The People We Choose Read online

  I cough, nearly spitting out the shell in my mouth.

  “Dad, what the hell?” Max says. “Calliope and I are friends. Not dating. And even if we were together, which we’re definitely not”—he shoots me a panicked, apologetic look—“I certainly wouldn’t need your approval. You don’t deserve to have an opinion, not about my relationships. You should focus more on your own.”

  Elliot turns an inhuman shade of red and stares at his plate like he’s fantasizing about smashing it into a thousand tiny pieces. Joanie stands up, too abruptly, rattling the table and knocking over her glass of wine onto Marlow’s lap. Marlow yells about ruining her new white romper, directing an ugly string of foul words at everyone and no one. Max is still and silent next to me and I can’t bring myself to look over at him.

  I stare out the window behind Joanie’s empty seat and wish I was on the other side of the woods. I’m pretty certain that Max is wishing the same thing.

  Soon it’s only the two of us left in the kitchen. Everyone else has scattered. The food is still on the table, looking hard and dry by now. I don’t know what else to do, so I stand up and start clearing away the plates.

  “You don’t have to do that.” Max sighs, dropping his head in his hands. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “Well, for one, sorry that my dad thought we were dating. I swear, I never said that to anyone. He just doesn’t pay attention.”

  I shake my head. “You don’t have to apologize. That’s on your dad.”

  “I feel like I do. I mean, I knew it wouldn’t be great tonight. It never is with this family. But this was a low, even for us.”

  I turn on the tap and water spits at my wrist for a few seconds before there’s a long rattle and then, finally, a steady stream of cloudy-looking water. I’m glad I didn’t drink any during dinner.

  “I do have a question for you, though,” I say, because I can’t stop thinking about the fact that Max is a Jackson.

  “Sure. You earned it, sitting through that dinner.”

  I finish scrubbing a dish, put it in the drying rack. “Why did you say your last name is Martz? If your dad—and you—are Jacksons?” I turn to face him.

  “Oh. Right. That.” He looks up at me, almost smiling. Relieved, maybe, that this was the question I needed to ask. “My legal name is Max Martz. It’s my mom’s last name. She hadn’t been with my dad long when she got pregnant, and the relationship wasn’t exactly smooth sailing in those early days. Let’s be real—it’s never been smooth sailing for them. So when she had me, she wanted me to keep her name. Just in case she kicked him to the curb, I guess. Didn’t want him tied to me, or her, forever. Even when they ended up getting married, she kept Martz. Too much of a hassle to change, she says, and who cares what the legal name is? Marlow is a Jackson, though. They fight about it sometimes, my parents—my dad wants ours changed. Wants us all to be the same. But nope, hasn’t happened. Never will.”

  “Ah. Got it.” It’s just a name, I know that. A word. But still, I can’t imagine not sharing a last name with Mama and Mimmy. “You like to go by Martz, though?”

  He laughs. “I like to be as different from my dad as I can be. So, yes. I pick Martz. I pick my mom’s blood whenever I can.”

  I nod and turn back to the sink. Start on another dish. There’s still something niggling at me, though. “Why did you never mention your family history, when the house came up? Or when I told you about your grandfather dying here?”

  He pauses, and then, “I guess I didn’t want to scare you away.” He says it so quietly, I have to turn off the water to hear him.

  “What?”

  He stands up, takes a few tentative steps toward me. “I should have been honest with you. But… I’m ashamed, Calliope. Of my dad. This house. Our family history. I was worried you wouldn’t want to be friends. Not with a Jackson.”

  “Of course I still want to be friends with you.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  He grins at me. Childlike. Simple. The Max I know. The Max he is when he’s away from this house. Max Martz.

  There’s a radio on the counter that looks like it might have predated the invention of television. I switch it on, shocked when music actually plays. Laced with static and a strange humming noise, but still—music.

  I don’t recognize the song, something old and jazzy, but I hum along as I fill the sink with more hot water and soap. Max picks up the dish towel and starts improvising lyrics to the song—one of his finest talents, I’m learning. We wash and dry and I stop humming so I can just listen to him.

