He says, “Are you sure? It’s JP’s car,” but he has an eager look on his face.
“I’m so sure.”
* * *
Halfway down, Max pulls into a scenic overlook.
“I’m okay, Max. You don’t need to pull over.”
“I’m not worried about you. You might think you slept with that old guy, but there’s no way you could have. I almost felt bad for him the way you were looking at him. I’ve never been rejected that hard before.”
With a flip laugh, I say, “I bet you haven’t.” Any girl would think twice before rejecting Max. “Anyway, you’re too optimistic.” I would tell him about the extortion, but doing so would violate my policy of hiding the worst facts about me.
He gets out of the Ferrari and walks over to the gravel turnaround. There’s a steep drop-off with no guardrail.
“We have too much to do, Max! We don’t have time for scenic overlooks,” I shout into the wind. I have to find Crystal, learn how to run a business, and figure out who assaulted me before Sunday. “Plus, are you sure you want to give up on your job completely?”
He gives me a let’s not talk about it look. “I’m sitting my black ass down on this bench and looking at the ocean. There’s always time for the ocean.”
I give up and get out of the car, kicking the gravel with my toe in front of Max, who is defiantly relaxing.
“I like that house over there. That yellow one is bomb,” he says. I recognize it for what it is, a prompt for me to chill and engage in the scenic view with him.
I nod. “Yeah, it looks good.” They all look good. I can’t bring myself to care about the stupid house, but I do care about Max, who, it strikes me, I know very little about. “Where are you from?” I ask. I can’t believe I haven’t asked him that yet, or anything else for that matter.
“Duluth, Minnesota.”
“How does that work?” I ask, sitting next to him. “Isn’t everyone in Duluth Swedish or something? It sounds like the whitest place on the planet.”
He laughs. “It pretty much is. My parents are both math professors at the University of Minnesota. I was basically the only black kid wherever I went, at least until I got to college. It was a total culture shock.”
“Professors. That sounds nice.” I wonder what my parents do. Or if they’re even still alive.
“It was nice. I grew up in a renovated old house in a residential neighborhood overlooking the lake. My childhood was all hockey, science fairs, hot chocolate after school.”
“Overlooking the lake,” I repeat. “Sounds pretty bougie to me.” My cynicism about the view is melting away with Max, though. There’s something psychologically healing about overlooking the world from a hilltop. “Why is a view so calming?” I ask.
“Because you can see your enemies coming. It’s a biology thing.”
He’s right. If whoever pushed me into Cupid came running up the hill, I’d go in the other direction—or maybe stand my ground. Max is so smart.
“Duluth is the middle-class version of this. Lake Superior looks as big as an ocean, but it’s gray and frozen half the year.”
Suddenly I want to ask Max a million questions—Does he have siblings? What did he do on Friday nights when he was kid? Who did he take to the prom?—but my thoughts are interrupted by another notification from Instagram. I think it’s going to be Jules but it’s a message from someone called @JennyBeans11561.
Hi, saw your selfie at the museum. Super cute! Anyhoo, I worked the night of the party. Your GF is cray. She literally said, “If you ever come near me again, I’ll kill you!”
My girlfriend? I’m just going to take this as confirmation that I definitely wasn’t getting along with at least one woman at the party.
I respond, Thanks @JennyBeans11561! Let me know if you think of anything else. Love your profile photo! Xoxo.
Max isn’t impressed when I read the message out loud to him. “I don’t know if someone who goes by @JennyBeans11561 is a credible source.”
“You can’t judge people by their Insta handles. Yours is @BlackEinstein3l4,” I scoff. I’m feeling defensive because I’m pretty sure I’ve been a @JennyBeans11561 at some point in my life.
“What’s the matter with that? I’m proud of being black and smart. More black guys should be proud of that instead of bragging about street shit.”
I hold my hands up. “OMG. We don’t have to get all racial about this. I just think you sound like a total snob. That’s all.” I flash an overblown smile and he laughs.
“Coming from you?! All you do is take pictures of yourself.”
“That’s what everyone does, Max. Not taking pictures of yourself doesn’t make you better than me.”
“Ummm, it might.”
I slap his arm and try to remember that line from the MySelfie exhibit about how selfies make the world more democratic…
“I just mean that you should take anything anyone says to you on Instagram with a grain of salt. It’s not like she’s testifying in court.”
“But that’s the beauty of Instagram, Max. You can be anyone you want online. There’s a filter for any look you want to achieve, any mood you want to set.”
Max gives me the side-eye. “I mean, that’s nice if you only care about what’s on the surface, but it’s ultimately fake. Who cares if some chick in Florida likes your photos if your life actually sucks? I think people need to pay attention to what really matters.”
I shake my head. “What are you, eighty?” I don’t even know how he’s surviving in this day and age.
“My point,” he says, “is that you shouldn’t trust everyone you meet online.”
“Max.” I look at him. “Not all of us need people to be hooked up to a brain scanner to understand if they’re telling the truth.”
He looks at me and starts laughing. “Oh, trust me—it helps. I’d take it with me everywhere if I could.”
“You’re going to have to make it a little sleeker, in that case. And really, do you always want to know if someone is telling the truth?” I stand and snap a few selfies with the ocean in the background, taking five shots at just the right angle until I have the perfect photo. After I filter it through Clarendon, which makes the blue of the ocean and my eyes pop, I show him the result. I look like I could be on the cover of any magazine. “Isn’t this nicer than the reality that someone tried to kill me a few days ago and I have no memory of who I am?”