Chapter Text
MAXINE
And all my friends, are enemies
And if I cried unto my mother
No, she wasn't there, she wasn't there for me
Max got up in the morning as if her legs weighed a ton. She dragged herself across the room into the bathroom and washed her face three times, lathering it in gentle circles with her fingertips. The icy water made her shiver and kept her awake. So she did it again and again, until she felt back in her own body. Her eyes were full of sand, red from crying. She spent half an hour trying to get ready. She made it, of course she made it. She chose a nice outfit, colorful as always, and clipped a few colorful barrettes into the side of her hair. She was ready.
She walked downstairs and noticed from a distance her mother resting against her father's shoulder. They were destroyed from the moment Marcos went into the clinic. So Max pressed her fingers around the strap of her bag and smiled.
She said a few eccentric things, half of which they barely heard, and helped her mother finish the pancakes. She’d been burning them lately. Max learned to help more, to be more proactive in the kitchen, although it was a mess when she tried.
She learned a different laundry cycle and how not to shrink everything and turn it all pink after the first time. Anything to ease the tension on her mother’s face and the vacant look in her father's eyes.
The home that was once filled with life had become a constant sepulcher. Max tried to fill it by inventing things, making up stories, pretending she was still popular and liked by someone.
Marcus refused to see her, and her parents said it in that voice, the one Max knew all too well. Her mother asked for patience, because he was going through a lot.
"You did the right thing, darling," her father said slowly, emphasizing each word, as if his distressed face hadn’t explained enough already.
"And of course you could have told us sooner," her mother said casually, carelessly, while Max was already dressed and excited to visit her brother a visit he asked her not to make.
"You need to understand, darling, he’s going through a lot," she said, and Max swallowed hard. It felt as if she were chewing nails for breakfast.
Her father pressed her shoulder and forced a weak smile, promising to bring back news and that soon everything would be all right. Her mother left her tasks to do, and Max finished them. She washed the dishes and scrubbed each piece of cutlery seven times, then rinsed it another seven, until everything sparkled.
She polished the furniture and reorganized the fridge and the pantry. She looked for possible hiding places that Marcus might have kept. She found a half-empty bottle, opened it, and meant to throw it away. She really meant to.
They need to keep the house safe for when her brother came back, right?
So she pressed it to her lips and tasted it. The warmth burned her throat. She turned it up and wondered if this was how her brother felt.
It didn't get better. She noticed.
Her mind was still noisy.
Her thoughts seemed to have thoughts of their own.
She couldn’t close her eyes and breathe. Drinking hadn’t done it. She tossed what remained into the sink and hid the bottle at the bottom of the garbage outside.
Georgia nodded to her from her doorway and smiled, making a move to come toward her. Max smiled back, unsure, and took a shaky step forward. But then she saw someone behind her neighbor.
It was Ginny.
So Max turned around as quickly as she could and nodded a goodbye to Georgia, letting her back into her home.
She separated art magazines and some old comic books she found in the garage and made cards filled with drawings not nearly as good as his, but she signed them anyway. She handed them to her mother, who smiled in a strange way and promised a response from Marcos.
According to her father, he was improving. He was in group therapy and had started painting again. Max cheered up at this, and even though she was tired, she obeyed her mother’s wishes and kept her brother’s room clean.
She cleared away all the garbage, changed the sheets, and felt strange searching through the drawers for more alcohol. Her mother hadn’t asked for it, but Max had become paranoid. If he was hiding it at school and in the garage, there might be a stash somewhere else.
She looked and looked, and luckily all she found was her father's old canteen, now empty. Her mother walked in and found her lying on his mattress, arms stretched above her, head droops downward. Max liked to sleep there sometimes, surrounded by her brother’s smell.
She wondered if he felt the same if he missed her and felt strange and empty.
Those weeks were the longest without her brother, and not being able to visit made the loneliness cut even deeper. She started listening to his depressing songs on her old iPod songs she used to roll her eyes at and then ask for something by Taylor Swift.
Marcus would furrow his brow and roll his eyes, but in the end, he’d give in. Max suspected there were a few Taylor songs hidden on his phone, ones he listened to in secret while thinking about Ginny.
She finds herself listening and liking some more than others, feeling that restlessness growing in her.
