Chapter 06: Break Down

The warmth made my face, ears, and fingertips tingle as I let Victoria lead me back to her room. Somehow, I'd barely even felt how much the frigid night air chilled me. I think she was talking to me, but I didn't actually hear anything.

I felt the plush, soft material of Victoria's blankets beneath me. At some point, we must've made it back to her dorm room. Fear pricked the edges of my consciousness as it dawned on me that I couldn't remember. Not a damn thing since we first entered the stairwell.

"Here, Max," Victoria said as she handed me a mug.

Its warmth felt so nice on my cold hands. I couldn't help but hug it close to myself to let that heat flow into me. It couldn't have been that long if this chill hadn't left me. I must've just been… overwhelmed.

It finally occurred to me that Victoria was staring at me. "O-oh, uh, thanks," I muttered, feeling like a total moron for missing out on the simplest social cues.

I felt a weight next to me. She sat so close to me that our arms were touching. "So," she started, taking a sip from her own mug, "trading stories. Your turn."

Hunching in on myself just a bit more, I removed the mug to find it filled with coffee. Some small part of me felt sad that it wasn't Kate's tea. A sip, though, delighted my tastebuds. It was perfect, right down to the temperature. "Why don't you go first?" I muttered, staring into the mug as ripples caused by my shaking hands reflected flashes of light.

"I just did?" Victoria replied.

I nearly dropped the coffee. My chest squeezed painfully, as my mind raced. Was I really that out of it? I knew Victoria was talking about something, but I just, I couldn't focus at all. It felt like a void in myself, swallowing everything.

"Max?" Feeling a hand on my shoulder, I jolted, looking over at Victoria. For a moment, all I could see were her emerald eyes. She looked… scared? "Are you okay?"

I shook my head, trying to ground myself in reality. I felt the warm cup in my hands. The gentle yet firm grip on my shoulder. I breathed in. And out. And in. "I-I-I'm sorry. I just…"

"Come on," Victoria said, moving her hand to trace comforting circles on my back. "It can't be that bad, can it?"

"I-it was so fucking awful," I managed to say.

A moment of relative silence passed before Victoria spoke again. "If you're not feeling up to it…"

She gave me an out. And I really, really wanted to take it. I bit my tongue to keep from blurting out that I didn't want to talk about it. There were much higher stakes than my feelings. My guts churned as I fought the tightness in my chest. Victoria needed to understand that Kate didn't do anything to deserve what we did to her. How much we needed to reach out to her to support her before…

I sighed. "I… I think I need to."

"You need to?" Victoria asked, leaning a bit more into me.

"We fucked up, Victoria."

She scoffed, sitting back up, leaving my side feeling cold. "Come on. Vic, Tori, Love… Just… whatever."

"Right. Vic."

Breathing a breath in, and out, Vic replied, "And just how did we fuck up? I thought you couldn't remember anything?"

"I'm talking about Kate," I shot back.

"This again? That bitch got off easy."

Brushing off the anger from Vic's insult, I set my mind back to just a few days ago. For me, at least. "So, in the original timeline, we were in class, and… suddenly everyone was shouting there was something going on at the girls' dorm," I said, my anger and bitterness leaving as swiftly as it came. "I was one of the last to get there."

Vic took a sip of her coffee. "I thought this was about the roof?"

I sighed. Out of spite, I drew it out, if just a bit. "It was raining. When I… when I turned the corner there was a whole crowd. They were all looking up." Not looking over, I motioned over at Vic. "You had your phone out taking a video."

Vic didn't let the silence linger. She held out a hand. "Video of what?"

"Kate. On the roof… standing on the ledge."

Shooting off the bed, Victoria rounded on me. "No. You're just fucking with me," she said, her voice wavering with just a slight hitch.

"Does it look like I'm making this up?" I asked, fighting back tears.

"Even… even me with my phone?" Victoria asked, hugging herself with her free hand.

I nodded. "She jumped," I muttered. Shaking my head, I continued, "I-I couldn't. I couldn't let that happen. So I rewound."

Victoria huffed. "S-so you made time go backwards, or whatever?"

"I have limits," I said, my gaze falling back to the coffee mug. "I could get her back up to the roof, but that was it. I couldn't go back any further. So I watched her jump again. And again. And again." Gulping down air, I forced myself to continue, "So… So I just went back as far as I could and I… I held time there. It felt like it took forever, and each second I held it my head felt like it would explode. But I finally made it to the roof."

"And you saved her, obviously." That skeptical look on her face ebbed away when I didn't answer her right away. "You saved her."

"I…" Breathing a deep breath in and out, I tried to explain exactly what happened on that awful, rainy day. "My power failed me. I couldn't pull her away from the ledge."

"No… no." Setting down her mug, Victoria hurried to her desk chair and flopped down it. "You said before that everyone died."

Shaking my head, I replied, "I couldn't use my power, but in that reality, I was her friend. I was there for her the whole time she was going through all that shit. Somehow, I managed to talk her down from the ledge." Looking up, I blinked away tears. "I… I can't do that in this timeline. I'm the one that hurt her, Vic. I was the only one who supported her then. Who's going to keep her away from the ledge now?"

"S-so, she didn't die back then?" she asked, a strange, strangled smile on her lips.

I shook my head, my heart beating in my chest as my mind trailed back to her room. Was it messy? Did she have the mirror covered? Why the fuck didn't I notice? "She died in the storm," I muttered, my eyes trailing over to the wall separating Victoria's room from Kate's.

"Storm?"

Images of the tornado flitted through my mind as the wind's deafening roar sounded in my ears. I could even feel the freezing hail pelting my skin. A shaky breath in and out, and I gripped the warm mug close to my chest. "It was my fault."

"Max, I don't think anyone's died in a storm around here since—"

"I broke reality!" I blurted out. "There's a reason I don't want to use my power—it fucks the universe over!"

Victoria stood, taking a step toward me. "Max…"

"I-i-it-it-it s-started with all the dead birds. Then, there was an eclipse when there shouldn't have been one. Whales beached themselves and… and the night before the storm there were two moons in the sky," I rambled on, not even realizing that Victoria had moved until I felt her arms around me. "Then it came. A tornado the size of a fucking hurricane. All because I abused the shit out of my power! For the most trivial shi—"

A firm finger on my lips silenced my rant. "Shhh, shh, shh," Victoria cooed in a soft, calm voice. Blinking, I looked up to find a pair of green eyes staring back at me. "You're spiraling, Max. Come on, take a deep breath with me."

As I followed along, she took the coffee mug away from me. It only vaguely registered that my hands shook so much that I'd gotten it everywhere. Tears started streaming down my face as incoherent apologies left my lips.

I couldn't do anything at all other than follow along and breathe as Victoria retrieved a towel and started cleaning me up. Only after she'd given up trying to scrub my clothes did I manage to actually say a drained and ashamed, "Thank you."

Victoria then helped me up and escorted me to my room. She said something about talking about it tomorrow, but her words barely registered for me. Numb, I fumbled through my evening routine, not even noticing that, at some point, Victoria had left. Her absence hurt. I didn't know exactly why, but the clawing thoughts digging at my mind no longer being held at bay probably had something to do with it.

Curled up in bed, I held my stuffed bear close as anxious thoughts ran through my brain. I kept fixating on piecing together the last couple of hours that jumbled around in my mind. All of it out of focus and out of order. The only reprieve from those thoughts was when worries about Kate and memories of that rooftop discussion pierced through the walls keeping them in. The same walls sealing in the dark room and all those nightmarish memories from just a few days ago.

No matter how tired and sleep-deprived I may have been, they just wouldn't let me rest.