Max the Dying Girl

(TW; suicide, child loss)

Everything was ready for the ritual. Almost.

Ms. McHale was ruling the kitchen with her usual fastidious fervor--ordering around aunts and cousins to hang streamers and blow up balloons and set the table but never once allowing any of them to stir the big red pot on the center burner of the stovetop. 

The brewing had gone off without a hitch. Now all she had to do was keep it at a consistent temperature. And she had to find Max. 

Max had disappeared early that morning without ever saying a word to anyone. Now the sun was setting over the hills, and Ms. McHale was both concerned for her daughter’s safety and annoyed at her blatant disregard for the evening’s proceedings.

“One of my children, go find your sister please,” she shouted over the chaos, still staring at the deep purple swirling beneath her spoon--her most sacred invention. She heard sighs and the shuffling of feet and took that as a sign that she had been obeyed and could go back to concentrating. She glanced out the window just to be sure.

Phoebe, the oldest, was climbing the hill towards the deeper forest while Becca, the middle child, went down towards the gully calling Max’s name with her hands cupped around her mouth the way men on boats did to ask if they could come ashore in some distant past.

They’d selected their searching ranges intentionally--Phoebe had one hundred and thirty-five years worth of knowledge about these woods and Becca had a little path down into the gully near the water that she’d been walking every day for about one hundred and thirty-three. 

Max was only seventeen. Really seventeen--not just a look-alike. The youngest by over a hundred years. She was not as knowledgeable as the others. 

There was a high likelihood she was lost--probably intentionally, Phoebe thought sullenly as she dodged low-hanging branches and trudged through the murky underbrush. Or maybe she was out joyriding with that deadbeat boyfriend of hers. Phoebe would’ve preferred the deadbeat to a trek through the woods.

Phoebe jammed her hands into her pockets and held her arms close against the autumn air. It was cold but not windy. The air was crisp, clear, and icy sharp beneath the setting sun. Phoebe hated cold.

She was angrier at their mother than at Max, who had spent the last five years very vocally declaring that she didn’t care what anyone else thought--she would not be drinking that potion on her eighteenth birthday. 

Now here it was, the eve of that very day and their Mother had ignored her pleas and brewed it anyway, without any intention of relenting.

Phoebe couldn’t blame her. Max was her baby--her pride and joy--and their Mother was not ready to part with her just yet, but Max couldn’t be blamed either. She was whiny and affected, but she had a point. She deserved a choice--the very choice that Phoebe and Becca had never been given. 

Max had succeeded in striking a deal with their Mother to have her drink on her eighteenth birthday instead of it being snuck in with her morning tea or secretly stirred into her oatmeal the way it had been given to her sisters, but there was no pushing it off anymore. Their Mother declared that it was still her choice, but everyone knew that wasn’t entirely true.

Can one really call it a choice when your options are aging slowly with your family or dying normally without them?

Phoebe paused when she came to the little stone wall that separated the woods from the neighbor’s big open hayfield--usually lush and green but now brown and soggy in the autumn twilight--and tried to adjust her weight over to her right side. 

Unlike Max, she was just a look-alike. A thirty-year-old shell filled with bones that sometimes felt their age--just for an instant, like when you get shocked by the carpet. Now her left hip creaked and cracked and then her shell had acclimated itself again.

She crossed the spongy pasture and made her way down the final slope towards Max’s tree. It was a great big oak, double Phoebe’s own age with long pointed branches that firmly and proudly surrounded the boxy little treehouse Max had built there. 

There was no ladder. Max considered only those brave enough to climb the tree worthy of entrance into her fortress. 

From the base of the tree, Phoebe couldn’t feel Max’s energy at all the way she usually did, but she could see the toe of one white shoe poking out the open door. Muddy as they were they looked blindingly bright against the dim, cloudy sky.

“The party can’t start without you, you know,” Phoebe called out.

No response. Phoebe crossed her arms and bit the inside of her cheek. Becca was always asking her to be nicer to Max. She assumed that birthdays were especially high on the list of days where kindness rules applied.

“Hey! Loser!”

Still nothing. 

“You’ve got five seconds to answer or I’m coming up.”

The shoe didn’t so much as twitch. 

The shadowy cold of the deep woods was pressing in, but Phoebe still stood there and counted to five--Mississippis included. What could be kinder or more considerate than that, she thought. Happy Birthday, Max.

At five she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and willed herself up into the tree. When she opened them she was facing the corner. The little homemade shades were pulled over the windows, and the treehouse was dark in the deep dusk. Phoebe shook her head and fished a tissue out of her jacket pocket. Transporting always left her with a bit of congestion.

“Listen, I’m warning you now--Mum about lost the plot when she found out you were gone. You know she’s not gonna say anything until everyone’s gone so you should probably just keep your head down for the rest of the night and maybe she’ll forget.” 

Phoebe finished wiping her nose and turned around to face Max.

She was laying on the floor with something crumpled up in her hand and her long hair was blowing softly over her face. Her big brown eyes were glassy and still, her lips were blue, and Phoebe was struck with the sudden realization that she couldn’t hear Max’s energy because there was no energy for her to hear. 

