Chapter Nineteen
Having a pizza place at the zoo is almost too convenient.
It’s on the other side of the park, a large grey building in Panda Plaza.
Hungry, I drop by after my shift and pick up a few slices to eat on my walk through Rock Creek Park to the cave.
I got a notification yesterday that my nanny cam battery died, so I brought the freshly charged backup camera I keep at home to swap it with.
God bless cheap technology and the paranoid parents that demand it.
I cross through Rock Creek Park, absentmindedly nibbling a slice of pizza.
Because Sam and everyone showed up on my break today, Max and I never got a chance to discuss our Tyler strategy beyond his idea to bring Rick to the cave.
Even though it hasn’t been that long since we started, spending my breaks talking with Max about Tyler has become kind of our thing.
Max’s excited chatter, his increasingly wild theories – missing it leaves a hole in my stomach like a skipped meal.
But that’s just the fear talking, I reason.
Because if we start missing our walks regularly, we might lose momentum, Max could get bored, and my window into Austin Taylor’s world could close.
And I can’t let that happen, not when I haven’t even really had a chance to dig into him yet.
The sky stretching overhead has the deepening blue haze of ink in water, a few clouds straggling along the horizon.
Though the trees have fully erupted in spring green, clusters of bluebells still hang on under shady shrubs.
But when I reach the top of the hill leading to Tyler’s cave, I nearly drop the pizza box, my whole body freezing with fear.
Tyler’s cave, normally squat and dark, even as the sun is setting, is light. A small yellow glow emits from the cave’s mouth.
My brain’s internal panic alarm sounds its familiar wail. Did Tyler turn again? But how? Of all the times for my nanny cam battery to die. Then again, as long as I’ve been visiting Tyler, he’s never figured out how to turn on the lantern in his cave. Which means …
‘Someone else has,’ I whisper to myself. Then shout: ‘Fuck!’
I break into a run, backpack thudding against my spine.
I’m out of breath by the time I scramble into the cave, where Tyler’s sleeping bag is folded neatly on the floor.
His slightly chewed pillows are stacked on one side, the gross stuffed animal leaning against them.
But it’s not Tyler, sitting alone on the other end of the illuminated lantern and looking up at me. It’s Max.
Max, the voice inside me murmurs with relief. It’s just Max. But … in the cave, without me?
I slump against the wall, trying to catch my breath. Organise my thoughts. Tyler hasn’t changed. It’s just Max.
‘Are you okay?’ he says at the sight of me. A Joy Division song, one we listened to last time we were here, plays from the phone at his feet.
The adrenaline rushing through my veins begins to subside, leaving my head light. Max stares at me as though I’m the one out of place.
‘Am I—’ I start to say, still panting. ‘What are you even doing here?’
‘I saw you heading for the front entrance of the zoo,’ Max says. ‘And after you didn’t come yesterday—’
‘You were here yesterday?’
‘—I thought I’d drop by, check for Tyler.’
Silence fills the cave aside from the high tss of a cymbal crashing from the song.
Max’s phone says it’s from a playlist he created, titled Cavecore.
The panic has fully left my body now, leaving in its place an unsettling mixture of confusion and relief.
I toss the small box of pizza down so it lands in front of Max with a thud and shrug off my backpack.
The nanny cam is just a small, inconspicuous black box that I attached to the overhang above the cave entrance with industrial-strength Velcro. It breaks free from the wall with a loud rip.
‘I don’t come here every day if I don’t need to,’ I say, waving the camera at Max.
‘It died yesterday, hence me not seeing you.’ I slip the dead nanny cam into my backpack and replace it with the charged one.
My knees crack as I lower myself on to the sleeping bag and pull out my phone.
‘See?’ I say, opening the nanny cam app.
I tap on the feed and hold it up for Max.
‘Genius,’ Max says, smiling at the video of two fuzzy figures staring at a phone. He gestures to the cave. ‘I’m sorry if this was weird of me. I was trying to be helpful, but—’
‘No, it’s okay,’ I say. ‘I just – I’m not used to anyone else doing this but me, so when I saw the light on in Tyler’s cave I – I freaked out. It always kind of feels like a matter of time before someone else finds it, and then, you know … Tyler.’
‘Yeah, that makes sense.’ Max rubs his forehead. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says again.
As usual, a mountain of papers and his iPad are spread around him. Max looks so comfortable here, like this is his office and not a secret cave in the middle of the woods.
I scoot closer to the lantern. ‘What’re you doing?’ I say. The papers are mostly invoices, brochures from local florists. One is titled, OFFICIAL F’RESH COLOUR PALETTE: THINK PARAKEET, with letters written in the same green as my F’resh polo.
Max lifts a brochure from a company that rents out party supplies. ‘Table settings,’ he says, handing it to me. Inside are three pages outlining various napkin and tablecloth colour schemes, along with china options.
‘Can’t the suits help you with this?’ I say, frowning down at the mountain of pamphlets. There are at least twenty of them.
‘The su … oh, you mean Elizabeth and Simon?’ he says. ‘They’re more like consultants. They basically tell me what decisions I need to make and when I need to make them. The actual planning and stuff – that’s all me.’
He taps the iPad to life, revealing a black-and-white sketch of a bunch of circles with words scribbled next to each.
I inch closer for a better look and see that they’re not just circles – this is the floorplan for the gala.
There are ten circles, with roughly ten people at each table.
