Out of Order (19 page)

“Aren't you worried about her?” I ask.

Mom nods and sighs. “I've talked to Lee,” she admits. “I think she and Zelia really need to get things sorted out between them. Zelia can visit, of course. She can come here to see you, but I'm not sure that letting her stay here would help her and Lee in the long run.”

“So Lee does want her to come home then? Zelia wasn't sure.”

“Of course she does. She's nervous about it—she doesn't always know how to handle Zelia—but she wants her to come home.”

“What about Michael?”

Mom hesitates. “Don't say anything to Zelia. Lee is going to tell her tomorrow. It's over. He's going to be moving out this weekend.”

I grin. “That'll make Zelia happy, anyway.”

“And it'll mean Lee can focus on her daughter. I think Zelia needs that.”

I raise my eyebrows. “Do you think she will? Lee, I mean? Do you think she'll put Zelia first?”

She sighs. “Oh, Sophie. I don't know. I think this suicide attempt really scared her. I think she'll do her best. And I guess...well, that's all any of us can do.”

I look down at my hands. “You know, I felt like I had to ask if she could stay here, but, well, it's okay that you said no.”

Mom pulls me close and gives me a quick hug. “I do love you, Sophie Keller. You know that, don't you?”

I nod and squirm away, pleased but embarrassed. “You too, Mom.”

“Sophie...”

“Yeah?”

She looks uncomfortable. “All this stuff with Zelia and Lee and Michael...I've been wanting to talk to you about some­thing.” She hesitates. “It's just that, well...if I was to start seeing someone, I hope you know that I'll always have time for you too. You wouldn't be any less important to me.” She rests her
hand on my arm briefly. “You do know that, don't you?”

I look at her, startled. “Patrick?”

Mom's cheeks are pink, and I realize she blushes as easily as I do. “Maybe,” she says. “I think so.”

I think about that for a moment. “Well,” I say. “Well.”

She laughs. “Can I take that to mean you can handle the idea of your mom going out on a date or two?”

“I guess so,” I say. She hasn't dated anyone for years, and it's pretty weird to imagine someone being in her life—in our lives—in that way. To be honest, I'd rather no one was, but I guess that's not really fair. And if she has to date someone, Patrick seems all right. I shrug. “Yeah,” I say. “It's okay.”

AT SCHOOL THE
next day, I keep thinking about what Zelia said about Max.
She's such a dyke.
I remember that time in my room when Max said she wanted to tell me something and then changed her mind.

My math text lies open on my desk:
A cubic meter of water weighs 1000 kilograms. What is the weight of a waterbed mattress that is 2 meters by 3 meters by 20 centimetres if the casing of the mattress weighs 1 kilogram
? I doodle on the edge of the page and try to sort out what I am feeling. Curiosity about whether it is true. Hurt that she didn't tell me. And there's something else too, something I have been trying not to think about: those words scrawled on my locker last year.
Sophie Keller is a dyke.

At lunchtime, Max is waiting for me. Despite everything, I can't stop a smile sneaking across my face when I see her.

“Hey,” I say. I feel suddenly shy.

Max grins at me. “Hey yourself.” She picks up her back­pack and slings it over one shoulder. “So guess what? Mom let me have the car today, so I can ride after school. Anyway, I thought we could take our lunches and drive somewhere. If you want.”

I nod. “Okay. Sure. It'd be good to get away from school. I don't really want to be here today.”

We decide to go to Beacon Hill Park, but it starts raining just before we arrive. Max keeps driving, right past the park and down to the cliffs at Dallas Road. We sit in the parked car and watch the waves crashing on the shore.

Max unwraps her sandwich. “Some picnic, ”she says glumly. “I hope it stops raining before tonight. I was supposed to go for a ride with Tavish.”

“Uh-huh,” I say, half listening. The wind is picking up, blowing ferociously. During the stronger gusts I can feel the car moving slightly. The rain is coming down in hard diago­nal sheets, sluicing down the windshield and bouncing off the hood like hail. Max looks at me apprehensively. “You
are
going to eat something, right?”

