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Questioning took two weeks.
Two weeks of being locked in a motel room with an officer guarding his door, only getting any human contact through the occasional cop taking him to the nearby station for a round of interrogation. Travis had taken their phones and bags—what, three months ago now?—and he suspected it had been thrown in a ditch or into the lake.
Fuck that guy.
Max was starting to go slightly insane, though, being locked up again. When he ruminated on his position for too long, his entire body would jitter and his teeth would clack loudly.
He accidentally sucked on his recently bitten and bleeding lip, and he swore.
There was a TV in the room, at least. It only showed local channels though, which were constantly interrupted with updates on the breaking news story of the Hackett family killings. He had a horrible thought.
‘How many people did she kill?’
All for him. His safety.
Fuck.
‘I guess I deserve some of the blame,’ he thought.
He’d told the cops that he was on the island all night, which was actually entirely true. He explained that he camped out in the treehouse and was unaware of the night’s events.
Thinking about it, it didn’t sound all that convincing.
He wondered what story Laura was telling.
Shit, should he have said Laura was with him on the island all night? What if that was her alibi? No, that couldn’t be it. She had bloodstains up and down her dress when the police arrived; surely she was smart enough to make up something more convincing than his ‘fact is stranger than fiction’-esc tale.
‘“Yes, officers, I slept through the most tragic accident this town has had in decades. Yes, sir, up in the treehouse.” Stupid.’
He was going to actual prison, wasn’t he?
“No, no. Please, no,” he mumbled out loud into his hands.
He didn’t know what exactly, but, fuck, he wanted to do something with his life.
‘Why the hell was I going fifty?’ he thought. ‘On those roads? It was a miracle we didn’t go off a steeper edge.’
This was all his fault. Everything.
There was a knock at the door.
‘This is it,’ he thought as he stood and walked to it.
The officer who greeted him didn’t show a hint of emotion when he said: “You’re going home.”
He could almost smell the cherry almond soap in the bathroom he and his sisters shared. He suddenly realized that he missed his dog.
His parents picked him up an hour later, with his two sisters packed into the backseat of his mother’s minivan. Everyone cried in front of the cops, unfortunately. He tried that square breathing technique Laura had suggested and rubbed the tears away with his sleeves, feeling incredibly public during a private moment.
Once in the car, his youngest sister Katie whispered solemnly with her hand cupped around his ear that their parents were planning to sue.
“There’s no-one left to sue,” Max muttered back.
His parents surprised him with a new phone to replace the one that’d been confiscated. It didn’t have any of his old data, though, so his contacts were gone. Plus, quite a few photos of Laura and himself on dates had been lost to a lying cop. He remembered one photo he would miss in particular, where Laura had fallen asleep on his parents’ loveseat with her arms curled around his dog. The poor mutt had a pleading look on its face, begging to be released from Laura’s sleepy deathgrip. He knew the feeling.
Everyone amicably agreed to eat box mac-n’-cheese when Max told them how much he was craving it. The fridge was stocked with twenty-four cans of Sprite, another one of his favorites. He stopped chugging them after he finished his third, noticing how his body jittered. He wasn’t as used to caffeine or sugar as he used to be.
He still fell asleep as soon as his head hit his pillow. For the first time in quite a while, he didn’t wake up hourly in a cold sweat from a nightmare. His sheets were freshly washed, evidenced by the strong lavender smell that stuck to him when he woke up.
His sisters had gotten up early to make pancakes, and they were apparently having some difficulty. There was a stack of burnt pancakes piled in the trash can, along with some batter that Max assumed was in some way ruined.
He’d hoped to wake up before everyone else and sneak away to visit Laura. He’d planned to leave a note, of course, but he knew his parents wouldn’t let him leave their sights for a second now that he was back. At least his parents weren’t up yet, and his sisters weren’t keeping as watchful an eye on him. He just needed to know if Laura was released too.
He took his mom’s keys from the counter and hesitantly backed her minivan out of the driveway.
‘This is going to be harder than I thought.’
