"What are we looking for?" Max asks, following behind Nathan.
"Something," he replies, adjusting his lens. He fiddles around with it and peers through at her.
She eyes the open field before them. "You mean nothing."
He shakes his head and leads her towards a patch of trees. "There's something in nothing." He snaps a photo of her, startling her backwards.
She crosses her arms over her chest and scowls at him. "How philosophical of you."
He kicks a pine cone at her in response. There's a large rock nearby and he moves it to reveal a gnarled tree branch. He kneels to take another photo. Circling the tree, he spots a bird on the ground, mostly decayed. "Perfect," he whispers. His camera clicks again.
Déjà vu prickles at the back of Max's neck. "You mean morbid."
"It's not morbid," he chastises and raises back to his feet. "It's life. It's a cycle. Everything that lives has to die at some point."
"This one's been dead far longer than some point." She covers her nose and backs up.
"Wimp." Another smile pulls on his lips. "What happened to finding beauty in the darkness?" He recalls her words from the other day.
Now she's the one to kick a pine cone at him.
"Petty," he says, laughing.
She ignores him and walks past, trying to get as far from the smell as she can.
This time, he follows her. She doesn't know how far they've walked but her legs begin to cramp and she collapses onto a patch of grass. "I need a break. Find anything?" The clouds above her stretch like cotton. Her own fingers itch to take a photo, but she knows that isn't what Nathan has in mind. There is no life or death above her, just color. Her eyes slide closed.
"You look high, Caulfield," he informs as there's another flash, right against her face. Her eyes pop open in alarm. She tries to sit up, but he kicks gently at her leg.
"No. Stay," he says, and she lies back hesitantly.
"I'm not the best model," she argues.
He just shifts towards her other side and snaps another photo.
"You know," she hesitates, "I used to be into photography, too. I had a Polaroid camera."
"A Polaroid?" he asks, lowering his own camera as he snorts. "Okay then, hipster."
"Selfies. It was perfect for selfies."
"The many faces of Max Caulfield.How fucking poetic of you," he muses and she shakes her head.
"Shut up." She glides her arms through the grass and he snaps another photo.
"Nah, it works for you. So why'd you stop?"
Her arms still and she closes her eyes again. "Things change."
He collapses next to her and she feels the heaviness of the camera against her hands. "Not everything."
Her eyes shoot open again as she grasps the camera. Everything in her entire dorm—no, bedroom—probably cost as much as this camera. "I can't," she says, trying to offer it back to him.
"You just press a button," he says flatly. He pushes it back towards her.
She falters, sitting up to aim the camera towards the drifting clouds.
Nathan watches her, still as the trees that are now dots behind them.
The click of the camera works into the silence between them. It almost feels as if it's come from inside her, something realigning in her bones or mind, snapping into place.
He tugs the camera back, eying the shot on the screen before him. "Not bad," he says. "Could be better if you work at it. If you want to borrow—"
"No." She stares at the camera between them and not at him. "It's too much."
"It's not a fucking marriage proposal, Max. You don't owe me anything."
She blinks away the stinging in her eyes and looks up to catch his scowl. "Too real," she amends and sees something fall into place in his expression.
He nods slowly and slides the camera back into his bag. "There's nothing wrong with real," he replies, zipping the bag closed. "Not all the time, anyway."
Max lets out a laugh that sends her coughing. "Let me know when you find that balance then," she says, standing up.
He grabs hold of her arm, rising to his own feet. He studies her, eyes flickering past her own, across the freckles dotting her cheeks, the firm line of her frown.
She can see something whirring away inside his gaze, something being torn apart and built up again, and she follows it right until the moment it's hovering in front of her. She isn't sure when he's closed the distance between them but his lips press against hers in one soft motion. It's sudden and demanding and there's steel beneath—as if by the pressure, he can trade her hesitancy for his stability. His lips move slowly once they capture hers and she feels herself fall into it, lean against him.
Nothing is parallel, but perpendicular, all running through her at this one point.
