Chapter Text
Max emerged in the bathroom.
Shaking off the nausea and the dizziness caused by the time travel, she crawled to her hiding place. Shielded by the stalls, she curled in on herself and began to cry.
All she had to do was do nothing, and yet, it was a formidable task.
The bathroom door opened and Nathan began his lunatic monologue.
He was another victim, neglected by his own father and exploited in the cruelest way by Jefferson. However, Max could not help but hate him. In a few seconds he was going to kill Chloe.
Some deeds can’t ever be forgiven.
The door opened again. Max sank deeper, clinging to the only reasons she had left for not losing her sanity. She was saving an entire town. Hundreds of lives, each of them with its own story, joyous or miserable, as real as her own. How many lost loves?, how many parents burying their children? Chloe was fully aware of the choice she was forced to make. A single decision that fell upon her, denied the infinite paths that the lives of the inhabitants of Arcadia Bay could take. The useless punk, the dropout who wished to glass the town that had caused her so much pain, was sacrificing herself to save them.
Talk about heroes.
I hope you checked the perimeter, as my step-ass would say. Now, let's talk bidness.
It was all a farce.
Her false bravado, her aggressive appearance, her imposed stiffness, the I don't give a shit attitude. A persona made up to hide her fear and insecurities. Once a young girl full of life, blessed with loving parents and true friendship, until everything was taken from her. Instead of experiencing the affection of her parents and best friend, she grew up with loss and abandonment. She might have changed on the surface, but for Max she was still the cheerful, affectionate little girl she had known so well. A girl who secretly hoped for her father to come home at night and a call from her best friend.
Max had returned to Chloe's life, and once again, all that was granted to her was a small glimpse into a better future, only to be ripped away immediately.
Chloe didn't want to die. Not now, when she had reasons to live. So she confessed herself. The problem was mathematics have no intent, they exist only in the realm of pure logic. One versus thousands seemed like an easy enough equation. A single victim, actually two, counting Max, who wasn't really going to die, but how to call life the endless void that awaited her?
The worst lies are the ones you keep telling yourself, and Max had had her fair share of those. She hadn't gotten over Chloe's separation, she never made any real new friends, the photography program was not her main reason for attending Blackwell and Chloe wasn't just her best friend.
All lies.
And she certainly didn't want to sacrifice Chloe, whatever that said about her.
It was Chloe's finest hour. The redemption moment at the end of the movie, Leonidas falling under a barrage of arrows to protect Sparta. She didn't want to die, but the remaining option was simply impossible for her to accept.
Where'd you get that? What are you doing? Come on, put that thing down!.
But was it really Chloe's call? What good is such an immense power if you cannot protect the one you love the most? Saving an entire town seemed like a good enough reason.
Not for Max.
Maxine, look at it this way:
In front of you there are two lines. On one side, queuing up, all the inhabitants of Arcadia Bay. On the other, just one person, Chloe Elizabeth Price.
The same question is asked every time. Who are you saving? Who are you dooming? Maxine gives the same answer every time, and the line moves.
At the end, the seemingly endless line is empty. Only one person remains on the other line.
Is the choice you’ve already made any easier to swallow this way? Are you less of a mass killer?
You don't know, and honestly, you don't care.
Chloe comes first.
You are going to get in hella more trouble for this than drugs .
"No fucking way."
Acting on pure instinct, Max pushed off the bathroom wall and lunged at the maintenance cart, knocking it over and spilling its contents across the floor. The enclosed space boomed with a metallic roar. A storm in a teacup. A bizarrely adequate metaphor.
Amidst the screams and confusion that ensued, Max stood up, regaining her balance, and peered out of her hiding place. Chloe had already escaped, taking advantage of the distraction. Nathan was crawling across the floor toward the gun that had skittered beneath the sinks. Clumsily, Nathan retrieved the gun and hid it under his jacket, rushing towards the door.
Before he was gone, he turned his head and spotted Max. "You're gonna pay for this, bitch."
