Page 61 of Furious

“The postcard. The one from Boston? You told me your jacket was at the shop. And I went, and that’s where I met JoJo. She’s Jolene’s granddaughter, isn’t that wild? But it wasn’t there, and Jolene said your friends might have it. So we found them, and they made us race for it—it was seriously fucking cool, Jo is amazing, you’d love her—and we got it back, and they told us about the pawnshop. So I … I brought it back to you. Because you asked.” God, I’m rambling.

But Max is still looking at me like I’m some kid she went to high school with and ran into at the grocery store, whose face and name she can’t quite place. “Boston. Oh. That was kind of a weird time. I hated that city. It was too cold, even in summer, you know? I was ready to leave as soon as I got there.”

“You wanted your jacket, though, right?” I insist. My arms are starting to shake a little, holding it out in front of me.

“Of course I did. Thanks.” At last, she leans forward to take it, cradling the leather for just a second before setting it down into a pile of crumbs around the old-fashioned toaster. “Jesus, El.” She shakes her head. “You’re a good little sister. Better than I deserve.”

“That’s not true! You’re the best.”

She snorts, picking at the edge of the countertop where the Formica’s peeling off. “I think our parents would disagree. Do they know you’re here?”

I shake my head.

“Don’t worry too much. I’m sure they’ll blame it on me; I’m the Bad Kid, and you’re the Good Kid.”

“Maybe I was, but I’m not anymore.”

She squints down at me appraisingly. “Well. Sorry about that, I guess. Or not. It’s a lot of pressure being the Good Kid, huh?” she asks, sounding more like the big sister I love than she has yet.

“Mom and Dad just … sometimes it feels like I can’t breathe when I’m around them, you know?” I confess in a rush.

“Sure I do. Like they’re so busy telling you how much potential you have, but then you have to carry that potential around with you all the time, and God forbid you trip, and sometimes you want to throw it all away just so you can set it down.”

Embarrassingly, my throat starts to feel hot and swollen, my nose runny. I nod in case I sound like I’m about to cry, because crying is not part of the script.

“I bet it’s gotten harder since I left. Sorry about that, too.” Max bears down, and a whole chunk of Formica crumbles away and falls to the floor.

“It’s not your fault,” I insist.

“I don’t know about that, El. I made a lot of mistakes.”

“So did I. I stole a car!” I blurt out. “We broke into a safe, and we stole a car so we could race it without a license.”

She lifts an eyebrow. “That, I never did. You get caught?”

Again, I nod.

“Shit. Does that mean I’m the Good Kid now?”

It shouldn’t be funny, but suddenly, neither of us can breathe for laughing.

“Shhh, my roommate!” Max gasps helplessly after a minute. “Now I definitely need a drink. How about you?” She hops down, leaving the jacket behind on the counter.

“Yeah. Sure,” I say, palming the tears from my cheeks.

The last of my laughter dies as she digs through the fridge, because I realize she looks smaller than she used to. She’s lost some of the muscle from her competition days, of course. That’s not new. Max barely rode in college, and she wasn’t exercising for hours a day just to ride the R1. But I don’t remember her shoulder blades poking at her T-shirt like that, or her twig-like fingers wrapped around the handle of the fridge.

“There’s something else,” I say.

“Like, besides stealing a car?” she asks, still deep in the fridge. “Did you rob a bank on the way to Richmond?”

I pry the bike keys from my back pocket. “Actually, I brought you the R1. I drove it here from Dell’s Hollow, and it was … really fucking scary, but I did it. And I was good at it. It’s parked across town, so maybe we can go and get it together?”

Max stiffens. Then, slowly, she emerges with two cans of something called Irish Goodbye Stout. “You shouldn’t have done that, El.” Her eyes settle on the key in my palm, still attached to her old mini eight-ball keychain.

“I know. I’m pretty sure Mom and Dad will bury me under the vegetable garden when they find out, if they don’t know already, but when they see why I did it—”

“Why did you do it?” she cuts in, blue eyes narrowing.