Shivering Mind

Chapter 39

“Shhh,” he says again, holding up a hand. “Let’s not find out. The Stony Bay po-po are bored out of their skulls. They leap on this kind of s**t. Trust me.”

“I know you’re out there,” the voice says implacably. “State your name and come out.”

Still pulling my hand, Max crouches down and runs from behind the billboard into a patch of bushes. The flashlight beam zooms around wildly. Fizz of a walkie-talkie. “ATL suspect and/or suspects for trespass. Copy.”

Loud crackle of unintelligible response.

I start to stand up, brushing off my shirt, prepared to argue. Max yanks me back to the scrubby grass.

“Let go. This is ridiculous.” I’m struggling against him, wriggling away. “Who do these guys think they are?”

“Matilda,” he hisses. “Nothing else is going on here tonight, unless they need to rescue a cat in a tree. They will bring us in, for real. That would suck for Joel.”

For that I fall silent, stop moving. My police academy brother.

More crackling from the walkie-talkie. “UTL, repeat, UTL. Over.”

Slow loop of the light all around. I press my head to Max’s chest, wriggle up to ensure my feet aren’t poking out of the bush like the dead Witch of the East’s, and then freeze, listening.

The shaft of light moves slowly, outlining the side of the billboard, up across the top, back down the side. What does this guy expect—that we’re scaling the Hyman Orchards sign? To do what? Hang from our knees and graffiti it upside down?

Crackle-crackle. “No sign of the perp. Repeat, negative as of this Maxe. Over.”

“Perp? We didn’t perp anything!” I whisper. “There was no caution tape, there was no no-trespassing sign.”

“Matilda. Be. Quiet.”

Finally, the crunch of footsteps moving away. I begin to slide off Max and he traps my hips between his palms.

“Don’t move.”

“What? Is he still there? Is he trying to fake us out? Do you know this cop?”

“I know almost all of ’em. No, he’s gone. Don’t move. Except the wiggling. That was good.” Lips drag along my ear, his voice lowers, close to a whisper. “Matilda. Kiss me.”

“Max . . .”

“I’m right here.”

Me too, no honest way to pretend I’m not.

I squirm as if to roll off, but I have his sleeve, pulling him over with me until his face is above mine, the sliver of moon behind it.

I move my hands up slowly, inching, brush one dark eyebrow, then the other with the tip of my index finger. Along one high cheekbone, the dip in the middle of his top lip, the bottom line of the lower one.

See the gleam of his eyes in the dim light. Watching. His skin, warm in the cool night air.

I twist a little underneath the length of his body, look away.

Try to laugh but there’s hardly any air to breathe, he’s so firmly against me, so it comes out as a gasp. He smiles, lifts to plant his elbows on either side of my head, nudging my cheek lightly with the left one so I have to turn my own head, look him full in the face.

“Matilda.”

Close my eyes. “You’re totally taking advantage of this situation.”

“Hell, yeah. You’re free to return the favor.” The tone is light, but his eyes are serious.

His hand slides across my neck, up behind my ear, thumb moving to the hollow of my throat where my pulse is knocking hard. I expect his lips, but instead I get his cheek, so lightly rested, it’s almost not touching.

Rise and fall of his chest against me, leg edging between mine. Then stillness.

For a breath.

One more.

When our mouths meet, there’s a suspended instant when Max freezes, total tension in his shoulder and neck muscles, but then he dives into me.

I hear myself make this noise in my throat, and I’m pulling him tighter against me, sinking into him. I’m shivering, actually shaking and making sounds . . . I don’t know . . . they’d embarrass me if I could stop. But I can’t.

We pull apart for a moment, breathing hard.

“This could be a big mistake.” I slide my hands down to his hips and lock them closer, hard against my own.

“Nope. I’ve made mistakes. They don’t feel like this.”

“Gotcha,” says a loud voice. We both jerk our heads up, blinded by a flashlight. Max swears under his breath. I hold my hands up to shield my eyes. Max flips over to the side, in front of me, blocking me from the light.

“Stand up slowly,” calls a voice. “Palms to your sides. No sudden moves. Step apart.”

“Shhh,” Max whispers, moving a foot away from me. “It’ll be fine. Just don’t say anything.”

“This is ridiculous,” I say. The two policemen are talking to each other, all low official tones, walkie-talkies still crackling away, so I don’t think they’ll hear, but one of them freezes, shields his eyes, and flicks his flashlight back up.

“Oh, hell. That’s my sister.”

Max

In the end they have nothing to bring us in for, although Matilda manages to make it a very close call.

“Since when have you been skulking around checking out bushes like the p*****t security guard at SB High, Joel?”

“This is part of my ride-along, Al. Since when have you been rolling around in the bushes with random dudes?” Joel flicks his flashlight up. “Oh. Hi, Max.”

I raise one hand. “Uh—hey, man.”

“What I do is none of your business,” Matilda hisses. “And he’s not a random dude, so—”

“Okey-doke,” says Joel’s superior officer. “Save that for the playground, kids. Speaking of which, you two”—again with the flashlight flicking from Matilda to me, in case he’ll need to ID us later in a lineup—“not smart to be around all that heavy equipment when the fair’s closed. Easy to get hurt. But we can’t arrest you for bad judgment.”

