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Summer draws to a slow, inevitable end. The weather cools, the sun loses some of its bite and soon, the bus is pulling up to take them back to the city. The kids haul their luggage onboard. Max, haunted by the feeling that he's forgetting something, doubles back to check the camp.
He finds David curled behind his locked cabin, sobbing into hands.
Max huffs out a sigh. “About fucking time.”
David looks up. His eyes are red and puffy. He’s an ugly cryer. “Huh? Max—?”
Max plops down in the dirt beside the camp counsellor. “I said it’s about fucking time. You’ve been extra cheery the past few days. It’s disgusting. And fake.”
“I wanted to make these last days count,” David says. “I didn’t want to end on a sad note by ruining everything and—and crying.”
“Ruining what? Everyone’s already sulking about having to go back to school.”
David nods a little. He rubs at the dirt beneath them, tracing little circles as he sniffles and rubs at his wet, flushed cheeks.
“I’m going to miss you, Max,” David says after a long, quiet moment.
“Well, I’m not going to miss this hell hole,” Max snipes back.
David quirks a smile. “We’ve still got the bus ride back, and I still have my guitar—”
“If you sing show-tunes the whole ride home, I’ll break your stupid guitar in half and shove the wooden shards up your—”
“Summer isn’t over yet, Max!” David says. He springs to his feet, sunny smile back on, cheeks scrubbed dry. The same obnoxious counsellor Max has been dodging for months. “I’ve still got you for a few hours!”
“There’s no god,” Max decides. He tells himself he’s annoyed about David’s guitar. The nausea and the pushing dread in his stomach is because of the long bus ride he’s going to have to suffer through with loud, campy songs, hard seats, and the high possibility of space kid getting bus sick and puking. That’s it. That’s why he feels like a tightly wound spring, about to snap and break and injure everyone around him.
Not because his parents will be waiting for them at the bus stop. Of course not.
David sings ‘99 bottles on the wall.’ He ropes a few campers into singing along—including Nikki, the traitor.
Space kid doesn’t throw up, but it’s a near thing. Half way home, when Max admits he's impressed Space Kid has managed to sleep on the bus when he's so prone to car sickness, Neil confesses to drugging his breakfast juice. Max high-fives him.
As they get further and further away from camp, Max feels like Nerris has cast a spell to transfer Space Kid’s nausea to him. His stomach roils, a familiar stress headache blooms behind his eyes, and he spends the bus ride wresting down his disappointment. He told himself he would stop being disappointed in things years and years ago. No more getting his hopes up, he’d vowed. No more expecting good behaviour from people—especially adults—and no more being anxious about his stupid, stupid parents. They would do what they pleased. Max had no control over that.
And yet there he sat, temple throbbing and stomach clenching, trying to focus on David’s singing instead of the approaching city.
Max nods to the other campers as, one by one, their parents arrive and they leave. He says goodbye to Nikki and Neil. He lets the two sweep him up into hugs and accepts the slips of paper they press into his hands, their phone numbers written beneath their names. They promise to stay in touch. It’s the kind of stupid optimism that he usually hates—they live in a separate city to him, and his parents would never let him arrange visits; Max’ll just be lucky if they both get dumped back at Camp Campbell next year. This is probably the last time he’ll see either of them.
But there’s something about the two that stops Max from shutting down their optimism—something about the wet, embarrassed shine in Neil’s eyes, the way he sniffs and is reluctant to let go off Max’s hoodie. There’s something about Nikki, all her energy gone, shoulders slumped as she lets her mom led her away, promising over her shoulder to invite both boys over for a sleepover. Something Max can’t bring himself to crush with reality. He agrees, hollowly, to get togethers he knows will never happen.
One by one, the campers leave until Max is the only kid left. The sky begins to darken. Gwen yawns. David promises to wait for Max’s parents. Gwen noogies Max and lets David rope her into a bone crunching hug goodbye before heading home.
Then, it’s just David and Max and the setting sun.
Max huddles over the curb. “Go home, David.”
“What?” David says, blinking. “Max, I can’t just leave you. That’s wrong. And illegal. I’m responsible for you until your family comes.”
“I don’t need you to babysit me. Fuck off.”
David sits down on the curb. Their knees knock together. Max scowls and inches away. “I don’t mind. It can be fun. You know, I still have my guitar—”
“If you start singing, I’m walking into traffic.”
The sun fully sets. This little street on the outskirts of the city, bracketed by dim street lights and brambly shrub, sits empty for a long time.
When Max begins to seriously think his parents have forgotten him (it wouldn’t be the first time) or had finally decided to abandon him (it wouldn’t be surprising), a Mercedes-Benz pulls up to the curb.
“Oh, good,” David says, springing to his feet, “I was beginning to worry about you catching a cold out here, Max.”
