Chapter Text
My eyes slowly opened to show me an unfamiliar environment. I wasn't in my bed. Not in my dorm, not in Seattle, and definitely not in Chloe's room. Along the far wall was a low bookcase, mostly barren, but with some books and art supplies. Next to the long bookcase, there was a doorway going out into a white hallway, but no door. I turned to look next to me to find a simple bed, identical to my own, of an unsupported mattress a few feet from mine. There a girl with jet-black hair and olive skin slept.
Where the hell am I?
The fog of sleep refused to leave my head as I tried to gather my thoughts. The storm came. I wouldn't sacrifice Chloe, but I couldn't let the Bay be destroyed either. We agreed to go back to my parents' house in Seattle. There, I found a picture from early April. Weeks before Rachel's death. If one jump to undo things was all it took to prevent the storm, then I would just need to warn Rachel. If Rachel never went missing, Chloe would never be in that bathroom. Chloe would live. Arcadia Bay would be safe.
Chloe made me memorize her number and coached me on things I could tell her to make her believe me. Then, safe in Chloe's arms, I jumped back and warned Rachel. It went better than I thought. The jump ended. Then… it got fuzzy.
I held my head in my hands. My mind just refused to completely wake up, seemingly trapped in a thick fog. My stomach turned as my thoughts trailed to the last time I felt this way. Drugged by Jefferson in the Dark Room.
It clicked.
Was I drugged?
My heart leapt into my throat as my mind started to race. Could this be some kind of prison? Was this girl near me also a victim of some sinister plot? I needed to find out more, but I feared to leave the relative comfort of the bed. There was no door, so maybe not so much of a prison. Still, it made me wary of moving anywhere near it. Instead, I decided it safest to figure out what I could here. I looked down at myself, finding what could only be described as some sort of ugly gym clothes. A loose, long-sleeved shirt and matching pants of an unflattering grey color were all that I wore outside of a pair of socks.
I looked around for a pair of shoes, only to finally spot them on that organizer at the end of the room. Next to it, a sight that made my heart soar.
My camera!
No longer bound by fear of the unknown I pulled myself up and stumbled across the small room. My hands seized my camera, my original camera, not William's. There, next to it, was my journal. It might not have been as helpful as my phone, but it was damn close. I took a selfie before my eyes caught movement in the doorway. I saw a pair of girls, my age if maybe a couple of years older, dressed exactly the same as me walk by.
Am I in a cult?
While it piqued my curiosity, I thought better of it and returned to the bed as I waited for the picture to develop.
I sat cross-legged on the mattress, setting the camera next to me as I opened my journal. The jump took me back to April, so all the entries should've been the same up to that point. After that, anything could've happened. But how could things have changed so much in just a few months? The first new entry to catch my eye was dated July 10th.
I… didn't get into Blackwell. It hurts. I mean, I know it was a pipe dream. Going back to my hometown and my dream school was always out of my reach. My grades suck. I hoped my pictures might've been enough to get me in the door, but I guess they suck, too. Seriously, they even lowered their standards after the whole scandal with Mark Jefferson getting arrested and I still wasn't good enough. Guess I'll never have an excuse to reconnect with Chloe now. I'll just finish school here in Seattle and… what? Just get some dead-end job like my parents, I guess.
My eyes just stared at the page for the longest time. How did warning Rachel get Jefferson arrested? And just how did that lead to me not getting into Blackwell? An icy chill ran down my spine as the truth revealed itself. The only reason I got into Blackwell was that Jefferson liked my photos. My selfies. My stomach lurched and I tasted bile on my tongue. It had nothing to do with talent, and everything to do with his sick fetishes.
"I like your spots."
I jumped at the voice, sending my journal flying and nearly crushing my camera. It took several moments for me to calm my heart and look around to find that black-haired girl, dressed exactly like me, sitting crosswise on the floor a few feet away. Her head was bowed, preventing me from seeing her face. All I could see was her hair, a tangled mess that fell around her shoulders and face. She didn't even have bangs. "You scared me!" I hissed, placing a hand on my chest to try to soothe my heartbeat.
"You let me eat your food last night. Thank you." Her words came out slowly, but evenly. For a girl, her voice came out a bit low, though it had little presence with how quiet her speech was.
