by Lara Zielin
Ethan puts his hands on his hips and moves his legs in a weird sort of shuffle skip. I look around and, to my horror, realize everyone else is doing the same thing. Except me. I have no idea what song the band is playing and no idea how to dance to it.
“It’s a line dance,” Ethan hollers above the noise. “Just do what I do.” I can feel myself begin to sweat, but I try to look like I’m having the time of my life, knowing the cameras are probably zoomed in on my shiny face and Max is likely out there somewhere watching. Ethan backs up a few steps, then leans forward. By the time I lean, everyone else is on to the next move, and I wind up bumping into a woman wearing a cowboy hat as wide as she is. Which is saying something.
“Sorry!” I manage. Ethan laughs, and I glare at him.
“Side to side!” he says, and crosses one leg over the other. I do the same—until everyone starts going the other direction. This time, I crash into a man with a handlebar moustache, who reaches out a steadying hand.
“Easy there, little filly.”
I can’t even look at him, I’m so embarrassed. I hear a roar and realize Ethan is almost bent over, he’s laughing so hard. He’s all but given up dancing. The crowd is sashaying and do-si-do-ing all around us. I smack his shoulder, which only makes him laugh harder.
“You did this on purpose!” I say.
Ethan is helpless. Tears are coursing down his cheeks.
I want to be mad, but seeing Ethan laugh so hard, I can’t help it. I laugh too. “Where did you learn to line dance?” I ask.
Ethan wipes the tears away. “I live in Oklahoma, Jane,” he says. He’s still grinning. “It’s practically a national pastime down here.”
My smile vanishes. I don’t want to, but I can’t help but think that while Mom and I have been struggling in Minnesota, Ethan’s been line dancing.
“Come on,” he says, “this next one’s a lot easier. And look, we have company.”
Max and Hallie squeeze onto the dance floor, followed by Stephen and Mason. One of the locals with fire-red cowboy boots tries to dry-hump Hallie to the beat of the music before she makes a scissors with her right hand and hollers something about his balls. He backs off.
Some of the Pig & Spit locals go back to their tables to make room for us. With the camera crew, we’ve taken up a good chunk of the dance floor.
A manic fiddle starts up, and both Hallie and Ethan know what to do instantly. I watch Hallie kick her feet and spin, her face getting more and more flushed. Her skin has that same sheen my mom’s gets when she drinks, but she’s smiling and laughing, her eyes bright.
Suddenly, Max is next to me on the dance floor. He grabs one hand, and my legs wobble. He takes my other hand and leads me in a little two-step, then spins me around. Somehow, it doesn’t surprise me that he knows exactly what to do. The warm lights and dark wood of the Pig & Spit swirl by. I tilt my head back and let my hair fly. I close my eyes. It takes me a moment to realize what I’m feeling: I’m having fun.
I stop spinning only to find Max smiling at me. His green eyes are shining, even in the dim space. I want to reach out and touch his hair—and I surprise myself by actually doing it. His eyes dart around, and I follow them. They find the cameras, which are trained on Hallie and Ethan, who are still dancing. Hallie wobbles slightly, tipsy, but it doesn’t matter. She and Ethan are in this moment, moving as if the music is in their blood. Their energy fills the space around them. They’re breathtaking.
“Come on,” Max says. “Let’s get out of here.”
He pulls me to the side of the dance floor, straight into the crowd. My heart pounds, wondering where we’re going and if we’ll be caught. We slip past torsos and elbows, away from the cameras, weaving through the crush of people. When the front door comes into view, Max grips my hand even harder. “Now!” he says, and we make a break for the exit.
17
The Pig & Spit door closes behind Max and me, sealing in its heat and noise. Outside, in the cool of the night, crickets are chirping and stars blanket the sky.
At the edge of the Pig & Spit parking lot, Max keeps his grasp on my hand. “This way,” he says. “I know where we can go.”