“You can stop mother-henning me, David,” Max snaps. He grabs his duffel bag and makes for the car. “Summers over. I’m no longer your responsibility.”
The car-door opens. A man in a sharp suit steps out. His dark hair is pressed back, and his long face is set with high, severe cheekbones. He towers over Max. Their height difference seems so much larger with the man looking down his nose at Max, studying him.
“Get in the car,” he says, and Max nods, and heads around the back of car.
“I’m David, sir, a camp counsellor,” he introduces. David has only ever met Max’s mother and a harried looking personal assistant before. Max’s father looks like him, David thinks, even with his curly hair tamed and slicked back. They share unblemished, dark skin, light eyes, and a cold, distrustful aura. “I have your change from your deposit, let me just get it—”
Max’s father sighs and follows his son around the car while he waits for David to riffle through his luggage, searching for the cheque he’d tucked away.
“Where’s Mom?” Max asks on the other side of the car. The trunk clicks open. His duffel bag is thrown inside.
“Your mother is in London. And what have I told you about questions?”
“Sorry,” Max says. Then, because he’s never been one to hold his tongue, even when it’s safer for him: “Are you heading to the airport tonight, then? Surprised you didn’t leave me to just walk home.”
Max’s father sighs again, exhausted after only a few minutes in his son’s company. “I’m not going to London, and your mother isn’t coming back to America.”
“But then—”
“We divorced. She refused to take you off my hands, so you’re staying with me.”
David stills, hands buried in a swirl of dirty laundry and books. He knows a private conversation when he hears one. He bites his lip and pretends not to hear the two talking behind the car.
“What?” Max says. “You guys finally split up and nobody told me? What, did Mom finally work out how many affairs you’ve had?”
“Like she wasn’t having affairs behind my back,” Max’s father says, like an afterthought, like he’s not really paying attention.
“So that’s why you fucked up your marriage? Or is it something else? Did you blow a case at the firm? Did you blow someone at the firm—maybe she walked in on you sucking your boss’ dick to get some wealthy fucking client—”
The slap echoes through the night air. David jumps to his feet and runs to the car before he’s even thought about it.
Max’s father has his son pressed up against the closed trunk. Max glares up at the man. There’s nothing surprised in his features. That, among everything—from Max’s cheeks, flushed where his father’s palm had struck him, to the way the older man has Max cornered, one hand holding him tight against the car, distressingly close to Max’s neck—is what sends David forward.
He pulls the man off of Max. “Hey, now—”
Max’s father shakes him off. “Don’t touch me. This is none of your business.”
“None of my business?” David says. “None of my business? You just hit one of my kids and it’s ‘none of my business’—”
“David,” Max says tiredly. His face is reddening. He’ll have a nasty bruise there tomorrow. “Let it go. It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine, Max.” David tries not to get angry around the campers, but he can’t help it. Max’s father has several inches on David, and glares down his nose at him, unashamed at being caught striking his own child. David grabs him by the arm. “You don’t get to hurt him—”
“Don’t touch me. I’ll have you up on assault charges.”
“Assault charges? After you just assaulted your own child—”
“Don’t be so dramatic,” Max’s father says with a wave of his hand. “He’s my son; I can discipline him however I like.”
“David,” Max hisses. He grabs the back of David’s shirt and tries to haul him back, away from his unwavering father. David doesn’t move. “What the fuck is wrong with you? Stop making this into a big deal, and just—just go already—”
“This is a big deal, Max. Look, your cheek is already puffing up. That wasn’t discipline—that was a grown man hitting a kid that’s under his protection—”
Max’s father exhales, slow and steady, and Max shudders at David’s back. “I’m beginning,” Max’s father says, “to lose my temper. Go home, camp man, before I call the police.”
Camp man, David thinks. It sounds wrong coming from this stranger. Only Max, voice squeaky with youth, charmingly resentful, can call David that.
“I’ll tell them what you did,” David challenges. Max groans and mutters something about stupid, stupid camp counsellors.
Max’s father plucks his Blackberry from the pocket of his slacks. “And who do you think they’ll believe, some 20 year old kid in a yellow bandana, or a highly respected lawyer who has done the local police several favours this past year? I hope you’re as fond of the inside of a police station as you are of the woods.”
“I—“ David falters.
“I’ll tell them you hit me,” Max says. His father stops dialling, thumb hovering over the call button. “How do you think your clients will feel when they hear about all those hospital trips? I don’t get in fights, I don’t have a bike, and I’m not clumsy. I don’t need to prove anything; it’s written all over my medical records.”
“What have I told you about—?” Max’s father starts forward.
“Whoa there, pal,” David says. He puts a hand up, and presses Max further behind him with the other.
“You heard me, you old fuck,” Max spits, teeth gritted. David tries to hold him back. He’s only ten years old. David will die before he lets anything happen to him.
