Chapter Forty-Two
One week later
‘This is a really bad idea. Like, I feel physically ill right now.’
‘You’ve said that a thousand times.’
‘Because it’s worth repeating.’
‘Is it, though?’
With a hand on each of my shoulders, his chest pressed against my back, Max gently guides me towards the glass door of Breakneck Records. I shuffle my feet on the sidewalk, slowing us down.
‘What if it didn’t actually work?’ I say, trying to squirm away.
Max’s grip, though still gentle, is unflinching. ‘If that was the case, don’t you think people would be running out and screaming right now?’ he says.
‘Not if he already mauled them.’
‘Come on,’ Max says, running his hands down my arms. ‘I’ll be with you the whole time.’
‘That’s what makes me nervous,’ I grumble.
We stand directly in front of the door and Max pauses, waiting for me to open it. When I don’t, he reaches around me for the metal handle and says with a chuckle, ‘Allow me.’
We’re met with a wave of Joy Division’s ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’.
I stare down at the concrete floor, paralysed under the swishy beat of the drums, until Max starts to move.
His feet are directly behind mine, which means I have no choice but to step forward with him unless I want to fall over.
There are only a few customers in the store, one of whom is at the front talking to the man behind the counter.
A black baseball hat smashed down on his head and squashing his long, shaggy brown hair shadows the man’s face, but when he laughs at something the customer says, a shaft of sunlight cuts in through the store’s front window and illuminates his smile. It’s really him: Tyler.
‘See?’ Max says in my ear. ‘Totally fine.’
Totally fine.
There are no horns, no fangs.
Tyler, just ten or so feet away from me, is Tyler.
He glances over and gives us a quick nod before resuming his conversation with the other customer. As though we’re just anybody. As though we’ve never fed him pizza in a cave.
Max’s hands fall from my shoulders as he rounds the table that cuts down the centre of the store.
‘What’re you doing?’ I say.
He shrugs. ‘We’ve got time to look around before we’re supposed to meet Sam, right?’
I glance down at my phone. He’s right, we’re not supposed to meet Sam for lunch for another half hour.
I made sure to give us plenty of time for Breakneck in case Tyler changed again and we had to give police statements.
But as Max flicks through a crate of records, his eyes intermittently floating up to mine to make sure I’m okay, I’m pretty sure he’s got ulterior motives beyond just wanting to kill time.
Since the gala last week, Max has been trying to get me to come to Breakneck to prove to me that the curse is truly broken.
Even though I knew, in theory, that it was – I’d been to school, been in class with Avery, though Sam basically had to drag me there, too – it still felt terrifying, going back to the very beginning.
Like if it was all going to unravel at any point, it would be here.
But here we are, and it’s like nothing ever happened.
At home, though, everything’s been different.
The day after the gala, I finally told my mom about what had been happening over the last few months: why I was really ‘volunteering’ at the zoo, my plan with Max, that all of it was because I thought the curse had passed down to me.
She swung between fury and anguish when I relayed the part about my confrontation with Austin Taylor, angry that I’d put myself in danger, and upset over the fact that I’d been placed in that situation at all.
But a quiet calm I hadn’t expected settled over her when I told her about the real curses that’d been cast. Who was actually responsible.
When I finished, she simply stood up and walked over to Laura’s house without a word.
The next hour was eerily silent across our two houses, and only when my mom returned to ours did the screaming and crying at Laura’s place start.
After hour two of Laura and Elliott’s heated exchange that I was fairly sure could be heard all the way down in Fairfax, there was a knock at our door.
Laura stood on our porch, her eyes overflowing with tears as she hugged me so tightly I could barely breathe.
‘Oh, honey,’ she’d said, hands cupping my cheeks. ‘I’m so sorry.’
By then, I was crying too. So was my mom.
‘It’s okay,’ I said, sniffling.
