#maxbel

“Oh, he’d be great.”

Max looked up from the pot he’d been stirring to see Isabel at his kitchen table, flipping through his old Mayview Middle School yearbook, 2010-2011 edition. “Great for what?”

She rolled her eyes- he tried not to focus on the unnatural way they caught the light nowadays- and smiled at him. “For dinner.” Duh. 

He pinched the bridge of his nose, “Wait. Are you using a book that's supposed to hold treasured memories or whatever of some of the most awkward years of our teenaged life… as a take out menu?” He watched as she innocently took a sip of the offal smoothie he’d made for her and sighed. “Wouldn’t be easier to go to like… an old folks home or something instead of killing people we’ve known for years. At least those guys would be dying soon anyway.”

“I would but someone,” she sounded exasperated as gave him a pointed look, “doesn’t want me to leave his apartment.”

“Kind of hard to be anonymous in a town where everyone went to your funeral,” he shot back. He gave the pot a stir and sighed once more. “It’s bad enough that Suzy thinks something’s up and keeps sticking her nose around here, we don't need a rumor of a girl that looks just like you visiting people before they mysteriously disappear.”

She stared at him for a moment before flatly saying, “You mean like an angel of death?”

“Wait… Fuck. That’s actually cool as shit.” It still wouldn’t be a good idea, would attract too many people who wanted to see the ghost- this town was filled to the brim with goddamned supernatural or paranormal or paranatural weirdos, he swore to god. Her cover would be blown, people would want to know how she’d survived, wouldn’t understand what needed to be done, would want to lock her up and study her. No, it wasn’t safe. Isabel could handle herself just fine, he’d seen her take down a man 3 times her size before- an act of grotesque beauty that only made him lose his lunch twice- but the more attention that was brought to her, the more likely he’d loose her again. 

Max wasn’t about to let that happen. 

He must be pretty easy to read, because Isabel’s face softens and her voice is gentle as she says, “You know, you don’t have to do anything. I really don’t mind getting my own food, and you’ve already done more than enough.”

Well, fuck. How was he supposed to say no when she sounded like that? Besides, they’d both already learned by now there was not much, if anything, he wouldn’t do for her.

He let them sit in silence for a minute, hoping that he could try to salvage whatever dignity he had left before folding like a well-worn paper doll. 

“Okay, I’ve gotta ask. Why him?”

The way her eyes lit up made it all worth it, with a soft dreamy look on her face as she rested her cheek in her hand. He would ritualistically slaughter all of his classmates if it meant he could see that look on her face forever.

“I bet he tastes like veal…”

…Okay, not what he was expecting. Max blinked a couple times as he processed her words, repeating them back to her flatly. “…Veal.”

“Veal.”

“Since when did you ever have veal?”

“I haven’t!” He watched her eyebrows furrow, “Hadn’t?” Her face remained unchanged save for her pursed lips the longer she thought on it, before she shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. But that’s supposed to be a thing, right? I mean, veal’s supposed to be soft and tender and expensive because the calf dies before it uses its muscles enough to develop them, right?”

“And you’re, what, thinking that he’s got underdeveloped muscles? We’re 22, I don’t think your math’s quite working out there ‘Bel.”

“I’m thinking that his life’s been a lot easier than ours and that means he’s going to be more tender”

“Honestly, having a life that’s easier than yours isn’t hard. You’re kinda an outlier. In fact, statistics classes probably have a picture of you right next to the definition of outlier.” He was getting into his little metaphor, missing how her smile had faltered. “Professors step up to their little mics and give lectures on the range of childhood difficulty, with, like, a bar graph and everything. And they’ll point at just how many people fall into the difficult to easy range and there you’ll be, all the way off to the left with your childhood sticking up like a cancerous growth.”

Isabel balled up a loose piece of paper scattered on the table and threw it at him with a slight frown. 

Shit, wait, that wasn’t… He sighed. “Sorry, that was…” He trailed off before sighing again, “Sorry. I mean, I’m not wrong… but…” She didn’t say anything, just stared at her drink in silence.

Minutes passed, his food finished and he sat down at the table to eat, all while she continued to stare straight ahead, unmoving. The longer the silence stretched on, the more unnerved he became, trying to desperately find a way to fix the mess his words had caused.

“You’re right though, his life was definitely easier.”

Isabel’s eyes met his, and he thought for a moment that he might’ve said the right thing despite the fact that for the first time since her funeral, her eyes looked truly dead. And then she said, “Do you think that’s why this happened? Something about my childhood, like, cursed me?” She stared at her hands, and his stomach dropped when he saw the slight tremble running through them.

“Do… Do you think…” She swallowed, “My grandpa had some pretty… weird stuff around the house before he died. Do you think that one of those… things might’ve like, cursed me?”

Max opened his mouth but no words came out, and she continued with a voice hardly above a whisper. “…Do you think this will happen to my mom when she dies?”