0: Max the Silent

Max walked into trigonometry the next day and saw that the vacant seat next to him had been filled by someone in a baby blue cardigan. He wondered if the girl was a resident of the for-sale house. She was a brief topic after school. Sam was the first to bring it up. "I heard she's from California," he said.

"I have trig with her," Max said.

"Is she pretty?" Sam asked.

"I guess."

"I hope we have chem with her," Luther said to Sam. "Then I'd definitely know if we had chemistry." He guffawed at his own joke as he took a swig of milk.

Max shook his head and said, "That was pitiful."

"So we talked today," Luther said.

Annie. Max glanced over at him. "Yeah?"

"Ms. Manis asked for two volunteers and as soon as Annie's hand went up, I was basically out of my seat. So I offered to carry the heavy box, but Annie was like, 'I can handle it,' and I was like, 'Are you sure?' And she sort of had this determined glare-smile on her face—"

"Wait, what's a 'glare-smile'?" Sam asked.

Luther made a face, which would've looked cute on Annie, but it only made him look ridiculous. Sam hummed contentedly. "Go on."

"Right. So we're on our way there, and I'm cracking a couple of jokes—"

"You what?" Max said. The way Luther carried himself was inherently funny. Luther just looked like a fool when he tried.

"I made jokes?"

"You're not funny."

"Annie thinks I am."

Sam shushed Max and urged Luther to finish his story. To Max, at least, nothing significant happened. There was really no substantial advance in Luther's relationship with Annie. That is, until Luther told them that he thought that it was primetime. "I'm going to tell her how I feel. I'm going to do it."

Max grunted. "As if she doesn't already know."

Luther took a deep breath and grinned. "I have it all planned out. I'm going to do it after school next week. I'll just meet her at her locker and pull out her favorite flowers—daisies—and bend down on one knee and tell her that I want her to be mine."

At that point, Luther had already paused the game to swoon over Annie. Max took the opportunity to check the time and found that they only had enough time for Luther to continue being lovesick, so he put his remote control on the side table. "Sounds elaborate," Max said.

"Very romantic," Sam said.

"This time next week, you'll be looking at the new Mr. Annie Flanders," Luther said.

"So desperate," Sam mumbled.

Luther gave everyone a ride home. Once at Sam's, Max looked across the street. The U-Haul across the street had disappeared, and there was grass where the for-sale sign once stood.

☁

Ms. Jacobs was doing trig examples up on the board, but Max couldn't bring himself to copy them down into his notes. She announced the homework assignment, and Max circled the problems in his book despite the fact that he wasn't supposed to. He told himself he'd erase it all at the end of the year, but he knew he wouldn't. He took out his notebook, wrote the number three, and set his pencil down. He started blankly at the textbook, wishing he had paid attention to at least one problem. Rather than leafing through the examples in the book or asking Ms. Jacobs for help, he twirled his pencil around, which flew out of his hand, clattered onto the floor, and rolled farther left than he could reach. The unnamed girl picked it up and handed it to him. "I think you dropped something," she said.

"Thanks."
"I'm Jess."

She held out her hand for him to shake it, but he just nodded. "Max."

She glanced down at her hand and slowly put it down when it became evident that he wasn't going to be courteous. "Erase number eight. Ms. Jacobs just said to skip it."

"Thanks."

"Mhm." She smiled and went back to diligently working.

Max was slightly annoyed that she had looked at his book but grateful that he didn't have to do what seemed like a challenging problem. In any case, he finished six problems and felt thoroughly accomplished with himself.

Just after class ended—Max was stuffing papers in his backpack—Juliana came up to Jess and asked if she wanted to join her for lunch. Max tensed up. It's not like he cared who Jess hung out with—they weren't even friends—but he just didn't want to see Juliana take another nice girl and minionize her.

He didn't say anything, not in the classroom and not in the cafeteria, where his cold eyes lingered on Juliana's table of laughing girls.

☁

Max was always frustrated with the zoom quality on his phone, but until he had the funds for a better camera, it was all he had to capture the seagulls. He was in the parking lot of the dentist's office, waiting for Lucy, trying to get as close as he could without scaring the birds away. His family had gotten used to him practically jumping out of cars for these birds, but he tried to keep his seagull obsession to a minimum around Sam and Luther. He wasn't scared of judgement from them; he just didn't want to answer why seagulls. He didn't even know.

The first thing Lucy did when she came out was brag about how she didn't have cavities, unlike Max who almost always had one each time he went. Then she asked if he would help her build a treehouse. "Do I look like someone who knows how to build a treehouse?"

"You could learn."

"We don't even have a good tree for that."

Lucy pouted. "Mom, can I get a purple streak in my hair?"

"What brought this up?"

"Lilybeth has a red one."

Mrs. Bishop looked calm. "We can talk about it, but I don't want you to do something just because Lilybeth did, okay?"

Max was about to suggest that clip-ons existed, but he didn't think his mom would appreciate that. "But Lilybeth and I want to be twins."

"You can be fraternal twins," Max said.

"What's that?" she asked.

"Twins that don't look alike," Mrs. Bishop answered.

"We won't look exactly the same. Lilybeth's is red. Mine is purple."

Max was out of ideas, leaving his mom to say no to Lucy, which was a difficult thing to do if you weren't Max.

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