“Don’t you take that tone with me, young man—”
“I’ll take whatever fucking tone I want if you keep threatening David—”
“This is your doing, Max. If you hadn’t said those disrespectful things, your friend wouldn’t be in this situation—”
Their voices grow louder, come faster, build into a crescendo. They ignore David’s polite demands to settle down and step away.
Max’s father reaches out to snatch at his son. David blocks him with his own chest, a defensive wall in front of Max. The lawyer gets a fistful of David’s t-shirt rather than Max’s hoodie, and pulls with all his force. David is sent sprawling out into the dirt, all the air knocked from his lungs
“David!” Max throws himself after his camp counsellor. Without David there as a buffer, his father hauls Max back by the hood. The hoodie pulls tight and chokes Max.
“Calm down, for Christ’s sake,” Max’s father says to his spluttering, thrashing son.
“Fuck you,” Max says, and twists around to bite his father’s arm in a vicious move he’s seen Nikki use half a dozen times.
“Ow!” Max’s father yelps and drops him.
Max hurries to David’s side, crouching in the dirt like a wild thing, face darkening with the promise of a bruise, clothes rumpled and dusty, his teeth bared in a snarl.
“Max,” his father admonishes, “what has gotten into you all of a sudden? I thought we were finished with this kind of behaviour.”
“I went and found some fucking respect,” Max says. David props himself up onto an elbow, and curls an arm around Max. There’s no way Max’s father is going to touch either one of them again.
“I won’t let you take him,” David warns. “Do what you want. He’s not going with you.”
Max’s father stares down at them. He looks untouchable, his solid features illuminated by the dim streetlights. He’s more of an adult than David has ever been—a black company car by his back, pressed suit barely rumpled, polished shoes stark against the damp earth of the outdoors. He knows the law better than David. He could destroy David if he wanted to.
But right then—with Max shivering with waning adrenaline, small hands bunched in David’s t-shirt, staring up at his own father with that dark, insidious bruise, waiting to be inevitably hauled away from this tiny bubble of safety Max has found—David doesn’t care. He would fight this man for Max. He’ll fight the whole world.
“Max is staying with me,” David says.
Max’s father sighs, like this whole argument is a tedious, exhausting thing. Hate is a strong word, but David thinks he could pull it out and try it on, just this once.
“Alright then,” Max’s father says. “He’s yours.”
“What,” Max and David say together.
“His mother’s in London. I don’t have much use for a rebellious kid in the house. You take him.”
“I…” David blinks up at the man. “Really?”
“Am I stuttering?” The blackberry is back. Max’s father punches something into it and turns away. “What’s your email address and full name? I’ll have guardianship passed to you, and all the paperwork sent for you to sign. It should only take a few months.”
“Holy fuck,” Max says. “Is that—is that even legal?”
“Vaguely,” Max’s father says. “A lot of people owe me a lot of favours.”
“Um.” David gets shakily to his feet. Max clambers up after him. They both hover in each other’s space. “Are you—are you sure, I mean, he’s your son—”
Max’s father eyes him. “You won’t take him? You just said you wouldn’t let me take him. I’m sure a foster family might—”
“No!” David says quickly. “No, I—I’ll take him.” David looks to Max. He can only see the top of his dark, curly head, his gaze turned downward. His sneakers trace nervous half-circles in the dirt. “If… if that’s alright with you, Max?”
“I should just go with my dad,” Max says.
“I’m not going to let that happen,” David tells him, firm but kind.
Max shrugs. All the fight has gone out of him. He looks like the boy he was at camp, shoulders hunched under his hoodie, eyes refusing to settle. “Whatever.”
David gives Max’s father his details. “I’ll be in touch,” he says, and gets in his shiny, too big car, and drives away.
David watches the tail lights retreat into the dark. He’s a pacifist, but he wishes he’d hit Max’s father. The burn of the thought is shameful. David aches with how much he wants to hurt Max’s father with his words or even, if it had come to that, his fists. He wants to say terrible, terrible things and make Max’s father shake. David guiltily wants to make Max’s father hurt and shiver as much as Max has.
(David knows he couldn’t. He doesn’t have it in himself. And he’d ruin his and Max’s lives in the process.)
But mostly, beyond all that, David just wants Max to be okay.
Max is curled into a disgruntled little ball in the backseat. David’s eyes keep searching for Max’s in the rear-view mirror, desperate for eye contact, to beam a smile his way, but the ten year old won’t look his way.
“Come on, Max,” David says. “It’ll be fun! I might not be your favourite person, and maybe you’d prefer to be somewhere else, but—but it’ll be great. Like a long, long sleepover. With only us. And an apartment for us to do anything in.”
“Like camp all over again,” Max grumbles.
David lights up. “Yes! Like camp again! Except all year around.”
“David, I fucking hate camp.”
