Nine: Vandal

The Bay Café's interior was a mix of fake wood panelling, chrome, and pleather seats. The scents of coffee and doughnuts filled the air. It sure as fuck isn't the Two Whales, Chloe thought as she raised a paper cup to her lips and sipped her lukewarm coffee. It was like a wannabe Starbucks in the only town in Oregon without one. But what it did have... was WiFi.

A bar and stools were set up against the side window wall, which currently gave diners a view of the ocean. The view used to be of the motel across the street, but the storm had cleared that up. Hella depressing view, but at least they couldn't see the ruins of the lighthouse. Chloe fucking hated seeing it, which she did at least once a day out of the corner of her eye no matter how hard she tried not to look. She still felt a twinge each time; more than the rubble, more than the tents and the donations, it always made her remember the price Max had paid to save her life.

Raindrops beaded the window like tears and slipped down the pane in long streams. The patter of the afternoon downpour might have been soothing if it weren't mostly drowned out by the keening of One Direction's latest chart topper. Chloe cast Max an envious glance, her eyes lingering on the earbuds shielding her from the boyband ode. It was the third 1D song in as many hours. If she ever found out who assembled the café's playlist, she was going to tear them a new one. Chloe's earbuds had perished along with her laptop, CD player, and house, and she hadn't gotten around to buying a new pair.

The laptop (Max's) on the bar in front of Chloe displayed yet another article profiling Mark Jefferson and detailing his rise to fame in the 1990s. The fawning tone and obvious admiration of the author made Chloe want to puke up the glazed chocolate doughnut she'd noshed on half an hour ago. So, instead of doing the research she was actually supposed to be doing, she stole a glance at Max.

Chloe let her eyes linger on Max's profile, the freckles that speckled her cheeks, her pale blue eyes, currently scanning the tiny screen of her phone, her hella luscious lips. Without taking her eyes from the phone, Max popped a powdered doughnut hole into her mouth. If Chloe kissed her now, those lips would taste of icing sugar. Her gaze traced the line of Max's throat. She wanted to run her mouth along that bare skin, to feel Max's pulse leap beneath her lips like it had the other day when they'd woken up in Susan's bed. She wanted that bed to be theirs, those sheets. She wanted to lie close to her with nothing between them, nothing stopping them, just the heat of Max's skin against hers, and the chance to run her hands over ever inch of her body.

Noticing Chloe's gaze, Max paused and pulled out her earbuds. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing. Just... thinking."

"About..."

Chloe flashed her best grin. "Things."

Max's brow crinkled up, her air suspicious. It was adorable. "What things?"

Leaning closer so that her shoulder pressed up against Max's, her arm brushing Max's arm, "Hella gay things."

The ring of the bell on the café door, made Max jump even as a blush was creeping up her cheeks. Glancing over her shoulder, Chloe got a look at the new customer, a tall thin guy in his twenties. He was an elementary school teacher. Not one of her teachers of course–he'd started later than that. Mister... Tanner, maybe? He scanned the room for a place to sit but when he noticed them, his brow creased a little. Chloe scowled at him. She was about to demand if he had a problem, but he hurried over to the counter and rang the bell for service.

"Asshole," Chloe muttered.

"Chloe?"

She shook her head. "Nothing. Think I've had as much as I can take of Jeffersuck for one day." They needed to do research. Fine. Max could try to find info on Susan Baker and Michelle (still no last name). But there was no way she was going to let Max research Jefferson. Max had been a wreck during their time in Seattle. And not in a sobbing-on-the-floor kind of way either. It had more of a quiet brooding sort of wreck, the kind where someone kept it all in and let it eat at them until something finally snapped. Chloe had been scared as fuck. Scared that she wouldn't be able to get through to Max, that she'd lose her. But they'd gotten through it. They were okay. But Jefferson was still a trigger and she needed to keep Max away from that as much as she could.

"Do you want to switch? I could–"

"No."

"For cereal, Chloe, I–"

"Max." Reaching out, Chloe caught one of Max's hands in hers and held on to it. "Let me do this for you. Kay?"

Max's fingers squeezed hers. "Okay."

Waiting for his order, Mr. Tanner's gaze lingered on their joined hands. And he was frowning again. When Chloe glared at him, he looked away.

"Why don't we pack up for now?" Max suggested.

"All right. Just give me a sec. The coffee just hit my bladder."

A few minutes later, Max was waiting for her outside the washroom with her laptop and other gear, ready to head back to tent city. "Chloe?" Max began as they walked together towards the café door. "I.. Well there was a tab open when I was closing my laptop and..."

She pushed open the exit door, Max following right behind. "Shit. I should've closed all that stuff."

They paused under the awning as Chloe rifled through her pockets for the junker's keys. "No," Max said, "it's not that, it's..."

"Hm?"

"Chloe, did you vandalize Mark Jefferson's Wikipedia page?"

Shit! Chloe rubbed the back of her neck, avoiding Max's gaze. "I just said he was motherfucking asswipe who got off on taking pictures of doped up high school girls. It's the fucking truth."

