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Max has half a mind – more than half, really – to run. Her fist clenches at her side, having just knocked on the blue door a moment ago, and she calculates her odds. She wagers that she could book it down the street and turn the corner in the next five-to-eight seconds. It’s more than enough time, but her feet stay rooted to the pavement despite her mind screaming at her to turn tail.
She doesn’t want to be here. She can’t be here. She doesn’t deserve to be here.
The door opens.
She recognizes William right away. He’s only five years older, but his face wears the weight of twenty. His strawberry blond hair, the same shade as his daughter’s, has thinned and grayed. Max wonders if it’s a recent change, or if it’s been like this for most of the time she’s been in Seattle.
His downturned lips curve up into a small, genuine smile at the sight of her, but they fall just as quickly as they rise. He steps aside, inviting her inside the home she used to consider her own. “Max.” He says her name like she’s his own kid, and she hates it. “Come in.”
“William?” calls a voice she instantly knows is Joyce’s. It comes from deeper in the house. The kitchen. “Who is it?”
“It’s Max!” William replies. Then, he raises an expectant eyebrow at her. “You coming inside, kid?”
That urge to run nearly overwhelms her, but she doesn’t. If nothing else, she owes this to Chloe’s parents. They did reach out to her, after all.
Her feet are heavy as she lifts them, but she forces herself to cross over the threshold and into the Price family home. William shuts the door behind her. Locks it.
Suddenly, she’s trapped.
The house looks the same as it did when she was thirteen years old. There are a few pictures on their picture board that Max doesn’t recognize, and she’s pretty sure there used to be a different phone on the console table. But, other than the minutia, it’s exactly as she left it.
William walks past her. Towards the kitchen. Towards Joyce. Max follows. She doesn’t have much of a choice.
The first person she sees at the kitchen table is Joyce herself. She looks tired. Tired isn’t a strong enough word. Exhausted. There are bags under her dull, green eyes. Not the kind that are difficult to spot, but big and drooping. Her forehead is engraved with lines.
Like William, time has not been kind to her.
There’s another person at the table. She’s sitting in Chloe’s seat and, for the briefest of moments, Max thinks she might be Chloe.
But Chloe’s six feet under in Arcadia Cemetery.
This girl, alive and well, looks to be about her age. She makes out a blue feather poking from underneath long blonde hair. The girl wears long-sleeved red flannel over a white shirt and ripped black jeans. Around her wrist rests a bracelet made of worn leather, with rough-looking blue suede wrapped around it.
When their gazes meet, Max looks directly into a peculiar set of eyes. One second, they look hazel. But, the next, they look blue. It’s as though they can’t settle on a color.
She’s the prettiest girl Max has ever seen.
Her name is Rachel Amber.
Of course, it is.
The perfect name for the perfect girl.
Max sits across from her at the dinner table and does her best not to stare.
Now is neither the time, nor the place.
“It’s … God, it’s so good to see you, Max,” Joyce says, and it sounds like she’s fighting through tears to get the words out. “I know Chloe would be grateful you’re here.”
But Chloe can’t be grateful. She can’t be anything.
She’s dead.
Would she even be grateful? Why would she be grateful to the girl who abandoned her five years ago? The girl who was too much of a coward to keep in touch like she promised?
Rachel Amber’s eyes bore into her. She isn’t sure what the other girl is feeling but, whatever it is, it’s intense.
“Of course, Joyce. I’m … I’m sorry I wasn’t here sooner. I should have been here.” The words leave Max’s mouth, but they sound flat. She wants to take them back and say them again with more feeling.
She’s too numb. In too much disbelief.
William shakes his head and reaches across the table to rest a hand on top of hers. “You couldn’t have known, Max. Besides, you were living your own life in Seattle. Nobody can blame you for that.”
He’s always been good to her like that. Like a father should be to a daughter. She used to smile and be grateful for his comfort.
But now, she wants to tear her hand from underneath his, because he’s wrong.
She does blame herself.
She knows, realistically, that she shouldn’t. Not entirely, at least. It can’t be her fault that at thirteen years old, her parents decided to uproot their lives and move to another state.
But it is her fault that she never texted. Never called. Never wrote.
Not even a Happy Birthday or a Merry Christmas.
She risks a glance at Rachel Amber and, by the glare she finds in those inhumanly beautiful eyes, she thinks that Rachel might blame her too.
Max moves into her dorm room at Blackwell Academy towards the end of August, convinced that she’ll most likely never see Rachel Amber again. It doesn’t bother her, per se, but the other girl is a physical link to a part of Chloe’s life that she’ll never have the privilege to know. So, if she feels a brief modicum of disappointment, sue her.
The move goes smooth, for the most part. She didn’t pack a lot, knowing it would be a hassle to take all of her belongings on a road trip, then up a flight of stairs at the end of it.
So, yeah, the move goes smooth. Until it doesn’t.
She stands in front of her room – number two-hundred nineteen – and holds a gigantic box. It’s the only box that has breakable, high value items in it, like her laptop and her HiFi system.
Now, trying to balance it while she fumbles with the key and door lock, she’s starting to think she could have done a better job packing.
Finally, after numerous failed attempts, she slides the key into the lock. She twists and, with the motion, tilts too far to one side. The box slips out of her grasp immediately and, in the time that it takes her to let out a string of curse words and react, it’s already too late.
Or, it would have been, had a pair of arms not come from nowhere to grab a strong hold of the box.
“Can you please get the door?” the person snips.
Max recognizes her savior before she even looks. She only heard that voice a few times at the Price household, but it’s instantly recognizable in its self-assured command of the situation.
