by Amber Smith
“But if you really like it . . . ?” he asked, letting the question dangle there.
“It’s vintage. Worth every penny,” Teresa added, pressing down on the tiny lever, popping open the locket to reveal a mark engraved on the inside.
“I like it ’cause it reminds me of you,” I said to Chris. “I don’t need it, though. I already have you. Thanks anyway,” I told Teresa.
“Maia! Chris?” Gabby called across the store. She and Hayden were dressed up in clothing from different time periods. Hayden waved us over, donning long white gloves up to the elbows. Gabby was in a fur shawl and had a sequin clutch.
“We’re being beckoned,” he said, thoroughly enjoying himself.
I groaned as I trudged toward them.
“You can relax,” he said close to my ear, and his voice was so soothing, I almost believed him. “It’s going well. I really like them.”
Hayden and Gabby were standing there with this old jacket they found, the kind with elbow patches. “Here, Chris,” Gabby said, holding the jacket open. “Try this.”
“Guys, come on,” I said.
“What?” Hayden asked as Chris threaded his arms through the sleeves. “He looks great!” Then she placed a fedora on his head, setting it on a tilt.
“Really?” Chris looked at me as he straightened the jacket out.
“You do,” I told him. “You look great.” He did, and for a second I wasn’t worried about the giant mess I had created; I was more worried about keeping my hands off him in the store. His smile was contagious. I watched it spread from Hayden to Gabby, and then finally to me.
He took the hat off and placed it on my head, telling me, “And you look amazing.”
I wasn’t sure how I could be so immensely happy while also being so profoundly sad—I was drowning. “I’ll be right back,” I said, pushing the hat into Chris’s hands.
“Where’s she going?” I heard Hayden ask as I rushed to the bathroom.
I had to run, had to get away. I locked the door behind me and turned the faucet on full force. I tried to slow my breathing, but I couldn’t. I was gasping for air—I couldn’t seem to get enough in or out. I was dizzy. I sat down on the floor because I was afraid I’d fall. My hands were shaking.
Someone knocked.
“Just a minute,” I yelled.
It was Hayden’s voice on the other side of the door. “Are you okay?”
I scrambled to my feet and shut the water off. I looked in the mirror for only a moment before I swung the door open—I had a twinge of that old sickening sense of not recognizing myself again.
“You okay?” she repeated as I came out.
“Yeah,” I told her as we walked back to where Chris and Gabby were waiting. “Just not feeling great.”
Everyone had removed their accoutrements. And Chris was holding one of those really old box cameras, saying, all excited, “Maia, check this out. And look, there are these old lenses over here.” Just when I thought I was back on solid ground, it began rumbling and vibrating under my feet again.
“Chris.” I hadn’t realized how sharp my voice was until the word was out of my mouth and everyone was staring at me. “Um, Chris,” I said again, softer, taking the camera from his hands and setting it down on a stray dining chair. “Look, we have to go, okay?” I whispered to him. “Y’all, we have to go, all right?”
“Wait, what? Why?” everyone was saying all at the same time. But I couldn’t answer any of those questions; I couldn’t deal. I started walking toward the door instead.
CHRIS
I KEPT CALLING HER NAME, but Maia wouldn’t turn around. “Hey,” I said, finally catching up with her out on the sidewalk in front of the theater. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” she said, but everything about her was shouting the opposite: her crossed arms, her wide eyes, the way she was standing so rigid, looking everywhere except at me. “I just—I didn’t want to do this tonight, and—and I don’t like getting steamrolled by everyone, and I don’t feel good, okay?”
I tried to keep calm, but I’d never seen her rattled like this and it was scaring me. “Should we at least tell your friends—”
“No!” she interrupted. “I’m sorry. Please just take me home. Please?”
“Okay, we can do that.” I started walking along next to her, toward where we’d parked, but when I tried to reach for her hand, she pulled away. I glanced behind us; her friends were on the sidewalk in front of the store, watching us leave.
I didn’t try talking to her again on the way home. She just stared out the window, facing away from me the whole time, biting her fingernails.
I parked the car in her driveway and turned off the headlights, waiting for her to say something first. She leaned her head back against the seat, finally looking at me as she reached for my hand, and said, “I’m sorry.” But her voice sounded ragged and strained, like she had been screaming all night.
“What’s wrong? What can I do?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Nothing.”
“Is it me?” I debated the questions I really wanted to ask for a moment, and decided to only say half of it. “Maia, you’re not . . . embarrassed of me, are you?” The other half, the half that was harder to say, was, You’re not trying to hide me, right? You’re not afraid of your friends finding out I’m trans, are you?
“No, it’s not you.” She unbuckled her seat belt and slid across the bench seat, and leaned close to me with her face against my neck. “I’m just having a bad day,” she whispered.
I nodded. I got it.
I had bad days—days when the past is biting at your heels, about to catch up with you—and I figured she must have them too, but I’d never heard her talk like that before. I put my arm around her and said, “It’ll be okay.”
She held on to me even tighter, and said, “Chris, I really love you.”