Then, he jerks backwards and breaks the kiss. His fingers skim across her arms, his eyes wide before his arms drop back to his side. "Fuck," he mutters.
Max laughs because it's better than listening to her heartbeat slamming into her eardrums. She can still feel the pressure of his lips against hers, tingling as if the blood is still rushing through. "Do you...do you kiss all the people you shoot photos of?" she asks lightly. Her words don't even feel real anymore, just sounds that fall from her lips as she tries to make sense of them.
"No." He frowns, fixated on the wringing of her hands in front of her. "Don't get used to it."
She shrugs even as her shoulders feel like bricks. "I wasn't planning on it," she says, looking anywhere but his eyes, which are full of challenges she's not ready for.
Max brushes her hair, the sound of the stereo fading in and out behind her. She frowns as she taps against the speaker, but it only crackles at her in response. It's old—she's had it since she was six, and before that it was her parents'. But it had been as resilient as the walls of her bedroom.
Her hair doesn't seem to fall in the same place this morning. She doesn't know why, and she has rearranged her part, swept aside her bangs, and brushed until her hand grew numb. It isn't until she's pulled the top half of her hair away from her face that she realizes it isn't her hair after all. The face that stares back at her isn't the one she woke up with yesterday. There's something slightly different—something more than a change of expression.
She raises a finger to her lips, pressing against them until the color blanches out. Too real and yet not real enough. She can still feel Nathan's lips against hers, even the drag of his fingers against her arm as he pulled away. Whichever Max he saw yesterday seems to be greeting her today.
She leaves her hair tied away from her face.
"So you and Nathan seem to be good friends," Dr. White beams at her.
Dr. White's office is too large for Max's liking and the random assortment of chairs and sofas remind her of a furniture section in a thrift store. The one she's sitting in looks as if it came straight out of the seventies.
Max shifts in her chair and shrugs. Somehow even Nathan's name sounds different to her, like some other layer has been pulled free, the skin away from the heart.
"Max?" Dr. White prods.
Max wonders which Max the doctor seems to be referring to, which layer.
"He knows a lot," Max says and holds her hand out, examining it, noticing how it doesn't shake as much. How utterly ordinary it looks, that aside from the nails she's chewed down to the quick, doesn't even feel like it's attached to her.
"Well, he's been through a lot to get to where he is now. How about you, though?" She digs through the mini fridge behind her desk and then sets a Tupperware container on her desk. "Pineapple?" she offers.
"Er, no, thanks," Max says, eying the container.
"Suit yourself," she says, popping a piece into her mouth.
Play the part, Max's mind tells her, or you'll never get home.
"It's hard," Max admits. "Finding out what's real and what's not here. I remember things that haven't happened and forget things that have."
"Anything in particular?"
Max hesitates, twisting her hands in her lap. When she blinks, she feels the colors of a strobe light against her eyelids. When she sucks in a deep breath, she can smell the reek of sweat and alcohol. When she exhales, she can hear Victoria's laughter behind it.
Dr. White's office is too large and too full and Max's elbows bump against the sides of the chair she's sitting in. There's a dancing cat on Dr. White's desk, a kind of bobble-headed statue that keeps on bobbing and staring at Max with its comically wide eyes and smile. She wants to knock it off the desk. "I can't," she stammers.
Dr. White nods, a slow tip of her head. "Another time then, when you're ready."
And then it's Max's turn to nod.
"It just takes time. It's always difficult settling back into things, but it'll start to even out. Think of it like a bottle of soda being shaken up. The carbonation bubbles and the pressure builds but after a while it settles back down. Right now, your brain is still trying to settle back down. The dreams are your way of sorting through the chaos, the pressure in the bottle, if you will. And as things settle, you might find yourself remembering more. Some good, some bad, and that's okay. That's what I'm here for." Dr. White sets the pineapple back in her fridge. "Sometimes it helps to keep a dream journal. Write your dreams down after you wake up and compare them. It helps you sort out your thoughts if you can see them on paper. But, remember, they're just dreams. Sometimes they blend history with fantasy. All they can tell you is what's in your head. Your fears, your desires, your experiences. They can't tell you anything you don't already know subconsciously."
