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“Well,” said her father, “I think that’s everything.” He looked around, surveying the small pile of boxes in the middle of Kate’s room, then ruffled her hair. A little of her bun came undone, the way it always did, and Kate just brushed it back out of her face and smiled, the way she always did. “Now, you remember, Kate. We’re just a phone call and a ten minute drive away. I expect to hear from you regularly and see you for dinner at least once a week, you hear me?”
“Yes, Dad,” she grinned, leaning into him for a hug. “I am only a ten minute drive away. You don’t have to act like you’re never going to see me again.”
“Ah, Kate,” he said, squeezing tightly. “You’re becoming your own woman. In a way, I won’t ever see you again. Not the little girl I raised and loved all those years. Now I am going to meet the woman you’re going to make of yourself, and that makes me more proud than I can say - but forgive your old softie of a father if he gets a little sad about it too.”
Well, she couldn’t really chide him for being sad if there were tears in her eyes too, now could she?
“Lynn! Penny! Come say goodbye to your sister!” her father called, and the two girls appeared in the doorway. Always the most demonstrative one, Lynn immediately tackled Kate with a hug tight enough to make ribs creak, while Penny, more reserved, still squeezed her for a moment and kissed her cheek.
“Don’t forget us, ‘kay?” she whispered, and Kate shook her head, straightening Penny’s glasses for her.
“I could never.”
And then they were gone, and Kate was alone in her new dorm room. Well, mostly alone. Alice was shivering in the corner of her cage, clearly stressed out by all the excitement of the move. Kate could definitely relate to that. Moving out of her parents house and into the Prescott Dormitory on the Blackwell Academy campus was the most exciting thing she’d ever done in her life… and also the most terrifying. She felt like a tightrope walker in the circus, one who was making her first performance without a net.
Well, if she didn’t plan to reduce herself to a quivering wreck of anxiety within her first five minutes living on her own, she needed to give herself a project. Since she was staring at a pile of boxes full of her stuff, the project seemed pretty obvious.
She set to work unpacking. The hours went by quickly, and she realized only when she was starting to actually feel a bit ill that she hadn’t actually eaten since lunch. It was almost dark outside now, and she had nearly missed her chance to grab dinner at the cafeteria. She bid Alice a quick goodbye and hurried out into the hallway.
Where she promptly ran straight into someone.
The other girl was a pale brunette, about Kate's height, with a charming dusting of freckles and bright blue eyes. She was wearing a grey hoodie and a tan t-shirt with a line drawing of a camera and the words, “Someday My Prints Will Come” on it. She was carrying a tall, leafy plant, nearly half as tall as she was, in a blue pot labeled “Lisa.” Kate got a faceful of leaves and nearly sent the girl sprawling, but sheer luck allowed her to grab the girl’s wrist and keep her on her feet. “Oh! I’m so so sorry!” she started, but the girl blushed and shook her head.
“No, no, it’s my fault, I shouldn’t be carrying this by myself! I’m almost blind. Are you okay?”
“Oh, I’m fine,” Kate rushed to assure her. “Let me help you! Where are you going?”
“Room 219, it’s just over there,” the girl said, trying to point without letting go of the plant. “Can you maybe get the door? It’s open.”
“Oh, of course!” Kate quickly moved down to the hall, pushing the door open. Clearly this girl was still in the process of moving in, although she had already laid down a large “Keep Calm and Carry On” rug on the floor in front of the door. Beyond that, though, there were just a bunch of boxes very similar to the ones Kate had been working through in her own room all afternoon. Seeing the girl coming up behind her, Kate quickly got out of the way and - when she almost walked into her own stack of boxes - also caught the girl’s shoulder before she risked another tumble. The girl seemed… remarkably accident prone.
She placed the plant on top of the boxes. “Thank you so much.” She colored slightly as she turned to face Kate. “Um. I’m… Max. Max Caulfield.”
“Kate Marsh,” Kate introduced herself. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Max! Is that short for anything?”
