Nov 27, 2013 – First Choice Timeline
When she woke, the sun had long since set, and a deep quiet had settled over the dormitory. Max couldn’t make out much, the blackout curtains doing their job and preventing any of the moonlight from penetrating into her room. She squinted and shuffled over her covers towards the switch for her lanterns, then shielding her eyes, she flipped the switch and a soft, warm light parted the darkness that had stolen in during her nap.
As her eyes adjusted, she thought back to the dream from which she had stirred. She still couldn’t place the voice that had been carried to her on the wind, but whoever had spoken those words, they stuck with Max as she slowly returned to the waking world.
“Be strong.”
Great advice , she thought. Thank you freaky dream fairy.
She wanted to shake it off like she always did unwanted thoughts, and yet the dream held an eerie quality, a surreal similarity to the visions that had plagued her in the week leading up to the storm.
It had been a dream, right?
She couldn’t be sure. Perhaps she had a vision before falling asleep, or perhaps in her sleep. She doubted she would be able to tell the difference between a dream vision and a simple dream. But if it was a vision, why now? She had already made her choice, and it had been to save the Bay, but in that dream, Arcadia Bay had been destroyed and Chloe, Chloe was still alive… at first.
Nope. Nope, nope. Don’t like that. Going to block that part out.
Yet, try as she might, she couldn’t shake that image of Chloe, her mischievous grin pulling at her lips, right before she backed off the cliff and fell to the rocks and sea below.
Dog, couldn’t she ever just have one good sleep? One sleep where she wasn’t plagued by nightmares of that week? Hell, now she had to have dreams of things that hadn’t even happened, of choices that she didn’t make. Seriously, if that’s what fate had in store for her, Max felt fairly certain she’d never get a good night’s sleep again.
Speaking of which, that nap had woken her right up. Max shook her arms out, trying to rid herself of excess energy, but no, it was too late. She was wide awake. Realizing that laying back down now would be an exercise in futility, Max rose from her bed, and left her room in search of distraction.
A thick silence awaited Max in that hallway, the dorms muted in the absence of so many students. It figured that she had been surrounded by her peers every day since she returned to this timeline, having to work to shut them out and find the solitude that she craved, but now, now that most of her classmates had returned home for the long weekend, now, she had a vision; now she needed someone to distract her from the chaos of her mind; and now, there was no one to be found.
Max flipped open her phone to check the time: Twelve past midnight. She must have been asleep for at least five hours, which was an hour or so better than most nights, anymore. Yep, I’m not going back to sleep now. Her display showed numerous text alerts as well, but given the hour, Max assumed those could wait. With the dorms emptying out for Thanksgiving, there were bound to be a few goodbye messages.
Worse than the long night ahead of her, was the complete lack of company. Photography class had stirred images of the Dark Room that morning, and Max could still hear that whispered voice in her ear. As she’d push it down, attempting to force out those unwanted memories, her dream would surface: Arcadia Bay destroyed; Chloe stepping out into the open air and vanishing into the waters below. Nope, nope, nope.
The channel changed and there Max was all in black, the afternoon sun beating down on her and the other mourners gathered in the Arcadia Bay Cemetery. She had tried so hard and for so long to keep this memory at bay, but now, struggling against her dream, alone with no sounds to distract her, and no friends to comfort her, Max felt that memory steel in and grip into her. There was no escaping it this time.
She stumbled past Brooke’s room and leaned against the window at the end of the hall staring out over the breezeway and towards the main building of the school; into that quad where Chloe had once leapt out with a loud ‘Boo-yah!’ much to Max’s consternation, and, secretly, her delight. She tried to focus on that memory, on the two of them breaking into Blackwell ( If I have a key, how can it be breaking? They can’t charge us just for entering! ), on Chloe trying to convince her they should take the principal’s chair ( No, you’re not taking the cozy chair ), on their evening trespass at the pool ( Splish splash! … There’s an otter in my water ), on all the thrills of that evening. It was no use. Just as soon as one memory would steal in, there came the funeral again to drown it out.