He didn’t even press the gas as he exited his neighborhood, crawling at a snail’s pace towards the main road. He looked to his left and right, watching for incoming traffic. He didn’t notice he was hesitating to pull into the completely clear road until a neighbor behind him honked and pulled around him.
Laura’s house was thirty minutes away. Shit.
He twisted the knob of his radio, discovering that his mother had been listening to the pop station. There was a cheesy song about love at first sight, with a masculine voice whining over the chords, describing his girl’s bright green eyes and dimples. It didn’t quite remind him of Laura, but he was reminded of how much she loved to hate-listen to the awful radio music their town played, laughing at stupid lyrics or groaning at an annoying chorus.
He needed to see her.
He pulled out of his neighborhood ten miles below the speed limit. A red Corolla behind him rode his ass for a few minutes before it swerved into the opposing lane to pass him with a honk. Max’s hands tightened around the wheel. Whatever. Fuck them. It was their problem, not his.
He reached the highway when he realized that there was no way he could handle that. He pulled into a Wendy’s and put Laura’s address into his phone, specifying to the navigation app that he wanted to avoid highways. A thirty minute drive turned into a forty-five minute one.
Max considered it a small miracle that he arrived at Laura’s house without having a full-on panic attack and crashing into someone. The garage was closed, but there were no cars in the driveway, and Max felt his stomach drop. If no-one was home, he would have to make the sad journey back to his house, probably tearing up, wondering where his girlfriend was.
He rang the doorbell and counted the seconds, wondering when it was appropriate to assume that no-one was there to answer and that he should just go home.
It’d been thirty-six long seconds before the door opened.
Laura’s hair was down and wet. She was wearing sweatpants that pooled around her ankles and house slippers.
She didn’t say a word as she surged forward to kiss him. She wrapped her arms around his sides, gripping the back of his shirt like she was afraid a gust of wind would blow him away from her. She broke the kiss and buried her head in the crook of his neck.
“I missed you,” she said, still leaning on his shoulder.
“I missed you too,” he replied.
They spent quite a while like that, on Laura’s front porch, holding each other.
“Let’s go out on a date,” Max said.
“What, right now?” Laura asked.
“Why not?”
“It’s, like, eight A.M.,” Laura replied. “And my hair’s wet.”
“I think you look great,” Max said.
“You’re not too bad yourself,” she said before she kissed him briefly on the lips. “I’ll settle on a drive-thru.”
“Done,” Max said. “Sonic? Smoothie King? Have you had breakfast yet?”
“No, I haven’t—and Sonic? Are we in high-school all over again?”
“Denting my car pulling out of the drive-in was incredibly romantic,” Max said. “My mom’s car could use a huge scrape across the side.”
“Well, if it’s for your mom’s sake,” Laura said with a large smile. “Fuck it. I’m not even going to get dressed.”
“Slippers and all?” Max found himself smiling just as brightly. He couldn’t keep a grin off his face, even if he’d wanted to.
“Why not?”
“Let’s go then,” Max said. He took her hand as they walked to the car.
“You can pick the music, hun,” Max said once they were buckled in.
“I’d rather talk to you. About everything,” Laura said.
“Works for me,” he lied. Max tried to keep the waver out of his voice. If he was being completely honest, he wanted to talk about anything other than their time in North Kill.
Laura was silent for a moment.
“Another time, actually,” she said. “Let’s just have a fun morning.”
Max breathed a sigh, and Laura’s hand squeezed his thigh right above the knee, almost like a silent reminder that she was there.
She also just liked to grab a handful sometimes.
G-d, he’d missed her.
Laura certainly noticed how slowly he was driving, with his knuckles white against the wheel and his jaw clenched. She didn’t say anything though, even when it took twice as long as usual to arrive at the drive-in.
Max skipped on the breakfast sandwich, since he’d already had pancakes, watching Laura wolf down half of hers before realizing she’d rather savor it. It really did feel like they were in high school, when they would pick each other up early in the morning and grab fast food breakfast before first-period.
Laura’s left eye twitched, just slightly, and Max was suddenly flooded with hazy memories drenched in guilt.
