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“Hey, guys.”
“Hey, Mads.”
“Jinx! Owe me a coke!” Lewis whipped a finger out at Sidney, who rolled her eyes and her head back down to her lunch tray.
Maddie lifted her skirt over the bench, apple toppling on its side. The smell of rain and wet concrete wafted over from the open doors. Normally they would be closed on such a dreary day, but the lunch ladies were currently dispelling the stench of burnt mini corndogs. To her left, Lewis ate his sandwich—peanut butter and jelly, with the perfect ratio of PB and J. Across from her, Sidney poked at her cup of fruit salad, her lashes, already thick and dark, were layered with mascara today. Maddie looked at the empty spot next to Sidney; a cold draft from the open doors hit her.
“Where’s Jonas?”
She wasn’t the only one wondering. Earlier, one of Mitch’s friends stopped her in the hall, tickling her face with his cigarette breath to ask Jonas’s whereabouts. She brought her feet together and told him it was none of his business. He crossed his arms—he wasn’t that much taller than her, really, but two, three, maybe four Madison Cleary’s could probably fit in his basketball shorts and the breadth of his shoulders was like Lewis explaining the stretch of a pterodactyl’s wings—this many school buses long. The black makeup around his mouth twisted, crinkling into little canyons.
“Damn. I ain’t got no clue, you ain’t got no clue. What’m I gonna tell the boss?”
Maddie sneered. “That he should learn to breathe through his nose.”
She shouldn’t have said that. It was the sort of thing her parents would say before sighing ‘all God’s children’ ruefully. That girl really shouldn’t wear such low-cut tops. Heavenly father is watching. Pregnant again? Did she just get off the ark? Children are Heaven’s blessings. Seconds? God made more of her to love. And she’s making more every day.
It was also the sort of thing her parents said privately.
It wasn’t gossip, you see.
It was concern, you see.
But what fell out of Maddie’s mouth was slander—slander that would reach the ear of Sellwood’s resident fire-starter. In that moment, Madison was glad she didn't have a car to key, but she did have hair to pull and that made her clutch her braid anxiously.
His make-up creased around his eyes, his black lipstick split and his hooked nose wrinkled.
“Hot shit!” He barked, the downward spikes on his bottom lip were betrayed by his climbing smile. “And they tell me it’s the Wagner girl you gotta watch out for!”
“He’s where all honor students go to die,” Sidney drawled, flicking her finger in a point, her black fingernail polish gleaming under the harsh florescent lights. She pointed where cold was seeping in, and Madison slouched into her tray.
Oh.
Guess he found him.
They orbited Jonas like the sun, he heated their space, they all stretched in their seats to talk to him. Like watching a flower bloom in real time, Mitch propped an elbow up on the table, spreading his legs wide and obscenely—she glared at the pale skin cutting through a tear in the inner-thigh of his jeans, a scathing venom usually reserved for the freckle on the back of Carmen’s leg. Mitch folded his knee and rested it casually on Jonas’s thigh. Jonas didn’t even care. He didn’t feel the weight of it, the same weight crushing Madison like a butterfly wing. Maddie watched as Jonas put his hand above Mitch’s knee, touched more exposed skin lined with that same awful, prickly hair Mitch had on his chin. Jonas stabilized the leg, fingers lingering just so as he jumped into an animated conversation with the guy from before.
Maddie turned back to the lunch she wasn’t sure she could eat now, pulling the tip of her braid out her green beans like an empty fish hook.
This wouldn’t be the first time Jonas had abandoned them like this. It was different in the beginning, when Mitch used to drag Jonas off by his hair. Sidney would bite her knuckles to bone worrying about him while Lewis hypothesized all the ways they might find Jonas's body. Now, a once loving sister didn’t bat an eye. Now, Jonas gleefully skipped school or rejected her offers to hang out to be with Mitch Mueller and his slobbering friends—that was unkind, lord forgive us our sins. But what was with those two? Jonas used to run from that boy, and confide in her that he felt like he was going to get beaten up the second he turned an unforgiving corner. And now he was, what? Walking unphased by Mitch’s arm, laughing at his crude jokes, sitting next to him at that staph-infected cesspool of a table?
