Chapter Thirty-Three
After three long hours of caution tape, blue flashing police lights, disgruntled neighbours, question after question after question – I’m sorry, did you say it looked like a ‘rabid dinosaur’?
– comforting a shell-shocked Laura, then my own shell-shocked mom, my street has gone mercifully quiet.
The only sound now is the squeak my porch chair makes every time I shift uncomfortably, the desire to tear off into the night after Avery practically fizzing in my veins.
But all I overheard from the cops is that the beast disappeared in the direction of Maryland, where the streets get wider, the parks get bigger, and each neighbourhood is more unfamiliar than the last. I wouldn’t know where to start looking for her.
A small red car turns the corner on to my street, puttering slowly before stopping directly in front of my house.
It idles for a few seconds at the curb and I stand, waiting, until finally the back door opens and someone steps out.
He peers up at my darkened porch, brushing the hair off his forehead with one hand and slamming the car door with the other.
When I step out from underneath the shadow of the porch awning, he smiles.
Max.
I thunder down the stairs and pathway, a sound that’s a cross between a gasp and a sob escaping my throat.
We collide, my arms wrapping around his neck and both my legs around his waist. Max catches me with the solidity of a brick wall, as though we choreographed it and he’s been waiting for his cue.
His own arms cinch behind my back, and the feel of him here, around me, is like hitting the finish line, my breath ragged in my ears.
‘I’m sorry I’ve … been so … weird … since …’ I sob, my face buried in his neck as Max makes patient hushing sounds. ‘I just wanted … needed … to call … you …’
‘I know, I know,’ he says quietly.
When he’s been holding me long enough that I start to worry his back might snap in half, I loosen my legs and slide to the ground. Max keeps a firm hand on my elbow.
‘What happened?’ he asks, his face close.
The sobs are still rolling through me as I splutter, ‘Ch-ch-changed … another … monster … and, and, and … then … like … a big freaking lizard!’
It’s the best I can do, the images from Elliott’s house and the hours of talking to the police a jumbled mess in my head. Max guides me back up the porch stairs as I take deep breaths, try to calm down. When I open my front door, he pauses at my side.
‘Are you sure?’ he says, glancing around the silent street. ‘We can just hang out here, if you want.’
‘It’s fine,’ I say, sniffling, and lead him inside. ‘My mom’s asleep.’
At least, I think she is. But I don’t want to sit outside any more, not with an Avery-beast still on the loose.
Minutes after I left Elliott’s house, my phone started going berserk.
Sam, Elliott and Julian had regrouped at the 7-Eleven down the street.
They were shaken, but unhurt. In fact, the police reported that nobody had been injured except Rocco, who’d broken his nose as he tripped down the porch stairs trying to flee.
Only Elliott came back to greet the police, his mom and mine not far behind.
The officers that came in from the Metropolitan Police Department were quick to write off the beast as a Komodo dragon that’d escaped from someone’s basement.
‘This is what happens when people irresponsibly breed exotic animals in the suburbs, ma’am,’ one of them said to a bewildered Laura.
Even though forty teenagers had seen something that was clearly twice as big as a Komodo dragon and blue. But obviously I wasn’t going to push it.
Once everything calmed down, I texted Max to give him the all-clear that we could meet.
He was in the middle of a board game all-nighter at Jake’s house in Arlington.
Calling him, being with him right now – it was the only thing that made sense in my head.
He’s the only other person besides my mom and Laura who knows about the curse.
It had nothing to do with what happened at his house, how just the thought of being with him made me feel safer.
‘Sorry I ruined your night,’ I say once we reach my bedroom.
‘Don’t be,’ Max says. ‘Jake was killing me at Risk, so you actually did me a favour.’
Without even taking my shoes off, I collapse on to my bed, sprawling out across my comforter and blinking up at the ceiling. Max joins me, but only just. He sits on the very edge of the mattress as though the middle is a black hole that’s going to swallow him up.
‘What do you mean there’s another monster?’ he says. ‘I checked Tyler’s Instagram Stories on the way here and he’s fine – he’s at some house show in Baltimore.’
‘Not Tyler.’ I shake my head. ‘Avery.’
Max frowns down at me. ‘Avery?’
Avery, whose transition from prom queen to psycho Godzilla had happened in a half second.
Swallowing hard, I recount the events of the night: the post-prom party at Elliott’s house, Avery keeling over on the carpet, her rows and rows of teeth. So many long, impossibly sharp teeth. I leave out the part about what was happening just before Avery turned. It doesn’t feel relevant.
‘But that doesn’t make sense,’ Max says. ‘Why would someone put the same curse on Avery? Do she and Tyler even know each other?’
