October 8, 2015
Ruins of Arcadia Bay
Tillamook County, Oregon
It's late evening by the time I turn the car off the relatively smooth asphalt of the Oregon Coast Highway and onto the cracked, unkept road that branches off to our destination. The county road crews probably stopped bothering to maintain it after the town was declared beyond repair. The handful of still-functioning lights only serve to make the drive creepier.
The fact that the old Welcome to Arcadia Bay sign is still standing has to be one of the most unsettling things I've ever seen. It's crooked as hell and two years of neglect haven't done it any favors, but it's still right where it was the last time I saw it. As we get closer, the car's headlights reveal some hasty spray-painted editing.
"Hell Came to Arcadia Bay," Max reads aloud, shivering a little as we pass by. "Jesus, that's dark."
"Sounds about right to me."
She glances at me, then turns back to the window. "Did you ever think you'd come back?"
"Hell no. It was hard enough trouble shaking the memories of this place the first time around."
"I never really managed to do that. I still remember driving out of town with Chloe like it was yesterday."
The trees begin to thin out around us as we enter the storm's path. There aren't any visible stumps, but the uneven earth gives away where trees were torn right out of the ground. The road starts descending, and a minute later we come around the last curve and what's left of Arcadia Bay comes into sight.
There isn't much left to see. Most of the buildings are gone, their remains long since cleared away. The only sign that any of them were ever there at all are the cement pads they once stood on, now half covered in moss. A gaping hole is all that remains of the gas station on the edge of town, probably from when the underground gasoline tanks were dug up. With the town gone, I guess they couldn't be bothered to fill it up when they were done.
Glancing in the rearview mirror, I catch a brief glimpse of the broken remains of Arcadia Bay's iconic lighthouse.
The roads here are in even worse condition. Grass is growing up from the unkept concrete, and I have to swerve to avoid potholes more than once.
"It's weird. I thought there'd be more left."
"The state contracted some companies to come in and clean everything up about a month after the storm."
"I never heard about that."
"They tried not to make a big thing of it. Guess they didn't want it played up in the news." My eyes are pulled to the edge of town, which would have been blocked from sight when everything was still here. Now, with the storm having ripped anything taller than six feet out of the ground, I can see all the way to the spot where my parents died. "I only found out because they needed my permission to demolish what was left of the mansion."
"Oh. Sorry."
"Whatever. Where are we headed?"
"Chloe's old house," Max murmurs. "We need to go south on Bay Avenue until we're two blocks past where the Two Whales used to be. Then turn left and drive another two blocks. Whatever's left of it will be there."
"No prob...what the hell?" I trail off, bringing the car to a slow stop. Killing the engine, I climb out to stare at the road ahead of us in disgust. There are at least fifty parked vehicles blocking the way, along with just as many tents. There are dozens and dozens of people milling around, and few of them are even trying to light a large bonfire on the spot where the Two Whales Diner used to be. "Oh, you've got to be fucking kidding me."
Max gets out as well, glancing at me over the car's roof. "Who are these people?"
"Nut jobs," I snarl.
I've heard about 'Arcadia Bay Believers' before, mostly from stuff I read online. People who're convinced that the storm hadn't been a simple natural disaster. That it'd been the work of God, or the devil, or ancient spirits, or space aliens, or whatever. It depended entirely on who you asked - though as far as I know, no one has credited the storm to a time-travelling teenage girl yet.
I'd always pictured a small group of old hippies waving crystals around and disheveled UFO whackos who lived out of their cars, and there are a few of those types. A lot of them don't look much older than us, though.
"Evening."
Surprised, I turn to see a heavyset, bearded guy sitting on the hood of a ridiculously old station wagon. He's got a laptop balanced on his knees and looks like he should be holed up in his mom's basement playing League of Warquest or whatever the fuck it's called. Gesturing to the dozen or so people clustered nearest to us, right in the center of the street, he says, "It's a bit of a wait for the internet spot, I'm afraid."
"The what spot?" I manage to keep most of the disdain out of my voice. What does get through doesn't seem to faze him.
"The internet spot. It's basically a ten foot by ten-foot box with the only active phone signal. Which is weird, considering how good the signal is just outside of town. Must be some kind of natural phenomenon."
"Localized atmospheric interference. It messes with signals in the UHF range," Max responds absently, eyeing the crowd with more contempt that I would have thought she was capable of. "It started after the storm. Some guy at Oregon State did a thesis on it last year."
