Page 58 of The Fall of Iris Henley
“Well, that’s no lie.” He goes quiet while I brush crumbs off the passenger-side seat and buckle in. It’s not until we’re turning out onto the highway that he speaks again.
“Actually, Katy and I broke up.”
I do a double take, cranking my head around to the left. “What? When?”
He frowns. “Uh, it was… yeah I guess it was right after homecoming?”
“Oh, wow.” I watch his profile, but his expression doesn’t betray much of anything. Well, that’s always the case with Max. “Wait, was it because of me?”
He bounces his head back and forth. A little bit yes, a little bit no. “You were what finally made her mad enough to pull the trigger, I guess.”
“Does she think we’re hooking up or something?” I ask.
“She’s always kind of thought that,” he says. “Now she’s also mad I’m not buying into the whole ‘you’re a murderer’ thing. She thinks I’m defending you because I’m in love with you.”
The way he says it is matter-of-fact, but it still makes my cheeks go warm. “I’m really sorry, Max. I never meant make her think…”
“Nah, you didn’t. She’s jealous. And intense. And let’s say ‘tightly wound,’” he says.
I bite my lip. “I’ll be honest. I, uh, never quite got you two.” When he doesn’t answer right away, I go on. “I mean, she’s cute and all, but she’s always kind of been that way. Do you remember the read-a-thon in middle school? She was so mad that I beat her she had a tantrum in front of everyone at the awards assembly. It was wild. I think she broke one of the microphone stands.”
“Yeah, I remember,” he says. “She does too. She still talks about it.”
“Really?” I ask. “If I made a fool of myself like that I wouldn’t ever bring it up again.”
“Oh, it plays a little different in her retelling,” he says with a smirk. “According to her, you’re an airhead who obviously cheated just to show her up.”
“What?” I start to laugh. “Why would I do that?”
“I don’t know, but she has a lot of stories like that. About you, about Hayden and Sophie, about some of the other popular girls at school. She remembers everything anyone has ever done to wrong her. Plus a few made-up ones.”
I whistle. “That’s intense. And now you’re on her list too.”
“Yeah. God, I hope she gets into Stanford so we can get some geography between us.” He picks up the aux cord and hands it across the console to me. “Here, get something on the stereo so I don’t fall asleep. This is maybe the most boring drive in Texas.”
“You know that’s not true,” I say. There’s a lot of Texas to measure against. “Hmm, let’s see. What’s your favorite Taylor Swift album?”
He doesn’t even blink. “Oh, definitelyThe Unspeakable Horrors of the Eldritch Void. Taylor’s Version.”
I laugh and scroll through my phone until I find FKA Twigs, who I hope will be weird enough for him. And then we are off, putting Varda in the rearview, the autumn sun sharp in the sky.
It’s not the most boring drive in Texas, but it’s not particularly scenic either. We shoot past exurbs and quarries, farms and undeveloped lots. It’s all flat and scrappy looking. I find myself thinking about Max and Katy. They were always a strange couple—her humorless and prissy, him dryly funny but not very demonstrative. He never even seemed to like her much. But then, he didn’t date around a lot, and maybe it wascomfortable for him to stay with the partner he knew, rather than to take a risk. I’d known Max long enough to see that his deadpan cynicism was a protective measure as much as anything. Underneath it, I think he was lonely.
Well, aren’t we all.
“So,” I say after we pass through yet another bland little housing development. “Do we have any kind of plan here?”
He tilts his head back and forth for a few seconds, like he’s measuring his options. It’s a tic I remember from when we were kids.
“Well, I guess I just want to get eyes on him, to start with,” he says. “I’m really curious about this guy.”
“Me too.” I have spent the entire weekend going through my old chat logs with Jonah, trying to find some sense ofwhy. There’s got to be a red flag somewhere, right? But then, that was what I’d thought after Rocky died. So maybe I just didn’t know a red flag when I saw one.
“You’ve known him for what, three years?”
“I mean, three years at camp. So two weeks a year. Which honestly adds up to something more like a few hours. But we didn’t start to text each other until this year.” I rest my head against the seat. “He always seemed nice.”
“Yeah, well, it’s easy toseemnice, if you’re trying to get something out of someone.” He makes a strange face, like he’s tasted something sour.
