Nov 27, 2013 – First Choice Timeline

Max couldn’t shake that thought, the sickening realization that Nathan Prescott was free. Sure, he would still have to face trial, but that seemed a joke. Half a million dollars and a month and a half in a psych ward had bought Chloe’s murderer his freedom.

It had been about five minutes since Taylor told Max about Nathan; about his stay at Alpen Slopes in Portland ( which let’s face it, sounds more like a luxury resort than it does a mental institution ), about his bail hearing and subsequent release, about his house arrest until the trial; it had been five minutes since Max’s world, a world to which she had barely been hanging on to begin with, had been turned completely upside down.

At the realization that Nathan wouldn’t even be brought to trial for possibly up to a year, Max had stood and wandered to the far corner window across from the storage closet. She leaned against the sill and stared out into the night, across the quad until her eyes rested on the Tobanga, standing proudly and mysteriously upon the hill overlooking the dorms. She stood there, lost in thought, mesmerized by the mystery of that artifact, and just as much perplexed by the reality with which she had just been presented.

As the silence stretched between them, Taylor smoothed out her nightgown and glanced nervously about the room, her discomfort plain to see. Let her be uncomfortable , Max thought. She should be uncomfortable. We should all be uncomfortable. And that was the truth, wasn’t it? Nathan had ranted in that bathroom that he could blow up the school if he had wanted to, and at the time that she first heard it, and the second time and the third time that she heard it, Max had believed those words to be mad ravings — just psychotic drivel Nathan spouted to work up his courage. Now she knew better. He could. He could actually blow up the school and Max was no longer certain that he would actually face any real consequences for doing so.

“Um, Max?” Taylor shot Max a questioning look, then shifted her eyes back to her hands in her lap. She had been fidgeting nervously from her place on the couch the entire time that Max had been at the window, and it was driving Max insane. It had been Max’s best friend that bastard had shot, yet Taylor was the one sitting on the couch with that hurt puppy face. Intuitively, Max understood it. The whole situation was awkward. Neither of them were really friends — were closer to enemies than friends if she was honest about the situation — so having to have that conversation, well, of course things were going to get weird. Max going quiet for five minutes straight probably wasn’t helping the situation either. Okay, Max thought. Maybe I can cut her a little slack.

“Sorry. It’s just… it’s a lot to take in.”

“Yeah.” Taylor nodded and when Max didn’t say anything more, she kept going. “I bet.”

Max suspected that Taylor couldn’t deal with the silence. In all honesty, Max couldn’t blame her. Just a few minutes before Taylor’s arrival and that same silence had been driving Max up the wall; now something else was sitting in the driver’s seat — something cold and raw and sharp.

She knew she should say something; that she should make a greater effort to ease the tension, but Max’s head kept spinning. The mystery of the Tobanga, Nathan free, Chloe dead, the injustice of it, Jefferson in the Dark Room, herself letting Chloe die ( murderer ), Kate on that roof, the train barreling down the tracks, gunshots and a switchblade, a storm spiraling towards Arcadia Bay, the mystery of the Tobanga, Nathan free, the injustice of it. Round and round we go.

At last Max pushed back from the window, shattering the loop. “Okay,” she said. “I’m okay.”

“Really,” Taylor asked.

“No.”

Taylor nodded.

“But I will be.” That wasn’t true either, but Taylor didn’t need to know that. Max plowed forward before Taylor could question her further. “I’ll text Victoria.”

“Good.”

Oh, aren’t we the talkative bunch tonight?

Max pulled out her phone and tapped onto the message chain with Victoria, typing out her message quick and to the point.

Slept through news. Checking in with Kate :Max

11/27/13-1:41 am

She heard the immediate ping of a response. What was it now, nearly two am? Max ignored the incoming message. She’d done her due diligence. Anything else that Victoria wanted to say could wait until morning.

