Chapter 6; Never Go Back

Drag your wagon and your plow over the bones of the dead
Out among the roses and the weeds
You can never go back and the answer is no
And wishing for it only makes it bleed
And I want to know the same thing we all wanna know
How's it going to end?

-Tom Waits, How's it Gonna End?

Sept 1, 2012

For a long time, Jane Caulfield stood and stared at her own stupid, freckled, teenage face in the mirror of the Blackwell Academy first floor girl's bathroom.

She stared and stared and stared.

Or rather, she didn't. She wasn't there.

Her body did. It was there. And the face in the mirror was hers. But the mind behind the brown eyes was somebody else entirely.

Well, somebody else partially. Whatever was in charge of keeping track of these things had evidently decided that Max and Jane Caulfield were close enough to the same person that Max was able to use her time-jumping focus ability to travel into a photo of Jane. A photo from just over a year ago. In a dead reality.

"I'm Jane!" Max said to the reflection. Her reflection. No. Jane's reflection. But, wowser, did it ever look like Max! A more mature, stylish haircut. Different nose. Brown eyes. Taller. They could be sisters.

"I'm. Jane," she said. Actually, in a way, she supposed, they were sisters. Same Dad, after all.

"I am Jane!" she tried. She was hoping there existed a way of saying those words that would make them sink in.

"I'm... Jane. I am Jane!" Nope. Not working. "I can't concentrate with you staring at me!" she told Jane's reflection and turned away. Behind the stalls, she found a familiar, shiny mop bucket. Turning it over, she sat on it and stared into the corner.

"Okay, Max, get a grip," she thought to herself, taking a deep breath. "You focused into a photo of Jane, and now you are Jane. This is actually... okay. This is what Warren would call the 'expected result!'"

It hadn't been any easy trip. When she first arrived, everything was out of focus and movement was awkward. Max had never been falling-down drunk, but she imagined that was what it felt like, and fall-down she did. A blonde, blurry blob that turned out to be Taylor and a striped, blurry blob that turned out to be Courtney had to catch her. It took all her concentration to keep from becoming disoriented and losing the focus. Every step was a struggle, like she was working the strings of a marionette via another, larger marionette.

She didn't remember much of her conversation with Taylor and Courtney. She could barely hear at first, like she was listening to them through a wall. Eventually she made the excuse that she needed to splash some water in her face (Jane's face) and came into the bathroom for a much needed moment to collect herself.

"It's so crazy to be back in this bathroom again. I mean... the last time I was here..." Max shuddered. She was sitting only inches from where she had curled into a ball and let her favorite person in the world bleed out from a gunshot wound. She felt that, if not for the distracting awkwardness of inhabiting Jane's body, she would almost certainly break down into a sobbing mess. She knew with a sudden clarity she would never be able to go back to this bathroom again, or even back to Blackwell itself. Maybe even all of Arcadia Bay was dead to her now.

Although, according to Jane, in this timeline, Chloe's shooting never happened. Even if Jane had lied, it wouldn't have happened yet. This was 2012. Max herself was just starting her junior year back in Seattle. No, wait, she wasn't. This reality didn't have a Max. But still, Chloe was theoretically alive here.

That thought pulled her to attention. "Okay, Max. Steph is gone, so you have to be the Steph now. Think! This is a dead reality. It ends when Jane leaves to go back to 1978 save her aunt. So I guess... nothing I do here really matters or changes anything, unless I stop Jane from leaving somehow." Max's face brightened at the thought, "And if I do that, then she never goes back to 1978 and she won't be there to kill Steph and... no, wait."

Max's head hurt. She had a hard enough time wrapping her mind around these things even without the added strain of struggling to maintain her focus. She tried drawing it out in the air with her fingers.

"The Jane that arrives in 1978 is already there. Or, I guess, already has been there in that timeline, so I can't change that from here. If I stop Jane from leaving, this reality keeps going, but mine... ends? What was the word she used? Mine would cease. Become dead. There would be nothing for me to go back to. I would..." Max shuddered again. She would face death for Chloe Price, or at least she liked to think she would, but the prospect of never having existed at all was a gut punch she wasn't ready for.

The door suddenly opened. Max leapt to her feet; Well, she leapt to Jane's feet; and peeked around the corner of the stalls, half expecting to see Nathan Prescott brandishing a gun and talking to himself. But no, it was just Stella; harmless, innocuous Stella and her big, brown eyes; doing neither of those things. Max raised her hand to wave, but Stella took one look at her and turned right around and left. Weird. As Stella opened the door on the way out, the sights and sounds of the hallway briefly intruded.