She looked at him with a quirked eyebrow when she noticed him staring with a frown.
“Just, uh,” he murmured. “I’m really glad that your eye healed.”
“Kinda got lucky there,” she said.
“Do you…remember what it felt like?” Max asked.
“Transforming? Yeah, I do. It was awful.”
“Yeah,” Max said. “Did I…yell at you? Back in the jail cell?”
“No, not at all,” Laura said. “You were in a lot of pain, though. I would’ve understood.”
“It’s all hazy,” Max said. “I can’t—Laura, I hurt you.”
“It literally wasn’t you,” Laura said. “You were a fucking werewolf, remember? And I’m probably one of, like, three people in the world that fully understands that it wasn’t you. I went through it. I almost killed Travis.”
“Shoulda,” Max muttered.
“What?”
“Never mind,” Max said.
Max sipped on his cherry limeade slushie as the conversation lulled.
“So, about school—” Laura started.
“I’m taking a year off,” Max said quickly.
“Me too,” Laura said.
“Really?”
“College will still be there next year,” Laura said. “I need some serious downtime.”
“Yeah, me too,” Max said. He leaned over to whisper in her ear as he spoke again. “Hey, listen, we should go see a movie and make out in the back row.”
Laura laughed, throwing her head back against the headrest.
“I don’t know what’s out,” she said.
“Me neither,” Max said with a smile. “We can pick a random one.”
“The shittier the better,” Laura agreed. She pulled her (presumably, also new) phone out of her pocket and poked around on it for a moment. “Nothing’s showing until one.”
Suddenly, the phone vibrated in her hand. Max looked over to see the contact calling listed as “Dad.” Laura looked over to him with a grimace.
“You should probably answer. I bet he’s worried,” Max said. Of course, at that moment, his phone betrayed him, vibrating similarly with a call from his mother. They stared at each other for a moment, wondering whether or not to call off their movie plans in favor of uninterrupted family time.
“Fuck it,” Laura said.
“Fuck it,” Max agreed. “I mean, at least I left a note.”
“I didn’t,” Laura said without a hint of guilt.
“They're going to kill you,” Max said warningly. She shrugged.
“Oh, wait. Shit, I’m still in my pajamas,” Laura said.
“We could sneak in,” Max said.
“The wonders of having a bedroom on the first floor,” Laura said with a knowing smile.
When they returned to Laura’s neighborhood, they parked a few houses down, sneaking through shrubbery to Laura’s window. She swung her leg over the ledge after throwing the window open, pulling Max through the opening headfirst by his hand.
Max noticed that the calendar on Laura’s wall was still in May. When she turned on her overhead fan, a whiff of dust flew down onto them.
The corkboard above her desk was covered in pictures of him and their friend group from high school on school trips or at birthday parties. Max focused his attention on one group photo featuring a middle-school aged Laura with a huge hiking backpack and a camp t-shirt.
When he turned back around, Laura was dressed. Her hair was up in a high ponytail, and she’d tucked the loose strands under a floral-printed baseball cap. She wore a pair of bright red jeans that Max always complimented her on and a large sweatshirt rolled up to her elbows.
“Aren’t you going to be hot?” Max asked.
“Movie theaters are freezing,” she reminded him. She stepped away for a moment into her closet and retrieved a jean jacket she’d stolen from his own collection. “Here.”
“Thanks,” he said.
“One sec, I’ve gotta grab some cash,” she said as she pulled out a genuine, pink piggy bank from her bookshelf.
“I can pay,” Max said. “I don’t mind.”
“With what?”
“My parents’ credit card,” he said.
“In that case…” Laura said with a smile.
Max smiled along with her, unable to help himself. They stared at each other with dumb smiles on their faces for a moment before he pulled Laura into a hug. Laura’s body wash was one of those woody scents, and it stuck closely to her skin. Max wondered if he smelled like his orange-scented face wash.
“You didn’t leave me,” he said, lips pressed to the side of her head.
“I didn’t even consider it,” she whispered. “Not for a second.”
