I KEPT CALLING HER NAME, but Maia wouldn’t turn around. “Hey,” I said, finally catching up with her out on the sidewalk in front of the theater. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” she said, but everything about her was shouting the opposite: her crossed arms, her wide eyes, the way she was standing so rigid, looking everywhere except at me. “I just—I didn’t want to do this tonight, and—and I don’t like getting steamrolled by everyone, and I don’t feel good, okay?”
I tried to keep calm, but I’d never seen her rattled like this and it was scaring me. “Should we at least tell your friends—”
“No!” she interrupted. “I’m sorry. Please just take me home. Please?”
“Okay, we can do that.” I started walking along next to her, toward where we’d parked, but when I tried to reach for her hand, she pulled away. I glanced behind us; her friends were on the sidewalk in front of the store, watching us leave.
I didn’t try talking to her again on the way home. She just stared out the window, facing away from me the whole time, biting her fingernails.
I parked the car in her driveway and turned off the headlights, waiting for her to say something first. She leaned her head back against the seat, finally looking at me as she reached for my hand, and said, “I’m sorry.” But her voice sounded ragged and strained, like she had been screaming all night.
“What’s wrong? What can I do?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Nothing.”
“Is it me?” I debated the questions I really wanted to ask for a moment, and decided to only say half of it. “Maia, you’re not . . . embarrassed of me, are you?” The other half, the half that was harder to say, was, You’re not trying to hide me, right? You’re not afraid of your friends finding out I’m trans, are you?
“No, it’s not you.” She unbuckled her seat belt and slid across the bench seat, and leaned close to me with her face against my neck. “I’m just having a bad day,” she whispered.
I nodded. I got it.
I had bad days—days when the past is biting at your heels, about to catch up with you—and I figured she must have them too, but I’d never heard her talk like that before. I put my arm around her and said, “It’ll be okay.”
She held on to me even tighter, and said, “Chris, I really love you.”
“I really love you too,” I replied.
• • •
I couldn’t sleep at all. Maia’s sadness had crawled inside me, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was very wrong—that not only was she not okay, but somehow we weren’t okay either.
I texted her in the morning to see how she was feeling, to ask if she wanted a ride to work, but I never heard back, and an hour later I saw her leaving her house on her bike, wearing her Bargain Mart shirt.
I went for my run. I showered and got dressed, as usual. I thought I’d go for a drive, clear my mind. But when I drove past the antiques store, I stopped.
The bell dinged as I entered, just like it had last night. The woman who had been working then was there again. “Morning,” she called over to me from across the store, where she was organizing a row of knickknacks on top of an old desk.
“Good morning,” I answered.
She gave me a knowing look and walked over to the jewelry counter. I followed behind, and before I could even ask her any questions, she pulled out the necklace Maia had been looking at. “This is what you came for, isn’t it?”
“How’d you know?” I asked.
She shrugged and said, “Just a hunch. Tell you what, I’ll give it to you for fifty. How does that sound?”
I would’ve gladly paid sixty—that was how much the vintage telescope was going for—and I would’ve paid a lot more than that if it meant making Maia smile today.
I nodded, and she took a tiny, square, plastic ziplock bag out from under the counter, carefully dangled the necklace over the opening, and let it collapse neatly inside. She sealed the enclosure and handed it to me. I couldn’t wait to give it to Maia—I kept imagining her reaction, so I decided to surprise her at work.
I walked up and down the aisles, before I texted again.
Did you make it into work okay?
She wrote back immediately: Yes, I did. Thank you, sorry forgot to text back earlier.
I wandered through the clearance aisles, and the clothing departments. It was a big store, but not so big that I shouldn’t be able to find her. When I walked by the fitting room for maybe the twentieth time, the older woman working there asked if I needed help finding anything.
“Actually, yes,” I answered. “I’m looking for Maia. Is she around?”
The woman pursed her lips and turned her head, saying, “No, that poor girl. She’s out sick today.”
I left the store and walked around to the side of the building. Her bike wasn’t in the rack. I pulled out my phone and looked at her text again—yes, she had clearly said she was at work.
She’d lied to me.
Back in the station wagon, my mind was flooding over with the events of the last day—nothing was making sense. I wanted to go talk to Hayden and Gabby, but I didn’t know how to reach either of them. As I drove past the gas station, I slowed down.
Neil’s truck was parked at one of the pumps.
I pulled up behind him just as he was coming out of the building. He stopped when he saw me standing there waiting for him, and approached me cautiously, looking around.
“Chris?” he said. “What’s up?”
I skipped the pleasantries and got right to the point. “What were you talking about the other day?” I asked, but he just cocked his head to the side like he was confused. “The thing you said about Maia, what did you mean?”
He walked over to the side of his truck, removed the gas pump from the tank, and returned it to its cradle. Holding his hands on his hips, he leaned against the side of the truck bed and looked at me closer. “What do you want to know?”
I wanted to know whatever it was he thought I should know about her, whatever it was that made him tell me I needed to watch my back. “I guess for starters,” I said, “why did you go off on her like that at the party?”
He sighed and shifted his gaze away from me. “Look, we’ve all been messed up about what happened to Mallory. And I know that Maia is her sister and all, but she was my best friend. To have to see Maia going around doing all this crazy, cruel shit like she’s the only one who loved her—it’s not right.”
“What crazy, cruel shit?” I asked.
“You know she burned all of Mallory’s work?” he said, and he was starting to talk in this labored, halted way—not out of anger, but sadness, almost like he could start crying at any moment if he let himself.
“No,” I said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“She burned all her pictures!” he shouted. “And if that wasn’t bad enough, then she’s gonna walk around with her camera—it’s just not right,” he repeated.
“Wait, I’m confused. Were they pictures of her sister?” I was really trying to work with what he was giving me, but the pieces weren’t fitting together. “And why shouldn’t she be able to walk around with her own camera? What am I missing?”
He stood up straight then, arms dropping to his sides as he turned to face me. He shook his head slowly and held one hand up as if he was trying to ward off the words I had spoken. “Hold on. Are you saying Maia told you that camera is hers?”
I stared back at him, and I watched his mouth drop open as I nodded in response.
“Jesus,” he mumbled, rubbing his hands across his face. “We should sit.”