Seven: Landmarks
"What was that?" Victoria's voice was tinny through the phone's speakers. It effectively amplified her ability to grate on Max's nerves. "It sounds like you're calling from the moon."
"Sorry," Max mumbled. "I had to put you on speaker."
Living in a tent came with a long list of inconveniences. The lack of washrooms, privacy, heat, and wifi were all up there. But it also made organization difficult. The floor of the tent was strewn with socks, bras, shirt, cigarette packs, and camera equipment. As far as Max could tell, her headset had tumbled into a black hole. And since she needed her hands to check the photos they were discussing on her laptop, Victoria was going to have deal with the poor sound quality.
Unfortunately, so was Chloe.
Crouched over a duffle back, she'd been rummaging in there for the past several minutes, periodically pausing to glare at Max's phone.
Victoria heaved a sigh that gave full voice to her sense of martyrdom. "What about the next shot? The one of City Hall."
Max pulled up the shot on her laptop. It was an old red brick building with its roof missing as well as its front door. The wrought iron railings that had once lined the front steps now curled around the pillared door frame. Tangled among the bent iron bars, a tattered American flag fluttered in the breeze.
"What about it?"
"I think we should crop the image so the flag is centred."
Max nodded–and then realized Victoria couldn't see her. "That sounds good."
Victoria heaved an exasperated sigh. "We still need to agree on a name and Juliet hasn't answered my message."
"I think she's still busy trying to do some of the background research we wanted to use for the historical sites."
Victoria huffed. "The Two Whales Diner hardly qualifies as a historical site."
"It was a town landmark. People from outside of Arcadia Bay knew it. Just like the lighthouse." Max had asked Alyssa to get the 'after' shots of both locations. Max couldn't bear to do it herself. So many bad memories. And knowing she'd been responsible for wiping those landmarks off the map... It was more than she could deal with right now.
"The lighthouse shots are passable but the lighting wasn't ideal. We should try again on a sunnier day."
Chloe looked over. "We?"
Max shot Chloe a look. Fortunately, Victoria didn't seem to have heard because she kept right on going. "I haven't heard anyone suggest anything even remotely useable so we should move ahead with my suggestion, Save Our Bay."
Chloe snorted. "Hashtag sob."
"Who is that?"
Max sighed. "Sorry, that was Chloe."
"I thought this was a private conversation to review our project. Not a group discussion."
"Dude, we're living in a fucking tent. It's not like I can step into the next room."
"Use a headset," Victoria snapped.
"I couldn't find it," Max said.
"Because we're living a tent," Chloe added.
The phone crackled for a moment. "I refuse to–"
"Never mind," Chloe said, crawling towards the tent flap. "I'll just step out onto the veranda for a smoke so you can be alone with Queen Victoria." She rolled her eyes.
"Chloe–"
"Just let me know when you're done with her highness."
The speaker issued something that could have been static but might also have been an irate huff. But Max had had enough of Victoria's attitude. She was pretty sure she'd hit her BS limit for the morning. "You know, Chloe's entire house was demolished and so was the place her mom works. She's one of the people this project is supposed to help. You remember that part? About helping people?"
"Just because she's in need doesn't mean she should interrupt. I guess your lack of taste extends to your friends."
"At least my friends haven't killed anyone."
Dead silence. Max wasn't sure if she would have rewound if that were an option.
"I didn't know about that. Nathan never said anything. He just..." Victoria's voice faltered and Max felt a twinge of remorse.
"I know. I..." She wanted to say she was sorry, but somehow she just couldn't regret breaking through Victoria's bitchy shell. Sometimes Max needed to see that Victoria was just as vulnerable as all the rest of them. "I know." The idea of going back to the photos was unpalatable. "We should pick this up later once Juliet gets back to you."
Victoria agreed and was all too eager to hang up. Sighing, Max stuck her head outside. It took her eyes a moment to adjust from the lime-coloured gloom to the grey November morning. But no, there was no Chloe in sight anywhere. Max darted back into the tent and checked her phone.
Buying smokes. Back soon.
With a sigh, Max set down her phone. Hopefully a little air–or nicotine–would settle Chloe down and she wouldn't be completely pissed off when she got back. Max would've liked to do some triage of her latest shots, but the laptop battery wasn't going to last that long so she'd have to wait till they hit up Warren again. They were only a few hours away from the coffee capital of the world and yet there was no Starbucks within easy driving distance of Arcadia Bay. The closest thing was the Bay Café which was an option... but also meant dropping cash on coffee and snacks.
