Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The pulsing, throbbing beat of Drake’s “ All Me ” thundered through the speakers, even as Victoria frowned in distaste at the implications. Probably some resentful pissy bitch trying to make fun of her or Nathan. If Victoria was being honest with herself, she would be forced to admit that the DJ quality and music selection had taken a definite nosedive at Vortex Club parties ever since Steph Gingrich had graduated last year. Whoever was manning the tunes had all the taste and confidence of a slavishly pop FM radio playlist.

Courtney said something that made Taylor spew her drink all over the tiled floor of the indoor pool, and Victoria graciously smiled at their antics. She rubbed her nose absently, the rush from the bump of coke she had done in the bathroom two hours earlier fading into the ambience of the party. She had more in her purse, but doing another hit so soon would deplete her supply, and she didn’t want her parents to become too suspicious about the large sums she was withdrawing with her black AmEx card. She supposed she should be grateful enough to find a supplier here in this fucking hick backwoods town of Arcadia Bay, even if Frank Bowers did stink like a fucking dog. A dog that ate nothing but beans.

She leaned back against the wall, closing her eyes and nursing the last of her buzz. Managing these stupid fucking high school events was a bitch, and she was grateful that she had a decent enough retinute to help her. This was her senior year; her last chance to live it up while she was the undisputed Queen of Blackhell. Now that Rachel Amber had skipped town like a loose lot lizard, there was no one around who could challenge Victoria’s right to do as she fucking pleased. Even fucking Chloe Price had gotten herself expelled like the raging dumpster fire that she was. She was the star student in the only fucking class she cared about, photography with Mark Jefferson, a true auteur and the generational talent of his age. The man had worked with enough celebrities, foreign dignitaries and models that even Victoria Chase and her parents had been impressed.

In short, everything in Victoria’s life was perfect.

Nothing was wrong.

There was no reason for this creeping sense of ennui inside of her soul.

Like, fucking no reason.

At all.

Are you sure?

SHUT THE FUCK UP, BRAIN.

Snapping her eyes open, Victoria looked around and saw the party was in full swing. She must’ve passed out for a few. The ice had finally been broken, and now most of the inebriated teenagers were bumping and grinding in time to the music. Juliet Watson was basically getting herself off on Zach’s muscular thigh, her arms tight around his neck. Taylor was nowhere in sight. Dana Ward was making out with Logan in the corner. Even geeky losers like Stella and Alyssa were dancing to the music.

“Victoria, are you okay?” Courtney’s voice intruded on her thoughts.

Courtney, ever loyal, ever eager to please Courtney was looking at her in concern. Victoria smiled at her social minion.

“I’m fine, Court. Just a headache.” For emphasis, she let her short blonde hair bump back against the wall. “I think Frank sold me some bad shit.”

“Oh no! Do you need me to get you some water? Or some medicine? Or go to the bathroom? Maybe you should call it a night….”

“ Court .”

Instantly the dark haired girl flinched back at Victoria’s reprimand. Shit. This wasn’t what she wanted to be.

Instantly, her constantly repressed anxiety answered her.

Who do I want to be?

Victoria swallowed, then masked her anxiety with anger. And bitchiness. Maybe it was time to remind Courtney who was in charge. Her green eyes narrowed. “If I wanted fucking help, I would have asked for it,” she answered waspishly. “For a fucking future English major, you’re remarkably hard of hearing.”

Courtney flinched again, looking as miserable as a kicked dog. She couldn’t even look Victoria in the eye. “Um...what do you want, then?”

I want to smoke weed and fucking watch Cowboy Bebop from start to finish. With someone I love, resting my head on their lap and them running their fingers through my hair.

She didn’t say either of those things. Instead, she said, “I’d like a pop. With ice.”

Courtney brightened at the simple task. “Oh! Um, okay! I can do that!” She rose from the bench they were sharing and dashed off to the concessions. 

A fucking peon could do that . Victoria shook her head, her tightly wound thoughts threatening to break free and ruin her rep. Zug zug , Court. Have a little pride, won’t you? I might actually respect you, then.

Fuck it. She needed to relax, and use this chance to come up with some brilliant concepts for the upcoming Everyday Heroes photo contest. She had imagined she had some genius ideas beforehand, but that had been when she had been coked up and thinking she could conquer the entire universe with her bare hands. Now that she was coming down from her high, her anxiety and nerves were coming back in full force, and her galaxy brain was nowhere to be found. Instead, Victoria stared blankly at the back of her hand, watching it with a photographer’s eye for the slightest sign of trembling.

Am I tweaking? I better not be fucking tweaking. I can’t be addicted to this shit. I’m Victoria Chase, an international heiress. Goddamn fuckin’ Frank.

This was the last time, Victoria promised herself. If she wanted to be more than the fucking resident cokehead bitch of Blackwell, she needed to up her game. Otherwise even stupid little retro plain-jane doe-eyed waifs like Max Caulfield would show her up this school year, and everyone in the school would realize that their Empress truly did not have any clothes.

At that thought, Victoria scanned the crowd, checking the walls for the five foot two shapeless grey hoodie and messy brunette head of her main rival this year. Where was that mousey bitch, anyway? Almost ninety percent of the school was here at the Vortex Club party. Did the stupid cunt think she was too good to even attend a party on the weekend? Not that Courtney would ever bother giving her a ticket.

But what galled Victoria the most is that 90’s hipster reject didn’t even try to get invited in. She simply didn’t show up. Like she didn’t care about being popular at all.

Like she really does think that she’s better than Victoria Chase.

“Here you go, Victoria!” Courtney said brightly, handing her a red solo cup that fizzled, distracting her out of her bitter musings. It even had some fresh ice in it, from God-knows-where.

“Thanks, Court,” Victoria said, taking a small sip. Ugh. Pepsi. But still, Victoria would take it, drinking up the liquid carbs gladly. It was probably time to ditch the party and get some food. But that would mean finding Taylor in the midst of all of these sweaty, hormonal, half-naked bodies. Reflexively, she felt a wave of irritation at her best girl friend, then just as quickly smothered it. Taylor was going through a rough time at home; it made sense she’d want to take her mind off things with a hook-up. Although she’d better use protection this time, because Victoria did not want to take another trip to the women’s clinic in Portland….

The thought of driving made Victoria queasy, but fortunately, Courtney had volunteered her services as DD tonight. Again.

“Court, do you see Tay-tay anywhere? I could kill a burger and fries right now,” Victoria said.

“Ummmm…” Courtney started, eagerly scanning the crowd. “Hm. She might be in the women’s locker rooms. I’ll check there.”

“She might be in the men’s locker rooms, too,” Victoria snickered.

Courtney made a face. “Gross. If she is, I’m not gonna be the one to interrupt her dick appointment.”

“I guess we could leave her a text to shake her ass into gear,” Victoria said, flipping out the latest iPhone model. “Seriously, if I don’t get some food, I’m gonna die.”

“There’s still snacks by the bar,” Courtney offered helpfully. 

Victoria gave a very unladylike snort. “After Daniel and Alyssa have pawed through them? Thanks, but no thanks.” 

Courtney sighed. “I’ll look for Taylor, then.”

“Thanks Court. You’re too good to me,” Victoria muttered absently, awkwardly trying to thumb type a text in her glowing phone.

She barely heard Courtney’s acknowledgement when she left their corner, nursing her soda in her hand, entirely absorbed in her phone. This message was coming out all wrong. Taylor was worried about her mother, and Victoria wanted to be there for her, but also wanted to maintain her superiority. Whatever favors she did for Taylor were magnanimous and entirely due to a sense of noblesse oblige. She wanted a tart message, but one with enough teasing fun that Tay knew that Victoria was getting impatient, and was going to leave her behind if she didn’t répondez s'il vous plaît immediately.

Message sent. Returning her phone to her classic antique black purse, Victoria looked up, distractedly scanning the crowd for her best boy friend. Nathan would want to know if she left, too….

Where was Nathan? Usually, he never left her side as they held court behind the Vortex Club screens. If Victoria was the Queen of the school, Nathan Prescott was the King, and everyone knew it.

Even though Nathan’s recent behavior was starting to concern even Victoria.

A nameless sense of dread ran through her. Nate ditching her at a VC party was a bad sign. A very bad sign. She was scared for her best friend; scared that his drug use seemed to increase tenfold over the summer between their junior and senior year, scared that he was off his meds again, scared by Nathan sometimes seeing and hearing things that were simply not there . One time could be excused as a bad trip; three or four was a fucking pattern. How many times had Victoria, and only Victoria, been the one to talk Nathan down from the edge? Ever since Rachel had skipped town, Nathan’s behavior had taken a nosedive, which was weird , because Nathan had had about as much use for Rachel Amber as Victoria herself did.

Ditching her wounded soldier into an overflowing trash bin, Victoria swept past the screens of the Vortex Club proper, looking out on the indoor heated pool that served as Blackwell’s de facto party zone. Six foot tall jocks were pushing each into the pool, along with some unwilling, fully clothed party-goers, each of them laughing uproarously like hyenas. Contemptuously, Victoria strode through them with her black Dior halter like a ship breaking through the waves, secure in her right as the social apex predator. No one would dare touch her or ruin her clothing. It would be the last thing they ever fucking did.

She finally saw Nathan’s jacket red and white through the crowd, and Victoria briefly smiled indulgently. It was such a Grease thing of him to do, wearing that stupid varsity jacket everywhere like a total middle schooler. So what if it was made of actual imported leather and was extremely comfortable in the cold and wet Pacific Northwest falls and winters? The entire aesthetic was so dated that it made Max Caulfield look like she belonged on the cover of Vogue .

Closing in on her targets, Victoria winced as the volume of the nearby speakers nearly deafened her. Who was Nathan speaking to? Whoever it was looked to have sandy blonde hair. In a bun. When she finally saw who it was, Victoria nearly laughed out loud. If Nathan liked to look like the stereotypical prep jock from American Graffiti , Kate Beverly Marsh looked as if she gotten lost on the way to the nunnery. Victoria doubted the girl owned a single article of clothing with a hint of color. Nothing but shades of white, grey, and black, her only piece of jewelry being the conspicuous golden cross around her neck, declaring her allegiance to the opiate of the masses.

Victoria frowned to herself. What was Nathan doing hanging out with the resident Jesus Freak? Willingly? Why had he ditched her to hang out with Kate Marsh, of all the girls….

If she hadn’t been intently watching them, she wouldn’t have seen it.

There was Nathan, leaning forward and trying to say something in Kate’s ear, above the roaring volume of the bass. There was Kate Marsh, innocently tilting her head up to assist her fellow student in speaking to her.

And there was Nathan’s hand, quickly coming out of his jacket pocket, dropping something white, small, and round into Kate’s mostly full solo cup.

For a moment, Victoria was frozen in horror, her thoughts unable to compute Nathan doing... this .  Doing drugs? Being an ass? Cutting classes? All normal, socially acceptable behaviors in Victoria’s book.

But there were crimes that erased even a decade long friendship. Because no one deserved something like that.

Not even Kate Marsh. 

Two thoughts thundered into Victoria’s mind.

He’s going to rape her.

No one else knows .

Victoria's limbs felt numb as she stood there, feeling like she was underwater, even as the party continued to rage around her. Her sharp eyes saw Nathan having the completely shameless fucking audacity to pretend to toast Kate, encouraging her to drink from her poisoned cup. Laughing at whatever he said, sweet, pure, way-to-innocent-to-even-fucking-exist Kate Marsh slowly raised the cup to her lips….