“No, you don’t. Plus, this time you’ll have wifi, and I could hook you up with some video games (kids like the internet and video games, right?), and we’ll have better indoor plumbing!”
Finally, Max looks up. His eyes meet David’s in the rearview mirror and glowers, all his weight put into the force of that stare. “Fuck. You.”
David sighs. “Language, Max.”
“No, fuck you. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be with you. You—you should never have interfered. It was never any of your fucking business in the first place.”
David brakes slowly at a red light. He turns around in his seat, and rests his hand on Max’s knee. Max flinches away from his touch, and David pretends not to be bothered by that. “He was hurting you,” David says softly, “that makes it my business.”
Max bares his teeth, and snarls, “I wish you’d just let him shove me in the system. Stick me someplace worse like every other kid with fucked up parents.”
“Max—”
“It’d be better than being with you!”
David retracts his hand. Quietly, he says, “I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad I get to help you. Even if you don’t want my help.”
He turns back to the wheel as the light turns green.
They eat dinner at Burger King. Max picks at his fries. David is busy on the phone, calling up his landlord. (He doesn’t allow kids, and won’t accept Max into his building, but he will, for a price, direct David to a friend who might give them a place without prior notice.)
Max tears at his burger bun. He pulls out all the pickles in his burger and puts them in David’s. He glares at the vinyl tabletop and works out that the city he’s moving with David to is the same city Nikki and Neil live in.
The thought makes his stomach swoop. Max hates it (no more getting his hopes up, no more expecting good behaviour from adults; no more disappointment). The happy, secret smile David shoots him over the table of splayed junk food only makes Max feel even more guilty.
The tiny apartment is in a shitty area of the city. The building is dodgy—Max is positive there are at least 2 child predators on their floor alone—and the landlady is probably running a front for the mafia, or managing a human trafficking ring from her basement, or at least working some serious tax evasion. But the apartment is cheap, and given to them quickly and without questions, and is already better than the towering townhouse Max had grown up in.
There is one, major drawback: there’s only one bed. Max glares at it, and then glares at a wincing David.
“I’ll get you a bed soon,” David promises. “And a couch. And a dining table. And a TV. And—”
“Should have left me there,” Max repeats. He throws his duffle bag down with full force, even though it contains what is now all his worldly possessions.
David worries at the hem of his t-shirt. “I’ll sleep on the floor, don’t worry. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. I’m sure we have a spare blanket around here—or not, I don’t really need one—”
Max digs out a pair of pyjamas and goes to the bathroom to get changed. “Get in the damn bed, David. You’re old; you’ll probably break your fucking back sleeping on these floors.”
When he emerges, sans hoodie, wearing a threadbare shirt and plaid pyjama pants, he climbs into the bed. David, in a pair of stupid, matching pyjamas, stares at him.
“Max, is that—is that your Camp Campbell t-shirt? Do you sleep in your—”
“Get in the fucking bed, David,” Max interrupts.
David ducks in after him. Max curls against the far edge, back to his new guardian. The space between them is cold and empty and far too large.
“Goodnight, buddy,” David says, and clicks off the lamp. He receives no reply.
David wakes to the soft dawn, visible through their curtain-less window, and tiny feet kicking at his belly.
He rolls out of range and sits up. Max is curled in the middle of the bed, his face scrunched. He thrashes in his sleep, mumbles under his breath, and kicks out again.
“Max?” David says. He shakes the boy gently. Max winds back his arm and punches David in the shoulder. “Ow!”
“Get away.” Max turns over. His whole body is tense, hands balled up in cotton sheets. “Get—get—no—”
“You’re just dreaming. C’mon, buddy, it’s just a nightmare—”
“No, no, NO—”
Max kicks out again. David dodges. The walls of their apartment are paper thin. Their landlady was nice enough to give them the apartment without prior warning, but David doubts she’d put up with a screaming child and his equally loud, frazzled guardian shouting right back.
Max’s pleas muddle together. His ragged exhales are wet and rounded on the end of a sob; David’s heart aches for his charge.
“Max,” David says, but Max only bites out a swear and then a rough, worn cry. “Max—MAX!”
Max jumps awake. He looks wildly around for a threat, but only finds David in all his bed-headed, terrified glory.
“Max,” David begins, “are you alright?”
“Fine,” Max says. He tries for brisk, but his eyes are still rimmed red. He rubs at them with his fist.
“Do you—would a hug help—”
“Fuck you, fuck your mother, fuck your entire—”
“Okay, okay, Mr. Grouchy.” David puts his hands up in defeat. “I’ll get you a drink of water, okay?”
David heads into the kitchen. They only have paper cups at the moment, and he fills two with tap water. Before he can bring them back, Max follows him into the kitchen, glaring around at their tiny apartment.
“What time is it?”
David checks his watch, left out on the counter. “Almost 6AM—”
“Fuck. I woke you up so early.”