“Shit, sorry,” Max mumbles.
She fully turns the key in the lock and opens the door to her dorm room for Rachel Amber, who is wearing that same flannel from a few weeks ago, with a Firewalk band shirt underneath. Rachel sets the box down gently just to the right of the entryway and then steps back into the hallway. She observes Max, flicking her eyes up and down her body.
“Um, thank you.” The words, meant as a genuine statement of appreciation, come out like a squeaky question as Max crumbles under the weight of the other girl’s judgment.
Rachel crosses her arms over her chest. “So, you’re the Max Caulfield. A little clumsy, aren’t you?”
“I’ve, uh, I’ve been known to be. Chloe used to say so anyway. It’s nice to meet you. Again … I guess.”
Rachel’s breath hitches and her lips spasm in displeasure. It’s at the moment her eyes narrow that Max realizes she made a mistake bringing up Chloe’s name.
“I’m not your friend, Max. Don’t try to be mine just because we both knew Chloe.”
The words don’t sting. Max brushes them off just as easily as she brushed off her broken collarbone at eight years old.
They’re long forgotten by the time she finishes unpacking a few hours later, let alone by the time her first week of classes comes to an end and she’s drowning in homework.
Except, when she broke her collarbone, she cried the entire way to the emergency room, all through the doctor poking and prodding her shoulder, and made Chloe spend the night with her.
“Hey, selfie whore, where are you going?” Victoria’s voice stalks her across the hallway, the clicking of her heels a telltale sound of her slow chase.
None of the other students populating the hall – and there’s a lot of them – so much as bat an eye. They’re all used to Victoria’s cruel reign. Better to stay out of her way than get punished for doing the right thing.
Max keeps walking, clutching her cross-shoulder book bag closer to her side. Part of her wants to stop. Pivot on a dime and uncork her fist into the bully’s face. She can do it too. She doesn’t know Victoria for shit, but she’s willing to bet that she’s all bark and no bite.
Max, on the other hand, is itching to bite.
She doesn’t, though. It isn’t worth it.
Step after step, she hurries to her next class.
But Victoria doesn’t know what Max is capable of, and so she makes the mistake of pressing forward, cornering her and thinking her hunt is nearing its end.
“Did you go deaf too? My God, what other defects do you have?”
Alright. Max comes to a halt. Her fist clenches.
She’s going to do it.
She turns, ready to swing with all her fucking might, but stops when Rachel Amber slides between them.
“Victoria,” Rachel’s voice slithers out sickly sweet. “Why don’t you get to Ms. Grant’s class before you miss the bell, hm? You know attendance counts for twenty percent of the final grade.”
Victoria, in all her popular princess glory, seems dumbfounded at first. Her perfectly-trimmed eyebrows tilt down. She adjusts her shirt collar, making certain it’s not out of place, and then tries to rebound. “I don’t need to worry about that class,” she scoffs. “I have an A.”
“Actually,” Rachel’s words leak with glee, “you have a B minus. I have an A. A ninety-eight percent, to be exact. Let me know if you need some tutoring, okay?”
Max watches with a mixture of satisfaction and disappointment as the confidence sputters out of Victoria like a deflated ball. Satisfaction that Victoria got put in her place; disappointment that her own pent-up rage now has nowhere to go.
The queen bitch rolls her eyes, flips her short blonde hair, and walks away.
Max wants to shout after her. Wants to say “good fucking riddance”, but she doesn’t. Instead, her eyes widen as Rachel pins her focus to her.
“Are you okay?” Rachel asks, and there’s genuine concern underneath the flat tone.
“Yeah,” Max answers. She isn’t shaken in the slightest. Just pissed. Her fist is still clenched. She makes a conscious effort to pry her fingers away from her palm. “Thanks for the assist.”
Rachel doesn’t respond. Instead, her eyes roam. Max presses her arms closer to her sides and hunches her shoulders, unable to hold the weight of the other girl’s gaze. It’s funny. She doesn’t care about anything Victoria Chase has to say, yet she folds the moment Rachel looks at her with those steely, contempt-filled eyes.
She wants to say something. She should say something.
But what?
Max still hasn’t figured it out by the time Rachel brushes past her without another word and, suddenly, she’s watching blonde hair disappear into the crowd.
“Here you go, Max,” William announces like a waiter as he sets a cup of coffee in front of her. He takes the seat across from her, holding a mug for himself.
Max wraps her hands around it, content with the burn of the radiating heat. “Thanks.”
It’s Saturday. Max is done – mostly done – with her assignments. Earlier in the week, William had reached out to her over text to invite her to the Price household. He framed it as “catching up”, but Max wonders if he’s just worried that she’ll disappear without a trace again.
She doesn’t blame him. Not really.
She has no desire to be here. Some unspoken rule surely prohibits her from sitting at the same table she sat at when she was younger, now without her childhood best friend. But William asked, and Max owes the Price parents anything and everything they ask of her.
So, here she is.
She recognizes the rug in the living room as the same one on which she and Chloe spilled wine. She can still make out the stain, though it’s almost nonexistent, no longer as discolored and pronounced.
Had she been here over the last five years, would she have noticed it slowly fade with time? Or, just like now, would she have one day looked down and realized that it vanished?
“You know, I still remember the day that happened,” William comments, seemingly knowing where she’s looking. He picks up his coffee and takes a sip, letting out a small, strained chuckle. “Joyce was so angry. It was the first and only time I’ve ever seen her mad at you, Max. I had to calm her down.”
Max mimics him and ignores the pain as the scalding coffee washes down her throat. “How’d you do it?”
