June 1, 2015
Seattle Central College
Seattle, Washington

"-iss Caulfield?"

Startled, I snap my gaze up from the textbook (that I wasn't having much luck reading with my eyes closed) to find at least thirty people staring at me, and I have no idea why. Judging by the look on the teacher's face, I've probably missed something. I have no idea what, though, which doesn't quite put me back at square one, but honestly it might as well.

And he isn't getting any happier while I sit here freaking out about it. I should say something. Ideally, something that makes it seem like I was paying attention, but not so much that it leads to more questions. Gotta be smooth, but vague.

"I...uh...sorry?"

See, that right there is the kind of grace under pressure that'll get you into the finest universities. Then, after you fail all your classes (because you either didn't study, didn't show up, or just didn't care), hopefully it'll get you into summer make-up classes at a halfway decent community college, too.

"Am I keeping you awake?"

"Uh...no? I mean, yes."

I'm fairly sure it was a rhetorical question, but I'd trade everything I owned for him to be the only reason I'm awake. If he were, I could just leave class, go home, and slip sweetly into dreamland. Maybe then I wouldn't always feel dazed and sore and kinda confused all the time and a little bit like I'm always about to lose my grip on reality. Which wouldn't be great because jumping from one reality to another is probably what got me here in the first place.

What's that, you say? You want to know what the hell I'm rambling about?

Well, let me tell you a story.

It all started after I got Chloe's last email. I think I probably read it a dozen times before I even looked away from the screen. I thought about what she would have looked like typing it, hunched over the keyboard a little bit, chewing on her bottom lip as she rocked her usual hunt-and-peck style...until I remembered when she wrote it and realized it was far more likely that she was laying back in her hospital bed, slowly moving one hand over the keyboard as she laboriously typed out the whole thing one letter at a time.

I spent the rest of the day thinking about what it must have been like for her to keep a secret like that for so long, and feeling like a grade-A shithead for even putting her in that position. I didn't sleep a wink the night of Chloe's birthday. I thought about so much that I just tossed and turned until the sun came up.

I spent the next day mulling over what she'd actually written. I promised myself (again, but I really really meant it this time) that I was done trying to change the past. More importantly, I resolved that I was going to live up to Chloe's expectations for me. That I'd somehow learn to live without her and make the most of my life.

I started writing out a list of all the things I wanted to do, filling page after page with notes and ideas and goals that would've made Chloe proud. And naturally, as I wrote out each one, my mind immediately served up a convincing reason why it'd never happen. It went back and forth so much that I didn't sleep that night, either.

Although I was pretty much dead on my feet the next day, I'd been shuffling around like a zombie so long that my parents didn't notice anything was wrong until that evening. Once they did, though, the foot came down. It was one thing for me to be a self-pitying waste of space (my words, not theirs), but it was another thing entirely to be a self-destructive one, too.

I haven't been told to go to my room since I was fourteen, but I hadn't had the desire or the strength to argue. I made myself a nice cup of warm milk (Actually, Mom had to do it because I got so frustrated by the microwave that I almost started to cry) and went upstairs. I'd pretty much collapsed bonelessly onto my bed, tired like I'd never imagined was possible and exhausted right to the bone.

And then I lay there, more or less awake, until the sun came up. And then I kept laying there, wide(ish) awake and staring at the ceiling, for the whole rest of the morning.

That's not good. That is, in fact, really bad.

"Miss Caulfield! I asked you a question!"

This guy, I tell ya. No respect for a good inner monologue.

"Oh...er...sorry. I didn't get much sleep last night." Understatement of the century. "Could you please repeat it?"

He lets out an annoyed huff but doesn't push back. If there's any upside to looking like an extra from The Walking Dead, it's that people usually take you at your word when you say you're tired. He just asks his question, and the universe actually throws me a bone today when it turns out to be about something I actually remember studying. It's not a big win, but I'll take it.

Anyway, where was I?

Right. So, just in case you're not familiar with the wonderful world of sleep deprivation, let me offer you a quick rundown of how it works.

I'm going somewhere with this, I promise.

Staying awake for 24 hours kinda sucks, but you probably already knew that. Pretty much everyone has done it at some point. I mean, in university it's practically expected. Sure, it's not good for you, but it won't really mess you up. At worst, most people end up feeling tired, cranky, and a little foggy in the head.

When you hit 36 hours, things start to get a little dicey. Besides being super tired, you may start to have microsleeps. These are brief little bursts of sleep (like twenty seconds or so) that happen without you doing it on purpose or even noticing. Imagine a lamp that, every once in a while and completely at random, turns off for a few seconds. But instead of a lamp, it's you.