Hearing the murmur of voices shook Max out of her thoughts. Somewhere out there, Chloe was alive. Steph too! And probably even Rachel! Despite what it meant for her own fate, Max resolved not to sit in the bathroom and ignore this chance to save them all. "Just go and look," she told herself. "See what it's like. And then... then decide."

It was like Blackwell, filled with faces. Some she knew, some she didn't, but Max couldn't say for sure if they were the same unknown faces as in her reality. The sounds were the same. The catty chirp of gossiping girls. The oafish grunts of boisterous jocks. Between them, the others. Darting through traffic, heads down, hoping just to get through the day. Her people.

Taylor and Courtney were waiting for her outside. It took her a moment to recognize them. Jane had an inch, maybe two, of natural height on Max, and she wore stack-heeled boots instead of flat sneakers. Max was still adjusting to everybody else being shorter than she expected.

Taylor tilted her head and put her hand on Max's arm, "You okay, Jane? You were like 20 minutes in there."

Max recoiled at the touch, "You were... waiting? Why aren't you with Victoria?"

Taylor tilted her head back the other way, "Uh... Victoria transferred, remember? Wanted to get into that photography program at Northfield?"

Courtney crossed her arms and sassed, "How do you not remember that? She wouldn't shut up about it for like a month!"

Taylor laughed and peered into Max's eyes, "Are you high or something? You'd tell us if you'd found somewhere to score some better weed, right?"

Courtney made an exaggerated handwave, "I can't take any more of Sheldon and his fucking sticks and seeds!" Taylor nodded in agreement.

Max didn't know what that meant and she was growing annoyed, "No, I'm not high, I'm fine. I just need a little while to myself."

The change in Courtney and Taylor was immediate. Without another word, they turned and walked away, Taylor stealing a concerned glance back at her before both disappeared around a corner. Max stood there blinking. Was this what it was like to have minions instead of friends? Was this the Victoria Chase experience? Was Jane the Victoria of this reality? And was it weird that Max was a little sad she wouldn't get to see Victoria? Of all the people to miss!

She scanned the faces in the hall. Near the door to the stairs stood a security guard she hadn't seen before. He was a little younger than David Madsen with blonde hair and a thin, clean-shaven face. He seemed strangely familiar, but Max couldn't place him. She was certain he wasn't around in her reality, or at least, he wasn't a guard. She definitely knew him from somewhere.

She recognized some of the sides of beef preening by the trophy case. She was certain one of them was Zachary and one was Logan, but she wouldn't want to have to guess which was which. They seemed largely the same. One of them shoved a passing smaller boy and it took her a moment to realize it was Nathan Prescott, in large part because he did nothing to retaliate. No screaming, death threats, no headbutts, nothing!

Nathan was walking with a girl Max didn't recognize. Thin, almost willowy, with mousey brown hair. Max shot a glare at Logan and/or Zachary, and to her great surprise, they both withered and turned to leave.

She stared down at her hands. What kind of crazy power did Jane have here that she could wilt bullies with a glance? She looked back to Nathan and his girl... friend? They were holding hands now. She was laughing. He was smiling. He seemed ... happy? Did Nathan Prescott even do happy? She was pretty sure she'd never seen him anything but various shades of angry in her world.

Max wandered toward the south wing classrooms, hoping to find Chloe in the science labs. Coming to the door to the wing, she was stopped in her tracks by something taped to it, and by the realization she had become so inured to tragedy in general and these damn things in particular that she had already walked right past 10 other Rachel Amber missing posters without noticing them.

She plucked the poster off the door and held it. "No! This... this doesn't make any sense. It's too soon!", she said out loud. The poster was new, fresh. Someone had put this up today, or at least very recently. The photo was different. Rachel looked younger, though she still wore that same single feather earring. According to the poster, Rachel had been missing for about a week. Almost eight months earlier than in Max's world.

A hand tapped her shoulder, "Miss Caulfield? Jane?" She turned around to find the voice belonged to a woman she had never seen before, and she would have remembered. A natural beauty, lithe and elegant, with long, flowing blonde hair. Max couldn't place her age, but she must be a parent; she looked too mature to be a student and too well-dressed to be a teacher.

"I'm Sera Amber, Rachel's mom?" she said.