"Dream journal?" Max repeats and the doctor nods. She misses the journal that was almost like an extension of her. Her bag feels too empty without it. Maybe it was time to start a new one.
The hour ends much later than Max would have wanted and she slips her bag over her shoulder, nodding her goodbye. She feels less of herself now than she did at the start of the hour.
Nathan brushes past her in the hallway, pausing as if he's waiting for her response. She smiles but it only makes him frown and push past the crowd. Her own smile slips away as she heads to her history class.
Warren meets her at her desk, arms extended in whatever story he's retelling. She barely notices when the story dies off, when he waves a hand in front of her face to catch her attention.
"—hair different today?" he asks and she nods slowly.
Her eyes are trained on Nathan as he walks into the class, seconds before the bell. He's still wearing his scowl and it deepens when he notices Warren at her desk. But he lets it fall away when he glances towards Max. He gifts her a small wink before heading to his desk.
Max feels the heat in bright patches on her cheeks. She knows it means nothing more than the darkening purple on Warren's face, but she can't will her own blush away.
Warren pushes away from her desk towards his own.
She can feel Nathan's eyes from the back of the room, flicking towards the ceiling when she turns to look over at him. His smile still plays at the edges of his lips.
She can feel Warren's eyes on her as well. When she turns back, she sees him frowning across at her. He quickly smiles, shifting in his seat so that he's facing frontwards again. But as soon as she looks away, she feels his gaze again.
At the end of class, Nathan brushes past her again, snatching her pencil from her desk. He twirls it between two fingers before letting it clatter back before her. "Catch you later," he murmurs before slipping out the door.
Warren scoffs from beside her and the pained smile on his face makes her want to grimace.
"He's just showing off," she says, gathering her things and rising from her seat.
"Yeah, sure," Warren says. He gestures in front of him for her to go ahead.
She hears the crack of a pencil behind her as she heads out the door.
The cursor blinking on her laptop seems to mock her. The words that fill the page seem to come from somewhere else, a different Max, and she feels herself slide from one timeline to the other. One side of her wonders why she should bother when she knows this won't be permanent, why she should trail from class to class, take notes, regurgitate them back into her assignments.
But there's something that stills her when she falls into the routine, when she pulls her mind away from it. It's as if a blanket has covered the cage of her thoughts and all the rustling has settled into a murmur.
With a sigh, Max deletes the few sentences she's written and picks up her phone. She only hesitates a moment before dialing the number.
"Warren, how good are you with Dante?" she asks. She balances her phone on her shoulder as she flips through the heavy anthology. The words blur before her in a whirlwind of black.
"Uh, I thought Kate was helping you with that," Warren replies from the other end.
"Yeah, she was. I just…I don't want to ask her for help with everything. It already feels like she's done most of the research for my paper." She pushes away from her desk and flops onto the bed.
"I'm a little rusty on classic Italian literature," he admits but she hears the clack of his keyboard as he types something. "What are you stuck on?"
"I have to create my own levels of hell." And the ones I want to write about are all labeled as "levels of insanity," she thinks. She tosses the book back onto her bed.
He stops typing and laughs. "That seems pretty easy. What's the problem?"
She groans, rolling forward on the bed so that the book is pressed against her forehead. The problem is I can't root myself here. "Everything feels like word soup in my head. I couldn't bullshit my way through an essay if my life depended on it."
"Hmm," he says, sounding distracted and starts typing again. "Fuck, no," he grumbles. She hears something being slammed down. "What the hell are you doing?"
Max pulls her head away from the book and frowns. "Huh?"
"No, sorry, not you. I'm just trying to multi-task. Okay, so what? Dante? Hell? What's your angle?"
A familiar chime sounds from behind him.
A small smile pulls at Max's lips. "Are you playing WoW?" she asks.
He pauses and she hears the phone being shuffled. "Yeah, sorry, is my sound too loud? You'll have my undivided attention in a second. If this is heading where I think it's about to." He pauses again. "How did you know? Do you play?"