And with that, Max’s legs gave out beneath her.
Chloe is alive.
That was all she could think as she was coming out of the blackout stupor.
A banging on the door startled her. "Is anyone there?" David Madsen's unmistakable voice thundered from outside the bathroom. None of what was going on at Blackwell seemed to escape his control, and yet he had not been able to stop Jefferson without the help of two teenagers. "Everything alright inside there?" he insisted, "answer at once, or I'm coming in."
"I'm OK," Max replied. The roughness of her own voice startled her. Then, she realized that the last time she had spoken, she was in another timeline, soaking wet and screaming to make herself heard over a storm. Hoarseness, apparently, crossed timelines as easily as memories did. Another invaluable lesson in time traveling. "I'm sorry. I tripped over the cart and knocked it over."
"Be careful Miss." A discontent grunt erupted from the other side of the door, in true Mr. Madsen style. "You have no business with the maintenance cart, that's for Samuel. The bathroom is meant for… other functions." Rules and guidelines. Even for bathroom use, that's your regular Mr. Madsen.
Max waited until Mr. Madsen had walked away to get out of the bathroom. With her gaze fixed on the floor, avoiding any kind of human interaction, she headed for the front yard. She looked for a tree away from prying eyes and sat down to consider what had just happened.
The implications of her choice were clear. A storm was going to ravage Arcadia Bay, and shockingly, she didn't feel overwhelmed by guilt. Instead, Max felt a contained euphoria. Images of a determined future piled up in her mind. Not the debris of what once were homes nor the piles of rotting corpses, drenched and reeking; Her hometown’s fate or her close friends’ lives; it didn’t even matter that she had miserably broken her promise to Chloe. Nothing held any real weight for Max.
The only thing that mattered was that Chloe was alive, and she couldn't help feeling alive, too. Nothing was of greater value than her. Nothing.
Chloe is alive.
What kind of monster had she become?
Her cell phone went off and the message reception alert light blinked. Max shoved the phone out of her pocket and read Warren's message asking for his flash drive back with a smirk. She was fully entering Déjà Vu land.
Something clicked in her head. In the bathroom, she had been too shocked from the time trip and the sudden change of plans to realize. A minor deviation in the timeline had been introduced, almost without noticing it. She had not triggered the alarm, instead, she had overturned the cart, and such an insignificant change meant she hadn't had to face Wells. For sure David had gotten involved, but he had been dodged without much effort and most certainly he didn't even recognize Max as the bathroom occupant. No one knew that Max had been the third person in the bathroom except for Nathan, and he was, without a doubt not going to tell anyone, even if only for his own sake. The heat was no longer on Max, which gave her ample leeway to maneuver this new timeline.
Her mind buzzed. Could she change more than that?
Chloe didn't want to die, not after having Max back in her life. She had laughed and smiled like she hadn't done in years. She only wanted to save the people in Arcadia Bay, the very same people that didn't care if she lived or died. They had both assumed that Arcadia Bay's fate was linked to Chloe's.
Was that necessarily true? The equation was designed so that only Chloe or Arcadia Bay could be saved, or there were other options? Was dying really her destiny?
They never really knew, but Max did know one thing: Chloe wouldn’t risk it when so much was at stake.
She was going to make the same decision over and over again.
Just like herself.
Chloe was going to sacrifice herself a thousand times if that was what it took.
And that was the exact number of times Max wasn't going to let her die.
It was like that old 80s movie she saw nestled next to her father in Seattle. That time when she was so depressed that she spent all her off-school time locked up at home. Stalemate, mutually assured destruction.
The only winning move is not to play.
Her only winning move was to break the game and make her own rules.
Hands shaking, she pulled out her phone and dialed a number she knew by heart. The phone rang only once before an overly eager voice answered.
"Max, how are you? It's about the flash drive? If you need more time, just let me know, no prob."
"Hey Warren, actually not about the flash drive, I have... um... sort of technical question."