Victoria exploded into motion. “NO!” she screamed, at a volume that rose even above the excessively loud party music. Taylor called it Victoria’s “Bitch-Goddess” voice, and whenever she used it, everyone in earshot listened. Lunging forward, she slapped her hand down as hard as she could between the pair, sending Kate’s red solo cup flying and red wine splashing everywhere. Kate gasped and backed away, the dark wine staining her skirt and blouse and sweater.

Ignoring her, Victoria used her Gucci heels to their fullest effect, getting into Nathan’s face. Even then, he still had an inch on her, but she saw the guilty and panicked expression in his face and his eyes. He had gotten caught. He had been doing something illegal, wrong, and extremely fucking evil , and now someone else knew too.

“NATHAN FUCKING PRESCOTT! WHAT IN THE NAME OF ABSOLUTE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?!” Victoria screamed in his face. An audible hush came over the crowd, even as the throbbing music continued incongruously over the suddenly tense environment.

Nathan’s panic held a moment longer, then his own gaze flattened. “Get the fuck out of my face , Vic,” he snarled back at her, shoving her away. “Don’t forget who fucking runs this town.”

“Like I give a flying fuck about that! Where did you get a fucking roofie, anyway? Huh? Was it fuckin’ Frank?” she shouted at the top of her voice, shoving him right back. She knew Nathan. The longer he was on the defensive, the longer that this confrontation was public, the better odds she had for making him crack like fucking egg and ‘fess up. He was panicking, but recovered quickly, falling back on male bluster and his own social standing, acutely aware of the crowd with their eyes on the both of them.

“I was just talking to her about photography! You’re the one wiggin’ out like a crazy bitch!” he snapped.

Heaping scorn into her voice, Victoria hissed, “So I’m just a ‘crazy bitch,’ now, Nathan? Really? Like you’re one to fuckin’ talk, Prescott.”

Whispers were erupting all around them, but Victoria kept her eyes laser focused on her old friend. Nathan grimaced, then sneered at both her and Kate, who was watching the battle of wills with wide brown eyes from her place against the wall. Suddenly he stamped his foot down into the wine puddle at their feet, grinding something into powdery mush. It was all Victoria could do to stop herself from flinching.

The pill . Of fucking course. There went the evidence, mixed into the chlorine soaked tiles beneath their feet.

With that, Nathan regained some of his swagger. “What’re you going to do, Victoria? You’ve got no proof, and you’ve bought just as much shit from Bowers as I have. If I go down, so do you. So you can’t do shit. Just stay the fuck out of my way, and don’t ever tell me what I can or can’t do.”

“So you admit it,” Victoria said, folding her arms, her voice going calm. Flat. Deadly. She had him.

He spat at her feet. “Yeah,” he said. “So what? I run this school. I run this town. I don’t need you.”

“That never stopped you from needing me before,” Victoria sneers back at him. She adopted a mocking tone. “‘Oh boo hoo, Vic, I can’t sleep tonight. Oh boo hoo, Vic, my daddy’s mad at me again. Oh boo hoo, Vic, I need your help to pass this test, let me cheat off you….’”

“SHUT THE FUCK UP, BITCH!” Nathan screams at her, his eyes wild, spittle flecking his lips. For a second, even Victoria rocked backwards a step, and Nathan slightly opened his starter jacket, fingering something with his right hand in the inner pocket, giving her a good look. Victoria feels a flash of pure, soul-searing panic as she sees a grey metallic glint in the dim light of the party.

A gun .

Nathan is carrying a fucking gun .

For the first time this evening, Victoria is at a total loss. None of her social power plays or emotional manipulations can help her here. Because apparently, finally, Nathan Prescott has completely fucking lost it. He could do anything, even with the entire school staring at him. Including killing her right here and now. Just because he could. 

As much as Victoria loathed to admit it, her best friend has finally gone completely bugfuck crazy.

“Get out,” she finally manages, her voice cracking. Something wet was on her face, and she finally notices the unbidden tears leaking out from the corners of her eyes. Fear for herself? Or was she mourning her lost, insane friend? Or a bit of both?

For the first time, Nathan finally listens to her. Turning on his heel, he screams at Hayden and other football players to get out of his way, and everyone obeys the clearly outraged King of Blackwell. Slamming steel doors announce his exit from the Aquatic Center.

Somehow, the music had stopped, even as everyone started talking and gasping all at once. Victoria rubs at her eyes, trying to mask the tears and keep her make-up somewhat acceptable. Belatedly, she notices people holding black rectangles, pointing at her and the still frozen form of Kate Marsh. She hears soft laughter starting all around her.

An angry, fearful sob threatens to burst from her, but Victoria ruthlessly suppresses the emotions. Or tries to. Shaking in release, she’s unable to keep the water works at bay. I could have fucking died. Both of us, and these fucking plebs are simply celebrating me being brought down to their level. Take a fuckin’ picture, it will last longer . Fucking jackals.

Victoria looks at Kate’s sodden skirt and ruined blouse. And she sees in the other girl’s eyes the knowledge that she saw inside Nathan’s jacket too. Like Victoria, she seems to be having trouble breathing, both of her red stained hands clutching desperately at the cross around her neck with the grip of a sailor lost at sea. In that moment, Kate Marsh is the only other person in the world who understands what really happened. What almost did happen.

Say something .

Despite the urge, Victoria hesitates. Had she even bothered ever talking to Kate Marsh, before tonight? In the dorms, or the hallways? Victoria couldn’t remember, having passed by most of the beginning of her senior year in her normally drugged up fugue state. But she had to say something quickly, because she saw Taylor and Courtney running up to her, their faces worried and anxious.

“Sorry about ruining your outfit,” Victoria finally manages to get out. A sarcastic voice that sounds exactly like Mr. Jefferson echoes in her head. Brilliant, Chase . A for effort, F for execution. See me after class.

Kate shakes her head jerkily. “It’s okay. It’ll wash,” she says quietly. Victoria almost laughed out a hysterical giggle at the girl’s endless innocence. Oh honey. Red wine stains do not wash.

“‘Tori, what the hell just happened? What the fuck is going on?” Taylor demanded, her large blonde friend interposing herself between her and Kate. Glaring at her like it was the church dormouse’s fault that Nathan was apparently a total fucking psycho.

“Don’t, Tay,” Victoria managed to command, forestalling Taylor from doing something stupid. “It’s not her fault.”

“Victoria, are you all right? What did Nathan do?” Courtney asked gently, handing her a fresh Kleenex that somehow was magically in her hands.

Victoria tried to move and found her knees were weak. Rubbing at her eyes and nose with the tissue, she noticed her fingers were visibly shaking. If I wasn’t tweaking before, I fucking certainly am now. Fuck. I think I’m going to puke. “Something bad,” she said quietly, unable to say more past the swollen lump in her throat. Why, Nathan? Just fucking...why?

“Right. Let’s get you back to the dorms,” Taylor said firmly, putting an arm around Victoria’s shoulders and glaring one last time at the wine-splashed form of Kate.

Victoria almost let herself be guided away by her friends, but then she planted her heels. Unfortunately, she knew exactly how spiteful and vindictive Nathan could be. Asshole’s probably out in the parking lot right now, keying my Maserati. Fucker. “Wait,” she said, a note of her old bossy command coming back into her voice. The shock was finally wearing off, and Victoria’s brain was finally kicking back into gear once more. Nathan wouldn’t forgive or forget about this, and it had been recorded by literally half the school. It was probably already online. There would be definite fallout from this.

Victoria Maribeth Chase decided that was okay. She could be pretty spiteful and vindictive as well.

She pointed at Kate. The girl was now her co-conspirator, whether she wanted to be or not. “She’s coming with us,” Victoria announced. “She has to.”

Tay and Court both stared at her like she had grown a second head.

For that matter, so did Kate Marsh.

“C-can I at least go back to the dorm for a change of clothes?” Kate pleads in the backseat with her. Courtney’s already pulling out on the highway in Victoria’s car, although they had been delayed momentarily by the tell-tale scratches and vicious tears in her car’s paint job. Her tires had been scuffed too, with the air caps to the tires tossed away. Court and Tay had been shocked, but Victoria was back in control, calmly taking pictures with her phone for insurance purposes. Nathan was wisely nowhere in sight, now that most of the party-goers had spilled out into the adjacent parking lot.

“Tay-tay, get Court’s purse and hand me some more tissues,” Victoria orders calmly, firing off text messages from her phone to nearly everyone of importance in Blackwell with the military precision of a battalion radio operator. She had to get her side of the story out there. Luckily, she already had a secret weapon locked and loaded, one who would have exactly zero sympathy for Nathan Prescott’s actions tonight.

Juliet Watson, editor-in-chief of Blackwell Academy’s student newspaper.

A small carry-on wrap of tissues was tossed into the backseat. Victoria plunked it into the church girl’s lap, her eyes still focused on her phone.

“Aren’t you going to wear your seatbelt?”

Victoria looked up, her brain registering the question finally. Kate Marsh was looking at her, her own seatbelt securely fastened around her wine-soaked clothing.

It would look supremely dumb if you were the only one who died in a car accident. In your own car, no less.

Maybe the church girl was onto something. Nathan might be lying in wait for them in his truck. Victoria loved her Maz, but she doubted it could stand up in an impact with an overcompensating, American-style vehicle. And there was something to be said about tempting fate.

“Fine,” Victoria sighed, wiggling her arms and shoulders until the unfamiliar sensation of straps settled around her waist and chest. “Happy now, mother?” she finished sarcastically.

“Much better,” Kate genuinely smiled at her, and Victoria felt a brief flutter of something in her chest. Then Kate’s face fell once more. “Um...I’m sorry to have caused such a mess….”

“Not your fault,” Victoria waved the apology away. “You didn’t ask for this to happen. I’m just glad I was there and saw it for myself.”

“Vicky, what exactly the fuck happened? Why are we driving to the beach?” Taylor turned around in her seat. Still glaring at Kate, for God knows what reason.

Because it’s the best place to find fucking Frank . I need confirmation. Victoria drops her phone back into her purse, snapping the clasp closed. Her eyes narrowed on her remaining best friend. At the rate you're losing them tonight , probably should be careful, Vic , her inner monologue warns her.

“I wouldn’t make up shit, Taylor,” Victoria says quietly. “Not about this.”

“Fine. But you have to admit, it’s a little hard to believe that Nate wanted to slip something to her .”

Kate just looks miserable at the accusation, and Victoria feels her temper flare at the implied insult to her own judgment and perception. “It’s not like he needed a reason, Taylor,” Victoria bites back. “Besides, Kate saw the pill too. He stamped his foot to cover up what he was doing.”

Kate nods her head in quick affirmation. “It’s true, Taylor. There was something white in my wine, and he crushed it into the floor. Then he also had a, um….” Here Kate’s shy nature takes over, and she looks to Victoria for support.

Victoria rubs her temples. She hadn’t wanted to tell Courtney and Taylor this, but they deserved to know what they were getting into. They needed to know. She finally says, “Nathan also showed us what was in his jacket. He had a gun.”

“What the actual fuck ?” Courtney exclaims, her eyes checking them from the rearview mirror. The car slows as Court takes her foot off the gas. “Vic! We have to go to the police! Fucking campus security! Not the goddamn beach!”

Her temper flares. “And that will do exactly fuck-all, Court! You think I want to get fucking patted down by fucking David Mad Dog Madsen and get expelled by Principal Wells for possession?” Victoria yells back, the stress of the night getting to her.

“Shit. The fucking Prescotts own the pigs around here,” Taylor realizes, all the downstream implications from tonight’s disaster finally registering.  “Do you think Nathan will—“

“Of course he fuckin’ will,” Victoria snaps back.  “He has to. Either he takes me out of play now, or it all blows up in his face. He’s crazy, but he’s not fucking stupid.”

