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Max’s world dissolved into blinding white.
It cleared almost as quickly as it had come, reality vibrating back into place around her with echoes of red and green.
She felt sick.
She’d never wanted to see these bathroom stalls again.
Max retrieved the butterfly photo from the front of her camera and shook it out perfunctorily. There was no reason to look at it; she already had every fiber of its surface memorized.
She looked anyway.
Was it fate’s idea of a joke to send her this fragile, short-lived creature with wings the exact blue of Chloe’s hair?
Max wasn’t laughing.
She let the picture slip from her fingers and watched it settle delicately on the dirty tiles. She didn’t need it. She had her own copy, wallet-wrinkled and water-stained and heavy with memories of Chloe. And a note written on the back.
Max stowed her camera in her bag. She flattened her back against the wall of the stall behind her, forcing deep breaths. It was so much worse being here when she knew exactly what was about to happen. What had to happen in order to save countless lives. She tried to ignore the clamminess of her palms and the knot in her gut and the fear that pulsed through her skull like one of her migraines. She felt at her nose, sure it must be bleeding again, but her fingers came away dry.
She could hear Nathan’s voice approaching from down the hall, heralding doom.
She used it to ground herself. She was here. She’d made her choice. There was no stopping what had to happen now.
Max took one more deep breath—
And stepped out of hiding.
She drifted to the row of sinks, like this was a normal visit to the bathroom and not a death sentence, and faced herself in the mirror.
She looked impossibly older, even though in this reality, no time had passed at all. It was her eyes. No longer did they resemble a doe’s, like her mother used to tell her. They seemed darker, sadder, sunken.
More like a ghost.
Nathan Prescott burst in the door. “It’s cool, Nathan,” he was in the midst of saying, “Don’t stress. Y-you’re okay, bro, just—”
Distracted, he collided with Max.
Panic morphed instantly to rage. “What the fuck?” he barked, staggering back and glaring at her as if she were the one out of place here, alone in the girls’ bathroom. “Get out of my way, whore! This doesn’t concern you!” His fists were balled, not reaching for his gun yet, but it was only a matter of time.
“You must be lost,” said Max with what thin thread of sarcasm she could muster.
“This isn’t a fucking joke, Crackfield! Get out of here right now or I’ll kill you!” Nathan lunged right into her face, pinning her against the sink. His hand was twitching toward his waistband.
Max glanced at it, clinging desperately to calm. “I don’t doubt it.”
“What?” Nathan bared his teeth like an animal. Max wished she could take a picture of him like this, all bloodshot eyes and feral snarl and frazzled hair. Then everyone would see him for the villain he was. “Didn’t you hear me? I’ll shoot you right the fuck now!”
And there came the gun, shining in the stark light. Max flinched away from the cold of the muzzle as it pressed through her shirt.
She hadn’t thought much about how it would feel from this side of things.
She’d only ever had one thought: saving Chloe.
The door swung open a second time.
Speak of the devil.
Chloe took in the scene in a glance and froze, one foot halfway into the room.
Max couldn’t help but turn her head for one last look at the friend she’d had, lost, made again, and traded back. This Chloe looked the same, but she hadn’t been the one to spend the last week with Max, smoothing the wrinkles between them and building something new on the fixed foundation. She hadn’t been the one to learn love for her stepdad or discover the fate of her second best friend or mature past teenage rebellion into staunch compassion.
She didn’t even know Max was back in town.
But Max would love every Chloe in every world, and she’d die for them all.
Their eyes met. Max found shock in that electric blue, but she didn’t feign the same.
Her note would explain everything anyway,
“You!” Nathan whipped toward Chloe, raising the gun, but Max didn’t let him get any farther than that. She threw herself between them, fists white-knuckled at her sides.
“Out of my way, bitch!” he shrieked at the same time Chloe stammered, “W-what the fuck? Max?”
Max ignored both of them. “I won’t let you hurt her,” she told Nathan, voice deadly quiet.
“You’re tripping, you crazy piece of shit!” Nathan was unhinged, gun hand trembling wildly. Max kept her eyes on it; her body in front of it. “You don’t know who the fuck you’re messing around with!”
Chloe, always taller, spotted the weapon from over Max’s shoulder. “Where’d you get that?” she demanded of Nathan. “What are you doing? Come on, put that thing down!”
“Don’t ever tell me what to do!” The gun jerked toward Chloe, but Max moved to block it again.
A hand pressed against her shoulder blade. “Max, what’s going on?” Chloe’s voice was shaking. “What are you doing? Y-you shouldn’t be here.”
“I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be,” Max whispered.
“I am so sick of people trying to control me!” Nathan was lost in his rage, stomping and gesticulating wildly. Max couldn’t have cared less what he was saying. All she saw was his finger on the trigger, squeezing ever tighter.
Chloe saw it too. “Max,” she repeated, “move. Please. This isn’t your fight.“
“I won’t let him hurt you.” Max heard her own voice as if from far away, like her soul had separated from her body already.
Maybe that would make it hurt less in the end.
