This part will be longer than the usual. Be prepared! lol!
And I want to thank you, readers, for liking my story! It means a lot!
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"Games, changes and fears/when will they go from here?/when will they stop?/I believe that fate has brought us here/and we could be togheter/but
we're not/I play it off but I'm dreaming of you/I'll keep my cool but I'm fiendin/I try to say goodbye and I choke/I try to walk away and I
stumble/though I try to hide it, it's clear/my world crumbles when you are not near/here is my confession/may I be your possession?/boy I need your
touch/your love kisses and such/with all my might I try/but this I can't deny/deny. (Macy Gray "I try").
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Zack, Brin and Max separate themselves in Ontario. Brin decided to go to Vancouvert, Zack to New-Brunswick, and Max decided to stay there, as long
as it was fine. Zack didn't want them to stay togheter, saying that it could jeopardize one of them if they got caught. "If one of us get
caught, we all get caught. It's better to go our separate ways." Zack had said.
While they were on the bus, nobody talked, everyone deep into their own thoughts. Brin was thinking how happy she was to finaly be out of that
Manticore Hell Hole. That's the only thing she was thinking about.
Zack, on the other hand, was looking outside the window, thinking about Bella. Just before Max got out of Logan's appartment, he'd wanted to go
looking for her, saying to the others she was taking too much time, but Bella stoped him in front of the elevator.
"No Zack, let them alone." She told him, gripping his leather jacket by the sleeve. "You still have plenty of time to get to the
bus station."
"Fine." He had said to her, looking at those blue eyes, imploring him to let go. Zack had put his hand in front of him, to shake
hers, saying: "Goodbye then Isabella." She laughed over the formal way of him to say goodbye, and then she shaked his hand.
"Bye Zack, it was nice meeting you." And she kissed him on the cheek. He remembered how gentle it has been, and how he just turned his
head to press his lips over hers. He'd thought she was going to kick his butt, she she didn't to his surprise. She let him kiss her, and she even
responded to it. He knew he didn't love her, but he was attracted to her. She had broken the kiss, telling him he shouldn't have done it, and then
she told him to go, and he left. 'She's a hell of a girl.' He thought.
Max was sitting still in her seat, trying hard not to let her emotions win over her. She closed her eyes, thinking that seeing the trees goes by was
reminding her of how many of them were behind, from her to Seattle. 'I never thought it would be THAT hard.' She swallowed the big ball of tears
that was raising in her throat.
The first weeks had been rough, but she managed to occupy herself with work. It didn't took her long to get a job, it was easier here than in
Seattle. She was now selling theatre tickets, but resting on her butt all day wasn't really something she liked to do. One day she woke up, packed
her bags, never showed up for work, and took off to Montréal. When she got there, she felt safe. 'I wonder if Lydecker will think of coming here to
look for me.' Of course, Max wasn't aware of the fact that Lydecker was dead, but that didn't mattered, they were still looking for her. And she
also prefered to not think of him at all. 'He's not my father anyway.' She said to herself. 'I can't come from a scum bag like this.' Anything she
could find was good. 'Sc*ew him!'
When she first got in Montréal, she booked herself a room in an hotel on Sherbroke's street. Logan had given her some money, even if she first
declined it, he told her that she didn't know what to expect, and that she should take it, so she did. The morning after, she got out of her room,
and went to the front desk.
"Bonjour Mademoiselle, que puis-je faire pour vous?" The guy asked her if he could help her with something.
"Bonjour, je voudrais savoir où je peux trouver un journal?" Max asked him in a prefect french where she could buy news papers. She had
learned French, Spanish, German, and Russian at Manticore. 'A good soldier has to know how to talk to his opponents!' Lydecker used to say. The guy
told her there was a place just next to the hotel.
"Merci." She got out of the hotel, it was cold outside and there was snow everywhere. In march, you couldn't expect any less in Québec. She
smiled and went to buy 'Le journal de Montréal' and 'The Gazette'. She walked until she found a Second Cup's coffee shop. 'Coffee...' She
thought, it wasn't hard to know she wanted one. She saw the *EMPLOYEE NEEDED* card and decided to take a chance. She opened the door.
'Hmmm...the good smell of real coffee!' The place was empty, maybe it was because it was 6:00 in the morning. Max saw the girl behind the counter
and walked towards her. She was about Max's age, probable more though, had blond hair, blue eyes, and was cursing at the book in front of her. Max
smiled.
"Hi!" Said the girl in a desperate tone, smiling at Max. "I'm trying to study for my test tomorrow, and my brain just seems to
bail on me!" She rolled her eyes to the ceiling and closed the book. "What can I get you?" She asked.
