I had no idea what to do. I’d already offered popcorn and hot chocolate. What else was there?
“It’s just getting worse and worse,” moaned Nudge. “First it was just stupid gossip. Now I’m an outcast. They all think I’m some kind of circus sideshow. As usual.”
“Come here,” I murmured, putting my arms around her. “I know it’s a drag to have everyone at school treat us like lepers”—to put it mildly—“but they’re just gullible, prejudiced jerks. Typical Avian-American prejudice.” I eased her head onto my shoulder, which I should have lined with paper towels first. “I’m really sorry Sloan was such a butthead,” I said soothingly. “But sweetie, he’s so unworthy. You deserve better than that. You deserve someone who’s going to love you, wings and all.”
I’d hardly ever seen such sadness on her face. “That’s easy for you to say. You have two guys who love you.” She looked up at me, and I didn’t know what to say to her. “I don’t have anyone.”
I swallowed nervously. Guiltily.
“That’s not true. You have us,” I blurted out, knowing full well how lame that was. The flock was awesome and all, but it just can’t be compared to the rapture of being loved, held, adored. In that… different way.
I quickly shook off the pleasurable shiver that shot down my spine as I remembered spending the night on the floor next to Dylan.
“Listen. Soon we’ll blow this Popsicle stand and move on, and then you’ll never have to deal with any of them ever again. Until we get rich and famous, and then you can have fun spurning them when they beg for your autograph.” I smiled, pulling her close, but Nudge wasn’t amused.
“I don’t want to move on,” she cried, pulling out of my arms. “Can’t you see that? I don’t want to ‘spurn’ them!” She made air quotes with her fingers, glaring at me. How had I become the enemy here, exactly? “I just want to—” Her voice broke, and she drew in a trembling breath. “I just want to be liked by them, Max!” And then Nudge burst into tears. Again. Crap.
“Oh, sweetie,” I said helplessly, uncomprehending. I had spent very little energy in my life trying to be liked by anyone. “Come here. Come sit down,” I said, taking her hand and tugging her toward the bed.
Then I saw that the entire thing was covered with crumpled-up pieces of paper. A pair of scissors was lying on top of a stack of teen magazines, all of which had been mangled and cut to pieces.
“Nudge? What’s this?”
Nudge blew her nose miserably and gestured at a pile of blocky, badly cutout shapes. “Those are for my scrapbook.”
I picked up one of the shapes. It was a photo of a pretty teenage model, smiling brightly at the camera, wearing some sort of sparkly outfit with furry boots. “Blech,” I said, and put the photo down. The next photo was another pretty model. So was the next one. And the next.
“What kind of scrapbook are you making, exactly?” I asked Nudge cautiously.
Her bottom lip quivered. “I want to be like them. Like those girls.”
I raised my eyebrows. “You want to be a model?”
“No.” She sighed dramatically, rolling her eyes. “I want to not be a freak.”
“Nudge, normal is way overrated….” I began. Déjà vu.
“Oh, yeah, it’s superlame to just want to have friends, to just want to be kissed, like everyone else.” She laughed bitterly. “You sound like the whitecoats. Being lab experiments doesn’t make us better, Max. We aren’t enhanced, we’re mutants.”
Wow. I had to remind myself that this was not the sweet Nudge I knew. This was a love-scorned girl who had just been through a day of despicable bullying. I was lucky she wasn’t actually breathing fire.
“And if we were normal, there wouldn’t be people trying to kill us,” she pointed out.
“Well, probably,” I admitted. “But I guarantee you people at school would still do mean things to nice kids for no reason. That’s just the way life works.”
Nudge shook her head. “No. You know what? There’s only one answer to all our problems.”
This didn’t sound good. “What is it?” I asked warily.
She snatched the scissors off the bed and looked so utterly reckless that it sent me into a panic.
“Nudge!” I gasped.
But Nudge turned from me and eyed a poster on the wall—a publicity poster of the whole flock, from our days as a flying sideshow—and then, lightning-quick, she let the scissors fly with as much skill and fury as she’d displayed battling Erasers. With a hollow thud, the blades struck the image of Nudge’s wing and embedded themselves deep in the wall.
I swallowed, my throat suddenly dry. My own wings twitched under my shirt.
Then she clutched one of her normal-girl photos to her chest, her eyes fierce with determination. “The only answer to all our problems is getting rid of our wings,” she said. “Removing them forever. I’m gonna do it someday, Max. I swear it.”