Final Room

26 | maxine minx

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX | MAXINE MINX

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          After all this time, I've grown accustomed to the feeling of my world crumbling from under me, the ground cracking open beneath my feet to swallow me whole. It's a sensation I know all too well, to the point I should no longer give it an opening to leave me feeling nearly as shipwrecked as it does, but it catches me in an ah-ha! moment every single time.

          I stare back at my mom, silently urging her to say something—anything—or to correct herself, to tell me she was just joking, because there's no way she'd ever tell that to Xavier. Even if she had, God forbid, Xavier was too assertive, too sure of himself to let her boss him around, especially when it came to something like that; besides, if that were true, he would've told me ages ago.

          Right? Right?

          As I stare at her in disbelief, as quiet as if someone had ripped my tongue out of my mouth, I find myself wondering if this is what Xavier meant when he told me I didn't know the full story. If this is it, if all of my frustration has been thanks to an order coming from my own mother, then I've been directing all those negative emotions towards the wrong place, the wrong person. Part of me still wants so desperately to believe that Xavier is stronger than that, more than capable of deciding for himself whether or not he wants to fly home for me, for Emma, for Zach, but I also know my mom.

          She can be a lot of things, but she's never been a liar. She's honest to a fault, bordering on blunt, so I'm inclined to believe her, regardless of how badly it makes my heart ache. It could very well be served on a silver platter for Christmas dinner at this point.

          "Why?" I ask her, my revising completely tossed aside. My voice is even weaker than before, slowly shrinking until it's no longer noticeable, no longer audible. It may be for the best. "Why did you say that to him?"

          The main question I want to ask her is why she did that to me, but I'm a dirty coward and would never have the courage to say that aloud. All I can do is hope the message gets across, but I've been doing a whole lot of hoping these days only for things to not work out quite how I want them to.

          She deflates, still not looking at me, and my brain is so desperate to understand that it almost tricks me into thinking I've offended her with these two small questions. I know I haven't—realistically, I know that—but it's not often that the realistic part of my mind wins over my emotional one. These emotions are brewing, boiling, and I feel like I've been skinned for the whole world to witness.

          "You had already been through enough," she explains, like that's something I understand. Whatever suffering I went through, a lot of it could've at least been mitigated temporarily if Xavier had been there—I'm sure of it. She understands a lot of things, but this is something that's beyond her comprehension. "I didn't want you to stress over him coming back out of the blue only to disappear again. If he wanted to be there, then he would've had to stay there for longer, but of course he wouldn't do that."

          The rational part of my brain knows I can't let my anger win this battle, hyper aware that if I do I'll end up saying something I'll regret, something that will hurt her feelings, and I've already asked far too much from her.

          I wonder if this is part of the universal Final Girl experience—constantly worrying whether you're asking too much from the people around you (at least those who survived), worrying if they resent you for sacrificing so much for your sake, and pushing people away because of that and because you want to prevent it from happening. I wonder if that's my fate, like it has been for so many of them; cursed by the inability to properly trust people, including those closest to them, they isolate themselves so they won't be a burden.