To her left Mr. Madsen supported Joyce as her grief overwhelmed her and she cried into his arms. To her right, Warren stood head solemnly bowed, and on the other side of Joyce and Mr. Madsen, Kate dabbed at her cheeks as her tears flowed. Max, however, couldn’t cry. She had still been in shock. For her, she had been there with Chloe on the cliff, barely an hour earlier, watching the storm roll in. Now, rather then, she stood watching helplessly as the small gathering listened to some old Father eulogize Chloe in a display of formality that her friend would have despised.
Beyond Warren, Kate, herself, and Joyce and David, about a half dozen other mourners stood in attendance, faces somber and hands clasped before them in respect: all from Blackwell. Trevor and Justin hadn’t been unexpected, having been friends with Rachel Amber and Chloe before Rachel disappeared. Dana was there with Trevor, and, Max suspected, to support her as well; likely the same reason that Warren and Kate were in attendance, as they had neither seen Chloe since before her junior year expulsion. Still, the last two attendees made no sense to Max. Victoria stood off on her own, just as solemn and reflective as all the attendees; Victoria whose best friend had killed Chloe; Victoria who had openly despised her in life; Victoria who had no right to be there.
Then, there stood Principal Wells, the man whom had expelled Chloe over two years prior – the second time he had expelled her. That last time stuck. Max could remember the anger roiling within her that this man, this drunken hypocrite, would show his face at Chloe’s funeral.
Yet all of that, her anger at Wells, her confusion over Victoria, her grief that so many of the mourners were there to support her rather than Chloe, Max kept it all inside. That afternoon was about her best friend, not her. So, she stood silently as the Father wrapped up his eulogy and she watched in muffled shock, worrying her hands, as a blue butterfly flitted through the air just over the Madsens and down in a graceful arc until it came to rest upon the head of Chloe’s coffin. Her tears flowed then, at last, but as Max focused on that butterfly, its blue wings flapping as it took a brief respite there with Chloe, the faintest hint of a smile had crept in. To an outside observer, it might have seemed that Max had found some peace with Chloe’s death, that the butterfly had perhaps symbolized for her a beauty and rest for her friend in the afterlife, a peace found in death that she never found in life. For others perhaps that smile merely signified Max’s delight reliving a long forgotten memory of her childhood friend.
Max knew the truth, however; that butterfly had started everything. It had been there the moment that Chloe had died, originally died. It had been there when her powers triggered; and its presence then, at Chloe’s funeral, at her latest dance with death, well, for Max that symbolized hope. Maybe time was not done yet with Chloe Price and Max Caulfield; maybe somewhere in the future past, Max and Chloe would yet be reunited.
So she had smiled, and she had let that hope settle in, and then she had buried it and she had grieved. Chloe had begged her to go back and save Arcadia Bay, to save her mother and even her step-douche, and Max, in taking that photo of this same blue butterfly from her friend’s shaking hand, had made a promise to Chloe. She had promised to set things right and to undue all her meddling with time, correcting its course and ridding the world of that ungodly storm; and to keep that promise, she couldn’t have hope – not of a world with Chloe Price alive and well.
Until that moment in the hall, Max had been able to keep that hope buried, avoiding all thoughts of that day, and of those somber proceedings. Now, all that grief and that hope came flooding back and Max couldn’t handle it. She ran, not realizing at first where she was headed; not until she found herself leaning over the sink in the showers, splashing water on her face. She had to get it together. It was only day one of Thanksgiving break, and already she was a mess.
Max splashed another dash of water over her cheeks and eyes, running her wet hands down her face and staring at her zombie-like complexion in the mirror. There. That was better. She breathed out, thoughts of the funeral already floating away, carried off into the nether like a dream upon waking.
She stretched, cracking her knuckles, and pushed back from the sink. She could do this; she could pull it together. She just had to focus one day, one hour at a time. Turning off the water, she shifted away, ready to head back out into the hall. If she were lucky, maybe she wasn’t the only one that had stayed behind. Maybe she’d hear some music or TV coming from one of the other girls’ rooms and find some solace knowing that she was not alone. So, she stepped away from the sink and – came to an immediate halt.
Sink after sink and mirror after mirror lined the wall, way more than the three sinks that should have been there; and the orangish brown and white tint of the girls’ shower room had been replaced with an all too familiar blue and white checkering. And, crap, those weren’t shower stalls to her right. No, in an instant she had been transported back to a different memory, that memory in that bathroom.
