The Map from Here to There

by Emery Lord

  It would have been purely fun except that I was trapped in a small, dark room with my ex-boyfriend and all of our mutual friends. Max and I were operating under the tacit agreement that the other person did not exist. We smiled freely at everyone else but avoided eye contact with each other. We sat on opposite sides of the curved bench facing the TV, me sandwiched between Morgan and Josiah so I couldn’t even see Max in my peripheral vision.

  All things considered, we were handling it. Or so I thought.

  When Tessa dragged me up for an old Lilah Montgomery song, I realized that I must be giving off bad energy. Tessa hated being in the spotlight, so this was clearly a concerted effort on her part. I got into it, serenading a delighted Kayleigh.

  I did not look at Max Oliver Watson for even one flicked-glance second.

  After that, we went down a Disney rabbit hole that began with Morgan’s rendition of “Part of Your World.” Josiah and Malcolm did an adorable and off-key duet from Frozen. Ryan hopped up to the machine and picked up two mics.

  “Come on,” Ryan said, motioning at Max.

  Max made no movement whatsoever, like maybe we wouldn’t see him. “Yeah, I think I’m good.”

  “Come on,” Ryan insisted. To the rest of us, he said, “He was obsessed with Toy Story in kindergarten. He made me sing this a thousand times. You owe me, dude.”

  The song was beginning, so Ryan started in with the opening lines, angrily singing about persistent friendship.

  “You can’t leave him up there!” Tessa cried, thumping Max with one of the couch pillows. He trudged up to the microphone, laughing.

  Max spoke more than sang, looking at Ryan with rueful head shakes. Ryan, meanwhile, hammed it up like he was born to.

  “This is … maybe the cutest thing I’ve ever seen,” Kayleigh marveled. The lights caught on her plastic, party store tiara.

  Morgan held up her phone. “I’m legitimately going to cry. And send this to their mothers.”

  I patted Morgan’s leg, motioning for her to slide out so I could go to the restroom. Under the fluorescent bathroom lights, I washed my hands with painfully cold water. I hated the tangy smell of cheap pink soap, and it didn’t make me feel cleaner anyway. I stared at my face in the mirror, willing myself to get it together.

  Kayleigh was waiting outside our karaoke room, leaning against the wall and texting.

  “Hey,” she said, straightening. “Stay here a sec.”

  She ducked back into the room, and I froze, more out of surprise than obedience. In seconds, she popped back out, and I frowned. “What’s up?”

  Max appeared behind her, and I opened my mouth to rage about this apparent conspiracy between the two of them. He got Kayleigh to act as the go-between? But when he glanced up, he looked just as surprised to see me. And just as unwilling.

  “What is this?” I asked Kayleigh.

  “How long until spring break?” she asked, unfazed by my hostility.

  “I don’t know. A few weeks?”

  “Right,” Kayleigh said. “And I worked very hard on planning our trip, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “You did,” Max said, tentative. We both felt something coming, Kayleigh working up to her point.

  “Okay. So are you two going to pollute my birthday party and my trip with furtive glares and sulking?”

  “We weren’t—” I began, at the same time Max said, “I’m not sulking.”

  “Bah, bah, bah.” Kayleigh waved her arms, silencing us. She stepped a few feet to the left and opened the door to the room beside ours. We’d heard people in there earlier, during lulls in our own performances, but it was empty now. “I know you have some no-talking thing, but we’re all over it. Go hash it out. Find a way to coexist. Consider it my birthday present.”

  Max understood first. “You’re sending us into a room to fight? Like an emotional cage match?”

  “Fight wherever you want. But you’re killing my party vibe.” She circled with her arm like a baseball coach waving us home. “Go on. The music is loud. Scream at each other; screw each other. Don’t care—just work it out.”

  “Charming,” Max said.

  Kayleigh pushed him lightly, enough to move his feet a few steps forward, into the room. Heat burned my cheeks, but I followed. A novelty light spun yellow stars across Max’s annoyed expression.

  “Thanks, love you, bye!” Kayleigh called, slamming the door.

