Max stared out the car window, watching the trees go by. She, Victoria, Taylor and Kate had had a lovely outing up the coast, enjoying a pleasant tea and pastry date along with the sites at a scenic town which possessed that most important quality of not being Arcadia Bay. Taylor and Kate snuggled together in the back seat, careful not to get too frisky lest they draw the driver's ire. Victoria focused on the road. Squirming in her seat, trying to get comfier, Max shifted her legs, planning to rest her feet on the dashboard.
"Maxine, do not put your dirty shoes on the leather!" Victoria declared, never even turning her head.
Max rolled her eyes, realizing for the first time that their divergent approaches to cleanliness might need navigating at some point. Dutifully, she reached down and untied her sneakers. "Is that better?" she asked, resting her feet on the dashboard. The white cotton of her shoe-cut socks left no marks whatsoever.
"You told her!" Victoria accused, suddenly going red, glaring at Taylor in the rearview mirror.
"What did I do now?" Taylor asked sleepily, sitting up straight. Gazing into the front of the car, she started laughing, "Ohmigod, I swear I didn't! I told you I'd never…."
"Tell me what?" Max demanded, completely baffled.
"Ohgod.." Taylor laughed, struggling to catch her breath long enough to form coherent sentences. "You… I just… Please V, now we have to tell her!"
Fortunate that there were no other cars on the road, Victoria slowed down to well below the speed limit as she tried to regain some composure, not to mention her dignity. She glanced over again and again at where Max's white-clad feet rested, trying desperately to concentrate on driving. Seeing Max growing increasingly upset, Victoria sighed and nodded to Taylor. "Fine."
"Max.. oh dear sweet Maximillian J. Caulfield…" Taylor began, "only you could stumble innocently onto two out of the Big Three all at once."
"Big Three?" Max turned in her seat to face Taylor, pulling her legs back underneath her. She noted a forlorn sigh to her left as the car began accelerating back to the speed limit.
"At one of our very first sleepovers, Court, V, and I played 'Truth or Dare' and, well, lots of fascinating tidbits came out, about each of us. It was when we all really became close friends." Taylor explained, smiling fondly at the happy memory. "Anyway, one of the things we talked about was fetishes."
Max blushed and stammered, "Fff.. fetishes? You mean like whips and stuff?"
"Nothing that dramatic, Max, though I like how your mind works," Taylor teased, ignoring some mildly alarmed murmurs from Kate. "More like little things guaranteed to turn you on. Like one of mine was rain."
"We live in the Pacific Northwest, it rains all the time," Max pointed out archly.
"Not rain like any old rain, I mean the idea of you know… doing it in the rain," Taylor clarified.
"You never told me that," Kate said, rousing herself from her half-slumber.
"Well, we've had unseasonably lovely weather for the past few weeks, so it never came up," Taylor replied. "Anyway, our own sweet vision of perfection herself, Ms. Victoria Maribeth Chase, mentioned three specific things." She made eye contact with Victoria in the mirror. "Do you want to tell her or should I?"
"I'm busy driving and you're doing so well," Victoria said drolly. "Maybe you can post my social security number and mother's maiden name in your Instagram when you're done."
"You're the one who almost drove us off the road!" Taylor laughed, reaching up to pat Victoria's shoulder fondly.
"She doesn't have to," Max inserted, her voice quiet. She never wanted to embarrass or upset Victoria, though the curiosity was killing her. She reached over and laid a calming hand on Victoria's knee.
Victoria flashed her a warm, gentle smile. "It's fine, sweetie. If I didn't want you to know, I never would have let her start talking."
"Anyway," Taylor interrupted, "before you both get any mushier. The Big Three Things Sure to Dampen Victoria Chase's Much Too Expensive Panties! In no particular order…" She paused for dramatic effect, noting with glee the frustrated glare from Max this earned. "… girls with their feet up on a dashboard; white ankle socks; and… ponytails pulled through the back of baseball caps! Now, you just need to let your hair grow longer and you can hit the trifecta!"
"And now I will drive us off a cliff and put an end to our misery," Victoria said.
"Tori! That's not funny," Max giggled, still processing these tasty morsels of information about her girlfriend. Certainly now, while the car was moving, was no time to explore further, particularly given the presence of Taylor and Kate, but there were some secluded little areas around Arcadia Bay where one could park in relative privacy. Schemes began to form in Max's devious and increasingly thirsty little mind!
"I think it's only fair, since you shared Victoria's, that you share yours too, Tay," Kate suggested.