Max squeezed her eyes shut, and for a moment the hallucination faded and she stood once more in the showers; then came that manic voice.
“It’s cool Nathan… Don’t stress… You’re okay, bro. Just count to three.”
That voice had been so panicked, but also laced with so much anger and privilege. It had dripped with toxicity, and Max, she couldn’t hear it again, she couldn’t relive this.
“Don’t be scared… You own this school… If I wanted I could blow it up… You’re the boss…”
No, Max wasn’t about to do this again. She jammed her hands against her ears and slid down along the wall to the floor, between two sinks, muttering under her breath, like a child trying to drown out a friend’s taunts.
“I’m not listening. I’m not listening. I’m not listening.”
Still the voices came.
A door creaked open. “So what do you want?”
Nope. Nope, nope. Max knew what was coming. She couldn’t hear that voice. She couldn’t let this memory play out.
“I hope you checked the perimeter,” that new voice began; her voice; Chloe’s voice.
Max pushed harder on her ears and lunged to her feet, rushing for the door.
“… as my step-ass would say,” the Chloe-voice continued. “Now, let’s talk bidness –”
Max burst from the showers, rushing out in a desperate bid to leave that memory behind; she hauled the door open and plowed out into the hall with a frenzied burst of energy — slamming right into Taylor Christensen and knocking her back against the stray desk by the window.
“God, Max! Watch where you’re going!”
Max’s daze lifted, as if yanked away by an unseen hand, and suddenly she was very, very much in the present; a present where she had just slammed Taylor, goon number one of Team Victoria, into a desk.
“I’m… I’m so sorry,” she said, genuinely apologizing. She didn’t get along with Taylor, but she didn’t have it out for her either.
“I’m so sorry,” Taylor parroted, adding a nasally mocking tone to her voice. “Don’t be sorry,” she continued, dropping the mock accent. “Just watch where you’re going, selfie girl.”
Ugh. Taylor and all of Team Victoria were the worst. Why of all the girls in the dorm did it have to be Taylor that stayed behind with Max over the break?
“I… I will,” Max stammered “I really am… sorry.”
Taylor rolled her eyes as she pushed past Max into the showers, mumbling something that sounded suspiciously like “weirdo freak” under her breath.
Mortified, and still wide awake, Max headed towards the stairwell and the upstairs TV lounge. She needed a distraction and she doubted a one-on-one girl’s night with Taylor was in the cards.
An hour later, Max lay sprawled in the girls’ TV lounge, a can of soda and some Lays chips open on the table by her feet, while streaming an episode of Pushing Daisies ; which with its themes of death, resurrection, and lost, unattainable loves, was probably not her wisest choice. But so be it, Max wasn’t about best choices tonight. She needed television romance, junk food, and a good blanket. Luckily she’d swung by her room and grabbed an extra blanket from her closet for curling under in the lounge.
Thus settled, she scarfed down some vending machine Oreos and flipped open her phone.
1:25 am .
Damn. It had been nearly an hour and a half, and she was still wide awake. Her phone already open, and with nothing better to do, Max decided that she might as well check her missed text messages.
Dana Ward: Just saw the news. You ok?
11/26/13 -6:08 pm
Dana Ward: Call if u need anything. Thinking of u. <3
11/26/13 -6:34 pm
Dana Ward: And if Juliet tries to bother you, let me know. I told her you and Kate were off-limits.
11/26/13 -6:36 pm
Kate Marsh: Just spoke to Dana. I can’t right now. How is this okay? It’s like I’m in a nightmare and I can’t wake up…
11/26/13 -6:12 pm
Max paused on the first message from Kate. She’d heard those words before; she’d heard them on a rooftop in the pouring rain. What were they doing here? Why was Kate’s mind traveling those paths now? Something had happened while she was asleep, but Max didn’t have a single clue what it might be. Her breathing hitching as her anxiety began to swell, Max returned to her messages.
Kate Marsh: I wish I could go back in time and erase everything…but I can’t, and now what do we do?
11/26/13 -6:16 pm
Kate Marsh: I’m glad you’re with your family. They seem nice. Seems like they’d help in times like these.