He sets down his mug and scratches the nape of his neck. “I told her, ‘Joyce, that thing doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. What matters is that Chloe and Max now have a story to tell. Forever. Besides, nobody ever looks at that ugly thing anyway.’ Then, she was mad at me instead.”
Max laughs. It’s genuine, but not very loud. It’s all she can muster. “You always did have our backs.”
“I’ve still got yours.” His words are earnest and caring and protective and Max is wholly undeserving of them. Hot wetness pricks at her eyes, and she slams them shut to keep the tears back. Thankfully, William moves on before she breaks down, “So, how is the prestigious Blackwell Academy treating you, Max? Have a favorite class? Meet any new people?”
“It’s … going good.” It isn’t a complete lie. She’s learning a lot of material rapidly and earning high marks in her classes. And, despite Victoria and her Vortex Club posse, there are some cool people at Blackwell. Like Kate Marsh, her mousy Christian neighbor who likes to drink tea just a little too much to be normal. Yet, when she thinks on her overall experience, she feels nothing profound. “My photography class is probably my favorite. Kate Marsh is nice. But Victoria Chase can go kick rocks.”
That pulls another laugh from William.
The sound, steady and bright, warms Max like a cozy heated blanket.
“Chloe hates …” his throat gets caught around the implications of the present tense, “… hated her too. Almost every day she came home from school, she would rage about something Victoria said or did that day. If she knew it wouldn’t disappoint me and Joyce, I’m sure she would have punched that girl.”
“I should have done it for her, then. I had the chance.”
“No.” The singular word is resolute as it leaves William’s mouth. “You’re better than that, Max.”
Except she’s not. She’s not the same young girl who fell off the swing set and scraped her knee, or who tripped down the stairs on Chloe’s eighth birthday and broke her collarbone.
Instead of voicing these thoughts, she elects to take another sip of her cooling coffee, all of its warmth being drained by her fingertips.
William clears his throat. “Have you spoken to Rachel at all?”
She doesn’t know why she lies, but she does before she can really think about it. “No.”
It’s probably better than telling him that Chloe’s friend – best friend? – hates her guts.
Chloe Price
March 11th, 1994
July 12th, 2013
Beloved daughter and friend
The words stare back at Max, haunting her. She wants to rip the granite tombstone from the patchy, unwatered grass. Needs to fucking shatter it into a million tiny pieces so that those words, strung together like they are, no longer exist.
Chloe doesn’t belong here, one remembrance amongst hundreds, all kept from the rest of the world by a cast-iron gate. She’s only nineteen for fuck’s sake. She’s supposed to be at Blackwell with Max, assuming she would even forgive her.
Max hopes she would. She doesn’t deserve forgiveness, but she craves it anyway. God, she yearns for a different world, one in which she and Chloe could still play pirates. Would Chloe even like pirates anymore? If she didn’t, that would be fine too.
Maybe, in this imaginary world, they would just do things that normal teenagers do. Like sitting at a campfire at the beach together, beers in hand, watching the stars twinkle in the sky and the waves lap at the shore. Or, maybe, passing around a joint in Chloe’s room while Joyce and William sleep in the next room, none the wiser.
Max just wants her. It doesn’t matter what they do or don’t do.
Chloe’s presence would be enough.
“Figures I’d see you here.”
Max doesn’t need to turn around to know who it is, but she does anyway, offering a small, uncertain smile. “Hi, Rachel.”
She takes the blonde girl in, surprised at how different she’s dressed. Her normal combination of clothing has been replaced by an expensive-looking lilac sweater and knee-length black skirt. She grips a few flowers tightly.
Max isn’t very familiar with the different kinds, but there’s a few red roses and … forget-me-nots?
“What are you doing here?” Rachel asks coldly.
Max wonders what she looks like, cowering under Rachel’s scrutiny. How pathetic is she, standing undeservedly at Chloe’s gravestone – with her scrawny body covered by a loose shirt, faded and dirty pair of jeans, and the same pair of shoes she wears every day because she doesn’t have another?
She doesn’t belong here; she knows she doesn’t. But something in Rachel’s words, so cruel and uncaring, ignite a fire in her. “I’m visiting my best friend,” she snaps. “What are you doing here?”
Rachel’s eyes narrow dangerously. Her jaw ticks. “I’m visiting my girlfriend.”
Just like that, the fire sizzles out. That explains the forget-me-nots. “Oh. I … I didn’t know.”
“Yeah, there’s a lot you don’t know.”
Rachel steps forward, bending at the knees to set the flowers down on Chloe’s grave. Suddenly, Max feels as though she’s intruding on an intimate moment that she has no business bearing witness to. She stands stock still, aware of the thump of her heart against her ribcage.
Her previous thoughts creep back in – of her and Chloe on the beach, of them getting up to mischief in Chloe’s room – and her mind replaces herself with Rachel. The new images don’t sit right with her.
It should be her. It should be her. It should be her.
She takes several large steps backwards in retreat.
“You don’t have to go,” Rachel calls, and her voice lacks any of its previous heat. “You can stay.”
Max looks over her shoulder at the long walk back to that daunting black gate, and then back at the other girl. Part of her is yelling to run as fast as she can – just like it yelled at her the day she stood outside the Price household and knocked on that dreaded blue door – but it’s like she can’t disobey Rachel. Her hands slip into the pockets of her shitty jeans, fidgeting within the confines, and she gazes at the sad sight before her.
Rachel’s as low to the ground as she can get without dirtying her clothes. Her hand rests atop the gravestone and her head is bent down. From this angle, Max is almost positive she can see Rachel’s lips move, but nothing audible permeates the air.