Quickly she tapped over to Dana’s contact, and typed an equally quick if slightly less succinct follow up.

So sorry. Just heard. :Max

Can’t really wrap my head around it yet, but I will reach out to Kate.

11/27/13-1:43 am

Thank you for caring. :Max

xomaxo

11/27/13-1:44 am

She didn’t have the mental energy to respond to everyone then and there, but she knew that there was one more text that she had to send: one more that could not wait until morning.  Her finger hesitated over her message logs. She couldn’t bring herself to tap into that chat.

Seizing on a distraction, she pivoted on her heel and marched over to the couch hauling up her messenger bag and pulling out a pack of cigarettes.

“Smoke,” she asked.

Max couldn’t say if Taylor had agreed to come because she actually wanted a smoke, because she felt obligated to be there for Max as the one that broke the news, or because she just couldn’t find any way to back out of it. Whatever her reasons, Taylor leaned on the railing of the stairs, cigarette to her lips, as Max exhaled across from her.

A cold silence spread between them, deep as the chill in the night air. Neither seemed ready to break it, so both smoked quietly, no words shared until Taylor tapped out the last bit of ash from her cigarette, and stamped out the butt under her heel.

“Bum another,” she asked.

“Sure.” Max nodded as she flipped open her pack and held it out towards Taylor.

Taylor slid out a fresh cigarette, cupping her hand to shield it from the wind as she lit it up and inhaled. Easing it from her lips, she let out a slow exhale, Max marveling at the thin, wispy tendrils of smoke rising into the night. Taylor turned to her then, an unspoken question hanging on her partially parted lips.

Max thought it best to wait her out and to let Taylor ask at her own pace. So, she took out her phone and tapped out a message to Kate. That’s what she was avoiding anyway, right? Of course, she needed to call Kate, but it was late, and if she sent a text, well, she could congratulate herself on a  job well done and hope for the best; hope that Kate was asleep and that this was a conversation for the morning, or tomorrow, or maybe even next week. Here’s hoping. Now take the plunge, Max.

Hi, Kate. Sorry. I missed the news. :Max

11/27/13-1:57 am

And your texts. :Max

11/27/13-1:58 am

I crashed after classes. Just seeing them now. :Max

Call if you’re up. I won’t be sleeping anytime soon.

11/27/13-2:00am

That done, Max closed her phone and slid it back into her pocket, switching it out for her pack of cigarettes. Taylor still hadn’t asked her question, but it hung there in that pregnant pause, and Max decided that this time, maybe she would just do her a favor and coax it out of her.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Max tapped out another cigarette for herself and leaned back against the far rail of the stairs as she cast her questioning gaze upon Taylor. As she threw the question across that gulf of space, she was acutely aware of the distance between the two of them; physical yes (the length of the stairs), but also social and psychological. Taylor stood at the pinnacle of a social hierarchy on which Max was the bottom rung. At the same time, Max had seen more trauma in a week than most people saw in a lifetime. Max came from a place of struggle, fighting to work her way into Blackwell Academy. Taylor came from privilege, her place in Blackwell almost assured by right of birth. Yet, tonight, sharing cigarettes in the cool fall air, none of that mattered.

“Are you scared,” Taylor asked. Max wasn’t sure what she expected fromTaylor, but that question had not been it. She paused, taking in a long drag from her cigarette, then exhaled marveling in the taste of the smoke and the warmth cascading through her. She could feel her tension easing, and there wasn’t even a hint of a cough. She’d come a long way since Halloween.

Great. Pat yourself on the back, Max. You can give yourself lung cancer with the best of them.

Meh, came her inner reply. She knew it was a terrible idea, but every cigarette reminded her of Chloe. The scent on her clothes that Max had salvaged from the Price-Madsen household was already fading, but in each cigarette the taste and smell of Chloe was fresh and new, as present as it had ever been. She watched the smoke trails catch on the breeze, then turned her attention back to Taylor.