“Max, you know your brother doesn’t like it when people mess with his things.” Her mother’s voice made her jump, nearly dropping the iPod.
“I was cleaning his room, Mom, just like you asked.” She knew her tone was brash, but she was so tired. The speech followed, the words Max knew by heart.
“Would you want your brother to stay in your room when you were gone? Would you want him to go through your things?”
“I was cleaning, Mom… that's all. I found some old things, his iPod… I… I miss him.” She whispered in frustration and pressed her hands against her jeans. Her mother’s expression shifted immediately.
“Oh, honey.” She opened her arms and Max fell into them. Her mother pressed a comforting hand against her back and whispered promises Max once believed. She wanted to fold into her, become small and invisible, safely resting in her arms again.
But even now, with her mother’s attention on her, the promises weren’t about her. They were about him, about Marcos. Max sighed and nodded, promising not to move his things again.
“Because you know, darling, he wouldn’t like it.” She nodded once more and walked away feeling strange. Then she cleaned her own wardrobe by color, because boredom was killing her. Then she started organizing by size divided into groups of seven.
She found her trunk and her heart tightened. Was it possible for a heart to twist itself up like that? She researched it on Google and read some symptoms. Oh God, could it be something serious?
She went through the box, touching photos and knickknacks a pair of matching heart chains, purple and pink bracelets with initials from her friends back when Mang was a thing. Now it’s just a bad joke.
She tried putting the bracelet on, but it no longer fit. It broke and fell into purple and pink beads all over the floor. She carefully collected them and put them back in the box. She hadn’t the courage to throw it away.
She received a notification from Norah. Abby smiled when Max arrived, and the rest nodded; everyone knew about Marcos and asked about him. Max did her best to update and appease.
“I’m sorry for what I said that day.” Ginny said awkwardly. “I didn't mean it that way.” Ginny with her upturned nose and sincere brown eyes.
Max nodded, assuring everything was fine, even when Abby made no effort to apologize. Even when the side conversation the ones Max wasn't a part of flowed effortlessly without her understanding their inside jokes.
She separated kernel by kernel of corn on her plate, organizing her food piece by piece, counting how many chews it took without feeling sick. She barely noticed when the girls stood up and walked away, until Samantha sat across from her, eyebrows raised. She looked at Max’s plate and smiled in a strange, piercing way.
Max forced a strange smile, and Samantha’s gaze barely blinked as she observed her, like an owl. Max felt trapped at the table. She looked at her own plate nearly untouched and felt guilty, unsure why.
“That trick gets a little old, you know. It’s easier if you drink water first… like a lot of water.”
“Hm? Water?” Max repeated weakly, and Samantha sighed impatiently.
“What exactly are we talking about here?”
“You're not the brightest one, are you.”
Max opened her mouth in offense, and Samantha stood up.
“Abby was much faster, but that's expected from her, isn’t it? Considering she barely takes her finger out of her throat.” She said it casually and walked away.
Max nearly fell trying to get up from her seat, but grabbed Samantha’s pale arm and forced her to stay.
“Wait.” She was breathless. “What the hell are you talking about? Are you implying that Abby…”
It couldn’t be. It couldn’t. Max would know, wouldn’t she? Abby was her best friend. She wouldn’t be doing this, would she?
Samantha’s smile seemed to answer for her.
“Oh, you didn't know? I thought you two told each other everything.” Her voice fell lower as she drew closer. “I forgot. Now she has Ginny and the other Baker. The better Baker, really.”
“Better?”
“My God, girl, you really are out of it, aren’t you? You need to pay more attention to what people you trust say when you’re not around.” She said it more seriously this time, nodded, and looked at Max almost… with pity.
It was a lot to handle. Max skipped the next class and the one after that. She locked herself in her room and told her mother she was having the worst cramps of her life. She cried in a fetal position.
“He wants to talk to you.” Her mother announced.
“Who?” Max removed her headphones and furrowed her brows at her mother’s frustrated expression.
“Who, Maxine? Your brother.”
Max stood up too quickly and felt the room spin. She really needed to stop counting the grains and eating them just to pass the time. Her mother held her arm and smiled when Maxine seemed excited to reach out and hear her brother.
He had finally called, finally wanted to talk to her. He forgave her; she knew he would. Marcos could never stay mad at her for long.
“Marcus.”