A silent conversation with the dead.
It would make for an incredible, if gut-wrenching and macabre picture. She already knows what she would call the piece.
The Ruin of Two Lovers.
Max isn’t sure what she expected Rachel Amber’s dorm room to look like, but it’s not this. There are more shelves than she can count, filled with knick-knacks and photographs, but they’re meticulously organized. Her bed is tucked in the same corner as Max’s, but her sheets are a simple black whereas Max’s are white with alternating pink and zebra-colored squares.
There’s also a star projector next to the standard student desk, plugged into a wall outlet and aimed at the ceiling. Come to think of it, the projector might be Chloe’s. She doesn’t like the thought, and she isn’t certain why.
Who is she kidding. Of course she knows. It’s not about the projector itself. It’s about the fact that she wasn’t there. And, in her absence, Rachel had slotted into the hole she left in Chloe’s life.
“Sorry about the mess,” Rachel mumbles as she closes the door behind them. “I don’t let anybody in here anymore. This is a first.”
Max doesn’t know what mess she’s talking about until she takes a few steps deeper into the room and gets her foot caught in a tangled mess of fabric. She kicks repeatedly in an attempt to free herself and, after one particularly strong swing, sends the shirt that had bear-trapped her across the room.
It hits the wall with a deflated whoosh and slides to the floor.
When Max looks over her shoulder, Rachel is looking back at her with a twitching, barely-contained upturn of her lips.
“Sorry,” Max apologizes.
“Don’t worry about it. Just be careful where you step. There’re more clothes.”
She tilts her head towards the floor and, sure enough, the other girl is right. Dozens of shirts and pants litter the carpet – a stark, messy contrast to the rest of the perfectly-assembled room.
She looks back up at Rachel, only to find that Rachel isn’t looking back anymore. Her arms are crossed protectively over her chest and her pretty eyes are on one of the shelves. Max’s gaze lingers a beat longer, unable to pull away from such a perfect face.
If she grabs a wipe and gently removes Rachel Amber’s makeup, she wonders if she’d find the same heavy, tired bags and stress lines that mar her own face.
As quickly as the thought pops up from the ground, Max stomps it back into the Earth.
Her eyes find the exact item that Rachel’s looking at, and it’s as though her breath evaporates inside her lungs.
It’s a picture of Rachel and Chloe. Together. Their arms wrapped around one another. Chloe looks so, so different. In the photo, her strawberry blonde hair is dyed blue. A beanie rests on top of her head; Max can’t remember her wearing beanies when they were younger. There’s a tattoo on her arm – blue butterflies and green, thorn-filled stems and a yellowish skull. The Chloe that Max knew would never permanently ink something like that on her skin.
But it’s unmistakably Chloe in the photo, lips pressed against Rachel’s and all.
Something green and ugly sours her stomach.
With a drained sigh, Rachel moves over to the bed, brushing the wrinkles out of the covers as she sits. Max looks at the spot next to her. There’s enough room for her to fit, but it feels wrong to be that close, like there’s some sort of mandatory distance she should keep.
Rachel gestures in no particular direction. “Go on, keep looking. I know you want to.”
She’s not wrong.
Max steps over the quicksand pit of clothes and towards the star projector. When she gets close enough, she realizes without a doubt that it is Chloe’s. Still, she asks for the confirmation that she doesn’t need. “That’s Chloe’s, right?”
“Yeah. She gave it to me as a gift. A ‘Welcome to Blackwell’ kind of thing.”
“She used to have it next to her bed.” Max’s voice catches around the sharp sting of the memory. “We would stare up at the ceiling at night, watching the stars during our sleepovers.”
“We’d do the same.” Rachel pauses, as though unsure if she should say what she’s about to. She continues anyway. “Your height markings are still on the wall, you know.”
Max’s lips twitch in pleasant surprise. Tears threaten her vision once again, but this time they don’t sting. “They are? I thought William would have gotten rid of them by now.”
“You were 4’11 when you were thirteen.” Max whirls around, an eyebrow shooting up, and Rachel shrugs at her with a sheepish grin before continuing, “I stared at that chart so much I have it memorized. You were short.”
Max can’t help a child-like whine. “I know. Chloe was always the tall one. I used to get so upset when William measured us. Just once, I wanted to be taller than her.”
“You weren’t,” Rachel teases, and that timid look is gone. In its place is a confident and in-control smirk, but that rapidly disappears too. She’s kind of like a chameleon with the way her expressions shift so fluidly. “Open the top drawer. Next to my desk.”
Max does as she says, stepping over a few more articles of clothing to get there. She pulls out a journal and looks over her shoulder.
Rachel nods encouragingly. “Go ahead.”
Max flips to the first page and, suddenly, she doesn’t feel as though she’s holding it with enough reverence, so she cradles it with both hands.
Chloe’s handwriting is unmistakable.
“Rachel, I –” Max has no inkling – neither of what she wants to say, nor what she should say.
Rachel helps her out with a gentle smile, the kind reserved for trying to coax a cat out of hiding. “Take it. It’s filled with entries about you. She would have wanted you to have it.”
She would have wanted you to have it.
When Max closes Chloe’s journal that night, having forced herself to endure every agonizing minute of reading it, she feels no better. In fact, she feels worse. Before, without knowledge of the words within, she was oblivious to the depths of Chloe’s emotions. But now? Now, she knows every explicit detail.
