Chapter 2

Max slowly woke up to the increasingly familiar sight of Chloe's bedroom. A day or two ago she would've started to freak out about her situation and where she was, but this time she actually found comfort in knowing that this was just another memory she could live out. A small part of her told her that reliving memories like this was unhealthy because of how unhinged from reality she could become.

But these powers had tormented her to no end, forcing her to make impossible decisions no one should ever be forced to make. For now, the catharsis of revisiting childhood moments with Chloe was something to take advantage of.

Max looked over at Chloe's bed and saw that as usual, she wasn't there. She casually went downstairs to join her for breakfast.

Chloe was already at the table, wolfing down whatever Joyce had made. All the plates of food were already set out on the table, but she was nowhere to be seen. She and William had probably already left for work, leaving the two of them to their own devices.

Max took a plate and began piling on food. "Well thanks for waiting up for me," she pouted jokingly.

Chloe took a bite of toast before replying, "You snooze, you lose. And I mean that literally, because you were snoozing."

Max sat down next to her and started to dig in. "So, I was thinking, maybe we could light the rest of those fireworks we saved from yesterday. You know, now that your parents are at work."

Chloe immediately stopped chewing and stared at Max. Max's heart skipped a beat as she realized she had said something wrong.

"You mean when we saved those fireworks on the 4th?" Chloe said slowly.

Max nodded hesitantly. "Yes…?"

Chloe gradually resumed chewing but gave Max a raised eyebrow. "You know that was last week, right?"

Max's eyes widened in shock. Luckily Chloe was too busy looking at her food to notice. Max's mind raced as she tried to cover herself.

"Oh yeah, last week. You know what I meant. And can we light them?"

Chloe gave her another quizzical look. "We used up the last of them yesterday." Then in a more serious tone, she asked, "Are you okay, Max? You seem a little…out of it."

Chloe remembered my weird behavior. Are my actions actually having an effect? Am I really in the past?

"Yeah…maybe I am a little out of it," she admitted.

Chloe chuckled. "Earth to Max! Earth to Max!"

Max smiled but gave her a light shove. "Oh, shut up."

"Still not an early riser, huh? Morning fog got you?"

"Oh come on, like you're a morning person."

Chloe gestured at the clock hanging on the wall and back at herself with her now finished breakfast plate. "Uh, clearly I am."

Max shook her head with a defeated grin but kept eating. "So what's the plan today?"

Chloe frowned as she took her dishes to the sink. Max didn't know why. Before she sat back down, Chloe went around the back of Max's chair, grabbing her head and turning it side to side.

"Did you hit your head?"

"Ow! Cut it out! What're you doing?"

Chloe relented and returned to her seat, leaning forward with her elbows on the table and her chin resting atop her fists. She squinted at Max, who tried to make like nothing was happening and continued with breakfast.

"Did you hit your head? Do you have Alzheimer's?" she asked.

Max froze in her tracks. She was really starting to screw this up. Chloe was catching on. Even though these were only memories with no effect on the future, she still had to be cautious. She had dropped her guard too much.

She shook her head. "Alzheimer's is for old people, and that's not even how it works. I think."

Chloe gave a disapproving look. "We were going to go swimming at the pool today. Then we were going to roast marshmallows outside and make s'mores. Then we were going to have a constellation counting contest. You came up with all of this, you know. This was your plan. Are you getting sick or something? What's going on, Max?"

Max sighed as she paused eating. "Sorry, I've just been a little…tired, I guess."

"Tired? But it's summer! We only have so many days before school starts. We're not going to be able to do this forever!"

Chloe's unintentionally cognizant remark made Max feel as though a stone had dropped into her stomach. She winced slightly like it caused her physical pain.

This is wrong. You don't belong here.

"Still want to go swimming?" Chloe asked worriedly.

Max forced a smile and nodded. Chloe looked relieved as she went upstairs to get ready. Meanwhile downstairs Max fought through her growing discomfort to finish breakfast. She buried her head in her hands and groaned.

What am I doing to myself?

…

A short walk to the community pool later, Max dipped a cautious toe into the water before walking into the deeper areas. Chloe on the other hand had dropped all of her stuff onto a chair and performed a running cannonball into the water. She swam over to Max, whose hair was still relatively dry.

Chloe grinned mischievously as she threw a handful of water into her face. Max coughed and sputtered.

"Bleh! What's that for?"

"Why didn't you just jump? You're way too dry."

The two spent the afternoon swimming and racing and seeing who could make the best cannonball off the deep end. Before they left, Chloe had said she wanted to take a dip in the hot tub first, but found that it was full of older kids. Both of them were pretty disappointed, but Chloe wasn't one to be stopped.

"What if we came back here at night? When no one's here?" she suggested thoughtfully on the way back to her house.

Max raised an eyebrow. "No one's here at night because it's closed."

