Marbles Sparkling

WEDNESDAY

The next morning, Nathan got woken up by soft sunbeams shining through the grey curtains. He slowly opened his eyes, finding himself laying in Mark's bed. When did he go there? … Then he remembered. Right, he thought sleepily, rubbing his eyes, I fell asleep on the couch, and he carried me to his bed. Then he blushed, feeling like a child who needed to be taken to the bed and getting a bedtime story.

No nightmare this time? Nathan was confused yet pleasantly surprised. He should stay over much more often than he already did.

He let his fingers run through his hair, noticing that it was messy and sticky from the styling mousse. Then he looked around the room. Mark's side of the bed was already made, as always. Some photography books were laying on his bedside table. Then he turned around, seeing the huge bondage photo hanging above the bed. It had been made in his cellar, his own Dark Room where he had drugged the girls before he had known Nathan. It wasn't as big as the one under the Prescott barn, but still … What where the women thinking who stayed the night?

"Oh, did I wake you?" Nathan heard a voice say, and he saw Mark leaning against the door frame, perfectly styled and dressed up, one hand was resting in his pocket, the other one was holding a cup of coffee.

Nathan shook his head. Mark could've done, though. Nathan always felt so weird waking up when Mark was already ready. Sometimes, he woke up with a message of Mark, telling him that he had class and that he should get himself something to eat. But Mark never had any sweets, so Nathan always raided the fridge, taking out the only things which tasted good and weren't absolutely healthy. But Mark had improved; lately, he'd been buying Nathan's favorite cornflakes.

"Did you sleep well?" Mark asked while taking a sip from his coffee. Nathan nodded, still tired.

"What class you're starting with today?" – "World History … with Caulfield. Ugh."

Nathan shoved the white sheets away, then he stood up and headed to the bathroom when he suddenly heard Mark say, "Breakfast at Two Whales Diner?"

Nathan turned around, then their eyes met and both of them smiled. "We can go to the beach beforehand, if you want," Mark said, "maybe we spot some whales."

"Almost ready!" Nathan shouted while dashing down the stairs, almost tripping and smashing on the ground.

"Be careful," Mark yelled, but Nathan had already disappeared in the lower floor, "and brush your hair for once!"

Half an hour later, another part of Nathan's life had turned to shit.

"Nathan, come over here," Mark said while Nathan was apathetically staring at the dead whales laying in front of them. He put an arm around his shoulders, but Nathan couldn't move. A week ago, he had read that this had been the time for whales swimming near the coast, making them easy to spot and observe. Him and Vic had wanted to go to the beach, watch them and make photos of them. Then, it hadn't worked out, and Mark had suggested to go with him.

"You must be shitting me," Nathan breathed, staring at the majestic creatures, laying on the beach like a dead fish's inedible remains. Thrown away. Their empty eyes were staring at him, like marbles sparkling in dead flesh.

"What the fuck is happening to Arcadia Bay," he said bitterly, sobbing and wiping of some tears he had been trying hard to suppress. "Look at that, Mark! Look at, look at these … these …"

Nathan tried to continue speaking, but he got overwhelmed by a sudden show of deep sadness and rage. He clenched his fists, trying to escape Mark's grip, but then he gave up and let him hold him.

"There, there," Mark said softly as Nathan struggled to breath because of crying, "I know what they mean to you."

"Fuck! Fuck it all! First the snow, then the eclipse, and now the dying of animals," Nathan yelled, "and d-don't say that they've been swimming into the wrong direction, I've seen dead birds this morning, they're … they're falling from the fucking sky!"

"I know," Mark said quietly, "I've seen them, too."

Then he put out a tissue, giving it to Nathan was rubbing his swollen eyes. His red nose was shining like a Christmas bauble, and he apologized for ruining Mark's jacket.

"Never mind," he said, then he patted Nathan on his back, "come on, Nate, let's get something to eat."