"I… uh…" I shook my head. "Last night was a blur for me." It was the truth. I jumped around six o'clock. I should've remembered something about last night, but it was all just a jumble of nonsense. "Have we met?"
She shook her head. "I'm… My name is Alexandra."
"I'm Max." My arm extended toward her, and she flinched, falling back as her palms slapped the floor to keep her upright.
"Don't touch me!"
I winced at the volume and ferocity of her words, completely different from before. Yanking my arm back to my side, I offered her an apology. Alexandra didn't respond other than to pull up her knees to sit in a fetal position. Unable to think of anything else, the words just sort found themselves. "I won't touch you if you don't want me to. I promise."
Her head snapped up at that, and I finally got to see her light brown eyes, wide and wild. "Promise?"
I nodded, trying to give her what I hoped was a friendly smile. "I promise."
Snapping her head to the side, her voice returned to its regular drone. "Don't look at me."
It was an odd request, and a bit harder to do than just not touch her. Still, what could I do but play along? "Okay. I won't touch you, and I'll try to not look at you." To prove my point, I picked up my journal and set my eyes on it.
"Promise?"
"I promise."
"I like you, Max," she said. I heard her get up, bare feet slapping on the tile floor. "You're nice."
The journal might've held a tenuous account of just where I was and why I was here, but this girl probably had all the answers. "Hey, Alexandra. Do you know where we are?" I tilted my head in her direction but was careful not to actually look at her.
"Hospital," she said as she walked back from the bookcase to her bed. "I don't know which one. It doesn't matter."
"Hospital?" There wasn't even the slightest sign of any medical equipment here. Let alone nurses or that smell of antiseptic. Even the walls were off-white, not the blinding white that threatened to drag my mind back to the Dark Room.
"Why… why are we in a hospital?" I asked, my heart dreading the answer for a reason I couldn't understand.
"I feel her. I don't hear her. I'm not me," Alexandra said. "You want to die."
Her words made my blood run cold. "I don't want to die!" Each heartbeat thundered in my ears as the pieces started to fall into place. Her bizarre behavior. All the matching outfits. How a hospital can be a hospital with no medical equipment. "Are we in a mental ward?"
Her reply was cool, with that same, slightly sad mumble she seemed to exude with every syllable. "Yes."
I immediately turned to my journal, flipping to the most recent page. It was dated August 23rd.
So starts another school year at nowhere high in Seattle. Instead of padding my resume with a photography and art-focused special curriculum, I'm just a C average student with no real friends. All day I just wondered what it would've been like if I'd been at Blackwell. Would I be friends with Chloe again? Could the classes there turn my kitsch photography into something worthwhile? Probably not. At least I found out that I'll never attain my lifelong dream before I wasted any more time on it. Not that I have anything else to waste time on anymore. No friends. No hobbies. Why am I even writing in this dumb thing anymore?
That was the last entry. Almost two months ago.
Did I get depressed because I didn't get into Blackwell?
I knew I would've been upset if I didn't get in, but to fall this far? End up in a freaking asylum? How did this even happen?
"Breakfast is soon," Alexandra said.
I couldn't help myself, and I looked up to see her pointing at a clock. The time showed it to be approaching eight o'clock. A slightly painful churning in my gut told me that breakfast was definitely a good idea. Still, I had no idea what that entailed. Did they bring food to us? Was there a cafeteria? As stupid as it was, I just had to ask, "What do we do?"
"We go."
It didn't seem to upset her when I looked at her, but maybe she just didn't see me. There was also the possibility that she really was crazy, or that she was just messing with me. I was always really slow to the uptake on that sort of thing. Chloe would always protect me from that kind of thing.
Chloe!
"Hey," I said as we left into a hallway, "do you know where my cell phone is?" The floors and walls were the same bland nothing. Here, there was a nurse's station and some heavy-duty doors on one end of the hall, and a long corridor to a dead end on the other. There must've been a half-dozen rooms just like ours. A lot of girls our age were gathered around the room entrances.
Alexandra said nothing.
I noticed a nurse was going room-to-room, sending more young women to gather just outside their room, each and everyone dressed the same. A couple of other nurses operated the heavy doors. One held up their I.D. badge to a sensor by the doorframe, then when it lit up, the other nurse opened the door. A team of three or four orderlies corralled us, telling us that we needed to go to breakfast and ushered us through the heavy doors. We all walked, lining up like grade-schoolers as we went through the doors, past some elevators, and down a couple of hallways before entering a small cafeteria. The only thing was that the room just had picnic-like plastic tables and trash cans. Nothing else.
