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The ruin of Arcadia Bay receded behind Chloe’s battered pickup trip. She and Max drove away from the wreck of their old lives and towards… anywhere. Chloe had no idea yet. The sun was rising, the sky was clear, there was no sign left of the howling winds that had overtaken their night. Chloe breathed in the air through her lowered window. She didn’t feel any different. She thought she should feel different – she was supposed to be dead, and instead the lives of maybe everyone she had ever known had been exchanged for her own. The proper thing to do, Chloe thought, was to come to some important realisation about why she was still alive and what she should do now. But there was nothing. She was still aggrieved, still angry, still had no idea what to do next.
Max had looked out the windows while they’d driven through what was left of Arcadia. Not out of any interest in seeing, Chloe suspected. Out of obligation. Out of guilt. Now that they were past the town, she slumped in her seat, head hung, eyes unfocused and glassy. It was Max’s choice that Chloe was still here now, and everyone else wasn’t. It was like the weight of all those lives hung on her neck now. Chloe still couldn’t fathom why Max chose her.
As the highway hurtled past, Max finally stirred, her eyes catching on a lonely gas station beside the road. “Chloe, can you pull in there?”
Her voice was quiet. Not a whisper, just faded, neglected. Max hadn’t said a word since she tore the photo of the butterfly in half. Chloe did as she was told. As the truck pulled into a parking space, Max rummaged through her camera bag.
“What is it?” Chloe asked and realised her own voice was almost as faint as Max’s.
“Just salvaging what I can of…routine. Whatever that is anymore.” Max retrieved a pair of pill bottles from her bag and set them on the dashboard, then found some crumpled soggy dollars. She opened the door to get out.
“You’re trusting me around those?” Chloe nodded towards the bottles. A joke. A bleak one, as usual. Her first since what they found in that dark room.
A tiny eye roll from Max. A flicker of their easy rapport. Where had that gone? Proof of life somewhere in that shell. “Good luck getting high off HRT.”
Right, of course. The woman Chloe had met in the Blackwell parking lot just a few days ago was so dazzlingly completely herself that Chloe almost forgot Max used to be the nervy boy from up the road. They had both reinvented themselves over five years apart. But Chloe had stitched together a facsimile of an adult out of the broken pieces of her childhood – strung a lifeline out of hedonism and spite to keep from falling into the pit beneath her. And Max had returned home this demigoddess, this force of nature, someone who turned the world around her even without her powers.
Max left her bag on her seat and got up, but it fell over the edge and its contents – photos and loose film and her camera and a notebook overflowing with post its – spilled on the floor. Max looked back at it for a second, then turned and left. Chloe eyed Max’s bag and its contents where they had fallen. Last time that happened, Max’s old camera broke. Chloe started picking up the scattered objects and returning them to the bag. She needed to do something for Max, even if it was just this. She couldn’t be yet another weight around her best friend’s neck.
The camera was undamaged at least. Chloe returned the spare film and loose photos to a side pocket. Possessed by a whim, she turned the camera on herself and clicked the button. A quick flash, and the photo emerged. It was terrible. Chloe looked like a corpse and half her face was out of frame. She tucked it in the bag with the others anyway. Max would know what to do with it. Or throw it out. Whatever.
And last the journal. As Chloe picked it up, she noticed an out of place edge sticking out between pages. Max filled her journal with photos, Chloe knew that already, but this wasn’t one of her instant pics. The paper felt like a professional print. Chloe opened the page and then very nearly dropped the journal back on the floor. Her blood turned to ice. The photo was Max duct taped to a chair with a half delirious glaze over her eyes. Max had told Chloe about being kidnapped and tortured by Jefferson, but nothing could have prepared her for seeing it for real. Max’s photos persisted with her through rewinds and jumps in time, this was the artefact of a night that never happened, but why would she keep this? Why would she want to remember it?
Chloe flipped back a page. She couldn’t look any longer. But the next page back revealed something else nearly as unthinkable. A shot from inside an art gallery. The notes beside it revealed that it was San Francisco. Out of all the worlds and times that Max had visited, in one of them all her dreams had come true, her art was on display with the recognition it deserved in a fucking art gallery, and she had given all that up… for Chloe.