After eating a Belgian waffle (and ignoring the waitress totally checking Mark out) and talking with him about the strange events, Nathan started to feel better. At some point, he saw that creepy drug dealer coming in, and both pretended not too see each other. Frank ordered some beans, making disgusting noises while he was eating in the corner of the room. Then Nathan showed Mark the petition Vic had started, and Mark smiled, flattered and surprised by so many students supporting him.

If they knew.

Mark got a call from Wells, telling him to meet him at Blackwell. He wanted to talk with him about the contest he had been expelled from, then Mark payed for the breakfast and patted Nathan on his shoulder.

"See you at school," he said, and Nathan, disappointed about Well's call, nodded quietly.

Then Nathan proceeded to eat his waffle, staring on the table, slouching his shoulders over his plate. Now that Mark was away, he felt like crying again. Apart from that, he felt the pain in his head for the first time in 24 hours, so he bitterly took out some pills, two blue ones and a white one, and swallowed them with a Coke. Then his whole body shivered, and in a fit of tiredness, he rubbed his eyes. Sometimes, he felt like a wooden rotten house which was about to collapse. When would that moment be …?

He heard some steps going into his direction, and he looked up, wanting to take a look who had the nerve to take a seat exactly in his corner.

- "Sorry girl, not my type of model. Try again, Rach." – "Why don't you wanna frame me? Or are you more into like, y'know, male models?" -

"Rachel …?!" Nathan said breathlessly, opening his eyes in surprise. Fucking Christ, I thought you were dead! I thought I buried you, I thought I …

Then he looked again, and what he saw was so not Rachel Amber.

"Ugh, whatevathefuck?" he said, looking into Max's derp face. He could've cried. For one second, he'd really thought that … whatever.

"Oh look, 'Max Amber'. Nice outfit," not, "by the way, thank's for getting Mr. Jefferson fucking expelled, you twee bitch. You're lucky this is a public place …"

If there was someone Nathan could've used least at this very moment, then it was Max fucking Caulfield.

"Considering we're in a public diner with a police officer right over there, you shouldn't advertise your rage, Prescott."

When did they start using surnames? Geez, Max wanted to be cool so bad. He suddenly wanted to break her nose so bad, but she was kind of right. Officer Berry, this weird creep, had been spying on him, again. He wanted to turn around, looking at him, but him and Max had a thing going. She really thought she'd figured it all out.

"You're so stupid, Max! You think you're so goddamn smart, too! Don't push me, girl," he said, getting annoyed by her stupid voice. He just wanted to eat his waffles, it really wasn't that much.

But Max didn't let up. She insisted chatting with him about Kate, probably taking notes or some stuff. Nathan knew that she did a lot more than the police had done, trying to find out about Rachel or Kate, but him and Mark were so throwing her off the scent. Still, he needed to be careful. Max was running around at Blackwell, telling everybody that she suspected Nathan of having drugged Kate, but while talking to Max, Nathan noticed pretty quickly that she hadn't got any solid proof for her allegation. Later on, Max apparently thought that she had gained his confidence by asking about his father, but Nathan wasn't stupid. Nobody besides Mark and maybe Vic have a single shit about him or his father, let alone about him. … Not even Kris.

"Spoiler alert: He's an asshole," he snarled. Why couldn't she just mind her own business, and spare him her conspiracy theories of him drugging Kate. "Now fuck off, dyke."

He looked out of the window, hoping that she was done with her cross-examination. Boy, was he wrong.

"Prescott." – "Holy shit, what do you want now?"

Max continued babbling about Kate and Rachel, and Nathan was just sitting there, trying to ignore his throbbing head. Shit, he thought – he hadn't felt anything recently, and now, everything he had been spared of was attacking his head at the same time.

On top of that, Max suddenly mentioned Rachel's and Frank's creepy ritual. "Blood oath? Who–? What the fuck? I never told anybody about that freaky shit!" Nathan yelled, remembering the disgusting photos Frank had proudly shown him back then. How did Max know about this? Did she have some fucking superpowers like mind reading or something? Whatever it was, Nathan wanted some, too.

"Besides," he said, not caring about Frank and him being in the same room, "everybody knows Frank is a liar and a loser! Even Rachel did."