"Duh. That's why it's the best time for us to come!" Chloe said as if it were obvious.

"What about s'mores? And the constellations?" she asked.

"Well, the sky isn't going anywhere…" Chloe thought for a moment. "And there's a grill by the pool! I bet we can make s'mores on that."

Max giggled at the thought. "Grilled marshmallows? Now you're starting to sound weird."

"No, silly. We make it into a dip! Like nachos, only sweeter."

"Alright. But how do we get into the pool? Are you going to pick the lock or something?"

Chloe shrugged. "Climb?"

Max knew that she was probably a little more cautious than her younger self, but resigned herself to living a bit more. After all, this was a memory. She remembered how it all went down. In a few hours when she went back to sleep, she would wake up in her room in familiar 2014.

They returned to the pool at night with a bag of marshmallows, chocolates, crackers, and aluminum foil. Chloe also threw in a laser pointer she had found in the garage. The two of them had climbed the gate with relative ease. The only source of light were the underwater lamps in the pool and hot tub, giving the entire area a shimmering blue glow.

"Wow! This is just like-" but Max stopped herself. She was going to say something like "when we broke into Blackwell" but thankfully didn't.

"-totally awesome," she finished for herself. Chloe showed no reaction at Max's awkward pause, and Max once again kicked herself for almost slipping up again.

Chloe went over to the grill and pulled all the ingredients out of her bag. But before she did anything, she let out a short yet loud laugh. Max went over to her.

"What's up?"

Chloe groaned. "My dumb ass forgot the charcoal. And the lighter fluid. And the matches. We have no fire."

Max thought for a bit. "We might not have s'mores, but we do have…"

She took the foil out of Chloe's hands and started folding it. Chloe watched curiously as a small boat began to form. A small pile of marshmallows went into the center, and then…

"Ta da!" Max proclaimed while thrusting out the boat for Chloe to hold. "The S.S. Marshmallow!"

Chloe grimaced as she held the S.S. Marshmallow in her hands. "Well this is a far cry from our pirate days."

They sat in the hot tub and looked up at the stars, trying to see how many they had recognized. Max wasn't sure why her younger self had suggested a constellation counting contest. Their only constellation they were certain of was The Big Dipper. Neither of them seemed to be any good at this. A small fleet of marshmallow boats danced across the surface of the hot tub, rocked back and forth by the bubble jets.

"Hey, Max?" came Chloe's voice next to her.

"Yeah?"

"Can I ask you something?"

"Sure."

Chloe took a deep breath before asking her question. "Are you…dying?"

Max sat up a bit. "What?"

Chloe seemed relieved by Max's surprise. "God, that's good."

"Why would you ask that?" Max questioned.

Chloe shrugged. "I dunno. You've been acting really weird lately. I thought maybe you were sick and didn't want to tell me." In a softer voice, she added, "You really had me worried, you know?"

Max was touched by Chloe's concern. "No, I'm not sick or dying. I'm fine. Of course I'd tell you if-"

She stopped dead in her tracks before she could finish that sentence. She was so certain, so sure of her own actions that opening up to Chloe with anything was a no-brainer.

But didn't tell her, did she? This is the summer where she left for Seattle. This is where she disappears on her best friend. And she didn't tell her, not face to face when it counted at least. She acted like a goddamned coward leaving behind nothing but a tape. She wasn't dying, she was moving. And right now she wasn't sure which was worse.

"I'm fine," she finished resolutely.

Max didn't look at her but she knew Chloe was smiling next to her. She rested her head on Max's shoulder and let out a yawn.

"I'm glad," she said. "I don't know what I'd do without you."

This was a memory but she didn't remember it hurting this much.

"Have you had any alcoholic drinks this past week?" the voice across from her asked pleasantly.

"No."

"Have you smoked within this past week? Cigarettes, marijuana, perhaps even-"

"No."

"Hm, I see. Have you taken any drugs recently?"

"Does Claratin for my allergies count?" she asked facetiously.

"Does it affect your mood, behavior, or anxiety in any perceivable way?"

A brief pause. "No…?"

"Well I'll write it down just in case."

Max sighed as she leaned as far back into her overly plush chair as she could. The woman across from her surely noted her disinterest and displeasure with this meeting, but as the woman made no discernable reaction to said disinterest, Max made no effort to hide it.

"Well now that those preliminary questions are out of the way, I'd like to start by asking how you've been sleeping. How well do you sleep?"

Max shrugged. "Well enough, I guess."

"Do you get recurring dreams?"

"Not exactly."

"Would you care to elaborate on this?"

Max shifted in her seat uncomfortably. She cleared her throat and spoke in a mock air of poise. "Well you see, I've had dreams, but they weren't exactly recurring. So, not exactly," she repeated herself with a touch of annoyance. Again, the woman took no notice.

