The Story of Max; Part 58 (((THE CONVERSATION BETWEEN MAX AND MARIA HAS BEEN MOVED FROM THE LAST PART TO THIS ONE AND REVISED))) I walked into first period the next day. I looked around and saw Maria in her seat. I got pats on the back, high fives, and tons of congratulations, even from my teacher. Then he turned on the TV. The channel was on CNN and it showed video from the racetrack. Once again, Crisis takes the spotlight. “Who was that?” “Is that the same dude from the congress hostage thing?” Individual conversations broke out across the classroom. I watched the screen as the action unfolded. Watching looking at what I could have done differently. I glanced at Maria and she was writing something. I turned back to the TV, “Max.” I heard her whisper. She held out a folded piece of paper and I took it. I opened it, “Max, can we talk after school? It’s important.” It read. “Yeah.” I wrote. I folded it into a tiny paper airplane and used my telekinesis to make it fly, it would have just fell to the ground otherwise. She opened it and read it. She looked at me and mouthed, “Okay.” This next week after the race mostly consisted of us sitting in class because our parents were busy getting us transferred to virtual school for the season. Later that day, I met Maria at her bike in the parking lot. “You said you wanted to talk?” “Yeah. It’s kinda private, I’m not comfortable talking about it out in the open like this. Can we go to my house?” She asked. “Sure.” I said. As I followed her to her house she didn’t seem as playful as she usually was. When we got to her house we pulled into the driveway and went inside. “Where are your parents?” I asked as we walked in. “Out.” She said. I followed her to her room. I walked in and she closed the door behind us. “Can you tell me now?” I said sitting on her bed. “Yeah, Max, we need to talk.” Maria said. “About?” “What happened Sunday?” “Oh.” I said dryly. “Was that really you? I recognized your voice, and there was a ton of stuff going on, and the adrenaline, but--” I looked at the wall next to me. “Yeah. That was me.” “And after I left the gas station?” She slightly moved her head in the direction of the wall while looking at me to try to get into my field of view. I looked back at her. “Yeah.” I paused. “I killed both of them.” “And the senate hostages?” I nodded my head. “I try to keep Crisis and Max as separate as possible.” “Why?” “Because the more people that know, the more people that I love can get hurt. And what Crisis does to people, is what’s necessary. But sometimes,” I looked down. “I don’t like what he has to do.” “I understand.” She said, “Who else knows?” “Tara knows.” “Is that it?” “Yeah.” “Is everything okay?” “I’m fine.” I took both of her hands and I heard her heart speed up. “You just can’t tell anyone at all.” “I would never.” I let her fingers slip away from mine. “So, what exactly can you do? If you don’t mind me asking.” “Think of something.” I said. “Think of something?” “Just do it.” I said. “This is so stupid.” She thought. “Is it really?” I said. “What?” “You said, ‘This is so stupid.’, in your head.” I said. “Yeah.” She said. “Can you--” “Yes, I can.” I smiled. “I can also do this.” I sat there. “Do what?” She said, then she paused. “Hey, why are you getting smaller?” “Oh, I don’t know. Try looking down.” I said. “What the heck?! I’m hovering in the air!” “A wonderful inference! Yes, I also have telekinesis.” I started making her spin around. “Max. Max! Put me down!” She started giggling and screaming. “Stop! Ahh!” I started laughing. “Ahh! Slow down! Max!” I dropped her into my lap and we both kept laughing. Now, we were just having fun, but to someone on the other side of the door. There was a knock on the door, and she popped up out of my lap and I jumped up from her bed. We both looked at each other, and then the door. “Come in.” She said. But no one came in. We both walked to the door and she opened it. Brandon stood there with a wide-eyed look of disbelief on his face. “How much did you hear?” I asked hesitantly. “I heard how much homework you were getting done in there.” He used his fingers to make air quotes while he said homework. “Wait.” I said. Maria and I looked at each other, then after a couple of seconds we realized what he meant. “Oh no. No.” “No. You thought we--” “No, she