I let him lead the way into the tall grass. I step behind him and wish I could hit the Pause button on this moment. That I could lie on my back in this sea of rustling green and float away with Max holding my hand and happiness gripping my heart.
Max and I walk for what feels like miles, but I don’t mind. The grass is high, though we can still see over it. The two of us are quiet, letting the summer night make its sounds all around us.
Finally, Max points straight ahead. “We’re here.” I squint, and in the darkness, I see a looming shape.
“What is that?”
“The barn we worked on today,” Max says. It’s skeletal—mostly two-by-fours and a few sheets of plywood. I can smell new lumber and sawdust.
Max threads his way through the beams to the center of the barn, and I tag behind. “We were working on the loft today. We can get up there if I can just find the—” He stops. “Eureka,” he says, and starts to climb the ladder he’d apparently been looking for. “Normally I’d say ladies first,” he calls down, “but in this case, I think I’d better head up in front of you. Hold on a sec.” I lose sight of him in the blackness. There’s shuffling on what I can only imagine is a platform above. “Okay,” he says after a second. “It’s safe for you to come on up if you want.”
Slowly, I ascend the ladder behind him until I’m out in the open in the barn’s half-built hayloft. There’s nothing but a few scant roof beams above us, and nothing but grass and sky everywhere else.
“Pretty cool, huh?” Max asks.
There are no words for how small I feel. And, yet, I want to tell Max that I still feel special because I’m here with him. But I don’t want to sound like a lameass, so I just say “Awesome.” I pause. “Did we just walk all the way to Patchy Falls?”
“Not quite. The barn’s a lot closer to Clarkstown than you’d think. We only walked a mile or so.”
I inhale air filled with the smell of lumber and earth. The plains are so flat, I feel like I can see all the way to the Pacific.
“This is something,” I say, and mean it.
Max sits down on the rough floor, then pats it with his hand. “Have a seat,” he says. I join him, wondering how close I can get before it’s obnoxious. I settle for having our knees touch.
“I’m a regular here, by the way. The bartender knows me.” Max waves with his hand. “Beer and a shot, please.”
“Make that two,” I add, even though in real life I’d just have Diet Coke.
Max turns to me. I can make out his face, his lips, his eyes. “I just realized something,” I say. “I don’t know your last name.”
“Vaughn,” he says. “Maximilian Adam Whittaker Vaughn, if you want the full version. But you can just call me Max.”
I blink at how rich it sounds. It reminds me of The Great Gatsby—a movie I’d watched because I didn’t feel like reading the book for class. So instead Mom and I popped popcorn and sat on the couch marveling at the sparkling champagne, glimmering jewels, and stupid excess.
“My online profile notes I’m six-one, seventeen years old. I’m a Sagittarius, and I like long walks on the beach.”
I smile. “Very funny.”
Max ticks more facts off his fingers. “I’m from Vermont. My favorite food is sushi, but the chicken-fried steak down here is a close second. I have one older brother. My dog’s name is Boner, no lie. I named him when I was eight. I go to school in upstate New York at the Bartholomew Academy.”
“Sounds fancy,” I say, not just about the school, but about almost everything. I mean, whose favorite food is sushi?
“The academy’s okay,” Max says. “It’s all guys, though, which sucks.”
“Oh.” I wonder if next he’s going to tell me about his personal driver and how hard it is to have only an outdoor swimming pool and not an indoor one too.
“Just, uh, wondering why you’re out here in the middle of nowhere doing this internship.”
Below us, a bullfrog starts its throaty croaking. “Weather is so totally badass. I saw these chases on the Weather Network and just knew I had to do it. Plus, I really dig the science. It’s kind of a meld, you know? Physics and chemistry and math. Also it helps that my dad and Alex’s dad go way back. So I had an in.”
Makes sense that Max would be connected. People with that much money usually are.
“Not that knowing Alex is helping me,” Max continues. “Pretty much I’m just a Sherpa, carrying Alex’s shit around. But I’m trying to make the best of it, because supposedly this is the only summer I might ever be able to chase. After this, my dad says I need to use my school breaks to ‘buckle down and start working for the family company.’”