There’s something in that—the emphasis on you—that gives David pause. “It’s fine, Max. I promise. I have work in a few hours anyway, so this just gives us time to talk some more—”
“Work,” Max echoes blandly. He scowls and watches David get out a box of cereal.
“Uh huh. It’s at this cute little dinner. I’ve never been a waiter before, but I think it’ll be a great learning experience. And I can save up to buy us real things. Real breakfasts with eggs and coffee, and real beds with real, patterned sheets.” David pauses as he thinks. The sound of cereal pouring into the paper bowl is loud in the quietness of morning. “What kind of patterned sheets would you like, Max? I’m not letting you get boring old plain ones, that’s for sure—”
“I don’t want any damn sheets,” Max says, “and I don’t want any damn eggs.” David holds out the paper bowl full of cereal with a sunny smile. Max smacks it away. Cereal skitters over their tiled floors. “We don’t even have any fucking milk, David!”
David falters. “I’m—I’m sorry, Max, I forgot to buy some yesterday… I promise, straight after work, I’ll go to the store and pick up some things. Whatever you want.”
“Stop. Stop.” Max waves his hands around at their crummy apartment. David ducks his head in embarrassment. Another apology and a promise to better provide for Max sits on his tongue, but Max cuts him off, “I don’t want you to spend one more goddamn cent on me, okay? You’re busy, now; don’t be stupid and stress about buying me patterned sheets. I don’t give a shit. I’ll sleep on the fucking ground rather than on a bed you bought me.”
“We’ll pick the bed out together. It’ll be one you like.”
“That’s not the fucking issue, idiot! Can you see I’m a—a fucking burden? I’m this draining, useless burden who can’t financially support himself, and can’t even clean properly, and swears all the time, and makes you miserable—” Max grits his teeth against his own barrage. He sucks in a breath through his nose and says, “You shouldn’t have let my old man shove me onto you. You shouldn’t have agreed to take me in.”
David bends until he’s eye-level with Max. Quietly, into the ringing, expectant silence of their apartment, David promises, “You’re not a burden.”
“I can’t even get a fucking paper route, David. I’m ten.”
“And that’s all I want from you. To be ten. To be you, Max.” He laughs, and even that is softer and subdued. “I could do without the swearing, but I knew what I was getting into, no matter how unexpected last night was. I’m not upset I’m supporting you—I’m excited. I’m so, so excited to live in this apartment with you, and get to know you even better, and provide you with a safe, supportive place you’ve apparently never had before. I’m happy about my new job. I’m happy about buying you all these things, because I want to. I’m happy you’re with me.”
Max glares at the sprawled mess of cereal. “That was so gay.”
David swoops in and presses Max into a hug. The boy pretends to struggle in the long-armed embrace, before relenting to the touch.
“Is that why you’re so upset? Because you thought that me adopting you would create problems for me?” Max nods against David’s shoulder. The older man can feel Max’s scrunched scowl against his arm, but he can also feel Max’s small fists bunching into David’s pyjama shirt, too. “Well then, that is what’s gay.”
Max sighs. “That’s not the expression, David.”
“I don’t care; it’s silly for you to be worried about me. I’m your guardian, now. Soon, it’ll be officially legal and everything. It’s my turn to worry about your happiness.” David finally lets Max go. The boy looks like a ruffled, grumpy cat. “And that means I get to set rules, too. New rule: no bad language, no throwing cereal, and no homophobia.”
A lucky charm pelts David in the eye. “Suck a dick, old man.”
David scoops up his own handful of cereal and throws it back. Max picks it out of his hair, looking betrayed. “C’mon, Max. Work with me here.”
Max throws another piece of cereal. “Fine, fine; I won’t fucking call things gay.”
“I guess I’ll have to live with that.”
Max sleeps in David’s bed for two weeks. Some mornings, David is woken by Max kicking and thrashing his way through a nightmare. David works out, eventually, that his nightmares are about old classmates corning him after school and gifting him with dark bruises and split lips. Some are about his parents, their big empty house, and their brief, violent sparks of temper that left him rattled. Some are about his mother. Max misses her. He hated her, he tells himself he did, but he misses her.
(The morning David wakes up to a shivering, tearful Max choking his way through cries of, “Mom, Mom—” is one of the worst. Max threatens to gut David if he ever speaks of it again.)
Eventually, David saves up enough money to take them to the secondhand furniture shop. They pick out a dinky dining table and mismatched chairs. They get a footstool so Max can see over the counters.
And together, after circling the store three times over, they pick up a single bed with a blue frame for Max. David gets himself new Superman sheets. Max’s sheets have flames on it.
Two months into their new set up, Gwen comes to visit.
David sweeps her up into a hug and spins her around. She laughs and looks a little pained, but doesn’t whack him over the head for it like she might have done at Camp Campbell.
