Shivering Mind

Chapter 38

I cough, nearly spitting out the water. “Um. Do we have a plan?” Why am I asking? Who cares?

She stretches. Air’s crisp. Sun’s out. She sweeps her hair off her neck. “We can improvise.”

“Can we get going, plleeeease?” Andy groans from the front seat. Harry’s now in back.

“Harry burped in my face on purpose!” Duff says. “That’s rank.”

“After the game? You’ll be here? I’ll . . . be here too.”

Christ.

“Sounds good.” Matilda looks down, pushes her toe into the soft tar of the driveway.

“Max! Come on! I know you two are all busy, but have some mercy here.”

Check the rearview mirror of the van, because this thing is humongous.

Cal, who had zonked out, now pops his eyes open, so wide-awake in the back-facing mirror thing. He goggles at Matilda, and then gives his biggest, goofiest smile.

“Wow,” she says. “Look at that.” She sets her finger in the corner of Cal’s mouth. They look at each other for a second, as if they’re adding each other up. Then his smile gets wider.

“Yeah, he just started doing it.”

She bends closer, brushes his hair back. “There you go, Max.”

“Huh?”

“There’s your missing dimple. Cal’s got the other one.” She touches her finger into the little crease on his cheek.

God, I hadn’t noticed, but it’s true.

Matilda backs off, drags her heavy purse up her arm, and heads toward the house, giving me one quick grin over her shoulder.

“Fi-nal-ly,” Andy says as I climb in.

“Buuull,” Patsy yells now, experimentally. I shake my head at her. She leans back, looking like I’ve offended her deeply.

“Why don’t guys ever put emojis in their texts? How are we supposed to have any idea how they’re feeling!”

“Most of the Maxe we have no clue ourselves, Andy,” I mutter.

I love the Garrett kids, but my mind is definitely in another place now. Plus, they’re all fighting like fisher cats the entire drive. By the Maxe we get to the crowded SBH parking lot, vans and SUVs parked everywhere, I have a headache like a frickin’ ice pick, sharp between my eyes.

Derek—PLS. NEED YOU TO TAKE HIM TONIGHT. PICK HIM UP FROM SB HIGH. TEXT IF NEED DIRECTIONS.—YOUR SO-CALLED COPARENT.

The last was d**k mode, I know, but c’mon. Matilda aside, I could fall asleep right here. The twenty-four-ouncer with an espresso shot didn’t make a dent.

“Whassup,” asks a familiar voice as the little guys and I are wedging our asses into the second row of bleachers. “Long Maxe no see, Max Mason.”

“What are you doing with my sister?” I ask immediately.

Troy cups a hand behind his ear, shrugging helplessly. Word is his hearing’s shot on one side because his dad whaled on him a bit too hard a bit too often.

Then he moves in, arms outstretched, lurching in for an actual hug, not noticing that I have a person strapped to my chest. When he encounters the front pack and the feathery back of Cal’s head, he edges back, then just readjusts his reach and loops his arms around my neck. “Missed you, man! What the hell? You’re a manny now?”

“What? No,” I say, before I realize that I sort of am.

“Hi!” George says cheerfully. “You’re Max’s friend?” He sticks out a hand. “Name of George. That’s me.”

Troy fist-bumps George’s outstretched palm, which is just messed up, then checks out Harry and Patsy, who are watching this exchange curiously. Cal’s sucking his hand with these loud slurpy sounds.

“Don’t talk to him. He’s a stranger,” Harry stage-whispers to George, suddenly Mr. Play By the Rules despite his totally illegit bid for the front seat.

“Naaah. Max here, he and I go way back,” Troy says easily, flipping his too-long hair out of his eyes. He looks, as always, like Hollywood’s idea of a teenage drug dealer. I’ve never been able to figure out if this is irony on his part or pure stupidity. I’m thinking Door Number Two.

“Need anything to take the edge off, Mason? You look tense as hell,” Troy says. “No wonder, am I right? Hear you’re home for the duration now.”

“I’m fine,” I snap. Troy backs up, palms extended.

“No big,” he assures me. “’S all cool. Priorities change and all that.”

“This is Max’s baby,” George tells him chattily. “Name of Cal. He got him at a party.”

“Geez,” Troy says profoundly, shifting his glance between Cal’s head with its telltale red hair, and me. “I heard rumors, but whoa. Talk about your misspent youth coming back to haunt you.”

“My misspent youth funded yours, Rhodes.”

“True,” Troy says, looking unaccountably stung. “But I get to go to college baggage free. Sucks to be you, I guess.”

“Wait here, guys,” I tell the Garretts, then give Troy’s forearm a shove in the direction of the back of the bleachers.

“Ha. I knew you’d go for it, Mason,” he says smugly. “Phonying up for the kiddos, huh? What can I getcha?”

“The truth. What are you selling my sister? She’s screwed up enough.”

“Your sister?” he says thoughtfully, with the wide-eyed, I’m so wrongly accused look that hasn’t gotten him out of detention since middle school. “You mean Nan?”

“Cut the bullshit, Troy. Yes. Her. What’s going on?”

His slow, faux-surfer voice goes hard as physics. “I don’t mess with family drama. You want to know what’s going down with the girl, ask her.”

George scoots around from the front of the bleachers, extending Cal’s bottle and then yanking on my sleeve. “Hurry up! The team’s coming out now! Hurry!” He pulls on Troy’s army jacket. “You can come too. Are you a soldier?”

“Kind of,” Troy answers cheerfully.

