"My life closed twice before its close."
She feels like she's going to remember those words for the rest of her life. Emily Dickinson has somehow worked her way into Chloe Price's brain, and there is no way that she is escaping so soon.
The fourteen-year-old girl sighs as she lies back on her bed, looking up at the ceiling. The work is over. She can be done with everything related to the poetry segment they had in English class. She's much more interested in the workings of science, anyway.
Why is this quote sticking in her head so much?
Why does it feel so prophetic?
She knows the other lines like the back of her hand at this point (she had, after all, begrudgingly recited it to the class so she could get at least one passing English grade this semester), but the beginning plays like a broken record inside of her brain, sending chills down her spine.
Finally, she shakes her head and pushes herself back up. Max would be over at any time, and the older girl would never hear the end of it if her companion made the discovery that Chloe Elizabeth Price had actually retained knowledge of a literary nature.
"Enough, Dickinson," the blonde grumbles as she rises to her feet. "We get it. Life-changing things happened. They were really deep. You came out of them a changed woman. Now get out of my head."
There's no way that this poem can really resound with her, Chloe reasons with herself as she walks out of her bedroom door. It's about a woman whose life seems to come to a close twice before she dies.
For there to even be a chance of this happening to Chloe, her life would have to open first.
And nobody's life opens in the town of Arcadia Bay.
Nobody's.
At the sound of Max's fist rapping quietly against the door, Chloe forgets it all.
Little does she know that it won't be the last time that she recalls the late poet's words.
The first time Chloe's life comes to a close is when she hears the news.
Her father was heading out to pick her mother up.
A truck ran a red light.
William Price's life was snuffed out just like that.
Everything comes to the surface at once, more than she can handle.
All of the hurt she feels, the rage at the driver for doing this to her, the despair of her father never coming home, bubbles up.
And Chloe screams.
She cries, she yells, she curses, trying not to hit the wall as tears blur her vision. She's seeing red and feeling everything as it all slips away from her, the life she's always known disappearing right before her eyes. She feels like she's losing her mind. Somehow, Max Caulfield stays through it all.
She stays, patiently waiting for the older girl to let it all out, and when Chloe is nothing more than a shaking mess in the floor, Max holds her close and cries with her.
"I'm sorry, Chloe, I'm so sorry."
That's all that can come out at the moment, but it's more than the blonde can muster. It's all that she can hear, feel, cling to in that moment.
Chloe holds on as tightly as she can.
In the back of her mind, she hears it again.
"My life closed twice before its close."
This time, another part follows, disjointed from the rest and segmented to where it fits.
"So huge, so hopeless to conceive..."
That's how it feels, the idea of her father being gone. It's been in front of her for the past several days, and it finally makes sense.
Maybe the woman knew what she was talking about all along.
Out of the fear that she was right after all, Chloe holds onto Max even tighter, begging the universe to not let her life close again.
She doesn't know if she'll be able to take it.
The second time her life comes to a close is when she hears the tape Max left for her.
Everything before has felt like nothing more than a nightmare, one from which she'd wake up from and still have her best friend by her side. But now her best friend is truly gone, the only thing left of her playing for Chloe.
Part of her wants to break the tape, to shatter it like Max shattered her heart. Though she couldn't help the move, the younger girl could've told her. She could be trying harder to keep in touch. It's already becoming difficult.
What if she just stops one day and Chloe never hears from her again?
A tear runs down her face at the thought. What if she loses everyone she loves soon? What if she dies alone?
She knows she shouldn't think about it, but at the rate things are going, it feels pretty inevitable.
After all, she and Max weren't supposed to part. They were supposed to be bonded for life.
The words of Emily Dickinson are back in her head again before she can stop them.
"Parting is all we know of heaven, and all we need of hell."
This time, nobody is there to hold Chloe when she breaks down.
This is the final close.
It's all evident to her in mere moments.
Milliseconds after yelling, "Get that gun away from me, psycho!", there's a deafening bang, ringing in her ears, and an agonizing sting in her stomach as she falls to the ground.
As the life bleeds out of her at a steady pace, she thinks of everything before.
Her first close. How naïve she was to believe her life hadn't even opened until she didn't have her father in it anymore. The way her mother blamed herself. The way that Chloe couldn't help but blame him sometimes just so she had someone to be angry at. The truth is, she still loves him. She loves him to death and she's angry, so angry at herself for not telling him enough, for being upset with him when he didn't ask for what happened to him.
Her second close. The look on Max's face when they locked eyes for the last time, the attempted texts, the way everything just ended. She will never see her again. She will never be able to scream at her or tell the girl that she really does love her, misses her more than anything.
Close two point five. Rachel. There was always a chance that she'd see the girl she was madly in love with one more time, so it was a cracked door. Now she never will. All she'll have is those strained last few days, filled with the deep reds of love and rage.
And now, simply, the end of her life.
For years, those words had stuck. "It yet remains to see if Immortality unveil a third event to me."
Here it is.
The events mix together, the falling, the loving, the leaving. The circle of her life.
The sting becomes unbearable as the black begins to eat away at her vision.
This is it.
Her final thoughts of heaven, her final feelings of hell.