“Hey, Max,” Gwen says when David finally sets her down. “How’re you doing? Have you stopped giving David trouble?”
“Never,” Max promises. He doesn’t move to hug Gwen. She doesn’t move to hug him or ruffle his hair. They both have clear personal space bubbles. Max respects her for that.
David smiles brightly. “He’s stopped running away, though! That’s something I never achieved at Camp.”
“Yeah, well, try and make me do dumb camping activities and I’ll stick forks in your eyes while you’re sleeping,” Max says.
David laughs, and ushers them into the kitchen to make coffee and hot chocolate. The hot chocolate is not for either Gwen or Max.
David turns to fiddle with their drinks. Max jumps to sit up on the counter, legs swinging idly. Gwen peers at him suspiciously. “You’re really okay with this, then?” she asks. “You don’t have something awful planned for him? Not going to chloroform him and make a run for it?”
“Chloroform is easier to get in the city than at that musty old camp.” Gwen stares at him flatly. Max sighs. “Okay, fine—I’m not going to run away. The first time I did it, I got half away across town…” Max fiddles with his sleeves, not looking at Gwen. “David freaked out. He called the police. When I got bored and finally came home around midnight, it was to a bunch of officers and David crying his eyes out. He was… He was so freaked out.”
“They could’ve taken you away from him for that,” Gwen warns.
“You think I don’t fucking know that? I do, okay. I promised I’d never run away again, and I meant it. Where the fuck else would I go? Back to my asshole dad?”
Gwen smirks at him. “You just feel bad for upsetting David.”
Max glares at David’s turned back. He’s humming as he fixes their drinks, hips wiggling to his own quiet beat. “You didn’t see his fucking face. He was shaking. Thought I’d sent him into a stupid panic attack or something.”
“Max, panic attacks aren’t stupid. They’re awful.”
“Gee, I never knew that, the hundred or something panic attacks I’ve personally had were wonderful, so thanks for enlightening me—”
“He’s still a sarcastic little shit,” Gwen says loudly. Across the apartment, David looks up from the drinks. “Your influence has done nothing.”
David sighs. “I can’t even get him to stop drinking caffeine, Gwen. It’s going to stunt his growth.”
“Short people are closer to hell,” Gwen says, eyeing Max.
Despite acting long-suffering around both Max and David, Gwen brought with her a box full of gifts. Most are second hand things her own mother had foisted onto her while moving house—an afghan, an old waffle iron, and a rug with a weird stain—that she didn’t want. But there is, buried at the bottom of the miscellaneous items, a true gift—
“Is this REAL?” Max demands, unearthing the Xbox and holding it aloft.
“Yup,” Gwen says. “My little brother crashed our parents brand new sports car, so they took away his Xbox and games and TV.” They stare at her. She shrugs. “TV’s in my car downstairs. I’ll need a hand carrying it up.”
“I don’t know,” David begins. “I feel bad taking this from you… I don’t know if I can pay you back.”
Gwen shakes her head. “You can pay me back by letting me play with you. All my friends are weak bitches when it comes to gaming.”
“Deal,” Max says, before David can get flustered over the pricey gifts. “Prepare to get your ass kicked, old lady.”
They set up the Xbox that evening. David helps Gwen carry the TV up to the apartment, and Max follows after them, cackling as they buckle under the weight.
They don’t own a TV cabinet or a couch yet. The TV sits on the floor. The trio perch on pillows and drinks hot chocolate when David cuts off their caffeine supply (“I’m living under a fascist regime,” Max tells Gwen solemnly as David plucks his half finished mug of coffee from his hands and ruffles his hair affectionately.)
Just after midnight, Max falls asleep on the floor. David carries him to his room. Gwen quietly takes photos of David tucking his charge into bed. (She sends them to David the next day. He makes them his wallpaper. A few days later, when Max sees said photos, he tries to throw David’s phone out the window.)
When David arrives home from his evening shift, tired and aching, he’s greeted by the rumble of the TV and the thick, cloying smell of tomato sauce. It wouldn’t be the first time Max has stayed up late—the preteen loathes and completely ignores the bedtime David had tried to impose, used to having freedom in an apathetic, often empty house—but the smell is new.
“Max?” David calls. “You up, buddy?”
A pile of sudsy, drying dishes are piled beside the sink. The countertop has been wiped down. Everything is clean.
And there’s Max, slumped at the dining room table, head pillowed in his arms, snoring. A bowl of pasta sits by his elbow. Tiptoeing closer, David can see grated cheese in the shape of a dick arranged over the pasta.
David gently shakes the boy awake. Max startles and jumps away, eyes wide and panicked. “Whoa, whoa there. It’s just me, Max.”
Max rubs at his eye with a closed fist. “David?”
“Yeah, little man. What’re you doing up? And without eating your dinner?”
Max glares, face scrunched, hair fluffier when sleep mused. David, privately, thinks it’s the cutest thing ever.
