Dirty Laundry Shrunken First Semester chapter 4 by maximally

Max never got to answer.

Three knocks came from the door. Small ones, evenly spaced, knuckle-tips only, the way you knock on a hospital room.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

“Tía?” said the door. “Hiii. Sorry. Are you in there?”

Max knew that voice. He’d known it for four years. He just didn’t know it like this. Izzy’s real voice came out from under her fringe sideways and dragged its feet, flat and bored and scratchy from mango vape cartridges. This one had been sanded. Every edge filed down, every word buffed and set out on a doily. It sounded like Izzy reading a hostage statement that a youth pastor had written for her.

“I’m looking for my charger,” the door added. “And I heard, like, a bonk? And a giant pink bag just went past my door, so. Is everything okay?”

Fanny looked at the door. Then down at Max in her palm. Then at the door again.

“Fuck,” she breathed. “Fuck, fuck, fuckity fuck. One sec, mija! I’m—I’m decent! I’m not decent! One sec!”

“Okaaay,” sang the door.

Max tried to say Tía, not her, anybody but her, and got as far as “Tí—” before Fanny’s hand moved.

There was no plan in it. It was just a huge ringed hand swinging him up through the air toward the only hiding place Fanny Vasquez had ever really trusted. The black crop top loomed in front of him, stretched across her chest like a tarp thrown over two parked cars, and then her fingers were stuffing him down into the gap.

“Boobs are a vault,” she whispered. “Stay.”

It was not a vault. It was a sauna with a bead curtain.

He went in headfirst and kept going. Her breasts were enormous and loose and hot, glazed with five hours of freeway, and they slumped in on him from both sides like a bouncy castle somebody had left out in the sun. Her necklaces came down across his back in a clattering rope bridge of beads. Cocoa butter. Salt. The sweet, swampy, stale-menthol smell of a woman who had driven up the 5 with the window down. Under his cheek, her heart was going like a drum machine set to the wrong song.

“Okay,” Fanny muttered. “Okay. Evidence.”

She heaved herself off the bed. The whole world lifted, sloshed, and swung with her, and Max clung to a bead the size of a bowling ball as she lurched across the room on bare feet. Her pumps had come off somewhere during the dive onto the bed. One of them lay on its side by the nightstand like a capsized boat.

The gift bag was still sprawled on the carpet, tissue paper everywhere, the Ventus hoodie hanging out of it like a tongue. Fanny took one look at it and did the only thing she could think of, which was bend over to shove the whole mess under the bed.

She bent a long way.

The walls opened. Two breasts that had cradled him like a pair of hands let go at the exact same time, swinging forward and apart, and the floor of the vault turned out to be nothing at all. The crop top had quit a long time ago, somewhere around Bakersfield, and it had nothing left to catch him with. He slid down a slick brown slope of skin, bounced once off the top of her gut, shot out under the bottom hem like a gumball out of a machine, and hit the carpet on his back.

The carpet was beige and tall and smelled like dust and old Doritos. He lay in it, staring up the length of her body, which from down here was mostly underboob.

“Baby?” Fanny whispered at her own cleavage. She peeled the neck of the crop top out with one finger and looked down into it. “Baby? Maxie?”

“Down here,” Max wheezed.

The doorknob turned.

Fanny had maybe one second, and Max watched her spend the whole thing panicking.

She didn’t bend again. There wasn’t time. Instead she did the thing every woman in this family did when company showed up and there was a dropped sock in the middle of the floor. She swept.

The side of her bare foot came at him across the carpet like a snowplow. It was wide and soft and warm, with a callused rim and a chipped red toenail on the end like a stop sign, and it gathered him up more than it hit him. Very gently. With a lot of foot behind it. One quick, frantic scoot, and Max went skidding across the carpet on his back, arms windmilling, straight into the heap by the closet.

Izzy’s pile.

Izzy’s closet had been full since the week she moved in, four years ago, so the spare floor of Max’s room had been her overflow ever since. Every night she walked in, dropped the day’s outfit at the foot of his closet door, and walked out. She had never once picked anything back up. Victoria called it “sharing.” Max called it the landfill: cut-offs, band tees, slouchy socks, a bra with cups like satellite dishes, a fishnet tangled through all of it like kelp.

