Winter has come with the harsh bite of wind and Max shivers inside her coat. It feels strange to walk upon the long-abandoned autumn leaves on the sidewalk. It's stranger still to be walking alone. It's been two months since Chloe has died, two months since Max has last lifted a hand and felt time thread against her fingers. She hasn't used her powers since she'd rewound to that date in the restroom. She isn't sure if she ever can.
She hates how normal everything continues afterwards—how people still crack horrible jokes, complain about the bitter wind, contemplate what to wear to a party. Her teachers still lecture during classes, their voices droning on in the background in the same sluggish beat. She still has assignments to turn in, homework to do. Life still keeps going.
What bothers her the most are all the memories she's lost. No one can understand why she misses so fervently a girl she hasn't seen or talked to in five years. Her Chloe is a ghost that slips through the cracks beside her, laughing in her dreams, whispers echoing in the wind beside her now.
She slips into the boys' dormitories, pauses at Warren's open door. He's sitting at his desk, arms tense in front of him as he contemplates whatever assignment he's working on. She hasn't known how to talk to Warren these days. Sometimes everything wants to slip out like oil but she's afraid to see rejection in those eyes, or worse, pity. She knows there's a part of her that's not quite all there anymore and when he can see it, the silence that stretches between them is liked barbed wire. And he will step closer and engulf her in a hug that makes her lungs feel as if they're collapsing, as if she's drowning. There are days, though, where she feels like that regardless.
Her feet creak on the floor beneath her and he turns to see her in the doorway. His eyes catch hers, surprised but silent.
She holds up the folded clothing in her arms. "I, uh, was returning your hoodie," she says, her voice too loud in the silence. She feels guilty that it's taken her two months to give it back to him, even guiltier that he hasn't mentioned it since he'd placed it on her that day she was out in the rain. She wishes she could say that it sat in a ball in the corner of her room, forgotten. But the nights when she'd awoken from the worst of the nightmares, her voice hoarse from sleep and trying not to scream, she'd burrowed itself in its familiar warmth, rocking herself back to sleep. It couldn't bring Chloe back but it anchored her in this reality. Where Chloe was nothing but memories and whispers, there, enveloped in a hoodie that smelled like laundry soap, rain, and a faint trace of sweat was what made her aware of her own heartbeat, her own blood that pulsed through her body. I am real. Sometimes, she doesn't know what real is anymore.
"Oh. Thanks," he says, holding his hand out for a moment before slowly drawing it back. There is something in her eyes that makes him swallow, hold his breath, before a shaky smile ghosts upon his lips. "Actually, why don't you, you know, keep it for a while. Just in case."
In case what? She wants to ask, but simply nods, holding the folded hoodie loosely in her hands. She leaves him to study and crashes early, like she usually does. When she wakes later, her screams muffled inside her comforter, her phone lights up with a text.
Are you okay?
She glances up at the mirror next to her bed, her reflection ghostly in the light illuminated from her phone. The bags under her eyes are heavy even in this light. She nestles into the hoodie, her breath fanning against the fabric and draws the phone close to her face.
Yes, she types.
No, she thinks.
No, she sends.
On my way, Warren's text reads and she should feel guilty, she should feel alone in this world that she crafted with ghosts that follow in the winter wind, but she doesn't. There is a trickle of warmth deep inside her and she clings to it, afraid of what would wait for her in the darkness if she were to extinguish it.