  I forget where we are. I forget about any ghosts.

  The rest of the night falls away.

  Max walks me home through the woods. I tell him I’m fine on my own—I’ve walked these woods my whole life—but he insists. It’s after midnight, and who knows what kinds of creatures might lurk in the shadows.

  When we reach my porch steps, he asks if he can hug me good night.

  I say yes.

  The hug feels good. Not everyone is a great hugger, but with Max—it’s like pulling on your favorite sweater on the first cold October day. I savor it for a moment before I let him go.

  It’s sweltering when I get upstairs to my room, and I push my window up higher, hoping to catch more breeze. Or any breeze at all. I undress and lie in bed, but I can’t sleep.

  My mind plays back through the night. The hug good night. The dishes. The dinner. I think about Elliot, and how much power he has to make Max unhappy. Joanie and Marlow, too.

  Meeting Elliot—meeting a dad like him—has me thinking about Frank again, too.

  Eighteen. In less than two weeks. Eleven days, to be exact.

  If there are dads like Elliot in the world, maybe I’m better off never knowing Frank.

  But then… there are lots of great dads, too. I just haven’t met that many of them. Noah’s dad is pretty decent. And I like Ginger’s dad way more than I like her mom.

  Eleven days.

  It’s true, I can make the decision anytime I want, ten months from now, ten years. I can keep making lists in my notebook for days on end. I can keep thinking of more cons, more reasons to preserve everything exactly as it is now. Perfect. Mostly perfect.

  Eleven days.

  It’s like a clock ticking in my ears, though, an alarm that I can’t turn off, even if I can temporarily hit snooze. And instead of some normal beeping sound, it’s playing Frank Zappa’s “Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow” and “I’m the Slime” on loop—songs I can’t really stand, for the record, they make my eardrums weep, as most of his music does. Which maybe is a sign? I don’t know.

  Breathe in, Calliope. Breathe out. I try some of Mimmy’s meditation exercises, picture orbs of light traveling from my toes to my calves to my knees… but it’s not working. My brain refuses to stop.

  Eleven days.

  Chapter Eight

  “SO still nothing on the murder?” Ginger asks, licking pink smears of melted ice pop from her wrist.

  “God. No, Ginger. No juicy murder updates for you. I should never have told you that Max was a Jackson. You’re too obsessed with that house. It’s unhealthy.” I splash her from the other side of the green turtle-shaped pool. Even that takes too much effort in this heat. I say it every year, but this time it feels especially true: it’s the hottest summer yet. Even Mama was looking at air conditioner sales the other day. Global warming might undo her resolve after all.

  “I just can’t believe you’ve been friends with Max for what, almost three weeks, and even now that you know he’s an actual Jackson, you still don’t have any more intel on whether or not there was a murder in that house. We’ve been wondering about that place for most of our lives and the answer is right at your fingertips.”

  “Maybe Max doesn’t even know. It’s not like he and his dad communicate much. He doesn’t seem like he’d be super-interested in learning about the Jackson family tree.”

  “But ever
yone knows at least something about their grandparents, right?”

  “Maybe it was his grandparents’ parents, or it happened before they lived there. Or, here’s a wild and crazy idea—maybe it’s all just Green Woods gossip. Maybe it never happened at all.”

  “No way. I believe this one.” She sucks down the last bit of her ice pop and drops the stick into the grass behind her. “When do I get an invite over there? I want to sense it for myself. I did see that ghost when your moms took us to Salem—Mimmy’s birthday trip that I got to crash. We did that haunted walking tour through the cemetery, remember?”

  “Okay, yes. I do remember that there was a white fuzzy spot on the corner of your photo that could easily have been your thumb. I told you that then, too.”

  She slides her sunglasses down her nose to glare at me. “You were just as spooked as I was. You can’t revise history now.”

  It had been a very old, unsettling cemetery. Lots of cracked and crumbling tombstones. But we were also twelve. And had stayed up until midnight the night before reading a Salem ghost book we’d bought from a gift shop. “Well, either way, it’s Max’s private family business. I’m not prying.”