“I really love you too,” I replied.
• • •
I couldn’t sleep at all. Maia’s sadness had crawled inside me, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was very wrong—that not only was she not okay, but somehow we weren’t okay either.
I texted her in the morning to see how she was feeling, to ask if she wanted a ride to work, but I never heard back, and an hour later I saw her leaving her house on her bike, wearing her Bargain Mart shirt.
I went for my run. I showered and got dressed, as usual. I thought I’d go for a drive, clear my mind. But when I drove past the antiques store, I stopped.
The bell dinged as I entered, just like it had last night. The woman who had been working then was there again. “Morning,” she called over to me from across the store, where she was organizing a row of knickknacks on top of an old desk.
“Good morning,” I answered.
She gave me a knowing look and walked over to the jewelry counter. I followed behind, and before I could even ask her any questions, she pulled out the necklace Maia had been looking at. “This is what you came for, isn’t it?”
“How’d you know?” I asked.
She shrugged and said, “Just a hunch. Tell you what, I’ll give it to you for fifty. How does that sound?”
I would’ve gladly paid sixty—that was how much the vintage telescope was going for—and I would’ve paid a lot more than that if it meant making Maia smile today.
I nodded, and she took a tiny, square, plastic ziplock bag out from under the counter, carefully dangled the necklace over the opening, and let it collapse neatly inside. She sealed the enclosure and handed it to me. I couldn’t wait to give it to Maia—I kept imagining her reaction, so I decided to surprise her at work.
I walked up and down the aisles, before I texted again.
Did you make it into work okay?
She wrote back immediately: Yes, I did. Thank you, sorry forgot to text back earlier.
I wandered through the clearance aisles, and the clothing departments. It was a big store, but not so big that I shouldn’t be able to find her. Wh
en I walked by the fitting room for maybe the twentieth time, the older woman working there asked if I needed help finding anything.
“Actually, yes,” I answered. “I’m looking for Maia. Is she around?”
The woman pursed her lips and turned her head, saying, “No, that poor girl. She’s out sick today.”
I left the store and walked around to the side of the building. Her bike wasn’t in the rack. I pulled out my phone and looked at her text again—yes, she had clearly said she was at work.
She’d lied to me.
Back in the station wagon, my mind was flooding over with the events of the last day—nothing was making sense. I wanted to go talk to Hayden and Gabby, but I didn’t know how to reach either of them. As I drove past the gas station, I slowed down.
Neil’s truck was parked at one of the pumps.
I pulled up behind him just as he was coming out of the building. He stopped when he saw me standing there waiting for him, and approached me cautiously, looking around.
“Chris?” he said. “What’s up?”
I skipped the pleasantries and got right to the point. “What were you talking about the other day?” I asked, but he just cocked his head to the side like he was confused. “The thing you said about Maia, what did you mean?”
He walked over to the side of his truck, removed the gas pump from the tank, and returned it to its cradle. Holding his hands on his hips, he leaned against the side of the truck bed and looked at me closer. “What do you want to know?”
I wanted to know whatever it was he thought I should know about her, whatever it was that made him tell me I needed to watch my back. “I guess for starters,” I said, “why did you go off on her like that at the party?”
He sighed and shifted his gaze away from me. “Look, we’ve all been messed up about what happened to Mallory. And I know that Maia is her sister and all, but she was my best friend. To have to see Maia going around doing all this crazy, cruel shit like she’s the only one who loved her—it’s not right.”
“What crazy, cruel shit?” I asked.
“You know she burned all of Mallory’s work?” he said, and he was starting to talk in this labored, halted way—not out of anger, but sadness, almost like he could start crying at any moment if he let himself.
“No,” I said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“She burned all her pictures!” he shouted. “And if that wasn’t bad enough, then she’s gonna walk around with her camera—it’s just not right,” he repeated.
“Wait, I’m confused. Were they pictures of her sister?” I was really trying to work with what he was giving me, but the pieces weren’t fitting together. “And why shouldn’t she be able to walk around with her own camera? What am I missing?”
He stood up straight then, arms dropping to his sides as he turned to face me. He shook his head slowly and held one hand up as if he was trying to ward off the words I had spoken. “Hold on. Are you saying Maia told you that camera is hers?”
I stared back at him, and I watched his mouth drop open as I nodded in response.
“Jesus,” he mumbled, rubbing his hands across his face. “We should sit.”
MAIA
I WAS LYING IN THE sun at Bowman’s. I stopped before work this morning, but I couldn’t force myself to face the rest of the day. I was falling in and out of sleep when Chris texted me yet again: Where are you?
I started tapping out a lie—at work—when his next message came.
I know you’re not at work. Come meet me. I’ll be waiting in the barn.
I clambered to my feet, heart instantly pounding out of rhythm.
As I raced my bike home, every part of my body, inside and out, was vibrating. I hopped off my bike while it was still moving, and it crashed into the side of the barn. I barged through the door to see him standing in front of the wall, looking at the photos.