I nod, pull an apple out of my pocket and turn it in my hands. “Uh-huh.”

It's weird. Even after seeing those old pictures of myself, even after realizing I was never fat after all—even after deciding that I had to deal with all this stuff—eating is still hard.

I take a bite of apple and chew. It tastes like nothing.

I look at Max. My stomach is in knots. I wonder if anything will change between us if I ask her about what Zelia said.

She frowns. “Is something wrong? You're so quiet.”

“I, uh, Max. There's something...Zelia said something about you. I don't know if it's true but...”

“What did she say?”

“She said you were...that you are...gay.”

Max just looks at me. Motionless. Waiting.

I turn in my seat to face her. “I don't care if you are. I mean, I care but I don't...you know...”

Max is quiet for a moment, and I listen to the drumming of the rain on the car roof. Her eyebrows are drawn down, straight dark lines over her brown eyes. A muscle twitches in her jaw. “I'm sorry,” she says. “I should've told you the truth.”

“It's not like you lied to me,” I say. I'm trying not to feel hurt that she didn't trust me. “I just...I guess I just made an assumption.”

“I lied,” Max says. Her eyes are dry but her voice is low and full of tears. “There are lots of ways to lie. I just lied with silence instead of words.”

I'm quiet for a few minutes, thinking. Lying with silence. That's the same thing I've been doing ever since I left Georgetown. “It's okay,” I say. “Really. I get it.”

“You know, I really wanted to tell you,” Max says. “I didn't want you to find out from someone else.”

“Why didn't you?”

She sighs, looks at me quickly and looks away again. “I wasn't sure how you'd react. Not that I thought you'd be homophobic.
I know you're not like that. I just didn't want you to be uncomfortable around me.”

“I wouldn't have been.”

Max shrugs. “Lots of girls would. Jas and Maisie are. Not that they'll admit it. ”She scowls. “You'll notice they don't neces­sarily want to hang out with me anymore, though.”

I study her face. “They just say you're really busy. Doing your own thing. They've never said anything bad about you.”

“No?”

“No. Actually, I got the impression that they thought you didn't have time for them.”

Max doesn't say anything for a moment. Then she sighs. “I don't know. Maybe I'm paranoid. To be fair, I guess I haven't given them much of a chance to get used to the idea.”

The wind and rain are deafening. I shiver and pull my jacket tighter around me. Max starts the engine and cranks the heat.

“Max?”

“Yeah.”

“Can I ask you something? It's kind of personal.”

She looks at me warily. “I guess so.”

I think for a moment. “I just wondered...how do you know you're gay?” I'm worried about using the wrong words, worried about her thinking I'm judging or doubting her. “I don't mean I don't believe you. I just mean, how did you decide? I mean, did you always know or...”

Max runs her hands through her spiky hair and lets them drop back onto the steering wheel. “I think I've always known.”
She pauses, looking thoughtful. “Last year I tried dating a guy. It didn't last long. It just felt all wrong.” She turns to me. “Actually, don't mention this to anyone, but it was Tavish.”

“Really?” For some reason, this bothers me a little.

“Yeah. But like I said, it didn't go anywhere. We're good friends, but that's where we should have left it. But that's okay. He's a cool guy, and we're still buddies.”

“Huh.” I stare out the window, squint into the rain, watch the waves sending sheets of salty spray high into the air.

Max gives me a crooked grin. “I figured if I couldn't feel that way for a guy like Tavish, I might as well quit trying.”

I nod, trying to take this all in, to figure out where it all fits, where I Wt. I should have known that Max, always so sure of herself, would be sure about this too.

“Max?”

“Yeah.”

“You know how I told you about the stuff that happened back at my old school? The stuff those girls did?”

She nods.

I roll the words around in my mouth, trying to feel out how they will sound. “They wrote on my locker one time. They wrote...they wrote
Sophie Keller is a dyke.
”

Max's face looks all tight, like she's thinking a whole bunch of things and trying to decide which ones to say out loud. Finally she just looks at me and shrugs. “Assholes.”

