aliens

.

chloe fell in love with rachel the way empty people always do;

she filled herself to the brim and drowned, and she was happy.

chloe kissed rachel like every time was an airport goodbye, like rachel was moments from taking flight and chloe's mouth was the only force strong enough to keep her grounded.

(stay.)

chloe got high with rachel for the first time, held her hand as they watched the glow in the dark stars on rachel's ceiling become a galaxy. they toured the milky way, chloe blew a kiss to the sun. rachel laughed until the whole universe shook, and they blinked themselves back to earth. "that's where home is," rachel said. "out there."

(rachel could not be made of anything but stars, so chloe believed her.)

rachel knew max through chloe's cracked lens, spent hours shit talking the runaway friend until the haunting look in chloe's eyes was replaced with anger. anger, they understood. anger fueled them like gasoline, and they didn't think about fires.

(chloe never hated max - she hated max leaving, hated max never calling, hated the open wound max left jagged and bleeding in the wake of her absence, hated missing her the way people never stop missing their first crush, first kiss, but she could never bring herself to hate the sweet, doe-eyed max she kept in polaroids in the toolbox under her bed.)

chloe drank with rachel and got drunk on rachel and they fell through chloe's window laughing too loud at three in the morning every weekend for months. rachel would dance naked in the slice of moonlight that cut across the shadows of chloe's room like a fairy in the wood, and chloe would fall under the spell every time like it was the first time, until she was so hungry for her she just knew she would shrivel away.

chloe made love to rachel the way lovesick, broken girls do, with curious fingers and bated breath and the kind of frightened excitement that comes from beds and the backseats of cars and tents on the shoreline.

(rachel tasted like salt and jasmine soap and something that chloe can't describe without using the word 'home'.)

"do you think the aliens even care about us?"

rachel had grinned at the question and looked at the heavens like she was in on something secret. "why would they?"

chloe loved rachel amber like poets speak their spoken word; with vigor, with bravery, with every breath. she was an astronaut to be watching the sky from her bedroom window, arms wide open, wanting to fall up and up forever.

(but gravity is cruel.)

(and love does not always stay.)

chloe misses rachel to the sound of her own heartbeat; too loud in her ears, too hard in her veins, too close in her chest, and it never stops.

(arcadia bay doesn't care and the aliens don't care and god, god doesn't care.)

rachel amber's missing person posters haunt her like her body is a house of ghosts;

chloe looks at max and cannot feel the burn of her anger anymore.

it's been snuffed out like a flame in the wind. there is just hollow, empty darkness, where stars used to be.