“I-is that why we’re not going back to the dormitories?” Kate weakly asks, trying to gamely keep up with the conversation, visibly wincing with each F-bomb.

“Nothing was in your room, right Vicky?” Taylor asks anxiously. “If Nate is busy snitching on you to his dad—“

“Just that bottle of blueberry flavored vodka,” Victoria admits, chewing her lip. “Nothing hard.”

“Okay...what about your purse?”

Victoria turns red and silent. 

Taylor Christianson turns her patented glare on her friend, automatically sussing her out. “Vicky….” she warns threateningly. They've discussed this before. “Get rid of the snow. Now.”

“Fine,” Victoria sighs, rolling down her window and extracting the clear plastic baggie with its white dusty powder. Kate gasps at the sight. 

“You’re not in Wallowa county anymore, Marsh,” she says shortly, flinging the bag and its contents out by the side of the road, not without some regret as she rolls the window back up. But she’s not going to get expelled and go through an arraignment for one fuckin’ eightball. “Get used to it.”

Blushing, Kate stammers out an apology. “I’m sorry.  I’ve just never seen...um, drugs before.”

“And she’s not going to get used to it, right ‘Tori?” Taylor adds from the front seat.

Victoria smirks at them both.  “Did you forget who we’re going to be meeting with soon?”

“A fucking drug dealer,” Courtney snarks from the driver’s seat. The stress is getting to her too. “Vee, are you absolutely certain you have to do this tonight?”

“Positive,” Victoria emphasizes to all of them. “Frank’s the only source of roofies in this town. But he may not know how Nathan’s been using the shit he’s been selling. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I don’t want to be forced to keep my eyes on all of my food and drinks for the rest of the fuckin’ school year.”

Sure enough, Bowers’ RV was parked at the abandoned beach parking lot.  A dim light was visible through the ratty curtains covering the windows as the girls watched from inside Victoria’s darkened vehicle, watching the empty lot for any other vehicles. 

Courtney whispered, “I don’t think he’s been here, Victoria. I don’t see his truck.”

Taylor was becoming anxious. “Vicky, this is a bad idea. What if Frank’s in on it?”

“He’s not,” Victoria tells everyone, trying to sound more confident about that assertion than she really felt. “Frank may be a sleazeball, but he has to be a decently ethical sleazeball to operate here in Arcadia Bay. Dealers depend on their rep, Tay’.”

“There’s lights coming up the road.” Kate’s whisper takes them all by surprise.

Sure enough, there’s headlights coming up behind them, passing by without a thought from where they had parked on the side of the road. The tension turns unbearable for a brief moment, but the vehicle thunders up to the RV, the driver carelessly parking across three spaces. The headlights go out, allowing them a clear view. Someone gets out, then knocks on the RV door. A dog’s excited barking. After a moment, the door to the RV opens and they enter. 

“Shit. That’s a truck,” Taylor swallows nervously. 

“Is it red?” Victoria demands to know. If it was Nathan, then they needed to clear the fuck out immediately. Maybe even crash at her parents’ house for the night. No matter how utterly humiliating and embarrassing that would be. 

“You’re asking me what color a truck is with no lights on at 3 am? C’mon, ‘Tori,” Taylor groans.

“You need to eat more carrots,” whispers Kate with a smile. Victoria raises her eyebrows, about to correct the commonplace myth, but the pastor’s daughter just smiles sweetly back at her. It appears the church dormouse has a style of playful humor all of her own. Just with less expletives. “Anyway, I can see that the truck is beige. A beige old F-150. It’s definitely not red.”

Victoria tries to peer in the gloom and confirm Kate's observation. After a few seconds, she realizes the novice Holy Sister is correct. Her empty stomach clenches.

A beige truck…

Shit.

I know exactly who drives that fuckin’ piece of junk.

Chloe bitch-ass Price.

What a fucking shitty clusterfuck this night is turning out to be. 

Chapter Text

“Vee, this is a terrible idea,” Courtney says, looking at her in concern from the front seat.

“I agree,” Taylor nods, rubbing her eyes tiredly. “Just...what if something happens?”

“Then we’re screwed either way,” Victoria says, tossing her purse aside. Taylor had insisted. “But I think good ol’ Kari being here is just a coincidence. Probably getting a double fix from Frank.”

Taylor wrinkles her nose at the idea. “Ew. Gross.”

Kate looks between them all. “What’s a double fix?”

“What expelled bitches like Kari Price do all day when they’re busy keeping hooker hours,” Victoria explains, with a sneer and a nod to the RV in the distance. “If it starts rocking, then we’ll just come back later.”

Kate shakes her head in incomprehension. “What’s a hooker?”

“Jesus Christ,” Courtney says under her breath, shaking her head. “See, Vee? This is what we were talking about. Let one of us go with you. Or hell, both of us. Kate can stay here in the car.”

“We’ve been through this,” Victoria growls, trying hard not to grind her teeth. She grips her knees and takes a deep, calming breath. “If I show up with you or Tay, Court, Frank will just think we’re fucking pranking him. Kate’s too…”— don’t say stupid, don’t say stupid —”...innocent for that. She can back me up about what happened tonight.”

“Okay, fine. And you’re leaving your purse here, right?” Taylor cranes her head to examine the backseat.

“Yes, mommy dearest,” Victoria says with a hint of venom. She decides not to tell Taylor about the tight roll of twenties she has in her waistband. If she wants to buy, she still can. It’s nice to have options. “We’re just going to talk. It won’t take five minutes. Kate will keep me on the straight and narrow.”

Kate beams at the other girls, who regard her with uncertainty. “I can do that!” she says with a wide smile. Unbuckling her seatbelt, the church dormouse eagerly opens her car door. “Coming, Victoria?” she says as she stands.

Victoria’s hand is on the car door when Taylor reaches out and grabs her. “Vic,” she says seriously, looking hard into Victoria’s eyes. “Are you one hundred percent certain that girl didn’t do any drugs tonight?”

It turns out walking on sandy and rocky beaches while wearing designer heels in the dark is sort of, kind of, how should we say—not fun. Victoria stumbles slightly, barely catching herself in time as she and Kate slowly make their way to the parked truck and RV. Thankfully, there is no sign of rocking, but the closer they get they can hear raised voices and music from coming inside, audible even above the sounds of the ocean not a hundred yards away.

In the darkness, Victoria’s magnetic confidence crumples faster than wet tissue paper. Fuck. What am I doing here? How am I going to convince a drug dealer to stop selling drugs? It’s not like he cares about what his products do to his customers. 

Then again, the majority of what Frank sells is weed and daubs of coke and ritalin pills. Weed’s been basically legal in Oregon for decades. Maybe the occasional prescription drug, but he’s not a junk dealer. He sells enough to get by but doesn’t draw attention to himself. I’m not sure if he even carries his stuff in that RV; if he ever drove that thing outside Arcadia Bay he’d be pulled over by the first State Highway patrolman that saw him.

Nathan had introduced her to Frank, years ago, when Victoria was still a sophomore and drugs seemed like these forbidden fucked up things that would ruin your life if you touched them. Victoria had been terrified of them, terrified of disappointing her parents if they ever found out and ruining the Chase name forever. But eventually Nathan’s insistence and Frank’s own brand of surly charm had worn her down, and as the months passed and the pressures of studying at Blackhell and managing the Vortex Club seemed only to increase, Victoria found herself becoming one of Frank’s most reliable and consistent customers.

Nathan .

She hadn’t meant to think about him, and suddenly her foot slides awkwardly on a large rock, and she nearly falls onto her bare knees. But instead of splitting open her shins down to the bone, Kate Marsh is by her side, gripping her elbow and supporting her weight with her own.

“Careful,” Kate whispers to her. “I think you’re stepping into the shoulder of the road. The ground’s flatter where I’m walking, over here.”

Slowly, Victoria righted her shoes and feet, and stepped closer towards Kate, finding out that it was true. But even as she stands up straight in the dark with Kate’s help, her hyperactive brain is busy noticing other absurd details. Kate smells like wine, from the spilled cup earlier tonight. But Victoria’s abused nose detects something else. Something lavender and citrus scented.

Okay, Ms. Chase, her imaginary Mr. Jefferson rebukes her. That’s quite enough sniffing at the only member of Blackwell’s Abstinence Club like a horny bitch for one evening. Report to detention.

“Sorry,” she manages, extracting her hands away from Kate’s in the dark. Something that seems awkwardly difficult at the moment. “I guess I need to eat more carrots, don’t I?”

“It couldn’t hurt,” murmurs Kate’s shadow next to her as they inch closer to the RV. But there’s a definite undercurrent of amusement in her voice.

It gets easier to see in the dark and lonely parking lot once they’re close enough that the lights of RV are helping them. By then, even the tiny voice of Victoria’s oft-neglected conscience is beginning to sting her. A fucking Disney cricket on life support. Terminal diagnosis. Hospice care.

“Listen,” she says finally, that tiny voice wanting to give Kate an out. “You don’t have to do this with me. I mean...it’s not like I really even gave you a choice, did I?”

“It’s okay,” Kate assures her, clumsily patting her shoulder in the dark. “This is kind of exciting for me. I’ve never stayed up this late before. Or ever met a drug dealer.”

Victoria can’t help wincing at that. “Okay, the first rule about meeting with a dealer is to never, ever, call them a drug dealer…”

Her quiet coaching of the church girl is abruptly interrupted, when the RV door slams open, and a five foot nine blue haired dynamo in a dark beanie and jacket comes stomping out, stopping up short when it sees them. A man in the RV is bellowing like a bull behind her.

“And I better see my fuckin’ money, Price! Remember, you’ve only got three weeks left—hey, what the fuck is going on here?” yells Frank’s voice, his profile backlit by the light from inside the RV.

Chloe Price’s own eyes narrow at Victoria. “Chase,” she raps out curtly.

Victoria reflexively sneers back. “Price,” she says in the same tone.

Kate blinks back and forth between Frank and Chloe, her hands clasped together nervously. Then she extends a hand to Chloe, who happens to be closest. “Um, hi! My name is Kate Marsh….”

Victoria never found out if Chloe would ever have shaken Kate’s hand, because what happened next was a bit of everyone’s fault.

At the sound of an unfamiliar voice, savage animal barking erupts inside the trailer, and a brown furred mutt of a dog charges the supposed human intruder in the form of sweet and innocent Kate, tripping Frank and setting him down on his ass.

“Pompidou!” Victoria yells, putting herself between the furiously barking dog and Kate, who cowers backwards gracelessly at the dog attack. “No! Bad dog!”

To her amazement, Chloe tries valiantly to assist her. “Pomp! Down boy! Ow! Sit! Fuck! Just fuckin’...sit your ass down!” she shouts, lunging for the dog’s collar. She manages to secure him, but the dog’s slavering focus on Kate sends her to the ground as well.

Even dragging Chloe’s weight, the dog manages a lunge towards Kate. Victoria, not even thinking about her actions, flings out a hand, only knowing that she has to protect her friend.

She connects with Pompidou’s snout, making the animal back off a little, but his teeth tear into her fingers. In retrospect, sticking her hand out anywhere near a rescue animal saved from illegal dog-fighting rings was probably a bad idea. But better her than Kate.

“God fuckin’ damn it!” yells Frank, finally getting a grubby glove under Pompidou’s collar. With Chloe’s help, the dog calms its barking into intermittent choked yelps and growls. The dealer turns his beady, puffy-eyed glare on Victoria and Kate as he crotches defensively next to his dog. “What the fuck are a bunch of teenage bitches doing here at four in the fuckin’ morning?”