"A cappuccino would be fabulous." Max said. "And I'll take a chocolate chips muffin too." She said to the girl. "How did
you know I talked English?" Max asked out of curiosity.
"You have 'The Gazette' news paper in your hand, and it's english written, so I figured." She said, smiling.
"Right." Max fixed the news paper and took a breath. 'Relax.'
"You're not from here, huh? Most of people here talk both english and french, but there's a lot of spanish too, depends of where you live. Do
you need a pen?" She didn't even waited for Max to answer that she was already giving one to her.
"Thanks." Max went to sit near the window. 'I hope it wont be too damn hard to find a place to crash!' She opened the news paper and
looked around. 'Damn! I'll need a freakin map to know where all those places are!' The girl walked towards Max.
"Looking for a place to stay?" She asked when she saw Max surronding the addresses. Max stared at her.
"Yeah, why?" She saw the name tag on the girl's shirt.
'Vitoney.'
"Look, said Vitoney to Max, I don't want to impose, but my roommate took off with her boyfriend 2 weeks ago, and I didn't find anybody
yet." She said to Max. "All the people I interviewed were scary...if you know what I mean!" She made a weird face and started
to laugh. "It's a nice place, 4 1/2, and it's not far away. I walk to come here, and the metro is just 5 minutes away." Max thought about
this for a minute. 'The girl seems nice. Anyway, I don't know anyone here, and I can't pay a whole place alone.'
"What are you asking for a month?" Max asked her.
"About 150$ a month, plus the food. One week I do the groceries, and the other week it's you. I don't really like the 'this food is mine don't
touch it!' thing, so I prefer sharing."
"Hmmm, sounds interresting, but I don't have a job yet. I was hoping to see the manager today, but there's only you here. Do you know if they
found someone for the job?" She asked Vitoney, showing her the card in the window.
"Oh! no...he didn't find anyone yet. But it's been a while I'm here, and he makes me do the interviews to hire people. I'll put a good word on you
and he'll listened to me. You can be sure about 99% the job is yours." Vitoney smiled at Max, who was amazed how this girl in front of her remembered her
of Logan with her kindness.
"Why would you do that? You don't even know me!"
"I don't know." Vitoney shrugged one's shoulders. "By the way, my name is Vitoney Brown."
"I'm..." Max suddenly remembered the name Logan had given her on her new ID. "I'm Maya Perkins." And Max shooked Vitoney's hand.
"I'm working until 4:00, just meet me here."
It has been 6 months now that Max was in Montréal, but it's been 9 months since she'd left Seattle. She was working at the Second Cup coffee shop and
it was going good, she was doing mostly the night shifts, but since nobody wanted to do them, it was fine with her. She was working with Vitoney on Fridays
and Saturdays, and they were going along just fine. Vitoney's been raised on a military base in Valcartier(Québec) with her father, her mom died while
giving birth, and now she was in Montréal, at the McGill University, studying Nursing. She had a strong personality and Max liked it. They learned to live
with each other, and Vitoney learned not to ask too much questions about Max's personal life. Many times she got into the apartment without Max knowing it,
because she was fixing an empty space, and by the look on Max's face, she knew it wasn't the right time to ask what was going on. 'A guy surely.' Vitoney
said to herself. 'What else?' She took her books and went into her room.
One night at the Second Cup, they had a robbery. The two guys came in, one with a gun and the other with a really big knife. There was Vitoney and Max plus
a few people siping their coffee, but who stoped siping when they saw the two morons.
"Maya, I think we've got visitors..." Said Vitoney to her, seeing them first. Max was pooring coffee to a customer, when she turned her head and saw them.
They were behaving like 2 school boys, yelling from anything to anything.
"You must be kidding me!" Max said while putting the coffee mug on the table.
"Any of you fucking bitch move, and I'll execute every mother fucking last one of ya!" The gun guy yelled at them. Max stared at him.
"I'm sooo scared!" She said to the guy, who looked so stone he had trouble holding on to the gun. "What's your problem? You can't even make a line of your
own, you have to pick one from an old movie?" In a flash, Max kicked the guy right on the hand, he droped the gun, she took it and disarmed it. The one holding
knife stared at her and didn't have the time to move that she was already punching him, being now the one holding the knife.
"You get the hell away from here before I call the police!" Max yelled at them. 'I can't call the damn police, she thought, because I can't have my name
printing anywhere in the justice department right now.' The two guys took off, and she returned to the table to poor some coffee. Everybody was staring at her,
not talking.
"What?" Max said defensively. "You never heard of self-defense classes?" Vitoney came near Max.
"I took self-defense classes Maya, and I didn't have the time to react that they were both gone." And she walked away, not asking anything else, and she never talked about it afterwards.
