“Um . . . what is happening right now?”
Mrs. M released me and I stepped away from her and the turkey. Max stood at the end of the hallway. I guess she decided against the shower. Her choppy red hair was styled calmer than I had ever seen it. She was wearing a turtleneck sweater that covered her multitude of tattoos. She was wearing less makeup, too. She looked like herself, still, but at maybe 25 percent of her normal vibrancy.
I missed the real her.
“Oh, nothing, dear,” Max’s mom said. “Cade just told me about his parents.”
“Right. His parents,” Max said. She shot me a wide-eyed look.
So, I changed the subject. “Mrs. Miller, tell me what Max was like as a child.”
Max groaned. Her mother practically cheered.
“I just happen to have baby pictures with me! I keep a photo album with me at all times.” Max stalked into the kitchen and threw herself down on the stool beside me.
“Yay. Baby pictures. What a great idea, sweetheart.” She laced her fingers with mine, and then lightly dug her fingernails into the back of my hand in warning. All I could think about was what it would feel like to have her fingernails dig into my skin under different circumstances.
I pulled her hand up to my mouth, and kissed the back. Her eyes widened, and she sucked in a breath. I smiled evilly and said, “Oh, honey, you can’t blame me for wanting to see your baby pictures.”
While her mother was distracted in the living room finding the album, Max leaned into my ear and said, “You bet your ass I can blame you. You’re not funny, Golden Boy.”
“Really? I thought it was hysterical.”
“Later, when we’re alone—”
“—I like the sound of that.”
She laughed loudly in the direction of the living room, totally fake, and then turned on me. “Don’t think I won’t murder you, pretty boy.”
“So, I was golden and now I’m pretty?”
She took another deep inhale, and I imagined she was counting to keep her anger under control. I liked her like this. With her cheeks pink and her eyes sparkling, she looked like herself despite the major style change.
“I can’t help it. It’s just so much fun to get you riled up.”
“You really want to play that game?”
“Here we go!” Her mother flitted into the room and slid the album in front of us.
The first picture was of the day they brought Max home from the hospital. The nursery was a mishmash of different pinks and had MACKENZIE painted across one wall. Max looked like most babies—small with a pink, pinched face, and no hair. Mrs. Miller had fluffy, curled bangs and looked like something out of I Love the ’80s.
“Mrs. Miller, I have to say, you don’t look a day older now than you did then.”
She giggled, and swatted me on the shoulder. “Oh, stop.”
Max untangled her hand from mine and said under her breath, “Really, please stop.”
Max took control of the album and flipped through the book quickly, giving me barely any time to look at the pictures, but one thing was obvious. Max’s parents never let her be herself when she was younger. They dressed her in pink, frilly things that you could tell she didn’t like. Her hair was blond and always curled in perfect ringlets.
I leaned into her ear and whispered, “You’re naturally blond? It’s getting easier every minute to picture you in that cheer uniform.” If looks could take physical form, the one she gave me would have been a bitch slap.
She looked picture-perfect in every photo. Like a Barbie doll, and her smile in each was just as plastic. She was beautiful, but sad. She flipped the page, and I was treated to the real Cheerleader Max mid toe-touch.
“And now I no longer have to picture it.”
Her glare stayed firmly in place, but her lips curled up at the end slightly.
“Did you play sports?” Mrs. Miller asked me.
“I did, yes. Football and basketball.”
Max paused in turning the page and said, “Really?”
“I did grow up in Texas. Plus, I was good at it.”
She laughed. “Of course you were.”
“I bet you were a great cheerleader.”
“Great? Not really. Nearly homicidal? Sure.”
I got to see her in a bubblegum pink prom dress and graduation robes. We were approaching the end of the book, and I kept waiting for a more recent picture of her with her new, non-Barbie look. They never came. The album just ended, as if the last few years had never existed. I saw the relief written across her features when she flipped the last page. It was replaced by shock and something else I couldn’t identify when she saw a final picture taped to the inside of the back of the book.
It was a family photo, and she looked twelve, maybe thirteen. She had that distinctive preteen glare down pat. Behind her was a guy I assumed was her brother. He had the same blond hair and wore a letterman jacket. On the end was a girl, probably sixteen or seventeen that was the spitting image of Max. Or I guess it was the other way around, since her sister was older.