“Waiting for you, you slow asshole.”
“Uh huh. And the pasta?”
Max turns his glare on the bowl. “Who cares, it’s cold now, you can’t eat it like this. I’ll just dump it in the trash—”
“It’s for ME?” David snatches up the bowl before Max can grab it and clutches it to his chest. “Oh, Max! You made this?”
Max scoffs. “It’s just pasta, it’s nothing special. We didn’t have anything in our bare as fuck cupboards, so it’s just stale pasta, cheese, tomatoes, and sauce. It’s probably not even good—”
To hide the adoring, teary smile David can feel building (and would, David knows from experience, make Max bluster and swear), he eats a heaping spoonful of pasta. “Mmm!”
“Don’t eat that!” Max says, jumping for the bowl. David holds it over his head. “David! Stop, it’s stone cold and bad—”
“It’s not bad, Max,” David says through his full mouth. “It’s great. Well done; you were obviously paying attention in cooking class at camp.”
Max drops his arms, but not his scowl. “Whatever, it’s not like it was difficult. I’ve been cooking for myself my whole damn life. It was either that or starve.” Max catches David’s face at that, and scoffs. “Oh, don’t look at me like that. I ate shitty mac and cheese and a lot of PB&J sandwiches, big deal.”
David slowly, slowly thinks about the half empty jar of peanut butter in their cupboard. About the ramen noodles stacked in their cupboard. The frozen meals in the freezer.
David feels bad; he’s been so busy working, often late into the night, trying to keep their tiny, two person household financially afloat. The pasta turns to ash in his mouth. Has he taken Max from his parents only to neglect him in the same way?
“Max,” David begins slowly, “I’m so sorry. I’ll—I’ll try and be here more.” David bends down so he and Max are eye level. The kid’s scowl is gone. His eyes are big. “I’m sorry for making you living somewhere so small. I’m sorry for making you eat cheap food by yourself. I don’t have the kind of money to give you all the amazing things you deserve, and spoil you horribly like I want to, but I’ll try better, okay? I’ll get more ingredients for us, and I’ll go to the library and look up recipes, and take time off work so we can cook together—”
Now the scowl is back in full force. “David,” Max says, “shut the fuck up.”
“Max—”
“No.” Max snatches the bowl from David’s hands and crosses the room, shoving it into their secondhand microwave. He turns back to his guardian, arms crossed, microwave whirring behind him. “I’d rather stay with someone who doesn’t have the money to spoil me but wants to, than people who have too much money and don’t care if I choke in my sleep.”
“You like it here?” David asks, anxiously.
“Yeah. Fine. I fucking love it here.” The microwave beeps. Max takes out the warm bowl and shoves it at David. “Eat your stupid pasta.”
David does. “It’s really good, Max. You’re really talented.” Max huffs and rolls his eyes. David thinks he looks pleased, anyway. “I would like to cook more, though. We could do it together! You could teach me things!”
Max glares at him. David smiles, closed-mouth and genuine, and enjoys the pasta his kid made for him.
“Fine,” Max relents, and turns before David can see the absence of his scowl. “About time you learned simple grown up skills, anyway, you big fucking baby.”
“And this is our shitty kitchen—our shitty fridge full of shitty left overs, our shitty cupboard full of shitty, sugary cereal that David likes. Our shitty table. That’s David’s shitty room. And thissss—” Max opened the door, flicked on the light, and waved an arm into the room, showing it off. “—is my shitty room.”
Nikki and Neil whistle in appreciation.
“Yeah, it’s okay,” Max says, hands shoved in his pockets.
“Dude, nice band posters,” Neil says. “I mean, it’s nothing like my room and its wall-to-wall posters—”
Max rolls his eyes. “We know, we know; you jack off to your Einstein poster. You don’t need to remind us.”
Neil splutters and turns red. “I—I do not!”
“It’s Neil deGrasse Tyson,” Nikki stage-whispers behind a hand. Neil splutters even more.
Max throws his head back and fake moans, so indecently David would be scolding him already, if he were here, “Oh, Tyson! Tell me more about your science!”
Nikki cackles. Neil grabs a rogue pyjama shirt lying in the hallway and ditches it at Max’s head. Max catches it easily.
Nikki moves into Max’s room. She clambers up onto the bed and immediately jumps up and down like it’s a trampoline, the springs squealing in protest.
“Nice bed!” she says. “Nice walls! Nice posters! Nice desk! Nice laundry and chip packets and homework lying everywhere!”
Neil prods at a wadded up ball of Burger King with the toe of his sneaker. “Yeahhh. Doesn’t David make you clean up?”
Max shrugs. “He does, but he’s cool about it. We have an agreement; I clean my room and the kitchen on weekends while he does all the laundry and scrubs the bathroom, and then we go to the arcade. I kick his ass, he cries, and then we go out for ice cream.” He shrugs again, projecting indifference. “It’s okay, I guess.”