“Lucky for you, Matilda.”

“Shut up, Joel,” Matilda says. “You hardly know him.”

“Compared to you, guess not. He’s what, Jase’s age? When I said to relax and kick back, I didn’t mean by hooking up with Holden Caulfield.”

I shrug. Meh. Could be worse.

Matilda, though, I expect her to flush, move away, put some distance between us. But instead, she edges closer, takes my hand. Moves a little bit in front, partially blocking me from Joel’s amused grin, my shield.

“You hardly know him,” she says again.

She stays close on the drive home too, scootching far over in the seat and up against me like she’s still making some kind of stand, a statement, even though there’s no one here but us. After I pull the car into the driveway, park it, I don’t know what to do with my hands.

The fairgrounds, what we did there came naturally. Now it’s like some movie moment, the motionle

ss car, the cool dark around us, the streetlight picking up the shine of her hair. I’ve seen this in movies. I’m looking at us from a distance—waiting for some sort of cue: Here is where you brush the hair away from her face, then you bend close and she makes that little sound of hers, halfway between a gasp and a hum of satisfaction. Then you kiss her and—

Yup, I’m thinking in the second person.

Matilda is looking at me, head tilted. I wait for her to look annoyed or puzzled, but she doesn’t. I wait for her to take charge, climb into my lap, face me square on, lift the decision out of my hands and into her own. She doesn’t. She studies me for a second more, then drops her head onto my shoulder, rests it, breathes in sync with me, but not like she’s trying to. Just that she is.

No impatience rising off her, no confusion. It’s like this is all good, just as it’s meant to be. For some reason, I remember standing in the shower, the water streaming down—but not the Maxes I’ve conjured up Matilda there. Of being under the spray with Cal, him sucking on my nose. Me thinking that right in that moment, I had everything he needed, and he was giving me everything I needed right back, simply by being there.

Matilda

Resting my head against his shoulder. Something I’ve done without a second thought with my brothers. But never with any other guy. Max would have no way of knowing that. But I do. When he tucks me nearer to his side, wraps a few strands of my hair around his fingers, lets them go, wraps them again, as though he can’t help but keep touching me once he starts, it’s then that I let it in. I’m most likely in love with him.

Max

“This is the first Maxe I’ve ever done this,” I say, a few minutes later.

Matilda rests back against the door, her shoulders flat against the screen.

“This?”

She knows what I mean, but I say it anyway. “Walked someone to their door.”

Matilda left the porch light on, but the kitchen’s dark. The house is quiet in a way the Garrett house is never quiet.

To my right there’s the long fence that separates the Garretts’ yard from what used to be the Reeds’.

Big maple tree, tossing boughs in the blowing air, with that shhh sound leaves start to make when they’re beginning to dry out. Clouds coming across the moon, wind swept in from down by the river, smells like riverweeds, mud, leaves, and drying grass, the kickoff of fall.

Almost don’t know what to do with peaceful.

Matilda lowers her head, looks up through her crazy-long lashes. I brace one hand on the door, to the side, well above her head.

“I should have won you a big-ass stuffed teddy bear and one of those huge lollipops.”

“At the Coconut Shy? I’ll take a rain check.”

“What about Joel?”

“More a High Striker kind of guy—always loved swinging that mallet.”

“You know what I mean, Matilda.”

“Is he going to come looking for your blood because you had your hand up my shirt? I’m not thirteen. He’ll show me no mercy, though.”

She smiles, shivers a little.

“You should get inside.” My voice comes out husky halfway, then breaks on the last word. The whole sentence is the opposite of everything I want to say, but that’s probably a pretty good guideline still.

I lean down just as she moves up, on her tiptoes, one hand flat against my chest.

Her lips just touch against my mouth, then the cleft of my chin, back to my lips.

“Good night, Max.”

My lips on her forehead.

“Good night, Matilda.”

I can’t remember ever having something and not reaching for more.

But I back away from her, hands in my pockets.

Enough.

Matilda

“Are you with him now?” The kitchen’s dark, but the tone of Brad’s voice is darker, one I’ve never heard from him. “Is that what’s going on?”

“Where are you?” I’m flicking on the kitchen lights, all of them, one after another, waiting for the answer. Cell phones, God. Andy’s been known to call the kitchen from the living room on hers. But Brad calling me from inside my own house is way too babysitter-slasher-horror movie.

“I was driving by to give you a printout of that new warm-up. The one with the trunk rotations? Cyn at CrossFit swears it cut her Maxe by a solid five minutes. And there you are, with that redheaded kid.”

“Where are you?” I repeat, walking through the living room, opening the bathroom door, back to the kitchen, the basement door.

“You can’t be with that guy.” Brad’s voice is louder through the phone, and I think it’s because I’ve found him—he’s lurking in the basement just exactly like the movies, but no, he’s just talking louder. “You’re with me.”

“We broke up,” I say, sitting down abruptly against the wall by the basement door. “I told you that, Brad. We’re not together.”

“Matilda. You. Can’t. Be. With. That. Guy,” Brad repeats. “He’s a druggie with a kid. C’mon.”

“He’s in recovery and the baby is tempor—” I start, then stop. I don’t need to defend Max to Brad. “This is none of your business.”