Shivering Mind

Chapter 14

I was sort of lame,” Duff admits, scraping up the last of his pie. “‘The king was into birds’? But I tried. It’s just hard someMaxes to see what’s gonna scare George.”

“Dead, baked birds? It’d give me nightmares.” I shudder.

That or that asskite Brad, and what Matilda might be getting up to with him right this very minute.

Matilda

“Do we have to?”

Brad may be upward of 225 pounds and over six feet tall, but he sounds like my little brothers when I drag them shoe shopping. “Yup,” I say.

He weaves hesitantly through traffic—he drives like he’s in one of his video games on slo-mo, sudden spurts of speed and then well below the limit. Staring out the car window, I don’t see the blur of the maple trees that line the turnpike but the garage apartment reinvented, the way I was going to do it.

All of Joel’s heinous furniture piled into the attic. My great-aunt Matilda’s brass bed down from there. Along with her big wardrobe that Jase and I were always trying to find Narnia in. The walls painted a deep burnt-orange color, October Sky, a paint we got in at Garrett’s Hardware last week—so not the dingy white that’s in there now—far from the “bridal pink” in the room Andy and I share. I saw something in a magazine last month—this tulle canopy that goes over your bed, making it into your own cocoon. Splurge on those billion-thread-count sheets that are so soft you barely notice them at all. Stereo speakers for my iPod and a reading corner full of books that aren’t textbooks, with big, puffy floor pillows and—

“C’mon, Ally-pally. Let’s hit Pizza Palace and you can bash my butt at Slimin’ Sumos.” Brad elbows me, giving me his best smile.

“I don’t feel like eating bad pizza while we play videogames, Brad.”

Now I sound whiny too. I dig my fingernails into my palm and kick my feet up onto the dashboard. Let it go. It’s just an apartment. Just a space of my own, for the first Maxe ever, and for the last Maxe for a while too, assuming I can still accept the transfer to Nightingale Nursing in the spring, assuming things at home are running smoothly, assuming I can get student housing and—

Sharp inhale. Another.

Brad squeezes the back of my neck. “Yowch, you’re tense, Allo. Don’t do that funky breathing thing. It freaks me out. How ’bout we go back to my place? I’ll send Wally out for decent pizza. Like all the way to Ilario’s or something. That would give us at least half an hour. I could . . . relax you.” Now he’s rubbing my shoulder, giving me a sunny, hopeful grin. No stormy weather with Brad. All one mood, like the easy-listening music they play at the dentist.

“I see a smile, Als. You want to, don’t you? C’mon. Let’s book it home. I’ll boot the Walster for the whole night if you want. Bummer for sure about the apartment—that would have been sweet—but it’s not like I don’t have my own place.”

Brad’s “place” is a three-story house in White Bay. His parents live on the first two floors, Brad and Wally in the basement, his grandmother, who I’m pretty sure refers to me as That w***e, on the top.

He reaches over and gives my knee a squeeze while passing a camper on the right and leaning on the horn.

I sigh.

“Is that a yes? C’mon, Aliwishous. We could take a shower or something. My dad fixed the hot water tank.”

“Let’s go to the batting cages. I need to hit something.”

“Works for me. Whatever floats your boat.”

He’s nothing if not steady. Which is good when you’re a little bit shipwrecked. He’s now singing along to the radio—a commercial for river cruises. Steady is solid ground under your feet. Even if the planks are a little thick.

But the garage apartment? I’m not letting that go down without a fight.

Chapter Eight

Max

“You’re actually knocking, sis?” I open the door to find Nan, one arm balancing sheets and towels, the other extended to knock again.

“I always knock,” she says, swatting my nose instead. “I respect your privacy, unlike you, reading my diary.”

I kick the door open wider. “C’mon, get my towels out of the rain, assuming those are for me and you’re not dropping off laundry. And really? The diary again? Jesus. It was once, it was four years ago, and I had insomnia. Your diary was like a sleeping pill. ‘Dear Diary, I—’” I start, all sugary. But I cut myself off. I’m being a jackass.

You want the truth, that diary about broke my damn heart. It was full of these letters from Nan to God. I knew she’d gotten the idea from this Judy Blume book she loved crazy much, because I’d read part of it when I was ten and someone told me it was all about t**s. It was, but not in the way I was hoping. Anyway, Nan’s diary entries were just sad—like, she was begging God as if he was Santa, the jolly old elf who could give you good grades and parents who were always proud of you, and a brother who wasn’t a f**k-up and get Mark Winthrop to love you forever and ever, amen.

Nan dumps the sheets and towels on the Sox beanbag chair and looks around, pulling off her windbreaker and wrinkling her nose. “Since when are you the big sports fan? What’s with the weights? Where’d you get all this stuff, anyway?”

“I robbed d**k’s. What do you care? What’s with all that?”

“Mom wanted me to bring it and to—” She stops dead.

“Spy on me, right? Make sure I wasn’t up to no good?”

“Are you?” Her voice is sharp. “Are you in trouble again or something?”