"Seriously?"
"Mhm."
"Do you remember his name? I'd love to look it up."
"Not really," she says, as if she didn't spend a week pouring over the man's research.
Well, if Max gets to be rude to strangers then I'm definitely not bothering to play nice. "So, which nutjobs are you here for? The ones who think it was ghosts, or the ones who think it was aliens?"
"The ones who read blogs, actually," he laughs, pointing to his laptop. "Brody Holloway. I write the travel blog A Tribe Called West."
"Never heard of it."
"I'm still building up a following." He shrugs. "These things take time."
"And this is how you're doing it? Your following must not have very high standards."
"In my experience, people dig stuff that's genuine and offbeat. I'd say these folks definitely qualify."
"Yeah, well, I'd say they're assholes."
"Aw, they're not so bad." Brody shrugs. "A little lost, maybe, but who isn't at some point?"
"It'd be nice if they picked somewhere else to get lost." Max glares at a passing girl whose t-shirt reads 'Embrace The Storm'. "People died here."
He nods solemnly. "Almost fifteen hundred."
"Fourteen hundred and seventy-three," we correct in unison, the words coming out almost automatically.
"Uh...I stand corrected." He coughs, placing his laptop on the hood of his car and walking over. "Look, no offence, but I think you two are being pretty harsh considering you drove all the way out here yourselves. What gives these people any less right to be here than you?"
"They weren't here when it happened." I don't know why I'm suddenly so protective of this godforsaken place. I just think these assholes don't have the right to be here. Not this week.
"I think you're setting the bar a bit high," he says, not quite frowning. "If memory serves, only five people made it out."
"Seven," Max says.
"No, it was five."
"There were seven." She doesn't look at him, but her tone is absolutely frigid.
He studies us for a long moment before responding softly. "Including you two, I'm guessing?"
I slowly draw my hand out of my pocket, making sure he has a clear view of the small pepper spray canister I'm holding. If this guy turns out to be a freak, then he's about to be a blind freak. "Pick your next words carefully, neckbeard."
"Hey, you don't have to worry about me." He raises his hands a little, glancing over at the small crowd. "But you probably shouldn't share that little detail around. I meant it when I said these folks are harmless, but some of them can still get a little...er...intense."
"Noted." I get back in the car, gesturing for Max to do the same. "Good luck with your blog thing."
Before I can reverse away from the idiots, Brody gently taps on my window; I lower it about an inch.
"I, uh..." He coughs awkwardly. "You probably hear this all the time, but I'm really sorry for what happened here. No one should have to go through that."
"We appreciate that," Max replies before I can say something a lot less polite.
"Right. Look, I'm gonna go start a rumor that you guys are just posers. They'll avoid you like the plague on principle. Hope that helps."
"Thanks, I guess."
"No problem. Good luck with..." He shrugs. "Whatever you're here for, I guess."
Backing away from the beachside asshole convention, it doesn't take too long for us to find another way around. We count the blocks carefully to make sure we're in the right place, until Max finally points to an empty lot that looks like all the others. "That's it."
"Really?" The house itself is long gone, just like everything else. What had once been a lawn is now a patchwork mess of knee-high grass, and weeds emerge from nearly every crack and crevice in the old foundation. To me, it doesn't look the slightest bit different from any of the other pads in sight. "You're sure?"
"Yeah." Max opens the car door and immediately makes her way toward the foundation. "Definitely sure."
"I can't believe this was ever a house," I comment, following. Along the way I kick at a small piece of concrete, sending it bouncing across what used to be a driveway. "I can't believe any of these were houses."
"The front door was right here. That was the kitchen, and that was the living room. The stairs were right here." She points to each spot in turn, moving forward slowly. I can hear her whispering softly, counting her steps until she reaches a place on the edge of the pad and looks up into the sky. "Chloe's old room was right above where I'm standing. I could tell you exactly where everything was the last time I saw it."
"I'm not sure if that's creepy or sweet." It's definitely sweet. And besides, if I could draw at all, I could probably sketch Taylor's dorm room from memory.
"I practically grew up in this house. I could've made my way around blindfolded." She smiles, and there's such a deep and profound longing in her eyes. I wonder if anyone has ever looked like that for me?
She points to the corner. "The bed was right here."
"Figures you'd start with that."
"Oh, shush. Her desk was here, and the stereo would have been here, so..." Closing her eyes, she takes five deliberate paces and stops. "This is it. This is the spot where Chloe and I had our first kiss."
