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Tonight, Max will have the house to herself. (It’s Clance’s house—Clance and Guy’s house, actually—but being best friends since they were five, Max and Clance have a well established “what’s mine is yours” relationship.)
One of the neighbors down the street begged Clance to come over to share the secret behind the crab boil's success, which they both found ironic, considering all the trouble they went through preparing for it. She's a little sad watching Clance walk by herself, Guy not here to place his arm around her waist and press a kiss to her cheek. She recalls the times she’s watched them leave for dates, still clinging to one another even as their silhouettes faded out of view.
Max starts to imagine her and Esther getting to experience that. Her heart twists at the dichotomy between how much she wants it and how plausible it could actually be. But hell, seeing Bertie and Gracie together, seeing all the people like her that night she first saw Esther—maybe it could happen one day. So she lets herself want it, lets the daydream settle comfortably in her chest.
After all, she’s living for those five minutes now.
She smiles to herself as she closes the door. Suddenly, the phone rings. She walks to the kitchen and answers.
“Clance! Is that you? I’m just checking in about the roommate situation again because my last few calls haven’t been answered!” The voice is the slightest pitch too high, accompanied by an overly peppy tone. Christ, it’s Cheryl.
“Uh, no…this is Max.” She's not sure how to navigate this conversation to not hurt her feelings, as Clance hasn’t made her decision yet, but also not invite her to run her mouth.
“Max!” she sings, stretching her name out into two syllables. “Well, when she gets back, can you let her know that I’ve been leaving her messages? Also, has she been enjoying those kitchen towels I made her?”
Max pauses for a second too long. The towels are still in the same spot Clance first set them down (on the counter next to the cooking utensils) and have remained untouched since. “Mhmm, sure,” she says eventually, deciding to omit a response to the second question. “I'll let her know you’ve been calling.”
For once, Cheryl remains quiet. “Alright,” she says after a few seconds. “Well, bye then!”
“Alright, bye.” She’s about to hang up, then Cheryl suddenly takes a breath.
“By the way,” she starts, and Max forces herself to not groan, “Congratulations! I saw in The Defender that you got recruited by that baseball team, what was it, the All-Stars? That’s really nice, Max.” Oh. She wasn’t expecting this. “You get to be a star now! Does that mean you’ll go see Hollywood, and-”
She chuckles, oddly endeared. “We’ll end up in California eventually, but we’ll probably be too busy, you know, playing ball and all that, to explore Hollywood.”
They talk for another minute, Cheryl telling Max about various attractions she hopes Max will see, then they say their goodbyes, and Max hangs up. While it was a surprisingly pleasant call, Max feels her mood drop, reminded that Clance needs a roommate since she’ll be leaving soon. And as she looks at the phone, she also remembers the call with her dad a few days ago, how she agreed to come back home Friday for dinner. Her nerves start buzzing, frenzied and frantic.
Without Clance’s usual rambling to bounce off of or distract her, Max settles on doing busy work around the house—if you keep your hands busy you won’t cry, she tells herself—so as she washes the dishes, rearranges the bookshelf, and adjusts the picture frames, she bites down the tears threatening to form.
As she washes the dishes, she doesn’t cry, even though it’s the plates she gifted Clance and Guy for their housewarming. She just focuses on rubbing the stubborn crumbs off, making it spick-and-span.
As she rearranges the bookshelf, she doesn’t cry when she notes the baseball books that Clance bought. “Helps me understand how to draw pitching forms better,” she had said, and Max always corrected the minor details, because it went without saying that everything Clance drew was perfect enough already. But she doesn’t cry, just lines the books up in perfect alphabetical order.
As she adjusts the picture frames, she doesn’t cry when she notices an equal amount of pictures of her and Clance in comparison to Clance and Guy, just focuses on angling the frames so they're not even the slightest degree tilted.Then she gets to the last one, and it’s another picture of her and Clance, tipping the scale in her favor. But she doesn’t cry, even as she accidentally looks at the picture—her and Clance outside this house the day Clance moved in, which Clance forced Guy to take for them before she made Max take the same picture of her and Guy—and maybe that’s when her eyes start to water. Still, it’s not crying if there’s no tears.
And then she gets to Clance’s desk.
She organizes her sketching materials, separating pencils from markers and whatnot, until her curiosity gets the better of her and she flips through Clance’s sketchbook. She smiles as she comes across Rockfordia and the Overlord of the Vines again, then flips through more pages of scrapped comic ideas. Then she lands on a drawing that finally makes her break. The first tear drops, then the second, and suddenly it's out of her control.
It's a drawing of Max and Clance sitting on their school bench together, sharing Max's peanut butter and jelly sandwich and Clance's bottle of milk, the first time they met.
Max wonders how Clance captures every moment perfectly, even when it's in black and white, because Max can recall that pink dress she hated with the frilly sleeves as well as Clance in her blue dress with the white collars. Even their expressions are spot-on, almost as if that stage of uncertainty blooming into comfort and trust had been tucked into a bottle for safekeeping. She can’t help but be drawn to the image of her five year old self, taken back to that very first day of school.
Maxine stood by the fence outside the school with her mom and dad, and her mother asked the question for the fifth time that morning.
“Okay Maxine, do you remember what I told you?"
"That I should have good manners and be careful who I trust."
“And?” she asked, waiting for the part Maxine left out every time.
“Don’t play with my hair,” she muttered, though she knew she probably wouldn’t follow through on that promise.
“That’s right." She leaned down to wrap Maxine in her embrace, to Maxine's surprise. “I'm serious, alright? Some kids can be mean. Especially the boys, keep an eye out for them.” It confused Maxine how her mother could turn on a dime just like that, fussing over minor details one minute then giving her affection the next. But she leaned into the touch anyway because she loved her mother; after all, she was the perfect daughter.
