What little holiday homework Max had was finished, leaving her plenty of time to relax. Spending all that time in her room watching TV felt too antisocial, so instead Max choose to come downstairs with her phone and be antisocial in the kitchen, while Dad made sandwiches from the remains of Thanksgiving dinner and Mom stood at the breakfast bar with her laptop.

Mom broke the silence first. "I figured out a bus route to Arcadia Bay."

Max pulled her earbuds out and paused Netflix.

"Dad can't drive me back?"

He shook his head. "I don't have tomorrow off, and I assume you don't want to go back tonight. Besides, twelve hours in the car is a bit of a drag, even if I do get to make you do half the driving."

"Okay."

"Dad will drop you off at King's Street and you'll take Amtrak to Portland, then there's a bus that'll take you from there to the Arcadia Bay docks parking lot. That only runs twice a day, so you'll have to wake up at seven to make the right train. You'll probably get to school around three."

"Okay."

Max went back to watching TV on her phone. After Walt had died-from the drug dealing, not the cancer, just like she figured from the start-she'd tried a few episodes of The Deadliest Catch, before settling on Doctor Who. A show about time travel was a bit of a risk, but so far they just seemed to be visiting different eras in history, which didn't risk dredging up any unwelcome memories. She wasn't really feeling into it yet, but she was only a few episodes in. Every single person on the internet seems to love it, even though it can't keep the same lead actor for more than three seasons. Maybe it gets better?

Her dad paused mid-sandwich and faced Max. "You seem quiet. Are you okay?"

Earbuds out again. They were both looking at her in the exact way that she didn't want them to be; like she was fragile or damaged. That they weren't wrong just made it worse. That she had to pretend otherwise... that was just a knife in the chest.

"I'm hanging-"

"-hanging in there," he finished for her. "Yeah, I know. That's what you told me the first time I asked. How are you really doing?"

Her silence was answer enough.

"I noticed as soon as I saw you on the curb. I was expecting you to have the freshman 15 from all the cafeteria cheese but instead you somehow lost weight. I remember when you came home from a week at photo camp and you wouldn't stop talking the whole way home, but now you've hardly said a dozen words to me all weekend, and you were fine with using your cell phone camera when you forgot your Polaroid. That's not the Max I remember."

"And you were never one for 4AM Black Friday sales," Mom finished.

She'd assumed that her post-Thanksgiving jog had gone unnoticed. Guess not.

Mom intensified her concerned look. "You know the school brought in a counselor, right?"

"Yeah... I've talked with her." The wording was chosen carefully, to suggest it could have been more than once while still being technically true. She shouldn't have bothered. Anything short of "I've never met her" would have felt like just as much of a lie. She ran her tongue gingerly over a sore molar.

But if Mom could tell she didn't let on. "That's good. I know it can't be easy losing your best friend right after you were reunited."

Max didn't dare hope that last word meant what she thought it did. She'd always assumed that Other Max had told them how much she regretted not getting back in touch with Chloe. If not then... maybe it was safe to mix in a few lies with her truth? Or some truths into her lies; at this point it was hard to be sure which was which.

"And we haven't gotten much chance to talk about her yet."

He'd let her avoid the subject in the car, but clearly that had only been a temporary reprieve. She nodded slightly and spoke cautiously. "After five years... she changed a lot. You saw the blue hair right?"

"We just saw the black and white photo in the paper." Of course Mom actually looked at the paper. "I could tell she did something with it though."

"When I saw her," Max said, "I almost didn't recognize her. She had a huge tattoo all the way up her arm and her hair was electric blue."

"I bet you two got into a bunch of mischief."

This was supposed to be a sad conversation, but Max found herself having to hide her joy at the thought that maybe there was someone else she didn't need to lie to. Here she felt far enough away from the reality she'd chosen-the one where her only interaction with Chloe had been to sit and listen as she was murdered-that talking actually seemed possible.

"She had a secret hideaway in the junkyard. We hung out there a bunch, shootin' the shit." Figuratively and literally. "She was angry sometimes. About me leaving. About her dad. About her step-dad especially. Things were pretty rough for her with me gone. She fought a lot with... Mr. Madsen." Max caught herself from saying 'David' just in time. "And even Joyce sometimes. Blackwell expelled her. She smoked pot a whole bunch. She was still in there, though. Just took a bit of digging."

"She didn't get you in trouble did she?"

Of course she'd ask that. The question was much softer than it would have been otherwise, but she knew exactly which type of trouble her mom was talking about. "No, she didn't get me to try pot." I figured that out on my own thankyouverymuch.

She detected a hint of unfatherly disappointment from the other side of the counter and threw Dad a bone. "We did sneak into the pool after curfew one night. Just relaxed and talked and splashed each other.

"Her music was... well it wasn't something I'd normally listen to, but it was fun, jamming with her. And then just waking up next to her..." Here goes nothing... "She was my first kiss."

It wasn't exactly accurate. There had been some fumbling middle school attempts at dating, and a pushy sophomore who got a brief smooch just so he'd shut up. But somehow it felt like the most true thing she'd said all week.

It didn't take long for it to sink in. "Oh!" He flashed her a smile for a split second before he remembered how the story ended. "Oh."

"Yeah. Nobody there knows. Not even Joyce. And now it feels weird talking about it. Like, congrats on coming out, sorry your first girlfriend was m-mur..." Their arms wrapped around her, keeping her from having to finish the word.

And it was enough. There was still so much she could never tell them, but that was enough.