She knows about the nights that Chloe cried herself to sleep when Max never answered back, wondering what she had done to make her best friend hate her. She knows about the exact day that Chloe’s written thoughts turned from sorrow to fury – February 16th, 2010 at 3:37 in the afternoon. She can even pinpoint the last journal entry that mentions her by name; it’s the entry dated April 1st, 2013.
In that entry, Chloe writes about the April Fools’ pranks they used to pull off when they were younger, specifically the time that Max took a brand-new bar of soap, coated it in Joyce’s clear nail polish, and the two of them listened outside the bathroom door as William cursed that the damn thing wasn’t lathering.
She stares out her window – at trees and a dead courtyard, not a soul walking its paved paths. She waits for the tears.
And waits. And waits. And waits.
Then, she begs for them to come.
And begs. And begs. And begs.
By the time the sun starts to creep into the sky, Max is still at her desk, waiting and begging.
There has to be some ulterior motive to this. Joyce and William are up to something. It doesn’t take two people to cat-sit for one day, even if that cat is Bongo. Maybe their ulterior motive is to force Max to become friends with Rachel?
Except she thinks – hopes – they’re already on their way there. She wants to be part of Rachel’s life in a meaningful way, and she’s fairly certain Rachel doesn’t hate her anymore. Or, at least, as much as she did when they first met.
The swing creaks next to her, and she looks over to see Rachel gaining momentum. It’s a light, up-and-down motion, with no purpose of reaching for the overcast sky. She must have gotten bored sitting still.
Max sways without purpose in her own swing. “Hey, Rachel?”
“Yeah?”
“What was Chloe like?”
She doesn’t know why she asks now. The question has been ready to burst from her for months, but she’s never actually voiced it. In the past, she got the very clear impression that Rachel has no desire to talk about it – and she gets that – but she needs to know. Needs to understand who her best friend became in her absence.
Journal pages aren’t enough.
Rachel doesn’t speak for a long time, allowing the whining of the chains to fill the void between them. When she does, she settles on, “You already know what she was like.”
Max shakes her head, kicking the patch of dirt beneath her feet and sending blades of grass into the air. “I knew what she was like five years ago. It’s not the same. Please.”
Rachel sighs, loud and heavy, and Max is certain that she’s not going to answer. But then, “Swing with me.”
Max does, pushing off the grass to gain some momentum of her own, and then she’s matching Rachel – lazy and low to the ground.
Rachel doesn’t look at her when she speaks next, opting instead to stare ahead at some unidentified point in the distance. “Chloe was … she was everything you knew her to be. She was kind to those who deserved it and loyal to those who were loyal to her. She loved her parents and Bongo more than anything. They have – had – a perfect family. Some days, I wish William and Joyce were my parents.”
“They’re pretty great,” Max adds with a small smile.
Rachel glances at her and nods her affirmation. “But she also took things really hard. This one time, I got pissed at her for something and she just totally shut down. Went cold. I got over it in like, an hour, but she was upset at herself for the whole day. I think … I think she was worried that I would walk away or something, you know? Was she always like that?”
Her smile drops, replaced by a tiny frown that she tries to mask when Rachel looks at her again. “No.”
She can feel herself start to spiral as she recalls the journal entries in which Chloe blamed herself for Max leaving. Just the thought makes her want to hurl, and she plants her foot into the ground to slow herself down.
A hand on her shoulder, squeezing in reassurance, stops her from completely spinning out. She turns her head, entranced by Rachel Amber’s soft eyes, and finds none of the hatred that was there a few months ago. Instead, all she sees is tender care.
“Chloe was also a gigantic rebel,” Rachel chuckles, and Max is thankful that she pushes past the moment and doesn’t allow it to linger. “Honestly, that’s one-hundred percent my fault. I got her into some wild shit. Almost got her expelled, actually.”
“What?” Max’s eyebrows furrow and she leans back in disbelief. “How?”
A smirk plays at the corners of Rachel’s lips; she’s obviously proud of herself. “I dared her to spray paint Principal Wells’s door with me.”
“And she did?”
“Oh yeah. William and Joyce were not happy. I wasn’t allowed to come over or take Chloe on any dates for a month.”
“How did you get caught?”
Rachel scoffs and shakes her head in annoyance. “Nathan Prescott, the king to Victoria Chase’s queen, found us sneaking out of Administration and reported it. Chloe was threatened with expulsion, but ended up just getting suspended.”
Max inwardly frowns as Rachel finally withdraws her hand and wraps it around the chain. Put it back. “What about you? Didn’t you get in trouble too?”
“I got a slap on the wrist from Principal Wells and a stern talking to from my parents, but that was it.”
“How?”
This time, when Rachel shakes her head, it’s playful. She pats Max’s shoulder in that way you do when you’re teaching a child something obvious. “Oh Max. One thing Blackwell Academy loves is its optics. It’s known for its exceptional student body, and I have a 4.0 GPA. If Principal Wells expelled me, he’d probably wind up assassinated by a board member.”
Max chuckles, but Rachel’s statement doesn’t track with the Chloe she knew. Chloe was intelligent – smarter than she ever was when it came to math and science. “Chloe didn’t have good grades?”
“She could have, but she didn’t try very hard. She was more interested in causing mischief and hanging out with Justin and Trevor and the rest of the skater bros.” Rachel leaps off the swing, dusting off her ass and then offering a hand. “Come on, it’s time to feed Bongo.”
“It’s not a two-person job.”
“Joyce and William seem to think it is. Plus, your company isn’t half bad. Get your ass up.”
Max places her hand in Rachel’s and allows herself to be pulled onto her feet.
When Max came back to Arcadia Bay, she never imagined that she would be spending Christmas with the Prices at all, let alone without Chloe.