A few weeks later, Max realized it was november 10th. "Tomorrow is Logan's birthday." She took a cup of coffee and sat on the couch, facing the pale yellow walls of the living room.
"Who's Logan?" Vitoney asked. Max jumped on the couch, acknowledging she'd said it out loud.
"A friend." Max simply said.
" A friend?" Said Vitoney back, sarcastically. "Really Maya, just 'a friend' ?" Max sat still on the couch, thinking she could probably talk to her about him, without telling everything.
"He's a friend from my past, and tomorrow is his birthday." Max said.
"From your secret past you never talk about?" Vitoney asked, happy to learn a bit more about her roommate's life.
"It's complicated Vitoney, and I prefer not to think about it because it hurts too much." She took her cup of coffee and sat besides Max.
"Look Maya, I don't know what happened to you, and frankly, it's not my buisness. I don't think you killed someone, but if you did, well, I can't do anything about it, can I? You probably
had your reasons because you seem like a nice girl. So, why don't you go see him for his birthday?" Max lightly smiled.
"I can't." She said, not looking at her.
"Why?"
"Because if I see him I wont be able to leave again." She answered her roommate, truthfully. "It was so hard, I don't want to do it again."
" I understand Maya, but it's so obvious you're dying to see him, and it could do you good to see him. You're not over him Maya, you're always sad and deep into thoughts. I think you should go."
She paused and added. "I could do your shifts at work if you want to go."
"I miss him tremendously." Max said back to Vitoney.
" I'm sure he misses you too." Vitoney stared at Max, thinking that it shouldn't take long for her to decide herself to go, since she seemed to have a smile on her face.
Max looked at her roommate and hugged her. She went to her room, packed some bags and ran to the bus station. Her heart was pounding like it would get out of her chest, she wanted to see him so bad,
to make sure he was alright. 'Just 2 days and I come back.' Maybe she wasn't going to see him face to face and just take a peek from outside, she wasn't sure yet. Plus, she missed Original Cindy and Kendra
and it would be great to see them again. Once on the bus, she began to feel scared. 'What if there's someone else in his life?'
She arrived in Seattle at 3:00.
She wasn't sure where to go first. Was it better to go to Logan's first, or go see Original Cindy to ask her if there was something new in Logan's life she should know?
Max decided to go to Logan's. She got in through the window, looking for some kind of life, but there was no one. She felt strange, like she didn't know if she was relieved or happy about it. The place
didn't change much, there was a few paintings she'd never seen before, and the computer room had some new gadget. She smiled while looking. She glanced around, feeling like she was there just hours ago
instead of months. Max could feel his presence so near her, but yet, she was alone in the apartment. 'Oh god, it's too much, I'm gonna cry again!' She sat on the couch and saw the blue sweater she
liked so much besides her. She took it in her hands. "Oh Logan..." She said out loud, putting her face in it to remember his sent. She smiled. She stood up and went to the kitchen, and she saw a bottle of wine
with two glasses on the counter, one had lipstick on it. Her heart missed a beat. 'Oh! no...' She knew she didn't have the right to ask him not to have a life anymore, but it got through her like a knife.
She went to the bathroom to splash some water in her face and she saw beaty products on the sink. She felt herself on the edge to puke. 'I have to get the hell away from here!' She ran to the living room
and then started seizing. 'Damn! It's been a while and it has to happen now!' She got to her bag and took the pills, Max fell on the floor, seizing badly, and the bottle opened widely, spreading the pills everywhere
on the floor. 'Damn it!' She took 3 pills and stood there, waiting for the Tryptophan to dissolves itself and be absorbed in her blood to make the seizing fade. She stood there for about an hour, and then
the seizing went away, but she was tired, and it was hard just to pick the pills and put them back in the bottle. Max looked around, making sure there wasn't any left, and got out of Logan's place as fast as she could.
She knocked on her old apartment's door, and when Original Cindy opened the door, she yelled at Max, smiling by the surprise.
"Boo! Why didn't you tell me you were coming here!?" She hugged Max letting her no place for breathing. "I'm so happy to see you!" She was speaking to Max 'on and on' on how happy she was to see her, and
it's only after a few minutes that she saw Max was crying." Original Cindy's face drop dead.
"What's wrong Boo?"
Max told her what had just happened.
"I knew it could happen, but I hoped...I was living in denial I guess! I knew I couldn't ask him to spend his life alone, but...still...it hurts so bad." Original Cindy hold her in her arms.
"Look Sugar, Original Cindy didn't know there was a bitch there. I came to think of him as a reasonable guy but now, I think there's some wire crossed in his head of his!" She tried to soothe Max during a long time.
'She came back for him, and that's what she's getting? I'm gonna kill that stupid man!" Original Cindy told herself.
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Please don't be a silent reader, it's the worst of all.
Anna