Laura ran her hands through Max’s hair comfortingly. He took her hat off and pressed kisses onto her temples.
“I love you,” he said.
“I love you too,” she replied.
They stood together like that for a long while, listening to the sound of the fan and mourning doves hooting outside.
Laura locked her door and led Max to her bed, still wrapped in his arms. She didn’t seem to mind that he didn’t want to let her go. Their legs tangled as they laid facing each other on Laura’s bed, and Max felt a wave of sleepiness hit him. He’d gotten nearly nine hours of sleep the previous night, but it seemed that his body was still exhausted. Laura was petting his hair again, his eyes were drifting closed, and then he was asleep.
He wished he hadn’t jolted awake about two hours later, waking up Laura with his sudden movement. She opened her eyes sleepily and asked, “What’s wrong?”
She loosened her vice grip on his torso as she woke up.
“Nothing,” he said truthfully.
Laura stared at him for a moment, her eyes bouncing between both of his, studying the color (or maybe the freckles that lay around them).
“You look cute today,” Laura said, kissing him on the cheek that wasn’t pressed into her pillow. “I liked you in that crop top.”
“Thanks,” he said with a smile and a laugh.
“You still wanna see that movie?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said.
They decided to go to the convenience store to buy candy, since it was terribly overpriced at the theater. Sure, they weren’t using their own money, but it was the principle of it, damn it. Laura picked out Sweet Tarts, and Max bought a bag of Tootsie Rolls. They stuck both bags into the inner pockets of Max’s jacket. Max realized with a little smile that his candy would be warmed and softened from sitting next to his body, instead of the usual sticky chewiness.
“You pick it,” Laura said to the theater employee selling tickets. Max felt his face go red in embarrassment.
“I’m sorry, ma’am?” the employee asked.
“We don’t care which movie we see,” Laura said. “You pick it.”
The employee handed them their tickets and pointed to the left side of the theater. They didn’t even read the name on the ticket, heading straight to the concession stand to get popcorn and drinks.
“‘Ma’am?’ Again? Come on,” Laura muttered as they walked away. Max laughed.
“What do you want?” Max asked when they were near the front of the line.
“I’m just gonna get a bottle of water,” Laura told him.
“Get something fun,” Max said. “I’m getting a slushie.”
“Two in one day?”
“Absolutely.”
“Fine, I’ll get one too,” she said.
Their theater was empty when they walked in. They climbed to the very back row, directly in the middle. Max looked up above him to see dust filtering like snow through the light of the projector.
They were still playing the pre-show trailers and some of the lights were still on, giving him a clear view of Laura’s face. She was holding their popcorn, popping kernels into her mouth with her eyes locked on to a trailer for a new Disney nature documentary.
She’d been so offended when Max asked if they were staged.
She looked really pretty, in Max’s expert opinion, and he told her so. He’d said it a lot that day, actually.
She made a pshh sound and waved her hand.
“I’m serious,” Max said.
“Aren’t you a charmer?” Laura said with a smile.
“What can I say? I’m a giver,” he said. She placed a hand on his shoulder and kissed him on the cheek.
The employee had picked out a rom-com for them, causing Laura to groan and him to laugh. He actually kind of liked these cheesy movies, even when they weren’t all that funny.
This one was bad , though. The male love interest’s face reminded him a bit too much of Adam Sandler, for some reason, and it totally took him out of it. Well, not to imply that any of it was worth watching, anyways.
It wasn’t long until they got bored, and Laura moved the bucket of popcorn into the adjacent seat. She placed a hand delicately on his knee, and then they were kissing. The angle his body had to twist at to wrap his arms around Laura’s neck was awkward, as always, but it was tradition at this point. Their first kiss had been during a movie theater date.
It’d been a little over a year since then.
‘Three months… A fourth of our time together was spent in those fucking cells,’ Max thought with a bit of guilt.
Laura’s hand cupped his side, slipping under the denim jacket, and he shivered.
They missed most of the movie that way, occasionally whispering about a silly scene they were seeing out of context. The love interest got the girl, but not before crashing her wedding, or something. He wasn’t paying all that much attention.
