Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports

28

"Is he your boyfriend?" Ella had been incredibly happy to see me. We'd hugged for a long time, until I heard Fang sigh impatiently. Now we were in her room, where she was changing out of her soccer uniform into regular clothes, while Fang made lame, stilted conversation with Dr. Martinez in the living room.

Regular people's backs look so naked and...flat without wings. Just an observation.

"Fang? No! No, no," I said quickly. "No. I mean, we grew up together, so we're more like...uh, siblings."

"He's adorable," she said matter-of-factly, pulling on some jeans and a hoodie.

I was still processing this and my reaction to it when she looked over at me and smiled. "But not as cute as Shaw Akers, in my class."

I grinned back. Ella flopped next to me on the bed, and it was so normal, so like sisters or best friends or something, that my throat got tight.

"Shaw is seriously, amazingly adorable," Ella went on, her face softening. "He asked me to the Christmas dance, but someone else had already asked me, so I have to go with the first one. But there's always Spring Fling..." She wiggled her eyebrows, and I laughed.

"Good luck with that." I had no Spring Fling in my date book. Mostly I had "kick Eraser butt," "destroy evil School," "save world," stuff like that.

A gentle tap on the door made us look up.

"Ready?" Ella's mom asked, opening the door.

"Ready as I'll ever be," I said.