"Yet Rachel Amber hung out with him more than you."

Max crossed her arms, and Nathan tried to hold back a smile. This girl really needed to get her facts straight. But, who cared anyway, her thinking that he had a crush on Rachel Amber, who was a brat, average looking and dead, was a lot better than knowing that he was a faggot.

"So? Rachel wanted Frank's stash. She let him take pictures, then he carries around her photo like she posed for love. Dumbass." Did Nathan know anything about Rachel and Frank's weird affair? No. Did he care? No. Why did every conversation end up being about Rachel Amber and who she was? Dead and buried. That's what she was.

Max seemed to have gone all insane now, trying to get Nathan's help for getting some dope. Now that Rachel was away, did Max plan on take her place and pretend like she was her or the fuck was happening? Then Max tried to chat with him about who had slept with whom.

"Like you would know, virgin," Nathan hissed. Max probably thought that Nathan spent his weekends partying all night and hooking up with some hot chicks, and there was nothing Nathan wanted to do more. To be normal. Instead, he jerked off to the guy who was in love with her, who had eye-fucked her probably a thousand times already in class. So much for virgin. Nathan hadn't got this much action in his whole life. His first kiss with a living person was some months ago with Vic, just because he wanted to find out if he was really gay.

He was. He fucking was.

Even though Max looked like she had never taken a baby aspirin, he told her about Frank's dumb codeword which was not obvious at all (higher education – really?), just hoping that she would finally piss off. Then she went to Frank and got on his nerves instead of Nathan's.

Nathan took the bus to the dormitories, then he tried to relax. He closed his eyes, sensing the light breeze on his skin. For the first time in weeks, he felt like making a photo. He took his backpack, fishing out his new monochrome, which was more expensive than half of Caulfield's scholarship. Did it make him happy? Not anymore.

He looked around, searching for an object to shoot. But there was nothing, which deserved to get framed by his 6 grands camera. There was a squirrel, eating some nuts, and out of desperation, he lifted his camera, probably scaring it. It dropped the nut and ran away, revealing the bird which was laying behind it. Nathan looked closer: it was dead, reminding him of the whales from the beach. He swallowed, being in two minds – one part of him wanted to cry, to run away and tell everybody that the climate change couldn't be more obvious, that this was the pay-off of the people clearing wide areas of trees, exterminating and exploiting animals, polluting the oceans, wanted to cry because he couldn't stand seeing death everywhere he went, attracting it. … The other part desired to take a photo.

He fell on his knees, then he pointed the lens into the direction of the miserable creature, its legs sticking up stiffly, and before standing up and bringing all of this to a stop, all of his weird, creepy and sick desires, his finger had gotten possessed by pushing the shutter. The flash lighted up, and his work was completed.

He looked at his photo, fascinated and disgusted.

Nathan proceeded walking to his dorm. He entered the corridor, seeing all of the guys' hypocritical quotes on their slates. What about "will bang 4 jesus"? Nathan hated all of them and their lying asses.

After entering his room, he remembered what Mark had told him about his second phone a week ago.

"We can't afford getting caught, under no circumstances," he had said, waving his phone, "if you lose it somewhere, and someone finds it, we're fucked. So put it somewhere safe.

Even if someone would find it, nobody would know that his passcode was his birthday, since … there was nobody who remembered his birthday. Nathan looked around the room, searching for a good place to stow it. He knew that if he would put it in some drawer or behind his bed, he wouldn't find it ever again. So he took the phone and threw it under the sofa.

Doing that, he noticed this dumb porn magazine laying under his table.

"Butts'n'boobs," he said scornfully, "why didn't I throw this shit away?"

Then he remembered: this disgusting shit had been a pretty good camouflage, and back when Hayden had gotten him this, Nathan had acted so not normal, desperately trying to make the guys believe that he was into this stuff. Women and stuff. In fact, he couldn't stand looking at these girls. Well, he didn't like the guys in porn, too, and he still jerked off to them, but all of this was pure satisfaction of his libido, which had been pretty high some years ago. He preferred men with class. Well, Warren wasn't exactly a man, but Nathan knew for sure that he got some abs, and he was bigger than him, and if "class" meant making silly puns and memes and having a folder full of live hacks, then yeah, Warren was pretty classy and an idiot. But he was Nathan's idiot.