"'Tay?' That's sweet!" Max noted. "And that does sound only fair, Taylor. Purely for scientific and ethical purposes, though, I'm sure. Right, Kate?"
Taylor rolled her eyes, having seen this coming. "Fine, but then you both need to share, too! That way it's fair all around."
"I'm not sure I have any," Kate worried.
"Dearest, I know of one for a fact," Taylor replied smugly, eyes glowing with a sudden passion as she took Kate's hands in her own.
"Keep in your pants, T," Victoria warned. Looking up at Kate in the mirror, she advised, "You and Max can think on it while Taylor describes hers in what I'm sure will be quite lurid detail."
"No need for lurid, at least not here and now," Taylor replied airily. "I already told you about the rain thing, just being with someone in like a field somewhere, with soft rain falling all around…" She sighed at the thought, inserting a mental image of Kate quite neatly into this long-standing generic fantasy.
"Sounds kind of cold, at least at this time of year," Kate said, pondering.
"Not a laundry list or a request, Katie," Taylor told her, "just things that get me hot. No pressure at all to make them happen."
"Especially the other one," Victoria snorted.
"Shut up, you!" Taylor barked, though with no bite. Turning to Kate she explained, "But she's right, the other one is not really something I think I'd actually want to do, just something fun to think about. I like to imagine that… well…" She gathered her courage, scared that Kate might be offended or put off by her other recurring fantasy.
Sensing Taylor's hesitation and understanding the reason, Kate squeezed her hands tightly. "I won't think any less of you, Tay. We can't control the things which excite our imaginations, only the actions we take in response. But, if you don't want to share, that's fine. I'm sure we all have things we don't want anyone else to know about ourselves."
Taylor smiled gratefully and pulled Kate in for a quick hug, releasing her before Victoria could admonish her. "It's not that, petal, nothing that bad. Just kinda silly. I have this daydream sometimes where I'm on a stage or in the middle of a crowded party… naked. Sometimes alone, sometimes with someone else… doing things or just kind of dancing around, but with all eyes on me, knowing that no one is allowed to touch or come close, but everyone is getting hot and bothered watching me."
"Narcissistic much?" Victoria said playfully.
"Tori, stop! Don't be mean" Max chided her. "It's not easy to share things like that, as I'm sure you know."
"Kidding, Maxine, sheesh!" Victoria insisted. "She knows I'm just teasing. Don't you, T?" She made eye contact, worried now that maybe she had crossed a line.
"I know you are, V, and it's fine. It is a little self-absorbed, but hey… like some super smart hottie said, we can't help what gets us excited!" To Kate she added, "And no, I absolutely don't want to do that. My dad used to quote Chris Rock at me about keeping me off the pole!"
"Maybe that's enough fetishes for one day," Victoria suggested. "Max, Kate, you guys can think about it and decide if you want to share. It might be a fun game for our next sleepover, and that way Courtney won't miss out!"
Kate looked a bit relieved at that and Max felt the same. She needed some time to sort through the difference between this kind of thing and more explicit sexual fantasies like the one she'd shared earlier with Victoria. Those kinds of things were nothing she wanted to share with Taylor, Kate, or anyone but Tori!
"Actually," Victoria went on, "I did have a question for you, Max." She glanced up at Taylor, adding "Completely off the topic of sex, thank you."
"O…k…" Max replied, trying to catch up with the rapid gear shifting this conversation was undergoing, "shoot."
"How did you know about Taylor's mother being sick?"
"Yeah, I was wondering about that, too?" Taylor chimed in. "I thought maybe V had mentioned it, but…"
"I most certainly did not," Victoria insisted. "Besides, the only things I said to Max before the two of you spoke were…" She hesitated, recalling how she used to treat Max.
"Clever insults? Variations of MeanAdjectiveField?" Max offered.
"'Hipster blah blah blah retro blah," Kate opined.
"'Could I be any hotter for you behind my mean girl façade?'" Taylor contributed.
"I hate you all," Victoria said quietly, though she couldn't avoid a smile as the three girls in the car gazed at her fondly.
"I was also curious," Kate said, bringing them back to the topic at hand.
Max paused to consider her answer. 'My magic journal told me,' was essentially the truth, but she certainly couldn't say that! Could she? She'd stopped trying to figure out when or why or how she had written those things in her journal. Max knew she had no memory of doing so, but also knew that it was definitely her handwriting. Sleepwalking was a thing, dream journals were a thing, so she'd figured sleep journaling might be a thing, but that still didn't explain how she'd known things that she shouldn't have known. Maybe her subconscious was just really perceptive?