“Wha-at? No. Not more than usual. Why?”

“Some woman, or girl, or whatever—keeps calling, asking for you. Do you owe anyone money? I—know what Dad said to you. If you need money, I have—”

“Nan, kid, I’m fine. I don’t owe anyone anything but a shitload of apologies. Don’t stress. It’ll affect your grade point average.”

Her cheeks flame at that last and she says, “I . . . I’ve been doing my college applications. Starting them. So maybe I can be early-decision, I won’t have to freak out all year. And—”

“Nano—”

“It comes easy to you, Max, but it’s really hard for me to concentrate—” Her voice breaks a little. She’s blinking rapidly, shoulders hunched, giving me the face.

But I shake my head. “Just no, okay. No.”

Her expression goes blank for a second, then she says, “That’s that, then. So . . . so . . . where do you sleep?”

I point to the bedroom door. “Be my guest. The drunk, naked babes are all in the shower right now, so no worries.”

“You’re such a jerk. I thought I’d make the bed, because I doubt you have any idea whatsoever how to do that. You can come watch and—”

“What, you’ll quiz me on it later? I’ll pass. I’m gonna get in the shower.”

“Fine,” she says. “Watch out for the naked girls. Word is they’re slippery when wet.”

I start laughing. She’s a pain in my ass, Nano. But I’m a d**k to her nin

ety percent of the Maxe and she loves me anyhow. She went all uptight right when I went all crazy and I wish to hell there was an AA for perfectionism, because I’d haul her ass there in a heartbeat.

She’s smiling back at me now, because I laughed, and she was the one who made it happen, because, as she said in that goddamn diary, “Dear God, make me funny like Max, because people like funny people and maybe then Mark Winthrop would . . .”

Love her.

“Nano—the school s**t,” I say, then swallow. “I can’t help you that way anymore. You get that, right?”

She nods, staring fixedly at the beanbag chair. “Look, about the college money, Max—Dad said I’d probably get it for Columbia because you—” She stops, and I can hear the gears turning as she tries to figure out how to put it. Because you—

Are the boy most likely to.

Fail.

Everyone and everything.

Matilda

There it is again, its silver top gleaming under the light of the Schmidts’ fake streetlamp, glossy from the rain. The car pauses at the end of our block, as it has three Maxes since Brad dropped me off. Then, as I watch, it signals the turn, though our street is completely deserted. I edge down the steps, arms folded against the wet, silty breeze blown over from the river.

Looking up at the shaded windows of the garage apartment, I see Max’s rangy figure pass by, then someone else, a girl, hair in a ponytail, gesturing with both hands.

As I’m watching this, the car pulls slowly into our driveway at a bad parking angle, sharply slanted behind my Bug and Max’s Jetta.

The headlights snap off.

Enough. Who’s this weird about pulling into a driveway? Who cases the street beforehand? I can’t see through the tinted windows.

Dealers?

Maybe the garage apartment’s new tenant has brought his sketchy past with him.

Or hired a hooker to join the party.

I stalk down the steps to the car.

Rap sharply on the window.

Right as it occurs to me what a stupid thing this is to do.

No weapon. No Mace. Unless they’re vulnerable to the power of Harry’s authentic Nerfblaster Lightsaber with glow-in-the-dark detailing, lying in the grass nearby.

The car turns back on, window slowly rolling down, and I’m staring at a girl, my own age or younger, with long brown hair and huge, thickly lashed blue eyes, wide and unblinking in the throwback glow of her headlights.

“Looking for someone?”

She edges back at the sound of my voice. Her fingers, with chipped dark pink polish, clenched at the ten-and-two position on the wheel, tighten even more.

“Yes. No. I mean . . . I . . .” she stammers. “I . . . I—”

“Are you lost?”

She gives a quick, unsteady laugh, and then says, “You got that right. Sorry—don’t worry about it. I’ll find my way.” Then she rolls the window up and backs out as slowly as she drove in.

Chapter Nine

Matilda

“I’m coming in, we need to talk,” I say before the door’s even half-open.

Max blinks at me, takes a step back, then peers over my head as though expecting a lynch mob.

“The scariest phrase in the universe.” He’s wearing baggy striped pajama bottoms, with a toothbrush in one hand, Crest poised in the other.

“Let me in,” I repeat, louder.

“Not by the hair on my chinny-chin-chin. You’re looking predatory.” He stares down at my shirt, slightly damp with rain. “And your—uh—chest is heaving. Is that you huffing and puffing?”

“Max. Now.” I’m not here to be disarmed.

Raising his hands holding the toothbrush and Crest, he steps aside. I brush past him, into the center of the room. My room. Which he’s completely marked as his territory. Open Grape-Nuts cereal box and an empty carton of orange juice on the counter next to a worn leather wallet and a handful of crumpled bills. Socks and a sweatshirt balled up in a corner. More clothes piled on the couch. Dishes in the sink. An iPod with a tangled wad of chargers and an Xbox next to the TV.

A lavender windbreaker tossed on the beanbag chair.

“Look, for starters, where’s the girl?”