… Right?

Nathan sighed, cursing himself for thinking about Warren again (was Nathan really that masochistic?), then he put on his headphones and put on some some whale songs, while sitting on his bed, silently scrutinizing the paper art thingy, which was basically playing the whole day. A project he had made in 10th grade. There was no actual story behind it, Nathan just liked to watch Southpark and thought about doing handicrafts made of paper and filming it.

Nathan hadn't watched anything since ages. Not even "New Romantics", his favorite show. His gaze wandered over to the "diploma" Sean had gotten him. "This diploma certificates that Nathan Prescott is officially the best son in the world!" Nathan sniffed. By now, seven years later, there wasn't much left of this diploma. Just a souvenir of what had once been. Back when Kris and Nathan had been inseparable, and Sean hadn't thought of Nathan as a loser and a sick fuck who liked to photograph dead bodies.

Best son in the world … Nathan was a piece of shit, nothing more.

He looked at the photo of Sean and him sitting on the stairs, smiling. – Well, Sean was smiling. Nathan was crying, and as far as he remembered, this stupid marine costume had been way too thick for this hot summer day, and he had been hungry and Sean had shouted at him for being too fidgety. … Why did he still have this stupid photo?

He looked around the room, seeing an old piece of paper hanging out of his drawer. He looked at it for a second, then he stood up and pulled it out, hoping for a split second it was a secret message, a tiny confession of love, maybe from Warren?

Of course it wasn't.

Nathan sighed, looking at Chloe's terrible handwriting. "Hey asshole, we need to talk, or im going to tell everybody what you did, and youre going to pay motherfucker". He had found this this love letter a few days ago on his car. So stupid of her thinking she could mess with Nathan, member of Arcadia Bay's oldest and richest family. Almost endearing. She was lucky that Nathan hadn't blown her fucking ass off. Nathan sighed again: sometimes, he said these things to himself, hoping to sound more hard-core and masculine than he actually was, trying to cover up the fact that he would go insane after killing another girl. He took out his gun and looked at it. Back then when he had threatened Chloe, he hadn't realized that it had been loaded. He didn't know shit about guns, so he had thought that he had taken out all of the ammo, but apparently not. After finding out, he had gotten a huge shock. If he actually had shot Chloe, he probably would've gone insane.

Just thinking about this, his head started to hurt again, and he searched for some pills, but couldn't find some.

"Of course," he mumbled, standing up, "the lockers …"

Nathan used to take some pills after gym, so he went to the boy's locker rooms. While heading for his locker, he passed by the bulletin board and bazillion notes hanging there. He saw the note he usually ignored as well. The missing-cat-pics note. It had actually been him, stealing the tablet. It was laying somewhere in his room. He had been drunk and it had been laying on the school's campus, and he had been jealous of his or her great cats. Back then, he had been a nervous wreck (not that much of a difference compared to today) and he had been missing Ahab a lot.

He went to his locker and took out his pills, and of course, because he was a stupid idiot, he managed to drop the box, making some pills falling on the ground.

" Fuck ing hell," he grumbled, sitting on the floor while picking up the pills, when he suddenly noticed something, "could that be …? No."

He grabbed the tiny instant photo. "My, my," he said, looking at the only thing Max knew according to Vic, "a selfie, of course."

He went to his room again and got himself something to drink and swallowed the pills (it was so much more comfortable adding water to it), then he took Max's selfie and sticked it to his wall. He glared at her.

"Whatevathefuck you've been doing in the boys' locker rooms, you noisy bitch, I'll make sure to never forget your average face. You don't mess with a Prescott," he growled, "I'll make you regret snitching on me, and reporting me to Wells, and I'll take care that your life will be shittier than it already is. Nobody gives a fuck about you and nobody will ever– Ugh, shit."