"Technically, you're about fifteen feet below that spot." I laugh at her annoyed look. "But I get what you mean."
"Are you suggesting that I rewind from the top of a fifteen-foot ladder?"
"Sure. Because nothing could possibly go wrong with that idea." I pause. "Actually, what are you planning to do about that?"
"I'm going to end the last rewind a little early. Probably just a couple of hours after Chloe and I left town, when her house was still more or less standing. I'll rewind through the storm itself in her garage, then I'll go up to her room and rewind the rest of the way from there."
It's actually not a bad idea. I wish I'd thought of it. "Well, don't step on a rusty nail or anything. C'mon, I'm starving."
Grabbing the sandwiches we bought at the Subway in Tillamook, the two of us sit on the hood of my car and listen to the noise those idiots on the waterfront are making. They're about six blocks away, but with nothing to block the view we can see their stupid bonfire from here. I wonder where they'll all end up in the new timeline. Will they be living normal lives somewhere, or will they just find some other weird-as-fuck thing to obsess about? I guess it doesn't really matter.
The sun is down by the time we're done eating, and with no signal there isn't a lot my phone can do to distract me. I briefly consider playing a few levels of my most recent mobile game obsession but considering my high score (along with my phone and myself) are all going to be erased from existence tomorrow morning, I don't really see the point.
Balling up my sandwich wrapper, I blithely toss it into the street and move to collect our blankets from the trunk. I'm not exactly thrilled to be sleeping in my car in the middle of an abandoned town, but for some reason Max is dead set on leaving bright and early tomorrow morning and I don't feel like renting a motel room we're barely going to use. If anything happens, Max will just rewind it away anyway.
Tossing one of the blankets to her, I wrap mine around my shoulders and settle into the driver's seat. It takes a second to get it fully reclined into it's not-entirely-comfortable semi-sitting state. And even then I find myself squirming to find a position I can sleep in.
Max, who seems to have settled easily into the passenger seat, sounds fairly amused by my struggle. "You okay over there?"
"Yeah, totally." I don't know if she can see me in the dim light, but I glower at her anyway. "I've always wanted to sleep in my car like a fucking vagrant."
"I don't think many vagrants have cars." she points out, chuckling.
"Oh, well, that makes it way better." I roll onto my side, still trying to get comfortable. "Seriously, is there any actual reason behind leaving tomorrow morning? Couldn't you just go right now?"
"I could," she nods. "But I want to leave tomorrow."
"Why, exactly?"
She hesitates before answering. "Leaving tomorrow morning at eight AM will make the trip exactly two years."
"What possible difference could that make?"
"I don't know. Maybe none," she admits, rising up on her elbows to look at me. "But it feels better to do it that way, and I'm happy to take any advantage I can get, even if it's just in my head. If knowing I'm going back exactly two years helps me get into the right headspace, then that's what I'm going to do."
I guess I can't dispute that. And really, the whole 'what's the difference' argument cuts both ways. "Whatever."
"Get some sleep, Victoria." She rolls away, pulling her blanket up to her chin. "We've got a big day tomorrow."
Maybe you do, I think with just the tiniest amount of bitterness. I won't even exist after tomorrow morning, and I don't know if I should be relieved or worried about how okay I am with that. The closer we've come to this, the more I've wondered whether or not I'd want to back out at the last minute. But here we are, right on the edge of it, and all I feel is resolve.
Even if the last two years haven't been a nightmare, this still isn't the life I want. I miss my mom and dad, I miss Taylor, and I'm tired of regretting all the things I never had the courage to say. But unlike almost everyone who's been where I am, I've been given a way to do something about it. Max is going to go back and rewrite history, and everything that's happened will be wiped away. A clean slate for all of us.
Reaching down to my bag, I brush my fingers over the sealed letter I've got stashed there. The one addressed to 'Past Victoria'. I've been working on it for weeks, trying to find a way to reach the girl I was before. I need to be sure that stuck-up little idiot really knows what's at stake and understands what she needs to do to set things right.
It's not that I don't think Max can convince past-me that she's telling the truth, but when all is said and done there are some words that can't come from her; not if she expects 2013 Victoria to really hear them. And this letter will, hopefully, tell her everything she needs to know to get her shit together and not make any stupid mistakes going forward. The kind of mistakes I know she'll make if I don't warn her.
It's the best I can do for her. I hope it's enough.