Max didn't reply. She noticed Sera was holding a stack of fresh missing posters. On her face Max read the telltale signs of sleep deprivation and excessive crying. Both looked very familiar.

"Look, I know you and my daughter... I know you weren't friends. But please... please if you think of anything... anything at all that might help us find our baby!" She placed her hands on Max's and gave a plaintive look. Max wanted to tell her everything would be fine; to offer some comfort, but she just stood there staring dumbly. Sera tapped the phone number at the bottom of the poster Max held, gave her a weak smile and turned to leave.

Max's thoughts raced! Rachel was already missing! Jane had lied! Or actually, thinking back, she sort of dodged that question, but still. What did it mean that Rachel had gone missing earlier? She thought of Nathan and how much more well-adjusted he had seemed. Perhaps it was naive, but she had difficulty picturing happy Nathan playing the same role as before in that particular tragedy, and that only left one person.

"Jefferson!" Max seethed.

She stamped her foot, spun around and threw the wing doors open, striding ardently to Jefferson's classroom and through the open doorway. She hadn't quite worked out yet what she would do when saw the murderous fuck, which turned out to be good, because he wasn't there.

In the classroom stood a red-headed woman Max didn't recognize, looking through a book of photos with Evan. They both looked up at her dramatic entrance in confusion. Everything was different. The layout of the room, all the photos on the wall, the equipment. This wasn't Jefferson's room any more. Or maybe it never had been in this reality.

"Can we help you, Miss Caulfield?" asked the woman.

"Where's Mark Jefferson?" Max asked angrily.

The woman snorted in disgust. "Still in jail, thank God!" she said.

Max wasn't following. Seemingly, neither was Evan. The woman explained to him, "Mark Jefferson was a promising young photographer, like you, once upon a time. I knew him from back on the Seattle scene. He drugged one of his models and tied her up in a basement. He apparently tried to give her some date-rape drug that makes you forget, but it didn't take and she remembered everything. Turned him in and testified. He's doing 20 years in Snake River I think."

"Wait! I remember the name now!" chimed Evan, "Didn't he publish a photo book? I remember seeing an argument about this online."

"The Dark Corner," said the redhead, rolling her eyes. "Honestly, it's ... it's not bad. There's some potential there. You could start to see a cohesive style starting to come together. But still. Yick!"

"I read he only printed a thousand copies, and they're quite sought after by a small group of dedicated fans and apologists."

"Ugh! Jefferson has apologists? Why am I not surprised? See, this is why I don't go in the forums." The redhead said it, but Max was thinking it. This was a world were Jefferson's crimes had been revealed almost immediately and yet some people still found a way to give him a free pass, like until it happens to you it's not real. Well, it had happened to Max, and...

Max's heart skipped a beat.

When you know someone, really know them, you can tell their walk from a mile away, pick out a familiar expression amid a throng of faces, recognize their movements even in silhouette. So when Max saw the double raised bird outside through the window, she knew it was Chloe before she even processed the face, before she heard the distant voice shouting, "Right in the dick!" She turned on her heel and ran through the throngs of students to the front door.

She passed the blonde security guard again. Who was this guy? Where did she know him from? Behind her came a quiet laugh from the hallway, "Looks like Jane's off her meds again," and another, "Quiet! She'll hear you!"

She burst through the front door of the school and turned left toward the picnic tables as fast as she dared to run in Jane's boots, and then she saw her.

Chloe.

Her Chloe. Sitting atop the table, gesturing wildly in the air. Her hair was still long, and still blonde. The arms waving in the air were tattoo-free. She sported denim shorts and a loose t-shirt with a stick figure hugging a buffalo and the caption, I found the Huggs Bison!

Sharing the table with her were a meek-looking boy Max didn't recognize and a girl whom it took Max a moment to realize was Steph, back when Steph had long hair. Max was happy to see Steph, but overjoyed to see Chloe. She ran towards her, arms out, ready to leap into a hug.

"Whoa, what are you doing?" Chloe cried, recoiling in alarm and jumping down to put the table between the two of them.

Max's heart broke into tiny pieces. Chloe looked at her with a mix of confusion and revulsion. Not in all the nightmares she had been through had anything prepared her for a Chloe who hated her. It hurt. Deep and sharp and physical. It would have been better to be stabbed. She knew why, of course. To outward appearances, she wasn't Max right now, she was Jane. But that didn't make it any easier to take.