  We stood there, bass from the other room thumping against the floor, and crossed our arms. On the table, a tray of abandoned appetizers and a few mostly empty beer glasses from the last group in here. God, of all the awkward things. The audio system cycled through example karaoke tracks, on to a peppy Whitney Houston song.

  I wanted to go back to this time last year, when I’d first realized that Max Watson could make my heart beat so hard that it almost hurt. Before we’d tangled every line that drew us together. Back then, I had no idea how good it could be. How complicated, how hard.

  Now I did know. I knew that this boy who brought out the best in me could also spur the worst of me.

  Woo, Whitney sang. Hey, yeah.

  Max sighed. “I’ll be the one who leaves, okay? I don’t mind.”

  Like he was so magnanimous, deigning to leave the party first. I opened my mouth to say Great, snottily. But here we were, right? Relative privacy. And honestly, I wanted it over with even more than Kayleigh did. Wouldn’t it feel like such a relief, to empty our heavy pockets of the grudges and slights? “Or we could get it over with.”

  “Get what over with?”

  Seriously? “The tense silence, the glares. The whole thing, Max. God, just yell at me! It can’t be as bad as this.”

  “I don’t want to yell at you.”

  Fine. Maybe he needed me to start him off. Jiggle the handle of a locked door. I drew in my breath and my nerve. “Oh no? You want to be shitty and passive-aggressive instead?”

  That’d do it. His jaw unhinged a little.

  “I’m being shitty to you?” he said, pointing to himself and then to me as if I didn’t understand pronouns.

  “You’re the one who ended it, so why am I getting treated like the antagonist?”

  “Are you kidding me?” His anger felt real, at least—the molten core of a problem, buried deep beneath an icy surface. “I ended it for you.”

  Oh, that’s the story he was telling himself? Because in my version, Max Watson couldn’t handle my friendship with another guy. “Why would you suggest something you didn’t want?”

  “Because I thought it would last a week!” he yelled back. “Two, tops. I thought I was giving you space.”

  Oh. I settled back on my heels. His calmness as we broke things off at Alcott’s—it wasn’t resignation. It was … confidence. What had he said at Alcott’s that day? You can tell me no. He meant it. He thought I’d be able to see the big picture, see him. And hadn’t I?

  “But instead,” he continued, “you’re with Hunter the next second. Which, whatever! Fair enough, I guess! But I don’t have to pretend to like it.”

  My fingers bent, like I could claw at all the ways he was wrong. “Argh, Max! I wasn’t with Hunter.”

  He narrowed his eyes, leaning in—like he’d already thought of this side of the argument, already bested me. “So, if you saw photos of me at a party with Aditi, having a blast days after we ended things, that would be fine with you?”

  I averted my eyes, wishing I could deny it. If I imagined Aditi—this girl I liked so much—becoming closer and closer with Max? It would draw up every insecurity I damped down, every negative voice that whispered inside my mind. “There’s no pressure with Hunter. He’s a friend, so I can’t screw it up.”

  “Why is there pressure with me, though, Paige?” Max asked, seeming equally exasperated.

  “I—I don’t know.” What was I supposed to say? I’m worried you think we’re committed for life? It sounded absurd. It was absurd. I closed my eyes, teeth clenched, trying to find the right words. I could say
that I never expected goodness, this much and this soon. It would be so easy to fan our relationship to fire, letting it overtake my future. But I feared snuffing it out, too. “A lot of reasons, Max. But I am sorry, okay? And I wish I could take it back.”

  When I opened my eyes, he’d eased away from frustration. “Take which part back?”

  The part where I agreed to the gap year. But … did I regret that? Because now I saw, so clearly, that I shouldn’t have been hiding my panic from Max. Telling my mom had felt like working up the nerve to peer under the bed, to check for monsters. If I could look right at the fear, confront it, at least I had some power. But I regretted the place we were in now, that’s for sure.

  The song faded out, replaced by the driving beat of a pop-rock song from middle school. Somehow, with a brain cluttered by trivia about Napoleon and geodes and Area 51, I still knew every lyric.