She inched her gaze back over as Mitch crowded Jonas, leaning in with his big mouth against Jonas’s ear in an uncanny replica of the dollar-bin romance novel that slept in her pillow case. Despite all Mitch’s teeth, it looked tender, it made her squirm. Especially the way Jonas’s face unwittingly turned in a laugh she couldn’t hear from this far away and his cheek bumped into Mitch’s (recently broken, it looked like) nose. Jonas blurted something that looked like: “oh! Crap! Sorry!” as his thumb brushed Mitch’s face uselessly. Horror-stricken, Maddie watched as Mitch grabbed his wrist and bit it, looking at Jonas mockingly..expectingly? Like he was daring Jonas to do something about it. Which was just strange and odd and borderline pornographic. Maddie blushed less watching Carmen kiss Jonas’s cheek, leaving a lipstick mark she primly tapped her own cheek to make him aware of.
Jezebel, she thought, that microscopic freckle burned into her brain.
Jezebel, she thought as Mitch’s yellowing teeth caught the light.
Jonas at least shared the sentiment, pulling away from Mitch’s spit-slick grasp and mouthing ‘weirdo’ with the biggest grin known to man.
Madison’s heart felt like she had grazed it on the grills inside the oven; pink and raw and exposed. Had Jonas ever smiled at her like that?
Once.
“Move it, snaggle-tooth.” A big, bony hand rammed into her upper arm and she hit the ground elbow first, feeling it split, the sharp pain harmonizing with an unpleasant spike to her funnybone. Tears welled up in her eyes at the sight of her horse notebook on the floor, slung out of the backpack she had forgotten to zip up. A Nike shoe stepped on it and her printed school schedule as it passed. Two girls snickered as they swerved around her. Madison couldn't bring herself to get up. The weight of the cellphone her parents had given her for emergencies felt like a stone.
Just then, an arm with more freckles than she had on her whole body appeared in front of her.
There was a hallway light behind his head, and Maddie was suddenly sure whoever designed the soft, breakable angels posted on every unused surface of her house had gotten it all wrong. Angels didn’t have pink cheeks and milky skin, their eyes weren’t serenely closed and they didn’t wear pastel robes. Because the boy in front of her didn’t look like that. His eyes were wide and green with red rims, he was wearing a Pokémon T-shirt and cargo shorts with a ninja turtles pin in one of the pockets, his hair was long for a boy, draping in thick black curls instead of pale yellow waves. She had yet to go through her final growth spurt, so they were the same height when he helped her up. Their fingers brushed when he handed her the horse notebook. He hit her with that smile. He said hi and also asked if she was ok, but his voice was drowned out by the church bells ringing in her head.
Maddie started wondering when the soonest she could get her mother's wedding dress altered was. She filled her horse notebook with M+J M+J M+J—because writing it on a bathroom stall in sharpie was juvenile, and lost some romance. She imagined the male lead of her paperback with green eyes, no matter how heinously blue they were described to be.
Pretty as Jonas's eyes were, they never lingered on her. He'd rather look Carmen, at Mitch. Jonas saw every star in the sky on the bridge of their noses. But the apple of Carmen’s eye was the pristine English notes in her hand. And Mitch…Mitch—she wasn’t sure what Mitch wanted.
Maddie came to and realized she was still staring at the table. She watched as Jonas leaned forward to snatch his hat back from the only girl at the table as she dangled it above his head. The two other boys laughed, but Mitch’s mouth was closed, temple cradled by his knuckles, eyebrows lax like puppets cut from their strings. Blasphemously, he looked as serene as the angels, eyes open slightly and cast to God. Look, even his cheeks were that perfect, rosy pink.
Maddie lurched as something that was part gulp and stifled shriek came out of her. She snapped back to her tray, the saltiness of Fritos shuffled over from her left as Lewis opened a bag by tearing it at the sides—she, Jonas and Sidney all threatened to strangle him if he popped open another bag of chips. Sidney swallowed a piece of sliced pineapple, raising an eyebrow at her.
“You good, Mads?”
Madison politely excused herself to dive into the nearest girls bathroom. It’s one she doesn’t go in often, high traffic, and it’s got the one long mirror instead of the little individual ones. She braced herself against the row of sinks, hyperventilating as the grout beneath her fingers spun.
This isn’t happening.
This can not be happening.
Mitch…Mitch can’t like anyone like that...can he? No. And even if he did, the object of his affection would have more piercings than pores and angel hair spaghetti straps for sleeves and stick-n-pokes in bad-for-job-interview places. Not Jonas. Sweet, reasonable, mild-mannered Jonas. Her hands started to tremble, holding another yolk of realization—could Jonas like him? No, no of course not. After everything Mitch had put him through, the stories Lewis had told her with a flashlight under his chin, the things she had seen for herself?
Jonas did not like that boy.