We were seated, instructed to have no more than two people to a table. I sat across from Alexandra, given that I literally knew no one else there. Though I asked her exactly how all this was supposed to work, she didn't reply. Her head stayed low with her hair hiding her expression from my eyes. So I took upon myself to try to figure it out. Everyone just sat at their tables. There were a couple of staff members by the doors, and one other walking between the tables eyeing all the patients.
My stomach churned again, though this time it was due to a deep feeling of disgust. I was a patient. A mental patient. How long would I be trapped here? More importantly, just what the hell happened with Chloe and Arcadia Bay?
A tiny voice in the back of my head made itself heard: What if everything that happened that week was just the delusion of a crazy girl in an asylum?
I shook my head, forcing the toxic thought aside. No way could I let that sort of thing take hold. I just needed to get a lifeline to the outside world. In my head, I started to make a checklist of all the things I needed to know. First, I had to know Chloe was safe. She wouldn't remember me beyond me being thirteen and abandoning her, but as long as she was safe, I could always try to repair that relationship. She really did miss me as much as I missed her. Second, I had to know that Arcadia Bay and everyone there was okay. Chloe and I driving through the twisted wreckage of the town still haunted me, but if I did things right (Ha! Like I'd ever managed to do that with my powers!) then everyone should be safe: Joyce, Warren, Kate.
Shit! Kate!
My mind lurched as the haunting memories of me talking her down from the rain-slicked roof assaulted me. No one would've been there to help her. Would she still have gone to that party? Would Nathan have dosed her? It was impossible to tell with Jefferson out of the picture, but it was still a huge risk. And there was no way for me to even know as long as I was here.
A clattering brought me out of my thoughts. In front of me was a plastic tray with a single plastic fork. Looking around, I found that they had wheeled in a couple of food carts, and they were passing out breakfast to everyone. Looking back down, I found a rather pitiful heap of pancakes, some scrambled eggs, toast, and two slices of bacon. They'd also put a glass of juice by me. I noticed that Alexandra had the same meal before her, though it was already half-gone.
I couldn't deny that I was hungry, and there was no telling if there was some sort of time limit, either. If Alexandra's pace was anything to go by, I needed to put my thoughts aside and focus on my meal.
I made it through the eggs, they weren't bad, nor were they good. They needed salt, and we had zero condiments. Not even butter or syrup for the toast or pancakes. Both of which had the consistency of cardboard. Even the bacon wasn't all that great. Despite my hunger, I was only able to eat the eggs, bacon, one of the two slices of toast, and about three-quarters of the pancakes. Probably due to the complete lack of palatability. Actual cardboard might've been better.
The tray clattered away from me as I surrendered. I heard an enthusiastic grunt, drawing my attention back to Alexandra. Her eyes darted away from mine and I reminded myself not to make eye contact. After another moment, she nodded toward my plate and gave another needy grunt.
"You… want what's left?" I asked, sliding the tray in her direction.
In the blink of an eye, the tray was in front of her as she devoured what was left in what had to be less than a minute. When she was done, she took the forks into her hands. One, she shoved wordlessly in my direction. I picked up off the table and she nodded. She stood, moving toward the door. Her head stayed bowed as she held out her fork to the orderlies. They took her fork then turned to me. Repeating Alexandra's actions, I held out my fork and they took it from me. At that point, I realized just what was going on. They were taking away the part of our meal we could use to hurt ourselves or others before letting us out.
One of the orderlies opened the door and escorted the two of us back to that hallway with the nurse's station and the rooms. Alexandra went straight back to our room. Part of me wanted to follow her, but there were other things I needed to know, and I wasn't going to get any answers in there. I went to the nurse's station. "Excuse me, do you know what happened to my cell phone?" I asked the nearest nurse, a blonde, heavyset woman in her thirties or forties sitting at a computer.
She ignored me.
"I-I'm sorry if I'm interrupting, but I just—"
"Sweetie, why don't you go back to your room? It'll be time for meds soon, then group." Without another word, she went back to her computer.
