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“You know, maybe I had you guys figured all wrong, y’know?” Max is saying from the staircase of the Waylon house. Pete is resisting the urge to share bewildered glances with the rest of the group. Can’t take your eyes off the enemy.
“I thought you were a bunch of nerds, but uh,” Max laughs. The wood creaks beneath him. How the hell is this place even on the market? “You guys throw one hell of par—”
It happens in a split second. The floorboards splinter. The wood breaks.
And Pete lunges forward to grab Max’s hand.
“—ty,” Max finishes, hand braced on Pete’s shoulder from where he stumbled into him. “Woah.” He turns to look at the gaping hole in the staircase.
“Oh my god!” Ruth screams.
“Is he okay?” Steph asks.
Pete’s mouth is dry. This was not supposed to happen. He lets go of Max as if he’d been burned, taking a step back. “Holy shit.”
“Holy shit,” Max echoes. He’s staring at Pete like he’s never seen him before. Maybe he hasn’t, not really. “Did you just save my life?”
“N-no, no, I just—”
“You totally just saved his life!” Richie shouts. “He almost just fell, like, three stories!”
Max grimaces. “Aw shit, I coulda broken my leg or something.”
“Or your neck,” Steph mutters.
“That would’ve been so bad for the football team, bro. If I couldn’t play…” Max shakes his head in seemingly genuine distress at the thought, then raises his eyes to Pete’s. “You just saved the football season. You know, you’re kind of a hero.”
What is happening. “O-oh, I’m not—”
“And you’ve got wicked fast reflexes,” Max continues. “You ever think about sports?”
“I try not to think about sports as much as I can,” Pete replies honestly.
Max laughs. Max Jägerman, star quarterback, laughs at Pete Spankoffski, fucking bowtie kid, and not even in a mean way.
What the actual fuck.
“You’re funny, dude,” he tells him, and deems that the end of the interaction, clapping him on the shoulder in a way that Pete knows Ruth is going to be weird about later. He moves into the center of the room, everyone still eyeing him like a wild animal about to pounce. Max doesn’t seem to notice the tense air, just cracking his neck the way jocks do. “So, where’s the rest of the party?”
“Uh…” They all glance at each other, unsure where to go from here.
“You guys got more ghosts? I’ll go at ‘em again, just you watch.” He gets into a fighting pose, fists out.
“No, this is everyone,” Steph says, sounding just as confused as Pete.
“Damn, okay. I was kinda hoping for more spooky scaries to fight off. It was kinda therapeutic, y’know? Car-thartic. Facing your fears and all that shit,” Max says easily, not seeming nervous at all to tell a room full of people what he’s afraid of. Though, considering who’s in the room, Pete figures there’s no reason for him to worry about what they’re gonna do. “How’d you guys know?”
“Um…” Pete shifts from side to side. “Lucky guess?”
Max shrugs, taking that at face value. “‘Kay, well I figured this was a BYOB party, so I brought some stuff.” He lifts the six-pack from where he’d left it on the ground and takes out a can. “You nerds ever had beer?”
“Obviously,” Steph scoffs.
“No,” Richie and Ruth sigh.
“My brother gave me some once,” Pete says. Everyone looks at him, surprised. He shrugs sheepishly. “I didn’t like it.” They all nod, relieved that his nerdiness makes sense again.
“Beer?” Grace gasps. “We’re only eighteen, we can’t be drinking alcohol!” She whispers the last word, scandalized to even be saying it, much less drinking it. “Besides, doesn’t BYOB stand for ‘bring your own Bible?’” Everyone stares at her. “That’s what they tell us at Bible study!”
“Grace, you are so unbelievably sheltered,” Steph says, deadpan as always. “You’re hopeless.”
“Hey, we can have a little hope, can’t we?” Max says, sliding up to Grace as if that pick-up line meant any sense. He holds up his unopened can with a smirk. “Wanna try?” He leans in even closer. Pete’s not close enough to see Grace’s face, but even from over here he can tell that she’s into it. Max’s voice turns simpering. “Just a little taste?”