“Vic!” Kate’s stammering voice murmurs nearby her ear. The church dormouse is clutching at her hand now, cradling it in a soft warm grip. “You’re bleeding!”

“M’fine,” Victoria mumbles, not knowing what to do about her torn and bloody hand. Why did I do that? Shit, that hurts! She mindlessly holds it away from her clothing, not wanting bloodstains on her expensive party clothes. “It’s just a scratch,” she says, her social skills somewhat lacking in situations where she’s bleeding. “It’s okay. Pompy didn’t mean to.”

“Shit, Chase,” Chloe grunts, finally getting her long lanky legs under herself. “Uh, hang on. I think I have some band-aids in my glove compartment.” Keys jangle as Chloe reaches for her belt, hurrying to the other side of her truck.

Frank shakes his dog one final time, and the dog subsides from its excited mood with a growling whine. Slowly, he stands up, awkwardly scratching the back of his dirty head. “Fuck. Uh, look, sorry about that. But back to my original question...what are you stupid girls fuckin’ doin’ here, anyway?”

Victoria takes a deep breath, ignoring the pain slowly creeping up her dripping hand. To the point. Well, we can certainly do that, Bowers. Fixing a glare on Frank, she demands in her bossiest voice, “How long have you been selling fucking roofies to Nathan, Frank?”

A car door slams with excessive force behind her. “Fuck!” Chloe Price crows loudly, running up to assist her with a box of band-aids, that Kate helps her fumble with in the dim light from the RV. Hopefully they’re cleaner than her. But still, any port in a storm. I’ll take it. But then she hears Chloe’s next words as the tall girl gets up in Frank’s face, much like she had done to Nathan earlier tonight.

“I fuckin’ told you, Frank! And after you gave me all sorts of shit and blew me off? So who’s the fuckin’ liar now?!” Price yells out for the entire empty park to hear, shaking a black painted fingernail at Frank’s nose. Still, Victoria will take that, too. Because Frank immediately looks guiltily resigned, being called out by both of them. Then his face turns mulishly stubborn behind his beard.

“Fuck off,” he declares, to all of them. “I’m not sayin’ shit. Good night, bitches.” He turns to leave, dragging his dog by the collar.

“Frank,” Victoria says loudly, stopping him with her tone of voice. In this, at least, her parents had taught her well. “The entire school knows what Nathan did at the party by now. Madsen and Wells are already opening up an investigation.” Into me, but you don’t need to know about that detail . “Eventually, one way or another, your name is going to be dropped after tonight. If not by us, then by some other student.”

Frank pauses at the open door to the RV for a long moment, his only movement the careful rubbing his dog’s ears as it licks his hand. Finally, thankfully, he cracks under the pressure. “Fuck it,” he mutters, running a hand over his face. “If I tell you bitches, will you finally fucking leave me alone and let me and Pomp get some sleep?”

“Don’t touch anything,” Frank grumbles once they’re inside, stepping into the back of the RV interior that serves as the bedroom. Victoria would definitely have had more commentary about the shockingly filthy interior, but she was distracted by her hand. And Kate’s tender fussing over it. She’s crammed into the small bench seat with the church girl, but like everything else that has happened tonight, Kate doesn’t seem to mind. Victoria has to admit she appreciates her help, her artist’s hands applying pressure to her still oozing wound with a handful of paper towels Chloe had wordlessly handed to her. The punk, in the meantime, paced in tight circles near the cab, barely able to take a single step before she had to turn around. Pompidou, apparently finally deciding that Kate was, indeed, good people, panted doggily in his corner, filling the RV with the reek of his breath.

“I fuckin’ warned him,” Chloe mutters, almost to herself. “I told Frank that Nathan was out of control, if he was drugging girls in bars and stuff. I fuckin’ told him about this shit for an entire fuckin’ month.”

“I’m Kate, by the way,” Kate introduces herself shyly once more. “Thank you for your help out there.”

Chole’s blue eyes dart between the two of them, then she shrugs and points a thumb to herself. “Chloe Price. Do you, ah...are you a friend of Vic’s?”

“Um. I guess,” Kate says when Victoria doesn’t interject herself. “She stopped Nathan Prescott from putting something in my drink tonight.” To Victoria’s relief, Kate doesn’t volunteer any information about Nathan’s gun.

Chloe looks briefly impressed. “Nice. That asshole did something similar to me about a month ago. Must’ve used the wrong dosage or something, because I managed to wrestle myself free and shake clear of his stupid ass. Locked myself in my car and slept it off until I could get the fuck away from Toddy’s.”

“Toddy’s?” Victoria rouses herself, scoffing in disbelief. “What the hell were you doing there? That place is like....a bar in a nursing home.”

“ I know ,” Chloe groans defensively. “I was tryin’ to raise the money I hella owe Frank. So I thought I could fly solo for one of the scams Rachel and I used to pull at the dive bars up and down the coast.”

The wheels click together for Victoria. Rachel had mentioned doing stuff like this, years ago. She sneers scornfully at her expelled adversary. “Shakedowns? Really, Price? How the mighty have fallen. So much for that academic scholarship.”

Chloe automatically sneers right back at her. “Not all of us were born with the full fuckin’ dining set in our mouths, Vic .” She smirks evilly and points an accusing finger back at Victoria. “Wait wait wait, lemme guess: are you still looking for that special someone to watch the rest of Steins;Gate with you?”

Victoria hisses in fury and tries to rise from the small RV table where she and Kate are sitting next to each other. “Don’t fuckin’ call me that name,” she says, all the more mortified that Kate has heard someone spill about her secret anime fetish. Not even Taylor knew about the depths of her fandom she tried so hard to hide from the world. Only Chloe fuckin’ Price.

Kate immediately tries to play peacemaker. “Let’s not fight, please. Remember, we’re guests here, and we need Frank to help us, right? To stop this from happening to any other girls?”

Chloe grunts dismissively and turns her black jacket back on them. “I guess,” she says noncommittally.

Frank chooses that moment to shuffle back into the main living area of the RV. He raises an eyebrow at Victoria and Chloe resolutely ignoring each other. Pompidou gives a rapid shake of his nearly nonexistent tail at the sight of his owner. Kate tries to smile politely.

“Glad to see everyone’s getting along,” he drawls, holding a small notebook in hand, already leafing through it.

Victoria suddenly feels done with this entire evening, feeling a bone-weary fatigue settle in her body. But she can’t quit yet. “Well, Frank?” she says, forcing a demanding note into her voice.

The dealer looks uncomfortable, which is saying something. Scratching the back of his neck, he sighs and says, “So um, yeah. I may have sold that Presshit kid some rohypnol.”

“Fuckin’ roofies,” growls Chloe dangerously, turning back on him and balling her fists. If Victoria didn’t know that Bowers always carried a switch with him, she would have bet on Price. She knew from experience that an enraged Chloe was not a joke. “This is some shit, Frank. Even for you.”

“Look, fuck you, Price, alright,” he growls back at her. “Unlike your punk hobo ass, I need the money. You wouldn’t believe how much that little shit is paying me for them. I get them from a supplier from California.”

“What’s rohypnol?” Kate asks firmly. Victoria senses what the church girl is trying to do by trying to keep the peace, but she’s had enough.

Almost too angry for words, Victoria stands and answers Kate’s question, glaring at Frank the entire time. “It’s a benzo. A tremendously strong one. It’s illegal all over the U.S, so Frank’s supplier probably brings it up from Mexico. It’s an extremely common date rape drug.”

“He told me he was usin’ it for sleepin’,” Frank shrugs carelessly, his hands spread up.

The attitude just pisses Victoria off more, but Chloe surprisingly beats her to it. “Fuck you, Bowers,” she says angrily and calmly. “You’re not the one at risk here, you never will be, and you know it.”

“Fuck you , Price,” he shoots back. Victoria rolls her eyes at their dialogue. It’s getting repetitive at this point. “It’s the Prescott kid, alright? It’s not like I had much of a choice. That fuckin’ headcase was being incredibly pushy about it. Keepin’ him happy keeps the heat off of my ass.”

Victoria thought that one over. That makes sense, from Frank’s perspective. But Nathan apparently tried to roofie even Chloe? At a shitty dive bar? Is this why Nathan’s been acting so off lately? 

Who else has he tried to….

A horrible sneaking suspicion suddenly enters Victoria’s mind, and she wonders if Chloe is thinking the same thing as she is. “How long have you been selling it to him, Frank?” she says, her voice now tight and quiet like Chloe’s. She glances at her former social nemesis, and while Chloe looks blank at first, she soon catches on, her blue eyes turning colder than a glacier.

Chloe starts trembling like a tightly wound spring, her fists clenched so hard her knuckles turn white. “How long, Frank?” she raises her own voice into a yell. Pompidou growls warningly from the floor as the tense energy inside the confined space rises.

“Why the fuck is that so important? God-damn it…” Frank gripes to himself under his breath, flipping through his notebook. He then taps a page. “Here we go. First sale I made to him was more than a year ago.”

Victoria and Chloe look at each other in open mouthed shock, their fear and horror and suspicions overcoming their long-seated animosity.

Shit. Rachel has been missing…

...for six fucking months.

The thought is apparently too much for Chloe. With a terrible sound wrenching from her throat, something between a sob and a moan, she tears through the cheap plastic door of Frank’s RV, heading back out into the cool night air, nearly ripping the door off of its hinges in her fury. Once outside, she’s immediately screaming obscenities to the stars, accompanied by metallic thumping sounds.

“Hey!” Frank immediately glowers at the damage to his mobile home. “Price! Fuckin’ come back here!” he screams while leaning outside the broken door, causing his dog to bark in chorus with him. “You’re gonna fuckin’ pay for that!”

Victoria clasps a bewildered Kate’s hand and hauls her to her feet. “We’re leaving. Right now,” she says tightly, hustling Kate past Frank through the busted door.

“What the fuck is going on with that crazy bitch?” Frank groans over Pompidou’s barking, almost pleading to Victoria.

Victoria continues to speak to Kate as if Frank’s not even there. Because he’s so fucking stupid he might as well not be. “Katie, will you be a darling and check on Chloe for me? It sounds like she’s hitting her truck with her fists, and I don’t want her to hurt herself.”

“Oh. Um, okay,” Kate says timidly, her brown eyes darting around, trying to make sense of the strange scene. “Um, nice meeting you, Mr. Bowers.” With that, she nods at them both before walking towards Chloe’s truck, where Chloe is still screaming and sobbing.

Victoria turns to Frank, who looks like he’s about to say something again, but she interrupts him before he can speak. “Shut the fuck up, Frank. You have got to be the fucking stupidest pusher on the goddamn planet.”

“What the fuck are you talkin’ about?”

She leans forward for emphasis, her voice dripping with all the venom and hatred she’s worked years to accumulate. “You can’t see it because your fuckin’ head is so far up your own fuckin’ asshole to even realize what you may have done. So allow me to spell it out for you. You’ve been selling roofies to Nathan for a year, Frank. Rachel has been missing for six months. I realize your formal education may have been limited, but please tell me that you can put fucking two and two together, at least.” 

To his limited credit, Frank immediately pales, obvious even in the dim light. “No...Rach is too fuckin’ smart of that little shit, she wouldn’t…”

She shoves her bandaged dog-bitten fingers into his face, wagging them under his nose. “Wouldn’t what , Frank? Be tricked? Have someone slip something into her drink? I know for a fucking fact you used to party all the time with Rachel. Do you really think she would never, ever get so wasted that someone couldn’t get a chance to slip a little something extra to her?”

Frank is still gawping at her. “I didn’t...I wouldn’t ever want for something to happen to her ….”