The hands that helped her up that day are the hands that have so gently touched Mitch Mueller’s cheek—held still while Mitch sunk his teeth in.
Cold water shot out of the sink’s nozzle in a violent gush and she splashed her face like she was in a commercial for a skincare product. Which was a bad idea, seeing as now the front of her purple blouse was soaked, making it look like a map of the world save for Australia. Talking through her teeth, she gathered paper towels to pat herself dry with. Just as the water started to graze her bra, the bathroom door swung open. Carmen, Sasha, Abby and Trilby swooped in like harpies and she had to press herself to the sink to avoid having her heel scraped by Abby’s passing wedge sandal. None of them entered a stall, they placed their backpacks and purses in sinks and conquered the mirror.
“Yeah, so we’re going to Rome in the summer,” Trilby unscrewed her mascara wand from the tube. Madison kept her eyes down in a glower, furiously swiping over the dark wet splotches on her shirt. Their voices puttered to the back of her head. She couldn’t stand to hear them talk, she would rather listen to Lewis pop open a thousand Dorito bags.
Carmen rifled through her red make-up bag and procured a tube of her current shade of lipstick. It was different from the one that had left a brand on Jonas’s cheek. Maddie watched her apply it out of the corner of her eye. Carmen's hand was steady, she pressed her lips together to evenly distribute the wax and cleared a smudge of stray lipstick with her pinkie, which had a dainty floral ring on it. She inspected herself with a head tilt before redepositing the lipstick. Her hair was down today, red waves kissing the dip between her shoulders, she flipped it back as she spritzed her pulse-point with a tiny, expensive looking perfume bottle. The neckline of her shirt was lower than average, and this close, Madison could see Carmen had a freckle on her nose too.
Maddie felt her right smile line arch as her lip curled. Jonas only looked at her because she wore all that, because she completely fried her hair with dye and because she showed off too much skin.
Maddie's thumb tore through her fistful of cheap, wet paper towels.
She huffed through her nose.
It's a sin to lie.
And she would be lying if she said she didn’t...like the idea of Jonas looking at her like that. With shiny eyes. And talking to her, well, less causally, with a frantic pitch to his voice. Like he had something to fear, like had something to lose.
You mean like how he talks to Mitch? A tiny Lewis appeared in her head.
Maddie pressed her mouth into a flat, humorless smile.
Well, there’s hope. Mitch didn’t wear make-up and Jonas liked him fine.
“Carmen, I’d kill for your cheekbones.”
“What mascara is that, Carmen?”
“Oooo, I love that blush on you, Carmen.”
“Oh, hey, Carmen! When are we going dress shopping?”
Madison threw the paper towels down with a huff, tearing out of the bathroom and back into the humid cafeteria. The smell of burnt corndogs waited for her and the sound of Mitch laughing was like an air horn to her already rattled nerves. She tortured herself with another passing glance at the table and the sight of Jonas laughing with him. She looked away, lest she turn to salt.
Madison wasn’t sure what made Mitch Mueller and his paste-eating friends—all God’s children, all God’s children—so appealing to Jonas. But she couldn’t do what they did. Deviate, have edges sharp enough to cut, demand to be looked at, to be idolized.
She thought about Carmen's ring, her hair, her perfume, her lipstick.
...But maybe she could soften her own edges, coax the gaze of desired eyes.
Madison reclaimed her seat, smoothing out her skirt.
She needed a leg up.
She needed Jonas to see her again.
She bit into her apple, ignoring Lewis pointing at the front of her blouse and going: “How’d you pee your shirt?”
The angels were watching when she took the makeup.
There was a bag, fashioned to look like alligator skin and filled with probably expired make-up. There was an eye-shadow palette, liquid foundation, a powder sphere, black eyeliner and lipsticks she had never seen executed on her mother’s lips—fuller than her own, she had always taken after her father.
The make-up had to be her grandmother’s.
Her bedroom, despite now being open to guests, was exactly the way she left it—minus the plethora of items she hoarded from years and years of yard sales. Primarily, she hoarded glass figurines, like the angels. But her parents also donated a lot of clothes that never saw a Sunday morning and beautiful bedspreads for sizes of beds her grandmother didn't own. Some of it remained. The angels, the ornate cookware. There was jewelry box full of clip-on earrings since her grandmother never pierced her ears. And the drawers in the guest bedroom were still neatly packed with knee-length skirts and stockings and blouses. One drawer was exclusively for purses. That was where she found the make-up.