The credits rolled, and Max realized he hadn’t had a single bite of the now cold popcorn. Oh, well.
The parking lot was nearly empty when they exited, which was probably pretty reasonable, considering it was like three P.M. on a Tuesday.
“Where to next?” Max asked in the car.
“This is the longest date we’ve ever been on,” Laura said. “It’s nice.”
They’d turned their phones off in the theater, and when Laura turned hers back on, she immediately got a call from her mother.
Max felt bad. He liked Laura’s parents. They were probably freaking out.
“You should answer,” Max said, for the second time that day.
Laura frowned, but hit the green button to accept the call.
“I’m with Max, and I’m fine,” Laura said at rapid fire speed, not letting her mother get a word in. “I’ll be back tonight. Okay, bye! Love you!” She immediately hung up.
“That’s about as good as leaving a note, I guess,” Max said.
“Let’s go to the aquarium,” Laura said suddenly.
“Sure,” Max said. He hoped his parents wouldn’t mind an extra charge or two. What were they going to do? Even though he had little interest in being a nuisance, he suspected he could total his mother’s car or max out their credit card and get away with it, at least while they were so happy to have him back. Okay, he felt a little guilty.
The top floor of the aquarium, as strange as it was, had a large butterfly room, where several species of fluttering bugs perched in trees and, if you were lucky, on your hand. Laura beelined it for the elevator that would take them to the top floor.
The glass walls of the room formed a pyramid which refracted light into lines of rainbows across the floors. Laura sat leaned up against a railing and waited for a few minutes until a butterfly delicately landed on her hat.
“Take a picture,” Laura whispered. Max did, realizing that this was now the only picture he had of her.
After that, he couldn’t stop taking pictures. He now had a few of Laura posing in front of penguins, petting stingrays, and poking her head through one of those domes in the fish tanks. He had a few pictures of himself too, next to Laura of course, with his favorite being an awkwardly angled selfie of the two of them with one of those stripes of rainbow filtering across the bridges of their noses. It didn’t show up on camera all that well, but Max doubted he would forget how saturated the colors were on her cheeks, as if she’d taken an eyeshadow pallet and painted the stripes on.
He’d hoped to see the downtown area at night, with all of the lights over the river, but it was still summertime, so the sun would be up for a few more hours. They got ice cream nearby and sat in metal chairs outside of the shop. Max was getting the worst sugar-rush headache of his life, but he told Laura that he didn’t want the rest of his. She was experiencing the same thing though, or maybe a brain freeze, because both of them ended up tossing half of their ice cream into a city trash can.
They returned to Max’s car, which was in a great spot they snagged right next to the aquarium, and Laura turned on the radio. They sat with the car running for a few minutes in silence, listening to the blues station Laura had put on and the rumble of the engine.
Max knew he was ruining the moment when he said, “It was my fault, wasn’t it?”
“No,” Laura said.
“My driving—”
“ No , listen, if we’d gotten to the camp without running off the road, we still would’ve found Chris in that basement,” Laura said. “I mean, shit, man, you might’ve saved us. Chris might’ve killed you and me if Travis didn’t follow us.”
He hadn’t thought about it that way.
“I wish you didn’t feel so guilty,” she said quietly, barely audible over the radio and the engine. “I’m the one who hurt people.”
He knew there were things she wasn’t telling him. He’d woken up in a tree, after all, instead of waking up in the treehouse he’d locked himself in. That alone had scared him, and he’d spent a lot of time in that hotel room wondering if he as a werewolf broke out on his own, chasing his tail and climbing trees, or if someone had discovered him, freeing him to hurt any unfortunate person who happened to visit the island that night. He’d heard from the news that all the other counselors had been stranded that night, and he shuddered as he imagined a corpse in a bush or a tree somewhere where he nor the police found it, evidence of the curse laid upon him.
“Who?” Max asked, also lowering his voice to a whisper.
“The sheriff’s mother,” she confessed.