Victoria suddenly decides she’s had enough. At least Nathan knew what he was doing was stupid and evil. Nathan’s actions tonight, while shocking and disgusting, were somehow better than this brand of gormless, smugly self-serving male idiocy. What did you mean to happen, Frank? “My selfish actions may have inadvertent consequences? Oh NOES! Why didn’t anyone fuckin’ tell me I might sow what I reap?” Seeing the tears gather finally in Frank’s own eyes, Victoria hardens her heart against any useless sympathy. Even Kate’s Bible knew about this lesson, Frank. Like four fucking thousand years ago. You’ve treated all of the Blackwell students like disposable garbage, even while you were fucking one, and now she might be dead because of you. Quelle surprise! No, you’re not getting any tears from me.

The headlights of her Maserati quickly pull up from where Courtney and Taylor have been hiding, and the side passenger window rolls down. “Vicky,” Taylor calls out. Her voice sounds strange. “We need to leave. Right fucking now. Juliet’s been texting us.”

Victoria looks back at Frank Bowers one final time. The man has his hands over his eyes, sitting on the steps by his busted RV door. Pompidou is whining and licking at the man’s unkempt beard. She can’t tell if he’s crying or not.

And in the end, does it even matter?

She turns her back on him.

“Be right there, Tay,” she calls out, then hurriedly walks over to the shadows near the back of Price’s junker of a pickup. She overhears both Taylor and Courtney cursing at her for the delay, but she’s not leaving Chloe like this. Not without saying something.

She reaches Kate and Chloe back behind the truck, and for a torturous moment, she wishes she had her camera here with her. Even her phone camera. Kate’s posture is perfect and formal as usual, but she’s rubbing slow, comforting circles against Chloe’s tall back, even as the older teen is sobbing in horrible anguish against the gate of her beaten up, run down truck, clutching the rim of metal and rocking in time to her crying. The half-full waxing moonlight, low on the horizon above ocean, only adds to the pathos of the shadowy scene.

For a long moment, Victoria can’t think of anything to say. She has a history with Chloe and Rachel, most of it unpleasant and bitterly embarrassing and awkward. Much of those confrontations made her into who she was today at Blackwell.

And now Rachel might have been raped to death. Chloe was expelled and no one cared. I made certain no one would care. And now I’m the so-called Queen of Blackwell. It was everything I thought I wanted.

She stood there listening to Chloe’s sobs, and recalling what possibly might have happened to Kate, to herself, by her supposed best friend, for whom she continually lied about and covered for and made apologies and excuses….

I didn’t want this to happen, Chloe. Rachel. I really didn’t.

But I know you won’t believe me.

Because I wouldn’t either.

Her tired brain cells recall one of her photography idol’s most famous quotes. Richard Avedon had once said, in the pompous way that all photographers act like when asked about their art: “All photographs are accurate. None of them are the truth.” Pretty standard industry boilerplate shit, because stuff like that sounds much better on the gallery tour circuit rather than “I took a fucking metric shit-ton of pictures and the small percentage of them I’m showing you happened to be good.” Almost all great photography was either almost comically serendipitous or the product of pain-staking, psychologically intense, back-breaking work and effort. Sometimes both , she can hear Mr. Jefferson saying with a smirk. The fact that almost everything was digital these days (retro Atari grade throwbacks like Maxine Caulfield notwithstanding) had made the industry only more ruthless and competitive, the pay shittier, the hours longer. But Victoria used that quote by her idol as an inspiration, and an important reminder, to the point where she even had a poster of it on her wall back in her dorm.

Now, in this moment of time, Victoria feels that quote takes on new meaning for herself, Chloe, and Rachel.

All photographs are accurate.  

Rachel Amber was a slut, a pedal pusher playing with fire, using all the men and women she met almost at will. 

Chloe Price was a timebomb waiting to go off, just wanting the chance to hurt everyone around her as badly as she’s been hurt in the past. 

And Victoria Chase was a deceitful bitch, who only cares about herself, and has no real friends. Because she’s too cowardly to be who she wants to be, and finds wearing the mask is easier.

Victoria takes a deep breath, and very slowly lets it out. 

But none of them are the truth.

After tonight, maybe it was time for an olive branch between her and...everyone. Because after tonight, Victoria feels like everything she previously thought about or cared about was so excruciatingly stupid and remotely inconsequential it is honestly starting to offend her.

Practicality would suit her best here, she decided. “Are you going to be okay, Price?” she finally says.

Kate slightly jumps at her voice, not having noticed her in the dark. Chloe Price inhales loudly through her nose, her breath slowing down into gasps. 

“No,” she says weakly. Well. At least she’s honest.

“Please...don’t hurt yourself anymore, too,” Kate’s soft voice pleads. “It hurts others when you do that in front of them, you know.”

Shit . “Price, what did you do?”

“Uh, um...well, heh heh,” Chloe laughs awkwardly through her tears and snot-filled nose, holding out her trembling fingerless gloves for their inspection. “I think I kinda broke both my hands while punching my truck...again.”

Wow. Such a Chloe Price sentence.

Victoria just looks at Kate, and she shakes her miserably. “I’m sorry...I didn’t know how to make her stop, she was so angry.”

Sighing, Victoria massages her sinuses, trying to keep a headache at bay. “Not your fault, Kate. Believe me, better people than you or me have tried to keep Price from spiraling into her self-destructive emo kid bullshit.”

Kate tilts her head, and Victoria’s heart almost melts because the motion is so adorable. “Emo kid?”

Chloe looks mortally offended. “Hey, okay now, first off, fuck you, Vic. Secondly, didn’t you listen to nothing but My Chemical Romance AMVs during sophomore…”

“Do you still have your old phone number?” Victoria interrupts her, not wanting to get side-tracked by high school trivia.

Now Chloe is confused. It takes her some wincing effort, but she manages to show off the black clamshell Wal-mart phone she has in her pocket. “Yeah, but my minutes are limited. I can still text, though,” she explains.

“Good,” Victoria nods to herself, the rudiments of a plan coming together in her mind’s eye. “I’ll be in touch with you, so unblock me at some point, and I’ll do the same for you.”

Clear skepticism radiates from Chloe. “Uh-huh,” she grunts indelicately. “We’re not at all fuckin’ buddy-buddy, Vic. So don’t act like it. All I need from you is for you to stand aside. I’ll take down Prescott myself and make him fuckin’ beg until I learn whatever happened to Rachel or I feed him his own nutsack, whichever comes first.”

Kate looks vaguely sick and Victoria’s anger bubbles forth, but she shoves it back down deep inside of her. Chloe didn’t know, so it was time to unload the other bombshell she and Kate had on her. “You’re right, Price,” Victoria admits slowly. “I don’t want to be buddy-buddy with you. Ever. There’s been too much shit between us for that. But I also don’t want you to die. Because Nathan is packing...he has a gun, Price,” she adds for Kate’s benefit.

It’s clear Chloe doesn’t believe her. “Psh. No way. Not at Blackwell. My step-douche wouldn’t let him.”

“It’s true, Chloe,” Kate says nervously, fingering her gold cross. “I know you don’t know me very well, but I was raised by my family to always tell the truth, no matter how big or small. Nathan had a gun inside his jacket tonight, at the Vortex Club party. He threatened both of us with it.”

Silent for a moment, Chloe painfully reaches into her pockets again. Her swollen fingers take out a cigarette that she lights with her zippo after a few fumbling tries. Inhaling the first puff deeply, the punk dropout looks out into the windswept distance of the nearby ocean.

“Okay,” she slowly admits. “That...might be a problem.”

Victoria gives a groaning sigh. Fucking finally. Time to wrap this up. “Trust me, Price. You’re a witness to Nathan’s shitty behavior. All of us are. But if you just charge into this shit recklessly, without a plan, Nathan’s just gonna pick you off and make it look like your fault.” Which it completely would be, because you have the impulse control of a fourteen year old with ADHD. she silently adds to herself. “We can take down the Prescotts, but let’s play it smart, okay? If what I’ve got planned doesn’t work, then you have my full permission to do whatever the fuck you want.”

The Maserati’s horn blares loudly behind her and Kate, and Courtney guns it slightly in reverse, so that Taylor can lean out the open car window. “‘Tori. Kate. I’m not fucking playing. We need to leave, now .”

Kate wilts under Taylor’s death stare. “Oh! Um, okay! Uh, nice to meet you, Chloe!” Giving a small half-wave, Kate runs around the Italian luxury car to her car door, entering.

Flicking her cig away into the predawn gloom, Chloe sighs herself and nods at Victoria. “Okay, Vic. We’ll play it your way. For now.”

“All I’m asking,” Victoria replies, turning to get back into her warm and soft car.

“Hey Vic!”

Victoria pauses at Chloe’s voice at the car door. 

Chloe Price gives her an evil grin that she remembers all too well, when they were both students together. “I like her. So treat her right, okay?” Chloe says with a wink, before loading up into the cabin of her truck..

Victoria refuses to dignify the innuendo with a response as she gets back into her car.

I am not blushing.

I am not.

... okay, I might be slightly blushing.

Fuck off, Price.

Victoria barely has time to slide her seatbelt buckle into place before Courtney is already gunning the engine, peeling through the gravel parking lot to get back to the highway. “Okay, what the fuck’s so important that the two of you couldn’t calm your tits for two minutes?” she demands to know.

She senses more than she sees Courtney and Taylor looking at each other in the front seats. Shit . Whenever both of her friends were like this at the same time, it was almost always bad news. Before tonight, bad news meant things like poor attendance at a VC party before midterms or finals, or that one of Victoria’s masterfully planned and pre-arranged matches in school had fallen through. Now it could be absolutely anything.

“What’s going on?” she asks, dreading the answer.

Taylor answers her. “Just...check your phone, ‘Tori.”

Her phone. She had left her phone here in the car, along with her purse. Victoria fumbles with the pearl clasp, swiping through her locked screen once her phone is out.

Too many messages and replies and missed phone calls for her to count, but two of them stand out.

A single ominous one from Nathan.

[I fucking warned you]

[4:27 am]

And an even three dozen from Juliet, but the last half catches her attention.

[omg Victoria I need to talk to you NOW]

[3:48 am]

[now meaning fucking now]

[3:49 am]

[Ok look I dont kno what the fuck u r doin but the longer u dont answer the worse it might be]

[4:01 am]

[Vicky shit ok just pls be alive right now im freaking out]

[4:13 am]

[listening to the police scanners now, Vicky ur car is a suspect vehicle]

[pls dear God be safe]

[4:21 am]

[ok I snuck out from curfew and managed to overhear Wells and Madsen talking outside]

[Vicky, Nathan is charging you with assault]

[4:29 am]

[apparently spreading some fucked up story about how you attacked him at the party while on coke]

[do u use blow???]

[fuck, forget I asked]

[4:30 am]

[Ok, finally managed to contact C and T. Thank God ur safe]

[but]

[meeting with Frank tonight is not a good look 4 u V :( ]

[4:37 am]

[okay, we’re all outside now. Fucking perv Madsen going thru our dorms right now w/ the goon squad]

[campus is on lockdown, but u not bn here is another bad look]

[4:47 am]

[might wanna call your ‘rents V]

[lawyer up]

[4:51 am]

That’s as far as she can get before burying her face into her hands, her phone slipping from her nerveless fingers onto the car floor.

“Victoria! Is everything okay?” Kate, sweet, innocent Kate, is fussing and worrying over her. Kate B. Marsh, the pure, guileless, blameless girl that Victoria just might have sacrificed everything for in one serendipitous act. The church dormouse who was hugging her as she was currently sobbing her eyes out, as all of her worst fears have come to fruition, while Courtney and Taylor grimly drove onward in silence.