"You called the right number, anything I can do for you, just name it."
"You see... if I had to create an anonymous account to use on the Internet, what would be the best way".
"I would need a little more intel, like what would you use the account for?"
"Let's say I have a piece of information and I want it to reach as many people as possible, in the shortest time, and to be completely anonymous." Warren's response delayed a bit, and she imagined him indulging in all sorts of weird fantasies.
"007 Max, are you a sexy undercover secret agent on a special mission?. I'm volunteering to be your sidekick."
Indeed, weird fantasies. Max sighed before answering, "such a special agent I would be, asking her friend how to do her job. None of that, just a school assignment, and please, use simple terms and be concise. I'm in a bit of a hurry."
Max swore she could hear Warren disappointment through the phone, "I will, I will... I guess the first thing would be to get hold of a public computer. Right here in Blackwell we've got a bunch of them, and create a profile on various social networks... "
Warren finished his exposition, and although Max sometimes struggled to keep up with him, she had taken the precaution of recording the conversation. True to his word, he was brief. "... and I think that's it. That will do the trick?"
"Sure. Thank you very much, I seriously owe you one." Max pulled the phone away from her ear and squeezed it against his collarbone, feeling guilty. She then spoke with a sad voice. "Warren, I'm sorry."
"What for?" Warren replied with concern.
Max raised her right hand and rewound.
She checked her cell phone. The sound file with the conversation that had never existed was there. She felt relieved, as she wasn't one hundred percent convinced it would work. Truth is, you can never be certain about how time travel works. She stirred in her bag and pulled out the earbuds, plugging them into her phone and played the file to familiarize herself with Warren's instructions. Once the recorded conversation started, she got up and headed towards the inside of the main building.
Almost an hour later, Max was sitting in front of a computer screen. Multiple tabs were open in her web browser. The process of signing up in various networks had been pretty straightforward. The problems started when she had to figure out the message to send. She had considered several options before deciding that it was best to publish the same message on all networks. This meant that the social network that allowed the shorter posts was the one setting the limits. It was at that point when she hit an unexpected wall, discovering the hard way that it is one thing knowing what you want to say and a very different story knowing how to say it.
She wrote, erased and rewrote variations of the same sentences dozens of times while cursing inwardly at her own grammatical limitations. At the end, she was just moderately satisfied with how it had turned out, but she assumed she couldn't do any better.
This should work, the most important thing is the message itself, not the way it's delivered.
There was still an awful lot to do, however, posting the message was liberating. One more change. One more step towards Chloe.
Back in the courtyard, everything around her felt eerily familiar. Fly Brooke's drone, talk to Miss Grant about surveillance cameras, ask Justin and Trevor for skate moves… it all seemed so meaningless now. Just for a second, she was tempted to wander across, checking on everyone. No. Repeating every small action from the previous week will only send her in the same direction, which was by all means what she was trying to avoid. Her resolution in the bathroom dramatically altered the course of events, and she had to act accordingly. Instead, she headed straight for the dorms.
Kate was sitting on the bench, her head down in misery. Max, using the path next to the Tobanga, approached her, and without a word, sat by her side. Kate turned her eyes and marked another notch in Max's growing list of failures. Her gaze was already lifeless. Max was considered Kate's best friend in Blackwell, she was the one who should have realized. Unfortunately, she was too immersed in her own world of insecurities.
"I know about the video." Straight to the point. There was no time to waste.
Kate averted her eyes, embarrassed. Max hastened to hold her hands. "I haven't seen it, and I'm not going to see it. Ever."
"Th…thank you."
Max released her hands and gently cupped Kate’s face, guiding her until their eyes met. "You need to be strong." She tried to look away again, but Max kept her from doing it, delicately and firmly. "Look at me, please. You need to be strong, you need to hold on."
"That's easy to say. You're not the one in that video." Kate answered too abruptly for her gentle manner of speaking.
