Chiaroscuro

One: Monochrome

Chiaroscuro – In photography, a striking contrast between light and dark used for effect.

Max loved taking photos of Chloe. It didn't matter what Chloe was doing–laughing, dancing, scowling, or flipping someone the bird–she was always larger than life in those photos, as if a two-dimensional image couldn't contain the force of her being.

So when Max spied Chloe that grey Seattle morning, sitting on the front steps of the Caulfield family home, a lit cigarette in hand, she knew she had to take the shot. Chloe never heard her until the telltale electric moan of the instant camera gave Max away.

Chloe raised her hands to shield her face. "Shit! Who told the paparazzi I was holed up here?"

Max laughed as she gave the photo a few shakes to help it develop. "Not the paparazzi, just you biggest fan." She sat down on the steps next to Chloe, close against her so she could feel the warmth seeping through her jeans where their legs touched. Once it would have been nothing; now it made her heart beat a little faster.

"Let me see that." Chloe took the photo and peered at it. Max glanced over but didn't let her eyes linger on it too long–just in case. "That's a keeper."

"You can hang onto it then."

Chloe stuffed it into her jacket and then knocked the ash from the tip of her cigarette into an ashtray at her feet. And then she said nothing for a long while. Staring ahead at the wet pavement of the small suburban street, Chloe seemed to be looking past the dreary scene to something far away. She must have gotten news from home.

It had been less than a week and Arcadia Bay was still under a state of emergency. The storm had taken out transmission towers, and the phone companies had had to erect temporary towers in order to restore cell service. Power was still a work in progress in many areas.

Chloe heaved a sigh, blowing out a puff of grey smoke. "I got another message from Mom. House is trashed. Her and step-dou–" She stopped herself, clenched her jaw for a moment, and then went on. "David. They're stuck camping out in a parking lot. And since the diner is in pieces Mom is out of a job. So we're basically homeless and on our way to a bright future of hobo-dom." She flicked the ash off the tip of her cigarette.

Max stared down at her sneakers. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be. Better homeless than dead."

"It' all my fault." Saying it out loud again made her chest ache, her eyes burn. The words popped into her head every time Arcadia Bay was mentioned on the news, every time it came up in conversation, every time her phone buzzed with a message asking if she was all right or letting her know that someone else was–or wasn't.

Chloe stubbed out her cigarette and then slung an arm around Max's shoulders, drawing her close. "It's not your fault." Max squeezed her eyes shut and tried to push back the storm of memories, the huge dark funnel, the destruction, the bodies. "I don't know why this clusterfuck happened to us, but you're the reason I'm still here, Max. And you didn't give yourself superpowers so don't give me that emo shit."

And in spite of everything, that made her laugh. She gave her eyes a cursory swipe and looked up at Chloe. "I don't wear enough black to be emo." She could smell the damp leather of Chloe's jacket and the lingering scent of smoke that clung to her. It was oddly comforting.

"Have you heard anything from your friend Kate?"

Max nodded. "She's all right. The hospital didn't take too much damage–broken windows and that sort of thing. And they had to run on generators."

"Good. Glad she's okay."

But when Max glanced up at Chloe, she didn't look okay. "What is it?"

"I just... I just keep thinking about Rachel and..." Scowling at the empty street again, Chloe tugged at the beanie on her head, adjusting it for a few moments, trying to buy time.

A twinge of–something–made words come slowly to Max's lips. Even now it was hard to grasp who Rachel Amber had really been–friend, lover, victim. She had saved Chloe but she'd also been sneaking around with Frank. She'd been friends with everyone but also been lured in by Jefferson as his next subject and become Nathan's accidental victim. Trying to see the real Rachel through all of it was like trying to see an image through a kaleidoscope.

Finally, Max rested a hand on Chloe's knee and whispered her name.

Chloe squeezed her eyes shut. "I keep thinking that... as soon as the dust settles in the Bay the cops are gonna start working on their investigation and... They'll go all CSI on the junkyard. They'll dig her up and autopsy her–her body. She'll be goddam Exhibit A in the courtroom." Tears rolled down her cheeks and she grimaced and covered her eyes. "Fuck."

Max wrapped her arms around Chloe. It was all she could do.

When Chloe spoke again, it was in a sort of snarl. "And that fucker, Jefferson, is still alive."

Just the sound of his name was enough to make goose bumps prickle her skin, to make her gut churn, and her fists clench. "Of course he is," Max said, her voice like acid.

"I know, right? Good to know the county jail's so sturdy. Goddam monster tornado can't even level the place." Pressed close against her, Max could feel the tension rippling through Chloe's body. "If anyone deserved to die, it was him. After what he did to Rachel. And to you."

