Maria sat down next to him. "Definitely," she answered.
"So if I didn't give the right present or, actually, any present, that would be-" Alex began.
"No. No, I meant it's definitely okay that you came over," she interrupted. "Not definitely that presents are important. Although they're nice, I guess."
"Isabel gave me a present once," Alex said. "Want to see?"
"Sure." Maria wriggled closer, finding the fact that Isabel had given Alex a present very cool. Maybe she was totally wrong about Isabel getting a thing for Michael.
Alex pulled out his wallet and slid out a strip of pictures from one of those little photo booths. He handed it to Maria. "When she gave that to me, she said she was thinking about me in every picture," he explained.
Who would have guessed Isabel had a squishy, lovey-dovey marshmallow heart? Maria thought, smiling. Apparently she was wrong about Isabel losing interest in Alex because of that dream of Michael's. Maria had been so sure that dream had started Isabel thinking of Michael in a different way. But maybe not.
Except wait. Alex said Isabel gave him a present once.
"Um, when did Isabel give you this?" Maria asked.
Please let it be postdream, she thought. Please, please, please.
"Not that long after Nikolas died," Alex answered.
Predream. Great.
"And today she dumped me. I just don't get it," Alex continued.
"Wait. She dumped you? Why didn't you tell me?" Maria demanded.
"I just did," Alex said.
Guys. They just don't get it, she thought. He'd been in her room for at least three full minutes, and he was just telling her this now?
Maybe she should just be thankful for the scoop. Now she knew for sure that Isabel had dumped Alex because of her feelings for Michael.
Maria studied the little strip of photos. God, Isabel was beautiful. Yeah, they both had blond hair and blue eyes, plus arms and legs and stuff. But on Isabel everything just worked together perfectly. There was no way Maria could compete.
Alex reached over and pulled the photos out of her fingers.
"Talk to me. What happened?" Maria asked.
"You saw how she was at our meeting, right?" Alex scrubbed his face with his fingers. "She was kind of jumping down my throat whenever I said anything. Then afterward I said something like how I knew she was feeling upset about Michael. I mean, girls are supposed to like it when you try and figure out how they're feeling, right?" He glanced at Maria for confirmation.
"Yeah. Of course," she answered.
"Well, not Isabel. She just exploded. She was all, like, 'You don't have any right to know what I think.'"
Poor Alex. He sounded kind of dazed, like a guy who'd been in a car crash and was wandering around the highway, talking about the milk he was supposed to pick up on his way home. No clue where he was or even what had really happened.
"Hey, you want some cedar?" she asked, reaching for her collection of aromatherapy vials. It was the only comforting thing she could think of to say. "It will make you feel better."
"The only way it would make me feel better is if you gave me a big vat of it so I could stick my head in and drown myself," Alex answered.
I know the feeling, Maria thought.
"I was going to nuke some popcorn, but, uh, I can't remember how long I have to leave it in, or, um, if it's supposed to be on high or what," Max said.
Isabel shook her head at him. "Just push that little button that says popcorn," she answered. "Now, I have a question for you."
Max leaned against the door frame, half in and half out of her room. "Okay, so ask."
"What do you really want?" Isabel said.
A faint blush colored Max's cheeks. You are just too nice, my brother, Isabel thought. She didn't know how Max was going to make it in the big, bad world when he couldn't even pull off a little lie, like pretending he couldn't make popcorn.
"I just heard some yelling before, uh, around when Alex was leaving," he said.
Oooh, very subtle.
"Come on. Let's go get popcorn." Isabel stood up and pushed her way past him. "I was a total jerk," she blurted out as they started down the stairs.
Max didn't answer. "This is the part where you're supposed to say that there's no way I could ever be a jerk of any kind," she told him, shooting a glance over her shoulder.
"But Isabel, there's no way you could ever-" he obediently began.
"Oh, forget it," she said as she led the way into the kitchen. "We both know that's not true. If you asked everyone at school to come up with one word that would describe me, you know what it would be."
"Now, that's definitely not true," Max answered. "It might make the top ten, but there's no way it would be number one."
Isabel grabbed a bag of popcorn out of the kitchen cabinet, stuck it in the microwave, and hit the button. She stared through the little window. Not that watching the bag expand was all that fascinating. It's just that it was hard to have this conversation and actually look at Max at the same time. Admitting that she'd done anything wrong wasn't Isabel's style. Confessing that she'd treated Alex, a guy she actually cared about, like dog poop was almost impossible.
"Okay, maybe it wouldn't be number one on everyone's list. But on Alex's, definitely." Isabel leaned closer to the little window. She thought maybe the microwave light was too bright because her eyes were starting to sting.
Yeah, you keep telling yourself that, baby, she thought. It's the light. Because there's no way you would cry over Alex, the guy you gave the boot.
"Alex knows you're really stressed about Michael," Max told her. She heard him pull out one of the kitchen chairs and sit down. "I'm sure if you called him up and said you were sorry about whatever went down, he'd be fine with it."
"Even if I broke up with him?" Isabel asked.
"You broke up with Alex?" Max yelped. The kernels of popcorn started to explode.
"Yeah, and I wasn't exactly sensitive about it, either," Isabel said, still talking to the microwave.
"Why?" Max asked. "You know what," he said before she could answer, "it doesn't really matter. You want him back, right? Just call and say that."
Isabel waited until the popping died down, then she pulled out the bag and ripped it open. The hot steam burned her fingers as she grabbed a basket off the top of the fridge and dumped the popcorn in. "The thing is, I don't think I do. Want him back, I mean," Isabel admitted.
She turned around and shoved the basket of popcorn down in front of Max. She grabbed a handful and stuffed it into her mouth, an un-popped kernel singeing her tongue, making her eyes water again.
"Oh." Max crammed a huge wad of popcorn into his mouth, and they both just crunched for a minute.
Isabel knew what Max's next question would be-why didn't she want him back? Good question. Alex was smart, funny, cute. Not exactly the creme de la creme of high school high society. But still. He'd gotten her through some bad times, really bad times.
But now whenever she was with him, she was thinking about someone else.
How could she tell her brother that she'd gone into Michael's dream and seen him with his arms around her? How could she explain that had changed everything?
She couldn't tell Max the raw truth-that recently, every time Alex kissed her, Isabel wondered what it would have felt like if Michael had done the kissing. Yeah, she and Max were pretty close. But he was still her brother. And this wasn't really something she could talk about to a brother, especially because Michael was Max's best friend, practically a part of the family. She thought it might give Max the wiggins to think of Michael and his sister like that.