“I don’t think I’d actually stopped to consider that.”

Taylor looked puzzled. “You have to consider if you’re scared?”

“Well,” Max started. “It’s not so much like I have to ask myself, but you know, it’s just.. it’s infuriating. It hurts, and I’m mad. I’m angry and I’m disgusted, and that feeling, that indignation, I guess, it’s just so strong that it hadn’t even occurred to me that yeah, under all of that, I think I am scared, too. I mean, he shot and killed my best friend.”

Oh Dog. Did you just admit that out loud? 

“Your best friend?”

Yep. Sounds like you did. Save this one, Max.

Kate and Dana knew about Max and Chloe, about how they had been so close in childhood. Warren, too. But she hadn’t told anyone that Chloe was her best friend. They hadn’t seen each other in five years. Hadn’t texted in over three. Calling her her best friend, well it seemed a stretch; but it was also true, sad as that might be.

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“I didn’t realize you two were so close. I’m sorry.”

“No one did, I guess. I mean we were best friends before I moved. I was, I don’t know, hoping now that I was back, maybe we would be again. She had a way about her, this whirlwind of energy that just swept you along in its wake, you know?”

“Hmm. Yeah, I can relate, I suppose.”

“Victoria?”

Taylor smiled, but gave no answer. She simply resumed smoking her cigarette in silence for a moment, then pivoted. “Sorry, Max. I don’t know that I’m really up for twenty questions.”

You started it, Max thought. Once again, she kept the thought to herself.

“Sorry,” Max said.

“‘It’s okay.” Taylor tapped out her cigarette, and stamped it out in an ashtray hidden around the bend of the side of the stairs. One look at her and Max knew she was about to make an exit. Normally that would have been cause for celebration, but tonight, Max needed her; so she did something that she never did — she took a risk and tried to connect.

“Is your mom, okay?”

“My mom?”

“I heard she was in the hospital?”

Taylor’s brow furrowed. She looked upset, which puzzled Max. This wasn’t how she’d responded last time she asked; not in that lost week.

“When did you hear,” Taylor asked.

“Huh?”

“When did you hear that my mom was in the hospital?”

Oh crap. Max blanked.

“Um… I don’t know… about…”

“A month or two ago?”

Max lowered her head, gazing down at her feet.

“I take that as a yes.” Taylor tapped her foot. Max wasn’t sure if that was an ‘I’m waiting for an answer’ tap, or just one more of Taylor’s nervous habits that she had never picked up on before, but either way she figured it wasn’t a good sign.

“Yeah,” Max responded, her voice soft and barely above a whisper.

Taylor shook her head. “Unbelievable.”

Taylor pulled the door open, paused, then let it shut again, turning back to Max.

“You know, weird as tonight was, weird and dramatic… for a second there, I thought… I don’t know… maybe V was wrong about you. You know?”

Max bit at her lip. She knew where this was going; she didn’t even need to have lived it before to know. Clearly she’d messed up, and there would be no rewinding this time; not without breaking her unspoken promise to Chloe.

“But what… you heard my  mom was in the hospital over a month ago. Never thought to ask about her until now… Until what… you’re hurting and have no one else to talk to. Well, you know what, Max… Fuck you. I’m not some consolation prize; I’m my own damn person. If you cared, you would have asked when I needed to hear it. You would have asked when she was in surgery, or the weeks before when all we could do was hope she made it until the surgery at all. Or even the week after as we waited for the test results and for any clue on her recovery. Anytime before now… but not just when it suited you.”

“Taylor…” Max started, but she didn’t know what else to say. I’m sorry. I was grieving and it slipped my mind? I’m sorry, you and I hated each other and so I never thought to ask? I’m sorry, I asked you in an alternate timeline and after I reset that timeline I forgot that you and I never had that conversation in this reality. Or better yet, I’m sorry, but I’m too afraid to even try to connect with anyone when I can’t rewind and correct my mistakes. 