He rummaged around in his pockets for his phone; he looked at the display, seeing "Queen" and the bee emoji.

"Yo Vic, you cool?" he said walking around the room. He looked into the mirror, seeing that Max's scratch marks from two days ago still hadn't disappeared. If they'd stay, Nathan would make sure that he wasn't the only one with a mark.

"Hey Nate, I just … I wanted to hear your voice, that's all. It's been a shitty week so far," Vic mumbled, and Nathan swallowed quietly. – "True."

"I, uhm, I don't know why I'm calling. I'm shopping with Taylor, but, I just … I can't stop thinking about Kate and all, her death really gets on me," her voice was soft and broken, and Nathan just wanted to hug her tightly. He sat down, looking at his shoes.

"Me, too," Nathan said honestly, "I never thought I'd say this, but we went too far. … But, it's not our fault."

"Yeah," Vic said, inhaling deeply, "she, she had the choice."

Nathan nodded silently, rubbing his face while falling on his back. He stared on the ceiling, while both said nothing to each other for a long time.

"Anyway," Vic said, and her voice started to sound like one of the old Queen Bee he knew, "sooo, you wanted me to organize the End of the World party – finally, my time to shine –, and so I did. I'll send you everything, and yes, of course I'll tell you beforehand what outfit I'm gonna wear."

She laughed, and Nathan smiled. Talking trash with Vic and just hearing her voice made him feel a hundred times better. "You better do, bitch. Don't wanna think about last time, so not couple goals," he said. Dior dress and Holloway college jacket. It had been a catastrophe.

"Yeah, I remember," she laughed, then her voice turned serious, "by the way … did you know that Warren struggles to pay off his scholarship?"

Nathan swallowed, "No …"

"Courtney said that Stella said that Warren told her this," she mumbled. – "You sure 'bout that?" Nathan asked quietly, but he knew that Vic wouldn't tell him something she wasn't totally sure about.

"She said, Stella had blushed talking about Warren, she said she so has a crush on him."

Nathan couldn't blame her. Me, Stella, Brooke … Seriously though, who hasn't?

"But, you know," Vic said, trying to sound bitchy, but she failed, "she's so ugly, so don't you worry 'bout her. I just … you know, she said he was worried if he could afford staying at Blackwell. He needs about ten grands. Poor bastard."

Nathan swallowed. Even though Vic didn't give a shit about Warren, she knew that Nathan did. She really cared for him. She was his angel, Nathan was glad to have her.

"Anyway, Taylor's calling me. We'll talk later, okay?" she said in a soft tone, and Nathan nodded. – "Alright. Thanks for telling me, Vic. Love you."

"Love you, too, hon," she said, kissing the phone, "stay strong."

Then the hung up the phone, leaving Nathan on his own, who now knew less than before. He didn't know what to think. He'd always thought that being rich was a burden, but he'd never seen in from some other side: Money didn't make happy, and sometimes, you even lose the ones you love, because they couldn't keep up.

Nathan laid on his bed, hearing his whale songs, looking at Max's selfie on his wall. She looked so pure and naive. But Nathan knew that there was something in her, some part him and her were connected to, something they had in common. But he didn't know what it was.

Don't try to fuck with me. I don't believe you, playing the role of the sweet hipster girl, who never does anybody harm. Why couldn't you safe Kate? Looks like you hadn't played such a good role in her life than you'd thought. Do you hate me? I guess so. You're Moby Dick and I'm Captain Ahab, only the difference is that it's me who's gonna win this fight.

I know what you're doing, and I won't let you get away with this. You think you're so close finding Rachel, but if you'd open your eyes, you'd see that everything you need is already in front of you, and the one you're searching for is thinking about doing the same to you.

Nathan closed his eyes, thinking about Stella and Warren. Another girl he needed to take care of, even though he didn't even know how she looked like. … Him and Max, cat and mouse. They were both possessed by an idea, but he did everything to hide the truth, while she did all she could to establish it. And at the end … one would win.

And that wouldn't be Max.