‘No, it’s not.’ Laura shook her head. ‘What he did – all this – it’s not just Elliott’s fault, it’s mine too; I’ve been so wrapped up in Donnie, and Carl before that, and Xavier before that. Elliott needs real help, and I should’ve seen it sooner. I should’ve been there.’
In the end, Laura and Elliott agreed that he’d finish senior year early – he’d already taken most of his finals and could sit the remaining ones remotely – and go to Seattle to see his dad like normal, but only if he agreed to go to therapy twice a week and keep it up for at least an entire year.
It was a relief, knowing I wouldn’t have to see him for the rest of the summer.
He’d be back eventually, but I’d figure out how to handle that later.
Weirdly, coming clean to my mom about Austin and the curse, what’d happened with Elliott – none of that was what I’d been most worried about; it was telling her about Max.
If he and I are really going to do the whole ‘together’ thing, that means he’ll be around a lot.
I know what Austin did wasn’t Max’s fault, but my mom was tortured by this man for months and then years.
I didn’t want to add to that trauma by bringing around someone who might remind her of it.
But as soon as I’d told her what Max had become to me, how he hadn’t hesitated to help take care of Tyler and break the curse, she’d wrapped her arms around my neck and pulled me close.
‘You’re not mad?’ I’d said.
‘Indie, baby, you’re in love,’ she said. ‘I’m elated.’
We both acknowledged that it might be a shock at first, her seeing me with Max. But we’d get through it. Together.
‘Do I need this?’ Max hoists up a record whose cover has five men feeding animals on it. It’s an album by the Beach Boys. ‘This is like, a quintessential California album. I could listen to it for, like, research purposes. You know, get an in with your dad.’
I frown. ‘Are you trying to butter him up by listening to old man music?’ I say.
‘That depends,’ Max says. ‘Do you think it’d work?’
Aside from finally getting to quit F’resh, this was the best part about confessing everything to my mom.
She’d sat stock-still when I told her that Austin had actually broken the curse years ago, as though she’d gone numb.
But later that night, once Laura eventually went home and there were no more secrets left to tell, I could hear my mom through the wall of her bedroom, laughing and crying to someone on the phone.
‘I know, Owen, I know.’
Since then, my parents have spoken every night, my mom wandering around our house with this giddiness I’ve never seen in her before.
My dad and I have talked on the phone most days, texting when we can’t; it was weird in the beginning, someone knowing you when you have barely any memory of them.
He agreed to take things as slow as I wanted, but after only a few days I already started planning a trip out to California for next month.
I haven’t yet asked Max if there are any southern California F’resh branches he could ‘check up on’ while I’m out there, but still, here he is, already mapping out a plan to impress my dad for when they do finally meet. And I love him for it.
The front door chimes as the customer at the counter leaves Breakneck. Tyler produces a notebook from somewhere under the cash register and starts scribbling on the pages.
Max slides the Beach Boys album back into its crate. ‘You okay?’ he says, catching me staring at Tyler.
‘Yeah,’ I say from beside him. I pretend to flip through the records, needing something to occupy my hands. ‘It’s just – I don’t know, it’s kind of weird. He doesn’t even recognise us.’
‘Isn’t that what you wanted?’
‘Yeah,’ I say again. ‘I mean, I guess so.’
It’s good that Tyler doesn’t know I have anything to do with him turning into a monster.
A relief, even. But those few nights I spent in the cave with him, talking through my fears around Austin Taylor, my plans – they felt like something.
Tyler, though a snarling, drooling goat-werewolf, was the first person I told about the curse.
Even Avery has some kind of awareness of what happened, albeit fuzzy, like Max.
On my first day back, she approached me in the library during my free period, where she apologised again for everything that went down with us.
And even though I’d asked her to prom, I said I was sorry too, for everything before.
Because she was right; she hadn’t been the only one to dodge whatever we had going public.
She too has few memories from her time as a beast, just headbutting Rocco in the stomach, my terrified face as I tore down the hall.
