This is all new to me. It is a bit of a shock to realize I don’t know much about Tavish. We’ve only ever talked about horses. I didn’t realize Max knew him so well.
“How long has he lived here?” I blurt.
She looks surprised. “Ages. Since he was a kid, I think. Why?”
I breathe a sigh of relief. “Just wondered. So...do you like him?” I ask.
“He’s a great guy,” she says. “A smart, honest, no-bullshit guy.”
I shake my head, watching her serious face. “No, I mean... do you like him?”
Max takes her eyes off the road for a minute and looks at me. She laughs. “No,” she says, “not me.”
We drive by a Weld that was full of pumpkins a few weeks ago. Now, with Halloween long over, it is brown and bare.
Max tilts her head to one side. “Do you?” she asks.
I shake my head in confusion. I know I am blushing. “I don’t know,” I say.
Max drums her fingers against the steering wheel. Her expression is hard to read. “He’s a stellar guy,” she says.
We are almost back at my place when Max asks abruptly, “So Zelia went home?”
I sigh. “We kind of had a fight.”
Max opens her mouth and shuts it again.
“What?” I say.
“Nothing.”
“No, go on. What were you going to say?”
Max pulls a pack of gum out of her pocket and offers it to me. I shake my head. She pops a piece out of the bubble pack and sticks it in her mouth. “You and Zelia. It’s none of my business.”
I twist in my seat so that I am facing her. “It’s okay,” I say. “I know you don’t like her.”
Max frowns, dark eyebrows drawing together. In the bright sunlight pouring through the windshield, I can see a scattering of pale golden freckles across her nose and upper cheeks.
“I don’t exactly dislike her either,” she says judiciously. “I just don’t really get what you see in her.”
I’m quiet for a moment, thinking. How can I explain Zelia’s magnetism, the irresistible energy that pulls me into her orbit and holds me there? Even though she can make me crazy— even though she does awful things sometimes—I can’t imagine my life without her in it.
“I didn’t know anyone when we moved here,” I say. “Zelia just kind of...drew me in. I don’t know how to describe it.” I stare out the window and squint into the sun. “She’s different,” I say. “She’s kind of exciting, I guess.”
Max says nothing. Images of Zelia are flickering through my mind: Zelia drawing dark eyeliner along the inner edges of her eyes; Zelia sitting beside me on the sidewalk while my grandmother stares at the hat by our feet; Zelia lying on her bed, a blue stone twinkling in her freshly pierced navel; Zelia pulling down her sleeve to cover the cut on her arm; Zelia sitting on the floor in my mom’s office, open files scattered around her.
“I’m worried about her,” I say softly.
We pull up in front of my house. Max parks the car and turns to look at me.
“Worried about her? How come?”
I want to tell Max about Michael, but I promised I wouldn’t tell anyone. “She does things, sometimes...that aren’t good. Aren’t good for her, I mean.”
Max looks serious. “Like what?”
Michael, I think. Shoplifting. So many things.
“I promised I wouldn’t tell anyone,” I say. “But then we had this fight, and she left, and...I don’t know. I hope she’s okay, that’s all.”
Max is quiet for a moment. “What did you fight about?” she asks. “I mean, if you want to talk about it.”
I look straight ahead. Down the driveway, I can see the door to my mother’s office. I feel sick to my stomach every time I think about the reason we fought. “I don’t think I really want to talk about it,” I say. I scrape mud off the heel of one boot with the toe of the other. “She did something really stupid. Something she shouldn’t have done.”
Max sighs and opens her door. “I don’t want to sound too harsh, but that’s her problem. Not yours.”
I open my door and realize I’ve got mud all over the floor of Max’s car. “I guess.”
We get out of the car and stand in the driveway for a moment in silence; then Max says, “You know that thing you told me? About the sculptor and the figures in the stone?”
I nod.
“Well, maybe Zelia’s just chipping away at the marble, you know?”
“Maybe,” I say. I know Max is trying to help, but a feeling of foreboding is lying heavy in my belly and tightening like a band around my forehead.