He went into it face-first, burrowed through a sock and a tank top, and came to a stop in something black, thin, and stretchy that wrapped around him like a hammock.

He knew what it was before he wanted to.

A thong. A black thong, lace in the front and cotton where it counted, and he had landed square in the crotch of it. The string ran up across his back. The little cotton panel was pressed right against his face, still holding the shape of where it had been. And it had been somewhere. All day yesterday, in July, in cut-offs, behind the Valero and wherever else Izzy went, and every hour of it had stayed. It was sour and musky and thick, salty-sweet like a gym bag, with a faint ghost of mango vape on top like a garnish.

It smelled like his stepsister’s crotch. Because it was. Or had been, until about eleven o’clock last night.

Max lay there in it and thought, very calmly, that he would like to die now. His body, which had no shame and worse taste, disagreed, and he hated it for that.

The door opened. Max twisted his head toward one leg hole of the thong and watched Izzy come in through it.

She’d dressed down to look like she hadn’t dressed at all. An old Deftones shirt with the collar cut out of it hung off one shoulder. Plaid boxers. One gray sock and one bare foot, like she’d gotten out of bed in a hurry. Phone in one hand. Her fringe was pushed back with a claw clip, so for once he could see her whole face, and the whole face was soft. Wide eyes. Lips a little parted. Not one muscle in it was working. It was the face of a girl who had never once been anywhere she wasn’t supposed to be.

Then her eyes went to the pile.

Half a second. Less. The sock on top of the heap was still settling, the way a sock does when something underneath it has just stopped moving. Izzy’s eyes went straight to it and stayed there one beat too long. Not wide. Not surprised. Steady, like a cook checking a pot she already knew was boiling.

Then her eyes lifted to Fanny, and the soft face switched back on.

“Hey, Tía! I thought you were coming for dinner.”

Fanny had planted herself in front of the pile with her back to it and her feet wide, like a bouncer. Her arms were folded under her breasts, which hid the fact that her hands were shaking.

“Surprise,” said Fanny. “I’m early. I’m a whole new woman. I’ve got a planner.”

Izzy laughed and crossed the room with her arms out for a hug. Fanny didn’t unfold hers.

“I’m sweaty,” Fanny said.

“I don’t care.”

“I care.”

Izzy’s arms came down. She didn’t look hurt. She just put them away, neat and quick, like she was folding a map.

Watching them from the dark of the thong, Max realized there was exactly one person in this family who had heard the whole thing. Not the highlights. All of it. The pool party lie. The birthday underwear. Four years of lil bro and courier runs and Thanksgiving punchlines. He’d told Fanny every bit of it on her couch in LA while she painted her nails and said mm-hm and that little shit in all the right places.

Once, blowing on a wet coat of purple, she had said, “That girl’s got your stepmom’s face, your abuela’s ass and nobody’s conscience.” Then she’d made him swear never to repeat it.

He’d never repeated it. But from the set of her shoulders, he could tell she was thinking it now.

“So. Charger,” Fanny said. “Haven’t seen it. Check your room.”

“I did.”

“Check your mom’s room.”

“She’s using hers.”

“Check the garbage. That’s where I’d put your stuff.”

“Rude.” Izzy pouted like a little kid and turned a slow circle in the middle of the room, phone held up like a flashlight.

She never looked at the pile again. Max noticed that. She checked the bed, the nightstand, under the desk chair, everywhere a charger could be, and nowhere a sock could move.

“Oh, wait. There it is.”

She went to the desk. Fanny turned her head to follow her but didn’t move her feet, and Max’s stomach turned over inside the thong.

His laptop was up there next to the monitor. From the floor, all he could see of it was one corner jutting over the edge of the desk, scratched gray with the Ventus sticker peeling, and the long white cable that ran from it down to the outlet behind the tower. Where the cable plugged into the corner, a tiny green light glowed.

The last time Max had seen that laptop, it had been dead at the bottom of his backpack. It had been dead since graduation. Last night he’d been playing Elden Ring on the PS5. He was almost sure he’d been playing Elden Ring.

Izzy unplugged the cable and wound it around her fingers, slow, in a neat little coil. Then she didn’t leave. She stood there by the desk with one hand resting flat on the laptop’s lid, like you’d rest a hand on a dog to keep it calm.