Instead, Max found her thoughts wandering back to Susan and Michelle. She still didn't understand how it all connected. Two girls who'd fallen in love and left Arcadia Bay together in spite of their families' disapproval. How did those visions connect with the disturbing photo she'd had found? Jefferson, Max knew, had spent time in Seattle after he'd graduated from the Chicago Art Institute.
I had enough of those faux-punk sluts in my Seattle days.
Max shuddered. Jefferson's voice was still so clear in her thoughts sometimes. Hugging her knees, she waited for her stomach to stop churning. That conversation had never happened. Chloe was alive and Jefferson was in jail. Everything was okay... Except for the fucking time tornado and all the wreckage and the people who'd died. But that storm was as much Jefferson's legacy as her own. Without him, none of this pain would exist. Rachel Amber would be alive and Nathan Prescott would be a jackass, but a mostly harmless one. And Chloe... well Chloe wouldn't love her. But she'd be alive, she'd be okay. Everyone would be okay. And maybe missing out on love would be a steep enough price to pay in order to save everybody.
Except that that wasn't an option. There was no rewind that could've stopped Jefferson soon enough to prevent all the damage he'd done.
Max gave herself a shake. It was stupid to keep thinking about this. There was nothing she could do, superpowers or no. Instead, she reached for the metal box they'd dug up. Grabbing the stack of water damaged photos she peered at them each in turn until she found one where she could clearly see the girls' hands. The girl with the hairsprayed mane and the heavy blue eyeshadow, the girl in the black and white photo that had started this whole thing, she was the one wearing the ring. She was Michelle.
The black and white photo was as creepy as ever. It was too much like the photos of Kate, like the photos of Rachel. Michelle's glazed over eyes, stared blearily into the camera lens. Max knew precisely what it felt like to be photographed while in that state, what it was like to be so thoroughly in someone else's power.
And if Jefferson had anything to do with this she wouldn't stop until she found out what.
Max took a deep breath and let her fingers trail over the surface of the photo.
#
Max found herself once more on Arcadia Bay's main drag with its boarded up stores and buildings in disrepair. Turning to look over her shoulder, she could see the docks in the distance. No fishing boats were moored there. Something else caught here eye then. The cliff overlooking the bay where the lighthouse stood, the lighthouse she'd seen destroyed. But the lighthouse was still there, still whole.
She stared at it, her mouth dry, her palms slick. If the lighthouse was whole that meant that in this place, whatever it was, the storm hadn't come to Arcadia Bay. But that also meant...
Max swallowed down a rush of dread that sent her heart clawing up her throat. Instead she began to run. She ran up the empty street, past for sale signs and vacant store front until she saw the familiar whale rising against the sky.
Panting, she came to a halt in front of the Two Whales. A flickering sign proclaimed that the diner was 'OPE' but she could see no one through the dirty windows.
The lighthouse and the Two Whales, the very landmarks she'd been discussing with Victoria were both here as if there had been no storm at all. Max turned her attention to the newspaper stand in front of the store. With shaking hands, she extracted a paper and read the headline: "Jefferson Acquitted."
Bile rose in Max's throat but she forced herself to read.
After only a few hours' deliberation by a jury in Salem, Oregon, photographer Mark Jefferson has been acquitted of all charges in the Prescott bunker case. The jury determined that Nathan Prescott, son of the Arcadia Bay developer tycoon, Sean Prescott, was solely responsible for the deaths of local teens, Rachel Amber (18) and Chloe Price (19).
Max choked back a sob. No storm; no Chloe. The thought that Chloe's house was still standing, but that Chloe was gone... She could just imagine her bedroom, empty, still, everything just as Chloe had left it, its postered and graffitied walls, magazines scattered on the floor, her laptop still open on her desk. How could all those objects outlive Chloe? Just the thought of that empty room was enough to make Max tear up.
She scrubbed at her eyes and tried to get herself together. She didn't want to be here in this fucking alternate reality or possible future or whatever BS this was. She didn't want any part of a world that had let Chloe die.
Gritting her teeth, she forced herself to scan the rest of the article. It summed up the case–Rachel Amber accidentally overdosed, her body hidden, Chloe Price accidentally shot to death in the girls' bathroom, the photos, the bunker. But aside from Nathan's allegations, the evidence of Jefferson's involvement was only circumstantial. There were some messages exchanged between the two, but no smoking gun in the communications. Or anywhere else for that matter. He had been acquitted and would hold a press conference in Arcadia Bay. There was speculation that he planned to take legal action in relation to the false charges.
"False charges." Max wadded the paper up into a ball and threw it to the ground. "Motherfucker."
If anyone deserved to die it was him. Why couldn't it be him? Not Chloe. Not her Chloe.
