Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports (Maximum Ride 3)

I sighed. Yes, it’s true, I am pretty wonderful, I thought to the Voice. But deep down, where I hoped the Voice couldn’t hear me, I did feel a little proud, a little heart-warmed.

Talk about manipulation.

“Okay, let’s go get her,” I told Nudge, and we swooped down and caught the Director with a good two hundred feet to spare.

129

After it was all over but the shouting, my only desire was to streak toward home. But of course I was outvoted, three to one. Even when I claimed that each of their votes counted for only half a vote, they still outvoted me.

Within hours we were at their chosen destination,

“Let me see the screen,” Angel asked, leaning closer.

Yes, we were at a cyber café in France. Why France? The food! The cute shoes! The fact that Total could go into restaurants and grocery stores!

“Now I can’t see,” Total complained. He leaned forward on his paws on the table.

“Coffee!” said Nudge happily, slurping from her mug. “Looove it!”

“Please tell me that’s decaf,” I said.

The screen dinged, and there was Fang’s face. And Gazzy. And Iggy, all crowding around their computer back in the States.

Fang! It felt like years since I’d seen him, talked to him. In the past three days, every memory I’d ever had of him had played through my brain. In the dungeon, it was thinking about him that had kept me going. Then getting that note from the mutant in Lendeheim, saying he was coming—it had been one of the best moments of my life.

“Where the heck were you?” I demanded. “I thought you were on your way!”

“Little Flyboy complication,” he said, his voice sounding funny through the computer. “Did you know they can’t swim? They sink like rocks. They don’t like water at all.”

His solemn face, his eyes as familiar to me as my own, seemed to make my world straighten out again. I laughed, and everything in me felt whole and complete. I knew the flock would stay together now, no matter what.

“You guys stay put,” I said. “We’ll come to you.”

“You got it,” he said, and my heart melted.

“Bring me something from France!” Gazzy cried in the background.

“Okay,” I promised him.

“Me too!” Iggy put in. “Like, a French girl!”

I groaned. Can we say ‘sexist pig’ one more time?

But he was my sexist pig, and I would see them all soon. I couldn’t wait.

Epilogue

WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS — FOR THE MOMENT, ANYWAY

130

When I saw them at last, on a barrier island off the coast of North Carolina, I almost couldn’t speak. Nudge, Total, Angel, and I coasted to a landing on the beach, feeling the sand squeak under our shoes.

There was a line of gnarled oaks at the top edge of the beach, and I looked through them, then checked my watch.

“You’re late.”

Fang stepped out of the shadows, eating an apple. He was dressed in black, as usual, and his face looked like a lumpy plum pie. But his eyes shone as he came toward me, and then I was running to him over the sand, my wings out in back of me.