Her dad died. It was sudden. Out of nowhere. An accident. One minute everything was great. She had great parents, and awesome best friend, good grades, plans for a trip to Paris, dreams. The next minute her dad was dead. She never even got to say goodbye. They called the house looking for her mom, but he had been on his way to pick her up when it happened. They weren't supposed to tell her since she was just a kid, but they let it slip. She was alone when she found out. Max had already gone home.
A minute later she lost Max too. Not an actual minute, but it sure felt like it. Apparently Max's parents had been planning to move to Seattle. They hadn't told her yet because it was unclear if her dad would get the job offer. But he did, and they did, and the move happened quicker than they had planned. Something about needing to start by a certain date, and a lease needing to be signed. So they packed up and left within a couple of weeks. It was barely after the funeral. She and Max promised to stay in touch, promised that the distance wouldn't break their friendship. But as time went by, they talked less and less, and then not at all.
Her mother didn't talk to her. The first few months, she just stayed in their (now only her) room and cried. Chloe cried too, of course, but she wanted to talk about it. She wanted her mother. But her mother wasn't there. Max was busy figuring out Seattle and a new school. It felt bothersome to call her just to talk over and over about how sad she was. So she tried to just keep it to herself. The problem was that everyone else wanted to talk to her about it. The kids at school didn't know how to talk to her about anything else. The teachers, the councilors, random people from town all looked at her sympathetically, telling her over and over that it was "ok to be sad" that they were there if she wanted to talk.
But who the fuck would talk to a stranger about how their life was falling apart? What did some school councilor know about her? What did any of these people know about her besides that her dad was dead? So she turned them down. Over and over and over again. And the more people looked at her expecting her to be sad, the more she decided to be mad. Mad at them for being so sympathetic, mad at her mom for closing her out, mad at her dad for getting in that car, mad at Max for not being there, mad at the whole fucking town for continuing to exist when her dad was gone.
So when her mom did deign to come out of her room to talk to her, she gave her a piece of her mind. When the kids at school came to coo at her and ask if she was ok, she told them to shut the fuck up. When the teachers offered her extensions on meaningless projects, or expressed "concern" over her falling grades, or insisted she should talk to a professional, she told them to mind their own damn business. Eventually they all learned to leave her alone. They even started avoiding her completely. And then she was mad at them for that, because fuck them if they couldn't handle the way she was. So she took to skipping classes, then school altogether.
After the wine spilling incident when she was younger, her parents had locked away the alcohol in the house, but she knew her mother kicked into it more and more at night. So when she found the cabinet unlocked one day, it wasn't a surprise. She swiped a half-gone bottle of bourbon, hoping her mother wouldn't notice. Or maybe hoping she would. She didn't. So next time she took a full, unopened bottle of whiskey. Her mother didn't notice. Either that or she didn't care.
Because it was so easy, she was tempted when she saw a pack of cigarettes within reach in some old dude's back pocket at the diner. He was distracted. She was a ninja. She told herself later that she had done him a favor. He was old. These things would fuck up his already fragile health. The truth is she had just wanted them. And sitting alone on the cliff by the lighthouse, lighting up (because she had snatched a lighter from the pharmacy when no one was looking), she thought she deserved them for putting up with this shithole town.