“Please,” I said, trying once more to slow the unending advance of the catastrophe I had created, but could not stop. “Just let me—” explain.
“Maia, show me the picture you took of me that day,” he demanded, finally turning to look at me.
“Chris, I—”
“Where is it?” he interrupted. “Show me that picture, Maia.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
He looked at me in a way he never had before. It wasn’t that his expression was blank, but more like his face was stripped of all emotion. Beyond that was something more sullen, bittersweet: He was hurting. No, I was hurting him. It was only a matter of time.
“You already know why,” I said, and I could feel my eyes burning, filling with tears, because this was it. It was over. It had finally caught up with me. “Don’t you?”
“I know, but I—I don’t . . . understand,” he said, his speech choppy and broken.
“I wish I could explain it to you; it’s just so hard—”
“Well, try!” he said, raising his voice.
“It made me feel closer to her,” I said, trying. Really trying. “Like she wasn’t really gone.”
“More,” he said, shaking his head. “I need more.”
“I liked that you thought I was special, okay?” I knew I had no right to be yelling at him right now, but if I didn’t yell, I was convinced I would melt onto the floor in a puddle of my own self-loathing and never be able to put myself back together. “I liked that you thought I had these amazing talents and dreams and—”
“So you lied?” he yelled back. “You lied to me this whole time, Maia!”
“But I—”
“But nothing!” he interrupted. “How am I ever supposed to trust you again?” He came closer, watching me, waiting for an actual answer to his question. The thing was, I didn’t have one.
“I don’t know,” I finally said, taking a step closer to him.
“Great,” he scoffed, looking around at all of Mallory’s photos.
I reached out to try to touch him, but he twisted away from me.
I’ve heard that the sheer amount of snow that lands on a person trapped in an avalanche can create confusion—you don’t always know which way is up. Sometimes the victims are found suffocated and dead, having dug the wrong way.
It must’ve been the disorientation that made me say, “Fine. You can hate me and never trust me again if you want, but don’t pretend you don’t have secrets too.”
“What are you talking about?” he snapped. “I’ve been totally honest with you—more honest with you than I’ve ever been with anyone in my entire life.”
“I knew, Chris. I knew almost from the very beginning.”
“Knew what?”
“Knew. About you. I spied on you. Just like a perfect little photographer would. Just like Mallory would have done. I knew. I saw you.”
He shook his head. “I don’t—I don’t believe you.” He was trying to hide it, but I could see this sheen cast over his eyes, water filling the corners.
“I’m just saying, how do you think I felt when day after day, as I’m falling for you—hard, I might add—I knew you weren’t telling me the truth?”
“This cannot be real,” he whispered, looking at me in a way that sent chills up my spine, like we were strangers, like there was nothing between us. That was when I remembered that I’d forgotten to tell him the most important part: how I trusted him anyway.
“So all those days when we were running around together searching for the perfect shots, all those conversations, everything we shared—that was, what, a lie?” His voice was small now, quiet, and I knew that was worse than the yelling.
“No. No, that wasn’t a—”
“And that night when I told you. Everything you said. How you were so understanding. And you said that—you said that nothing changed—were you just laughing at me on the inside?”
“No, I wasn’t!”
“That night meant everything to me,” he said, his voice trembling, “and it was all a lie.”
“How I feel
is not a lie, Chris,” I said, my voice thickening with my own tears about to spill over. “I’m sorry, okay? Wait, just let me try to explain. I shouldn’t have said it like that.”
Too late, Mallory whispered in my ear.
CHRIS
LOGICALLY, I KNEW THAT THE feeling in my body was only adrenaline—heart racing, palms sweating, the electric buzz coursing through every vein and every cell—but another part of my brain honestly wondered if I might spontaneously combust.
I needed to get away from her, or I was afraid that fire inside might actually kill me.
“Leave me alone,” I yelled as I busted out the door and into the open air.
But she wouldn’t. She was following me, saying, “I’m sorry,” trying to get in front of me, blocking my path.
“Get out of my way!” My voice sounded hard, mean. She opened her mouth again but never even got a word out before I cut her off. “Just. Get. Away.”
“No, we need to talk. I’m not explaining anything right. I just—it all came out wrong. I’m sorry,” she said again.
She didn’t get it—I was done talking, done trying to understand. Her words, the supposed truths she had just told me, were all jumbled in my head, repeating themselves over her simple apologies. Underneath that, I still had all of Neil’s words running on a loop too. My head felt too full. I just had to make it back to Isobel’s, then I could think again.
“I’m sorry?” I tossed the words over my shoulder at her. “That’s so weak, even for you.”
“I know. I know it is. But you have to believe me, I do love—”
“Don’t.” She didn’t get that word anymore. It wasn’t hers to have. Not with me.
“I love you,” she finished, rushing to keep up with me.
“Stop saying that!”
“That’s the one truth I had this entire time—I love you.”
I didn’t know much truth, but I knew one of my own had arrived in this very minute. I reached Isobel’s porch; at last, I had something solid to hold on to. “You love me? That’s great. But guess what, I don’t love you!”
