When we get back home Malin demands a board-game tournament, and everyone heads to the game room to choose something. The room is big and filled with everything from pool to darts to pinball, which kept us occupied as kids. Now it also boasts a fantastic bar filled with top-shelf liquor to keep us occupied as adults.
It is probably stupid, but I think a drink might help me calm down or at least clear my head enough to understand why I feel so apprehensive. I kick off my sandals in the corner and head towards the alcohol. As usual, as soon as I get anywhere near one of them, my brothers call out drink orders. Everyone else follows suit.
Brody and Liam play darts, and the girls debate the merits of all the board games in an attempt to decide what we should play. My parents have parked themselves on the big sectional in the corner, and even though I don’t look up, I can feel Taylor watching me. Making the cocktails is good, actually, because for about twenty minutes it gives me something to do with my shaky hands. Once everyone has a drink, I make my own and take a swallow that decreases the liquid in my glass by half.
“What about Scrabble?” Miko asks the room.
“No!” my brothers say in unison.
“Max will murder you at Scrabble,” Malin tells her seriously. “You have no idea.”
Taylor catches my eye and smiles. I look away and take another drink.
Landon and Miko are both sitting on the floor in the corner, and they go back to digging through the game shelves.
“What about Password?” Mom asks everybody.
“You cheat at Password!” Malin laughs back at her.
Mom’s only response is a giggle and a raise of her eyebrows. My dad leans over and kisses her cheek as if even after all these years she is still the coolest person he knows.
Liam lets out a whoop when he strikes the bull’s-eye, and I turn to watch him handing out high fives at the same moment Landon gasps. I don’t turn immediately, because Landon is overly dramatic and could be reacting to anything. I start to take another sip of my drink when she squeals.
“Max, is this you?”
Everything in me stills completely.
I am walking across the room towards her before my eyes can even focus on what she is holding. I stop a foot away from where she and Miko sit in the corner. They are flipping through an old photo album, the kind that my mom used to have everywhere until I begged her to put them away. She put them here, along with all the other pictures of me from before, so I wouldn’t see them and have to be reminded.
The blood starts pounding through my body, and my heart is beating so hard I can hear it in my ears. Nobody else seems to notice my distress. Landon and Miko are immersed in the pictures on each page.
Landon’s voice is filled with laughter. “All this time you have given me grief!” she says without looking up. “How many blonde jokes have you told me? How many times have you teased me about the color pink? Max, you looked like a Barbie doll!” She laughs outright now.
Miko nods in agreement. “Seriously, dude, why did you chop your hair off? Even I want to make out with you in this photo!”
I rub my palms down the front of my dress, fighting the urge to be sick. Malin leans over the page to see the photo they are looking at. I don’t need to get closer to see the images; I know what they show. A lifetime of shots of me with the same blonde hair as my mother and the same pampered outlook on life that Malin has now.
“Oh, she did that freshman year at Georgetown,” she says flippantly.
“When were you at Georgetown?” Landon asks, turning the page.
“She went there for part of her undergrad.” Malin reaches out and starts shuffling a deck of cards as she shares more facts. “Went away that year with this perfect, long blonde hair and a golden tan, then came back at summertime all angry goth. You’d actually probably die of disbelief if you knew what she was like then,” Malin continues, blissfully unaware of her story’s effect on me in the way only a sheltered twenty-two-year-old can be.
I start to have trouble breathing.
I feel Taylor come up behind me, but that only makes it worse.
“She was the sweetest girl you’ve ever met,” Malin says with a smile. She searches her memory for more information for her rapt audience. “She was captain of varsity track from freshman year in high school on. Won every award there was. Straight As, most popular girl in school, never did anything wrong. The perfect goody two-shoes!”
Landon gasps again and Miko giggles.
I vaguely hear my mother call my name, but it is hard to focus on anything other than staying upright.
“I guess you decided to rebel, though, because you kind of . . .” She trails off when she looks up and sees whatever is on my face.
She jumps to her feet in panic.
“Max?” she asks urgently.
It is too much. Everything with Taylor and lying to my parents and trying to keep my job and now those pictures, and remembering that time before it all went so wrong, and . . . I feel light-headed.
My mom’s face is in front of mine, and it takes me a minute to understand her words.
“You’re OK, Mackenzie. Just take a deep breath,” she says soothingly but authoritatively. “You’re OK.”
“I’m OK?” I choke out.
I take a step back from her and back right into Taylor. I jump away like I’ve been scalded. I look around the room wildly. Everyone is standing now, staring at me in concern. My mother starts to speak again, and I cut her off.
“I’m OK?” I ask again in wonder. “I’m OK!” This time it comes out like an accusation.
“I am not OK,” I answer honestly. “I haven’t been OK”—I spit out the word—“in a really long time!”
“Max,” Malin says gently.
Anger comes then, swift and welcome. It is an emotion I can process better than the overwhelming urge to fall to pieces. It sweeps through every part of my being, becoming a rage I direct at Malin, at my mother, at anyone who’s ever considered my coming home as a completely different person the result of a childish act of rebellion. I spear Malin with a look.