Max wanted to yell, but a raspy whisper was all she managed. "Fuck you, Arcadia Bay."
And then the world was a shimmery shade of lime green and someone was calling her name.
#
"Earth to Max. Come in, Captain Max. Do you read? Get your ass back here."
Max blinked up at Chloe for a moment and then pushed herself off the floor and threw her arms around her. "Oh thank Dog. You're all right."
Chloe hugged her back, squeezing tightly. "Me? What about you? I leave you alone for like five minutes and when I get back you're passed out on the floor with that creepy ass photo in your hands."
"I had another vision." Max buried her face in Chloe's shoulder, clutching her as hard as she could, as close as she could. "The storm never hit but you were..."
"Hey it's okay. I'm right here. Alive and well." She tilted her head so that her lips brushed against Max's jaw, sending a shiver down Max's spine. "Thanks to you."
As Chloe stroked her hair, Max squeezed her eyes shut. She wanted to just stay this way, wrapped up in Chloe' arms, awash in her scent of leather and cigarettes, in her warmth. She wanted to be close enough to feel Chloe's heartbeat so she would know that she was really and truly alive and not just a ghost or a dream. But that vision... "Jefferson was free." She barely managed to choke it out. "They didn't have enough evidence to convict him."
Chloe huffed. "So much for my noble sacrifice."
"I would never have let that happen." But she could feel the tension in Chloe's body. Chloe shifted even as Max held on to her. Max drew back to look into her face. "Chloe? What is it?"
Looking away, Chloe rubbed the back of her neck. "You uh... haven't been following the news, right?"
"The news?" Max repeated, confused. "What news?"
"The Doughnut Brigade haven't found Nathan's body. And without it, they're going to have trouble proving Jefferson did anything and that it wasn't all a setup by the Prescotts."
The shock of that announcement robbed her of the power of speech. It was impossible. It was just completely fucking impossible. For a minute she just stared at Chloe, slack-jawed, until a few syllables managed to stagger from her mouth. "B–but... How? He..." She shook her head, tried again. "They caught him right in the bunker."
Chloe rolled here eyes. "Yup that's why they pay the Arcadia Bay PD the big bucks. There's no case they can't fuck up." Hands shoved into her pockets, Chloe glowered at the floor. "Jefferson is saying that Nathan is alive and well and that the Prescott family helped him disappear. If they don't figure out where he stashed that dipshit's corpse, Nathan's going to take the blame for everything."
"No. No, he can't..." Max kept shaking her head. After everything they'd done, everything they'd gone through–it couldn't just be for nothing. "Jefferson killed him. He told me so himself."
"I don't think alternate reality testimony counts in court." She held Max by the shoulders, her blue eyes fierce. "Can you think of anything else he said? Like a clue?"
Thinking about the dark room was something Max tried to avoid. Sometimes she woke with the feeling of duct tape on her wrists or the prick of a syringe in her neck. But those disjointed snatches of conversation stayed with her always, Jefferson's ravings about his work. "No. He just said Nathan was dead and buried and that they'd never find him."
"Fuck. Fuck Jefferson. We should've shot him that night at the Vortex party."
"No, Chloe. He was expecting us. I already saw him kill you once." Max pressed her palms against her eyes, trying to blot out the memory–the gunshot, the spurt of blood, and Chloe, wide-eyed, falling... dead before she hit the ground.
"Hey." Chloe's grabbed her wrists pulled them gently down. She took Max's face in her hands and looked into her teary eyes. "We're okay. We're both here and we're hella okay. We just need to get our Sherlock and Watson on and figure this out."
Max forced herself to take several long, slow breaths while she let her eyes drink in the sight of that beautiful scowling face she loved so much. "I feel like we have all these puzzle pieces but they all belong to different puzzles."
Chloe removed her perpetual beanie and tugged it onto Max's head. "Hey!" Max protested as the fabric came down over her eyes. Chloe tugged it up a bit and grinned at her.
"That is your official Sherlock hat."
Max raised a sceptical eyebrow. "Do I look hardcore now?"
"You look adorable."
They both started when Chloe's phone buzzed. She glanced at it. "I said I'd help out over on Oak Street today. But if you need me to stay..."
Max shook her head. "It's all right. I'll go help Joyce." Doing something normal like peeling or chopping might help get her mind off things. "But tonight we should try to find out more about Susan and Michelle. Maybe it'll help make the puzzle pieces fit together."
Chloe held her fist out and Max bumped it with her own. "Deal, Super Max."
The peeling and chopping did help, but all day the thought nagged at her that the missing puzzle piece was really Nathan Prescott's corpse.