"I used to," she answers, thinking of the times they'd played in the previous timeline.
"You should pick it up again. I could use someone who's not an asshole and what the hell are you doing?"
Max snickers, flipping through the pages of her book. The conversation feels so normal, so familiar, that when her mother peeks in through the open doorway, she's thrown off guard.
Vanessa beams at her smile, winking as she sets a plate of cookies on her desk and leaving her to resume her conversation.
"How do you know I'm not an asshole?" Max asks, taking a bite from one of the cookies.
Warren lets out something that sounds like a combination of a whine and a grunt. "Oh, please. Actually, yes, please. Please come save me from this hell."
"Speaking of hell," Max says and there's a clatter as Warren throws something down again with a yell.
"Done," he grumbles. "So, Dante. Nine circles of hell. You know, I think I still have my old Dante book from last year. I bought my own copy so I could write notes in it."
"You have your own copy of Dante's Inferno?" Max asks.
"Yeah, somewhere. It's all of the Divine Comedy, in fact. I can bring it to school tomorrow if you want."
"I would love that," she says. "Extra notes might help drive this thing into my brain better."
He pauses again and the laugh that follows sounds forced. "Great. That's…I'll see you tomorrow, then."
She doesn't know why she feels her stomach drop, as if anticipating something wrong, a sudden change in the wind.
She shrugs it aside and turns to her essay again and the laptop that's still flashing a blank screen back at her.
The rain around her falls like strings of pearls. She can hear them crack and explode onto the ground below her. Except she's not on the ground. She's standing high on the rooftop of the school and even as she wants to back away in panic, she finds herself stepping closer to the edge.
"Kate, come back down," she hears herself say, but again her lips don't move. She reaches for Kate's hand because she's standing just in front of her, hovering on some invisible ledge in front of her. But when her hand makes contact, the hand that grasps her disappears in front of her and she's nearly toppling over, screaming for help—help for Kate, help for her, and she feels Warren's arms embrace her, not pulling her back, but holding her stable.
She closes her eyes and leans into it, the firmness of his arms which don't waver or move but feel like an extension of her own body. She opens her eyes and finds herself lying on the roof with Warren kneeling over her. She doesn't know what he's saying but she knows she can't move. Her limbs are heavy, her chest is heavy, and all she wants to do is close her eyes again.
"Can you stand up?" she hears Warren say before his words fade out again.
"I can't get up," she answers, pushing at her body, pushing air, pushing nothing. "I can't...it's like I can't stay vertical." She doesn't know why she says this, but when all she can see is the horizon of the sky above her, a stretch of dark storm clouds ready to devour her, it makes enough sense.
Then there's an ambush of arms around her, lifting her, pulling her, and she feels herself disappear just like Kate. This time when she closes her eyes, she doesn't open them.
It takes her a few moments to realize that it's dark because her nightlight has burned out. Her blinds are closed against the moonlight. She reaches for her phone, missing twice and knocking the bottle of pills from her nightstand. They hit the floor with a dull rattle and she picks them up, rolling them around in her hand. They feel like stones in her grasp. But she slides the bottle back clumsily onto the nightstand and dials Nathan's number.
"I'm sorry," she says as soon as he answers because she knows she's woken him again.
But his voice is clear from lack of sleep and he pushes her apology aside. "Another one?" he asks and he hears him rattling his keys.
"Yeah," she says and her voice is trembling enough to cut the word off before she can fully say it. She pulls the covers over herself. "Don't come over though. I'm going back to sleep."
"Promises, promises." He doesn't put the keys down. She hears them jangling against the phone. "You sure? We don't have to go anywhere."
"I'm good." She tries to imagine Nathan sneaking into her room while she's only half-dressed with her parents just down the hall and she shakes silently with laughter. It's much better than the shaking she awoke with.
"So what's up?"
Her mouth goes dry as she struggles for something to say. His question feels heavier than it should and she presses a hand against her lips.