Chloe snapped the journal shut and forcefully returned it to the bag. She got out of the truck and went to sit on the hood, leaned her back on windscreen, face up to the sky. Chloe lit a cigarette. The familiarity of heat and nicotine salved her frayed nerves. For now, at least.
Max returned with a bottle of water and a chip packet. Salt and vinegar. Half finished. She got up besides Chloe and offered her the bag. “Chip?”
Chloe took one. The vinegar burned in her throat almost more than the smoke did. “How can you stand this stuff?”
“Salt cravings,” Max said, “Besides, I’m supposed to take my blocker with food.”
“That doesn’t count as food.”
“They taste better than cigarettes.”
“Because that’s a real high bar to clear.” Chloe rasped.
Max retrieved her tablets. She washed down the first with the water then set the second beneath her tongue to dissolve. The two girls sat in silence on the front of the truck. Chloe burned down her cigarette to the butt. “What was that about routine? Us on our daily chemicals, right?”
Chloe regretted the words once they were out of her mouth. As if her dependency was in any way comparable to what Max was doing. But Max didn’t seem to care. Her lips just wryly upturned. “So long as it keeps us going.”
“You know, I thought you disapproved,” Chloe said.
“I don’t think I can get on a moral high horse about anything anymore after…” There it was again. Neither of them wanted to talk about it or think about it but it couldn’t be avoided. Max tried her best anyway, changing the topic as she noticed the new photo sticking out of her bag. The one Chloe had absently taken. “This is nice.”
“Why?” Chloe didn’t need Max to give her empty niceties. She knew it was terrible. “It’s blurry and I’m halfway out of the shot.”
“It’s of you,” Max stated matter-of-factly, “I’m keeping it.”
“And…” Chloe couldn’t hold it any longer, “Why am I worth keeping?”
The tortures Max endured, the successes she gave up, the lives she sacrificed. How was Chloe possibly worth all that? Max was quiet for a long time before she answered. “Because I choose you.”
“Stop being so fucking cryptic Max,” Chloe warned her.
“Chloe, how many people have put you last since William died?” Max asked, “What you told me, after we found out about Rachel and Frank, you were angry and hurt and losing it but that doesn’t mean you were wrong. You’ve been lied to and let down and left behind so many times. Even I did it. I didn’t choose to move away, but never calling was easier than listening to your grief. I wish I could go back far enough to change that.”
Max took Chloe by the hand and gripped her tight. “But I can do better now. I choose you, Chloe Price. And I will not ever give up on you. Not for my education or for fame or to save my skin or because I’d rather some other friend’s life over yours. You’re more important to me than a town. You’re more important to me than the whole world. I choose you. I will always choose you. You’ve always deserved better. I am never abandoning you again. Not for anything.”
Chloe felt like her anger had mellowed over the past week. Having Max back, having some light in her life again, made it easier to live with the darkness she’d been through. But it seemed like her anger wasn’t gone so much as inherited by Max. Whatever she had endured in the futures she averted, it had lit something in Max. A raging, righteous, vengeful fury that anyone would hurt Chloe, that the universe would dare try to take her away. When Max said she would burn the world for her, Chloe believed it.
Max’s eyes unflinchingly met Chloe’s. She looked so earnest, so determined, so devoted, like nobody else had ever looked at Chloe before. Before she knew what she was doing, Chloe closed the gap between them and pressed her lips hard against Max’s. Unlike their first kiss, this time there was no hint of uncertainty, no pulling away. Max leaned into the embrace just as hard as Chloe did and held her there until they were both breathless.
Chloe sobbed and wiped her eyes when they parted. “I don’t know how long I’ve been waiting to hear someone say that.”
“Guessing about five years,” Max said, letting her mouth curve in a smile for the first time since the storm.
“Is it always going to be like this?” Chloe asked, “Just us clinging to each other against the world. Do we ever get to be ok again?”
“We will be. We’ll find a way,” Max promised. “And when we can’t, then we’ll be not ok together.”
They got off the hood and back in the truck.
“Where to next?” Chloe asked.
Max settled back in her seat, mind already wandering off to the future. “Anywhere we want.”