11/26/13 -6:19 pm
Kate Marsh: Mom’s just as bad as ever, and tonight, well this just opens up old wounds, we’ve avoided talking about.
11/26/13 -6:24 pm
Kate Marsh: I wish I could hide away somewhere.
11/26/13 -6:25 pm
Kate Marsh: Sorry for blowing up your phone.
11/26/13 -6:38 pm
Kate Marsh: Could you call? I could really do to hear your voice, right now.
11/26/13 -7:05 pm
Kate Marsh: Sorry to bother you. Obviously you’re busy. Probably out with family. You’ve heard right? You have to have. I wouldn’t bother with me right now, either. You’ve got your own problems without me dragging you down.
11/26/13 -7:46 pm
Kate Marsh: I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry, Max. Please call.
11/26/13 -8:18 pm
Dana Ward: Kate’s spiraling. Could you give her a call?
11/26/13 -7:09 pm
Dana Ward: I think she really needs to hear from you. XOXO Thinking of you both.
11/26/13 -7:12 pm
The deeper Max waded through the string of texts, the more her anxiety ratcheted up, the TV existing now as nothing more than a dull background drone. All that mattered was the phone in Max’s hand, and the mounting tension with every new text that she read.
Warren Graham: Max. I’m worried. I can’t believe this. It is so insane.
11/26/13 -7:16 pm
Warren Graham: Call your boy Friday here if you need to talk
11/26/13 -7:17 pm
Alyssa Anderson: You okay?
11/26/13 -7:19 pm
Alyssa? Alyssa texted? Max tried to swallow, but found that her mouth was too dry and a dull ache had formed in her throat. Her hands were shaking now, but she only had a few messages left; and all from Victoria.
Victoria Chase: CALL KATE
11/26/13 -7:24 pm
Victoria Chase: You better be dead or in the hospital. Those are the only excuses I’m going to accept.
11/26/13 -9:05 pm
Victoria Chase: WTF! Taylor saw yuo in the dorms. U CALL KATE NOW.
11/27/13-12:27 am
Victoria Chase: Taylor, says you’re not in your room. Where r u?
11/27/13-12:51 am
Victoria Chase: I’ve got all night, Max.
11/27/13-1:09 am
With a trembling hand, Max set down her phone. She should call Kate, but she still had no idea why everyone was in a panic, and why they all seemed so concerned about the two of them. Kate hadn’t tried to kill herself in this reality, but with her video out there, even if nothing was officially released, it was public knowledge that she had been drugged by Nathan and had been one of Jefferson’s victims; but Max, no one knew about her time in the Dark Room. No one knew that she was a victim.
“The slightly unconscious model is often the most open and honest.” His voice broke through Max’s panic and brought with it a whole new flood of anxiety. Much as with her attack that afternoon in Language of Photography, his voice whispered in her ear, softer than he had spoken in that reality, but with just as much malevolence.
“No,” Max muttered. “Shut up.”
She knew it was useless. He was only in her head; a memory or a fabrication at most. You can’t argue with a memory. Yet, still she tried.
“I promise…” that voice continued.
“Shut Up, I said.”
“People will care when you die tonight, Max. I wasn’t lying when I said you had a gift.”
She covered her ears and screamed. She screamed loud and long, drawing it out as if the very force and duration of her scream could will away that man’s memory. When at last she stopped, her throat raw and hoarse, she noticed the silence. That voice had stopped, no longer whispering in her ear, but what’s more, all sounds had stopped: even the television. She sat now in a cone of silence.
Confused, Max opened her eyes.
“Better?” Taylor asked. She stood there in her silk pajamas, her soft blond hair unkempt, as if woken fresh from sleep. Max hadn’t been screaming that long though, had she? Could Taylor have woken to her scream and made it here that quickly?
“Victoria’s looking for you.”
Oh, yeah, that makes more sense.
“She woke you to find me?”
“Yeah. Stop ignoring your phone.” Taylor gestured to the phone in Max’s hand. “You might want to call Kate or Victoria, if you don’t want her to blow up your messages all weekend.”
Max glanced back to her phone screen, the contacts button calling to her from the bottom corner. She should call; but she still didn’t know what had happened, and that bubble of fear had not diminished with the quieting of Jefferson’s voice.
