Faking It (Losing It, #2)(27)

While her mother was distracted in the living room finding the album, Max leaned into my ear and said, “You bet your ass I c fingernails scrapeing himm,an 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. To actuheal sex had bee





16

Max

I didn’t know whether to scream or cry, throw things or collapse to the ground. There was something about my mother that made me feel fourteen and pissed off all over again. I hated it, but I couldn’t seem to turn it off either. She just couldn’t ever leave it alone.

I didn’t need pictures of Alex all over the place to remember her. I saw her on the subway, at concerts, passing me in the street. I saw her when I closed my eyes. I used to see her when I looked in the mirror, before I’d changed my hair and inked my skin. I could see her reflected in Mom’s eyes every time she looked at me, like if she just wished hard enough she could make us trade places and get the good daughter back.

It didn’t matter how many times I said it, Mom always tried to make the holidays about Alex. She wanted to talk about the time Alexandria did this or when she said that. Mom brought her up so much that she was like this phantom sitting there at the dinner table that sucked all of the happiness and all the normal conversation into the realm of nonexistence with her.

Forget wishing I were dead. Mom made me feel that way already. Hell, she already had the photo album ready to show the world her other blond princess, never mind that I hadn’t been that girl in a long time. No one wanted to see pictures of this Max. Just Mackenzie.

What was wrong with letting the past stay the past? Why did we have to drag all our issues with us into the future? I couldn’t breathe out there for all the ghosts Mom hauled in with her. I didn’t fit in that world, and the fingernails scrapeshoowI wondered if more I tried, the more I felt like I didn’t fit anywhere.

I was lying on my bed, my face pressed into a pillow when I felt the mattress dip. I knew it had to be Cade. Mom never followed me after fights, easier to pretend they weren’t happening. And Dad steered clear of all things that involved emotion. I pulled myself up on my elbows and looked over my shoulder to see him seated gingerly on the very edge of my mattress. He’d left several feet between us.

I rolled over onto my back and waited for him to say something. To ask questions.

He didn’t. He lay down beside me, still careful to keep a buffer zone between us. He put one forearm behind his head, and stared up at the ceiling in silence. This close I could see how broad his shoulders were. I mean, I’d felt them, but I hadn’t gotten a chance to really look at him. His arms were muscular and his chest wide. I watched the way his body moved as he inhaled and exhaled. The rhythm was calming.