Maddie bit down hard on her thin lower lip. Guilt gnawed through every bit of muscle tissue she had, she clutched the bag to her yellowy vintage pajamas that also once belonged to her grandmother. She was a second from bolting out of the room that never failed to smell like baby powder, falling to her knees and repenting. She looked up, eyes wide, seeking forgiveness. But in the angel's face, she saw the lovesick gaze of Mitch Mueller. Her eyes narrowed, she set her jaw. Madison tucked the bag under her arm, slid the wooden drawer shut soundlessly and ran out of the room, tip-toes treading lightly over the pink carpet.
Makeup bag nestled in a generally unused pocket of her satchel, Madison cradled it in her lap on the way to school, sweating like she was holding a bomb. Her mother drove her, which immediately put her on edge. It was a sign. A trial. She knew, any moment now she was going to ask about the secret makeup stash.
“God will put it upon our hearts to know if you’ve done something you shouldn’t have”.
Maddie’s shoulders drooped like she was wearing a wet blanket. She remembered bawling into her parents' knees after every sneaked cookie and dirty word she thought. She tried to laugh with her friends about it once, only for Lewis to give her this vacant, chameleon-esque look—his parents were atheists, you see—and for Jonas to smile with in-turned brows. “Heh, I think you just wear your guilty conscience on your face, Mads.”
Madison looked up into the vanity mirror on her sun visor. Jonas was right. She looked like a sacrificial lamb. She fixed her face, throwing her eyes to her mother's side profile and the powder that made her nose less shiny clinging to her frumpy sweater. A confession was climbing up her throat as her mom fiddled with the knob of the radio, the hymn distorting.
“Could these girls' shorts get any shorter?” Her mother tsked once in the school parking lot. Maddie opened her mouth to agree—but balked as she watched the object of her mother's scorn go by. Sidney, wearing little overalls with the legs rolled up to her thighs. Jonas and Lewis walked to the left and right of her—Lewis’s shorts were about the same, except he didn’t have black leggings underneath so his leg hair was unveiled in all its orange glory. “I’m glad I have such a chaste daughter,” her mother pinched her chin between her finger and thumb. Maddie felt her skin ignite, itching with unseen boils. “I never have to worry.”
“Bye, mama!” Maddie chirped, but the air was almost knocked out of her. She made haste of opening the car door and pressing a hand firmly against the pocket with her spoils. “I love you!”
The bathroom she sought out to perform the operation was colloquially referred to as Chainsmoke Central. There was a little window that filtered foggy light through it. None of the toilets worked and there had been a bad case of overflow last year that had caused the hall to stink for a month after. The only smell that lingered now was the phantom stench of cigarettes. Cigarettes grossed her out, she could always tell when Jonas sat outside with Mitch and his friends, because he came back with the smoke coiled into his hair. But you would think she went in there to smoke something by the way she anxiously checked over her shoulder every five seconds, twitching and wiping her nose in a leftover habit from allergy season.
She set her satchel inside one of the cleanest looking sinks, pulled out the alligator skin bag and started rummaging through it. She picked up the lightly used eye-shadow palette and popped the plastic lid back to inspect it. The light blue square reminded Madison of her first and only makeup kit. Modeled to look like a seashell, it came with a selection of sticky pink squares of lips gloss and blue, green and orange eye shadow options. She won it at a church event and her mother took it from her once they were back in the car. Maddie remembered her mother’s nude lipstick shade in the car’s overhead light as she pinched her pointy chin between her thumb and index finger. “God made you as you are.” And Maddie, suddenly empty handed, was even more envious of the little girl who walked away with the My Little Pony mystery packets.
That color blue. Mermaid blue. That’s what she wanted. She didn't have a brush or anything to apply it with, so she used the pad of her finger, eyelid fluttering.
“Hm,” she pursed her lips when the color didn’t show up, then pressed the pad of her finger more firmly into the palette and against her eye. The foundation globbed into her palm and she squeaked as it dripped down the inside of her wrist. It was cold when she pressed it to her cheek, smearing it over the reddened bumps on her chin and those building to her cheeks. She applied it like sunscreen, getting some in the roots of her hair by accident. Afterwards, she took the powder, giddy to see the powder puff inside. She grabbed the ribbon on the back of the powder puff and dabbed it like she had seen in old disney movies, then patted it against her face like she had seen in those same movies, only to sneeze as she inhaled a dust cloud of the stuff. She stuck her tongue out in concentration, holding the dull black eyeliner to her face with a shaky hand. Wincing anytime the tip got too close to her eyeball, she swiped it blindly in the corners of each eyelid. Finally, she lifted her chosen lipstick like Excalibur. The cherry red was tantalizing and the slow, spinning rise of it as she twisted the bottom was like a ballerina in a music box. She always imagined lipstick was what a kiss tasted like.
