The Night Before Shrunken First Semester chapter 27 by maximally

Victoria had come to get him at eleven-fifty that Friday night, from the garage in Santa Clara, in her satin robe and a pair of slides, with her hair still in its silk wrap. She hadn't said a word to Miguel. She hadn't needed to. Miguel had seen the Mercedes pull up through the gap under the garage door and said, "Oh, deadass, no," and gone into the tía's house through the side door in his socks and not come back out.

She'd scooped Max off the pillow with no case. She'd looked at him: the raw stripe down his back where the chain had dragged, the sweat dried white in his hair, the smell. She'd looked at Izzy on the mattress. Izzy had looked at her phone.

Then she'd put him in her robe, against her bare chest, and driven home with one hand on the wheel and the other over him the whole way, and hadn't said a word to Izzy, who rode in the back seat with her knees up and her face turned to the window.

That had been two weeks ago.

Since then the days had gone by in the house the way days had gone by in the beginning, before the list, before anything: Victoria's bra and Victoria's lap and Victoria's palm at night. No more numbers. The legal pad had disappeared off the nightstand the next morning, and nobody asked where it went. Lupe called every evening. Izzy came home late and slept late and said almost nothing to anybody, and twice he heard her crying through the wall, and once she came into the kitchen with red eyes and stole him out of Victoria's blouse without asking and held him in both hands at the island for ten whole minutes, saying nothing, while Victoria watched from the stove and let her.

Bea had called once more. The spring spot was still open. Technically, she'd said. Nobody needs to decide anything yet, she'd said. Victoria had repeated both to him, word for word, the way you'd read a weather report for a city you weren't going to.

Tomorrow was the twenty-third.

*

It was ten past one in the morning, Friday, August twenty-second, and he was lying awake in the jewelry tray on Victoria's nightstand with the silk scarf pulled up to his chin.

The room was dark. The curtains were drawn. The digital clock on the far side of the bed glowed red and threw a faint wash across the cream duvet and the shape of her under it. She was a foot away, on her side, facing him, one arm under the pillow and her hair spread across it. Her breathing was deep and even. Every now and then her lips moved a little in her sleep.

Down the hall, Izzy's door was shut. No music.

He'd been lying there for two hours, looking at the ceiling. In thirty-two hours Ventus would open for check-in. There'd be a line of cars in a parking lot six hours away, parents carrying mini-fridges, TWIN XL mattress toppers rolled up in blue plastic. Brianna from Residential Life would be at a folding table with a clipboard. Zeke, whoever Zeke was, would be unpacking across the room from some kid off the waitlist, in the bed that had been Max's.

Victoria's phone was on the nightstand between them, face up, plugged in.

It lit up.

No sound. She kept it on Do Not Disturb at night, except for favorites. Except it was buzzing, the whole nightstand trembling with it under his back, the jewelry tray rattling against the lamp, and the screen said ARTIE 🎨 in white letters over a photo of Artemis at about fourteen, with purple braces and a terrible bowl cut, holding up a painting of a horse.

He looked at Victoria. She didn't move.

The phone kept buzzing. It stopped. Then it started again.

He climbed out of the jewelry tray.

The phone was bigger than a door. He crossed the nightstand to it on his knees, between a hand cream tube and her reading glasses, and stood over the screen with the green button under his feet. He looked at Victoria one more time. Her eyes were closed.

He stepped on answer with his whole weight, and then on the speaker icon, twice, until the light turned green.

"Tía?" Artemis's voice filled the dark room, loud and close and a little tinny. "Tía, it's—sorry. Sorry. I know it's late. I just—"

"It's me," Max said.

Silence.

Then, very flat: "What the fuck, Max. You're on her phone."

"She's asleep. She's right here."

"Okay. Okay. Don't hang up. Please don't hang up." He heard something rustle on her end, a door, the distant sound of Oakland traffic. "I've been calling you for two weeks. Your phone goes to voicemail. I called Tía six times and she texts he's fine, mija and hangs up on me. I was going to drive down again. I had the keys in my hand."

"I'm fine."

"You're not fine. You're three inches tall and living in a jewelry tray, Max. I can hear the little—is that a scarf?"

"Artie."