  I stared up at Max, lips parted with unformed thoughts, and he nodded, jaw set. Like my silence decided something. “Okay. Well, I think we’re done here.”

  He moved forward to leave, expecting me to step aside.

  “No, we’re not.” I backed up against the door, fully blocking it. Blinking up at him, I said, huffy, “Don’t do that—don’t make unilateral decisions just because it’s taking me longer to figure something out.”

  He was too close—already leaning down, arm out and his hand on the doorknob by my waist.

  “Okay,” he said, mostly out of surprise, I thought. That I’d said, clearly, exactly, what I meant to. We were both breathing fast, flustered from arguing. So often when emotions spiked, my instincts screamed flight: retreat to a quiet place where I can collect myself. Not this time.

  “I’m not done,” I said, and I lifted my eyes to Max’s, ready to hold my ground. But his gaze glanced off my mouth, giving himself away. Or maybe I looked first, judging the distance I’d have to close. Maybe we were both halfway there before we realized we’d left.

  Of all the ways our mouths had met before that moment—gently, intently, finally—Max had never kissed me with frustration revving beneath. I’d never kissed him back like I wanted to push him, even while pulling him closer. The pulse in my wrists, in my neck: Uh-oh, uh-oh, and oh well, oh well.

  What was different? Everything else had been giddy and breathless. New. That version of us was a photograph framed in good light. Or frantic, in his basement and me trying to prove something to myself. Now he’d seen me hold back from him, retreat when I couldn’t deal with the consequences. I’d seen his sarcastic edges become sharp and directed right at me; I’d seen jealousy ding his hard-won confidence. We’d wielded our worst qualities and shone our best qualities on each other, and I still wanted to kiss him. I still really, really wanted to kiss him.

  The door lurched, someone trying to enter, and Max’s arm shot out, holding it shut.

  “Oh my God.” I tugged my shirt down, wiped my mouth off on the back of my hand.

  “Uh, hello? We reserved this room,” a voice called from the other side of the door.

  My many hours at Cin 12 took over. I grabbed two empty beer glasses and shoved the appetizer tray into Max’s hand. The door opened to a group of frowning college-aged kids.

  “Sorry ’bout that!” I pasted on a smile. “We were just dealing with our mess.”

  I mean, trying anyway.

  “No sweat,” the speaker—a guy in a blue hat—said, relaxing his stance.

  “Room’s all yours!” I said, cheerful. “Have fun!”

  After everyone had filed in, we set the tray and glasses outside the door. I turned to Max, ready to exhale and laugh it off. “Well! Good instincts at least, you holding the door shut.”

  But Max frowned in consternation, not inside the joke with me or even close. “That … should not have happened. What am I supposed to do with that, Paige?”

  He said it like I was the sole perpetrator of our extremely mutual make-out. Like it was something I had done to him.

  “I’m gonna go,” he said, turning away from me. I opened my mouth to yell after him that he would not bail on Kayleigh’s birthday without saying goodbye, no matter how much she had meddled. But he stopped on his own and glanced back. “I’ll pretend to get a text from my mom.”

  “Great,” I snapped.

  “Great.”

  He shook his shoulders out and took a deep breath before reentering Kayleigh’s party. And I was so pissed at him—for shutting down, for acting like my confusion was a personal affront, for expecting me to know what I was doing. He was the one who always acted so sure of himself, so sure of me.

  So why did I also love this infuriating person?

  When he did react to a supposed text from his mom, he made a good show of seeming regretful. He bid the birthday girl farewell, waved to everyone, and I really thought he pulled it off.

  It took Tessa less than five minutes to plunk down beside me and say, “Well, that text was pretty fake, huh?”

  I almost denied it, almost put up the energy required to fib. Instead, I gave a defeated smile. “I hate that we can’t even disguise our drama.”

  “Well. You’re so alike, you and Max. That’s why it’s so good. It’s also why it’s hard sometimes.”