Mom’s in the kitchen making baklava, placing layer after layer of fragile phyllo pastry into a shallow glass tray. Back when I still ate dessert, baklava was my favorite. I figure that’s why she’s making it—she’s always trying to persuade me to eat.
She looks up and smiles at us. “You must be Max,”she says, wiping her hands on a dishtowel.
Max shakes her hand. “Nice to meet you.”
I can tell Mom is studying Max carefully, probably trying to figure out whether she’s going to be a good influence or not. It suddenly feels important to me that my mother like her.
“Max has twin brothers,” I offer inanely. “She babysits them a lot.”
Both Max and my mother turn and look at me blankly.
“That’s great,” Mom says.
I silently vow to keep my mouth shut.
“I have to go out in a bit to pick up things for dinner,” she says. “Sophie, I don’t want you two going in my office, okay?”
I blush furiously. She knows it wasn’t my fault. She didn’t have to say that.
“We won’t,” I say.
Mom looks me in the eyes. “Okay.” She turns to Max. “Are you staying for dinner?”
“Oh no, that’s okay,” Max says quickly.
“It’s no trouble. I’m just going to pick up a frozen pizza or something.”
“Stay,” I urge her. “Stay for dinner.”
Max shakes her head and looks at my mother. “It’s really nice of you but I have to go home in a bit.” She starts to laugh. “I’m babysitting the twins tonight.”
UP IN MY room, Max seems uneasy. She sits on the beanbag chair; then she gets up and looks out the window.
“Clouding over,” she says.
I flop onto my bed and stretch out. “Mmm-hmm. You okay, Max?”
Max nods. She sits down cross-legged beside me. “Sophie... there’s something I really want to tell you.” She hesitates before going on. “I’ve been wanting to tell you this for ages, but I don’t know how you’ll react and I—well, you’re important to me, you know?” Max’s dark eyes are fixed on the bedspread, her face turned downward.
“What is it?” I say. “You can tell me.”
“Okay.”
There is a long silence. “Well, remember when I...you know, the night of the party...”
“Uh-huh.”
There is another long silence. Finally Max shakes her head. “You know, this isn’t a good idea. Forget it. It’s nothing.”
I prop myself up on my elbows and tilt my head to one side, trying to read her expression. “It’s okay, Max. Tell me.”
“I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
I sit up and lean toward her. “Max! You’re making me crazy! What is it?” I think about what she said in her car that time, about how you can’t always be honest about yourself.
Max shakes her head and her eyes are wet. She blinks furiously. “Damn it. Can we change the subject?”
I wish she would tell me. I remember that night at Max’s place, how I whispered my secrets into the dark when I knew she was sleeping.
“Max,” I say hesitantly.
“What?”
“There’s something I want to tell you too.”
“There is?” Max brushes the back of her hand roughly across her eyes. “Tell me then.”
“You know how I used to live in Ontario? In Georgetown?”
Max nods.
“Well...don’t tell anyone this, okay?”
“I won’t.”
I want Max to know me. I want to tell her the truth, but it’s hard. Having kept it a secret for so long makes it seem like such a big deal. “I should have told you this before,” I say. “When we first started getting to know each other. I don’t know. I feel like I’m doing everything backward, telling you now. All out of order.”
“It’s okay,” Max says. “Just tell me. If you want to.”
I sigh. “I was...different then, you know? In middle school. Grade eight and nine.”
“Yeah? Well, I guess we all were.”
I pick at a loose thread on the quilt. “No, I mean, I was really...I got picked on a lot. Bullied, I guess you’d call it.”
Max looks surprised, but her voice is soft. “Sophie, I’m really sorry. That’s awful.”
“It was my fault, really. I was such a loser.”
Max frowns. “No one deserves to be bullied.”
“No, I know.”I want to make sure she understands. “All I’m saying is that I wasn’t like I am now. I didn’t fit in, you know? I was kind of fat. I wore stupid clothes. I acted like a little kid. stupid like that.”