Max realized that she was just standing there, mouth agape, words unspoken, and finally she clamped her mouth shut. There was nothing that she could say to make this better.

“Yeah,” Taylor nodded. “That’s what I thought. Good night, Max.” The door slammed shut behind Taylor, leaving Max alone on the steps, her cigarette a long stem of ash.

Max dropped the butt and stamped it out on the stairs, then sat down and slid her head into her hands. That could have gone so much better , she thought. She should go after her. She should try to actually apologize. She did care, didn’t she? She didn’t just use everyone around her, right?

“FUCK!” Max screamed into her hands. Maybe she was an awful person, after all. Maybe Victoria was right about her. Damn it , she thought, realizing that she did need to go after Taylor. She had to apologize. She had to.

Hands to her knees, she pushed herself up, ready to follow after the girl into the dorms. As she stood, however, her phone buzzed in her pocket. Slipping it out, she saw the caller ID: Kate. Much as she needed to go after Taylor, Kate needed her even more.

“Hello,” Max said, a hint of uncertainty in her voice. She feared screwing up this conversation as well.

“Hi, Max.” Kate’s voice came through soft and shaken. Max could tell that Kate had been crying.

“I’m sorry,” Max said; and she was. She was sorry for missing Kate’s texts when she had needed her. She was sorry that Nathan had been released. She was sorry that she let Chloe die. And she was sorry that she had screwed things up with Taylor. She was sorry about everything.

“It’s okay. You were asleep.”

“I’m up, now.”

“Uh huh. Me, too. Apparently.” There wasn’t an ounce of grogginess in Kate’s voice. Max wondered if that alertness was from shock alone, or if Kate had been splurging on caffeine to keep herself up and away from the nightmares that sleep might entail.

“Can’t sleep,” she asked.

“Are you going to be able to?”

Kate had a point. After learning about Nathan, Max felt confident she wouldn’t be sleeping anymore tonight. “Probably not,” she said.

“Yeah. Me neither.”

“How are you…” Max trailed off. She would only have one chance at this conversation. It surprised her how much anxiety that simple truth brought with it. She discovered her ability to rewind time  at the start of that one week, and had only used that ability for that one week alone, and yet, she had become so reliant on it. Whole friendships had been forged through her ability to snoop without anyone knowing; to fumble a conversation and redo it; to act without fear of consequence. Now every conversation, or at least every conversation that mattered, was a minefield. “How are you… holding up?” she finished.

“Better than when I heard,” Kate replied. “Worse than before. I don’t really know. I mean, I don’t remember it, what they… you know…” Kate paused and Max knew that she was searching for the right words, a phrase that was perhaps both sanitized enough for polite company and explicit enough that it would encompass the horror of what had happened. “I don’t remember… what they did…what happened to… me. But I do remember snippets.”

Oh Dog. What does she remember? Please, nothing new.

“Not there, you know, in that place, but before and after,” Kate continued. “I remember the party, almost like stills, snapshots of it… of Nathan helping me to the door. He seemed so nice; not his usual self. And I bought it, Max. I did. I thought that, hey, maybe I’d misread him. He said he’d take me to the hospital and I was so thankful. I just went right along with him. How could I do that? How could I be so… so stupid?”

“Kate. No.” Max knew self-loathing and self-doubt. They were her constant companions; but Kate, Kate was a saint, and Max couldn’t let her friend go down that route.

“No?” Kate’s voice angled up into a question.

“No,” Max answered. “No, this isn’t on you. You’re a good person. You see people the way that they should be; the way that they could be. And that’s… it’s beautiful, Kate. Okay? Don’t let them change that.”

“But I —”

“But you, nothing. Everything that happened, that’s on them. Not you. Do you understand me?”

“Yeah.” Kate’s voice sounded barely above a whisper, weak and full of doubt. This wouldn’t do.

“So tell me.”

