Chapter Text
The clock on Ms. Kelley's wall ticked with a persistence that made Max want to scream. Each second stretched out like taffy, pulling her deeper into the beige cushions of the counselor's office couch. Outside, the October sky was the color of old dishwater, and dead leaves scratched against the window like fingernails.
"Max," Ms. Kelley said, her voice measured and soft in that way adults used when they thought you might break. "We've been meeting for six weeks now, and I notice you haven't mentioned any of your friends from last year."
Max's fingers found a loose thread on her jeans and picked at it. The denim was faded, worn thin at the knees. Billy used to give her shit about how she dressed. Used to. Past tense. Everything was past tense now.
"I have friends," Max said flatly.
"I'm sure you do." Ms. Kelley shifted in her chair, that practiced movement that was supposed to seem casual but never quite landed right. "But I'm thinking of the kids you spent time with last year. Mike Wheeler, Dustin Henderson..." She paused, consulting her notes. "Lucas Sinclair."
Max was secretly shocked Ms. Kelley even knew that, considering the fact that she didn't work at the middle school. That final name hit Max like a fist to the sternum. She kept her face carefully neutral, a skill she'd perfected. Don't react. Don't give her anything to work with.
"What about them?"
"I understand Lucas was your boyfriend. Is that still—"
"No." The word came out harder than Max intended. She softened it, slightly. "We broke up. Over the summer."
That was the sanitized version. The truth was messier, uglier. The truth was that Max had stopped returning his calls in July. Stopped showing up when he knocked on her door. Stopped existing in any space where he might find her, until he finally got the message and stopped trying.
"That must have been difficult," Ms. Kelley said. "Losing your brother and ending a relationship in the same summer."
Max wanted to laugh at the absurdity of that statement. Losing Billy wasn't like losing a boyfriend. It wasn't even in the same universe. Billy had been awful and cruel and sometimes she'd hated him with an intensity that scared her, but he'd also been the only person who understood what it was like to live in Neil Hargrove's house. The only other person who knew what it meant to make yourself small and quiet and invisible when the yelling started.
And now he was gone, and Max was alone with her mother who cried at the kitchen table and drank cheap wine and couldn't even look at her daughter without her face crumpling.
"Billy wasn't my brother," Max said to the carpet. "He was my stepbrother."
"Of course. I apologize." Ms. Kelley made a note on her pad. Max hated when she did that. Hated knowing her words were being recorded, catalogued, analyzed for signs of whatever pathology counselors were trained to find. "Can you tell me about Lucas? What made you decide to end things?"
Because I'm poison, Max thought. Because everyone I get close to gets hurt or dies or leaves. Because Lucas looked at me like I was something precious and I couldn't stand it, couldn't stand knowing that eventually I'd disappoint him or destroy him or both.
"We just grew apart," she said instead. “That's all.”
"Hmm." Ms. Kelley set down her pen, folding her hands in her lap. "Max, I want to be direct with you. Your teachers have expressed concern. Your grades have dropped significantly since last year. You're isolating yourself during lunch and free periods. You're not participating in class discussions."
"I'm fine."
"Are you?" Ms. Kelley's voice was gentle, maddeningly gentle. "Because from where I'm sitting, it looks like you're carrying something very heavy, and you won't let anyone help you with it."
Max's throat tightened. She focused on her breathing, counting the inhales and exhales the way she'd taught herself to do when the nightmares woke her at three in the morning.
"Lucas keeps trying to talk to me," Max heard herself say. The words came out before she could stop them, and once they started, they kept coming. "In the hallways. Between classes. He acts like nothing's changed, like we can just go back to how things were."
"And you don't want that?"
"I can't." Max's voice cracked on the word. "I can't do that to him."
"Do what to him?"
Make him watch me fall apart. Make him try to fix something that's broken beyond repair. Make him waste his time on someone who's already given up.
"He's better off without me," Max said quietly.
Ms. Kelley was silent for a long moment. When she spoke again, her voice had lost some of its clinical distance. "Max, do you think that's true? Or is that what the grief is telling you?"
Max didn't answer. She couldn't explain that the grief wasn't telling her anything, it was just there, constant and suffocating.
"Lucas was in my office last week," Ms. Kelley said. "He's worried about you."
Something twisted in Max's chest. "He needs to stop."
"He cares about you."
"He shouldn't." Max stood abruptly, grabbing her backpack. "Are we done? I have class."
Ms. Kelley didn't try to stop her, just watched with those sad, knowing eyes as Max headed for the door. "Max," she called out as Max's hand touched the doorknob. "You don't have to carry this alone."
But that was the thing, wasn't it? Max did have to carry it alone. Because the alternative, letting someone in, letting Lucas see how broken she really was, that was worse. That was unbearable.
She left without responding, the door clicking shut behind her with a finality that felt like surrender.
In the empty hallway, Max leaned against the lockers and let herself think about Lucas for just a moment. About his stupid smile and the way he'd danced with her at the Snow Ball. About how he'd looked at her like she was brave and strong and worth something.
She'd given that up. Given him up. And it was the right thing to do, she told herself. It had to be.
Even if it felt like dying all over again.