Maddie looked at herself in the mirror. Then took two tiny steps back—mirrors can be cruel.
This one was, anyway.
The dim sun pouring in from the window revealed every bump on her face, which was not the same color as her neck anymore. The stray foundation crusted in her hair, the eyeshadow was perched too high on her left eyelid, the wings of her eyeliner were similarly mismatched, as well as being different lengths, and the obnoxious red lipstick was unevenly applied, a little was on her braces.
This had to be what Eve felt discovering her own nakedness.
Madison sighed, again reaching for the itchy brown paper towels in the dispenser.
“A parking ticket! He gave me a goddamn parking ticket! If it’s on the sidewalk just crawl over it!”
Sweeping in and taking the Lord’s name in vain with them: Mitch’s friends. They lacked his spindly, looming shadow but made enough noise on their own to compensate.
“What’d’ya do with it?” The guy with the make-up raised a brow.
“Better yet,” said the blonde guy, adjusting his worn red cap. He was already working on his first cigarette. “Where’d y’tell ‘im to shove it?”
“I ate it this time!” The littlest one grinned, flicking a lighter over and over, the short blue flame matching her hair.
Their shoes shuffled to a stop on the cold, unpreventably wet bathroom tiles when they saw her. The suction of the air vent and the drip of a leaky faucet replaced their noise. The three of them stared at her blankly, the girl's smile never wavering as her eyes slowly moved over Maddie’s face like a cat-clock. Maddie started to tremble—they were blocking the door.
The blond guy’s gaze untethered from her like a string falling out of a stitch, he looked slightly down at the make-up guy.
“Peel yer eyes at this,” he removed the cigarette as a smile split his face. “Got not one, but two fuckin’ clowns in this loo.”
The blue-haired girl cackled, driving her sharp elbow into her friend's stomach. Maddie’s breath hitched, teardrops sprung to the corners of her eyes. Clutching her satchel strap, she pushed through them—not with any real man power, they parted for her, strangely pliable. She kept her head down as she skimpered along the lockers, slicing at her eyes with the sleeves of her cardigan, smearing the make-up. The final bell tremored through the halls, doors clapped shut as students were done filing in. Tears blurred her vision so bad she couldn’t see the numbers of the classrooms or the braille underneath them.
“Hey!”
Maddie flinched at the booming voice that brushed her back.
“Carrie!”
More tears welled up, hot and dripping down her cheeks. Maddie balled her fists and straightened her gait, prepared to drop her satchel if it quickened her strides in any capacity. It was scary enough to be stopped in the hall by one of Mitch Mueller's lackeys, it was downright terrifying to be chased by one. She should have dropped the bag, because by the time she had passed the conference room the math team met in, he’d gained on her, shoes squeaking as he obstructed her path. Maddie jerked to a halt and sniffed, tear runoff going back up her nose.
“M-Move.”
“Now wait a sec, just wait a sec,” his fingers spread, moving up and down placatingly. Her knees wobbled at the prospect of him grabbing her by the shoulders, her collarbones would surely snap under the impact. “Look. I’m sorry about Cliff. He don’t watch a damn thing that comes outta his mouth.”
Clearly, Maddie thought, trying to skirt around him.
“Hey, hey—“ she squeaked as she brushed the arm set out to block her. His face tightened in a new direction, almost wincing. “Sorry.”
He stopped talking, like he was waiting for something rolling and breakable to settle first. Maddie cocooned herself in her cardigan, inching her flat ever so slightly to the left.
“But. Seriously, Carrie,” he slid a hand over his buzzcut. “I can’t have ya goin’ and boo-hooin’ to lil’ bro and them,” he put his arms out when she moved too far to the left, leaning with her. Briefly, she considered dropping to the floor and scampering between his legs to get away—she had seen Lewis do that once, like he was demonstrating for a seminar on what to do when the anti-bullying seminars inevitably failed. But that wasn’t very ladylike, and her skirt wouldn’t make her the most agile, so she was stuck.
“And why not?” She managed around the knot in her throat, pushing a pool of tears out of her eye with the heel of her palm.
“Cuz your off limits, babe,” he said it like it was law. Which should be a foreign concept for a batch that apparently ate parking tickets.