Despair gripped me. It was like she didn't even consider me a person. I wanted to lash out, to scream at her to treat me like a fucking human being, but I bit my tongue. Getting thrown in a straight jacket and locked up in a padded room wasn't high on my to-do list.
I plodded away from the station, going over my list in my mind, but not knowing how I could even begin to execute it. Make sure Chloe is safe. Confirm Arcadia Bay survived. Check on Kate. Find out if Rachel is alive. I couldn't do any of it without a phone or even the internet.
"Alexandra," I said as I entered our room.
"Here," she replied from her spot on her bed. In her hands, she held my selfie.
My head tilted to the side as I stole a glance at her face. With her so transfixed on the Polaroid, she didn't seem to notice. A ghost of a smile touched her lips as her auburn eyes stayed glued to the picture.
An idea formed in my head, and I went over and grabbed my camera. "Do you want me to take your picture?" I asked, holding up the camera for emphasis.
A shake of her head came with her simple reply, "No."
"Oh," I muttered, completely failing to hide the disappointment in my voice. Scooping up my journal, I took both items and returned them to their place on the bookcase.
"I have a picture already." Alexandra came over to the bookcase and grabbed a drawing pad. It was at that point I realized that it was organized into three sections. My section was on the left, her's on the right, and the middle seemed like a communal section where all the books and stuff were.
After flipping through a few pages, Alexandra held up her drawing pad for me to see. I looked over to find not a self-portrait, but of a tiger-like beast. It had stripes down its back, and a pair of antelope-like horns rising from its head. The tail was more like that of a fox or squirrel, flaring out in a huge ball of fuzz. Its face snarled up like it was roaring, showing a mouth full of predatory teeth. The picture was all done in pencil, and it was really, really good. Daniel would've totally approved.
"This is great!" I glanced up but remembered to stop short of eye contact. "Did you draw this?"
She gave me a nod. "In the art room. They don't let me have pencils here."
Earlier, she mentioned already having a picture, so I asked, "Did you also draw a picture of yourself?"
"This one." Her finger tapped the paper for emphasis. "If I always looked like this, no one would look at me. Touch me."
I stared at the beast for a moment as my mind tried to make sense of it. At least the drugged haze from this morning was almost gone. I guess she just wished that she was big and scary. Honestly, being like that would definitely have its perks, and it's not like I never dreamed of being someone else, either.
"I don't know," I told her. "If you looked like that, I think you would attract way more attention than you do now. And as long as weren't aggressive and snarling, I would totally want to pet you, especially that big, poofy tail."
"Don't… pet!" A glance up showed me a red stain on her olive cheeks. Her hands fumbled with the pad before managing to close it. She threw it back onto the bookcase before going back to her bed and picking up my selfie again.
Following her lead, I went to my bed and sat down. In my head, I tried to run through what information I could get out of her. At least she was talking to me again. She'd been completely nonverbal through breakfast.
Just as I was about to speak up, she beat me to the punch. "Do you have more spots?"
"You mean freckles?" She still wouldn't look at me, only casting a sidelong glance and using my selfie as a sort of armor, hiding her face. "Yeah, they're all over." I turned around so my back was to her before reaching over my head and pulling my shirt up to expose my back and shoulders. "See?"
I heard her gasp, followed by an excited giggle. "So many spots!"
I was about to put my shirt back down when I felt a light, warm touch on my shoulder. She might've had a thing about people invading her personal space, but she clearly didn't have hang-ups about the other way around. The touch would leave, only to reappear a moment later a fraction of an inch away. I could only imagine that she was touching each freckle. It made me a little uneasy, and holding the shirt up was more than a little uncomfortable. The position made my wrists sting for some reason.
"Do you mind?" I couldn't keep the grunty quality out of my voice. While she didn't give me a proper reply, the touches stopped.
I dropped my shirt, letting it fall back. With a hiss, my hands went to rub my wrists. Instant regret. A sharp pain emanated from my touch, forcing me to withdraw my hands and causing me to yelp.
"Are you okay?"
"That hurt," I said as I grabbed my sleeve to pull it up. On the inside of my wrist, I found a still-healing wound at least a week old. A single line parallel to my arm several inches long. The flesh raised up where it had been stitched together. I couldn't believe it. Letting the sleeve drop, I checked my other arm to find an identical wound.
I really did try to kill myself!