Her inner Mr. Jefferson took the time while she was crying to monologue in her head, from a brilliant lecture a few weeks ago where he had expressed his admiration for a simple, seemingly innocuous motion, a story about one of Victoria’s favorite classical photographers.

Philippe Halsman, on the subject of using jumping in portrait photography.

Halsman famously said that in the act of jumping, when the human body is detached from gravity, our mask slips, and the true self is revealed. This was, of course, a bit of self-serving nonsense, because jumping just replaces one mask with another, in my humble opinion. But! But. Through this simple, physical act, Halsman oftentimes created a simple, childlike psychological bond with most of his portrait subjects, even going to the point where he would often insert himself into the portrait, along with the subject, if it would make them more comfortable while jumping! Of course, maybe he just also wanted to say that he had once jumped around with Marilyn Monroe. Thank you, I try to be somewhat entertaining. So perhaps it’s through the bonds he made, through the psychological trust and comfort he argued for and with he endeared in his subjects, that allow his portraits to feel comfortable enough to drop their normal, socially distant “mask” that most of us wear through day by weary day….I’m sure all of you have noticed that mask, that distance and remoteness with our fellow sentient beings, out in the halls by your lockers. Or online, of course. But just imagine if everyone just jumped their way to their lockers instead. Or instead of asking someone you like out on a date, you ask them out on a jump. Don’t laugh, because this time I’m actually serious! Because Halsman was onto something in one regard in portraiture; with every jump, there’s always the implicit risk of falling. By offering to jump with someone, you’re telling that person, on a subliminal instinctive level we can barely acknowledge, that you’re willing to accept the risk of falling with them. Falling...to the very end. 

Splat, in other words.

Chapter Text

It wasn’t until it was past noon that Victoria was finally released by the school administration and campus security, by which time she was so tired and exhausted she could have died and she would have only been grateful for the chance to finally rest.

Meetings with Principal Wells and David “Mad Dog” Madsen, Chief of Security.

Interviews with Arcadia Bay Police.

Meetings with her parents.

Interviews with her parents’ lawyers.

And as she told, and retold, and repeatedly retold her story, with zero variations in repetitions, she was met with either a solid wall of skepticism or indifference by the older adults. Instead, her own indiscretions were constantly brought up: her violent reaction against Nathan. Against Kate. The vodka bottle they found in her room. The miniscule amounts of white dust in her purse. Being forced to take a drug test in front of the school nurse, like she was the criminal. The outsider. The villain.

In the end, she had court dates set, a conduct review by the school’s Advisory board (of which Sean Prescott, Nathan’s father, was the head, because there was currently no bottom to Victoria’s life now), citations for misdemeanor assault and schedule II drug possession (god-damn drug sniffing dogs), and her worldly possessions confiscated, including everything inside her classic vintage black bejeweled Dior purse. Seeing David Madsen roughly handle the high four digit dollar purse like it was a twenty dollar eBay knockoff made Victoria inwardly seethe, but like every other indignity and humiliation she had to endure, she silently bottled it up. 

The school administration magnanimously left her her phone, in case they needed to “get in touch” with her later. She would learn whether or not she was merely suspended or expelled by Monday morning, so she had only thirty-six hours of all-consuming existential dread to look forward to for the remainder of the weekend.

Her parents’ disappointment was palatable, and their interactions in public with her were austere and functional.

In private, where it was just the three of them, she noted odd details, like the way her father just rubbed his face that Victoria was shocked to realize she constantly mimicked, even though it was terrible for her complexion. Or the familiar way her mother was absorbed in her phone, managing the crisis for her daughter, even as her green eyes looked at her reprovingly over the rims of her sunglasses.

If Victoria could use a single word to describe the relationship she had with her mother and father, she would call it “utilitarian.”

After they left, she couldn’t stop thinking about how she didn’t even get a hug.

Well.

Maybe she’d get one at Christmas.

If she was lucky.

Santa might not come around this year, after all.

The walk of shame from the high school to the girls’ dorms on Saturday afternoon was the cruel and unusual part of her punishment.

The Pacific Northwestern day was bright and sunny and unseasonably warm (thank you, global warming). Victoria blinked rapidly and stumbled into the too-bright light, shielding the low rays of the sun stabbing into her eyes with her sore and bloody hand (which no one had bothered asking about).

Courtney and Taylor were nowhere in sight. She was alone.

Without her posse, Victoria felt naked and abandoned, seeing the quad full of lounging Blackwell students on the weekend, as usual.

But this time, the apex predator had become the prey, and everyone knew it.

Brooke’s drone buzzed by her head. Repeatedly.

Nathan was holding court with the rest of the football team on the steps, pointing at her. After a moment, loud laughter erupted in a cacophony of scorn.

A skateboard rolled into her path on her blindside, nearly making her trip in her heels and aching feet and sending her face-planting into the asphalt. More laughter, this time from the stoner clique of Blackwell.

Even Alyssa rudely bumped into her shoulder while walking past her, the fat girl whom Victoria had viciously mocked for years muttering loudly enough for her to overhear, “Sucks to suck, doesn’t it Vicky?”

Victoria stumbled past her, ignoring her.

Yes. It does.

Dragging herself past Well’s home on campus, she was finally to the entrance to the girls’ dormitory when her exhausted thoughts finally clicked. Victoria hauled herself wearily to the double-door entrance, belatedly realising what she’s missing.

My swipecard. They took my swipecard when they took my purse. 

I can’t get back into the dorms without it.

Blearily, Victoria raises her phone up, ready to type a message to Courtney or Taylor or Kate. They had been interrogated and disciplined along with her, but they had been unable to communicate for the vast majority of the morning.

Blackness greets her as she dumbly stares at her own dim reflection of the iPhone’s surface. Victoria pressed buttons at random, and a cheerful image of a white power cord and red thunderbolt greet her efforts.

Her phone is dead.

So if she wanted to get back into her room, she would have to trudge back through the quads, past Alyssa and Nathan and Trevor and Brooke, back to school administration, and ask David Madsen or Principal Wells politely and subserviently for her school ID back….

Fuck it. I’m done.

There was a bench that faces the nearby overgrowth and woods nearby the dormitory. It seemed like as good a place as any to have a complete mental breakdown. Victoria forces her blistered feet to move towards it, then settles her butt onto the cool stone as she stares sightlessly into the woods.

Is this what they mean when people say no good deed goes unpunished?

Her stomach growls uncomfortably. She still hasn’t eaten anything since late afternoon yesterday. Victoria feels her head and belly throb, angrily demanding sustenance, for which she has no money for, since she can’t get into her room. Which has no doubt been completely trashed by campus security, who had undoubtedly pawed through her designer jewelry and expensive electronics and gear and stolen whatever could fit into their pockets. 

She can’t help but replay the Vortex Club party last night in her mind. What could she have done differently? Could she have just grabbed Kate’s drink from her? Tossed into the pool? Confronted Nathan less publicly, and sent Courtney and Taylor to take care of Kate? Or should she have just stood by, and let it happen, like some passive wallflower, and feel privileged and excited just to witness the vile act in the making, like some creepy fucking voyuer?

What did I do wrong? Her mind chants it in a litany, even as the fragile remnants of her ego and intelligence try to fight back against the numbing, tired sensation that creeps into her soul. You didn’t do anything wrong. Kate is okay. You know about Nathan. You know about the roofies. You know something like this might have happened to Rachel.

For Victoria Chase, the impasse of how to quantify the past twenty four hours into a win or a loss is a struggle that her admittedly brilliant mind is having trouble accepting.

She knew, on a background level, what was happening. Even her own wealth and status was not preventing her and her story from being marginalized. Instead, on guiltily arriving back at Blackwell Academy at six am, she and Kate, Taylor and Courtney, had been divided and conquered, each of them individually packaged, unwrapped, and digested by the system, which had completely closed ranks against them.

All to protect a bugfuck crazy WASPy male teenager with a gun and drugs. America. Fuck. Yeah.

Victoria stared dumbly into the woods, not seeing anything, her thoughts flickering like a glitched television screen. Maybe I should pull a Diane Arbus and fucking off myself. I wonder who would even care. Here lies Victoria Maribeth Chase, 1995-2013. And of course, the cherry on top would be my portfolio then being lauded as groundbreaking or revolutionary or trailblazing or some other kind of bullshit, and finally being accepted. The art world loves women, so long as they’re DEAD and don’t have to be paid.

What was it she said? ‘Nothing is ever the same as they said it was?’ Yeah, no shit, Diane.

I think I’ve figured that out by now.

* Click-WHIRR *

The sound shocks her out of her disjointed thoughts, and Victoria looks up to see what roused her from her fugue.

Max Caulfield, in her grey hoodie and jeans and camera bag, lowers her scratched Polaroid JobPro Two, even as the polaroid ejects from her camera, which she scoops up and wiggles in the air. Which you are never, ever, supposed to do. Risks bleeding the exposure. Stupid hipster can’t even retro right. She tries to meet Victoria’s eyes, but fails and looks at her sneakers instead.

“Sorry,” Max mumbles. “I should have asked for your permission.”

The Victoria Chase of old would have been up in Caulfield’s face in an instant, cussing out the mousey bitch, undressing her in a verbal tirade that would make her self-proclaimed rival shrivel up into a grey slime blob straight from Akira Toriyama’s Dragon Quest artwork.

Now? Victoria can barely work up the energy to shrug a single shoulder, turning back to stare in the woods. Even Caulfield is here to celebrate my fall. Perfect. Fuck you too, life. I realize I never did myself any favors, but this is too much.

She hears Caulfield shuffling her feet, after putting away her camera. “Um. What are you doing? If you don’t mind me asking?”

Finally, some of the poison leaks from Victoria’s soul. “‘The fuck do you care? I know you hate me,” she responds bitterly.

Caulfield sounds offended. She splutters briefly, then, “What? What are you talking about? I’ve never hated you.”

“...You should,” Victoria says, refusing to look at her, still staring into the woods. “Everyone else does, now.”

“...is this about what happened last night?” Max sounds completely at sea. “I don’t know what’s going on. Everyone has been acting kinda hella weird.”

The verbal tic from Caulfield makes Victoria pause for a second. Where had she heard that before? Last night?

“What do you mean by weird?” she asks, finally turning and accepting Caulfield’s presence. At least she was talking to her. Maybe the retro hipster chick was just...special, on some level. It made sense from what Victoria knew. Max Caulfield didn’t seem to react much facially or respond to social cues, and merely went from class to dorm to the bathroom and back again with her headphones in her ears and the same mopey, vaguely guilty, wide-eyed expression on her face. In fact, the only time Victoria remembered seeing Max ever smile was inside Mr. Jefferson’s class. Back then, it had made the old Victoria seethe with jealousy, certain Max was using what limited waifish charms she owned on Mark.

“Oh my dog, where do I start?” Caulfield says with a faint note of exasperation. “First off, all the female security staff are stomping up and down the halls on our floor at like four this morning. I think your room got searched or something? Then I heard a bunch of girls start laughing and singing the munchkin song from The Wizard of Oz. Y’know, ding, dong, the witch is dead? They went on for freakin’ hours with that. Then there’s all these emails and phone alerts from Principal Wells at around six about how all Vortex Club parties are cancelled for the foreseeable future, saying that assault and drugs and alcohol on campus are not to be tolerated, blah blah blah.”

“They cancelled the Vortex Club?” Victoria repeats in horror, witnessing the majority of her life’s work crumbling before her very eyes.