“Don’t call me that,” Maddie took a sharp right, she could smell cigarettes as she sliced past him, cigarettes and cologne. A gasp was punched out of her when she felt her satchel jerk back like an anchor. He was holding it, the little horse charm swaying from it like a hostage. She took a hold of the strap, pulling at it gingerly in hopes of coaxing it out of his big hand. “L-let go.”
“Hey, relax, fuckin’—“ he let go of the bag, the horse charm clinking and bag slapping heavily against her side, “relax, ok? I’ve got—“ he circled a finger around his face, “I’ve got make-up wipes. If you want ‘em.”
Maddie curled back in on herself, brushing her fingertips against her cheek. There was foundation on the sleeve of her cardigan, caked between the rivets of thread. She couldn’t walk around like this, she couldn’t risk Jonas—oh gosh, her mother seeing. Madison cut her eyes up to him, she was already late, he had already seen her twitching and vulnerable like the poor things on the side of the road she used to cast prayers to. She nodded, and he nodded back, bobbing his head and throwing his chin in the opposite direction.
Was this what it felt like to agree to a drug deal?
The second location was his locker.
Maddie took inventory of everything inside as he rifled through the contents. Several textbooks with accession numbers for the library on the spines, a tiny purple mirror, a dollar store package of birthday balloons, a face painting kit, a ripped out page of a magazine taped to locker's interior. On it, a model in white face paint, with sharp gray eye-shadow and thin brows, it was a face centered by a dark red lip and crowned by teased black hair, the model's torn up clothes and fishnets were simply falling off of her—Maddie rolled her eyes far enough back to see her brain. There was also a pack of baby wipes.
“Here,” he held out the baby wipes. But when she reached out to take them, he snatched them back. “Real quick,” he added, shutting his locker. “Whaddya I gotta say to make Cliff’s joke go under the rug?”
“It’s—“ the urge to cry again stung her throat, "I just need to get it off.”
“You got a, uh, I dunno," he leaned his shoulder against the locker, gesturing with the baby wipes. "Somebody you want roughed up? Oooo, a house you want egged? Scared to shoplift some nail polish—we can do that for ya, toots.”
“I really don’t have time for this,” Maddie held her hand out, "and don't-"
“Don’t take this mean-like, Carrie,” he leaned into her space and she leaned out of it. “But yer a yappy lil' tattle-tale if I’ve ever seen one.” Maddie wrinkled her skinny nose at that. “So it’s gonna be in Jonas’s ear one second, and up my ass the next. I just know it."
Maddie scrunched her face. How profane.
“Why would Mitch be mad at you? You didn’t say anything,” Maddie put her hands on her hips. You didn’t even laugh, she thought.
“Cuz I’m the boss when he’s not around,” he shoved a thumb into his chest. His nails were painted black. Distantly Maddie wondered if he stole his own nail polish and if Sidney wore the same brand.
“Oh you’re the boss, excuse me,” Maddie turned and marched down the hall.
“Hey—ah, shit, wait!”
She picked her chin up and her pace.
"C'mon, Carrie!"
Maddie felt the buzz of pride in her chest. Maybe this was what Jonas was after, the high he was chasing—of being untouchable.
“I’ll do your makeup!”
Maddie’s bag swung to a stop and her skirt fluttered at her ankles.
”…” she half turned, like a ballerina in a broken box, “you?”
”Shit,” he said, breathing slightly heavy, “shit, yeah, sure. Whatever you want.”
Maddie frowned. “The right hand of Mitch Mueller?”
He scoffed, moving his hand around his face. The triangles on his cheeks were purple today, and there was some around his eyes, coupled with thick pencil lining applied expertly on his waterlines. Maddie pursed her lips, strangling the strap of her bag. She looked at him and then back down the hall, wiped her nose one more time, then slowly skirted back to him one floor square at a time.
“I’ll take them,” she held out her hand and when he raised a brow she continued: “And I’ll take you,” she pointed with a little finger-gun, “up on the offer. I don't want anything…” her eyes traversed his face, voice dropping to a croaky whisper, “spooky, though.”
He smiled, the smallest one she had seen from him yet, and moved the package up and down like it was being weighed on a scale, then placed it in her hand. “I’ll see what I can do, Carrie.”
“Madison Cleary,” she clutched the baby wipes to her chest, releasing her satchel and extending her palm, still smeared with foundation, “so, um, Maddie, not Carrie.”
“Javier.”
Madison jumped a little when he shook her hand. His was warm, sweatily so, all-enveloping. He winked at her.
“And I’m not so spooky once ya get used to me.”