Page 71 of The Fangirl Project
“Sorry if I did that to you, too.”
“Truce?” he says, and there’s a smile in his voice.
“Truce,” I agree. Then I say, “It wasn’t…I mean, I don’t think I’ve been totally fair to you, either. To be honest, I’ve been…reallyjealousof you.” The words taste like ash, and I press the cold glass of my cider to my forehead, hunching over my knees. But I’ve said it now, I’ve put it out there, I might as well carry on. “Because you and Jake got so close so fast, and I thought we were best friends, so I felt really pushed out. Maybe Ididgo a little harder on theOWARstuff at the beginning when I wasn’t actually that into it, to try and make up for that.”
“You don’t say.”
“But I think I was…maybe a little harsh to you, because it was hard for me.”
After a moment, Max says, “Like at Comic Con.”
“Yeah. Yeah, like then.”
“Cerys,” he says, and his voice pulls all consonants in my name into something soft and enticing. “I wasn’t trying tostealhim from you. I mean…you do realize that, right?”
“Yeah. Obviously.”
Ish. Sort of. Not really.
I must not sound very convincing, because he laughs again.
“You’re impossible,” he informs me.
“I do my best.”
“D’you wanna come out of there yet?”
I shrug, debating it. Ishouldget myself together, go downstairs, join in with the party, try to find Jake and Anissa, maybe even Daphne if she’s still here somewhere…
But I also know that the second I open the door, I’ll end up face-to-face with Max, and that suddenly seems…like a lot. Like too much.
There are goose bumps all along my arms, and I hug my legs tighter into my body.
No, I decide. I am not ready to leave yet.
Rather than answer him, I say, “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“What’s the deal with the necklace? The one you always wear. Is it part of your cosplay?”
“It’s…I mean, yes? No. Both? I got inspired to make it because ofOWAR,and it fit my Moonwalker cosplay, but it’s…”
There’s something raw in the edge of his voice that prompts me to say, “You don’t have to tell me.”
“Nah, it’s okay. It just sounds kind of stupid.” He laughs, self-deprecating, in a way that makes me think it’s the very opposite of stupid. “So they don’t make it as obvious in the show, and I don’t know if you’ve gotten to this part in the books, but the Moonwalker wears this pendant to remind him about his mission—”
“An arrowhead from the attack that killed his family, yeah.”
“Right. And—well, my dad’s always wanted us to do well with school, worked hard to make sure we have the opportunities he didn’t. I remember when me and my big sister were little, he tookus to the zoo one time, and obviously we wanted to go mad in the gift shop—”
“The best part of any day out,” I agree somberly.
“But things were kind of tight, so he took us over to one of those pressed penny souvenir machines. He got us to make a wish while we turned the crank, and this tiny, crappy piece of copper felt likemagic,you know? Way beyond anything else we’d have found in the gift shop. It turned into a tradition whenever we went anywhere, or what we’d come back with from a school trip, and we thought they were so cool. Me and my sister had this whole collection. I kind of forgot about them until a couple of years ago, and found this box full of them, and I realized this really fun memory we had with our dad was…you know, his way of trying to make the best of things when they were tough. So I drilled a hole in one, to wear. It’s…I don’t know. It feels like a good luck charm, or something…”
He trails off quietly, awkwardly, alotuncomfortably.
My hand shifts, even though I can’t reach for him from here. It lands next to my side on the floor, empty and cold.