“Tía,” she said. “Can I tell you something kinda weird?”

“You can tell me something normal. I’d love that.”

“I’m serious.” The sanded voice dropped to just above a whisper. “Max’s laptop... He’s been on this thing all night. Like, all night. My wall’s basically paper. Click, click, click. Until, like, five.”

“He’s eighteen. Eighteen-year-olds are on stuff all night. You know what I was on all night at eighteen?”

“Ew. Don’t.”

“Two guys named Carlos. At once.”

“Tía.” Izzy almost laughed, and caught it, and put it away. “Not like that. Like, I came in last night to get my hoodie, and he had it open, and he slammed it shut, like, so fast. And his face was all red. And I saw some stuff before he shut it.” She hugged her elbows. “I’m not gonna say what. It’s his business.”

Max lay frozen in the crotch of her thong and tried very hard to remember last night. There was Elden Ring, and a bottle of something, and then a gap with nothing in it, and then this morning. He didn’t know whether Izzy had come in. He did know he’d never once slammed a laptop shut on Izzy, because there was no point. She found everything.

“I’m just worried about him,” Izzy said. “Like, if Mom finds it before somebody talks to him? It’s gonna be a whole thing. You know how she is. A whole group chat. And then everybody’s gonna be like, okay, who’s been talking to him about this stuff? Who’s the bad influence?”

She didn’t look at Fanny when she said it. She didn’t have to.

From down on the carpet, Max watched his aunt’s bare toes curl into the beige, slowly, all ten of them, like a cat flexing its claws.

“Huh,” said Fanny.

“I just think he’d listen to you. You’re the cool one.”

“Mm-hm.”

“He tells you stuff.”

“He does,” said Fanny. “That’s how I know a lot about you, mija.”

For one second, the soft face slipped. Not much. Just a tiny tightening at the corner of Izzy’s mouth, like a stitch pulled snug. Then the smile was back, and Max wasn’t completely sure he’d seen anything.

Fanny planted her hands on her hips and settled her weight back. Max had known Tía Fanny since he was fourteen, and he’d seen that move exactly twice, both times right before something terrible happened in an enclosed space.

Oh, no.

Her back was still to the pile.

BRRRRAAAAAAPPPPPPPPP

It came out of her like a tuba falling down a stairwell. Her flare jeans rippled. And Max, lying in a heap of dirty laundry directly below and behind the source, got all of it. It sank into the pile, through the cotton and the lace, and settled into the crotch of the thong on top of the smell that was already there, and the two of them got acquainted. Sour coffee. Hot sauce. Something deep and syrupy and very Fanny underneath. The sock above him didn’t move. He was pretty sure it had died.

Fanny didn’t even pretend it was an accident. She just watched Izzy, chin up, like a woman who had laid down a royal flush.

Izzy didn’t blink.

“Tía,” she said. “I live with Mom.”

Fanny considered that for a second.

“Yeah,” she said. “Worth a shot.”

“Wait... oh my God, sorry,” Izzy said suddenly, looking at the pile like she’d only just noticed it. “My stuff. It’s literally everywhere. Mom’s gonna kill me.”

She was already moving. She crossed the carpet in three quick steps, the coiled charger still looped around her fingers, and went down on her knees in front of the heap with both arms out wide, like a girl about to scoop up an armful of puppies.

Max saw her hands coming. Chipped black polish. Silver rings. Her fingers sank into the top of the pile, and the whole heap folded in toward her, and the darkness tipped as she started to lift—

“I GOT IT.”

Fanny dropped to her knees, and the whole house felt it. The floor jumped. The desk rattled. The Smash print slid crooked on its nail. And Fanny’s hand plunged into the pile faster than Max had ever seen Fanny move for anything that wasn’t a free sample at Costco, past the sock, past the tank top, straight for the black string, and closed.

For half a second, there were two hands on the thong.

Max could feel them both. Fanny’s whole fist around him, hot and damp and ringed, squeezing just hard enough to hold. And at the other end of the waistband, a smaller tug: Izzy’s fingertip, hooked through the string. The elastic stretched taut across his back like a bowstring.

Nobody spoke.

Then Izzy let go.