He’d heard about her death on the TV as well. She was in, what, her seventies? Jesus.
“Was she transformed?” Max asked.
Laura stared at him for a long moment. She opened her mouth before closing it again.
“Was it…her or you?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“Alright then,” Max said. That was enough for him. If that was the case… Well, he’d rather it be her, he supposed.
“Kaylee,” Laura said. “But…she was transformed.”
“Alright,” Max said, trying to keep the waver out of his voice again.
“Do you… Are you mad at me?” she asked.
“No, not at all,” Max said. “I just hate to think of you having to do that.”
“I hate remembering it.”
He suddenly felt like he’d gotten off very easy.
“Do you want to go home?” he asked her.
“Not really,” she said.
“Wanna go to my place?” Max said.
“Sneaking in again?”
“I have a tree next to my window,” he said with a smile.
“ No ,” she said with a laugh.
“I got pretty damn good at climbing them when I was on the island,” he said. “I woke up on top of a tree.”
Her eyebrows shot up.
“I still have some bruises,” he admitted, rolling up his pants to show one on his calf that was just turning yellow, with most of the deep purple color gone from it.
“Ouch,” she said.
“It probably doesn’t compare to your night,” he said.
“Yeah, but I woke up from my transformation without a scratch,” she said “The paramedics gave me this awful look when they realized I wasn’t hurt even though I was covered in blood.”
“When’s your preliminary hearing?” Max asked, suddenly remembering that they weren’t quite out of legal trouble yet.
“Next month,” Laura said.
“Do you want me there?”
“Please.”
“Alright,” he said with a nod.
“So…your house?” Laura asked.
“We can sneak in through the backdoor,” he said.
“I like your parents. We don’t have to sneak around,” she said.
“They’ll talk your ear off,” Max said. “They haven’t seen you in months.”
“Well, it’d be more fun to sneak in.”
So, they did.
Max’s plan of going through the backdoor actually worked, since the staircase was tucked into the back of the house and his door was the first room to the left. Max was sure that his parents would notice his mom’s minivan parked a few yards down from the driveway, but at the moment, he’s successfully pulled off his Laura heist.
They sat on two beanbags Max owned. Laura played with his Rubix cube for a few minutes before giving up.
“Have you actually ever solved one?” she asked.
“No,” Max said. “It’s been mixed up for years.”
Laura got up to sit at his desk and poke around on his computer. After a moment, an indie-pop song with an almost haunting feminine voice singing a ballad about her lover was playing.
“This one reminds me of you,” she said. “I had it stuck in my head for weeks in the cell.”
Max listened closely to the lyrics and heard Laura humming along. He had a feeling it would make its way onto his playlists soon enough.
After the song ended, Max had an idea.
“Wanna hit from my cart?” Max asked.
“What? Max, no, ” she said with a laugh. “The internship at the animal hospital does random drug tests.”
“I thought you were taking some time off,” Max said.
“Yeah, I am,” Laura said, considering it for a minute.
“No pressure,” Max added.
“Thanks, but no,” Laura said.
“Okay,” Max said, closing the drawer that contained his pen.
They heard Max’s dog losing his mind barking downstairs, indicating that someone was at the door. Max and Laura peeked out of his window to see that Laura’s parents had arrived at Max’s house, probably looking for her.
“You should probably go,” he said.
“Yeah,” she said with a sigh. “Wait! I don’t have your new number yet.”
“Oh, yeah, true,” Max said, handing her his phone. “Here, put your contact in.”
After a second of typing, she handed it back to him.
“Text me so I have yours,” she said.
He sent her the picture he’d taken of the butterfly on her head, and she responded with a little butterfly emoji.
“Thanks for today,” she said. “I had fun.”
“I did too,” he said. “Call me when you get home?”
“Sure.”
She pulled him down with a quick tug of the shirt collar to kiss him.
“I love you,” she said.
“I love you too,” he replied.
“You’re okay,” she said. “We’re okay.”
Max felt tears welling up in his eyes, and he couldn’t stop his mind from fixating on the thought, ‘She didn’t leave me.’