“Maxine,” Max replied unwillingly, “but I kind of hate it. Max is fine.” She looked around, seeming embarrassed, before her eyes fell on the plant. “And, um, this is Lisa!” She grabbed one of the plant’s branches and waved it.
Kate giggled. “It’s nice to meet you too, Lisa,” she told the plant. She looked back at Max. “I can see you’re still getting settled, but I was just about to go get some dinner. Would you like to come with me?”
For a second, Max looked like she was going to say no, but she visibly calmed herself and said, “That… would be nice. Thanks.” She smiled, and Kate was touched by how lovely it was.
Both of them were naturally shy, it seemed, but Kate was determined to make friends in this new place, so she pushed the conversation forward as much as she could without feeling rude. By the time they’d reached the cafeteria and gotten their meals, she’d learned that Max was from Seattle (“I thought driving the rental truck down alone and unpacking it myself would make me feel independent and adult. I’m kinda dumb sometimes.”) and was at Blackwell to study photography. Kate explained about her own artistic ambitions and plans to start an abstinence club and comparative religion study group on campus, assuming she could get permission from the school administration.
“I hope you can find people to join,” said Max carefully, and Kate recognized her wariness.
“I’m not here to convert anybody, Max,” she said. “And I won’t think less of anyone who isn’t interested in joining. That’s… not how I think faith should be treated.” She speared a tomato slice from her salad. “I want to be an example, not an encyclopedia salesgirl, and I want to help people, not judge them.”
Max smiled, and Kate noticed again how pretty it was. “That sounds really reasonable, Kate. And I meant it: I really do hope you find people to join you.”
“So,” said Kate, changing the subject, “are you going to study with Mr. Walker?”
“I am!” Max brightened. “I’m really excited. He’s a great photographer. I went to the library back in Seattle and checked out the book they released after his show at MoMA, and he’s just amazing at portraiture. So much of his work has this raw, almost grungy vitality that reminds me of Nan Goldin, but he’s had commercial success in fashion photography too, so I think he’s got a lot to teach me.”
Kate smiled. “I’m taking his class too,” she said. “I guess we’re going to be classmates then.”
“That will be fun!”
“It must be really exciting to be able to be taught by someone you admire so much. Is that why you came to Blackwell?”
Max opened her mouth, but then closed it without answering right away. Kate frowned, wondering what was troubling her. “Not really,” Max finally admitted. “I mean, it’s part of it, but… I’m actually from Arcadia Bay originally. My parents moved us to Seattle when I was thirteen, and I had to leave somebody behind. Right when she needed me, really. I’m hoping I can find a way to reconnect with her.”
Kate blinked. “You… picked your school based on a friend you had when you were thirteen?”
Max flushed. “...yeah. I know it’s stupid.”
“She… must have been really important to you,” said Kate diplomatically. She didn’t know that she would have called it “stupid,” that was really rude, but it seemed… unwise, at least.
“She was,” Max said. “She was the most important person in the world to me when I lived here, and we moved three days after her father died. It was the exact day of the funeral.”
Kate put her hand to her mouth. “Oh, Max, I’m so sorry. That must have been so hard on both of you.”
Max looked away. “It was really…” she sighed. “Shitty. But not as shitty as what I did afterward, which was completely fail to reach out to her at any point. I basically haven’t called, texted, emailed, written, anything, in five years.”
“Why not?” Kate asked, surprised. They didn’t know each other very well yet, true, but Max didn’t seem like the sort of person to abandon a friend like that.
“I… don’t know,” Max said, her face downcast. “It was a really bad time for me too, I guess, and adjusting to Seattle was hard, and then… it had just been so long. But I never stopped thinking about her.”
Kate studied the other girl. The way she was talking… “Do you want to tell me about her?” she asked gently. Max colored again.
“Her name is Chloe. We were… best friends doesn’t even quite seem to cover it. Soulmates, maybe.” She smiled, remembering. “We would go on all these adventures, usually pretending to be pirates, but we were superheroes, blade runners, wizards… you name it. She was always the leader and me her trusty sidekick. We built a fort in the woods, we went up to the lighthouse all the time, we explored every inch of this town and the forest around it.”