But here she is, sitting in the family room of a home that used to practically be her own. Joyce sits on the couch – geez, do the Prices need a new couch – while Rachel and Max face her in chairs that were pulled from the dinner table.
She shouldn’t be here. She still doesn’t understand why Chloe’s parents are so insistent on having her around.
With Rachel, she gets it. Rachel is – was – their daughter’s girlfriend. Rachel belongs, with her precisely-combed blonde hair, candy cane-themed Christmas sweater, perfectly-crafted and reassuring smile, and those eyes. Those fucking eyes.
She belongs.
Max, meanwhile, is just a footnote in the too-short life of Chloe Price - a footnote that people would do better to forget, at that.
Chloe’s journal still occupies her mind. She picks an entry to read each night before bed, and that’s how she chooses to torture herself to sleep.
As Max stares at Rachel, she morbidly wishes she could staple all the journal pages to herself and carry them with her forever, even as they caused her skin to bleed.
“Here you go, Max.” It’s William’s voice that grabs her by the hand and pulls her from the sinking depths.
She blinks and, suddenly, there’s a hot chocolate in front of her face, whipped cream and marshmallows and all. “Thanks,” she mumbles, taking the mug.
William takes the seat next to Joyce, wrapping an arm around her to keep her close.
They’re doing surprisingly well all things considered, Max thinks. It’s one giant performance – fake smiles and tight laughs – but she supposes they’re grateful for a reason to pretend.
She knows that the tears will fall once she and Rachel are out the door.
The door closes behind them, the click too loud in Max’s ears.
As the noise, repeating itself over and over, dies down, she’s left standing next to Rachel Amber in near darkness and freezing cold. Their only saving graces are the flickering streetlight several houses up and the heat of their layers of clothing.
Max brushes a piece of hair out of her eye and feels Rachel’s look before she sees it. She stuffs her hands into her pockets, uncomfortable with the attention.
“Thank you for coming tonight,” Rachel whispers, snapping the silence that both plagued and protected her.
“What?” Max struggles to get the word out around the chatter of her teeth.
“They were going to be disappointed if you didn’t show up.”
Max’s gaze drops to the driveway. The thought of doing anything to wrong the Price parents physically hurts. “How do you know?”
Rachel kicks a tiny pebble, scuffing the front of her boot. “They told me.”
“Oh.”
Rachel’s eyes are still on her, and she decides it’s better to face the music, so she looks up into an expression she can’t decipher.
“I have something for you.”
“You have something for me?” Max repeats dumbly.
“A Christmas gift,” Rachel explains. “It’s in my car. Walk with me?”
It’s framed as a question, but she’s already moving. Max follows.
“Rachel, you didn’t have to get me anything. I didn’t –”
“Max?” Rachel cuts her off.
Her voice is small when she replies. “Yeah?”
“Just take the gift and don’t say anything, okay?”
“… Okay.”
Rachel’s car – a Porsche Panamera, thanks to her richy-rich parents – is so far out of Max’s league that she doesn’t feel worthy to look at it. It’s kind of how she feels about Rachel herself, actually.
She stands off to the side, shifting her weight between her feet and desperately doing her best not to awkwardly look while a bent-over Rachel digs around the driver’s side and mumbles to herself.
“There it is!” Rachel exclaims in triumph, standing up and turning around. Whatever she grabbed from the car, she’s hiding behind her back. “Sorry it’s not gift-wrapped.”
Then, she’s holding it out and Max wants to break down crying, just as she’s sure Joyce and William are doing inside.
She recalls the necklace – a shitty string with three bullets hanging from it – from several of the photos displayed around the other girl’s dorm room. It was Chloe’s – Chloe had worn it around her neck – and now Rachel was offering it to her.
She struggles to form words. “Rachel, I –”
“Hey.” The word is forceful. Max listens attentively. “Remember what I said? Just take it.”
“You’re sure?”
“Hold out your hand.”
Max obeys the command and tries to stop herself from shaking as the necklace is laid gently in her palm. Rachel leaves her hand there until the trembles stop.
“Thank you.” The words leave her, a reverent whisper.
Rachel steps back and clears her throat, snapping them both of out of whatever trance-like state they’d been in. “Do you have a ride back to the dorms?”
Max forms a delicate fist around the necklace, holding it protectively. “I, uh, I took the bus here. I’ll just catch the late one.”
Rachel shakes her head and walks around to the passenger side. She pops the door open and gestures toward it. “I’ll drive you.”
“Really, it’s fine,” Max resists. “I don’t mind.”
She doesn’t even know why she’s arguing. She already knows she’s going to go with Rachel.
“Max, get in the car.”
Max wears the necklace every day from that point forward – her own little piece of Chloe Price.
Knock.
Knock.
Slow, then rapid.
Knock! Knock!
Max’s eyes fly open at the noise, ever increasing in both pace and loudness. Her first instinct is to reach for the nearest blunt object, but her hand freezes midway to her lamp when she hears the voice on the other side.
“Max? Are you awake? Can I come in?”
It’s Rachel. At – Max glances at her alarm clock – two-thirteen in the morning.
She throws off her covers, casting a quick look down to remind herself that she’s dressed in a pair of light blue pajamas, and pads her way to the door. She cracks it open just barely.
Max yawns, squeezing her eyes shut and doing her best to talk around her exhaustion. “Rachel? It’s two in the morning.”
