Shivering Mind

Chapter 35

“You definitely regained your power. No worries there.”

“No, listen. Don’t joke. Listen. Really. I’m sorry.”

“You’re forgiven. Don’t do it again. Either thing.”

“I promise,” she says, her voice solemn and serious in the darkness, so near that if I turned, I’d be brushing right up against the length of her.

Except that rolling to my side might kill me.

“This is so not how I imagined getting you into my bed.”

“So not how I imagined being in it.”

“You’ve—” I start to sit up. Ow.

“Shh,” Matilda says, and lies down next to me, on her back, on top of the sheet I’m under. Wrapping her fingers around mine, she edges my hand over to the ice pack.

“Hush,” she says again, but somehow it’s not like she’s calming down some fussy kid. It’s more like the dark makes things clearer. Cleaner. Sharper. No blurry lines.

She turns her nose to my shoulder, breathes in. Her hair’s wet. She shivers a little. The rain is pinging against the roof, and suddenly the wind gusts loud, spattering drops hard against the window, like someone throwing pebbles to get attention. I start to sidle my arm around Matilda, but that simple movement jars me and aches like holy hell. So I don’t move, Matilda doesn’t either, except to burrow closer, as her shivers die down.

Her fingers are still laced in mine, warm against the melting ice. The tension in my muscles—everywhere—is slowly easing too, undone by her small, solid weight against me.

“Max?”

“Mmmm.”

She props herself up on an elbow, barely visible except the glimmer of her wide eyes, the slight sheen of her hair in the distant light from the streetlamp.

“When I was twelve . . .” She stops.

“Go on,” I whisper.

“I came back after the summer and I had”—she looks down at her chest, then sweeps her hands across—“this.” She moves the hand that’s holding mine, presses it against her chest, so her breast . . . God . . . fills my palm, no doubt freezing cold from the ice pack. My fingers tighten. Then I pull my hand away—sheer force of will.

“I was basically the first girl in my class with boobs. It was like—overnight—and suddenly all these people—these kids I’d known forever were calling me names. Some of these girls hated me—again, overnight. Guys were always asking stuff about whether I’d gotten implants, and whether Dad had to take a loan out to pay for them.” She looks up at me again. “Joel had just moved on to high school, so he didn’t know about the teasing. Jase was still in elementary. I didn’t want to tell my parents, because Mom was pregnant with Harry, and Dad’s dad was really sick. I have no idea why I’m telling you this,” she says.

Matilda’s eyes meet mine, searching for something. Even in the dim light, she must find whatever it is, because she continues. “So I just decided to flip it. If people were going to take how I looked and figure out how I was, I was going to . . . I don’t know . . . take charge of it. So I wore things that showed off my body, and I picked boys I was stronger than, and . . . that’s the way I handled it.”

I have to admit I’ve never thought of Matilda as “managing her image,” as the politicians would call it. I’ve always thought she knew she had a great body and felt fine about showing it off. I pull her even tighter against me, bury my lips near the pale gleam of the part in her hair. Her body goes rigid, then relaxes against me. She mutters something, too soft for me to hear.

“That’s what you do. With your father. You flip it. Just sort of own whatever it is. Not just with him. You do it a lot. ‘Everything’s funny if you look at it the right way.’”

“Um.” I squint against the prickle of dampness in my eyes. “Right? It is.”

Her only answer is to press closer

. “You can get under the covers, you know,” I whisper.

“Better not.” Her voice is low.

I smile. “You’ve never been safer with me than you are now.”

Her quiet laugh shakes the bed, but not painfully anymore. Matilda shifts, her wavy hair tickling my cheek. Warm skin, soap, damp hair that smells like rain and leaves.

The branch of the tree outside scratches against the window, moving with the wind. All the rain sheeting down . . . it’s like we’re in a cocoon, wrapped up, falling into sleep.

Matilda

“Mmmm,” Max murmurs, then yawns into the pillow, stretches his arms over his head, then yawns again.

“I’ve got to go. Will you be able to crash again?”

“Incredibly.”

I tug the sheet and the blanket up to his neck. Pat him quickly on the back, bend to put my lips there, just where his hair curls down, before I even think, then pull back before I make contact.

“I’ll lock the door.”

I scribble one more note. The Boy Most Likely To . . . need a little recovery Maxe. Call “Sweet dreams.” But there’s no answer.

He’s already asleep.

I could have kissed him after all.

Max

I’d have said there was no way in hell I could sleep with Matilda sitting there beside me, one hand on my back and the other brushing my hair away from my forehead. But when I wake up, it’s morning—the rain long gone and the sun slanting through the window, so I must have done just exactly that.

Matilda

It’s only later, when I’m in the kitchen, slurping coffee, unknotting George’s shoelaces, Krazy Gluing the broken nose pad back onto Duff’s glasses, quizzing Harry on his spelling words, and I stand up to stretch, sore from Max’s hard mattress, that I know what happened here.

Lying next to him, breathing in the rhythm of his breaths. Watching dreams chase across his no-defenses face. Having him tuck me closer, head under his chin, anchored against his heart and heat . . .