“I…” Grace leans in ever so slightly, then rips herself away. “I must resist temptation,” she declares. “However hard it may be.”
Max’s grin turns devilishly dirty. “You wanna see me hard?”
“Ookay, let’s stop that right now.” Steph cuts in between them. “If I have to endure this weird-ass flirting all night, I will literally kill myself.” She stares daggers at them.
Grace flushes bright red and turns away with a huff while Max just rolls his eyes. “Whatever, Steph. I gotta take a piss anyway. You think this place has a bathroom?”
“I wouldn’t try that, the floor already broke once and you don’t want to end up covered in greywater and with a broken leg,” Richie says. “Or worse.”
Max looks at him for a second. “I’ll just go find a bush,” he decides, and moves towards the front door. “Wouldn’t it be yellow water, Shit Lips?” He chuckles to himself. “Man, for a bunch of nerds, you sure are dumb.”
With that, he leaves them alone in the foyer of the old Waylon place, dust swirling through the air as they all stare at each other.
“Okay, so what the actual fuck,” Pete hisses, trying to keep his voice down in case Max can hear them from outside. “This was not the plan!”
“Neither was physical injury,” Richie points out. “It was fucking lucky you saved him.”
“Lucky’s right,” Ruth adds, a dreamy look on her face. “He touched your hand and your shoulder. Was it everything you ever dreamed?”
“Why would I dream about Max Jägerman?” Pete asks.
“That’s right, why would anyone dream about Max Jägerman?” Grace says, voice shrill. “There’s nothing attractive about that sinful, disgusting, hunky dude.”
They all take a second and silently decide to ignore Grace’s weird repressed and incredibly obvious lust for Max Jägerman. None of them are strong enough to deal with it.
“That’s besides the point,” Steph says. “What are we going to do now?”
A silence falls as they glance around the circle. What are they going to do? This is so far from the intended outcome, they have no script for it. If they just leave, he might realize this was all a prank. Or bully them even worse at school the next day.
Richie speaks up. “We could… hang out with him?”
“Us?” Ruth exclaims. “The nerdiest nerds to ever set foot in Hatchetfield High? How the hell could that work out?”
“I take offense to that,” Steph interjects.
“He already thinks we invited him to a party!” Richie points out. “I think we have to just play along. If we upset him, who knows what he’ll do.”
They think on this for a moment. “Richie’s right,” Pete decides. “We’re gonna have to hang out with him. Pretend this was all a surprise party just for him.”
“I mean, it kind of was,” Steph concedes.
“Not that he’ll ever find out,” Grace says, intense as she makes eye contact with each one of them. “As far as he’s concerned, that’s all this was. A good surprise for him. Nothing about any other plans will leave this room.”
Richie swallows. “I’ll delete the footage.”
“What footage?”
They all jump at Max’s voice, somehow sneaking up on them despite the amount of creaky doors in this house. There’s no way he doesn’t suspect something, they look guilty as hell.
“You guys making a movie or something?” He continues, getting his can from before and cracking it open. “Hey, that could be cool. Got a great haunted house for it right here.” He knocks against the doorframe, and the structure makes an unsettling creaking noise.
“Yep! That’s why we’re all here! We’re making a movie! A horror movie! With ghosts! And that’s why we invited you here, to see if it was scary enough!”
No matter how hard Pete glares at Grace, he can’t get her to stop digging them deeper.
“Aw, sick!” Max says, somehow unaware that Grace is a terrible liar. “It was definitely working on me, dudes. Micro-Peter and Flem-wad were fucking scary, your movie’ll rule.”
Pete looks over to Ruth. She mouths, He said we rule! with a big thumbs up.
“Uh, please don’t call us that,” he says.
“You can call me whatever you want,” Ruth sighs.
“Well, please don’t call me that,” Pete corrects.
