Page 100 of Headstrong Like Us
MAXIMOFF HALE
We’re trappedin a pretzel kiosk.
Welcome to my strange Sunday afternoon. I’m sitting on the floor with my best friend. Hidden with our backs to the display. Want some hot mustard? Yeah, me neither—dammit, I swallow backpain.
Physical pain, and I try not to shift too abruptly again.
The only employee—our one ally—already locked up his register and left to go hunt down mall security.
With zero cell service, I’m counting on him.
You might be wondering: how in the hell did we get separated from our temp bodyguards in the first place? I keep replaying the events over and over. We have a few things on our shopping list, and Jane wanted to pick up some new eye shadow palette for her little sister.
We exited Sephora.
And it was chaos, normal chaos, but for some reason, our bodyguards got pushed away like they were floating out to sea.
Hands grabbed at me.
At Janie.
I tried to shove them off her, and we made a run for the kiosk.
I breathe measured breaths through my nose. Muscle around my collarbonesears.Someone wrenched my arm in an awkward direction. Usually my shoulder would pop. I dislocated it at the FanCon, but this feels different.
Maybe because this is the same surgically repaired collarbone.
I just hope nothing is broken, and I’m glad Janie is okay.
Shouting and screaming pitch the air and echo off the high mall ceilings. “MAXIMOFF HALE! MAXIMOFF! JAAAANE! WE LOVE YOU!”
I almost smile.
The passionate love feels better than the passionate hate.
I hear pounding at the doors of an Armani store. It was one of our pit stops. Maybe they saw us in there earlier and think we went back inside.
Janie has a few shopping bags hooked on her elbow. “We made a critical error somewhere along the way, I suppose.”
I force myselfnotto risk a peek above the kiosk. Even though I’m dying to see what’s happening. “Or maybe this is just one giant throwback adventure.”
“Rien que nous deux. Comme au bon vieux temps,” Jane says brightly in French.Just the two of us. Like old times.
“Si jeunes et innocents,” I quip.So young and innocent.
She smiles. “Visages frais et yeux écarquillés.”Fresh-faced and wide-eyed.
I want to smile too, but a sharp pang shoots in my arm. I swallow hard. “We aren’t that different, are we?” It doesn’t feel that long ago, when it was just me and Jane conquering the world.
But then again, the time without Farrow feels like decades long past.
Jane rests her head back, our eyes meeting with this quiet nostalgia, existing inside the fan-crazed madness. “I think all the changes about us are awfully good ones.” She lists out a lot, like our careers and friendships, and she ends with, “I’m engaged and in love, and you’re getting married in two months. And the ones who would’ve believed least in that possibility, would’ve been us.”
I think about that.
Janie is way smarter than me, in case you didn’t already know. Shouting pitches, closer than before. She angles her head a bit.
“WE LOOOOVE YOU!!! MAXIMOFF!! JAAAANE!”