“You think this is what rebellion looks like?” I gesture to myself, this person I’ve become who is so unlike the shiny, perfect little girl I see in the photos before me. “You think I became this person because I was going through a phase? One I’d still hold on to six years later?” I swipe at my cheeks, surprised to find the tears there.
The group around me is utterly still; no one knows how to handle me.
I don’t know how to handle me.
“Mali”—I choke on a sob—“you don’t destroy yourself on purpose. Don’t you get it? It’s one stupid mistake, over in an instant, but then it’s too late to take it back.”
“Mackenzie”—my mother takes a step towards me—“sweetheart, let’s get you upstairs and we can talk.”
I take another step backwards and reach out to finger the bracelet on my wrist.
“Why upstairs?” I demand. “You’ve tried for years to get me to talk. Well, here we are.” I throw my hands up in frustration.
“Honey, I don’t think this is—”
“Why, Mom? Don’t you want to hear about it?” I can’t stop the words. I’ve held them in for so long, and I can’t stop them now. “Don’t you want to know about that first year of school? How excited I was to be on my own? How I thought it was finally my chance to have fun and go to parties like the other girls? And you told me. You told me so many times that I had to be careful with my diet, and that alcohol would affect me more because of my condition. And I knew better, but I so badly wanted to be like everyone else, and so I drank right along with them.”
“Sweetheart, let’s go upstairs,” she tries again.
I ignore her.
“And the alcohol hit me hard, like you told me it would, but I was having fun, more fun than I’d ever had before.” I shake my head at the memory, as if I could wish the rest away. “There was this guy there, and he seemed like fun too.”
“Mackenzie?” My mother’s voice is pleading.
“You can guess where this is going, right?” I ask her. “Because I couldn’t. I was a goody two-shoes, just like Malin said, but I felt wild and so grown up. I didn’t think about consequences, because I’d never done anything that had any real ones. You know, it was my first time, and I don’t even know what his name was?”
I can never live up to their standards, and they may as well know all the ugly details.
“Sweetheart, please stop,” my mother begs quietly.
Her eyes fill up and the tears run down her face, but I can’t make myself stop talking.
“Don’t you want to know the rest, Mom? How ashamed I was the day after, when I woke up in bed with a man I didn’t know?” I feel Taylor flinch beside me. “How later,” I say in a near whisper, “when I found out I was pregnant”—I hear sounds of shock from the people around me, but I can’t be stopped—“all I could think about was how unfair it was? All I could think about was what this would mean for my GPA, or how”—my voice breaks on the words—“how disappointed Daddy would be with me?”
“Please, baby girl—” My father tries to reach me, but I cut him off.
“Don’t you want to know how selfish I was then? How I wasn’t even mature enough to make any decisions, because I didn’t want them on my conscience? How I prayed every day that God would just make that baby go away?”
I lose the ability to speak, my throat closed off by words I’ve never told anyone.
A hand slips around mine.
I look down at Taylor’s fingers holding on to my own. I can’t look at my parents anymore. I can hear my mom crying, but the rest of the room is utterly silent. They know there is more; they are waiting for the bomb to drop. I feel Taylor’s hand in mine like an anchor, weighing me to earth. I can’t say the rest to them, but I can tell him; Taylor kept all my secrets. I look up into his eyes. They’re shiny, but no tears fall from them. He’ll be my confidant one more time.
“A month went by, and I tried to pretend it wasn’t really happening,” I tell Taylor. “But then another month meant it wasn’t just an abstract thing anymore; it was a baby. And I started to wonder what he’d . . .” I swallow and try again. “What he’d be like. Or if his hair would be blond too . . . Or if he’d be a good runner.”
I can hear both my parents crying now; maybe everyone in the room is. I have to say the rest. Taylor squeezes my fingers.
“I had an ultrasound, and I saw his heartbeat. It was so fast, Taylor. So strong. I understood something then that I hadn’t before. I had made a mistake, but he wasn’t a mistake. He was a baby. He was my baby. I didn’t know how I was going to be a mom, but I knew I could figure it out for him.” I take a breath, and when I speak again my voice sounds as hollow as I feel. “A week later I started bleeding. By the time I got to the hospital, they told me there was nothing they could do.” I shrug, then say the words I’ve thought a million times and hate myself for the truth in them. “I guess God heard my prayers after all.”
Everything starts to go dark.
Taylor catches me before I hit the ground.
Chapter Sixteen
When I open my eyes the next morning, the early sunlight of the summer day is streaming in through the drapes I forgot to close. I stretch out my arms and try to remember going to bed, because I am kind of obsessive about sleeping in a cave I so won’t be woken by the sun. I must have—
My thoughts stall out as the memory of the night before comes back to me in a flood.
Oh no, what did I do?