She glanced over at Steph, whose fists were balled up tight. She was trying to hide a furious scowl by looking away. The boy just hung his head and averted his eyes, seemingly hoping to avoid being noticed.

"Chloe..." she started lamely. She wanted to tell her everything. She wanted to gush about their alternate lives together; about pool break-ins and mystery-solving and pirate adventures, but it was impossible. This reality didn't have a Long Max Silver. Captain Bluebeard sailed alone, and nothing Max could do or say would make her understand what she had missed. If she had even missed anything at all.

"Jane, I don't know what you want, but we're kind of in the middle of something here," Chloe said, shooting a concerned glance at Steph.

Max just stood there, mouth agape, staring into the eyes of the person who meant the most in the world to her and seeing only confusion and fear. Max looked at Steph, who was still looking away, seemingly struggling to hold back tears. She looked at the boy, who seemed concerned for his friends but too scared to say anything. And she looked at the missing poster still in her hands. Shaking, she asked Chloe, "How's your dad?"

"Why do you care about my dad?", Chloe asked, genuinely stumped.

"Just... can you just tell me? Tell me and I'll go," Max stammered, looking down at the grass.

Chloe looked more confused than ever, but answered cautiously, "He's fine. Or at least he was when I saw him this morning."

Max nodded grimly, "This morning? That's... good. That's so good!" more to herself than anybody else, and bolted past the table to the stairs down to the dormitories. She wanted more than anything else to throw her arms around Chloe and say good-bye, to tell her she loved her, but she couldn't. This wasn't her Chloe.

But it was a good Chloe. A happy Chloe. A Chloe worth saving, even if that meant...

Once Max was out of sight behind the wall, she threw her back against it and slid down to a seated position. She wanted to break down into tears. She wanted desperately to cry and wail, but she was afraid that would break her concentration and kick her out of the focus. And she had work to do.

Looking down at the missing poster she still held, she said to the photo, "I'm so sorry, Rachel! I know what I said. I said I would try. But... just look at her. She's happy! She has Steph, she has friends. She has her dad! There's no Jefferson here. She doesn't need money. She must have avoided the accident that paralyzed her. That would have been a year ago! She'll go to college next year. She'll have a future! Maybe... maybe we were both right."

Max let the poster fall from her hands to the ground. Taking a deep breath, she said, "Maybe she really is better off without either of us."

She heard the boy's voice carry from the other side of the wall, "Chloe, what was that all about? How does Jane know your dad?"

Chloe voice answered, "She doesn't. I mean, I've known her for years. She was in elementary school with me and Steph. The class behind us. But we're not friends. She's never met my Dad."

The boy responded, "Why would you be friends? That girl is mean!"

Steph added bitterly, "That girl is crazy!"

"Steph..."

Steph continued her rant, "I know she and Rachel were at each other's throats all last year, but when Rachel went missing, Jane was fucking happy about it. That's sick!"

"Steph..."

"No, Mikey, seriously! If Rachel ran away because of her, or hurt herself or something..."

Chloe broke in, with the usual lilt in her voice when she was trying to cheer someone up, "Come on, Steph, let's get back to the game. How about you make an orc that looks like Jane, and me and Ellamon will smash it for your amusement?"

The boy; Mikey, apparently; said quietly, "But if it's a girl orc, how will Calamastia know where to punch it?"

Chloe laughed, "I can punch a girl orc in the dick! Don't be so literal! There's more to dick punches than just punching someone in the dick! It means like you're really punching them. So they know you mean it. Like, punching their essence! And also, if an actual, physical dick is present, you punch that as well, just to keep the theme consistent."

Max sat on the far side of the wall, grinning like an idiot with tears running down her face. She couldn't remember the last time she had heard Chloe sound so carefree. Actually, she could, and they were both dressed as pirates at the time.

There were worse things than never existing, she supposed. It was becoming increasingly clear to her she didn't know how to keep on living without Chloe. She hated the idea of letting Jane win after what she had done to Steph, but here was the answer, right in front of her! Chloe and William, alive, healthy and together. Jefferson in jail. This might be as good as things would ever get.

With a resigned weariness, Max began looking through Jane's bag for paper and pen, while mentally trying to compose a letter that would convince young Jane not to go back and save her aunt. A letter that would end not only Max's life, but her very reality as well, and everything she'd ever known.

She would write the letter, end her focus, and then... nothingness.

But, for Chloe Price?

Worth it.