Kate's words were those of someone who knew she had been defeated. The truth didn't matter. She was a pious and religious girl who had drunk too much at a party and had unleashed her true self. A hypocrite, a Pharisee, a Jezebel in the words of her own aunt. All that was left was to face rejection, and that she could only accept to a certain extent. Part of her own family and church had already turned their backs on her. The confrontations with Mr. Madsen and Mr. Jefferson will seal the deal, two authority figures who were going to blame her without listening to her explanations. Max had to avoid those encounters at all costs and comfort her.
Rest. This was what Jesus offered, according to Matthew's gospel. Peace. A shoulder on which to weep.
"That wasn't you. I know your drink was spiked."
"How… how would you know?" Kate stuttered. "It doesn't matter anyway, everybody has their opinion already formed. I'm just a… nothing is going to change that."
"How I know is not what matters now. There's a lot more going on in Blackwell, and it's directly related with what happened at the party. You were drugged. You were not the first, and you won't be the last one if I don't stop it."
"Do you have proof? Kate rise from the bench. "We must go immediately to the police."
Max stopped her. "We should wait."
For a brief moment her eyes had shown a glimmer of hope, now the dejection returned. "Why? If what you say is true, then I have a chance. And you mentioned other girls, too. I… I don't understand why we have to wait."
Max paused. Saving Chloe had been a reflex act and although it was not a decision she will never have second thoughts about, at the moment she lacked a fully outlined plan. This said, taking care of Kate was out of the question. Keeping a low profile and avoid drawing too much attention seemed a good starting point while she figured out the rest.
"You know I'm not a religious person, don't you?"
"I know." Kate didn't understand the question, but she humored Max.
"You know about how this works more than I do… Listen, I know this is a lot to ask, even so. I need you to have faith in me."
"Faith in you?" Kate repeated.
"Going to the police is not the solution, at least not right now. I promise you the truth will come out soon, in the meantime, I need you to be safe and strong."
Kate looked away in disappointment. "You assure me you have evidence, and then you ask me not to do anything about it. Can you imagine what it means to me to be marked as a …? I've been disowned by my own church and family."
"I failed you as a friend, I should have been more attentive to you." Kate's puffy eyes evidenced that she had been crying for too long, and most likely that was the only reason tears weren't flowing right now. Max thought about Chloe; in a way, she and Kate had walked parallel paths of hurt. Convinced that everything and everyone is against them . Being so defeated, that they are forced to seek a way out. In Chloe's case the anger, the rebellion, the drugs; in Kate's case jumping from a rooftop. "Please," Max insisted, "waiting is for the best. I'll take care of you in the meantime."
“Will you?” Kate asked, barely above a whisper.
"You have my word. I will protect you until all is solved."
Kate offered a shy smile. "You're the only one who cared about me instead of watching the video and making fun… I guess that means something."
"A lot of people care about you. You can't see it now, but I assure you it's like that."
"How long do we have to wait?" Kate tried to show some hope. She wasn't really all that convincing, but it was something.
"Sooner than you think. Time is already running out."
"I'll have to trust you on this one." Max was Kate's only hope. As much as she didn't see things the way Max did, she had no other options.
"Just hold on a little longer." She hugged Kate. The two girls separated and Max could see some light returning to her friend. "Don't tell anyone about this, whenever you need to talk, you call me."
"I will."
"Go back to your room and rest, you haven't probably slept in a few days. I'll check on you later."
"I've tried that before." With a slight nod, Kate pointed to the dorms.
Sitting on the steps, Victoria in all her Queen Bee glory and her drones were immersed in a passive display of power.
"Give me five minutes." Max stood up, and steadily walked toward the three girls. Once she was in front of them, not giving Victoria a chance to recite her offending lines, she made a strange move. Instead of standing in front of the Victoria as Blackwell's hierarchy demanded, she positioned herself at the right end of the group, right next to Taylor, crouching slightly until she was at eyes level.
And that was before she spoke, which proved even stranger to the three girls.
"Taylor, how is your mother doing?"