Kate couldn’t quite hide her shock. A girl named Chloe, a girl whose father who had died five years ago… “Chloe Price?” she asked, and Max’s eyes widened.
“You know her?”
“Not… really,” Kate hedged. “She and her mother came to my father’s church a few times after her father’s death. William? Is that right?” Max nodded, still looking surprised. “I think Chloe’s mother was… looking for something. I wish I could say she found it, but they only attended for a few weeks.” All of which was entirely true, but none of it was why she remembered Chloe.
The story seemed to have depressed Max even worse. “I… they were never religious before, but I guess… I understand why. Oh, Chloe…”
Kate took Max’s hand. “From what I heard of him, William was a wonderful man. I’m sorry for your loss.”
Max nodded. “Thank you. He really was.”
Kate licked her lips. “So… you’re planning to rekindle your fr- friendship with Chloe?” she asked, stumbling over the words. Max had sounded so… invested in her. She’d even called them “soulmates.” Had they actually been… more than just friends? Was Chloe…? Kate couldn’t even quite finish the thought. She had no idea what to think about any of this.
Max was too wrapped up in her own memories and worries to notice Kate’s uncertainty. “I hope so,” she said. “If she’s even willing to talk to me.”
For a long moment, Kate didn’t know what to say, but finally, her upbringing reasserted itself in her head and the words came to her. “If you don’t mind, I’ll pray for you.”
Max smiled, though it was a bit weak. “Thanks. I’ll take any help I can get.”
They moved onto other topics, much to Max’s apparent relief. Kate was relieved too, but managed to not make it obvious. By the time the meal was done, they’d agreed to meet somewhere in the coming week for tea, and Kate was fairly sure she’d made a friend. It felt good.
That night, however, as she lay on her bed, staring up at her ceiling, her feelings were a lot more mixed. For one thing, she hadn’t had a room to herself since she was four years old, so the silence was oppressive. For that, though, she could turn on a little music, keeping the volume very low. The things she couldn’t ignore as easily, though, were her memories.
Kate was handing out programs at the door to the nave when she first saw the girl. She was a few inches taller than Kate, with shoulder-length strawberry blonde hair and bright blue eyes. There was a tightness in her eyes and around her mouth that seemed to speak of deep pain, and Kate immediately felt her heart go out to her. She was with an older woman, presumably her mother, but the girl had stepped aside a little, out of arm’s reach, clearly wanting to stand on her own.
Something about that combination of suffering and strength made Kate’s stomach flutter weirdly. She stepped forward, offering programs to the two, but only the mother took one. Kate saw that the mother looked sad too, if not as angry as her daughter. “Can I… show you to a seat?” Kate offered, surprising herself, and was surprised again when she was disappointed to be told it wasn’t necessary. She wanted to help, somehow.
Not knowing what else to do, she slipped away from the door to find her father, telling him about the new parishioners. “I think something bad might have happened to them,” she said, hoping her intuition was correct, and her father nodded, thanking her for the insight. When the service ended, they approached the two and her father introduced himself and his daughter.
“Joyce Price,” the woman said in a thick Southern drawl, “and this is my daughter, Chloe. We’re… this isn’t somethin’ we usually do. We’re just… visitin’, I suppose.” She looked awkward, perhaps even ashamed.
“My daughter thought something might have prompted this visit,” her father said gently.
“No, no, noth-” Joyce started to say, but Chloe cut in angrily.
“My dad’s dead,” she snapped. “He’s dead and we’re here because she thinks God might make it stop hurting somehow. Because what we need is an invisible friend, apparently, to magically make it all go away.”
Kate gasped, shocked by the blasphemy, but her father just nodded. “Doesn’t seem likely to work, does it,” he said sympathetically. “That isn't how God works, though. He gives us the strength we need to get through our pain, not take it away. The pain of grief is a symptom of the love we felt for the person we lost. Taking the pain away would mean taking away the memories of that love. That's not what God wants, and I don't think it's what you want either.”