  “But you’re his friend. Seemingly his best friend. It’s your right and privilege to pry.”

  “He’s my friend, yes, but he’s also my neighbor. Maybe he spends so much time with me because it’s convenient. Who knows what’ll happen in the fall when he has his whole pick of Green Woods kids. Everyone’s going to be hungry for the artsy new boy.” I hadn’t thought about that until now.

  “Please.” She waves me away, drops of warm water flicking across the pool. “Neither of us believes that. Let’s be real, it’s just the two of us right now because he’s running errands with his mom.”

  I open my mouth to deny it—he is out with his mom, but only because I’d told him I was having quality Ginger time this afternoon. I stop, though, when I notice a dangerously bright smile spreading across her pretty pink lips.

  “Let’s ask if we can hang out at his house tonight,” she says. “So I can see it for myself.”

  “No thank you. We hardly ever spend time there.”

  “All the more reason! Doesn’t his mom want to meet his other friends? Or does she only care about you because you’re the special friend?” She punctuates the question with an irritating wink.

  “I am not his special—”

  “Just ask. If he says no, he says no. I’ll respect that.”

  “Why can’t we all just hang out here? We’ll make s’mores. With peanut butter. What else do you want to eat? I’ll bribe you with delicious food.”

  She wraps her legs around mine, pulling herself in closer. “Come on, Calliope. Please. We’ve obsessed over that house for years. I just want to take a teeny peek inside. That’s all. It’s either this way, or we break in sometime when they’re all out.” She grins and wiggles her eyebrows, her face so close to mine our noses are practically bumping.

  I pull away from her, resting my elbows on the grass behind me. Stare up at the cloudless sky.

  “I’ll be polite,” she says. “On my best behavior. Scout’s honor.”

  “No. And you quit Girl Scouts and left me all alone after two weeks of being a Daisy.”

  “You like to say we’re all friends—that it’s not you and Max. This would be a good chance for some group bonding. I’ll convince Noah to come, too. He’s been pathetically mopey lately. Not that you would know.”

  A dig. It’s not that I haven’t invited him to come over here. I have. He’s been the “busy” one. Weekdays at Wawa, Saturdays at his cello lesson, practicing—it would seem—every other hour he’s not sleeping or eating. I miss him. I miss the three of us. But still, “No.”

  Ginger laughs, too sweetly. “Maybe I forgot to mention it… I asked Max for some photos he took on the Fourth. I have his number, too.”

  Ginger races past me and Noah and up the porch steps—nearly wiping out on the second one—and knocks on the front door. Very enthusiastically.

  I catch up with her and grab her hand, lean in to whisper: “Remember, best behavior. You promised. If the stories are true, they are about real people. Max’s family.”

  “You do realize I’m not an actual monster,” she whispers back huffily. Because she’s out of breath or offended, it’s hard to say.

  I’m still surprised Max agreed to this plan. And even more surprised that Noah did, too. Ginger has a knack for getting her way. That’s one thing I’ve learned many times over in the last seventeen years.

  The door swings open, and Max is there. Smiling, but with a nervous edge that’s not normally on his face.

  “Hey,” he says, nodding at me before he steps back to let us in. “So… bad news, I guess. At least for you, Ginger, since you seemed seriously stoked to meet my family when you texted. My sister had a meltdown about some epic party her friends were having in the city tonight. Like a kicking-and-screaming, tear-the-roof-down kind of meltdown. This move has been… hard on her. Anyway, she begged my mom to drive her in. My dad was already there. Working. On a Saturday.” His carefully constructed expression droops a bit as he says this. I want to reach out to him. But I don’t. “So. Yeah. They won’t be back until late tonight.”

  “That’s fine, plenty of other opportunities!” Ginger says cheerfully, pushing past me into the hallway. “I brought chips.” She also brought a Ouija board, but that, thank god, is sitting on my kitchen table. That was one battle Ginger did not win.

  Max leads us down the hallway, then turns left into the living room. I’ve only seen the room in passing a few times. Max never seems eager to do much living in there.

