll work out the details later. In the meantime, get some rest, eat something. I’ve already got people tracking the flock.”
Slowly Ari turned and left the room. If this was true . . . An almost painful burst of joy exploded inside him. Dad was going to help. Dad had said he was proud of him. He was going to get Max all to himself. It was like Christmas and his birthday and sort of Halloween, all rolled up into one.
97
Have you ever—no, I guess you never have. If you’ve never flown with hawks, there’s no way you’d be able to understand what it’s like. Maybe if you’ve swum with sharks or something, not like at SeaWorld but in the ocean. That might be kind of close to this feeling.
I looked over at Nudge. Her face was serene, curly hair streaming behind her. We had just crossed the border from Virginia into North Carolina. The Appalachian Mountains rose beneath us, not as high and not nearly as pointy as the Rockies. These were older ranges, and time had softened them. See? Some of that geography stuff stuck with me after all.
We were high, high up, where oxygen was pretty thin. The sun was hot and bright on our backs and wings, and we had nothing but open sky all around us in every direction. Best of all, we’d spotted a flock of broad-winged hawks and joined them.
At first they’d scattered, wondering who the heck these huge, ugly raptors were dropping down on them, but then they’d cautiously circled back. Now we were wheeling in and among them, flying in a loose formation, the six of us and maybe twelve of them. I’d already hissed at Total to be very quiet and not make a sound. He huddled in Iggy’s arms, nose quivering, small black paws twitching as he chased them in his mind.
“This is incredible,” the Gasman said, tilting one wing down to soar in a huge circle around us. I grinned at him. Just two hours ago we’d been screeching out of Anne’s yard as Erasers swarmed out of vans, aiming their sights at us. Now we were free, breathing thin, pure air, surrounded by creatures who showed us what to aim for: their fierce, proud beauty, awesome grace and flying skill, and unjudging acceptance of beings so incredibly different from them.
It was a huge change from, say, Erasers, who mainly showed us how to not be clumsy, predatory idiots. And I for one was thankful.
“Maybe we could just live with them,” Nudge said wistfully.
“Yeah,” said Gazzy. “’Cause you love eating raw squirrels and snakes and stuff.”
“Eew. I forgot about that,” said Nudge.
“Anyway, guys, we can’t live with them,” I said, stepping up to my role as full-time rainer-on-parader. “We need to get farther away.”
“I want to go to Florida. You said,” Total chimed in, and though the hawks had warily accepted our speech, Total’s voice made them realize that he was alive. Several of them sheared off, effortlessly tipping a few feathers downward to shift their whole position in the airstream. It was so completely streamlined, the way they did it, and I practiced it myself.
We flew out of the hawks’ territory, and they left us with hoarse cries. One by one we sheared off, soaring in huge, symmetrical arcs and then joining up again.
“It’s like synchronized swimming,” Gazzy said, pleased.
“No, it’s like exhibition jets,” said Iggy. “Like the Air Force Thunderbirds. We need stuff so we can leave huge trails of colored smoke behind us.”
“Oh, yeah!” said Gazzy, totally psyched. “Like, we could get sulfur and—”
“And this would help our whole ‘lie low, disappear’ act how?” I said, bringing them back to reality.
“Oh, yeah,” said Iggy.
“Maybe someday,” I said, hating to see him and the Gasman so disappointed. “In the meantime, let’s do a vertical stack!” I said, angling upward into position. Fang put himself directly below me, carefully out of range of my feet, because he’s just paranoid that way. Iggy was below him, then Gazzy, Nudge, and finally Angel on the bottom, as white as the clouds we were flying over. We were six stacked bird kids, flying in unison, making only one shadow on the clouds. Totally cool.
Of course it was too freaking peaceful to last, right? I mean, there was no way I was going to wallow in serenity for more than two seconds, right?
No, of course not.
What happened was, Gazzy suddenly pushed upward into Iggy, wanting to knock him off balance, the way all of us have done to each other a million times. It would have been fine, and even funny, if Iggy hadn’t been holding, say, a mutant talking dog. For example.
But he was. And when Gazzy bumped up into him, he knocked Total out of Iggy’s arms. Total gave a startled yip and then he dropped like a piece of coal, right through the clouds and out of sight.
98
Angel reached for Total as he plummeted past her, but her fingers only grazed his fur.
“Total!” she cried, and Total started barking and howling, dropping farther away, his voice trailing off.
“Oh, crap,” I muttered, then veered down past Fang. “If I’m not back in two minutes, do not let Angel have another pet.” Then I tucked my wings behind me and started to drop.
