“Ah, but youshouldbe,” Leah says sagely. “Speaking of—”
Something across the quad has captured her attention. I follow her disdainful look to find Becky McMahon standing among half the boys’ basketball team. Skinny with ginger hair and apple-green eyes, she’s cocaptain of the dance team, along with Ivy Holden. She’s also an enormous flirt, as evidenced by the starry-eyed way she’s gazing at Bryan Davenport, point guard extraordinaire.
Leah and I look on as she lays a hand on his arm. He’s in my trig class and, frankly, he’s not very attractive. He says something presumably witless and she cackles, a sound that carries through the quad like the caw of a hungry crow.
“What the hell?” Leah says, shaking her head. “She’s a swine.”
“Who’s a swine?” Jesse asks, approaching with Leo and Kyle at his heels. He sits down next to Leah and drapes his arm over her shoulders.
“Becky,” she says, popping the last bite of her cookie into his mouth. “She’s always screwing with Max, not to mention making a scene about it.”
He’s at Becky’s side, suddenly, speaking fiercely into her ear as the five of us watch from a distance. She unearths a tube of lip gloss and applies it like Spackle, ignoring him. Max is far from perfect, but I can’t believe how awful she’s been to him over the last few months. It’s like she’s forgotten about what happened to Bill, like she doesn’t even care that Max has, for whatever reason, deemed himself responsible for his father’s stroke. Instead of trying to build him back up, she’s egging him on, letting him believe it’s cool to drown his unhappiness in alcohol.
When he stops speaking, Becky rolls her eyes and gestures in Bryan’s direction. She’s red velvet cake—bold and confident, but with a sharpness that puts people off.
Kyle whistles a few bars of “Tainted Love,” the theme song he’s assigned to Max’s relationship with Becky, then shudders. “Jesus. I’ve never seen two people make each other so miserable.”
On cue, Max swivels around and saunters toward us. His hands are shoved deep into the pockets of his jacket, his shoulders bent against the cold.
Becky trails after him, the spiky heels of her boots clack-clack-clacking against the pavement. As they near us, she cries, “Why are you walking away, Max?!”
Anyone with half a brain can see that their relationship is a vicious cycle of provocation and dysfunction, but both of them continue to lope back for more, as if mind games and manipulation are the foundation on which their alleged romance is built.
“Just forget it,” Max mutters, eyes on the ground.
“No! What’s your problem?”
He shakes his head and it’s so pitiful, I can’t help myself—I’m standing up, stepping between them, opening my mouth, inserting myself into a fight that’s sonotmine. “You’re the one with the problem, Becky. Bryan Davenport? Even you can do better.”
“Jill,” Max cautions, but his voice lacks spirit.
Becky’s face buckles in a glare aimed straight at me. “What goes on between Max and me is none of your business.”
“You’ve made it everyone’s business.” Out of the corner of my eye, I see Kyle nodding and I’m spurred on, though I’m aware of how grossly hypocritical my next words will be. “If you don’t want outside interference, keep your hands off other guys while you’re on the quad.”
As if drawn by a silent mean-girl summons, Ivy Holden appears. She shares Max’s dark hair and gray-blue eyes, but where his features are sturdy and masculine, hers are delicate and soft. Her voice, though—it’s sharp as broken glass, and it cuts deep. “Maybeyoushould let my brother live his life.”
There’s a retort on the tip of my tongue, but I bite it back. There’s no point in arguing with Ivy or Becky or anyone else—not on Max’s behalf, not while he’s just standing there, staring at the pavement like he wants to dissolve into it.
“Max can take care of himself, Jillian,” Ivy tells me, slow and clear, like she’s talking to a second grader. This is her modus operandi. She’s never outright mean, but she exists in a bubble of pretension, and she can make a person feel tiny with nothing more than a look. She’s the very opposite of her mother.
“Iknowthat.”
“It’s time you got your own life,” Becky says. “And you can start by bumming rides from someone who’s not my boyfriend.” She lets her gaze rake Max up and down, then adds, “In case you haven’t noticed, he’s not your little playmate anymore.”
He peers at me, just briefly.
I gathered as much last night, when we were making out, I want to tell Becky—the perfect comeback. But I’ve become mute, and I’m blushing like nobody’s business, silently willing the lunch bell to ring. God, I suck at confrontation.
Kyle slings a supportive arm around me. “You’re pathetic, Becky. One of these days, Max is gonna wake up and figure that out.”
Ivy rolls her eyes, emitting a wispy know-it-all laugh.
And then Max does wake up. He moves a step forward, and I hope he’ll take a stand against his sister, who’s acting pompous as usual, or Becky, who’s treating him like a slab of meat. I hold my breath as he leans in to say something muddled in his girlfriend’s ear. She nods, and for a nanosecond I’m grateful to him for emerging from his fog long enough to defuse the tension. But then Becky pushes up on her toes to kiss him hard on the mouth, and while he doesn’t actively reciprocate, he doesn’t push her away, either. My meager lunch sloshes in my stomach.
“I’ll see you after school,” she tells him, sultry,nauseating, before turning to strut away.
Like she’s connected to Becky by an invisible thread, Ivy turns to follow, but Max grabs her arm. “Hey,” he says, low and cross. “Stay out of my shit, would you?”