By the time you've hit 48 hours it's not only hard to absorb new information, but your ability to remember what you have picked up is pretty unreliable. Your mental responses and reaction time are both way off, and your ability to socially interact with people is at roughly the same level as a parking meter. You're not at the red line quite yet, but you sure can see it from here...or at least you would, if you could actually focus on anything.

If you've been awake for 60 hours in a row, I could say 'welcome to the danger zone'. But I might as well say 'rhinoceros tugboat cheesecake', because the odds of you being able to read and retain either sentence are pretty darn slim. You're well into extreme sleep deprivation territory now, and by this point you're definitely having microsleeps. You'd probably perceive them as a kind of random unexplained flickering in your senses, except most things feel like random unexplained flickering by now.

This is also the point where you start to hallucinate. More on that later.

At 72 hours, you're basically no longer a functional human being. Your body is begging for sleep, even if your brain won't let it, leaving you with the motor skills and reflexes of warm Jell-O. Your ability to interact with other people isn't just impaired; it's completely shot. Even basic conversations are beyond you because by the time someone reaches the end of a sentence, you've probably already forgotten how it started.

And if you weren't hallucinating before, you sure are now.

After that, the closer you get to 96 hours, the worse things get. Your brain has been running so long without a break that you're way past 'overheating' and rapidly approaching 'complete meltdown'. You'll steadily lose your understanding of reality, your ability to accurately perceive the world around you, and even your sense of self.

This is called sleep deprivation psychosis. 0/5 stars. Do not recommend.

It was at the 76 hour mark (I'm pretty sure) that we come to the part of this story I like to call The Absolute Stupidest Thing I've Ever Done. Because despite having the approximate mental processing power of an onion, I somehow managed to find enough brain cells to come up with this train of thought:

I'm very tired I wanted to sleep last night I couldn't sleep last night I'll try again tonight Tonight is far away I don't want to wait I'll try to sleep last night again.

That's right, ladies and gentlemen. I, Max Caulfield, decided to try rewinding while so sleep deprived that if you asked me to find the square root of something, I would have gotten stuck on the concept of 'square'.

I've got no idea how far back I managed to go, if I managed to go back at all, because I don't actually remember rewinding. The only thing I can recall is a few snippets of a deeply upsetting conversation I had with another version of myself.

Remember what I said about hallucinations?

The other me had been explaining how everything that had happened to me and Chloe since that day in the bathroom was my fault. How my meddling was the reason Chloe died. What's weird is that she wasn't cruel or bitter about it. She was actually surprisingly sympathetic. Out of the whole bizarre hallucination, though, the only thing I remember with absolute clarity is when she looked at me and said, very sadly, "If the world is going to keep turning, the dead need to stay dead and you need to leave her in the past."

It wasn't until later that Mom filled me in on what actually happened. She'd gone up to my room to see if I wanted something to eat. Letting herself in when I didn't respond to her knock, she found me standing in front of my bedroom mirror, crying my eyes out and muttering 'you did this' at my own reflection.

Apparently she actually had to yell my name a few times before I reacted, and even then she said it was like I wasn't totally sure who she was. Then she tried to get me to move away from the mirror, which is when I started screaming things like 'She's wrong! and 'She's lying!' at the top of my lungs. Then I kept screaming until the nice men in white coats came and took me away, and I got to spend the next three days in the hospital undergoing a full psychiatric evaluation.

Good times.

I'm sure you're all on the edge of your seats right now, but I'm afraid the story actually gets a lot less interesting after my brief stay in the loony bin. It didn't take them long to figure out I was suffering from sleep deprivation rather than an actual psychotic break, so they shot me up with something and I spent the next twenty hours dead to the world.

The doctors who 'treated' me weren't much help. They just wrote the whole thing off as stress, as if it weren't completely obvious what was wrong. I knew exactly what had happened, just like I know exactly why I've been dealing with almost constant insomnia ever since.

You wanna know a fun fact about insomnia? Well, I can't help you there, because there aren't any. It's pretty much awful all the way down. A regular person gets 50-60 hours of sleep every week, but in a good week I'll get about half that; usually about 3-4 hours a night. That probably doesn't sound too bad but believe me when I say it adds up.

I can't even rewind to get an extra hour in here and there. Or at least I'm not willing to. I don't know if that messed up sleep deprived rewind attempt actually did any damage, but for the last three months I've been too scared to try going back so much as a second.

"Miss Caulfield!"