My eyes zero in on the table right in the middle of the floor, a star in its centre. The word DAD is penned at the top.
Dad. This could be my chance. ‘What about your dad?’ I say slowly. ‘Is he … helping?’
Max shakes his head. ‘He’s really busy in England, trying to set up the UK branches,’ he says. ‘Plus, the whole reason I even agreed to do this was ’cause I wanna show him I can.’
For a second, all thoughts of the plan leave my head. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, I don’t know,’ Max says. ‘My dad had his own business and a newborn by the time he was twenty-five, so, like, I feel like I should be able to throw a party.’
At this mention of Austin Taylor and his baby, I fight a wince. That would’ve been right around when he met my mom. Just like that, the plan’s back.
‘Wow,’ I say, hoping the amazement in my voice sounds genuine. But another thought occurs to me, a new window opening. ‘Maybe if we actually do reverse this curse,’ I swallow, clutch my fingers tight in my lap, ‘you can figure out how to use magic to help with the party.’
Max snorts. ‘Something tells me that would one thousand per cent be the way I ruin the whole thing.’
‘What?’ I say carefully. ‘You don’t come from like, a long line of magical dudes?’
It’s not my best segue, but it’ll have to do. I hold my breath, waiting to see if Max will take the bait.
‘Not exactly,’ he says, still chuckling. ‘I’ve watched my dad pull a dead mouse out of our sink drain. If he had magic, that would’ve been the time to use it.’
There it is.
I laugh back, but it sounds robotic. ‘So, he didn’t just keep random Wiccan coffee table books lying around like my mom?’ I say. When Max blinks at me, stunned, I add quickly, ‘Remember when you asked if my parents were hippies? You weren’t wrong.’
As Max’s shoulders loosen ever so slightly, relief surges through me again. Crisis averted. ‘Is your mom into magic?’ he asks.
‘My mom?’ I say. ‘God, no. Her brand of pseudo-spiritualism is all crystals and tarot readings.’
A glimmer of a smile passes over Max’s face. ‘My dad is like, the exact opposite,’ he says. ‘He’s Mr Logic. We never read the Chronicles of Narnia or watched Hocus Pocus when I was a kid. I wasn’t even allowed to do Halloween. We were always the lame dark house on the street.’
Mr Logic? Either Max is a really good liar, or Austin even has his own son fooled.
‘To be honest,’ Max glances up at me, ‘this whole thing with Tyler is kind of a relief. It’s nice to know life isn’t all just board meetings and brand expansions.’ Suddenly he looks panicked. ‘Not that I’m happy Tyler is cursed. I – I didn’t mean it like that.’
‘I know what you meant,’ I say quietly. ‘I guess … I don’t know, it’s cool to think maybe there’s more we don’t know about.’
It’s something I’ve thought about before. If someone as devious as Austin Taylor could use magic, what might someone less gross do with it?
‘Yeah,’ Max says, smiling again. ‘Exactly.’
‘So, your dad,’ I say. ‘It’s just been you and him?’
He nods. ‘I don’t really know my mom,’ he says. At my frown, Max elaborates. ‘Well, okay, I know I sort of, you know, came out of her.’ He mimes holding something watermelon-sized, pulling it out of his groin, then blushes and rubs his knuckles together. ‘But we haven’t hung out much since then.’
I open my mouth to respond, but nothing comes out. I know I asked the questions, but I didn’t expect this – such openness. Honesty.
‘Apparently,’ he continues, ‘she was never that stoked about having a kid in the first place. We tried talking on the phone a couple times when I got older, but – I don’t know …’ He shrugs. ‘It was clear she didn’t really want anything to do with me.’
But what if that’s because she was also cursed, and wanted to get away from Austin?
‘And now?’ I say, careful not to sound too eager. If Max’s mom was cursed too, maybe I can find a way to talk to her and see if—
‘She’s married now, has a whole new life,’ Max says. ‘She seems really happy.’
My shoulders deflate. There goes that theory. Though I guess being married doesn’t technically mean she’s in love, it seems unlikely that she’d bother with the whole charade. Which means my mom really is the only cursed one.
‘Her leaving really screwed my dad up for a while, but starting MENtal helped,’ Max says.
‘It’s almost more important to him than F’resh at this point.
Sometimes I think he’d give up F’resh if it meant he could just focus on MENtal, but charities don’t fund themselves, you know.
’ He laughs self-consciously. ‘That’s why I wanted to plan this gala.
My dad always works so hard, I just … I don’t know, I wanted to help. ’
As his voice drops, I search his face for any trace of self-importance, of duplicity.
But there’s nothing. Max just looks sad, his eyes trained on the cave floor.
His hands return to his jeans. His fingers are long and strong, his nails cut neatly.
Searching for something to say, I watch for a second as they find an errant thread on his pants.
After a few beats of silence, all I can manage is, ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Ah, don’t be.’ He waves me off. ‘We’ve got a great team of therapists.’
The song changes. Max’s fingers go still on his thighs as another thumping beat echoes in the cave.
He looks nothing like his dad in this moment, the lantern light catching the red in his hair.
When he turns to me and smiles again, there’s a little more levity in it, but not enough to reach his eyes.
An image comes to me, fast and sharp: me reaching out to hold Max’s hand. Comforting him. Max squeezing my fingers, the tension in his shoulders loosening.
When I blink, it’s gone.