"I dreamed about the roof," she mumbles against her fingers. She doesn't like how heavy her own words feel, as if she's breathing life into them. There's black beneath her feet, black above her, black in the back of her eyelids. She blinks it away.
He lets out a ragged sigh. "How bad?" he asks.
"Could be better. Or less detailed. Or not at all." She can taste the rain in her mouth.
"Ignorance is bliss," he states.
She scoffs lightly. "Why couldn't you sleep?"
"Bad dream." She hears the amusement between the words.
"Any rooftops?"
"Nah, just this girl that I can't seem to stop thinking about."
She smiles slightly. "So why was it bad?"
"She wouldn't let me in her room." She laughs and he lets her before dropping the heavy question. "You gonna move past it?"
"I don't know," she falters. She feels the air leave the room like a vacuum. "It wasn't me on that rooftop. I don't know how to move past that."
"Was it you that I kissed the other day?"
Her mouth goes dry again as she struggles for a reply. The question has been dancing on the tip of her tongue all day. She can't bring herself to ask it though, at the risk of breaking whatever spell had taken over.
"You're still you, Max," he continues, ignoring her lack of response, "whatever bad choices you make."
There's a sour taste in her mouth as she nods, then remembers that he can't see her nodding. "Yeah, sure." But she doesn't feel like it is. Every day that she's here, she remembers more. This is the longest she's ever stayed in a timeline and she doesn't know if it's some kind of trickling-down effect from staying here or if she's really remembering things that shedid. It doesn't feel as temporary.
She grips the phone tighter, her fingers sliding on the screen from perspiration. "How many times?" she asks. "How many bad choices do you make before you're not yourself anymore?"
There's a pause long enough for her to think that he's hung up. "I don't know," he confesses. "I'm still here, right?"
"I'm not you, though."
"You sure you don't wanna go for a drive?"
"I'm going to sleep," she repeats, even though her eyes feel as if they've been peeled and glued open. She'll be awake for quite a bit longer.
She hears him sniggering in the background as if he knows she'll be awake as well. "Need help?"
"No, I'll be okay—" His words catch up to her before his tone and she swallows the rest of her words. She feels the blood rush to her cheeks. "I'm not that desperate, sorry," she replies.
"Oh, you need to be desperate?"
She can practically see his shit-eating grin and groans against her palm. "Were you desperate when you kissed me the other day?"
There's another long pause. "Forget it," he finally says, the humor gone.
Her hand falls to her side. "No, I didn't mean it like that," she rushes on.
"Goodnight, Max." And the phone clicks into silence before she can answer.
She retraces her words, pressing her fingers against her lips again.
Nice going, dumbass, she tells herself. She settles into the covers, wide-eyed and even more wide awake, her fingers once again itch to rewind. She tries calling him back. The phone just keeps ringing, however, and she lets it clatter back onto her nightstand. The glare of the screen flashes against the wall of her desk. Don't you forget about me stares across her like blood. She traces the words on her arm, over and over, willing their magic to work back into her fingers.
Max carries a mug in each hand while Kate fishes through the pantry for some cookies.
"I know they're here somewhere," Kate mumbles from behind a box. Something squawks loudly behind her.
Max jumps and nearly drops the mugs before noticing the tall cage behind her. "What is that, a parakeet?"
Kate peers over the box she'd been leaning behind, a bag of cookies in her hand. "Oh, this is Elizabeth. She's a sweetheart," she introduces. She holds out a finger which the bird nips affectionately. Kate beams in a way Max hasn't seen for a long time, the color in her cheeks and the light in her eyes as vibrant as if someone has breathed life into her.
There's something jarring inside Max's chest as she watches, some green-eyed monster in the hollow of her rib cage.
"You seemed more like a rabbit person to me for some reason," Max says, forcing a smile.
"I would love a rabbit but my mother's allergic," Kate replies. "So it's just birds and reptiles here. My sister has this enormous iguana named Fred. He's kind of charming if you squint your eyes." She laughs, and Max finds herself laughing along, even as the monster inside her twists and turns.