Max narrows his eyes. “You think you can tell me what to do, dickhole?” He advances on him, grabbing the lapel of the stupid ghost costume. “I thought I told you how things work around here. I decide who the losers are.”
“Max!” Steph calls desperately. “Beer!” They both turn to see her holding up the six-pack. “How about we go drink this in the backyard, huh?” Her voice shakes a little, but she manages to keep it together. “I don’t trust this house not to fall apart.”
“I’m kind of in the middle of something here, Steph,” Max tells her impatiently.
“You don’t want to go out back?” Grace asks. “I heard that’s where the Waylons did their sex rituals.”
He furrows his brow. “Really?”
Ruth’s eyes widen. “Really?”
“Do you wanna come find out with me?” Grace asks, a devious glint in her eye. Pete watches in disbelief as Max releases him without a second thought, following Grace out the door.
“I don’t understand anything that’s happening right now,” he confesses to the room.
Steph sighs and takes his arm, dragging him with her around the back of the house as Richie follows. “Just go with it. Motto for the night is ‘Yes, and.’”
“God, does this mean we should join theatre,” Pete grumbles. Steph laughs at that, and a jolt goes through him. He did it! He was funny again!
“If you join, I’ll join,” she says. “Apparently we’re all aspiring movie stars now, so maybe we should get a head start.”
Pete huffs out a laugh. “God, I can’t believe her. And I can’t believe he’s buying it!”
“Yeah, I never thought I’d meet someone dumber than me,” Steph snorts.
“You’re not dumb,” Pete says. “You just… need a little help sometimes.”
She scoffs. “Sure.”
He wants to reassure her that it’s true, that he really means it, but they join up with the rest of the group and he’s not trying to be emotionally vulnerable in front of Max Jägerman tonight. He really doesn’t think that would go well. Not that he thought a group of the nerdiest students in Hatchetfield hanging out with him would go well, but it’s… surprisingly alright?
Sure, Max is still a dick to them, and he doesn’t stop calling them names, and he’s kinda pervy on Grace, but he doesn’t threaten to beat them up for the rest of the night. For him, that’s huge. They actually manage to hold a conversation for a few hours. Grace and Richie make up some bullshit about their fake film project and Max seems genuinely excited to see it when it’s done. Pete just barely manages to talk him out of joining the (fake) cast. Richie gets into a tangent about anime when Max reveals that he’s actually watched a couple episodes of Naruto. Steph chats with him about some mutual popular friends. Ruth even manages to bond with him over shared porn preferences, of all things.
The night ends with the six-pack long gone, half drunk by Max, the rest by Ruth, Richie, and Steph. They watch as Max walks away, bouncing down the sidewalk and humming to himself.
“Did we just befriend the bully?” Pete asks.
“I think we may have,” Steph confirms gravely.
It’s crazy. It’s insane. It’s not something that would ever happen. Max Jägerman being nice to someone?
But then Pete thinks about how Max had said that pranking him was the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for him. The guy has lived a charmed fucking life. He’s the main character of Hatchetfield High. There’s just no way that’s true.
But the fact that he felt like it enough to tell them that says a lot, doesn’t it?
Pete doesn’t know a lot about Max as a person. He doesn’t know anything about his family, or his dreams, or his interests other than football and beating up nerds. He doesn’t really know enough about him to say if this was how he usually acted around his friends. (Honestly, from what he’s seen, he thinks they might have been treated better than his actual friends tonight, which is kind of fucked up.)
But Pete knows enough about him to doubt if they’re going to be bullied tomorrow. And the fact that he’s uncertain — doesn’t that mean something?
“I think we did,” he says, a slow grin spreading across his face. He’s not trying to get his hopes up too much, but this went better than anyone could’ve imagined. They might have just turned the social hierarchy upside down. Max Jägerman thinks he controls the order of things? Then what happens when the nerds get on his good side?
“For the first time…” He turns to face the group, confident for once. “We’re not the losers.”