“Which is?”
“Vaughn Commodities Management. We help people buy stuff abroad. For cheap.”
“You sound like you hate it.”
Max laughs. “I can’t stand it. Which is why I know there’s no way I’m doing it. If my dad pushes it, I’ll probably drain my savings and hit the road for a while. Maybe come back down here and chase with a different team. Or I could hit Moab and just rock climb for a while.”
“Where’s Moab?” I ask, picturing the rocky coast of some far-off country.
“Utah.”
I blush, embarrassed at how little I’ve traveled outside Minnesota. Max rolls past it. “So let’s talk about you, Jane McAllister.” He pretends like he’s holding a microphone. “I need to ask you if you believe in a higher power, in the great mysterious, in fate, as it were.” He points the make-believe microphone at me.
There’s no way I believe in any of that stuff, but I play along. “Why do you ask?”
The microphone is gone. Max is stone serious. “I mean, if anyone had told me I’d meet a pretty girl at a Days Inn, who talks funny and takes kick-ass photographs, I would have told them they were smoking something. We’re in the middle-of-nowhere Nebraska, after all, during a summer where the most exciting thing I’ve done so far—apart from watch some storms—is try to hunt down Alex Atkins’s brand of hair gel. So I think that’s the universe talking. That’s fate.”
I snort. “Fate? Come on. You’re the one who sat next to me at breakfast. You’re the one who encouraged me to get the Torbros to stick around Patchy Falls. You’re the one who told me you’d be at the Pig & Spit like you were daring me not to come. So don’t say this is fate, Max. This is you. One hundred percent you.”
Max grins. “I never thought of it that way. But I did sort of lead the charge, didn’t I?”
I marvel at his ability to manipulate his environment and not even know it. “You could say that.”
“Well, apart from this irrefutable fact, I’m glad I’ve gotten to know you.”
I smile. “Know me? You’ve been in my life for a matter of hours. You think you know me?”
Max leans back. “Granted, I don’t know you well, but I know you some.”
He sounds so sure. “Like what?”
“Well, first of all, from that unfortunate display at the Pig & Spit, I know you can’t dance worth shit. Beyond that, I know you’re good under pressure. You could have freaked out when you found Danny, but you didn’t. Also, I know you care about your brother, and maybe all the Torbros, because you pitched the Patchy Falls plan to them, even though it meant you’d have to help clean up the town. And I’m going to guess you color within the lines a lot, because the look on your face when I pulled you out of the Pig & Spit made me wonder if you were going to ditch me and run back inside. But now that you’re here, I think you’re cool with it.”
I shiver, suddenly afraid. I don’t remember the last time anyone looked at me and tried to see me—really see me—the way Max does. It unnerves me. What if he gets too close and sniffs out the truth about my mom being a boozer? What if he finds out how we live, about how our power gets cut off? About how all my clothes are used? Someone who goes to private school and eats sushi could never understand that. If Max knew the truth about my life, he’d probably just laugh or, worse, feel sorry for me and want to pay for everything. Which is the last thing I need.
Max’s eyes are on me. A crackle of electricity ignites my body.
Have your fun, I think. Just don’t let him get too close.
A moment passes, then another. Slowly, Max leans forward. I feel his lips on mine, and my eyes close. Right then, it doesn’t matter who’s rich or who eats ramen. Everything about him is powerful and gentle at the same time. His arms wrap around my body, and my hands somehow find his neck, his face. We pull each other closer, and every nerve in my body feels like it’s on fire. I have been kissed before, but never like this.
Max’s lips part slightly, and mine do the same. His tongue inside my mouth makes fireworks of color burst behind my closed eyelids. We explore and taste each other again and again, until Max finally pulls away. I want more—I think I could survive on nothing but his mouth for weeks—but I try not to let it show too much.
