the room is worse. Though it does have a balcony that looks out over a sorry, green pool and half the parking lot.
We drop our bags on the bed, and Max says he’s showering. I stare at the green bedspread worn down to a sheen, and vow that my first time won’t be here, not in this gross, pathetic place.
I’m too tired anyway. I’m sure Max is, too. He won’t mind. He’s waited this long. I’ll find us somewhere nicer to stay tonight. A Marriott or a Hampton Inn. Heck, I’d rather be outside, on a blanket on the edge of some scenic overlook, than here.
I listen to the shower run, unlock the terrace door, and step outside.
What is it that makes us suddenly remember, Aubrey? What makes us take notice of what is actually around us, rather than what we want to see?
Is it a janitor at a dumpster, emptying an industrial-sized gray pail, then checking his cell phone, and muttering some obscenity at the ground?
Is it a maid pushing a metal cart from one sad motel room to the next, a stack of thin white towels folded on top?
Or is it the red Toyota that pulls into the parking lot, a pretty woman, unsteady, with long black hair getting out?
Or maybe it’s not any of those, but something else, something smaller. Something simple and stupid, and momentarily sweet and soothing, but utterly jarring to the brain. The sound of your boyfriend’s voice drifting out from the shower, some lame old lyrics you’ve never heard before, spilling out and obliterating you through a half-open bathroom door.
“You can’t sit under an orange tree
In a grove full of thorns…”
Max’s voice is soothing at first, slipping out with the steam through the bathroom door. It makes me laugh even, his nutjob songs with the nutjob lyrics no one my age has ever heard before.
“You can’t pick the sweet tangerines,
When the trees to begin with ain’t yours…”
The kind of song my mother was singing. Something dumb about loganberry pie. My mother and Max, peas in a pod. Max and his apples and his tangerines.
Tangerine.
I blink at the janitor as he disappears back through the main entrance, and close my eyes altogether as the maid does the same into a room below me.
But open or closed, I can’t make it stop. Max’s voice, mixing with the details from last night. When I first came in from Aubrey’s house.
Not how Max was already there.
Not the television or wine bottles.
Not the two glasses, or Max’s leather jacket on the chair.
No. It’s the other details. Ones I missed at first.
Because I didn’t want to see.
Max, staggering, panicked. Zipping his jeans.
His T-shirt, inside out.
His feet, bare.
Shoes, I don’t know where.
And something else.
Something way worse. Through the sliver of my mother’s open door:
Her orange kimono, lying twisted on the floor.
That’s it, Aubrey. I’m not spelling it out any clearer. It’s already more than you’ll ever need to know.
More than I, or anyone, ever need to know.
Yet there it is. So now you do.
Like I said when I started this thing, it’s yours to keep, but, please, you can’t ever tell.
It would break everything. Dad coming home and Mom getting better are all the hope I have left now.
Promise me, please, it never leaves these pages.
Promise me, Aubrey. Promise me.
So, what’s left of the story, now, to tell?
Just Max.
Of course you want to know about that.
LATE JUNE
TENTH GRADE
“JL?”
The air is thick. Unbreathable. Everything moves in slow motion.
Max, walking toward me. From the sad hotel room out to the balcony.
I hear him on his way, each sound, each movement, magnified.
The shower turning off.
The towel rough against his skin.
Jeans zipping.
His backpack opening, him rifling through.
He’s putting on deodorant.
He’s searching for things.
I can’t bring myself to look at him.
“Jailbait?”
The balcony door is open. We’re only two floors up. If I wanted to, I could squeeze between the bars and drop down.
If I fell and shattered, would it hurt worse than the pain I am in?
“Hey, what are you doing out—?” He stops. The tears on my face, the slump of my shoulders, tell him everything.
“I’m so sorry, Jailbait.”
I hold up my hand against his words. There isn’t really anything he can say.
“I need to go, Max,” I say, my voice clear and forceful. “I need to get to the airport and go without you. There’s a flight that leaves at six tonight, from an airport in Cleveland.”
I hold my cell phone screen out to him. I’ve already checked the times.
“Okay,” he says. He