“Um… Taylor?” Max’s words came out little more than a croak, a soft, raspy plea.
Taylor either didn’t pick up Max’s distress, or she just didn’t care. “Yes?” she asked, not even attempting to hide the agitation in her voice.
At that moment, Max longed for Dana’s cheerful banter or for Kate’s soft voice, always so full of concern and compassion. As much as she had lied to herself over the past month and a half, convincing herself that she needed neither, she could see now how much she had been relying on the two of them to hold herself together. Now, alone with Taylor and her clear animosity, Max grew concerned that she no longer had the strength to stand on her own. Still, she needed answers, and there was no one here to help her; no one save for Taylor.
“Taylor,” Max started again. A lump formed in her throat, and Max had to swallow it back before she could continue speaking, an awkward pause stretching between the two girls, until at last Max found her voice again. “Why does Victoria want me to talk to Kate?”
Max had rarely seen so blatantly clear a transformation of emotions. The wide-eyed agitation knitted in Taylor’s brows softened to a narrowed, cock-eyed confusion, followed swiftly by a further softening to a delicate look of concern.
“Wait… didn’t you hear?” That puzzled look stole over Taylor’s face again, and suddenly Max really wanted her to just pick one emotion and stick with it.
“No. Hear what? I crashed right after class.”
“Shit.” Taylor wasn’t talking to Max, more mumbling to herself, her eyes shifting towards the TV lounge entryway. Clearly she wanted an exit, any way out of this conversation, and for a moment, Taylor’s fingers began to twitch, pulling at the hem of her nightshirt. Max remembered then, a different Taylor; a Taylor from that lost week, prepping for bed at the sinks. What was it she had said after Max had comforted her, the two bonding over guilt for Kate’s suicide attempt and relief for its failure?
“Now I have to be alone for my nightly anxiety attack.”
“Are you okay?” Max asked.
Taylor eyed her suspiciously, obviously unaccustomed to Max’s concern. Whatever she may have suspected, she pushed that aside however.
“I… I shouldn’t be the one to tell you,” she started.
“Please.”
Taylor took one last look at the exit, then relaxed down onto the couch beside Max. “Okay…” she breathed in deep, then slowly exhaled and collected herself together. “Let’s do this.”
Max waited as Taylor gave herself a mental prep talk, then finally started in. “Okay. You remember after… well, after the shooting…”
Damn. She was really going to walk on eggshells here, wasn’t she?
“Yeah…”
“Okay. And you remember when they took Nathan in, when he was arraigned, you remember the news then, that week? How the court had sided with the defense and agreed to a temporary commitment and evaluation at Aspen Slopes in Portland?”
Uh, no, Taylor, I was in another timeline that week, and the Max you knew who heard all of that apparently blocked it out and didn’t note it in her diary and is no longer here, replaced by her doppelgänger from an alternate reality. And that doppelgänger has been so caught up on Chloe’s death she didn’t even think about the possibility that Nathan might be anywhere other than prison.
“Um… yeah,” Max said, figuring that was likely the safer course of action. “What are you saying?”
“Well, um…” Taylor hemmed and hawed, obviously wishing anyone other than her was here to relay whatever news she was holding in. “Well…” she continued. “The court reconvened today, just before close. According to V, based on the recommendations of the doctors in Aspen Slopes… well, they’re saying that based on his mental state, and, with treatment, a decreased likelihood of, I think she said, recidivism, that —”
“Just cut to it.” Max snapped. Taylor meant well, but dancing around the topic did Max no good. “Please,” she added, trying to dull the cut of her words.
“The court agreed to a half million dollars in bail. He was released under house arrest.”
“He was…was…” Max stuttered.
“Released,” Taylor finished.
Yeah, that’s what she thought she had heard. Chloe was dead, and the man that killed her wasn’t even in jail. He wasn’t even in an institution. He was at home living it up at Chez Prescott. Of course, bail still meant…
“When’s the trial?” she asked, grasping for any straw she could.
“They don’t know. It could be as soon as May, it could still be a year out.”
A year; a whole year. For the next year, Nathan would be free, awaiting trial, and Chloe, she’d still be in the ground. The force of that struck Max, the injustice of it, and she could barely breathe.
He was free. He was free.
That psychotic, privileged ass was free.