Out the kitchen window, I watch Max plunge down the garage steps, long legs, hands shoved in pockets. He hits the grass, headed for his car, washed clean and sparkling by last night’s rain, windshield plastered with stuck-on leaves, then shields his eyes and looks toward our house. His face blazes, happiness purer and more unfiltered than I’ve ever seen from him.

ith potential.

Another word for hope.

Chapter Thirty

Max

The guy who opens the door at Derek’s three days later looks like a skinny Jerry Garcia. He wears a faded, tie-dyed T-shirt and baggy corduroy cargo pants. He’s barefoot, balding, and bearded.

“You must be Max,” he says.

You can’t be Derek’s grandfather, I think. Lousy casting. They’d never even be in the same movie.

“Yep,” I say. “That’s me.”

“Waldo Connolly. Come on in. Like Thai food?”

I haul in Cal and all his crap, looking around. Not what I expected for Derek’s backdrop. Shitloads of big, bright abstract oil paintings, one glass wall that juts out back, turning into a greenhouse-type room, plants everywhere, big braided rugs, loads of furniture that looks like it’s been carved out of trees, someMaxes with the bark still on. A hobbit would be right at home.

I’m definitely not.

Waldo Connolly’s just standing there, smiling at me, thumbs hooked into his belt loops. I finally remember that he asked me a question. “Oh, uh, yes, uh, sir. Thai food. Love it. Probably. I’ve never had it.”

“Derek, he’s here,” he calls up the stairs.

I guess no court-martial.

I look around at the tables and bookcases. Lots of pictures of Derek with friends, Derek alone, Derek with Waldo, Derek with Waldo and some old lady—her grandmother, maybe. No pictures of the kid.

Speaking of, he’s chomping on my finger ferociously with his gummy little mouth. I scrounge out his bottle.

“Come on into the kitchen. You can heat it up in there,” Waldo says, walking through a brick-lined archway into another room.

The kitchen too is decorated in early Middle Earth. Copper kettle, huge black iron stove, lots of woven rug things on the walls and glass witch’s balls hanging in front of the windows, big puffy red armchair, big table that looks like it was hewn from a hundred-year-old redwood by John Henry or whatever.

“Microwave’s right there.” Waldo waves to a corner of the counter.

I’m actually surprised there’s a microwave and not a huge iron kettle over the fireplace.

The air smells spicy and thick. Waldo picks up a gigantic machete-type knife and stands looking at me as Cal’s bottle revolves. I resist the urge to protect my privates. But then Waldo pivots and starts whacking away at some big green vegetable-type thing on the counter.

“You like green papaya salad?” he calls over his shoulder.

“Love it.” I push the n****e into Cal’s mouth, and his head immediately lolls back against my forearm, eyelids half-lowered in ecstasy. This kid sure does love to drink. Can only hope he’s equally stoked about the solid stuff.

“That’s what we got going for dinner tonight. That and tom yum goong.”

“Great.” Whatever.

“Take a load off. Tell me about yourself.” Waldo aims the machete toward the big red armchair.

“I’m Max and I’m an alcoholic” would not be the appropriate response. I’m a Sagittarius? I’m generally much more reliable with birth control than you might think? Not that I’ve had s*x in a while. Like forever. Like since I had it with your granddaughter. Not that I remember that.

“Hi Max. Hi Grand.” Derek bounces into the room at this point, wearing a surprisingly clingy blue dress—with cleave, even. Her hair’s wet and not in a ponytail, just down. Lipstick, eye stuff, the works.

“You look good,” I say, rising to my feet.

“Thanks. Um, thanks, Max. Grand, did you give him a drink?”

I glance at Waldo, who’s looking a hell of a lot less friendly than he was a second ago. Oh, right, dumbass. He’ll think you just want in her pants again.

Screw being charming. I’m not good at that anyway when I’m not buzzed.

“Sir, I know what you must think of me . . . well, no, I don’t really, but I want to apologize. The year must have sucked for you too. I mean, that is, it must not have been easy for you either. So—” I cross the kitchen and extend the hand that’s not cradling Cal, which means I let go of his bottle. Cal lets out an angry squawk. I check on Derek, figuring she’ll reach for him, but she doesn’t.

Her fingers don’t even twitch like she’s restraining herself. Instead, she keeps her eyes steady on me.

“That’s mature of you, Max,” Waldo says, pointedly not taking my hand. “I think Derek’s the one who deserves the apology. All I had to do was watch her suffer.”

Oh, just use the damn machete.

“He did. He did apologize to me, Grand. I told you that,” she says quickly.

Cal wriggles around in my arm, trying to latch back onto the bottle.

Dad? Dad! Help me. It’s right there. Dad!

I drop my hand and reposition the thing. At least I can make him happy.

“Would you like some nam dang-mu pan?” Waldo asks pleasantly, as though he hadn’t just left me hanging and made me feel like s**t. Which is, I know, appropriate under the circumstances.

Still.

“It’s like a watermelon cooler,” Derek translates for me. “You’ll like it. Really delicious. Grand was a chaplain in Vietnam during the war, then he and Gran lived in Thailand for a few years after that.”

A chaplain. Like a minister. That explains the lack of soldja vibe.