Worst case, her friends would think she was crazy, but she had the journal to prove at least that she had written those things, if not when. Best case, they believed her and maybe had some ideas to explain it. It came down to trust and Max knew she trusted all three of these young women completely.
"Ok, this may sound odd, but please bear with me," she began. Max relayed the events of the day after the funeral, how she'd noticed the missing pages, the entries on the final page. She even produced her journal from her ever-present messenger bag to show Taylor and Kate. She then told how she tested the entries, starting with Taylor on the quad what seemed like years ago.
"How could you know these things?" Taylor asked eventually. Kate stared out the window, pondering, while Victoria remained steady at the helm, processing.
Max walked them through her various theories, about subconscious emotional intelligence, dream journaling, etc. pointing out the merits and flaws of each idea. "I don't even know for sure when I wrote these things or what happened to the other pages," she concluded.
"I know."
Max, Taylor, and Kate turned to Victoria, stunned. "You.. you know?" Max asked. "How?"
"I saw you," Victoria replied quietly. "It was after the funeral."
"But how did you…."
"Do you really think I went for any other reason than you?" Victoria said, voice cracking. "I'm not that nice a person and I didn't know Chloe at all. I knew I was the last person anyone wanted to see, given… well… me and Nathan."
"Tori…" Max rubbed her knee again, trying to calm the onslaught of raw emotion.
Victoria took a deep breath and spotted a place just ahead she could pull the car over. Parking under some trees, she turned the car off and spun to face her friends.
"I wanted to make myself experience your pain," she explained finally. "I know… please, Maxine, let me finish. I know I'm not that person anymore, not really. But then, I… I was in a bad place, as I think you all know." She smiled wanly over at Max, taking her hand. "The relevant part is that I spent the funeral watching you. When it was all over, you dashed off, away from everyone else, so I followed."
No one inserted any witty remarks, instead waiting for Victoria to gather herself to continue.
"You went to a secluded part of the cemetery, pulled out your journal, and just started writing, almost frantically, like you were taking a test and time was running out or something. You wrote and wrote, but then you stopped and after a minute or two, you ripped out a bunch of pages and crumpled them up. I thought you might just toss them in the air, but I guess you're too eco-friendly, cause you put them in the recycle bin."
"I don't remember any of that," Max observed.
"What do you remember from the funeral?" Kate asked.
"Well, I remember the shuttle ride over from the school and walking out to the gravesite, but… I guess after that maybe getting back to the dorm?"
Taylor piped in, "Wait, if you were spending all that time writing, wouldn't you have missed the shuttle back?"
"I think she got an Uber," Victoria informed them. "I thought about offering you a ride when I saw the bus leave, but…" She sighed. "… but I was still a huge, self-hating, bitch and didn't. I did see you on your phone, though, and later someone came to pick you up."
"You waited to make sure I got home safe?" Max asked timidly, grasping for anything vaguely positive.
"Yes, I suppose I did do the very bare minimum human thing," Victoria replied bitterly.
"Shut up," Max whispered, pulling Victoria into a fierce embrace. "No one is allowed to be mean to my Tori, not even you."
"Your Tori," Victoria echoed, tears now falling. Kate and Taylor leaned back, giving their friends what privacy they could until they collected themselves.
"So," Taylor finally said after Max and Victoria separated, "you don't recall anything from after we arrived till you were on the way back to school."
Victoria strained to recall the events of that distant day. "There was something," she said. "There was a moment where you almost collapsed, like one moment you were standing there, sad but relatively normal, then the next minute you crumpled up almost into a ball. Mrs. Price had to hold on to you to keep you from falling over."
"I don't remember that either," Max informed them, struggling to pierce the veil over her memories.
"I suppose the only thing to do is go back and get those pages," Victoria suggested.
"But it's been weeks," Kate pointed out.
Taylor sniffed, "Like the cemetery shells out for weekly recyclable pick-ups. I'd say there's a chance they're still there."
"But, that still doesn't explain how I knew about your mom, or David and Joyce, or Dana and Trevor," Max said. "Or why I can't remember any of it."
"Maybe, maybe not," Victoria answered. "But it's all we've got. We can stop by on our way back to campus and check."
"I feel like we've fallen into an episode of Scooby Doo," Taylor said. "I guess that makes me Daphne!"
"I think I'm much more Daphne," Victoria countered, proceeding to make her case as she pulled back onto the road.
Feeling particularly Velma-like, both Max and Kate settled back, half listening to the banter between their girlfriends, half focused on trying to understand, watching the trees race past.