When explaining to her what had happened, I kept details about the curse to a minimum, just said that people around me had started changing temporarily.
Upending her understanding of magic and reality felt like kind of a lot for fifth period.
‘But that won’t – could it happen again?’ she asked, eyes misty with fear.
I just shook my head. ‘No,’ I said. ‘You’re safe.’
Tyler, who’s currently tapping along to Joy Division’s drumbeat, totally carefree, is, apparently, a special breed of beast. But that shouldn’t even matter, I remind myself. What matters is that it’s over.
I’m barely paying attention to the records as they fly by under my fingertips, so I almost miss the album cover with the man and woman kissing.
It’s the one I saw last time Max and I were in Breakneck, the first time I let myself imagine what it would be like to kiss him.
I hold it up. It’s actually John Lennon and Yoko Ono, an album called Double Fantasy.
I flip it over, read the list of songs; I don’t recognise any of them, but it’s the cover I like, John Lennon’s floppy hair and the way his hand curls gently but protectively around the back of Yoko Ono’s neck. It reminds me of Max.
‘You gonna get it?’ Max asks.
My eyes flick up to Tyler, whose attention is still buried in his notebook.
‘Yeah, I think I am,’ I say.
Swallowing, I approach the counter. I don’t know why I’m so nervous; Tyler clearly has no idea who I am.
He looks up and smiles politely before sliding the notebook and a blue ballpoint pen to the side of the counter.
He takes the album from me and types the price into the cash register’s touchscreen.
‘I only recently found out this was the last album he released before he died,’ Tyler says, nodding at the record.
‘Really?’ I say. My fists are clenched tight at my sides.
‘Do you need a bag?’
His tone is strictly professional, customer service at its finest. I know I could try to read between his words, attempt to find some kind of hidden message he’s trying to obscure while at work, but it’d be pointless. He really doesn’t know me.
‘Yeah, thanks.’
He tells me my total and carefully drops the record into a brown paper bag. I tap my phone on the card reader, and that’s it. Max holds open the door and together, we leave. I bite the inside of my cheek against the tears pushing at the back of my eyes.
Not more than two seconds on the sidewalk and Max’s arm snakes around my waist as he kisses the side of my head.
‘You did it,’ he says. ‘And for the record, I totally get it. I think even I have a crush on him.’
I snort a laugh and pretend to elbow him away but Max catches my arm and pulls me to him instead.
His eyes are on my mouth, his own quirked up in a half smile.
I push myself up on tiptoe and kiss him, the feeling of imminent tears evaporating.
The curse is over, but this – me and Max, Max and me – is just beginning.
‘Hey,’ a voice calls from behind us.
Hope sparks in my chest as Max and I both turn to see Tyler hanging halfway out of Breakneck’s front door. But then he waves a small scrap of paper through the air.
‘You forgot your receipt.’
I jog back and take it from him, smiling my thanks. The door closes silently behind Tyler and then he’s gone again. Max and I continue walking down the street, pausing when we reach a crosswalk.
‘I can see why you’d like all three of us,’ Max says as he watches the cars streak past. ‘We all have really great hair.’
I squint up at him. ‘Excuse me?’
‘Me, Avery and Tyler. We all clearly take great pride in our haircare routines.’ He pretends to primp the curls that fall haphazardly around his ears. ‘It’s okay if you have a hair thing. Everybody has a thing. My thing is for cool girls who pretend they don’t have feelings.’
‘Yeah?’ I say, opening the paper bag to drop in the receipt. ‘Well, you clearly know nothing about me, because …’ Just as I’m about to let the receipt go in the depths of the bag, I catch a glimpse of something on the back of it.
‘Oh my God,’ I whisper.
Max is instantly on high alert. ‘What?’ he says, leaning into me.
I hold out the receipt, flipped to the back. Where there’s a note written in blue pen:
Thank you for the pizza, Indie. I owe you one . . .