“Tell you what?”

“Tell me that you understand it wasn’t your fault.” And Max knew it wasn’t. It wasn’t Kate’s fault. Was it her own fault? Max could rewind time, but had she ever considered preventing Kate from being abducted? Did the fact that she could technically prevent it mean that Max in her own way bore culpability? Those were questions that Max was not ready to face; they mixed with her own sense of guilt, her own self-blame for what had happened to her in the Dark Room; for falling for Jefferson’s trap in the junkyard and letting him murder Chloe ( don’t worry, you erased that. That way you could murder her all by yourself ) and take her. On some level, Max knew she was asking Kate not only to accept that she wasn’t responsible, but also to say for it herself, for Max; to admit that those bastards, that Nathan and Jefferson alone, were responsible for what had happened, and not either of them.

“Tell me, Kate,” she continued. “Please.”

“It’s not my fault.”

“No, it’s not,” Max said. “Thank you. You need to know that.”

“I do,” she said. “You know it’s not, as well… right?”

“It’s not what?” Please don’t go there, please don’t go there, pleasedon’t gothere, pleasedontgotherepleasedont—

“Chloe,” Kate said. “You know that what happened to her, that what… what Nathan did to her… that wasn’t your fault either, Max. I know we don’t talk about it… we avoid it… but… but you need to hear it… you need to hear it just as much as I did.  It’s not your fault, either.”

Damn it. She went there. Max didn’t believe her. The second she heard those words from Kate, she knew it. She knew that she blamed herself. She knew that Kate was wrong. Max wasn’t Kate. Max wasn’t a saint; and Chloe’s death, that was on her. Still, the words were nice. Hearing them, hearing someone try to tell her that she wasn’t to blame, it felt comforting, even if a comfort to which she had no right.

“Thank you,” she muttered, her voice spent, struggling to choke back a surge of emotion.

“You’re welcome, Max.”

Quiet stole over the line as each contemplated what had been said, and also everything that hadn’t been said. Max tried numerous times to start up the conversation again, to will herself to speak, but she still felt too raw, and that underlying worry persisted, the worry that she would say the wrong thing and ruin this, the deepest, closest friendship she had remaining. At last, Kate broke the silence.

“I’m glad you’re home, Max. You always speak so well of your family; I’m glad that you’re there with them now, with people who understand.”

Damn. Why did she have to go there? Max could lie to her and assure her that her family was helping and that she wasn’t worried about Nathan because she was there with them, but she knew when Kate found out — and she would — that the lie could threaten this friendship just as much as her bumbling awkwardness ruined everything else. She could tell her the truth, instead, but would that be just as bad, since she’d already let Kate believe the lie before she had left? Would a lie by omission be fine? Perhaps a deflection?

“Is your mom…” Max started to ask, but hesitated uncertain how to kindly end that question.

“She’s being her usual self. She means well, but she’s… she’s preaching the Lord’s forgiveness, as if I should, I don’t know, accept the court’s judgment. That the court says that Nathan was not of a sound mind, or however they put it, and that he deserves our understanding. But… when that video… when I went viral… well, you remember what she was like.”

“Yeah. Your dad?”

“He’s better. I just don’t understand it. I’m her daughter and when it’s me… and forgive me… I know I shouldn’t talk ill of my mother… but… when it was me, she didn’t have any understanding… any forgiveness. Now, that it’s him… Him… I just…”

“I just can’t believe they released him,” Max said. She could tell talking about her mom hurt Kate, so she tried to change the subject; to bring the conversation to the inevitable conclusion to which this conversation had always been headed.

“It’s… it just doesn’t feel real, Max. After everything they found in that bunker, everything that the news reported on him and Jefferson… after he did that to me, to Rachel Amber… after he…”

“… after he shot Chloe,” Max finished.

“Yeah,” Kate said. “After all of that, and he’s out. Confined, maybe, sure, but not in jail.”