"You'll have to show him to me next time. I've got to head back after this. I've got another pile of homework to tackle before going out with..." She trails off at Kate's wondering eyes and her shoulders slump forward.
Kate leads the way to the back porch. "Nathan Prescott?" she finishes and her smile has grown fainter.
Max's smile drops completely. "We're just...friendly," she insists, "kind of. Sort of. Barely." She pushes his face out of her mind, as she's been trying for days now, but it doesn't lessen the way her blood seems to sing whenever she thinks of it.
Kate stirs her tea thoughtfully. "Be careful," she says. "He's not like he was last year, but there was a lot he did. It was as if he'd pick a fight with any and everyone. And they would be horrible fights. He sent a few people to the hospital. He would set fires, blow things up, especially Mister Tennington's car." She points her spoon at Max, as if she should learn a lesson from this, and sips her tea.
"I could have done that," Max says, shrugging helplessly.
"Oh, Max. You're nothing like Nathan. You can't compare yourself to him."
"I don't know. I don't know what it is I can't compare." It's not as if she can tell Kate she's come here after the fact, that she has stepped into shoes she's never worn and has to continue wearing.
Kate clucks her tongue as she struggles for something to say. "When he and Victoria were together, they spread a lot of disgusting rumors. They pulled pranks."
"Like the party," Max cuts in, her voice falling flat.
Kate gives a slight nod. "And there was some stupid rumor about me trying to sleep with Nathan. I'm pretty sure Victoria started it. As a joke. But it made others talk. And they said horrible things. I didn't even know half of the guys they talked about."
"You can't think people would believe that. I mean, Kate, you're—"
"Max." Kate waves her words aside. "The thing about rumors is that if enough people talk about them, they get harder to ignore. It doesn't matter how ridiculous they are."
"I can believe that," Max says, patting the other girl's hand.
"I know what it's like to let it build," Kate says quietly.
"I bet Nathan does, too," Max adds.
"Nathan," Kate continues, "decided it wasn't funny anymore. He just turned around and yelled, 'of course you didn't sleep with anyone. Who in the world would sleep with you?' Except, of course, it was a lot more vulgar." She cringes and tries to take another drink, frowning when she finds her mug empty.
Max frowns. "That was messed up," she agrees. "I think Nathan will always be an ass, but he's trying." She tries to change tactics. It's hard not to doubt her words, though. These are the same points she'd brought up to herself over and over again. She isn't sure when she stopped debating them. She stares into her own tea, suddenly feeling nauseous. The liquid swirls around and around and she feels as if she's falling into a black hole.
Kate nods slowly. "I know. He apologized to me at the start of the semester. But you can't just undo things that easily. I think he knows that, though." She sighs. "I just don't want you to get hurt."
Max shrugs. "You and Warren seem to be on the same team. Don't worry. I can take care of myself. We're just friends." She feels as if she's lying, even though she's not so sure what's the truth.
Kate folds her hands in front of her and studies Max. There's a wisdom far beyond Kate's years that's hidden there, tucked in the corner of her gaze, the lines of her frown. She nods, slowly. "If that's what you think," she finally answers. "That should count for something, at least."
Max sighs and pushes away her tea. She's barely touched it. "Thanks, Kate."
Kate smiles, as if nothing has transpired, even as the worry in her eyes disagrees. "Come by next week and we can trade ideas on our Dante papers."
"Sure," Max says, rising to leave. "Warren's letting me borrow his old Dante book, so maybe that'll give me a few new ideas."
Kate's eyes trail after her, widening a bit. "Really? He's not one to let go of his books easily. You must be one of the chosen few."
Max shrugs. "No big deal. It's just Dante."
"It took me two years to get him to loan me his Bradbury book when I couldn't get a copy from the library. He erased most of his notes from it before giving it to me, too."
"Why?" Max asks, trying to imagine what kind of embarrassing note he could possibly not want anyone to see.
This time, Kate shrugs. "Warren's kind of…particular about what he likes to share."
"I guess," Max says, frowning.