The woman adjusted her thick rimmed glasses and flipped back a few pages. "Hm. As I recall from our previous notes, you used to have many more recurring dreams."

Max cocked her head a bit in genuine confusion. "Really? I said that?"

The woman nodded. "Yes. For the previous three weeks you have answered 'Yes, absolutely' to the question on recurring dreams."

"What kind of dreams did I say I was having?" In a lower voice, Max muttered, "Did I mention the Loch-Ness monster by any chance?"

The woman nodded as she began to quote Max. "'I've had this dream where the Loch-Ness monster is chasing me on a flying cruise ship and I fed it s'mores to make it go away.' You mentioned the Loch-Ness monster again just now. Are you having more recurring dreams of the Loch-Ness monster?"

Max groaned. "No. And clearly with those other recurring dreams, I was kidding."

"I am still required to record everything you say, no matter how much I thought you were trying to be funny."

Max rolled her eyes and under her breath mumbled, "Why am I not surprised?"

"So then I take it your dreams about Godzilla fighting the giant mutated moth were also…?"

"Yeah," Max said bluntly. "I'm pretty sure I said that after Warren gave me more movies. I think he was trying to cheer me up or something…"

The woman flipped back a few pages and scribbled something in the margins, no doubt a note that Max's previous "recurring dreams" were just jokes. She put down the pen.

"Warren, your classmate? Is he usually the perceptive type? I mean, do you think he could read someone's feelings from just a surface-level observation?"

"Not especially. What does that matter?"

"I'm worried your behavior may be affecting those around you in ways you may not yet see. If even your friend, Warren, who you affirmed is not exceptionally perceptive is still able to see that something is wrong with you-"

"-Nothing is wrong with me," Max interrupted coldly.

"And yet, here we are," she countered, equally icily.

Max scoffed loudly. "I thought therapists were supposed to be all gentle and assure their patients that everything will be alright."

She smirked. "You've seen too many movies, and I'm switching up my strategy." Her hands came together on her desk as she leaned forward intently. "Look here, Max. I can tell that you're the no-nonsense type of girl who doesn't care for all this beating around the bush, with me asking Socratic questions and you answering them to find your own solution or whatever, so I'm going to tell it to you straight: you're not going to change because you don't want to change. You like this suffering."

"Excuse me?"

"That's right. You want to keep on suffering like this because you feel that somehow it's only fair that if Chloe suffered this much then you should have to too. Maybe you think it gives you a sense of solidarity or something."

Max glared at her and scooted up in her chair. "You are way outta line."

"You're punishing yourself because you feel that if no one remembers Chloe's sacrifice that she died for nothing."

"You think so? Well maybe I am! But it's true though! No one knows!"

"You know. You are the only one who knows. And if Chloe were here right now, do you think she'd be very happy with the way you're moping around? You said it yourself, she gave her life for yours. Does this seem like a good way to repay her?"

Max sighed as she imagined Chloe over her shoulder, scolding her. "Did you actually believe all of that? That Chloe died for Arcadia Bay? That I could travel through time?"

The woman shrugged. "You said you were with her when she was shot. Honestly? For all I know, your "time traveling" could just be a product of your brain trying to protect itself from traumatic memories. Maybe you were trying to see if I'd actually write it down. Or maybe you were actually being serious for once. It doesn't matter. This has never just been about your powers. You feel guilt from leaving her all those years ago."

Max slumped a bit as her eyes lowered. "Wouldn't anyone?"

"Yes. Anyone would."

There was a bout of silence between them as the woman took more notes down. Max took a moment to reflect on her outburst, and it scared her. No matter how irritating these sessions were, it wasn't like her to snap like that. Of course she had been moody these past months, but all it really did was dull the expression of her emotions. She had never lashed out like this.

Maybe it was a good thing she was here.

In a much calmer voice, the woman restarted, "Let's go back to the beginning of this meeting. I want you to be honest with me."

Max nodded.

The woman paused a bit before asking in a voice that begged for transparency, "Are you having recurring dreams?"

Be honest with her.

Her mind reflexively went back to the days she had recently relived hanging out with Chloe all those years ago. God, they made her so happy. To hang out with her best friend without worry or care, to live out their lives in blissful ignorance of a terrible future, with blind promises of "We'll call and write every week."

And yet despite all this, she was still from the present. She knew the terrible things that were to come. She knew they wouldn't keep in touch. She knew Chloe was going to die.

Everything was fake and she loved it anyway.

"Nope," came her final reply.

The woman's face fell. She looked disappointed. She was about to press for more, but instead wrote final remarks on Max's paper and closed the binder.

With a grim smile, she nodded.

"Okay."

Max held out a sheet of paper for the woman to sign. She put down her signature at the bottom of a long list of other signatures, each one belonging to her.