“I know.” Max’s voice cracked, and suddenly she became very aware of the chill biting into her; of the shadows snaking across the dormitory lawn, and of just how open and exposed she truly was out here… alone. She stood, and opened the door, rushing down the entry hall and angling back to the stairs, pushing immediately through the steel stairwell door. As she climbed the stairs the door clicked shut with that distinct metallic echo that reverberates through stairwells in campuses everywhere.

“Max,” Kate said, the question evident in her tone. “Where are you?”

Crap.  That sense of panic had risen so quickly, Max hadn’t bothered to think. She’d just bolted straight in, rushing as quickly as she could towards her room. She slowed her pace now, overly cognizant of the sound of each footfall against the concrete stairs with their metal tread.

“Just going to my room,” Max offered. Technically it was true. She just wasn’t specifying which room — hers in Seattle or hers in Blackwell.

As she eased through the door between the stairwell and the girl’s dorm, she noticed Taylor’s door on the right, still propped open, the light from her room angling out into the hall. Max would need to try to talk to her in the morning, if she was still there. Now, however, now she had to focus on Kate. She rushed past Taylor’s room, tuning out the blare of the upbeat poppy anthem drifting into the hallway, as a female voice sang out:

“I guess that I forgot I had a choice, 

I let you push me past the breaking point…”

Max pushed on, leaving Taylor behind, but too late.

“Is that Katy Perry,” Kate asked.

“Um… maybe…” Max honestly wasn’t sure.

“Max.” Kate’s voice was stern, laced in a seriousness and severity that rarely penetrated her more typically mild mannerisms.

“Would you believe that I’m trying to broaden my musical horizons?”

“No,” Kate said, the harshness of her voice softening with the faintest hint of laughter — but only barely “Where are you? Seriously.”

“The dorms,” Max said. It was better that she just admit it than Kate find out from someone else.

“You said you were going home to Seattle.”

“Technically, I said I was going to my room to pack.”

“Max.” Damn. Kate had already mastered her scary, stern mother voice. Max wondered if she had perfected it from years of practice with her sisters. There would probably be better times to ponder that, however. Now Kate was waiting for an answer.

“I’m sorry. I just… I wasn’t ready to… I needed to stay in Arcadia Bay.” And she did need to. If she went back, if she went to Seattle, she didn’t know if she would have the strength to return. Arcadia Bay, this was where Chloe was, where Chloe would always be. She didn’t want to leave her. Not again.

“Okay,” Kate said, her disciplinarian voice gone, replaced now with concern and compassion. “You’re coming here,” she finished.

Oh, no. That’s not happening.

“Kate, if I have to hear your mom talk forgiveness for Nathan Prescott, I won’t be able to hold my tongue. I’m pretty sure I’ll ruin your Thanksgiving break.”

“Fine.” Kate paused thinking over her next words carefully. “Okay, Max. But I’m coming back early. As soon as I can.”

Max didn’t want Kate to ruin her holiday on her account, but she could also tell that Kate would brook no argument. Hell, she was already glad Kate didn’t seem more mad at her for lying earlier; perhaps it was best she let her have this one.

“Okay. Thanks, Kate.”

“Of course. I’ll see you, Friday. Saturday at the latest.”

“Good. I look forward to it.” Much as it surprised her, Max really did look forward to it. Six weeks ago she never really thought she would look forward to anything again, but the thought of seeing Kate, the thought of her joining her over the break and keeping her company, it felt right; it felt comfortable.

“And Max?”

“Yeah?”

“You know Dana is going to murder you, right?”

“That seems harsh.”

“Do you think she would have let you stay alone in the dorms over break?”

“Point taken. Is it too much to hope you won’t tell her?”

“Has anyone seen you on campus, yet?”

“Taylor?” Max posed the name more as a question than a statement, as if to ask if that would be a problem.

“Sorry, Max. You’re already doomed.”