Max interrupts me. “That’s a load of crap. You’re just letting the kids who bullied you off the hook. How come you’re not mad at them?” Her voice is getting loud.
I’m not sure what reaction I had expected, but this wasn’t it. I think for a moment. “I don’t know. I guess maybe I should be?”
“Damn right you should,” Max says passionately. “No one has a right to treat you like that. No one should make you feel bad about yourself.”
Something inside me loosens, lightens. I meet Max’s eyes. Relief is bubbling up from deep inside me. She knows and she doesn’t care. More than that: She knows and she’s on my side.
I reach out and touch her hand. “Thanks,” I say softly.
Max shrugs. “Just saying what I think.”
I laugh. “Yeah, I know. You do that.” That’s why I trust her, I think. She never says anything she doesn’t mean.
It’s only later that I realize she never told me her own secret.
Twenty-two
I SPEND THE evening working on my English paper. I’ve written pages and pages, but I won’t be able to hand it in. It’s by far the weirdest paper I’ve ever written. It has bits of poems tossed in, and sketches of scared faces and echoes of voices from my own past. It’s about Lord of the Flies, I guess, but it’s about Georgetown and Chloe and Patrice too.
It’s a paper about things falling apart, and if I hand it in, Mr. Farley will be calling my mother for sure. I sigh and try to figure out if I can salvage anything useful from the mess of words. I’ve never had a grade below an A– in my life. I wouldn’t admit this to anyone—I took enough crap about being a keener back in Georgetown—but I don’t really want to start screwing my grades up now.
Every couple of minutes I glance at the phone. I try not to think about Zelia. If she doesn’t call, then forget it—I’m not calling her. She’s the one who owes me an apology. I look at the phone again. Zelia never apologizes. If she calls, she’ll be full of bright chatter, reeling me back in like a fish with a hook through its lip. She’ll pretend nothing happened.
THE NEXT DAY, Zelia doesn’t show up for school. At lunchtime I wait by Max’s locker and persuade her to go for a walk with me. It’s still clear and sunny outside, and we walk through the little square, browse in the small gallery on the corner, sit and talk on the steps in front of the theater.
“Did you bring lunch?” Max asks.
I shake my head.
“Come on, I’ll buy you something.” Max pulls me into the pizza place and orders a slice for herself. “What do you want?”
“Coffee?”
“You have to eat something. Come on, Sophie. I’m buying.”
Max is watching me intently.
I scan the menu. “Umm, okay. Vegetarian pizza then. Thanks.”
We sit at a small round table in the back corner. After the bright sunlight, the café is dark and quiet.
“Have you heard from Zelia yet?” Max asks.
“No, and she’s not at school today.”
Max gives me a look. “Yeah, well, I figured you wouldn’t be hanging out with me if she was.”
I lean across the table. “I’m sorry. It’s not that I’d rather be with her, you know. Honestly. I wish...I don’t know...it’s just that I was friends with her first.”
Max takes a bite of pizza. She chews slowly and swallows before answering. “I know. It’s okay. I didn’t say that to make you feel bad. My feelings aren’t hurt or anything. It’s just a fact.”
I shake my head. “Max...”
She shushes me. “It’s okay. I just...you’re pretty easy to talk to, you know? I like hanging out with you. But I don’t want to cause problems for you. Or Zelia.”
I stare at my pizza. “Max?”
“Yeah.”
“Zelia...she was shoplifting. And I think she might have cut herself, one time. On purpose.”
Max puts her elbows on the table and balances her chin on her folded hands. “I guess that’s what you meant when you said she was doing things that weren’t good for her.”
I pick a mushroom off my pizza and chew it slowly. “Other stuff too. I’m...I’m worried about her.”
Max is watching me silently.
“What?” I say.
Frowning, she unfolds her hands, pulls the straw out of her glass of water and sticks one end in her mouth.
“What?” I ask again.
“Promise you won’t get mad.”
“It’s okay,” I say. “I know you don’t like Zelia much.”
Max holds the straw like it’s a cigarette, between two fingers. “It’s not about Zelia exactly.”
