Maximum Ride Forever (Maximum Ride 9)

She looked down at me sadly, unblinkingly, for a long time. Finally, she stepped off the lightning rod and fluttered down to the ground. “I should get going, too,” she said.

With those words, the reality finally hit home: I was going to lose her—again. As hard as I’d tried to keep us together through the years, she was leaving, along with everyone else—my mom, Ella, Dylan, Akila, Fang, Gazzy, Iggy…

The anger disappeared, and I reached out and clutched her to me in a fierce hug. What else could I do?

“Please,” I whispered. “You can’t go.”

Angel wrapped her arms around my neck and I pressed my face into her ashy, once-fluffy locks, remembering how I use to smooth her hair from her face when she was little, how I’d promised I would protect her. I imagined Angel out in that awful new world alone, without her flock. Without me.

I’m not your baby anymore, Max, her voice said in my head. I never really was.

She wriggled out of my grasp and turned to Nudge and Total. “Take care of each other, okay?”

Nudge nodded and hugged her tearfully, and Total licked her face, leaving odd clean streaks. Angel unfurled her wings, her primary feathers still tipped with crud from the ash and rain. But before she took off, she turned back to me.

“One day you’ll understand,” she said, her face an infuriating picture of Zen confidence. “You might even thank me.”

“I seriously doubt that,” I muttered.

I guess we can’t all be enlightened. Angel grinned. See you in Russia.

Moments later, I watched the little kid I’d raised and loved and butted heads with fly away from me. I watched her curls bouncing as she pushed off, waiting to see if she’d turn her head again, but she never did.

Instead, Angel’s white wings rose through t

he ash, and soon she was a speck I couldn’t tell apart from the rest of the sky.

24

I STOOD NEXT to the mound where we’d buried Akila, staring up at the churning sky and biting hard on the insides of my cheeks as I tried to keep from screaming.

They’ve left. They’ve really left.

Sure, we’d had our ups and downs. The boys had splintered off briefly before. Fang had gone off on his own more than once. Iggy had joined a cult. Nudge once wanted to cut off her wings. Gazzy almost blew up his sister, and Angel had always had a bit of a God complex.

But this was the first time that the flock had really, truly, broken up, and it was the worst possible timing. After the world ends, you really need someone you can count on, you know?

No problem. Just leave it to Numero Uno to pick up the pieces. As usual.

I went back into the house, past Nudge and Total, who were sitting dejectedly at the kitchen table.

“I used to think you couldn’t trust adults,” I announced, banging open the cupboards to search for anything we could use. “But really, you can’t trust anyone. Not kids, not mutants.”

My fingers trembled with rage. I swiped my arm across the shelf and Total whistled as dishes clattered to the floor. I flung jars of rotten Vegemite at the wall and stabbed a dull, useless knife into the counter. Nudge gasped.

“Nothing, nothing, nothing!” I bellowed.

I collapsed onto the couch and raked my hands back through my snarled hair, trying to get a grip on myself. “How am I going to do this alone? There’s no one left.”

“Gee, thanks, Maximum,” Total said pointedly, and strode out, his black nose pointed in the air.

“Come on,” I called. “I didn’t mean—”

“That we don’t count?” Nudge said coolly from the kitchen, where she was opening other cupboards. “Even though we’re the only ones who stayed with you?” Her cheek was healing, but there was still a huge, jaw-shaped wound, and it made her expression hard to read.

I sighed. “Of course you count, Nudge. Let’s just go back to the island, all right? Like we said.”

“There’re no boys left is what you meant,” she continued bitterly, cocking her head. “No Dylan. No Fang. No more cute guys to obsess over you.”