“Max! Get Total!” Angel shouted after me, her voice panicky.
“No, I’m dropping straight down through clouds just for fun,” I said to myself. I know people always fantasize
about dropping through clouds or walking on clouds, landing on clouds. The thing is, clouds are wet. Wet and usually chilly. And you can’t see anything. So, not as high on the fun scale as you might think.
I followed the sound of Total’s howling, letting myself fall toward the earth. Suddenly the mist cleared and I saw the ground, green and brown, below me. Plus a bunch of white—
“Aaahh!” I cried, as I dropped out of the cloud and practically onto the back of a glider plane. My feet actually brushed its thin skin before I pulled my knees up and angled my wings sharply. I slightly scraped the plane’s right wing before I could pull enough to the side, then I moved my wings powerfully and rose up several yards, out of the way.
Gliders are virtually soundless. That was the lesson for today. This close I could hear the wind whistling against the smooth, streamlined plane, but there had been no sound to tip me off. That had been close. If I’d dropped in front of it . . .
I could no longer hear Total. Dang it! My eyes raked the air below me. I tucked my wings back and aimed downward again, shooting like a rocket instead of just letting myself fall. I poured on my new supernatural speed and roared toward the ground, and suddenly Total was in view and getting larger fast.
He was still howling pathetically. There was no time for me to slow down, so I just shot toward him, scooped him into my arms, then pulled out of the steep, steep dive about two hundred feet from the mountainside. Raising my face to the sun, I rushed upward, my wings feeling like steel, like fusion rockets. I looked ahead to make sure there was nothing above me, then I finally glanced down to check on Total.
He was crying. Large tears made wet streaks through his black fur. “You saved me,” he choked out. “I couldn’t fly. I was falling. But you got me.”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t let you fall,” I told him, and rubbed behind his ears. Still weeping, he licked my cheek gratefully. I clenched my teeth.
The rest of the flock was circling overhead—Fang had made Angel stay with him. She was peering down anxiously, and as soon as she saw me coming she hurried to meet me. “You got him!” she shouted happily. “You saved him!”
Total wiggled excitedly in my arms, and I let him go over to Angel’s embrace. He weighed almost half as much as she did, so she couldn’t hold him long, but right now they were crying in each other’s arms. Fine. Let him lick her. I rubbed my cheek against my sweatshirt shoulder.
Angel was actually crying herself, I realized. She almost never cried—none of us cried easily, and Angel was unnaturally stoic for a six-year-old. The fact that she was crying because she’d almost lost Total told me that she was majorly attached to him. Which wasn’t great. I mean, I liked Total fine, but we still didn’t know much about him. I wasn’t 100 percent sure we could trust him.
Or me, actually. My chip.
“Oh, Total,” Angel cried, her tears soaking his head. “I was so scared!”
“You were scared!” Total said, burrowing deeper into her arms. “I thought I was gonna plotz!”
“Okay, I better take him,” said Fang, holding out his hands. Total crept cautiously into his arms and tucked himself neatly into the crook of Fang’s elbow.
“I need wings,” said Total, still sniffling. “I need my own wings. Then things like that wouldn’t happen.”
Yeah, that was all I needed. A flying talking mutant dog.
99
At last, at last. Ari strode through the doors of a Best-Mart, feeling huge and powerful. Dad was going to let him have Max. She would be all his. Dad could have the others. Ari would have a chance to make Max like him. He remembered when they had fought in the sewer tunnel, in New York. That had been really bad. Max had acted as if she hated him. But now they would be friends. Soon. Very soon.
The Best-Mart was crowded—Atlanta was a big city. Ari and a couple of Eraser troops had hunkered down at a cheap hotel on the highway, waiting for dark. In the meantime, Ari had decided to celebrate.
Now he looked around the store. It was huge. Too bright, too noisy. Hot and full of people, all around. He wished he could drop a bomb on this whole place, watch it light up like a bonfire. He could do it—but he would probably just get in trouble. Again. And get the “don’t call attention to yourself” lecture. Again. Ari felt like, Hellooo, I have wings! I turn into a wolf! Blending is out of the question!
But anyway, this place was full of cool stuff. Ari deserved to have something really cool. This was the clothes department. Bor-ing.
Housewares. Bor-ing.
The automotive section, which seemed as if it should be interesting but was actually bor-ing because all it had was, like, oil and windshield cleaner.
Oh, so gross, the underwear department. There was a lady right there, holding a bra! Out in the open! Oh, my God—was she crazy? Ari turned away and kept walking, fast.