I sit bolt upright in my bed and realize I am still wearing the wrinkled dress from the night before. They must have had to carry me up here after I . . . after I just spewed all of that out all over everyone. Six years of carrying around the secret, and it all came undone in one stupid crying jag in less than fifteen minutes! And everyone knows now. I cringe. My parents, my brothers, even Taylor and Landon and Miko. They all had front-row seats to my train wreck! And today they will want to . . . what? Hold hands and talk it through? Cry about it? Or worse, reprimand me? I can’t handle that at all. I do a perfectly good job of beating myself up about everything that happened. If one of them starts in on me, it will break our relationship in an irreconcilable way. That is why I could never bring myself to tell them what happened. It is why I stayed away the rest of that year until I was sort of pulled together enough to come home. I hadn’t come home as the same girl—not even close—but I did transfer to a local school so I wouldn’t have to see reminders of the darkest period in my life. But I’ve done it now; I’ve spewed all of those secrets out into the world, and I can’t take any of it back. After years of worrying about it, I am finally going to have to see my family’s faces now that they know exactly what kind of person I am.
I reach out to pull my phone off the nightstand and see that it is only a little after six, which means that it is likely that only one other person is awake right now. Before I can think about it further, I jump out of bed. While I brush my teeth and wash my face, I convince myself that this is really the best option. I go back in the bedroom and throw on the first things I can find. I grab my backpack and my phone and hurry downstairs as quietly as possible. The house is utterly silent as I make my way through it, and the relief I feel at not running into anyone is profound. As I get closer to my destination, I hear noise, telling me my guess was right on.
When I walk into the gym, Liam’s eyes fly to my reflection in the mirror in front of him. He hits a button that immediately stops the treadmill he’s running on, and as soon as it slows down, he jumps off and turns towards me. He must not have been on it for long, because he hasn’t even broken a sweat yet.
I look down at my feet, not sure what to say. I try to make a joke.
“So that happened,” I say with as much sarcasm as I can muster.
“Yeah,” he answers.
Apparently he is as much at a loss as I am. I feel sort of sick to my stomach and unsure. This is the kind of confrontation I’ve been trying to avoid for so many years. I look down at my feet again. If there is disappointment in his eyes, I can’t stand to see it.
“Are you mad at me?” My voice comes out sounding like a child’s, and I feel just as small.
I look up when Liam swears, but he is already in front of me, pulling me into his arms.
“Don’t be an idiot! Why would I be mad at you?”
When I only shrug, he sighs.
“I’m sad for you, Mack. I am so fucking sad that you went through all of that. That you didn’t feel comfortable enough to ask anyone for help.” He holds me at arm’s length and looks me over.
“I didn’t want to disappoint anybody,” I answer him honestly.
“So this was better, then? Letting it eat away at you for years? Letting what happened alienate you from your family? You haven’t had a boyfriend. You haven’t really had friends until recently. All that was better than being honest about what was going on? Why would you do that to yourself?” he demands hoarsely.
Tears burn in the back of my throat. I cannot believe there are any left in me.
“Please, Liam,” I say almost desperately. “Please. I can’t do this today. I need your help.”
His eyes narrow, and he looks down at the backpack on the floor next to me.
“No way! You cannot run from this again!” he barks.
How can I explain this to him? I know my family and friends will want to talk about it in detail, but it isn’t their burden to bear; it is mine. I deserve to handle it however I choose to, and if I piss everyone else off in the process, well, it won’t be the first time.
“Liam, last night was”—I choke on the words—“last night was horrible for me. Don’t you understand? It wasn’t just the first time I told you guys; it was the first time I told anyone.”
He swears again.
“I know I’ll have to talk about it with Mom and Dad and everyone else, but please, just not today. I just need some time,
OK?” I say, searching his face for some sign that he might be considering my plea.
He is looking away from me, staring at the wall, but really, who would want to have to look at such a screwup and know she is your sister? I fight the urge to cry again at the thought.
“My keys are by the front door,” he says finally. “I’ll face the wrath this morning for helping you.”
“Thank you. I—”
He cuts me off with a look.
“But you’ll talk to Mom, right? Take a few days to get your head on straight, but then you have to talk to her. Promise me.”
“I promise,” I say, grabbing my bag off the floor and turning to go. I’ve already spent so much time down here that I’ll be lucky if I can still sneak out without anyone knowing about it.
“I’m serious, Mack,” Liam calls after me.
“I know,” I respond and hurry off to grab his keys.
I know he is serious, and I meant it when I said I would speak to my mom about everything. I just can’t guarantee when that will be.
I wait all throughout my drive back to LA for calls and texts that don’t come. I don’t know what Liam had to say to everybody to keep them from sending out search parties, but I know I owe him a bigger debt than I can ever repay.
When I get back to my apartment after a few hours in some horrible holiday traffic, I drag myself upstairs. The whole way here I was thinking about how much I wanted to take a shower and put on pajamas and not have to talk to anyone for as long as possible. When I walk into the apartment, though, the emptiness seems absolute. The quiet is its own kind of noise; the hum of it makes me pause inside the entryway, not sure what to do now. Here I am again, alone. This was exactly how I wanted it, so why is it that I still feel anxious? How come I feel more like crying now than I did when I left this morning? I don’t even just feel like it; I am pretty sure I am about to have another full-on, ugly cry.
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