“Awww,” Neil whines, flopping onto the bed. Nikki makes a move to jump on him, and he quickly rolls off and onto the floor. “I wish my parents took me to the arcade if I cleaned my room. I have to keep it spotless all the time or my mom takes away my allowance.”
“My mom disconnects the wifi,” Nikki says. The two boys shudder in horror. “Last time, she went away for a whole month to Hawaii and I stayed with my dad and he let me do whatever I wanted. A family of opossums started living in my room! I fed them bits of bread. They gave my brother rabies. It was great.”
Neil makes a face. Max shrugs. “Yeah, I guess David’s okay.”
“Okay?” Neil echoes. “You seem pretty excited about this apartment. And you’re never excited about anything.”
Nikki stops her erratic bouncing. She drops onto the edge of the unmade bed, and says, “I’m glad you’re happy, Max. You complained about him at camp, but… but David’s good for you.”
Max looks at the floor. He shoves his hands into his pockets. “Better than my good for nothing parents, anyway.”
“Fuck them,” Neil says to the roof, arms crossed in his laid out position.
“Fuck them!” Nikki agrees.
“If they didn’t see how awesome you are, and didn’t want to spend time with you, then I hope—I hope their fucking roof catches fire and the smoke chokes them to death in their fucking sleep.”
“To death!” Nikki crows. There’s no David to lecture them about discussing patricide.
“I guess…” Max clears his throat. “I guess David likes spending time with me. He always gets so excited when he gets time off or he finishes work and we get to hang out after school…”
Max half expects his friends to tease him about the unrepentant happiness in his voice, the joy radiating off of him at the thought of their optimistic camp councillor. But they don’t. Nikki and Neil just get up, cross the room, and crush Max into a hug.
“Ugh, you assholes!” Max says against Neil’s shoulder. Nikki’s hair is getting into his mouth. Her mom still hasn’t let her buzz it short yet.
“We’re happy for you, Max!”
“Yeah, you big dweeb,” Neil says, squeezing the two closer like the sap he secretly is. “We’re glad you’re happy here. We’re happy for you and David.”
Max tucks his face into Neil’s chest, lets Nikki wrap closer against his back, and, for once, doesn’t snark back.
Christmas is spent in their apartment. It’s just Max and David and the hum of the radio playing Christmas jingles. Max has been complaining for a month about the approaching holiday, griping at the tinsel David pins in every other doorway, and the stockings he helped Max sew and hang on the wall, and tree he brought home one snowy night, smile too big for his face.
He ropes Max into decorating it with popcorn strings, homemade decorations, and cheap, plastic baubles. Instead of stretching onto his tiptoes to put the paper angel on the top of the tree, he lifts Max under the arms and holds him up high. Max shoves the thing on with force. David grins and gets a little teary. Max glares at the lop-sided, crumpled angel like he isn’t studying the Christmas tree—the first time he’s seen one outside of TV—and learning what Christmas with a family is really like.
On Christmas, David makes ham sandwiches and pours cups of eggnog. Max makes mac and cheese bake. They pull out biscuit packets and tarts and tiny, chocolate cakes full of preservatives. That night, they decorate gingerbread houses. David makes a gingerbread Max and a bigger, gingerbread David. Max makes a gingerbread dick and a gingerbread dinosaur with sharp, gingerbread teeth. His gingerbread dinosaur makes an attempt on gingerbread David and Max’s lives, and David squawks and has to hold his gingerbread people above his head where Max and his dino creation can’t get them.
The day after Christmas, Nikki and Neil come over. The preteens spend hours in front of the TV, playing video games. Gwen comes over with spiked eggnog. David refuses to touch it. Max tries to get his hands on some, but David quickly shuts that down.
Max gets drawings from Nikki, and a textbook about dinosaurs from Neil. A very tipsy Gwen tries to gift him the eggnog carton, now more vodka than eggnog, but David, once again, puts a stop to it.
The kids stay up to see the sun rise on December 27th, eating left over gingerbread pieces for breakfast. Gwen is passed out on the floor, snoring. David is on his bed. They already TP’d his sleeping form around 3AM.
“What did David get you, Max?” Nikki asks. They’re half slumped over each other, drinking coffee like it’s the end of the world, trying to stay awake. Neil is already drooling on a gingerbread chunk, losing his battle with consciousness.
This apartment, Max doesn’t say. Flame patterned sheets. The ability to sleep through the night. Years and years away from that huge, awful townhouse my father lives in.
“A tent,” Max says. “He wants to take me camping when it stops snowing.”
Nikki cackles at that, remembering a summer full of Max complaining and glaring at nature. Max shoves the rest of his gingerbread dinosaur in his mouth and pretends he’s dreading going camping with David.