Shrugging, Caulfield says, “That’s what they said. Then I was coming back from breakfast, and I saw Kate crying as she was basically running to her room. I asked her what was wrong, but she just said she couldn’t talk about it. Courtney and Taylor were right behind, and it looked like they had been crying too. Then someone posted a link on Facebook to this weird video of you and Nathan and Kate, the one where you’re cussing him out, but I didn’t see anything wrong with it, so I thought it was just another churn of the rumor mill.”

If there was a pit nearby, Victoria would have walked into it. This was worse than she could have ever imagined. “There’s a video?” she asks numbly.

“More like videos...there’s a bunch of them from every angle, which show you slapping Nathan and Kate’s drinks out of their hands, and…” Caulfield blinks and stops herself. Then she says more slowly, “You...really don’t know about the videos?”

“No.”

Caulfield looks abashed, then says quickly, “Um, good, then. I wouldn’t look them up. Like, for cereal.”

Victoria intends to anyway, but how bad must they be if even Maxine Caulfield is warning her away from them?

Probably pretty fucking bad.

“Anyway, before I head...do you want to see it? Your picture?” Caulfield says shyly, holding out the developed polaroid.

Victoria silently takes it and studies it. As much as she hates herself for admitting it, Mr. Jefferson is right when he raves about Max Caulfield’s photography. You either have it or you don’t; that certain je nais se quoi that separates the professional from the amateur artist. What people in photography called “the eye” in hushed, revered tones, as if invoking the name of deity. What has frustrated Victoria for years, and forced her into secret crying spells deep in the night alone in her room, is the deep-seated fear that she will never have it, because it is something that hard work or enthusiasm or intelligence or expensive gadgets cannot overcome. It’s a simple quirk of genetics or psychology, or both; take your pick. 

Or maybe it was by being so mousey and unassuming and awkward that you simply take pictures of people you bump into, without asking permission.

The portrait captures herself in a slightly angled profile, her shoulders hunched as she leaned on her palms, sitting on the bench, her face blank and her mouth unattractively slightly open, her eyes far away, looking at everything and nothing, like the so-called “thousand yard stare” captured in war photographed of combat fatigued soldiers. Her bitten right hand, with the crusted blood soaked band-aids around her fingers, is in the forefront, a striking contrast to her stylish but wrinkled black party outfit. The final detail is her feet, her high heels tangled together under the bench, because unconsciously, her body had been seeking to take pressure off her sore feet.

It’s a brilliant portraiture of her. Victoria can’t help but be impressed.

And it’s on a fucking disposable polaroid.

God damn it, Caulfield. If I simply gave you some of my hand me down cameras and lighting rigs, you wouldn’t even need to finish high school. You’d already been on the gallery circuit. Someone desperately needs to swoop in and manage this girl’s fucking career for her. Otherwise, she’ll just waste her talent by becoming an art teacher in Spokane or something. Close enough to touch the stars, but not having enough resources to become one.

“It’s good,” she manages, instead of saying anything like what she was thinking. She hands it back to Caulfield with a grimly ironic smile. “Maybe you can submit it to Mr. Jefferson. Who’d ever think of a person like me being an ‘Everyday Hero?’”

Caulfield frowns as she stuffs the picture back into her shoulder bag. “What’re you talking about? I was just thinking about calling it ‘After Party’ or something. I mean, the way you look, it seems like you must have had a good time. Must’ve been a hella party to get your club cancelled like that.”

She doesn’t know anything! Victoria barks out a bitter laugh. “Oh, I had a real good fucking time all right. Enough to get expelled.”

Caulfield’s blue eyes widen to anime levels. “W-what? Why would you get expelled?” she stammers.

“Because Nathan is charging me with assault,” Victoria shrugs. “You saw the video. Videos, whatever. But when I saw Nathan trying roofie Kate...I dunno. I guess I acted on instinct.”

Her rival’s face scrunches up. “Roofies? Nathan had roofies?”

Victoria suddenly feels ice cold despite the heat of the global warming in October. “Max,” she says seriously, looking the other girl dead in the eye. “Your telling me you don’t know about the roofies?”

Caulfield shakes her head in the negative. It’s clear she’s not lying. Victoria doesn’t think she’s capable of it.

Oh fucking Christ.

Juliet didn’t get the story out.

Where IS Juliet? I haven’t seen her. Why were Kate and Court and Tay crying? What did they tell them?

That might mean...nobody knows Blackhell might have a rapist and a killer in its midst.

The Prescotts might have fucking buried it. 

Completely.

There’s a slight humming buzz, and Caulfield hauls out her phone and looks at it. “Shi'ite. Sorry, Victoria. I’d like to hang out more. Actually, come to think of it, this is the longest we’ve ever talked, haven’t we? But Warren’s blowing up my phone. I’d better head out to the parking lot and meet up with him….”

“Fuck Warren Graham with a spoon,” Victoria snaps angrily, interrupting. She rushes to her feet, her worn ankles nearly collapsing as she stands with a wobble. “Come with me, Caulfield. You’ve got better things to do than watch Mystery Science Theater with Graham at the drive-in this afternoon.”

Caulfield stares at her. “I do?”

“Yeah,” Victoria snaps, her mind racing, feeling herself getting her second wind from terror and adrenaline. She’s going to crash, and hard, soon, but she has to make sure everyone knows first. She needs to know what has happened to her friends.

There. She’s admitted it to herself.

Kate Marsh is her friend. She hopes so, at least. Someone whose life you save doesn’t always have to be your bestie for life. 

But it’s still a great fucking icebreaker. 

Speaking of ice, how hard are those diamond drillbits you call nips, Vic? Instead of Mr. Jefferson, this berating mental voice sounds like Chloe Price, the resident Arcadia Bay out and proud lesbian that Victoria is endlessly envious of.

Stay on topic, brain. “I’m calling a fucking emergency second floor meeting, Caulfield,” she says firmly. “You need to hear about this. It concerns all of us.” Seeing Max’s skepticism, Victoria grimaces and confesses, “Look, you know that missing girl, Rachel Amber? The one with the posters up everywhere?” Max nods. “That’s what I don’t want to happen to any of us. Especially me. Believe me, this is fucking life or death. For all the girls at Blackwell.”

Max still has her phone out. She’s examining Victoria, she realizes, and Victoria gamely does her best to meet that supremely naturally talented eye with her own.

I’m not lying. I’m not. Please believe me, she tries to communicate with that stare.

Caulfield hesitates a moment longer, then she texts something quickly, sliding her phone back into her pocket.

“Okay,” she nods. “I still don’t know what the flick is going on, but I think I know you well enough to know you wouldn’t act like this without a good reason. How can I help?”

Victoria scoops up her dead phone from the bench, then flushes slightly.

“This is gonna sound extremely stupid, Caulfield...but...can you swipe me in? I don’t have an ID.”

Chapter Text

Upon marching up the stairs to the second floor, with Maxine Caulfield stumbling behind her, Victoria Chase made an instant beeline to room 223, Juliet’s room. It had been clearly updated since the party last night, with a message on the dry erase board next to the door saying: “X-TREME STORY COMING SOON ON THE TOTEM!!! STAY TUNED 4 UPDATES!!!”

Rapping on the door, Victoria tried to ignore the deep seated sense of dread. “Juliet?” She rapped harder. “Juliet, are you there?”

As Caulfield moves uneasily behind her, Victoria strains her ear to the wood of the door.

Nothing.

“Max, could you be a darling and try calling Juliet for me? My phone’s dead,” she pleads, chagrined by having to resort to begging from Caulfield, of all people.

“Oh. Um, okay, hang up a sec,” Caulfield replies, getting out her phone. Victoria notices it’s an old iPhone 3G. Caulfield uses budget phones? Okay, the entire retro schtick may not be entirely by choice.

The room next door opens up, and Taylor’s blonde head steps out, dressed casually with a laptop bag slung over her shoulder. Victoria’s heart almost skips a beat in joy as she runs up to her bestie.

“Tay! Thank God, there you are….”

Taylor turns around and  glares at her with a sneer, and Victoria almost staggers backwards at the other blonde’s visible anger. “Out of my way, you lying bitch. I don’t have any more time or patience for your cokeheaded delusions.”

Victoria feels her mouth drop open. “Tay-tay, seriously, what the hell are you….”

“Don’t!” Taylor almost shouts at her, her hand up threateningly, and Victoria backs up a step, wondering for a horrified moment if Taylor’s going to slap her. Seeing this, Taylor deflates and sighs, shaking her head. “Don’t bother, Vee. It’s over. The Vortex Club is over. And we’re over.” She looks at Victoria and her bedraggled appearance up and down, sadly. “For what it’s worth, I hope you get your nose clean. I really do. But I can’t do this any more, ‘Toria. I’m sorry.”

Taylor’s abandoning me? Shit, after all we’ve been through? After all these years? Even after last night?

Stopping the tears welling up in her eyes is impossible. “Tay…please. Don’t do this to me. Not now,” Victoria whispers, her voice thick. 

Taylor hefts her shoulder strap, not looking her in the eye. “I gotta study. Have fun in rehab or whatever.” With that, Taylor steps past her and heads for the stairs. The sound of the metallic doors opening and shutting behind her feels as final as the slamming of a coffin lid in Victoria’s mind.

Even as tears streamed down her cheeks, Victoria had been wondering how this day could possibly get worse.

Well, now I know.

“Wham. That was flippin’ cold. I thought you and Taylor were like, BFFs or something?” Caulfield asks behind her.

I thought so too.

Then Victoria Chase’s previous fire comes back, and she wipes away the useless tears angrily. Taylor has been clearly lied to and deceived, and Victoria’s going to get to the bottom of this even if it kills her. Because now, she has absolutely nothing left to lose.

I know you’re behind this, Prescott. Hide behind your lies and the rules of American society protecting your limp dick and that deflated thing you call a ballsack. But I know you better than anyone. I know your tics and phobias.

I’m going to be the one that fucking ENDS you.

“Did you get a hold of Juliet?” Victoria asks Caulfield briefly, rubbing at her eyes.

“Nah. It just went to voicemail after ringing.”

Don’t panic. Maybe she’s in the computer lab, working on getting the story out. Maybe she’s interviewing people who were at the party. Maybe she’s checking into those online videos. Her mind can rationalize Juliet’s strange absence in a dozen different ways.

It does nothing to quell that cold sinking feeling of dread within her gut.

“So. Whatcha gonna do now?” Caulfield idly asks her.

“I haven’t been to my room,” Victoria muses to herself. “I need to check on it. Make sure the pigs haven’t destroyed it.” She glances back at Max. “You said they searched my room?”

Caulfield rolls her eyes. “Don’t remind me. They woke us up around four or so, because of a ‘campus security check’ or some such bullpuck,” she says, using air quotes. 

Victoria stomps past her, determined to get to the bottom of this, not really caring if Max follows her or not.

She hesitates, slightly, when she marches past Kate’s room, 222. But she thinks about Taylor’s betrayal of her, and then she thinks about Kate, sweet, innocent, God-fearing Kate, treating her the same way. Those eyes flashing in anger, and judging her unworthy.

That may shatter Victoria past all endurance. So she ignores Kate’s door for now.

Victoria reaches her room, pausing when seeing the pretentious quote from Gandhi she had left on her dry erase board a week ago.

“Be the change you want to be.”

Before opening her door, Victoria, seized with an irrational impulse, smudges away the stupid-ass quote with her bare hand.

Fuck off, Mahatma. From now on, I’m using nukes. 

“Thank dog,” Caulfield chimes in behind her. “I have to admit, that kinda annoyed the coprolite outta me.”

“It was meant to,” Victoria says defensively. It was a psychological trick to try to throw you off your game in class with Jefferson. I guess it worked, on some level. 