---

Aunt Bev decided after a thorough examination that Max had been dead for at least five hours. 

Phoebe’s first response had been overwhelming panic. Her heart filled with pain and she lost all ability to breathe. Then, her rational thoughts took over. 

She intertwined with Becca while she tried to feel for a pulse. Becca transported herself in an instant and dove to the ground--tears already welling up at the corners of her eyes. Phoebe was a brilliant talent at communicating but Becca was a born healer. She held her hands out above Max and closed her eyes, trying to concentrate through her shaking. 

Rigor Mortis had already set in. No matter how hard she tried, she could not find a spark of life anywhere in Max. They each placed a hand on her and transported her back down to the house. 

Aunts and cousins helped carry her inside. They pushed aside the place settings and laid Max out on the dining room table. Ms. McHale--usually so collected and in control--went grey when she saw her. 

Aunt Bev was the oldest of the McHale sisters and the most talented healer in their coven. She placed a hand on Max’s heart. She could feel the cold and wind of the forest, and even hear the deep serene silence of the treehouse at the exact moment of her death. She could also feel the smallest spark of a life, buried deep below the bones and muscles that had long since settled. 

Everyone was watching in silence. The air was thick with awe and fear and grief and hope all jumbling together in a great tangled knot. Max’s body looked strange in the yellowy dining room light, surrounded by gaudy pink crepe paper and waxy balloons hovering in the stillness.

Aunt Bev yanked the crumpled thing from Max’s hand—a wrinkled-up Ziploc bag with something bright blue dusting the inside. She spat on it and tossed it to the ground for killing her precious favorite.

“Come on, all of you,” she said and held out her hands. They all stepped forward. Even the youngest among them knew the solemnity of this circle. Aunt Bev was whispering something quietly, and a great ball of energy was building up inside her. It passed to all of them, rising up and up until it was in their chest and they could push it out with all of their might toward Max’s cold, rigid body. 

Phoebe opened one eye slightly for a peek. A deep light was emanating from her sister—one that said her spark was growing. Phoebe found she couldn’t close her eyes--she was too fascinated by what she saw. Aunt Bev’s incantation was louder now, and Ms. McHale had suddenly found her voice and joined her sister in fierce, concentrated speech.

Suddenly all of the energy was knocked out of Phoebe. It took the wind out of her, doubling her over for a moment. Through her watering eyes, she saw Max flying up from the table, gasping haggardly. Her limbs were moving rapidly and she was vomiting something blue and viscous onto the carpet.

Aunt Bev was weak, but she smiled at Max and took her hand, and said through what little voice she had left that “it will be okay little one.”

—

Everyone went home after that. The ritual, they were assured, would take place once Max had made her recovery.

Becca and Phoebe sat up with her that night. Becca did all the coddling and the hair stroking each time Max surrendered to her sobs. Through all that crying she never said anything--just let out wails to stop the world turning before dissolving back to hiccups. They tried asking her why she’d done it, but she would not answer. Or maybe could not--they weren’t sure.

Finally, she said,

“I don’t want this.” 

It was like she’d popped the atmosphere of the room with a pin.

“Want what?”

“The party, the potion—any of it. I don’t want it.”

“So what do you want?” Phoebe ventured, without Becca’s sweetness.

Max started to cry again.

“I don’t know,” she said, “I don’t think I want to die again, but I don’t want to live either. I don’t want to live like you do and live without living. I want to die when I’m old and I’ve lived and kissed a boy and maybe had a baby, but I don’t want that because Mama will hate me for not staying and I thought I could fix that by dying now but I didn’t fix it I just realized that I really do want to go and live and then die so I guess I do want to die again just not tonight.”

There was silence for a moment. Then Becca’s eyes welled up once more.

“As much as it hurts, Max, I suppose we’ll have to let you die then.”

Phoebe felt a pang of jealousy rise up inside her. She wanted a choice for Max almost more than she wished she’d had a choice for herself. She hugged her tight, and so did Becca, and they sat all tangled up in their hug and their tears until what felt like the very end of the world.

Max tore herself away and climbed back into her muddy tennis shoes and pink hoodie. At the window, she turned back to them.

“Thank you.”

“What for?”, Phoebe answered gruffly—trying to sound emotionless for Becca’s sake.

“I’ve never wanted to be like our mother,” Max answered, “But when you grow up not wanting to be like your mother you have to find other people who you can watch so that you can learn how to be. Thank you for teaching me how to be.”

And then she opened her window and climbed out, and was gone.

Nearly every night for decades Phoebe lay awake at night thinking about her sister—out in the world living and dying all at the same time. Dying in the way Phoebe would not for a few hundred years. Sometimes she tried to intertwine with her and to show her what she could see, but she never could find her energy. It must’ve ended up somewhere very far away she imagined, somewhere that Max could do her living and dying in peace.

Fifty years later, when Phoebe was a one hundred and eighty-five-year-old pile of bones in a forty-year-old shell, a careworn face with big brown eyes appeared at the screen door that made Phoebe smile. She asked to see the treehouse and the gully path and to tell Phoebe all about the living she had done in all that time, and Phoebe accepted the dying girl gladly.