“A freedom fighter against the war on drugs?” I ask, and he laughs, pointing his finger at me like a gun.

“Ex-act-ly. Lead on, midget.”

“More civilians than soldiers get killded during any war,” George tells him. “Look—there’s the team!”

At this point, the Stony Bay and Maplecrest teams jog, two by three, onto the field, round into a circle.

“Raah!” Cal says, shifting angrily in the front pack. “Raah. Raah. Raahaaah.”

“He cwying, Hon. Do somfin. Cal cwying.” Patsy sounds like a pissed-off truck driver, at odds with her little sprouty ponytails.

“There’s my brother!” George says to Troy. “He’s number twenty-two. Right over there. The one who just stopped that big running guy in the orange shirt.”

George, Harry, and Duff all have their eyes riveted to the field.

“Nice tackle for a loss,” Duff calls. “Take that, Maplecrest High—you stink.”

“Duff said another bad word,” George singsongs.

I’m thinking of a few that would put him to shame.

Patsy watches me try to feed Cal, and then looks at me with this betrayed expression, lower lip trembling. “Hon . . .” she says, like it’s my funeral.

“Maybe I could, like, walk her around,” Troy suggests. “I’ve got this half sister. She’s an infant. I mean, being on the move helps, man, I know that.”

“Are you jacked?” I ask.

His face twitches, miffed. “I, like, deal it, man. I don’t, like, do it.”

Yep, you’re a real man of principle, Troy. I assess his clear eyes, his healthy color. Messed up that I never asked or wondered about this before. But then, first things first. “Back and forth, then, in front of the bleachers where I can see you,” I order.

So here, in Surrealland, my friendly neighborhood drug dealer soothes a kid I’m babysitting, while I try to change my own kid’s diaper on my lap—not a brilliant idea, that—and Harry, Duff, and George cheer Jase on like this is all totally normal and fine.

“Hoo boy,” Duff says under his breath. “Jase got burned deep on that pass.”

Cal yanks his mouth away from the bottle like this knowledge personally pains him. I shove it back in. “Just chug it, kid.”

Troy has Patsy up on his shoulders and is hovering near us, pointing out Jase on the field. “Check it out, little babe. See how he was smart and stayed in his lane on the punt return so the returner couldn’t get outside of him?”

“No,” George says solemnly, edging closer to Troy. “But is that good?”

“It rocks, little dude. It, like, so rules.”

The game’s winding down when Derek taps me on the shoulder. I unsnap the BabyBjörn thing and haul Cal out, pushing him unceremoniously into her arms so fast, she nearly drops him. He looks back at me, lower lip wobbly, gives this tentative version of his smile. Dad?

I take him back, hold him against my shoulder. “Sorry, sorry, sorry, kid.” Low in his ear.

She’s studying me, squinting, hand to her mouth, chewing a thumbnail. “Ready to let him go now?”

I stand still for a minute, put my hand on the back of his head, the little folds of skin there, like extra skin he’s waiting to grow into. Kills me a little bit.Keep him safe, ’kay?”

Chapter Thirty-two

Max

I’m up to the door, in what, three steps, standing there in the shoes Matilda gave me, hand upraised to rattle the screen, when she opens it before I can.

My brain freezes, because she’s in nothing but a short dark green towel, hair dripping, fresh out of the shower. She smells like baby shampoo and damp skin. Tanned and clean and wet.

As the silence lengthens, she stares back at me, eyebrows slowly climbing.

A trickle of water slides slowly down from her collarbone, disappearing into the cleavage just barely covered by the green terry cloth, which she adjusts, pulling the towel higher in the front but making it dip on the side.

Having trouble thinking in words.

“I just . . .”

“Happened to be in the neighborhood?”

“That’s it.”

“Come in.”

Matilda

In our kitchen now, dark except for the electric light above the stove and what spills in from the street. Quiet except for my music from the other room and a semi-insistent complaint from Jase’s cat, Mazda, because something must be done about that empty food dish.

Max bends down to pet her and she batters herself against his calf, gets up immediately on her hind legs and begins kneading his thigh, butting against it. His hand looks big against her fur, and Mazda is not a small cat.

She attempts to clamber into his lap, but she’s too fat, so she does the disdainful-tail, you’re beneath me anyway cat thing and wanders off.

Max looks up and smiles at me.

That same dazzled smile from the other day.

The glow from the streetlamp far down our driveway throws everything in the room into sharp relief, lighting Max’s red hair and bringing out deeper, warmer tones.

He rubs a hand over his face. Yawns, says “Sorry,” blinks, smiles again.

“Look . . . do you want to . . . take a walk? I’ll throw on some clothes.”

Not go out in this towel, in case you were assuming that.

“Damn,” Max says, but it sounds almost automatic, a reflex, like that’s what he thinks he’ll say, all I expect from him.

“I’ll just . . . get dressed.”

He nods, standing up. Walking to the table aimlessly. Picking up my tea mug, a smudge of red on the side, turning it around in his hands, setting it down. Selecting one of Joel’s left-behind drumsticks, tapping it against the corner of the table, setting it down.

When he opens the refrigerator, stares into it, shuts it again, I repeat, “I’ll put some clothes on . . . my body.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Max says absently.

When I come back, having thrown on my favorite jeans and Jase’s football jersey, he’s at the kitchen table with his head down on his folded arms.

I touch his back and he startles, rubs his eyes, blinks up at me.

“I wasn’t gone that long,” I say, amused. “Sure you’re up for—anything?”