“Yeah. Yeah, but...”

She shakes her head. “But nothing. They're assholes. Anyway, it's something only you can know.”

I make a face. “But I don't know.”

We sit in silence for a minute. Max sighs.

“Look,” she says. “This is the way I see it, okay? I think...some people just always know. Like me. And then a whole lot of people never even think about it. They just assume they're straight and they never even question it. And then, for some people, it's just not that clear.”

I stare at her. “That's it? I thought you were going to tell me something helpful.”

Max laughs softly. “I'm sorry. But you'll figure it all out, Soph. You're one of the smartest people I know.” She grins at me. “Well, most of the time, anyway.”

“Thanks a lot,” I say. I haven't figured anything out, but for some reason I feel a little better. Like maybe not knowing isn't really such a problem after all.

ON SATURDAY MORNING
, I sleep late and wake up to a blue sky and sunlight streaming in my window. There is frost on the

I throw off the covers, pull on jeans and a sweatshirt, and splash water on my face. In the mirror, my gray eyes look wide and startled and my hair is a wild frizzy mess. I take the stairs two at a time. I have to remind myself to eat. Force myself, really. Breakfast, lunch, dinner. Sometimes I manage it, and sometimes I don't. Even so, it feels like an absurd amount of food after months of starving myself. And I am still nervous about gaining weight.

I pour myself a bowl of cereal. Max says I'm way too skinny. I know she's right, sort of. I can see it every time I look in the mirror now. Still, it's helpful to have her as a more neutral observer. I don't always trust myself, but I do trust her to tell me the truth. So I'm trying to keep eating, at least a little. It feels scary, but okay. It feels like I'm in control.

MOM DRIVES ME
to the hospital. She's had her hair high­lighted with blond streaky bits, and she keeps checking it out in the rearview mirror.

“It looks good,” I say.

She looks at me. “Do you think so? Not too obvious? Not too much?”

“No, it's nice. It looks like summer. Like you've been at the beach.”

She adjusts the mirror back to its proper position and turns in to the hospital entrance. “Here we are.” She pulls up to the passenger drop-off area and stops the car. Then she turns off the engine. “Sophie...”

“Yeah?”

“Look, I know you're probably in a rush to see Zelia, but there never seems to be a good time to talk lately. And I just wanted to say something.”

I feel instantly anxious, like I've done something wrong.

Mom looks as nervous as I feel. “This move out to Victoria,” she begins, “it's been a lot harder than I thought it would be. Seeing your Gran all the time...well, I've been thinking a lot about what it was like when I was growing up.”

“You have?” It's so hard to imagine Mom being my age, although obviously I know she was.

She pulls on her lower lip with her teeth, just like I do when I'm nervous. “I love my mother. You know that. I wouldn't have moved us out here if I didn't.”

“Of course, I know that.” I look at her, wondering where she is going with this.

She sighs. “The thing is, Gran used to nag at me constantly. She criticized every little thing I did. Everything. And she always had a million questions about where I was going and who I was seeing.”

“I can imagine,” I say, feeling a surge of sympathy at the thought of having Gran for a mother.

“I feel bad saying that about her, but I want you to understand. I've always promised myself I wouldn't be like her, as a mother. I don't want to...well, be on your case, as you'd say.”

I shake my head. “You're not.”

She looks at me for a minute without saying anything. “Well, good. I'm glad you don't think so. But I have been worried about you since we moved out here, and I don't know...I wanted to respect your privacy, but maybe I should have asked more questions about what was going on.”

“Mom...I like it here. Better than Georgetown.” I meet her eyes. “Honest.”

“Good. Good. But I just wanted to say, if you ever want to talk to me about anything...”

“No, I don't. I mean, I don't need to. I'm fine.”

She nods. “I'm glad. But you know, if you weren't fine...and you didn't want to talk to me...there are other people you could talk to.”

I turn away and look out the window at the hospital. “You mean, like counselors?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I don't need that,” I say quickly.

She nods again. “That's fine. I just wanted to make sure you knew it was an option.”