She opens her eyes just in time to see Rachel stepping closer to the door, her arms wrapped protectively around her middle. Rachel’s wearing pajamas too – black, long-sleeved ones – but she’s shaking despite the temperature in their dormitory being in the low-seventies. Max looks closer at the girl’s face, spots the tear tracks, and realizes that she’s actively crying.
“Please?” Rachel’s voice breaks.
Max opens the door all the way and steps to the side. She expects Rachel to walk past her and sit on her bed; she’s the type to make herself comfortable in any environment. But what she doesn’t expect is for Rachel to cross the threshold into her room and immediately launch her arms around her.
Max holds her tight, her heart constricting painfully at the sob pressed close to her ear.
She nudges the door closed with her foot. Nobody else needs to hear this breakdown. “What’s wrong?” Max whispers.
Her lips are close – so close – to Rachel’s forehead, and she has the sudden, terrible desire to press a soft, reassuring kiss there. She doesn’t.
“Victoria,” Rachel answers, but doesn’t elaborate.
That’s okay. She’ll keep holding her.
A few more heart-wrenching sobs fill the space between them. As the minutes pass, her breathing slows and she stops shaking. Max holds her for a moment longer and then lets her go. When she steps back, she sniffles, the sound wet and ugly.
She’s perfect.
“Can I stay here for the night?” Rachel asks, wiping at her face with her sleeve. “I don’t feel like sleeping alone.”
The question flusters Max. She can feel her cheeks staining a light pink. “Yeah. Yeah, of course. You can have my bed. I think I have a sleeping bag lying around here somewhere.”
But Rachel’s already trying to pull her toward the bed. “Don’t be silly.”
Max remains rooted in place, resisting the tug on her arm and almost sending them both falling in the struggle. “There’s not enough room.”
“Bullshit. Sleep on top of me, then.”
“Rachel –”
“Max. You’re telling me that you don’t want to share a bed with a hot girl? I don’t buy it.”
She knows Rachel’s a tease. She’s been the willing victim of it a few times in the past. But it’s never been this direct – this bold – and it shocks her system. Her arm is yanked and the next thing she knows, she’s on her bed, crammed in the tight space with half of her body on top of Rachel Amber.
“There,” Rachel huffs in triumph. “You’re pretty strong, you know that? Get comfortable. We’ll share the pillow.”
Another protest would be futile, so Max gives in. She rests her head next to Rachel’s, cognizant of the heat shared between their bodies and the strands of blonde hair that tickle her own. Hair isn’t the only thing that tickles her. Something else, a little fuzzy, brushes against her cheek; it’s that blue feather earring.
Eventually, her stiff and anxious body begins to relax, shoulders untensing and back softening. Her eyes flutter. She fights against the impending sleep – unsure as to why – but it’s no use.
One second, Rachel is beside her. The next, she doesn’t remember. However many after that, her eyes are opening again thanks to that soft voice.
“Victoria made a shitty comment about Chloe today. It’s why I was … I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since.”
Max yawns, compelling herself to wake up, and wants to ask for details. The question is on the tip of her tongue. But Rachel sounds like she might cry again if she thinks about it too much, so Max strains to reach behind the other girl’s head. Rachel lifts herself off the mattress just enough, and then she lays back down. Max’s arm cradles her securely.
“I hate her,” Rachel continues. “I hate her so much.”
“Victoria?”
“Chloe.” Max knows she doesn’t mean it – that the statement is born from agony and heartbreak and a hundred other emotions all mixed together – but it shatters her. “And Victoria.”
The minutes drag on in deathly silence. She wants to scream and cry and curse because how dare Rachel say such a thing about such a special person.
She doesn’t mean it.
She doesn’t mean it.
She loved – loves – Chloe. The same as Max.
Max chooses to take a deep breath. She doesn’t let it go, but she doesn’t say anything about it either. “You know, before you stepped in that day, Victoria called me a ‘selfie whore’,” she shares, tilting her head so she can see the other girl’s expression, silently hoping for a laugh.
Rachel’s enigmatic eyes crinkle as she chuckles. “I have to give it to her, that’s actually pretty good. Still, fuck Victoria Chase.”
Max can’t help her own smile, if only because Rachel Amber is so beautiful. “Fuck Victoria Chase.”
There are things in life worth getting in trouble for, and there are things in life that aren’t.
Punching Victoria Chase in the face – like she came so close to that one day – falls into the first category.
Breaking Blackwell Academy’s curfew to sneak onto the rooftop at one in the morning falls into the second.
But Rachel Amber asks her to do it, which firmly places it back into the first category.
“Don’t tell me you’re a pussycat, Max Caulfield.” Rachel threw the taunt over her shoulder as she glanced down the metal staircase.
Max, several stairs behind, nearly flinched with every hollow thud produced by her steps. “I’m not a pussycat,” she complained indignantly. “I’m just … not a troublemaker like you.”
Rachel’s laugh was loud – so loud that Max was sure they would be caught – and perfect. “Not yet, you’re not.”
She understands why Rachel likes it up here. It’s peaceful and secluded, with a beautiful view of the campus courtyard. The wind, cooled by the night, whishes around them, occasionally lightly jostling their hair. It bothers her at first but, after tugging her long sleeves down and closing them around her fingers, she doesn’t mind so much.
“Chloe and I used to come up here,” Rachel says to break the silence.
Max doesn’t know how long they’ve quietly sat next to each other, arms and knees brushed up against one another and feet dangling over the edge.
Five minutes? Ten minutes? Fifteen minutes? She hadn’t counted.
Rachel’s admission doesn’t come as a surprise, and it doesn’t sound like she’s fishing for conversation. It just sounds like she’s stating a fact.