I stare at her. “Tell me, already.”
She points at my cold congealing pizza with her straw. “You. Never eating. Thinking you’re fat. How is that any different from what Zelia is doing?”
I stare at her. I want to argue, to tell her it’s not the same, but her eyes hold mine, dark and steady, and the words dissolve like salt in my mouth.
Max gives a little shrug and sticks her straw back in her glass. “Just think about it, okay?”
There is a roaring in my ears and a lump in my throat, and I’m scared I might start to cry. I nod. “Okay,” I whisper.
THAT NIGHT, I undress in front of the bathroom mirror. I look at myself, trying to be objective. My ribs are sharply outlined, my chest bony, my shoulders knobby, my arms and legs long and angular. See, I tell an imaginary Max, I know I’m skinny. I can see I’m too skinny. I’m not crazy. I just don’t want to get fat, that’s all.
Mom knocks on the door. “Sophie? Are you almost done in there? I wouldn’t mind taking a quick bath before I go to bed.”
I pull an oversize T-shirt over my head, brush my teeth and retreat to my bedroom. I drop to my knees and jerk open the stiff bottom drawer of my dresser. All the stuff Zelia gave me—the stuff she stole—is crammed in here. I scoop it out—makeup, jewelry, sunglasses—and wonder if I should get rid of it.
Underneath it all lies a red photo album. I run my hand over the cheap plastic cover and try to remember when I last looked at these pictures. Not since we left Georgetown. A lifetime ago.
I flip open the front cover. There I am with Dragonfly, the tall gray mare I used to ride. I turn the pages, slowly at first and then faster. Staring. I’m not seeing what I expected to see. These pictures don’t fit with my memories.
I stop and scrutinize my grade nine self. I am standing on a bale of hay, reaching up to braid Dragonfly’s forelock. My hair is longer and lighter, and my body looks different—stronger, more solid—but I look fine. I am smiling into the camera and I’m not fat. I’m not fat at all. I trace the tiny outline of my face with my fingertip, confused.
My mom took this picture. I can remember i
t clearly. It was early one spring morning, not long before we moved, and I was getting ready for a schooling show. We got to the barn at 6:00 AM and my mother, who doesn’t even like horses, helped me wash Dragonfly, braid her mane and groom her to perfection. It was my first show, and Dragonfly and I placed first in an equitation class and second over fences. It was a good day— a great day.
I look at the picture again, trying to clear the fog in my head. The old Sophie looks a little different, I guess. Younger. And I definitely have a better haircut now. But there is nothing in this photograph to explain the things that happened, nothing to explain the shoves in the hall, the names I was called. Nothing to explain two years of no friends. Nothing to explain my believing that I was fat.
There is a knock at the door. I quickly shove all Zelia’s stolen stuff back into the drawer and drop the photo album on top. “Come in.”
Mom opens the door a few inches and pokes her head in.
“Hi, Sophie,” she says. “I’m just off to bed.”
“Okay. ’Night.”
She stands there for a moment, looking at me. “Sophie...”
“What?”
She opens her mouth. Then she shuts it again and smiles tentatively. “Nothing. Just good night, that’s all.”
I think about that photograph, about her helping me with Dragonfly that morning. I wish Mom would come into my room, sit on my bed and talk to me like she used to talk to the old Sophie Keller. I want to ask her why those girls used to call me fat and why I believed them. I want to know why they wrote those words on my locker. I want everything to feel okay between us again.
I look at her, standing there in her nightdress, a towel tied around her wet hair. I don’t know why I never told her about the bullying. I just never told anyone.
“Good night,” I say.
I AM ASLEEP when the phone rings twice and stops. The digital alarm clock beside my bed says 11:52. I wonder who would call this late. My first thought is of Gran: Is she okay? What if she has had a heart attack or something? I slip out of bed and tiptoe down the hall toward my mother’s bedroom. Her door is open a crack and the soft light of her reading lamp spills out into the dark hallway. I stand close and strain to hear what she is saying.
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