The waistband snapped back against his shoulders. Through the gaps between Fanny’s fingers Max could see one slice of the room: Izzy, still on her knees, looking at the fist. Not at Fanny. At the fist.

“That’s mine,” Izzy said.

“I know.”

“So can I have it?”

“No,” said Fanny. “I’m washing it.”

Izzy blinked. “You’re washing my thong.”

“Aunt Fanny does laundry now. I’m in a program. There’s a sponsor.” Fanny’s fist didn’t move. “You want me to do the rest? I’ll fold it. I’ll iron your little socks. Whole new woman, I told you.”

Izzy looked at the fist for a long time.

Then she smiled. It was a nice smile. It was the nicest one Max had ever seen on her, and it scared him worse than anything she’d said all morning.

“Kay,” she said. “Love you, Tía.”

She gathered the rest of the pile against her chest in one armful, tossed the charger coil on top, and got to her feet with the satellite-dish bra trailing. At the door she looked back over the top of the laundry, toward the desk.

“Oh. And it’s not locked,” she said. “The laptop. He never locks it. Just, like. FYI.”

Then she was gone.

The door clicked shut behind her. Max listened to her footsteps cross the hall, and her bedroom door open, and her bedroom door close.

He waited for the playlist. Minor keys, sad boys, somebody whispering about a parking lot. It always came on the second she got back to her room.

It didn’t come on.

*

Fanny stayed on her knees on the carpet for a while, breathing hard. Then she opened her fist.

Max lay in the middle of her palm, still tangled in the crotch of the thong, with the string over his shoulder like a bandolier.

“Oh, baby,” Fanny whispered.

She picked him out of it with two fingers, as carefully as she’d ever picked anything, and set him down on the fat pad of her thumb. Then she dropped the thong on the floor and wiped her hand on her jeans, twice, hard.

“I kicked you,” she said.

“You swept me.”

“I swept you. Into your sister’s chonis.” Her face crumpled. “Max, I swept you like a Cheeto.”

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay. I’m a terrible aunt.” She sniffed. Then she sniffed again, differently, and her nose came down to within an inch of him, nostrils flaring like garage doors. Her face did something complicated. “Baby. You smell like your sister’s ass.”

“Crotch,” said Max.

“That is not better.”

“And you farted on me. That’s twice today.”

“That last one was for her.” Fanny wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand and smeared what was left of her mascara toward her ears. “Okay. A little bit for me.”

She got up, one knee at a time, with a long groan and a pop from somewhere in her hip, and held him up to eye level.

“Tía,” Max said. “I didn’t use that laptop. It’s been dead in my backpack since graduation. I swear. I was on the PS5.”

Fanny studied him a moment. Then she walked over to the desk and laid the back of her free hand on the lid of the laptop, the way she’d check a kid’s forehead for a fever.

“It’s warm,” she said.

Max’s mouth went dry.

“She did this,” he said. “Tía, she did this to me. She knew I was in the pile. She looked at it.”

“Yeah. She looked at it.” Fanny didn’t take her hand off the laptop. “Baby, I believe you. I always believe you. But I’ve believed a lot of people in my life, and I’ve got six divorces and a dominatrix in Van Nuys to show for it, so you’ve gotta give me a sec to believe you smart.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I don’t know yet.” She drummed one chunky ring on the lid. Tink. Tink. “Either there’s something on here, or there isn’t. And I don’t know which one’s worse.”

Downstairs, sharp and cheerful and much too awake, Victoria hollered.

“Fanny? Is that your car? Fernanda! Did you park on my lawn?”

Fanny closed her eyes. “Partially! It’s mostly curb!”

“Coffee’s on! Five minutes or I’m coming up!”

“Five minutes!” Fanny’s eyes snapped open and found Max’s. Past the blinds sat the back end of her car, a dented gold sedan with one tire sunk in Victoria’s grass. Her keys were on the bed, next to the pillow with the condoms under it. Full tank. Two hundred bucks. Five minutes.

Fanny’s hand lay on the warm laptop. Max sat on her thumb, smelling like his stepsister, and watched her look at the lid, and then at the keys, and then at the lid again.

“Okay, baby nephew,” she whispered. “Tía’s thinking. Don’t rush me. I’m bad at it.”