When I snap back to reality this time, the other students aren't staring at me. Only the teacher, because he's the only other person still in the room.

"I...uh..."

"Class is over, Miss Caulfield."

Yeah, that'd explain it. Nodding silently as I gather my things, I dump them haphazardly into my bag and shuffle toward the door. He's giving me a concerned look that I see a lot these days and I can practically hear the words before he says them.

"Miss Caulfield, are you doing alright?"

I already know what I'm going to tell him, but people never believe you if you answer too quickly. I wait until the clock at the front of the room ticks twice, then say, "I'm fine. Just tired."

"Maybe you should head home, then. Try to get some sleep."

I've long since gotten bored of thinking up snarky responses to that suggestion, so I just nod and give him the best smile I can manage. "Thanks. I'll try."

University of Washington
Seattle, Washington

There's this coffee place underneath the University of Washington Art building called Parnassus. A bunch of students started it back in 1951, which makes it (so I'm told) the university's oldest café. It's got a bunch of student artwork up on the walls and a super-artsy hipster vibe that somehow does a really great job of reminding me of all the ways my life has gone to shit in the last three months.

Geez...I really need to stop being so melodramatic.

It's also Kristen's favorite place on the whole campus, though, so that's where I meet her for lunch after my classes are finished. Sitting across from her, I listlessly pick at a blueberry muffin and listen to her go on and on about the wonders of UW's film school. I'm sure I look bored as hell (that's kind of my permanent expression these days) and I really hope she doesn't take it personally. I really am interested in what she's saying.

"Max, are you even listening?"

"Of course I am." She looks dubious. "Really, I was totally listening. You were talking about Jean Reno."

"Jean Renoir, Max," she corrects. "Jean Reno is an actor."

Oh, so that's how it's gonna be. "You mean Jean Reno wasn't an icon of the French silent film era? The British Film Institute didn't rank him as the fourth greatest director of all time?"

Kristen blinks, pretty clearly surprised. "Okay, I'm sorry I doubted you."

"I told you I was listening."

"I know. You just looked, well...you know." She puts her hand over mine, her expression softening. "Still not sleeping well?"

I shrug and smile a little. "Not great. It's getting better, but still..."

"I'm glad. You've been through enough already. It's high time the universe gave you a break."

"Yeah, that'd be nice."

"Have you talked to a doctor about it?"

"A couple. There isn't a lot they can do, other than give me some drugs."

And let me just say, no thanks.

Not long after my insomnia started, our family doctor prescribed some pills that were supposed to help me sleep. Since the little orange bottle said 'take ONE before bed, as needed', I decided I would try taking one pill before bed. I slept for twelve straight hours and waking up had felt like coming out of a coma. After that, drugs were a no-go for this sleepy girl.

"Seriously? It's knock-out pills or nothing?"

"There's a lot of lifestyle stuff. No caffeine, not much sugar, no looking at screens for a couple of hours before bed."

"Sounds lame."

"Lame is relative." What a dumb answer. I suck.

"Still doing that whole, y'know, 'tire yourself out' thing?"

In case you're wondering, the word she's searching for is 'exercise'. And for a while it'd been my very own bedtime cheat code.

I'd never been in very good shape growing up. While my fairly healthy diet (waffles excluded, of course) and my own natural skinniness had kept me looking slim, I could actually get winded if I ran up a flight of stairs too fast. So after I swore off medication, I moved on to good old-fashioned physical exhaustion.

At first, walking for about an hour before bed would tire me out enough to get an okay night's sleep. Which, looking back, is kinda sad. But after a while, it'd have to be closer to 90 minutes. Then almost two hours, with a lot of hills, because here's the thing about exercise; the more you do it, the more it takes to get the same effect.

It's kinda like meth, except socially acceptable and super good for you.

Fast forward a few months. Now I run two miles almost every morning and go to the gym three times a week and it still doesn't even add up to six straight hours a night. (See what I did there?) And on the rare occasion I miss a day, I barely get any sleep at all.

I'm in the best shape of my life, and I'm not even very proud of myself. It feels like I was forced here at gunpoint.

"Honestly, Kris, I don't know how much more tiring out my body could take."

I know she's trying to help, and I really do appreciate it, but some of most common reasons behind insomnia are psychological issues; depression, stress, anxiety. Fun stuff like that. And a lot of people find relief by identifying and addressing those issues. Identification isn't a problem for me, though.