“I can’t believe this,” Chloe nearly sobbed. “Here you are after five years and I’m just going to lose you again.”
Forsaking Nathan, Max turned around. She was vaguely aware of him yelling something else, something about bitches and whores and disrespect, and Chloe yelling back, something about assholes and psychos. Max felt like she was underwater, all sluggish and muffled. Drowning. Drowning in Chloe’s panicked blue eyes and the fall of her hair and the magnetic warmth of being near her again.
She barely heard the gunshot.
“Max!”
It hit her like a kick to the spine. She careened forward into Chloe’s arms. The pain was delayed, but the shock wasn’t. Max’s vision tunneled and her breath grew deafening in her own ears as Chloe lowered her to the ground, hands clutching her body as if she could hold Max together from sheer force of will. They came away red, unnatural against Chloe’s canvas of blue.
It was around then that the burning started.
Max might have made a sound of pain, but it was drowned out by her thundering heartbeat and Nathan’s panicked gibberish and Chloe saying over and over again, “No, Max, no.”
For some reason, she’d thought she would retain her faculties better than this. Maybe because she’d seen Chloe get shot so many times it seemed almost routine. Maybe because she was the girl with the magic time powers; why wouldn’t she be invincible, too?
But she was only ever human, and it was taking its toll now as she tried to reach for her back pocket with clumsy, shaking hands and failed.
“What?” Chloe finally broke off her tearful mantra to ask. “What is it? What do you need?”
Max’s bloody fingertips swiped at the just-visible corner of the old photo in her pocket.
Chloe leaned over her to retrieve it, her body a cocoon around Max’s tattered wings. When she laid eyes on the photo, she gasped.
“I recognize this.”
Max nodded sluggishly; the how and why didn’t matter right now. What mattered was that her blood was pooling on the floor, running into the cracks between the tiles like time slipping through her fingers. She could barely think through the pain now wracking her torso.
But she had to. She wasn’t done yet.
“Chloe,” she managed, strangled.
“I’m here, Max.” Chloe’s free hand raked the sweaty bangs from her forehead. The one with the photo stayed around Max’s shoulders. It was a small comfort, but Max enjoyed it for what it was worth.
“The back,” she garbled. Chloe hesitated, confused, but Max shrugged her shoulder to draw her attention to the photo. “The back.”
Chloe turned the wrinkled butterfly photo over to reveal the cramped message Max had scrawled over the back.
She’d originally meant for Chloe to read it while she was here, but she could feel her time running out. She reached out a grasping hand for Chloe’s wrist. She missed, but Chloe placed herself gently into her hold. She was crying. Both of them were crying.
“I—I’m sorry,” Max choked out. There was blood in her lungs; in her throat. She coughed and swallowed and more replaced it instantly. “This was the—the only way.”
“No, no, no, no.” Chloe cradled Max’s face with a trembling hand, wiping a trail of red from the corner of her mouth. “Don’t talk like you’re done for. There’s an ambulance coming. I can hear it.”
Max couldn’t hear much of anything. But ambulance or not, she wouldn’t last that long. “I did it for you,” she whispered. Chloe leaned down to hear her, butterfly-blue hair curtaining her world. “I l-love you.”
“Oh, Max.” Chloe pressed her forehead to Max’s, her tears leaving tracks through the blood. “I don’t know what the fuck is going on and I hate it but you know I love you too. Always have, always will.” Her voice began to shake out of control. “So please hold on, all right? You can do it. You have to. You can’t just drop a bomb like that and then dip. Please. Please.”
The last thing Max heard was always.
And then she was still.
…
Chloe,
I would start this off by saying “I know you won’t believe this,” but I think you will. Especially if…
Well. I know you will.
For a week, I had the power to control time. I mostly used it to save people from dying. Usually you. I also used it to solve the mystery of Rachel Amber. I don’t know how to tell you this, Chloe, but she didn’t leave you; she was killed. And I know you’ll want revenge for that, but please just let justice be served. It will; I’ve seen it. But I’m still sorry.
We became friends again, too. We watched the sunset, explored the junkyard, broke into Blackwell, went swimming in our underwear. I kissed you, if you can believe it. It was so good to hang out with you again. Like I never left.
But it all came at a terrible cost. The world turned on its side. There was snow on a sunny day, an eclipse, a double moon, animals dying left and right. And to top it all off, a tornado showed up to destroy the town.
I had a choice: go back to the moment my powers appeared and let the timeline return to normal, or live with my decisions and let the tornado kill everyone.
I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to live in a world where you died angry and alone in a fucking bathroom, but I also couldn’t live with myself if I traded you for everyone else.
So I found a third option. One where only one person has to die, and it isn’t you. I’m sorry it had to be this way, but I think I made the right choice.
My last wish is for you to live the life you deserve. Quit the drugs. Smile more. Tell your mom you love her. Try to love step-douche, too. I know you can do it; I’ve seen it happen.
I just wish I could be there to see it again.
I love you, Chloe.
MAXOXO
…