“What I want is my dad back,” Chloe said, eyes flashing, and she ran out of the church.
Joyce looked even more embarrassed than she had a moment before. “I’m so sorry, Fath-, er, I’m sorry, I don’t know your title.”
“It’s Reverend Marsh, Mrs. Price, and there’s nothing to be sorry for. You and your daughter have suffered a terrible loss. Anger and grief are both unavoidable and nothing to be ashamed of.” Her father looked down at Kate, putting his hand on her shoulder. “Kate, why don’t you go see if you can find Chloe and talk to her. Not about her father, unless that’s what she wants; just talk to her. She could probably use a friend right now.”
Kate nodded eagerly. “Oh, yes, of course. Um, nice meeting you, Mrs. Price.” She gave an awkward wave, then scurried out. As she did, she heard her father ask Joyce if she would like to join him in his office for some tea.
She found Chloe near the bus stop. She was sitting on the curb, her head in her hands, and Kate could hear the sound of tears as she approached. She stopped, waited for a few uncomfortable moments, then remembered her task and cleared her throat. Chloe jumped, twisting around to see who had made the noise, and glared when she spotted Kate. The glare faded quickly, though, and all Chloe said was, “What do you want?”
Kate started to say her father had sent her, but some instinct held that back. For some reason, she didn’t think Chloe would take it very well if Kate said she was coming to talk to her just because she’d been told to. “I wanted to talk to you, I guess. If that’s okay. You don’t have to be alone if you don’t want to be.”
Chloe’s face twisted in unexpected pain. “Yeah I do,” she said angrily. “Everybody leaves. Right when you need them, they’re gone and you’re just… fucking alone.” That solitude, that loneliness, poured out of her eyes and slashed open Kate’s heart. She tried to imagine what it would be like to lose her father, and the very idea twisted her insides up painfully. What Chloe was going through… it made her want to throw her arms around the other girl and hold her the way she did for Penny when the school bullies were bad or Lynn during the thunderstorms that always upset her.
Desperately trying to find something to say that wasn’t going to make things worse, Kate’s eyes fell on the crumpled piece of paper in Chloe’s hand, the remnants of the church program Kate had handed Joyce before the service began. There were several drawings and doodles scribbled across it, the same kind that Kate herself had done a few times when she just couldn’t keep her mind on her father’s sermon. “Do… do you draw?” she asked, pointing at the paper.
Chloe looked down at it, then shrugged. “Sometimes,” she said a little of the tension easing, “when I don’t have anything better to do.” She pushed her hair back over one ear. Kate found herself inexplicably fascinated by the movement. “It helps a little, I guess. When I feel like I have to say something but I can’t find the right words for it or… when nobody’s around to listen anyway.”
“I draw too,” said Kate, sitting down next to her. “Sometimes it’s the only way I can get away from my parents and my sisters, if I just want a little peace and quiet in my head. Not that I don’t love them, of course! But, you know, sometimes you want a little space from everybody.”
“Not really,” said Chloe, and the anger was back, if less intensely than before. “I’m an only child and, well, my dad’s dead, so…” Kate colored, looking away, and Chloe let out a pained breath. “Fuck. Sorry. That was an asshole thing to say.”
“It’s okay,” Kate said, still not looking at her. “You’re upset, I get it.”
“I do know what it’s like to wish you could get away from everybody,” Chloe admitted. “It’s like that at school a lot for me these days. And I guess I draw sometimes then too.”
Kate looked back, and her breath caught when she met Chloe’s gaze. It was the first time she’d been right in the focus of those intense blue eyes, so close and so… She didn’t even have the words for it. It was too much, and yet for some reason, her instinct was to lean closer, not get away. She caught herself, jerking back, and Chloe frowned in confusion.
“Uh, sorry,” Kate fumbled, getting to her feet. “I need to… get back to my father. It was nice to meet you, Chloe. I, um, hope you come back to see us next week.” And she ran.