Like I said earlier, I know why I can't sleep. It's the same reason my brain made a halfway-decent attempt at blowing itself up four months ago. It's why I stopped going to classes. It's the thing I lay awake at night thinking about and that distracts me a dozen times a day. It's what drained the color out of everything and kept me from bothering to make an effort to do anything other than wait for the next day.

And I can't do anything to change it.

Because even though she didn't mean it to – even though she meant it to do the exact opposite thing – Chloe's email made me realize something horrible. From that day forward and for the rest of my life, it didn't matter what I did; every path would take me in the same direction.

Away from her.

Caulfield Home
Seattle, Washington

I can smell dinner cooking as soon as I open the door, and since it doesn't smell like barbeque I know it must be Mom. Sure enough, I wander into the kitchen to find her hovering over a big pot simmering on the stove.

"Hey there, sweetheart."

"Hi, Mom. What are you making?"

"Just stew." She waves vaguely at the pot. "Nothing fancy. Anything exciting happen to you today?"

Mom has asked me that same question when I come home every day since I was a little kid. And even when I don't really have anything to tell her, it's still nice to know she's interested. "I got lunch with Kristen."

"That's nice. How's she doing?"

"Still planning to take over Hollywood." I shrug, grabbing an apple out of the fridge on my way through. "So, y'know, the usual."

"That sounds about right. Oh, don't go anywhere yet."

I'm a little tempted to pretend I didn't hear her. I'm not really in the mood to get roped into helping with dinner.

"Oh, don't give me that look. I'm not going to put you to work. I actually have a surprise for you." Moving over to the kitchen table, she pulls the lid off a small box I hadn't noticed before. "I was tidying up my desk at work and I found something I thought you would want."

I'm already bored with the conversation, but I'll indulge her. Like I said, it's nice that she shows an interest. Makes me feel a little less two-dimensional these days. I watch her rummage around for a second, then she pulls out a small black picture frame and holds it out with a smile. "Here you go."

I don't take it from her. Not because I don't want it, but because I seem to have forgotten how to use my arms. Or breathe properly. She can't possibly be holding what she's holding. She can't be. I lost it along with my old journal and Chloe's dad's camera and everything else that had been in my messenger bag the day Arcadia Bay had been destroyed.

"Max? Are you alright?"

"W-where did you get that?"

"I told you, I was tidying up my desk at w-"

"No, I mean where did you find it? How did you find it?"

"You mean originally? It was in the pocket of your hoodie the day you came back to Seattle. I found it when I was putting your clothes through the wash."

"Why do you still have it, though? Why did you have it at work?! Why didn't you give it back to me?!"

She looks pretty startled. I don't think this is the reaction she was expecting.

"I...I meant to, but with everything that was happening at the time, it just slipped my mind. I didn't find it again until a month later and by then it was pretty clear how you felt about pictures of yourself. I didn't think you'd actually want it." She looks down at the frame fondly. "It's such a wonderful shot, though. I couldn't just get rid of it, so I kept it at work."

Unbelievable. This whole time, it's been sitting on my mom's desk. Right there for the asking.

"After Chloe died, I put it in a drawer and forgot about it. As soon as I saw it today, I knew you'd want it back." She's smiling like she's offering me nothing more than a sentimental keepsake, rather than the one and only thing I've been wishing for since I lost the love of my life.

"Y-yeah. Yeah, I do." I slowly reach out to lift the frame from her hand, staring in disbelief at a polaroid photo I thought I'd never see again - the selfie I took the morning after Chloe and I broke into Blackwell and treated ourselves to a dip in the pool. The two of us are bathed in the golden early-morning light and smiling sleepily into the camera, Chloe's chin resting on my shoulder and a mischievous little smile on her lips.

"...aken?"

Looking up, I realize I missed Mom's question. "What?"

"I asked when it was taken."

"Oh. Do you remember that story I told you about our first kiss?"

Mom laughs. "The one where Chloe dared you to do it and you called her bluff?"

I nod. "I took this picture right before that."

"Oh, wow. I suppose that sort of makes it the first picture of you and Chloe as a couple."

I almost correct her, but in a way she's not wrong. After that morning, we were together for the rest of Chloe's life. "Yeah, I guess it kinda is."

"Then you should definitely keep it. That's not a memory you want to lose." She shakes her head, going back to her stew. "Can you imagine being able to go back and relive moments like that? Wouldn't that be something?"

"Yeah," I murmur, as if she didn't just say the most insanely ironic thing imaginable.

I'm suddenly so excited that I can barely breathe, and I barely pay attention as my feet carry me up to my room. This is it. The golden ticket. The solution I've been dreaming of.

I can save her.

I can save everyone.