  “That is …” I glanced over, studying her profile in the rainbow dots that swirled above us now. Whatever souls are made of, Emily Brontë wrote, his and mine are the same. I’d read that in class and thought: huh. “True, isn’t it?”

  “Yep.” Tessa shrugged, like it was a very simple assessment. “Same for me and Laur.”

  “Why’d we fall for them?” I asked grumpily.

  “Pure narcissism,” she said, deadpan. Then, elbowing me, “No, c’mon. Because they’re also the people who really get us. Right?”

  Until recently, being with Max gave me a familiar feeling—like changing into pajamas, like scrubbing makeup off my face. That ah moment of stripping away my time in the outside world. He’d fallen for me like that—absent of my defenses. And what had I done? Tried to be some simpler, girlfriend version of myself he didn’t ask for.

  “Okay,” Tessa said. “To cheer you up, I’m willing to duet one more time. And—one-time offer only, enjoy it while it lasts—you can pick the song.”

  My smile spread slowly. Finally, an easy choice.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  The rest of the weekend, I seethed. I pined. I daydreamed about charging into Max’s house unannounced and pointing my finger up at his face while I yelled. I imagined that scenario turning into another imprudent make-out session. And while I knew drafting a list of all the ways he could have acted better was not the solution, I typed one out for my personal satisfaction anyway.

  I found myself pacing my room Sunday evening, hands itchy for something to do. I went downstairs to see if Cameron would accept help with baking, but she was deep in homework at the kitchen table. I wandered out to the garage, where I’d noticed a pine dresser my mom had sanded down already, the raw wood like pale skin waiting to be clothed. The drawers had a floral pattern etched into the wood, more intricate than the electric sander could reach. The last of the lacquer needed some sandpaper and elbow grease.

  I scrubbed at the arches and petals till my arm ached. I blew away the sawdust and traced my finger on the now smooth curve, warm from friction. The progress gave me the same satisfaction as picking at nail polish, only angrier.

  All my feelings about Max, channeled into the scouring of old furniture. I could sand every drawer into a pile of dust and I’d probably still feel heated.

  I barely registered my mom entering the garage, but her shadow stretched into my patch of light.

  “Hey.” I sat back on my heels.

  “Hey.” She was wearing her work button-down, hair tied back. “I didn’t know you were out here.”

  “Yep.” Only in this moment did I realize she might not have wanted this particular part to be sanded. Maybe I had just ruined her project. “Did I—I thought it would be okay if I finished this part
?”

  I held a hand to my forehead like a visor, trying to make out her expression.

  “Of course,” she said. “I’m happy for the help.”

  She pried open a small canister and stirred the primer while I finished my task. The scratch of grit on wood sounded louder than when I had been out here alone, and I eased off, to cover the aggression behind it.

  “Did you know that sandpaper isn’t made of sand?” I asked. “It’s aluminum oxide, usually.”

  “That’s interesting,” my mom said pleasantly.

  It wasn’t, really. Just useless QuizBowl knowledge stacked into the crawl spaces of my brain.

  Maybe I opened my mouth with trivial commentary because I didn’t know how else to start. But my mom took the hint, only a beat passing before she said, “You wanna tell me what’s going on?”

  “Max,” I said, like that explained everything. I wasn’t going to tell my mother that Max and I had accidentally kissed mid-fight, further scrambling the entire dynamic. “We’re a disaster.”

  “Well,” she said. I appreciated that she wasn’t looking at me, trying to study me. She kept priming the wood, watching each stroke of white. “You and Max care a lot about each other. Makes for big feelings when it’s good. Big feelings when it’s bad.”

  “Yeah.” I sighed, sitting back again. “But it’s like … how much work is too much work in a relationship?”

  My mom exhaled, lips buzzing. “Well, my love. That’s a very big question.”

  “I know.” Scritch, scritch. My scrubbing was solely catharsis at this point. “On the one hand, I know all relationships take work. But I’m seventeen.”

  So often, my mom was quick to tell me what to do—or, more likely, not do. But she seemed to be really considering this one. “Didn’t you have an argument with Tessa not too long ago?”