010 & 011-Elmax

7

-TW: Abuse & Homophobic Slurs-
-This chapter takes place during S2E6: The Spy-
-Max's POV-

"Are you still ignoring me?" Mar asks me as she walks into our room. I'm sitting on her bed, flipping trough a Wonder Woman comic. I stay silent. "Look Max," she starts. "I told you why I was gone. Hell, I told you everything he told me." Mar makes her way over to me and sits down. To be completely honest I don't know why I'm still mad at her. I just need something to be angry at, and she's the closest living thing to me. I just want to be left alone by everyone. Except for maybe one person (even if that one person was the source for all of my anger).

"Maxine! Margaret!" Our mom calls from the kitchen. "Breakfast!"

Mar and I race out of our room to the dining room. The dining room technically was where the breakfast nook was supposed to go, but since my mom and Neil were nice enough to give Billy his own home gym, we had to eat in a small space.

"So," my mom starts, as she sets down the pancakes and eggs she made for breakfast. They were out of the box, nothing special. "How has everyone's first week been?"

"Great," Mar says as my mom sits down. "Max and I have a whole group of friends."

"Had," I correct her, with a passive aggressive tone.

"Mar has a new boyfriend," Billy says suddenly. My mom gasps and Neil drops his fork. I glare up at Mar

"What," I say.

"What?" Mar asks Billy at the same time. Her eyebrows go up as she turns back to everyone else. "I do not have a boyfriend! Not even close!"

"Oh yeah?" Billy asks. "So you're telling me that little black boy you've been hanging out with isn't your boyfriend?"

"Bl- Billy are you from the fifties I something? You can't just say boy? You gotta be racist about it?" Mar asks, flabbergasted.

"I'm not being racist!" Billy shouts.

"You're totally being racist," I add.

"Shut the hell up, dyke!" Billy suddenly snaps.

Rage boils inside me. Not rage at Billy, but rage at myself in a way. "I'M NOT A FUCKING DYKE!" I yell at him, standing up. "GO FUCKING CHOKE ON A DICK LIKE A FUCKING QUEER YOU SHIT HEAD!"

"HEY!" Neil and my mom shout at the same time as Neil brings his first down in the table. "Watch your goddamn language!"

"Oh piss off," I mumble, sitting back down.

Neil quickly grabs my arm, sinking his fingers into my skin. "The hell did you just say to me little girl?" He asks, grabbing my face and whipping it towards him, so I'm forced to make eye contact.

"Nothing," I mumble.

"That's what I thought. Now, we're going to eat breakfast like a perfectly normal American family without all that profanity," Neil states as he lets me go. "And nobody under my roof is a dyke or queer, am I understood?"

"Yes," Mar and Billy answer at the same time. I stay silent, looking down at my hands in my lap.

"I said, am I understood?" Neil gets really close to me, his voice getting lower and more threatening. I don't look up to meet his eyes with my watery ones. "AM I UNDERSTOOD!" Neil slams his hand in front of me. I see Mar flinch in the corner of my eye. That only made me more angry. How dare he scare her.

I finally look up at Neil. "And I said to piss off."

I see the moment Neil snaps; it was right before he yanked my arm away from the table, dragging me to his room. I try to fight against him, but I felt so powerless against his grip. Suddenly I was small again, being dragged down a hallway in a hospital gown, crying, because there was nothing I could do.