She spent the entire next week feeling like an utter fool for running, imagining what Chloe must think of her, hating herself for making things awkward with a girl who needed help, and never, ever managing to forget those eyes. She was practically a nervous wreck by the time Sunday came around the following week, and she almost begged off of attending by saying she wasn’t feeling well. Fear of her mother’s disappointment and shame at lying kept her from it, though, and she was right back at the front of the church, handing out programs, when Joyce and Chloe came in again. She forced herself not to stare at Chloe as she gave the program to Joyce, but she couldn’t keep herself from looking, and every time she did, she found Chloe watching her with a mix of confusion and wariness. Kate had no memory of the sermon whatsoever by the time it was done, and although she desperately wanted to go talk to Chloe afterward, she couldn’t make herself do it. She was just too nervous.
Her emotions didn’t get any less troubled and bewildering the following week until Friday night, when there was a story during the evening news about Iowa’s Supreme Court legalizing gay marriage in that state, with film clips showing gay couples, including pairs of women, kissing one another on the steps of a courthouse. Kate, watching absently while she did her homework in the living room, glanced up, saw one of the couples, and had a sudden, intensely clear image in her mind of herself and Chloe standing in their places, doing the same thing.
Kate abruptly found herself with a very, very uncomfortable suspicion. One involving exactly why Chloe was making her so nervous, and why she couldn’t stop thinking about her eyes. Or, now, her lips.
She spent a lot of time praying that night, and for several nights afterward.
Joyce and Chloe didn’t attend church that weekend, but the weekend after was Easter, and there they were. This time, Joyce had apparently decided that they were obligated to dress up. Joyce was wearing a lovely cornflower-blue dress with a pattern of bright yellow flowers and birds on it and a wide-brimmed hat, while Chloe was in a simple sleeveless white dress that came down to just past her knees, with white flats and even a small pair of white gloves. She looked absolutely beautiful, Kate thought, stunned, but the outfit was very much at odds with the open fury in her expression, which seemed like it could have set all the candles in the church alight at once.
Kate handed them programs automatically, but Joyce smiled down at her. “You look lovely today, Kate,” and Kate blushed, looking down at herself awkwardly. It was the third year in a row she’d worn this same Easter dress, a pale pink sundress with an equally pale yellow belt and trim of the same color at collar and hem. It didn’t quite fit right anymore, it was a little too tight and a little too short, and her mother had frowned ominously when she’d looked her three daughters over at breakfast, but it was really all she had.
“Thank you, Mrs. Price,” Kate said, forcing herself not to stammer. “So do you. And, um, you too, Chloe.” The anger in Chloe’s expression faded a little, and she even managed a small, very tight smile, but it disappeared an instant later when the two Price women were joined by a third person, a tall man with a rather silly mustache and dark hair cut extremely short, like a soldier’s. He was dressed in an ill-fitting dark suit, something more suited to a funeral than Easter. His eyes were hard and he didn’t seem capable of smiling, but he took Joyce’s arm and received a broad smile from her in response.
Chloe looked like she might murder the man on the spot.
The couple began to head up the aisle, but Chloe didn’t immediately follow, still glaring at the man. “I’m… I’m, um, really glad you came,” Kate said, smiling shyly, and Chloe turned away from her glare to eye Kate curiously.
“Why?” she asked, and Kate found herself unable to come up with an answer to that.
“Chloe!” the man with Joyce snapped over his shoulder. “Will you please join your mother and me?” The words were phrased like a request, but sounded very much like an order, and it made Kate’s hackles rise. Chloe’s gaze whipped back around, her eyes flashing, and for a moment Kate really thought she was going to just turn around and walk out of the church entirely. Instead, though, the anger faded to something more like sullenness, and she reluctantly started up the aisle after them.
But not before she said, “Talk later, Kate,” and sent little whizzing fireworks spinning through Kate’s brain. It was just a simple farewell, just being polite, but Chloe thought she might want to talk to Kate again, despite the way their last conversation had ended, and that was enough to make Kate both very floaty and even more nervous.
