Page 62 of Furious

“I’m … I’m here to bring you home.” It comes out so much smaller and weaker than I’d hoped. “If you drive the R1, Jo and I can find a train station or a bus station.” Maybe there’s a train or bus to a town nearby Dell’s Hollow, where we can transfer. I’ll keep looking until I find a way.

Max blinks back at me. Then she says, simply, “No, El.”

This is not her line.

This is not the plan.

“But if we talk to Mom and Dad together—”

“I said no. Like, come on. I thought you got what it was like for me there, how I felt like I couldn’t breathe in that house.”

“Yeah, I know, but …”

“Fuck the whole town.” Max cracks her beer, and the can crumples a little under the force of her grip. “Maybe you got in a little trouble, but you still don’t get it. The hoops I had to jump through, the pressure—”

Now it’s my turn to interrupt. “I don’t get the pressure? Are you kidding me? The way people watch me, waiting for me to make a mess because …”

“Because of me. See?” She smirks, infuriatingly. “You’re better off without me around.”

“No, I didn’t say that!” I feel my voice rising to a shriek. “I’m the one everyone’s mad at. My best friend hates me right now. I’m grounded forever, so I have to quit my job. I might not get to see JoJo after this, for who knows how long. It’s all my fault. I drove my whole goddamn life off track to find you.”

“I never asked you to!” Max shouts. “Am I supposed to be happy you messed up? Am I supposed to be grateful? I didn’t tell you to do any of that. I wrote something I can’t even remember on a gas station postcard, El. So maybe you’re right; maybe it’s not my fault you fucked up your shit. You made your own choices, just like I made mine. That’s life. You make choices and you don’t look back.”

In the hallway, a door bangs open against a wall. “Maxine, shut up!” someone hollers. The door slams again.

Max closes her eyes and hisses, “My roommate.”

The big sister I love is fading away again in front of my eyes, and I just want to stuff her into her forgotten jacket so I can grab her by the collar and drag her back to the bike she loves so much. Maybe then she’ll remember all of the good things she had in Dell’s Hollow, the things she had no choice but to leave behind. There has to be something I can do, something I can say. “I … Okay, yeah, we both made choices,” I whisper hoarsely around a lump the size of a Putt by the Pond mini-golf ball. “But you’re my sister. We can fix it together.”

“El.” She shakes her head. “Look, I need to shower. I have a thing tonight.”

“Not at Mama Maple’s diner, though, right?” I practically sneer.

It’s something Mom might’ve said to Max during one of their worst fights, those screaming matches after Max quit college. But this time it’s coming out of my mouth.

My sister’s eyes turn to ice. “Hang around here if you want—this isn’t a great neighborhood—but I have to leave by seven. And don’t wake up my roommate again.”

Standing in the empty kitchen after she goes, I find I’m still holding the key to the R1 in one hand, and the Irish stout in the other.

I remember those nights when Max was restoring the bike at Jolene’s after hours, while I was doing my calculus on one of the scarred workbenches. She’d hand me a beer from the shop’s mini fridge to match hers. Mine inevitably warmed to room temperature unopened, as we both knew it would, leaving condensation rings on the battered wood. That didn’t matter. It was just nice to be in the same space, to be as much like my fearless champion of a big sister as I could possibly be.

In my whole life, that’s what I wanted most.

I set the key on the kitchen counter next to Max’s forgotten jacket, along with the parking garage receipt. Now she knows how to get it back if she wants it—the thing I’ve taken painstaking care of for the past five months. Her last reason to come back home.

Then I leave her apartment.

JoJo is waiting under the tree outside, looking at her phone and sitting in a lawn chair to get a bit of shade. When she sees me come out, she jumps to her feet, an encouraging smile on her face. It starts to falter as she stares at me. “What happened?”

I plop down on the burning-hot concrete stoop, staring at the can still clutched in my fist. “I don’t know.”

Jo sits beside me and says again, “El, what happened?”

What did happen? I came all this way. I followed my script. Where did I go wrong? My body feels both heavy and hollow at once. Like my heart is a boulder in my chest, but also a cave. How did today begin as a rescue mission and end like this?

It can’t end like this.

“What did Max say? Is she coming home?” Jo bumps my leg with her knee.