Shit. Even though Max has been all-in these last few weeks with Tyler, with me, there’s still a chance he’ll bolt if I tell him the curse’s real trigger.
But after everything he’s done – stocking the cave with Tyler’s favourite albums, the Google Doc, the fact that he’s even here, now – he deserves to know the truth.
And the chance to run while he still can.
I sit up. ‘Because it’s not Avery and Tyler that’re cursed,’ I say quietly. I feel so nervous, like I might choke on my own heartbeat. I lift my eyes, brimming with tears again, to Max. ‘It’s me.’
Max’s lips part.
‘It only happens when I fall in love with someone,’ I say. A tear streaks down my face, but I swipe at it quickly with the back of my hand. ‘When I go near them, they become monsters.’
‘When you fall …’ Max cuts himself off as he works something out in his head. I clutch my hands tight in my lap, waiting for him to shoot to his feet.
‘I didn’t want to freak you out,’ I say quickly, before he can.
Maybe if I can just explain. ‘But I’ve known what’s going on with Tyler the whole time.
I figured it out when he first went Wolf Man, before I met you.
That’s how I found the cave, that’s why I look after him. Because this is my fault.’
‘Wait, wait, wait.’ Max blinks so many times, it’s as though his eyelids are a lens to his brain and he’s trying to click his thoughts into focus. ‘So, you’re the one who’s turning Tyler and Avery?’
‘Well, yeah,’ I say slowly. ‘That’s what I just said.’
‘No,’ Max draws out the word, scepticism thick in his voice, ‘you said the curse is on you. Unless, did you curse yourself? Like, by accident or something?’
‘What?’ I say. ‘No, I … someone else cursed me.’
Ahem, your freaking dad.
‘Okay, exactly.’ Max tosses out an arm. ‘So, you’re not turning anyone. This isn’t your fault. This was done to you also.’
‘Yeah, but they’re turning into monsters because I fall in love with them. If I could just control my stupid feelings, this wouldn’t have happened.’
‘You can’t force yourself not to love somebody. It doesn’t work like that.’
‘But that’s the problem,’ I insist. ‘I don’t love Avery.
I barely even like her. I mean, I thought I loved Avery at one point, but tonight I was sure that I don’t any more.
’ When she used my full name, it felt like a light being permanently turned off in my chest. ‘It’s the same with Tyler.
I wouldn’t have said I loved him, I was just …
into him, I guess.’ I chew my lip. ‘I used to think I just didn’t know what love felt like, but this time with Avery, I’m sure.
There’s something wrong with the curse.’
‘Who would even put a curse on you?’ Max asks. ‘Do you know?’
I open my mouth to answer, but look away. The concern on his face is so genuine, looking at him creates an almost physical ache in my chest.
‘No,’ I lie. ‘But whoever it is sucks at curses, because this one’s janky as hell.’
‘Maybe it’s residual?’ Max says. ‘Like, the curse is only registering your love for Avery now?’
‘Maybe,’ I say doubtfully. ‘It just seems kind of screwed up, if that’s the case. Nobody around me is safe, whether I love them or not.’
As soon as the words are out, tears start welling up again. I blink them back furiously, try to focus on the thousands of tiny Vs making up the pattern in my knitted sweater, but the stripes are distorted in a watercolour blur.
‘What if …’ I say, my voice shaking. I can barely get the words out. ‘What if …’
The fear that’s been brewing in my head for the last two months, the one I’ve done everything to avoid speaking about out loud, flashes like a neon sign at the front of my brain: What if I never get to be in love?
Before I can finish, Max’s arm loops around my shoulders, warm and firm.
He pulls me against his chest, his mouth finding the top of my head.
I crumple into him and cry, breathing his warm, vanilla-tinged scent in deep lungfuls.
My last shred of composure is gone. Max just strokes the back of my head, not moving even when my tears leave wet splotches on his T-shirt.
He’s just comforting me like any friend would, I tell myself.
There’s nothing earth-shattering about how much it’s actually helping. How much better I feel with him here.
‘We’re gonna break it, okay?’ he murmurs into my hairline.
Sniffling, I say, ‘How do you know?’
I can feel his smile spread across my scalp. ‘Because you’re Indie Reynolds, dude,’ he says with a husky laugh. ‘Your life isn’t dictated by what ifs.’
We sit like that for a while, his words settling over me like a weighted blanket. Head tucked in the crook of his neck, my eyes start to droop, my breaths evening out to a sleepy rhythm. Max’s heartbeat, quick and steady, pulses against my cheek.
‘I should go,’ he says, breath soft on my skin.
I nod. Mumble sleepily, ‘Probably.’
But he doesn’t move, and neither do I.