Kate did her best to concentrate on the sermon and managed it better this time than she had when Chloe had last been in the audience, letting herself get caught up in the majesty of the Crucifixion and Resurrection. “Jesus had the strength to accept suffering and rise through it, transfiguring it into love, just as He transfigured the wine and bread into His own flesh and blood,” her father said, looking out across the sea of faces, and Kate felt certain he was, at least for a moment, looking at Chloe and Joyce. “Pain and loss are never easy to bear. Even Christ asked, on that fateful night in the garden, that the cup be taken from Him. But in the end, He accepted it as the price of salvation for us all.
“The Easter story teaches us many things, but one of the most important is that suffering is the price of love, and through it we learn how strong we truly are, how strong love can make us. When we have passed through it, we can roll the stone of loss aside, just as the stone was rolled away from Jesus’s tomb, and find that we, like Him, have risen anew, ready to go and spread love again in the world.”
Kate couldn’t keep herself from looking over her shoulder at Chloe and Joyce and that man, Joyce’s… boyfriend?, as her father concluded. Joyce was smiling adoringly at the man, perhaps having taken a kind of validation of their relationship from her father’s words. Chloe, though, was glaring at her lap hard enough that Kate worried the hymnal in front of her might catch fire. Whatever she had heard in the sermon, she apparently didn’t care for it.
When the service was done, Kate hurried to catch Chloe before she left the church again. She didn’t quite manage it, having to settle instead for joining the taller girl on the curb, just as they had sat together the first time they’d talked. “Hello,” she said, managing to keep her voice steady and friendly this time.
“Hey,” Chloe said, She didn’t look up, preferring instead to watch the cars driving past them.
“I’m glad you came because I want us to be able to help you get through this,” Kate said in a rush. That did get Chloe to look at her in confusion again. “Earlier? When you got here?” Kate reminded her, a bit awkwardly. “I said I was glad you came and you asked why?”
“Oh,” Chloe said. She didn’t say anything else, turning back to the traffic.
With the other girl’s eyes elsewhere, Kate indulged herself in taking Chloe in, just basking in how pretty she was and how close she was. Even if she hadn’t officially admitted anything, even to herself, she was painfully aware of how badly she was crushing on this girl. She felt reckless, desperate, willing to do an uncomfortably wide range of things to make her happy, or to get to kiss her. Only the two-pronged vise of shame and fear kept her from simply admitting it right there, throwing herself and her feelings at Chloe’s feet in hopes of being picked up and swept away. The vise was strong, though, and all she could do was writhe in it.
“No offense,” said Chloe abruptly, “but I think your dad’s sermon was kind of bullshit.”
Kate frowned, her pleasant haze of adoration shattered by a sudden urge to defend her father. Indeed, a flicker of anger flared in her instead. “What do you mean?” she demanded. “He’s a great reverend!”
Chloe did look at her then. “Loving people doesn’t make you stronger. It makes you weaker. It means that they can hurt you when they leave you. Pain sucks, Kate, and as far as I can tell, love just leads to pain.”
The anger increased, but Kate felt a tremor of fear run through her as well. She was already scared of how much Chloe could hurt her if she said anything about her feelings. Hearing Chloe tell her she was right to be scared didn’t help. “It doesn’t if you love good people! I love my dad, and I’m not scared of him ever hurting me! Or my mother, or my sisters! Just because you might have-”
Chloe whirled on Kate before she could even finish the sentence. “Don’t you fucking dare say anything about my dad, or about… about anybody! Don’t you fucking dare say they’re not good people! You don’t know shit about it, Kate!” She was jumping to her feet, getting ready to stalk off, and Kate panicked.
“Wait! Wait, please! I’m sorry! That’s not what I meant!” It had been, it absolutely had been, but it had been a terrible thing to say, and she knew it. “I just meant… it’s not their fault! When somebody who loves you hurts you, it’s not because they meant to! Accidents happen, you know? Bad things happen, but it’s not them hurting you. It’s just… nothing they could do about it.”