“Hey Max.” He said it, and she sighed and laughed, and he did the same at least she thought so. “How are things?”
“How are you?” She interrupted him. “My God, sorry.” She laughed and felt her voice tremble. “You first.”
Marcos laughed on the other side it was amazing how much she’d missed it, the sound of his voice. His.
Then he cut the conversation off abruptly.
“How is she?”
“Who? Mom?” Max glanced over her shoulder and smiled.
“No, Max. Ginny… Abby, Silver… How are everyone?”
How would she know?
So she holds the phone tightly and feels sick to her stomach. The cramp she made up now seems to have come to torment her for real she could swear it felt like a knife twisting in her gut.
"Max? Are you still there?"
"I… I-I am. hm, what did you ask again?"
He sighs, but it's not the amused kind like always it sounds impatient. Marcos is probably rolling his eyes and tapping his foot. He asks about her again, more sharply this time, and Max stumbles over her words. Her eyes sting and suddenly she can't find anything to say.
"She's fine," she says. It's all she can manage before handing the phone to her mother, who takes it while climbing the stairs, holding the railing as her legs feel weak as jelly.
"You know how your sister is."
She locks herself in her room and paces in circles. Of course he called about her. About Ginny. He wanted to know about her. About Abby and her friends.
He didn’t apologize for refusing to see her. He didn’t apologize for anything at all. Because he didn’t regret it, did he? They were right, weren’t they? She always made everything about herself.
She literally just did it, didn’t she? She could’ve given details. Details about Ginny wanting to go to Korea, about how excited she was for the program. About shared custody with their dad. All those things she picked up by osmosis, but didn’t really know in depth. She could’ve said how Abby now walks around holding her girlfriend’s hand.
But she got so caught up thinking about how he didn’t really ask about her, how he cut off her explanation and her questions just to talk about them. Max can’t stop searching for the red hair tie the one that holds her hair tightly. She wants to put it on her wrist and snap it, like she saw Ginny doing. The urge is clear and sudden.
Max doesn’t even know why Ginny uses it. Some kind of compulsion, maybe? Was she like Abby was she throwing up? She grabs her phone and looks up bulimia, remembering Samantha giving those awful tips, and suddenly it hits her how little she actually knows.
Norah probably had something serious going on too, and she hadn’t noticed because she was too selfish, always talking about herself.
She yanks at her hair and throws the phone across the room, but quickly searches for it again and finds Samantha’s disturbing advice. She can’t stand to read it anymore. She heads downstairs and slips into the garage her parents are in their bedroom, and she exhales in relief. She’s sure her brother kept strong rubber bands.
She finds one, but her hand is shaking. She knocks over the toolbox. Lips pressed tight, eyes squeezed shut in panic. Her mother would freak out if she saw her messing around in her brother’s workshop.
But no one shows up, so she carefully grabs some tools, trying to avoid making any noise, but her stupid trembling hands don’t help. She grabs something sharp, pulls on it by mistake, and feels the burn in her hand. She gasps and yanks her hand back. A mistake, of course. Blood stains her pants as she stares at the sharp edge of the utility knife.
She presses the wound with her shirt, already worrying about stains on the floor.
Could it be mistaken for paint? Maybe she could pour some over it or bleed more no one would notice. She stares at the cut. It's deep, right in the palm, almost reaching her wrist.
It stings and burns, and she presses on it, which only makes the pain sharper. She focuses on the burn, trying to think of how to close it. She doesn’t notice that she’s stopped pressing and is just staring at the tiny blood droplets gathering, beginning to coagulate. She watches them thicken, mesmerized.
She doesn’t know why she does it, but presses the wound again with her nail until it starts bleeding more. She gasps and jumps back.
Why the hell did she do that?
Max grabs a dirty rag Marcus left behind and presses it against the wound.
She rushes up the stairs. Hears her mom asking her to make less noise and locks herself in the bathroom, letting the water run over the cut. She bites her lip as the clear sink water turns dark with her blood.
And only much later, when she’s holding a compress against her wrist, does she notice the silence. She had focused so much on the pain, on the wound, that everything else had vanished. The knot in her stomach, the tightness in her chest, the constant tears that made her head ache gone.
She presses the wound harder when Marcos’s voice comes back into her mind.
“How is she?”
She presses and presses, feeling stupid for it. She was definitely being stupid, as always.