Max shuddered. She could still almost feel the duct tape on her wrists, feel the flash blinding her bleary eyes. "I used to idolize him. Ugh." Rereading the pages in her journal where she'd gushed about Jefferson now made her want to heave. "Everything he talked about in class... He was just playing games with us, laughing at us." She could still hear his lectures. From light to shadow, from colour to chiaroscuro... What if Arbus chose to capture people at the height of their beauty or innocence? "All that bullshit about photographing innocence when really he was..." But whenever she tried to talk about it, she ran out of words. For all his eloquence, all his charm he was a monster, a common sicko, jonesing to take pictures of doped up girls and calling it art.

"Total bullshit. After all–" And here Chloe leaned in and spoke into Max's ear, "If anyone's going to mess with your innocence, it's hella gonna be me." And to make her point, Chloe nipped Max's ear.

Max yelped and, as Chloe grinned down at her, she could feel herself turning a brilliant shade of red.

"You're hella cute, hippie. Did you turn that colour when Warren was putting the moves on you?"

"No!" she protested. Warren had definitely not had this effect on her. Not even close. "Just you."

"I told him he didn't stand a chance."

It occurred to Max that Chloe was trying to distract her, but, as Chloe leaned in to kiss her, Max found she that didn't mind. No, she didn't mind at all.

#

The storm came without warning, darkening the skies of her dream.

At first it was only a black roiling cloud, a towering thunder-head spitting lightning. Max could see it from the bluff where she stood overlooking–no, not Arcadia Bay. Downtown Seattle, its colony of skyscrapers clustered behind the Space Needle like a faithful entourage.

The sky seemed to grow lower, the dark cloud oozing downward, an expanding stain reaching towards the ground. The air around it grew thicker. It began to churn and then to spin. She could feel the tug of it even from where she stood, like a giant, drawing in a deep breath. The vortex inhaled debris–SUVs, lamp posts, trees, hunks of mortar–swallowing them whole.

Max could only watch.

The funnel was as wide as the horizon, as tall as the Space Needle, and she watched it take the tower to pieces in an instant, devouring it and then sweeping over and past. The tall arch of the glass museum Max and her family had visited last year vanished into the storm. Columns of gold and orange glass flowers shattered into brilliant shards, filling the storm with flecks of colour against its blackness.

As it churned northward through downtown Seattle, towards the square roofline of the Key Arena, Max realized she was no longer alone. She stood watching the storm with Mark Jefferson.

"Oh, Max," he groaned. "This is amazing." He held the camera view finder up to his eye, pointed at the storm. The click of the shutter, the flash. "Keep it up, Max." A photograph tumbled from his camera as he kept clicking, and then another. "I knew you had a gift." The wind picked up the photos, making them swirl around her. They were all pictures of her.

When she looked again, the funnel was mountainous and the city below was gone. The glass flecks had multiplied, filling the black cloud with a hail of red as if the storm were bleeding.

"You broke the rule, Max." Jefferson continued to photograph the funnel even as the starkly shadowed pictures of her face fluttered all around her in the wind. "Always take the shot." He spun, his gaze furious. "Christ, Max! What is wrong with you? You fucked up everything." She couldn't move, couldn't speak. "There's only black and white. Experience and innocence. The present and the past. And if you try to mix them together you just fuck them up. Isn't that right, Max?"

Max jerked into wakefulness, her eyes springing open to the familiar contours of her old bedroom. Her limbs felt weak and heavy even as her heart was racing double time. And though she recognised the popcorn ceiling, and the shape of the bookcase to her left, the terror of the dream was still fresh, gripping her. If she stirred, she might be back there again, or in the dark room. She could get pulled back there again as she had so many times. She might–

"Max?" Chloe's voice was thick with sleep.

As had often happened this past week, they'd stayed up late into the night talking and hanging–or making–out, and, rather than creep across the hall to the guest room, Chloe had crawled into bed next to her.

"I'm fine," Max said, turning onto her side. "I just... had a bad dream."

"Go back to sleep."

I can't. I just can't. The storm was waiting for her if she closed her eyes. And Jefferson.

She heard Chloe shifting under the blankets. She thought her friend had turned over and returned to dreamland. But then Chloe was pressed up against her, wrapping herself around Max's body, an arm around her waist, drawing her close. "Go black to sleep, Max," she said again.

It was a long while before Max did get back to sleep, but with the warmth of Chloe's skin against hers, and the steady rhythm of her breath like a lullaby in Max's ear, she didn't feel afraid anymore.