When it was time for her dad to hug her goodbye, he leaned down to whisper in her ear. "And one more rule: have fun." Maxine chuckled as she wrapped her arms around him in return. As she finally started heading towards the building, her dad called after her. "You're gonna have a great time, tell us all about it later, okay? Go get em’, sunshine!"
She turned around and grinned ear to ear. "I will, I promise!"
The beginning wasn’t really that great.
Before an hour even passed, Maxine worried away at the sleeves of her dress and her hair, the sleeves because the scratchy fabric made it feel like a bug was constantly crawling on her, and her hair because her restless hands needed another place to go. To make matters worse, there were a few boys that kept whispering and looking her way, snickering whenever she looked back. But she ignored it and focused on her schoolwork instead, though she cringed every time she wrote her name. Every time she saw “Maxine”, it felt like it was taunting her somehow.
She wondered what it would be like if she were to take away the last three letters.
When recess finally came around, she saw those same boys tossing a ball around, one of them standing on a mound. She watched for a few minutes, enthralled by the motion of it, how he winded his arm back then forward, sending the ball in a swift, straight line in the direction of another kid trying to hit it. As minutes went by, she hoped no one thought she was staring at the boy himself, as that was the last thing she cared about.
Eventually, she stood up and walked towards him. Maybe it was a stupid idea, but she needed to experience it for herself, needed to feel the ball in her own hands.
“I wanna play,” she said.
The boy laughed in her face, high and mean. “You wanna pitch?”
Pitching, that’s what it was. “Yeah, what’s wrong?”
“Girls can’t play ball.” The other boys started laughing as well. “Everyone knows girls are weak,” he taunted.
Her mother was right, boys could suck sometimes. “No we’re not,” she said.
“Really, what if I did this?” he asked, and then had the nerve to push her, when all she did was ask if she could play too. “What, are you too weak to fight back?”
Maxine felt her chest drop, something heavier than anger seeping into her skin. And right as she was about to push him back, another girl suddenly charged towards him, effectively knocking him over. Somehow that was what finally caught the teacher’s attention, not the boy that picked on Maxine, but the girl that stood up for her. Being outnumbered, the boys blamed the girls, so the teacher sentenced them to the bench on the opposite side of the courtyard. The two of them grabbed their lunch boxes and walked across the asphalt with their heads down, Maxine’s heartbeat pounding in her ears as she watched her steps.
They sat in silence for a minute until the other girl spoke. "Are you okay?”
Maxine opened her lunch box to distract herself. “Yeah, I’m fine,” she lied, muffled by the sandwich she’d taken a bite out of.
“You’re fine?” she asked again.
“Uh huh,” she confirmed, chewing her food. “And you? You’re fine?”
“Yes ma’am, I’m fine. Mhmm, just fine,” she replied before taking a swig from her milk bottle.
Maxine looked at the girl sideways. Ma’am? They were the same age and their legs dangled off the bench, not long enough to touch the ground yet. She supposed this girl was peculiar—after all, she challenged a boy to defend someone she didn’t know—and Maxine realized that must have meant she was peculiar as well, in some way. Strangely, it made her feel less alone, to have someone to share that with.
The two of them sat in silence again. Maxine chewed her sandwich and the other girl drank her milk, both pretending to be fine.
Maxine broke first.
She tried her best, but started sniffling after a minute passed. To her surprise, she heard the same sound coming from the girl next to her. They looked at each other and laughed despite themselves.
Maxine wiped her eyes, then tore off a piece of her sandwich and offered it to her. “What’s your name, by the way?”
“Clance,” she replied as she grabbed the food. “What’s yours?”
She paused. “Maxine,” she mumbled.
“That’s a pretty name," Clance said, but Maxine just shrugged. " You don’t like it?”
She looked down at her feet and swung them. Hm. She wondered if she should answer honestly, say "Maxine" didn’t feel like it belonged to her. She bit her lip, then admitted it for the first time. “I…guess not.”
Clance nudged their shoulders together then gave her a smile, eyes warm and bright. “Okay,” she said, then offered the milk bottle to her. “What about Max?”
She sipped the milk while she considered. Turns out she wasn’t the only one that thought “Max” could be a better fit. It made her feel seen. “Max,” she repeated, referring to herself with that name for the first time. “I like it.”
“Max!” Clance cheerily announced, clapping her hands together. “Well, Max, nice to meet you. So we’re gonna find that boy after school, right?”
“Are we?” Max chuckled, feeling her body untighten, replaced by a warm feeling radiating through her. Something like recognition, like acceptance, like belonging. Friendship.
Max rubs at her cheeks and makes sure no tears fall on the page, because she could never forgive herself if she ruined one of Clance’s drawings.
They didn’t find the boy, as he was forgotten by the end of the day (which was fortunate for him) but Max and Clance quickly became best friends after that. Max remembers how delighted her parents were to find out she’d made a friend. Clance stayed over that Saturday, and the one after that, and again and again. She joined Max in her bed and always encouraged her to let down her guard and let herself be held. It's cliché, but Clance taught her that it was okay to not always be okay.
Remembering that, Max finally accepts that her body is spent and lets herself cry while she takes a shower, and maybe she even cries while she eats dinner. She gets into bed early, but Clance will be back soon, she’s sure, so she tucks herself under the blanket and stares at the ceiling, listening to the sound of her breathing.
After about half an hour, she hears Clance’s steps coming from the hallway, but she shuts her eyes, pretending to be asleep. And sure enough, she feels Clance climb into bed and wrap her arms around her.
Just like when they were little kids.