"Sorry. Sorry. Okay." She took a breath. He heard her sit down. "Listen. I talked to the girl. The chem PhD. Berkeley. Her name's—it doesn't matter. She looked at what I could tell her, which isn't a lot, because I don't know who did it and I don't know how to undo it and I am not a chemist. But she said she could look. She said if it's the April stuff she knows about, or something close, there might be a way. She said it could take months. She said she needs to run assays. She said—" Artemis stopped. "She said he'd have to be here. In Oakland. With me. In the co-op. I have a drawer. I cleaned it. I put a sock in it that I washed. You'd hate it. It's still very gay in there. But it's a drawer, Max, and it's yours if you want it, and I will take you tomorrow morning. Right now. I'll drive down right now and get you and I will bring you home."

He stood on the phone and looked at Victoria's face, a foot away, asleep, or seeming to be, her mouth a little open, her breath on the nightstand.

"Artie," he said.

"You don't have to decide about the chem stuff tonight. Just come. Come get out of that house. Come eat oat milk and listen to people argue about compost. Come be somewhere where nobody is your stepmother."

"No," Max said.

The word came out of him before he'd finished thinking it. It came out clean.

"Max—"

"No. I'm not coming." He sat down on the screen. His legs were shaking. "I know what you're offering. I know. And thank you. And I'm not going."

Silence on the other end. Then, quieter: "Is she making you say that."

"No."

"Is she sitting there. Is she listening."

"She's asleep."

"Then why."

He looked at the jewelry tray. At the pink label-maker sticker on its side. At the shape under the cream duvet. At the closed door down the hall.

"Because I want to stay," he said. "Here. With her. With them. I don't want to go back. I don't want to be big. I don't want Ventus. I don't want a drawer in Oakland. I—"

He stopped.

The next part came out of him without anything behind it, the way it had come out on the pillow in Miguel's garage: a sound his mouth made before his head caught up.

"I want Mama."

He heard it. He heard himself say it into the dark, into Artemis's silence, and his face went hot all over, and he shut his mouth so hard his teeth clicked. He hadn't meant to say that. He'd meant to say he was fine. He'd meant to say thank you and hang up.

On the other end of the phone, Artemis didn't breathe for a long time.

Then she breathed out. A long, flat breath, the kind she made when a painting went wrong.

"Okay," she said. "Okay. I'm going to hang up before I say something I'll have to apologize for. Call me when you can. Answer your phone sometimes. Please."

"I will."

"Bye, Max."

The call went dead. The screen went black.

He sat on the dark glass for a second. Then he heard Victoria's voice, from the bed, very quiet, and not asleep at all.

"Come here, mijo."

She'd been awake the whole time.

He knew it as soon as she spoke. Her eyes were open, looking at him across the foot of nightstand between them, and there was no sleep in them. There was something else. Something that had been waiting.

He climbed down off the phone and across the nightstand and stood at the edge of the tray, and she reached out and picked him up in her whole hand and brought him under the covers, against her chest, into the dark and the heat of her body under the duvet. Her heartbeat was going hard. Her skin smelled of cocoa butter and sleep.

"Mama heard," she said into his hair. "Mama heard every word."

"I know."

"Is it true."

He put his face into her. He could feel the question in her whole body, waiting.

"I want to stay," he said. His voice cracked on it. "I want to stay with you. I don't—I don't want to go. I don't want to get big again. I want—"

He choked. The word was right there again, the same one, sitting in his throat, and he tried to swallow it, and it came out anyway, broken, into her skin.

"Mama."

She made a sound that wasn't a word. Her hand closed around him, all the way, and held him against her heart, and he felt her start to cry, quiet and shaking, into the pillow over his head, and he held onto her as hard as he could with both arms.

"Okay," she whispered. "Okay, mi amor. Mama's got you. Mama's got you forever. Mama's not letting you go."

He lay there against her and let the crying go through her, and through him, and when it stopped they just breathed.

The bedroom door was open.

He hadn't heard it open. He didn't know how long it had been open. But it was open now, a crack, and through it, in the light from the hall, he could see Izzy.

She was in Miguel's tank top again. Bare feet. Her hair was a mess. She was standing in the doorway with one hand on the frame, looking at the bed, looking at her mother's face buried in the pillow, looking at the small dark place under the duvet where Max was. Her eyes were wet. She wasn't crying. She was just standing there, looking, and for once she didn't have anything to say.

She stayed like that for a long time.

Then she nodded, once, to nobody in particular, and pulled the door shut behind her, careful of the latch, and went back down the hall.