Much to Chloe's surprise, Max flung her arms around Chloe's neck, almost knocking the breath out of her. "I love you." And then her lips crashed against Chloe's, hot and sudden and demanding, quickly leaving Chloe out of breath.

"Wow, Super Max, that was..."

"Super?" Max said, and bit her lip, reverting to shy hipster mode.

Chloe draped an arm around her shoulders as they braved the rain and headed back to the truck. She grinned. "If there's anything else you need vandalized, I'm your girl."

"I'll keep that in mind."

And in spite of the shitty weather, and the debris across the street, and the weird-ass visions, Chloe felt like the world was just about perfect.

#

When she got tired of staring at the inside of her eyelids, Max stared at the tent's ceiling instead. The glow from the floodlights, pouring through the canvas, cast everything in neon green, reminding Max of a laser tag place she'd been to when she was fourteen. It had been a birthday party for one of her new friends in Seattle. A twinge of guilt shot through her as often happened when she thought about Seattle and what a shitty friend she'd been to Chloe those five years. But that was then. Now...

Shifting under heaps of blankets, Max turned over onto her side to look at her friend. Her girlfriend. Her best friend. Her Chloe.

Not wanting to wake her, Max resisted the urge to reach out and touch her. Her right arm was folded under the pillow and Max's eyes traced the tangled vines of Chloe's tattoo, the green pigment seeming almost aglow in the greenish light. This all still came as a surprise to Max, the way she felt about Chloe, the way Chloe made her feel. How Chloe's hands, sliding down her back, sent shivers up and down her spine. How her kisses, shifting from slow and deliberate, to urgent and insistent, replaced the butterflies in Max's stomach with a knot of heat.

When she'd returned to Arcadia Bay, she'd put off contacting Chloe, uncertain of whether they would still be friends. She certainly hadn't thought, Oh hey I'll reconnect with Chloe and maybe we'll hook up. Never in a million years. It seemed as unlikely as... as suddenly developing superpowers.

And knowing that she could have missed it all, that Chloe could have died that day in girls' washroom, without Max even recognising her... Max's chest clenched, her breath catching in her throat. She still woke up sometimes with the sound of that gunshot ringing in her ears. Max squeezed her eyes shut, biting her lip, but her mind was already playing the horror reel on her inner projector. Chloe's blood pooling on the dirty bathroom tiles. The ambulance coming–eventually. Declared dead at the scene. A crime scene. Cops taking photos while Chloe's body cooled. And then the body bag, a black plastic bag that they shoved her into and zipped up all nice and neat as they wheeled it though Blackwell Academy's halls and out to door. The county morgue. Chloe's corpse in the freezer. Autopsy. Joyce IDing the body.

Hot tears streamed down Max's cheeks. She bit her lip harder, forcing herself to keep quiet. She didn't want to wake Chloe; she didn't want to have to tell her why she was crying.

It was all Jefferson's fault. All of this. Without him, Nathan wouldn't have killed Rachel. And Chloe wouldn't have been in the washroom that day.

They had to find Nathan. Jefferson had to have stashed Nathan's body somewhere nearby; he certainly hadn't had time to go far out of town. And Jefferson liked to be clever, liked to think he was so much smarter than everyone. It made Max sick when she remembered the way he'd toyed with Kate. He'd suggested to her that maybe it was all an attempt to get attention. Meanwhile, he'd known exactly what had happened to Kate–he'd been responsible for it–and he'd done his best to push her.

Max could still hear his voice, lecturing her in the dark room. That moment innocence evolves into corruption... Bullshit. He'd enjoyed controlling people, being the one who shaped their destiny, the artist who shaped the world. Sometimes Max wondered if she had been any different in how she'd used her powers, changing people's fates–and, in spite of her best intentions, not always for the better.

Fuck all that, Max. It's all bullshit.

The memory of Chloe's voice drowned out the echoes of Jefferson's. She had said that to Max in Seattle, during a particularly bad moment when Max had voiced her fears about being like Jefferson. Chloe had shut down that line of discussion immediately. Max had to keep reminding herself, though, that the real difference between her and Mark Jefferson was that he enjoyed hurting people.

Slowly, still hoping to avoid waking Chloe, Max eased out of their nest of blankets. The rustling seemed thunderous to her ears, but Chloe didn't stir. Operation sneak out of bed a success.

The chill air in the tent sent goose bumps prickling her skin. She pulled on her coat and grabbed her hoodie to drape over her knees for extra warmth. And them she booted up her laptop and began to read Chloe's notes on Jefferson. Somewhere in those notes was a clue and they had to find it.

Max read until her eyelids grew heavy and she had to keep catching herself from slumping forward onto her laptop screen. Visions of the dark room and of the storm danced behind her eyelids. But she didn't care. She would ferret out Jefferson's secret just as she had before. Fuck the nightmares. She'd do it anyway.

A half formed dream of the storm inhaling Arcadia Bay's main strip, shattered and Max woke with the sound of breaking glass in her ears. Giving up for now, she shut down the laptop, crawled back under the blankets, and fell into a fitful sleep. It wasn't until the next morning that she realized the breaking glass hadn't been part of her dream.