was just, we were,” The both of us quickly tried to deny what we knew he was thinking. “Ah okay, phew.” He said. “I mean, personally, I would’ve locked the front door first. But you know.” “You didn’t lock the door?” I whispered. “I thought I did.” She whispered back. “I’ll just go, and leave you to continue what you were doing.” He said backing up. “We weren’t doing anything.” She said. “What are you doing here anyway?” “I wanted to know if you caught the assignment for Mr. Perelli’s.” “In my bag.” She said. “It’s over there.” He walked over to it. “How are you doing work if it’s out here and not in your room?” He asked. We both looked at each other and then back at him, “Leave.” We both said. “Okay, I’m leaving, I wrote it down.” He opened the door. “Have fun.” He closed the door behind him. I locked the front door a couple of feet away from her bedroom door with a flick of a finger. “I think maybe you should be going too.” She said. “Yeah. I think so too. Who knows what your parents would think if they saw us alone in your room with neither of them there.” I said laughing. “Well, I don’t know. I think they’d pick you to find over some of the other guys around here.” “I would too.” I continued laughing. She punched my arm, “Get out of here.” And she started laughing. Later that Friday, instead of going to school we packed up our things and went to the airport to begin our season. I picked up the portrait of Maria that I drew a while ago and I put it in my pocket. “Now, boarding flights to Miami in terminal…” We overheard the female voice say while we were walking through the long, long, terminal hall. “Having to be on time for a flight, sucks to suck.” Brandon said shaking his head. “Yeah, we have our own plane, but we still have to carry our bags own bags.” Maria said. “Says you, I’m carrying some of your bags.” Brandon said. “Don’t whine. Just be happy she doesn’t have more.” I replied. “And I’m the one with most of her bags.” “How are you even carrying that many bags?” He asked amazed. I was using my powers to lighten her things to make it easier. “Oh you know, the usual, push-ups, pull-ups.” I said confidently. “You’ve gotta show me your workout routine.” “Yeah, no problem.” I said, “All you gotta do is get struck by lightning, live, and not be crippled.” I thought. “All right, here we are.” My dad said. We arrived at a door that read, ‘Private Hangar.’ This opened up to a huge airplane hangar a couple of football fields long. It housed twenty five planes. A couple of planes down from the door was my Dad’s newly painted, private, red Challenger jet with the Ducati logo on the tail, and a white stipe going down each side under the windows. “They did a really nice job on it wouldn’t you say, Steve?” Coach asked. “I’ll say. Looks better than it did before.” My dad said with a smile on his face. “What are we waiting for?! Last one there’s a rotten egg!” I yelled. I kind of set us up for failure because even with using my powers it was sort of hard to run. Brandon and I hobbled as best we could while Maria was freely skipping past us towards the plane. She was the first one to touch the plane and Amy started running after we were ten feet in front of her, and she still managed to touch it before we were 15 feet from the plane. Maria kneeled down and said, “Good job.” And gave her a high five. When we finally got there we were almost half dead. My parents, Coach, and the rest of our team was were close behind. Then, the door of the plane came down and a man and a woman stepped out of the plane. “Mr. and Mrs. Renault. Very nice to see you again.” The man said. “Mr. Smith, nice to see you as well. Ms. Tyner, always a pleasure. This is the kids’ coach, Matthew Farrell.” “Nice to meet you.” Coach said. “Nice to meet you as well.” Mr. Smith said. “So, we’re going to Le Mans, France?” She asked. “That’s right. First race that we have to travel to.” “Exciting! Maybe that’s why,” She pressed a button on a handheld remote and the large door in front of the plane opened. “They had these delivered.” And on the other side were our bikes. “Awesome.” “Sweet!” “Nice.” The three of us said at the same time. “All right, let’s get packing.” My dad said. “Sit all of the bags down. Max, in the back of the plane where we put the bags there’s a rubber mat. Roll it