Chapter Twenty-Two #2
He approaches the clerk at the front of the store, laying the album down carefully on the counter. I was so buried in my thoughts, I missed the only other customer leaving. The weight of Max’s arm slung around me felt so real, his breath against my mouth.
‘Get a grip,’ I whisper fiercely to myself, shuddering.
Max’s hurried babble carries over the store as I inch towards the back.
A sheet is strung across a doorway on a curtain rod.
Duct-taped to it is a sign that says STAFF ONLY.
I watch as Max carefully angles his body away from the back room and points at the record in his hands, forcing the clerk to do the same.
Neither of them notices as I slip around the sheet.
The room is probably five feet long and five feet wide, big enough only for a tiny desk and a chunky desktop computer.
The walls are crammed with floor-to-ceiling shelves loaded with records, some whose corners are worn and wrinkled, others that are still wrapped in plastic.
Even if I was planning to look around, I wouldn’t know where to start.
There’s no alarm, no angry screaming from the clerk.
Even so, I hold my arms close to my chest, careful not to touch anything.
I sip my coffee, straining to hear Max’s voice.
I have to stay in here long enough that he thinks I actually poked around.
My mind drifts back to the album cover, to how easily it let me imagine the couple as Max and me.
It’s not like I actually want anything to happen with Max, though, or that it even could.
Not yet at least, not unless I want to add another monster to my mutant menagerie.
My brain is just tired, accidentally equating my and Max’s increasingly flirty interactions with me wanting to kiss him for real.
And I don’t want to be flirty with him either; it’s part of going undercover.
But I need to focus more. Not get distracted by charm or bouncy hair. This is Austin Taylor’s son.
At last, Max breaks into a coughing fit. I steal back around the sheet to the main store, where the clerk is busy typing something into the cash register. Max barely glances at me as I sidle up beside him, still gripping my coffee cup.
The clerk passes Max a brown paper bag with the Breakneck logo stamped on the front.
‘Thanks again, man,’ Max says. He waits until we’re out on the sidewalk before turning to me. ‘What’d you find?’
My stomach curdles with guilt at the excitement in his voice.
‘Nothing,’ I say with a sigh. ‘No spell books or secret magical ledgers, or whatever. Just a lot of clutter.’
‘Damn,’ Max says, looking back at the horizon.
Rush hour is fast approaching, the streets of DC quickly filling with people who are racing home for the night.
‘I talked to the guy at the front about Tyler and the “wild dog attack”.’ Max curls his fingers in air quotes.
‘He says he thinks his boss might’ve let the dog loose on purpose for the insurance money.
Apparently one time, he tried to fake his own death to get out of his phone plan. ’
I nod solemnly. ‘Sounds normal.’
‘He’s definitely still our prime suspect,’ Max says. ‘I mean, he’s clearly unhinged.’
The guilt only intensifies as I manage, ‘Definitely.’
We pause at a crosswalk, where Max chucks his coffee cup into a trashcan on the street corner. I dart my gaze around the intersection, desperate to change the subject.
‘What’d you buy?’ I ask, nodding my chin at his bag.
Max slides the album out and holds it up for me to see. I recognise its salmon-pink cover, the small, stout refrigerator, the prehistoric vacuum cleaner, the antique lamp with the autumn-orange glow. It’s the Cure’s Three Imaginary Boys.
‘I didn’t know you had a record player,’ I say.
Max smirks. ‘That didn’t come up in your research?’
My eyes drop to the ground, where a mess of weeds protrudes from a chink in the sidewalk. If it were possible to melt into a puddle of embarrassment, I would currently be liquifying.
‘Nah,’ he says, nudging me. ‘I bought it for Tyler. The guy said this is Tyler’s favourite album, so I thought he might want it in the cave if he changes again.’ Max drops it back in the bag and rakes a hand through his hair. ‘You know, just to have close. Like a baby blanket.’
The crosswalk flashes green. Max steps into the street without looking back, but I stay rooted to the sidewalk, as though the weed has wrapped its spikey tendrils around my ankle.
I’m aware that my mouth has dropped open, the nerves returning to my arms so it feels like every millimetre of my skin is on fire.
Laura’s description of Austin Taylor from a few nights ago comes boomeranging back to me: his selfishness, the way he’d use his moods to punish and control my mom.
With the dipping sun silhouetting Max’s sweater-covered shoulders, his brown paper bag containing a record he picked out for a guy who’s in trouble and that Max doesn’t even know swinging by his legs, I can’t see any of that.
Only once he’s halfway through the crosswalk does Max notice my absence. He turns to face me, still waiting across the street.
‘You coming?’ he calls out, his voice bordering on a laugh.
My stomach plummets with the most dramatic swoop yet. It feels like falling.
I jog down the curb, the crosswalk signal counting in blocky red numbers the seconds we have until the light turns green. It’s only once I reach Max again that I realise I don’t actually know where we’re going. I just followed him.