  We all follow him in, Ginger on his heels, Noah a few feet behind me. He’s barely said a word since he showed up on my porch earlier with Ginger. I can’t imagine what she possibly said to convince him to come.

  I glance around the dimly lit room, an interesting contrast of new and old. The furniture is too fresh and modern, too big city for this house. Sleek leather sofa and chairs, an all-glass coffee table, a television that is at least triple the size of ours, hanging up on the wall alongside some expensive-looking abstract paintings. A metal pole lamp that looks cool but gives off very little actual light. And then there’s the room itself—more of the floral wallpaper is peeled than not, leaving large patches of exposed plaster. The floors are warped and scratched. One window has a pane covered with cardboard.

  “I’m going to go grab some drinks from the fridge,” Max says. He’s staring at the walls, the window, his lips curling down. “Maybe heat up a frozen pizza if anyone’s hungry?”

  “Yes!” Ginger says. “That sounds great. I’ll come help.”

  The room is too quiet after they leave.

  Noah stands by the doorway, hands jammed in his pockets.

  I distract myself with the massive fireplace, easily the best part of the room. Its mantel is a few inches higher than my head, thick slabs of smooth dark wood. I imagine it would be impressively shiny if it was ever polished again. The wood is carved with intricately sprawling trees and leaves and vines, dotted with birds and flowers, stars and sun and moon. The design matches the banister, two pieces of the same set, but this work is much more elaborate. I’m surprised Max hasn’t mentioned this to me before. As an artist, I would think he’d appreciate the craft. But then again, I don’t think he appreciates anything about this house.

  I turn on my phone flashlight for a better view and reach out to touch the wood, running my hand over the finely rounded edges of a cloud near the edge of the mantel. There are nails sticking out at intervals just above my head, empty holes where other nails used to be. They had hung things here once, maybe for Christmas. Pine garlands or strings of cranberries, stockings, greeting cards. The idea warms me. It’s a work of art, this fireplace, but someone didn’t mind altering it for the sake of festivity. Maybe there was some happiness in the Jackson house.

  “Look at this,” I say, waving Noah over. “I can’
t imagine how long it took someone to carve this scene. It’s so ornate. Somebody put a lot of love into this part of the house. I wonder who. And why.” I walk slowly along the length of the fireplace, studying the mantel. There’s a house—maybe this house—and people, a man and a woman and a child, sitting beneath a big willow tree. There are tiny details all around them, blades of grass and butterflies, but their faces are oddly blank. Probably worn down by time, but the effect is still unsettling. “You really should come look at it.” I turn to Noah and motion him over again.

  “Nah. I’m good. I can see it from here.”

  I don’t recognize Noah, not the way he says that. The cool indifference.

  Something inside me snaps.

  I am suddenly so exhausted by all of it. The awkward silences, the lame excuses he’s come up with the past few weeks, the guilt I don’t deserve to carry.

  “Can we please talk about what’s going on?”

  “What do you mean?” His eyes are pointedly fixed on the wooden floorboards. Away from me.

  “You know what I mean. You’re barely even here.”

  “Obviously I’m here. I’m standing ten feet away from you.”

  I want to scream. He has never felt more like a brother to me than he does in this moment. A little brother. “Why are you making this all so difficult? You do realize me having a new friend doesn’t need to change anything between us, right?”

  He snorts. “Doesn’t it?”

  “Noah. You’re one of my best friends.”

  “It’s okay. I knew it would happen eventually. I just didn’t know when. Or who. But I knew you’d never break the rule for me. Sometimes I wonder… if the rule is because of me.”

  “What? No,” I say, lying to my best friend’s face. “But I’m not breaking the rule for anyone.”

  “You’re not?”

  “No.” I’m not. Am I?

  It shouldn’t matter anyway. It doesn’t. Not for me and Noah.

  “Calliope…” he starts. Stops. Please god don’t let him cry. I don’t know how to handle his tears right now. But I hear the sniffling, the telltale wobble in his voice as he says: “I love you.”