down the aisle to keep the tile clean. From there, to the door, down the stairs, and back out here.” “Okay, got it.” I said. I stomped off whatever was on my shoes, which was practically nothing. Before swiftly jogging up the steps onto the plane. I haven’t been on my dad’s jet since I was small. Looking around while walking to the back of the plane, everything started to look more and more familiar. The tile on the floor was off-white to match the counter tops and beige to match the cabin walls. The soft leather seats were a light, creamy vanilla with massage features. The wall and door separating the galley from the living area were made of a polished Moroccan and coffee brown wood. There were accents of the wood along the top of the cabin. It was the same color for the door separating the cockpit from the galley and separating wall of the lavatory and the main living area. When I made it to the large baggage area of the back of the plane I saw the black, rubber mat in the corner that he was talking about. Starting in the baggage room I unrolled it by kicking it down the aisle all the way to the door then I rolled the mat down the stairs. “Do we need to drain the bikes?” My dad asked. “How much do they weigh?” Mr. Smith asked. “About 350.” Coach said. “Each?” Ms. Tyner asked. “Yeah.” “Then we should be fine.” She said looking at Mr. Smith. “Yeah, we should.” He condoned with a nod of approval. “So?” I said pointing at the bikes then the plane and back and forth. “Yeah, go ahead.” My dad said. “All right. Come on Brandon.” “Coming.” “Careful with my bike.” Maria called out. “Yeah yeah.” We both said waving her off. While we went to get her bike Maria struck up a conversation with Amy that consisted of colors, animals, and blues’ clues. “Dude, that thing.” He whispered. “What thing?” “During the podium ceremony?” “Yeah?” “What the heck was it?” “Looked, like a vampire. Which is weird, I didn’t think they even existed.” “Neither did I.” He said. “Whatever it was, it’s dead now.” I said. We took Maria’s bike and took it off of its kickstand and we walked it towards the plane. We rolled it up the stairs and down the aisle into the baggage area then we stood it up there. We did that with the rest of our bikes. Then we moved on to the actual luggage. After everything was packed onto the plane we all got on and sat down. “You kids want to hear what one of our conversation sounds like up here?” Ms. Tyner asked. “Yeah!” Brandon said. “Sure.” I said. “Sounds cool.” Maria replied, and Mr. Smith pressed a couple of buttons on the dashboard and on the overhead panels. “SAC Tower, this is Challenger six, zero, four, Delta, India holding short runway zero, two at Alpha one, ready for IFR release.” He said into his headset. “Challenger six, zero, four, Delta, India, this is SAC Tower, you are cleared for take-off, runway zero, two.” “Cleared for take-off, runway zero, two, Alpha one.” He said into his headset. “SAC Tower, Challenger six, zero, four, Delta, India, contact departure, have a good flight.” The tower replied. “Over to departure, Alpha one, see ya.” Mr. Smith said. And Mr. Smith and Ms. Tyner looked back at the three of us in the doorway. “Did you guys catch all that?” He asked. “Uhh.” The three of us said in unison. “Don’t worry. You learn all of the lingo that you need in flight school.” Ms. Tyner said. “Alright, everyone sit in a chair and strap in we’re about to take off.” Ms. Tyner said over the intercom. It was about 9 o’ clock at night when Amy got up and went to our mom. Amy tugged at her shirt, “Mommy. I’m sleepy.” She said rubbing her eyes. “Go to sleep. There’s a bed back there. Come on, I’ll tuck you in.” She said. I was sitting next to Maria and Brandon was in a different seat away from us. “Well this is going to be a wonderfully long flight.” I said. “Yeah, well, we are on a private jet. Better than coach.” She said. I started laughing, “Yep, it definitely is. We should be there about an hour after we wake up tomorrow.” “Oh okay. That’s not too bad.” She said. I rested my elbow on the arm rest propping my head up with my hand. Maria moved closer and laid her head on my shoulder. I looked over, then slowly put my arm around her and closed my eyes.
Posted on: Tue, 06 Aug 2013 14:45:37 +0000
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