So, Max doesn’t respond. They lapse back into silence, but it’s comfortable.
They can stay like this forever for all she cares.
But the silence is broken once again by Rachel, who digs into her red flannel’s breast pocket and produces a cigarette carton and a lighter. She plucks a stick from the bunch, slides the carton back into her pocket, and runs the filtered end across her lips. “Do you mind if I smoke?” she asks, but she’s already lighting it.
Max shakes her head anyway.
In that moment when the light flickers and the cigarette ignites, Max imagines that it’s the Chloe from Rachel’s pictures who sits next to her. She can see her so clearly. Blue hair shielded by that scruffy black beanie. The messy arm tattoo that she still doesn’t know the meaning of. The white tank top and spiked bracelets and three-bullet necklace that Max currently has around her own neck.
Most of all, she can see Chloe’s smile. In the photos, it’s rougher – hardened and less wide – than she remembers. But it’s still Chloe’s, down to the uneven upturn that favors the right side of her face.
And then, as she hears an exhale and cigarette smoke fills the air, Chloe Price is gone, replaced by Rachel Amber.
“What was Seattle like?” Rachel asks, tugging on Max’s silly photography-themed pajama pants.
They’re on the floor in Rachel’s room – the mess of clothes picked up long ago – and their heads are leaned back against the side of the mattress. Max is fully aware of their arms and legs touching. If this had been the first time she was in this position, she most likely would have forced some distance between them out of a combination of guilt and respect for the ghost of the person who still lingers over their shoulders.
But this isn’t the first time anymore. She’s been this close to Rachel many times now.
“Seattle was … it was fine.”
“Very insightful, Max,” Rachel retorts, twisting her foot to knock against Max’s own.
Max lightly returns the kick and sighs. “It was a big city. So many unique places to see and tourist attractions to visit. A photographer’s dreamland, really. I don’t know, though, I guess I felt like I didn’t belong there. Like the city was too big for me, you know? I’m just a small-town girl from Arcadia Bay.”
“Yeah, but you had to have made friends, though, right? I can’t imagine you didn’t. I mean, you’ve got the whole cute, shy photographer-with-freckles thing going for you.”
Her face flushes, hot from Rachel’s compliments, but she tries not to take them too seriously. If she takes them seriously, then she’ll seriously consider kissing her, and that’s about as opposite of a good idea as there can be. “There was Fernando and Kristen. They were probably my closest friends out there.”
“Do you still talk to them?”
Max shakes her head, frowning. “No, not really. But I guess that’s just a common theme for me.”
“Hey,” Rachel says forcefully, delivering a firmer foot-kick that has Max turning her head. Once she has Max’s attention, her voice softens into something sad. “Why are you so hard on yourself?”
“What?”
“Excuse the overused metaphor, but you walk around carrying this weight like you’re not good enough or you don’t deserve this, that, or the other thing. I saw it the first day I met you. I saw it again on Christmas, and I’ve seen it every day since. You’re so negative about yourself, and I don’t get it. You have to stop blaming yourself for things, Max. It’s not your fault. It’s not my fault. It’s just the way things happened.”
Max stares into Rachel’s eyes, watches as they seemingly shift colors, and whispers brokenly, “We graduate in a few months, Rachel. She was supposed to be graduating with us.”
“I know.” Rachel’s reply is flat, empty.
Max's lower lip quivers. “I never even got to see her again.”
“I know, Max. I know. I miss her too. More than I ever show.”
Max doesn’t even realize she’s crying until Rachel grabs ahold of her and pulls her into a tight embrace. That blue feather earring tickles her cheek, and she hears the quiet sound of Rachel’s own breath snagging, and then they’re both crying.
Rachel’s hand rubs soothing circles into her back. In turn, Max presses their bodies even closer together, wishing she could shield them both from their pain.
Later, at an unreasonable hour given that they have classes come morning, they both lay on the floor and watch the projected stars slowly orbit around the ceiling. They’re blue and purple and all the shades of each. While they’re not authentic, with Rachel by her side, Max thinks they’re prettier than the real thing.
Rachel shifts her head, resting it on Max’s arm, and lets out a soft, content noise. “You’re comfy.”
“Glad to be of service,” Max replies, tilting her head. The angle is awkward and it hurts her neck, but it’s worth it to catch a glimpse of the beautiful girl next to her.
Rachel is dotted in stars, awash in their colors, and Max feels that same terrible urge squeeze her heart. But it’s worse now than before. Her fingers brush against the bullets that hang around her neck – cold and rough despite their rounded edges.
Rachel Amber is so beautiful it aches.
When Max leans in, rests her hand reverently against Rachel’s warm cheek, and swallows a surprised hitch with a tender kiss, she isn’t sure why she does it – other than that she can’t fucking take it anymore.
She isn’t sure if she does it for Rachel, who will never again feel Chloe’s lips on hers or the heat of their skin pressed together. Rachel deserves that love, deserves to have felt it for longer than she did.
She isn’t sure if she does it for Chloe, who had a whole future ahead of her with the love of her life. She thinks she knows what Chloe would be feeling in this moment, so she pours those emotions – love and remorse and care and everything that can’t be defined by a label – into the kiss.
She isn’t sure if she does it for herself, who loved Chloe and never told her. Herself, who walked out of Chloe’s life that day not knowing it would be for the last time. How could she have known? She should have spent the rest of her life by her best friend’s side like they planned to do when they were kids. Herself, who needs to cling onto the one thread she has left and – maybe, just maybe – is falling in love with the absolute last person she should.
She isn’t even sure if Rachel Amber feels the same way.
But she kisses her all the same.