“I should get you home,” he says. “It’s really late, and your brother might be wondering where you are.” Reluctantly, I nod. I hate to agree with him, but he’s probably right. “But maybe we can come out here tomorrow night. I think the farmer down the road might put his cattle into the next pasture over, and it’s supposed to be quite a show.”
I smile. “Sounds riveting.”
I don’t tell him that I have my own motel room and that we probably don’t have to walk to an unfinished barn just to be together. The truth is, I’m not sure I’m ready to bring Max back to my room. I’d just had my first real make-out session and it had nearly done me in; my whole body might actually explode if I actually had sex.
“Come on,” Max says, standing. He extends his hand, and I take it. With one final look at the stars and fields all around us, we climb down the ladder and make our way back into Clarkstown.
18
The motel lobby is deserted as I sneak back to my room—or so I think until I hear a groan from the corner. I jump what feels like six feet in the air. Victor leans forward, out of the shadows, and laughs. “Scared you,” he says. I can barely see his face, the way his black hair falls forward.
“Cripes,” I whisper. “What are you doing here?”
“Just resting,” Victor says, looking at me with red-rimmed eyes. As I get closer to him, I catch the smell of whiskey. “Better question is, whad’re you doing here?”
His words jumble together. He’s trashed.
I look around, debating whether to leave him or give him a hand back to his room. I could let him suffer out here, but I figure if I help him, maybe he won’t tell Ethan that I snuck back into the motel at three A.M. If he even remembers it.
Besides, it’s not like I don’t know what to do in these kinds of situations.
“I’m here to get you back to your motel room,” I say, assessing whether I’m strong enough to pull him to his feet. It’s easier with my mom, who’s only about twenty pounds heavier than me. “Can you stand?”
Victor puts his hands on either side of the chair. “This is really nish of you,” he says. “I didn’ think you gave a shit.”
“I don’t,” I reply.
Victor pushes himself up a few inches, then falls back into the chair. “Then jus’ leave me,” he says. He waves his hand clumsily. “Jus’ go.”
I roll my eyes. Why are drunks so dramatic all the time? My mom starts out giddy and bubbly, but then it always morphs into hyperbole. Everything from the television never ever having one thing on that she wants to watch ever to no one understanding her and what she’s going through—not even me.
“Okay, try again,” I say, holding out my hands. “I’ll pull you up. Ready? On the count of three.”
Victor clasps my hands with his. They’re toaster-oven hot.
“One
, two, three—” I pull with all my strength and he comes lurching out of the chair. He stumbles forward but I catch him, or at least try to. He gets his footing and straightens.
“Thanks,” he says, looking around. He blinks. “I got losh on the way to my room. I think it’s thataway.” He points at the doors leading outside.
“Do you know your room number?” I ask.
“Fifty eleven thousand,” he says, then wheezes laughter.
“Very funny.” I glance at the empty front desk. No one’s on duty this late at night, which means Victor had better remember his room number, or he’s going to be sleeping it off in the hallway.
“Do you have your key?” I ask. “Maybe in your pocket somewhere?”
Victor fumbles in his khaki shorts. After a bit, he pulls out a key with a plastic 108 tag on it.
“Awesome,” I say, taking it from him. “Let’s get you there.”
“’Kay.”
Victor shuffle-walks while I hold an arm to steady him. “Why are you doing thish?” he asks, wobbling slightly. “I’ve bem a dick to you.”
We get to the vending machine, and I prop him up against a wall. “Hold that thought,” I say, and feed a couple dollars in for bottled water. Victor’s going to need to hydrate before bed. “Here,” I say, handing him one. “Drink this.”
He brings the bottle to his lips, misses a little, then tries again. He gets a few sips down. His scar rises and falls as he swallows.
“Can you drink and walk?” I ask. Victor nods, and we keep going.
“You didn’t asser my question,” he says. “’Bout why you’re helping me.”
“Let’s just say I have some practice at it,” I reply.
