“I mean, the air, and we’re up so high, and no one’s after us, and we’re all together, and we hit IHOP for breakfast.” She looked over at me, her brown eyes bright and untroubled. “I mean, God, we’re just up here, and it’s so cool, and down below kids are stuck in school or, like, cleaning their rooms. I used to hate cleaning my room.”
Back when she had a room. I sighed. Don’t think about it.
Then, in the next second, I choked. I think I made some kind of sound, then a blinding, stunning pain exploded behind my eyes.
“Max?” Nudge screamed.
I couldn’t think, couldn’t speak, couldn’t do a thing. My wings folded like paper, and I started to drop like a hailstone.
Something was incredibly wrong.
Already.
68
Tears streamed from my eyes, and my hands clutched my head to keep the pain from splitting my skull wide open. The only semicoherent thought I had was Please let me go splat soon, so this freaking pain will stopstopSTOP.
Then Fang’s arms, ropy and hard, scooped me up, and I felt myself rising again. My wings were mushed between us, but nothing mattered except that my brain had been replaced by a bursting nova of raw agony. I had just enough consciousness to be embarrassed at hearing myself moan pitifully.
Death would have been so great just then.
I don’t know how long Fang carried me. Slowly, slowl
y, the pain leached away. I could almost open my eyes a slit. I could swallow. Cautiously, wincing, I let go of my head, half expecting huge shards of skull to come away in my hands.
I blinked up at Fang, his dark eyes looking down at me. He was still flying and carrying me.
“Man, you weigh a freaking ton,” he told me. “What’ve you been eating, rocks?”
“Why, is your head missing some?” I croaked. His mouth almost quirked in a smile, and that’s when I knew how upset he’d been.
“Max, are you okay?” Nudge’s face was scared, making her look really young.
“Uh-huh,” I managed. I just had a stroke or something.
“Find a place to land,” I told Fang. “Please.”
69
An hour or so later, I thought that I had recovered—but from what? We were making camp for the night.
“Yo, watch it!” I said. “Clear more of that brush away—we don’t want the whole forest to burn down.”
“Guess you’re feeling like your old self,” Fang murmured, kicking some dead branches away from where Iggy was lighting a fire.
I shot him a look, then helped Nudge and Angel surround the pile of kindling with big stones. Why was the blind guy playing with matches, you ask? Because he’s good at it. Anything to do with fire, igniting things, exploding things, things with fuses, wicks, accelerants . . . Iggy’s your man. It’s one of those good/ bad things.
Twenty minutes later, we were exploring the limits of what could be cooked on sticks over an open fire.
“This isn’t half bad,” the Gasman said, eating a curled piece of roasted bologna off his stick.
“Don’t do bananas,” Nudge warned glumly, shaking some warm mush off into the bushes.
“S’mores,” I cooed, mashing a graham cracker on top of the chocolate-and-marshmallow sandwich I had balanced on my knee. I took a bite, and pure pleasure overwhelmed my mouth.
“This is nice,” the Gasman said happily. “It’s like summer camp.”
“Yeah, Camp Bummer,” said Fang. “For wayward mutants.”