She tests the knob. It’s unlocked.

Victoria walks into her room, her sanctum, her domain...and screams.

All her designer clothing was off their hangers and on the floor. Her mattress was overturned, all the printing, camera equipment, and even her computer stacked carelessly in the corner, leaning together like some shiny black unplugged Tower of Pisa. Her carefully curated DVD and computer game collection was haphazardly strewn about various tables and chairs as well. 

But all that was fine, almost expected from the pigs at Blackhell. What caused Victoria to scream was the torn fragments of pictures and photographic paper and empty clear plastic sleeves littering the floor.

Someone has destroyed her photography portfolio.

You have copies of most of it. There are backups on the cloud, her mind whispers, trying to soothe her.

But most of these photographs had been her originals, the first photos she had taken with real film and developing them with her teachers in actual dark rooms. Some of them were irreplaceable. All of them were precious childhood memories. Her first shoots, when her mother was helping her with some friendly models who had agreed to take some time on the weekend (and Chase money, she realized, years later) to help a nervous, nerdy, shy little eleven year old girl get a head start on her fashion photography career….

“...okay. This is pure evil,” Caulfield says quietly behind her, shuffling around her and taking in the scene. “What kind of person does this?”

“...Nathan,” Victoria hisses savagely, clenching her nails into her fists. “I crossed him, because I wouldn’t let him fucking roofie Kate at the party last night. This is his psychotic way of getting revenge.”

Caulfield blinks several times, then says, “Okay. And why didn’t you just contact security? Madsen’s a donkey, but he still probably would have done something about that.”

“Because Nathan had a gun!” Victoria snaps back, subsiding when she sees Caulfield flinch. She waves her hands helplessly. “I freaked out, okay? He scared the shit out of me, and I didn’t know what to do! I didn’t know who to trust!” Her stamina finally ebbs, as staying up all night suddenly catches up to her. Victoria moves to her couch and almost collapses in it, covering her eyes with her left hand. There were only so many times she was willing to break down in front of Caulfield.

Victoria feels herself sniffle like a god-damn child. Totally helpless. “I didn’t know who would believe me,” she says quietly, defeatedly. “And now I know.”

“I believe you,” a quiet voice says.

Victoria looks up as Caulfield turns. “Hey Kate,” the hipster says with a little half wave.

“Hi Max,” the church girl smiles quietly, dressed in her sleeping clothes, a ratty old oversized white Bible camp tee and red pajama bottoms. Her face is drawn and her eyes are red, but she’s still trying to smile for everyone’s benefit. She looks around Victoria’s room, however, and the smile falters, shaking her head mournfully at the destruction within. She awkwardly holds her elbow and says, “I’m so sorry, Victoria. This is all my fault.”

Victoria snorts in disbelief. “How in hell could this possibly be your fault, Kate?”

Kate looks at her feet. “Because I went to that party, and I shouldn’t have. All of this suffering you’re going through is because of me. Because of me, you’ve lost all your pictures, your future, your reputation. You got caught with your coke because of me.”

“Coke? I’m more of a Dr. Pepper gal myself,” Caulfield deadpans.

Kate shakes her head. “Oh, I don’t mean soft drinks, I was talking about Victoria’s, um…”

“Go on, Kate,” Victoria says, shooting the smirking hipster a stink eye. “Caulfield’s sense of humor is just as dated as her taste in clothing.”

“Ouch,” Max mutters, but her smirk is still there.

Kate shakes her head. “My point is, none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been tempted to go to that party, and then tempted Nathan into wanting to…to….”

Okay, enough of this religious guilt bullshit. “Kate,” Victoria interrupts her, her voice stern. “Stop it. Seriously. Stop nailing yourself to that cross. You did nothing wrong. Nathan’s the asshole here.”

“But…”

“But nothing. This is my fault,” Victoria continues ruthlessly. “I knew he was losing his grip on reality. And what’s funny about all of this is that if you think I’m a cokehead, Kate, you haven’t met Nathan Prescott. I’m surprised he hasn’t perforated his septum yet. He’s probably done lines in front of Wells and Madsen, just to prove he can.” Suddenly restless, Victoria gets up from the couch and stands in the midst of her ripped up pictures. “And I knew all about it and I saw he was getting worse and worse in his behavior and I just stood by and...let it happen.”

“He was your friend,” Caulfield says quietly behind her. “It’s understandable.”

Snorting again, Victoria looks around her destroyed room. “Some friend. And this is how he repays me for sticking my neck out for him. The instant I stepped out of line, he had to ruin me.”

“That’s what I don’t understand,” Kate says softly. “They said they found drugs in your room, and I knew at once they were lying, because you said you didn’t. They also didn’t want to hear anything I said about Nathan or the rohypnol. Mr. Madsen even accused me of being on drugs, and forced me to take a drug test. It was so humiliating.”

“No wonder the videos online are focusing on your drug habit, then,” Caulfield says. She looks at Victoria in her awkward manner, trying to but not meeting her eyes. “Sorry. I didn’t kinda believe you all the way earlier, especially when Taylor blew up at you, but if Kate’s vouching for you, then I know you’re not lying.”

Kate nods jerkily. “I know they took what Principal Wells and Mr. Madsen were telling them very hard. But I was there when Victoria was meeting with her dealer, Max, and she didn’t buy anything. Last night, she was just trying to prevent anyone else from getting hurt. It was like…”

“Like what?” Victoria sputters indignantly, already offended by the fact nobody seemed to trust her. Am I really that bad? Why does everyone take this highschool BS so seriously?

Smiling at her gently, but with something sad in it, Kate says shyly, “It was like I finally got to meet the real Victoria Chase for the first time.”

Oh, hell no. This was the last straw. “Oh come on! I haven’t been that much of a bitch, have I?” Victoria demanded, glaring green daggers at both of them.

Kate and Max look at each other, then at anything else other than Victoria. 

Caulfield coughs slightly. “I plead the Fif,” she says.

Kate eventually meets her eyes, her jaw tight. “Before last night,” she says firmly. “I didn’t think you cared at all for me. You always called me rude names, made fun of my faith and convictions, and tried to get everyone at school to avoid the Abstinence club. I don't know what made you feel like you had to do those things, but it was very hurtful to me.”

Victoria sputters. “That was just me...expressing my own opinions, like any other person!” Pure reflexive denial. 

“Really? What about me then?” Caulfield adds. She points at herself with her thumb. “Just the resident ‘retro hipster chick,’ right? The photography nerd with the polaroid camera that barely works half the time and you can’t even buy film for these days. Who cares if I like old stuff?” Caulfield points to the thankfully not destroyed poster on her wall. “You like old stuff too. Like Richard Avedon.”

“That’s completely different! He’s a classic!” Victoria protested. “Versece would have never been Versece had it not been for Avedon’s Vogue covers!”

“The Bible could be considered somewhat classic, as well,” Kate giggles softly.

That earns a wince. “Okay, touché, I’ll grant you that one….”

“And what’s that in the corner?” Caulfield interrupts her and points past her, toward the piles of DVDs spilled carelessly from their shelf.

Suddenly embarrassed, Victoria hastily walks over and starts cleaning the DVDs up off the floor. “Nothing,” she says firmly, her ears burning. 

“They looked like cartoons,” Kate says helpfully, with a twinkling smile.

Caulfield snickers slightly. “They are cartoons. Was that She-Ra, Princess of Power that I saw there?”

“No, it wasn’t,” Victoria says sharply, stacking DVDs quickly and efficiently, putting her more respectable live action movies on the top of her anime and cartoon collections, such as Mean Girls and Moulin Rouge and Heathers .

“And I think I also saw Jem and the Holograms? ”

“Shut up, Caulfield!” she hisses. Her face must be bright red by now.

Kate speaks up. “It looked like there were some Japanese cartoons in there as well. I’m not familiar with them, but I recognize the art style.”

“I’m not super into them either, but I think I saw Sailor Moon and Revolutionary Girl Utena in there.”

“Shut up!” Victoria leaps up and shouts, in something between a strangled scream and a yell, causing both Caulfield and Kate to back up a step. Waving a random DVD case at both of them for emphasis, Victoria yells, “Both of you! Neither of you know how much shit I had to take about liking this stuff in middle school! How much shit my parents gave me! That they still give me! So finally I was forced to keep it a secret from everybody! I don’t need any more shit from my friends!”

At that moment, her stomach growls audibly, echoing through the room after the note from her last words.

Max Caulfield and Kate Marsh stare at her, wide eyed and jaws hanging open.

Victoria covers her mouth in complete mortification.

“I’m sorry,” she says, not even sure what she’s apologizing for anymore. “I’m really sorry, I haven’t eaten anything since yesterday, and…I was in those stupid meetings all morning, and then they took my purse, because it was considered evidence, and now it’s just been one thing after another….”

Kate starts giggling, a light airy breathy sound that slowly starts rising in pitch and volume. Soon, Max is joining her with her less dignified squeaking laughter, but her own blue eyes are mirthful, not taunting.

“Oh my glob,” Max manages to wheeze. “I think I FELT that.”

“Vic...Vic...Victoria…” Kate gasps repeatedly, wiping at her eyes. “C-can I get you something to...to…to eat?”

“Careful, Kate! She’s hangry!” Max points out between peals of laughter.

Victoria feels hot all over, but she can’t even be bothered to try to hide her cherry red face at this point. “I am NOT!” she loudly insists to the other girls.

That just makes Kate and Max laugh even harder.

Resisting the urge to stamp her feet about like a toddler and confirm things for them is the hardest thing Victoria feels like she’s ever managed to do. She needs a fucking cigarette, one of her special clove ones that always manages to relax her mind off her troubles. Except her pack of Djarum Splashes was currently languishing in Wells’ office.

But then Kate smothers her laughter, still grinning widely at Victoria, and she feels her heart skip a beat once again. Several beats, in fact. Complete afib. Because there’s so much affection, and trust, and purity in that smile that Victoria Chase can’t help herself falling for it. Kate is genuine. Kate is honest. Kate does not play games. Whatever she feels, whatever she shows to Victoria, it is the real deal.

That smile is a balm to Victoria’s affection starved soul, and it breaches her numerous walls and defenses like they’re not even there.

God, I bet she has such beautiful hair, Victoria thinks to herself idly on a tangent as Caulfield finally manages to calm herself down as well. She’d look great with it down, instead of bundled up in that Marge Simpson bun. Does she not know proper hair care? If not, I could show her, but Taylor would be the true expert here. Me, I like my pixie cut too much. I blame Mia Farrow. And Edie Sedgwick. Holy shit, what if I could convince her to model for me? Or God, even cut her hair in a more modern style? Would she let me do that for her?

Her thoughts freeze with sudden ice cold clarity.

Oh, damn.

I’m crushing on Kate Marsh.

Bible fucking wholesome Thumper-the-Rabbit Kate Marsh.

Straight as a fucking crate Kate Marsh.

President, Vice-President, Treasurer and Secretary of the Blackwell Abstinence Club Kate Marsh.

Will still be here at Blackwell while I’m probably going to be expelled back to Seattle Kate Marsh.

I’m going to Hell.

*Click-WHIRR*

The sound snaps her out of her thoughts for the second time that afternoon.

“Sorry,” Caulfield grins, catching the polaroid from her old JobPro. “It’s just you looked so interesting there, holding that anime in your hand. Which one is that? I’m not familiar with it.”

Victoria looks down at what she’s holding in her scabbed over, sore hand.

She’s standing like a complete idiot, holding her old bootleg sub of the first season of Strawberry Panic! Of which Caulfield just took a photo.

Going to Hell?

Scratch that, she’s already there.