Chloe was looking at her now, and for some reason Kate was suddenly very aware of the fact that Chloe was older than her, probably at least a year, maybe two. There was something about her expression that seemed like she was pitying Kate for still being young and silly. “Doesn’t change that if you didn’t care, they couldn’t hurt you, on accident or on purpose,” she said angrily. “Don’t care about people, Kate. They can’t fuck you over if you don’t care.” She turned away, striding fiercely across the parking lot to where Joyce and the man with them were waiting by a black muscle car.
Kate watched her go, watched the brief but furious-looking exchange between Chloe and her mother before Chloe climbed into the car, watched as they drove away. She knew that, whether she wanted to or not, she’d already broken Chloe’s instructions. She did care.
And, as a result, she learned the hard way that Chloe had been right, because she had never seen Chloe again. After that Sunday, Joyce and Chloe had never returned to Kate’s church, and Kate’s attempts to find Chloe on her own had been utter failures. She didn’t think it had been Chloe’s fault, any more than it had been William’s fault for dying, but Chloe had been absolutely correct: it hurt like Hell.
Kate shook her head, trying to force the thoughts away. All of that was more than four years in the past. She wasn’t the same silly adolescent girl feeling her first crush, and if she hadn’t gotten all that much more experience with the world in general, she at least had been through a couple other similar attractions to girls in her church or at the public high school she’d attended until just this year. She knew how they went, how she could handle them, and how they would pass eventually. Honestly, Max was exactly the sort of girl Kate had often found herself crushing on for a few weeks or a few months, but Kate wasn’t at Blackwell to date, especially not a girl. (Her father had always been circumspect about his opinions with regard to homosexuality, at least partly due to the debate raging within the larger Communion of congregations their church was a member of, but Kate’s mother had not. Kate had no illusions about what reception her sexuality would receive at home. But that was a problem for… later.)
What mattered right then was that she had made a new friend, a kind and gentle girl with artistic interests similar to Kate’s own. Max clearly had some things she needed to work out about her own past with a dear friend, a goal in which Kate would absolutely support her. If Max was able to patch things up with Chloe, then maybe, just maybe, Kate would find Chloe back in her life as well, but even then, it wouldn’t be… however her thirteen-year-old self had imagined it. They would be friends, and Kate could always use more good-hearted friends.
Yes. Exactly. She could go to sleep, knowing that was how things were going to go. Nothing else to think about.
She closed her eyes.
The music played quietly in the background.
Besides (she opened her eyes again), it wasn’t at all likely that Max or Chloe were actually into girls. Even if this was a school that attracted an unusually-large number of queer students to its arts program, which Blackwell almost certainly was not, the odds of more than one or two other girls in her class being gay were ridiculously low. Even less that one in particular, like Max Caulfield, would be, let alone Max and her old friend both. Or even just Chloe, really. And while Kate did have some experience crushing on straight girls, it could never come to anything anyway, so there was no point even thinking about it. Max was almost certainly straight. Chloe, if Chloe ever even appeared, was almost certainly straight. So no matter what Kate might have imagined four years ago, or even what she might have been thinking about when looking at Max’s smile or her lovely blue eyes earlier that day, it was irrelevant. They were only going to be friends.
Friends. That was it. And that was absolutely, unquestionably, incontrovertibly for the best.
She closed her eyes again.
A new song came on, just barely audible in the stillness.
And even if they were into girls (she stared up at the ceiling), they almost certainly were into each other. Max had even called them soulmates. There was definitely no way she was going to come between soulmates. Max and Chloe, each other’s first loves. It was really sweet, actually. Lovely. She found herself smiling at the image of the two of them, kids just learning what those wonderful and scary little quivers in their stomachs, in their chests, were when they looked at each other; she imagined their first, tentative kiss and found it adorable. No way she’d risk disrupting anything that perfect. It was almost blasphemous to consider it. When she prayed for Max and Chloe to find their ways back to one another, she would definitely be praying for that reunion, if it had been that way once for them.
She closed her eyes for the last time that night. Sleep finally found its way into her mind. As it did, though, it let one last thought whisper through her: what if only one of them was straight? What if the other…
She never finished the thought. But her dreams were filled with blue eyes glittering in the sunlight.