Nothing but silence and smoke surrounded the blue haired young woman who was staring up through holes in the roof of her junk shack, pondering the same thing she had many, many times. 'Where did you go, Rachel? Why did you have to turn out just like Max and leave when I needed you so much?' She blew a smoke ring upwards after taking a long drag from her joint. Chloe had expected her night to be full of turmoil with her being so in her mind and prepared for exactly that, a bag of pot fresh from her new dealer sitting on the old loveseat next to her. She put the joint out in frustration before grabbing the newest booty to be plundered in her junkyard sea- an almost perfect acoustic guitar. 'Who the fuck throws away a hella nice guitar?' She'd thought as she slung the strap over her shoulder and trudged back to base camp in silence.
Now Chloe sighed and set it on her lap, her fingers twitching over the strings. "Guess what, Rachel? Remember two truths and a lie- when I said I was in Missfits and you said I couldn't play because I didn't have calluses? I learned, Rache, I learned." It had been a common occurence, talking to the Cali girl as if she'd never dissappeared from her life. But the blue haired woman knew she was more alone then ever. Dad had left her, Max had left, and now… Rachel. It was getting hard to take the same, constant pain of abandonment but Chloe had kept herself in a massive cloud of pot or cigarette smoke, drank when it got too hard, and countinued being the "delinquent dropout" she was. Except for the times she practiced the guitar and lost the pain and desire to escape.
She started to play a song softly as she sat back on the loveseat and gazed up at the stars- 'the stupid stars, dead for so long and just leaving their light as they go' she thought bitterly- before starting to hum the beginning of the song she'd been learning. It was for Rachel, so many things were for Rachel, and she turned her head back down to gaze at the missing flyer she herself had made up. Beautiful hazel eyes weren't getting the justice they deserved in black and white, her feather looked as if it had the color bled from it, and the feeling Chloe used to get when they locked eyes was gone. It wasn't really Rachel looking back at her anyway. Rachel was gone.
"Let us be lovers, we'll marry our fortunes together. I've got some real estate here in my bag, so we bought a pack of cigarettes and Mrs. Wagner's pies and we walked off to look for America." Chloe began to sing to herself, closing her eyes and imaging herself and Rachel in the truck blazing out of Arcadia Bay with not a single fuck left behind them. It was always the same daydream when she practiced the song but they had been supposed to look for America together. Not just abandon each other.
"Rachel, I said as we boarded a Greyhound in Pittsburg, Arcadia Bay seems like a dream to me now. It took me four days to hitchhike from Oregon, I've gone to look for America." Chloe had taken some liberties with the lyrics, she didn't really give a damn if it pissed off Simon or Garfunkle, and it helped to make up a dream world where she and Rachel had really gone. No confrontation with Rachel's parents the night after Tempest and their first kiss… Thinking of their first kiss had her fingers misstepping in the soft plucks of the strings and she forced herself to stop playing for a moment and light the joint again.
The blue haired pirate took a deep hit from the joint as she sat back and closed her eyes, it was so hard to not know why Rachel had left her all alone and it left her wishing that they had just gone together when the chance had been there. If maybe they hadn't even stopped at the Amber's, just gotten into the truck and gone, then maybe… maybe they would be hella happy on the beach somewhere, cuddling together and staring at the stars in a happy silence. There was smoke swirling into large clouds above Chloe's head and she only took a few more indulgent hits before stubbing it out in the ashtray. She let out a sigh and then lifted the guitar to start strumming away again, trying to shake herself free of the what ifs.
"Laughing on the bus, playing games with the faces. She said the man in the gabardine suit was a spy I said, be careful, his bowtie is really a camera," Chloe felt her voice break a little on camera as another friend who had left her broken hearted flashed through her mind but she forced herself to keep playing "Toss me a cigarette, I think there's one in my raincoat, We smoked the last one an hour ago. So I looked at the scenery, She read her magazine
And the moon rose over an open field." Where else would they have traveled to? If they could. Maybe Colorado, the idea had Chloe buzzing at the possibilites of all that smoke in one supreme location. Maybe trekking up a mountain just to make Rachel happy would result in a great smoke place.
"Rachel, I'm lost, I said though I knew she was sleeping and I'm empty and aching and I don't know why," Her voice faltered as tears started to slide down her cheeks "Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike. They've all come to look for America, all come to look for America…." The last few chords were struck improperly and the guitar slid off her lap as soft sobs echoed through the empty junkyard.