Finally—here, at the back of the store. Electronics. Ari’s heart sped up as his eyes darted past the rows of TVs, all tuned to the same station. Maybe thirty of them. It was so awesome. Ari could sit here all day, watching them. But that wasn’t all. There were boom boxes, cool phones, Walkmans, MP3 players. It would be great to be able to listen to cool music all the time.
Then he saw it. The huge Game Boy display. There were eight Game Boys, all different colors, cabled to a shelf. Next to them was a TV, and it was playing videos of all the different Game Boys, like, having adventures. The blue one was surfing, and the red one tried to break out through the TV, and the silver one got a tattoo. It was the coolest thing Ari had ever seen. He stood there, mesmerized, for a long time.
“Uh, sir?”
Ari turned and saw a salesman wearing a red vest.
“Can I help you, sir? These babies are really hot. Can’t keep ’em on the shelves. Would you care to see one?”
“Yeah.”
The salesman blinked at the sound of Ari’s gravelly, morph-roughed voice. But he regained his composure and managed a smile. “Certainly.” He pulled a set of jingling keys from his pocket. “Now, what color would you like, sir? They all have their merits.”
“The red one.” The one that had tried to break out of the TV.
“I like this one too.” The salesman unclipped the red Game Boy from its cable and handed it to Ari. “You’ll see it has all the advanced features, including—hey, wait a minute, sir.”
Ari was already walking down the aisle toward the exit.
“Sir—wait! You can’t take that out of this department! If you want one, I have to ring it up for you!”
His voice sounded like a gnat buzzing around Ari’s head. Ari opened the Game Boy and pressed the on button. The screen flickered to bright, colorful life. He smiled.
The salesman caught up with him and grabbed his arm. Ari shrugged him off easily. He thumbed through the menu and chose a game. Another man, larger, stood in front of him, arms crossed.
“You’re not going no—,” he began, but Ari snapped out his fist and punched him without even looking. The man’s breath left him in a whoosh and he doubled over.
Ari walked right through the exit doors. Alarms sounded. A tinny voice said, “You have triggered our security system. . . .” That was all Ari heard because he was out in the parking lot. His thumbs started working the controls. This was a good day. A favorite song popped into his head, and he started rapping under his breath about “a kid who refused to respect adults.”
Ari had his Game Boy. It was incredibly awesome. And he’d gotten it for himself. He didn’t need anyone to give him stuff.
He became vaguely aware of a ruckus behind him. Turning, he saw an unarmed rent-a-cop holding a billy club, and four store employees, vests almost as red as their faces. Ari sighed. They always had to make things difficult. Well, he could simple things up real fast.
Whirling, he went for a full-out morph. As always, it was kind of uncomfortable, like getting pulled in all directions till his joints popped. His jaw elongated, his eyes yellowed, long, sharp canines pushed down through his gums. He raised his hair
y, claw-tipped paws high, one of them incongruously holding a red Game Boy.
“Arrgh!” He’d practiced this in the mirror, the raised claws, snarling muzzle, angry expression, the roar. It all came together in a terrifying, grotesque picture, and now it had the intended effect: Everyone stopped dead. They gasped in fright.
Ari grinned, knowing how horrible he looked when he gave a morphy grin. He looked like a nightmare, like anyone’s worst nightmare.
“Arrgh!” he roared again, raising his claws higher.
That did it. The employees scattered, and the rent-a-cop put a hand over his chest and turned pale.
Ari laughed and loped out of the parking lot, waiting until he was out of sight to unfurl his heavy, awkward wings and take off.
He loved his Game Boy.
100
That night we crashed in General Coffee State Park, not far from Douglas, Georgia. Fang and I scouted around for a few minutes and found a scooped-out indentation in the face of some limestone rock.
“Not as good as a cave, but decent,” Fang said.
I looked at it and nodded. “This will keep us out of the wind, and it probably won’t rain. Looks pretty clear.” I turned to get the others, but Fang put his hand on my arm.
“You okay?” he asked. “What happened back there at Anne’s?”
Just like that, it all came rushing back—my day. Being trapped in a school full of—enemies, teachers, Pruitt. Thinking Sam was an Eraser. Leaving Anne’s house, knowing she was responsible for a lot of our situation.
Suddenly I was exhausted. “It was pretty much business as usual.” Which was the sad truth.
“What’s in Florida?” Fang asked. “Why does Angel want to go there?”
“I don’t know. Maybe just Disney World?” I looked at him. “You think it’s something else?”
He frowned, then shook his head. I noticed his hair was getting long again, growing out from his funky New York haircut. That seemed like a lifetime ago. “I don’t know what to think,” he said, “I’m tired of having to think about it, you know?”