Disclaimer: Anything familiar to you, I don't own. This is a work of fanfiction for personal amusement, fulfillment and a bit of self-therapy. I make nothing from any of it.
Chapter Forty-Seven: Sunodia
January 29th, 2012 2:21 PM
Chloe stood with her back against the house, trying not to shiver. It wasn't that she was worried about anyone seeing her shiver, so much as being stubborn. Oh, sure, the air nipped at her nose and cheeks but if she couldn't go out back and have a smoke, this was going to be an unpleasant sunday. Pompidou, at least, had few compunctions about throwing himself down into the grass and rolling about. Still resisting the urge to shiver, she grinned at the dog and took a long draw. It would be a lot less cold if there was a Max or a Rachel at her side. Or both, she thought. The girls were back at campus spending the day picking between their final two themes for the Vortex Club party in a couple of weeks and trying to settle on decorations. Chloe had no horse in the fight between the themes of "Eros and Ludus" and "Otherworldly Love." Though she had spent the day before helping them whittle their ideas down to two, she was more than fine letting them spearhead this particular fight. Her already low interest in being an official part of the club had been halved upon hearing that this was how they intended to 'test' two new members.
The truth was, as Chloe crossed her left arm across her and shuffled in place for a moment, she knew exactly why she had not been taking an active role in things lately. If she was honest, it was simple because she was tired all the time. Between school and trying to find work I barely have any energy left at the end of a week. Opportunities for work around the neighborhood were finally drying up in the neighborhood. It didn't help that she was simply not feeling rested when she woke. What she had not told the others was that this was no recent thing: it had started back in October and worsened with the passing days. At first, she had thought it was relief: knowing Max's secret, being open with Steph, being free of the Madsens; there was plenty to be thankful for. Now, though if Chloe had to put a word to the way she felt when she opened her eyes in the morning, the closest she could come would be 'dread'.
Car crashes around every corner, a ticking time bomb in the boys' dorm and they still want to wait before we bring him down. Chloe admonished herself for the callous thought. It wasn't that simple. Everyone involved wanted Nathan stopped, maybe none of them more so than Max herself. She understood why, as a group, they held back: there was another threat in the school, now and the worst of it all was that it was down to the four of them to bring Nathan and Jefferson down. Chloe dropped the butt of her cigarette and stomped it into the earth.
They had all of this on their plates and still had to maintain grades, avoid David and not let anyone, especially each other, get hurt. When Max and Rachel had approached her about joining the Vortex Club, the idea of spending day after day with Victoria's snide remarks or that sick fucker Prescott staring them down while at least half of the club talked down on those of the lower and middle class had made her want to claw her eyes from her head. Frankly, with all of this laid out in front of them, dread felt like a completely acceptable emotion to feel. The best part was that this was only temporary. If they survived all of this, there was still graduation looming a couple of years ahead of them and the journey into a great unknown.
Chloe was not a moron, she recognized that most of these thoughts were a byproduct of rough mental health. One of her first steps in attempting to fix this had already been taken in the form of a phone call and a little bit of bribery. She only hoped to get a return call some time soon. Chloe cracked her neck and opened the back door. With one brief burst of a whistle, Chloe summoned the dog to her and watched Pompidou leap the small single step between the house and the backyard. Little show off. It was pleasant to shut the door against the cold and stretch out in the warmth.
Set down at the kitchen table for a moment, Chloe had easier access to Pompidou, who seemed all about the personal attention he was about to get. Usually, the dog had a bit too much energy to convince him to stay still so soon after coming inside but today perhaps the cool had mellowed him, some. Unless one counted the wagging of his tail shaking roughly his entire hind end, he stayed in place and allowed Chloe to itch his chin, returning a quick lick across her knuckles in response. When Pompidou finally lost interest in the attention he shot off toward another room of the house, probably in search of Steph.
Setting aside her jacket, Chloe caught a glimpse of the tattoo on her right arm. Usually, looking at it very much improved her mood. It was a piece made to celebrate people and things. She could trace a finger along the ribbon and see the people most important to her in life push up against that ribbon: Max, Rachel, Steph, Mikey. They were all there, represented in bits and bobs. Sure, Mikey was gone for the moment but she doubted he was out of her life for long. The rest of them were still, around and she could see in their faces that they were all coming to realize the same thing Chloe had: Chloe was stagnating. If dad could see me now, struggling to get up in the morning, what would he think?
Chloe rose to her feet, kicked her shoes off and set them by the back door. She would have loved to lay down and dream. In that case, she could confront all of these feelings in her head. The truth was that when dreams came as of late, they were short and fitful and her attempts to control them were usually unsuccessful. She settled on the couch in the living room and listened to the distant sound of Steph talking to Pompidou. In her dreams, there were distant noises, too. They were dangers in the distance and not even realizing that she was dreaming dispelled her fear of them. Maybe she couldn't go vigilante like Rachel had and she really would rather stick needles in her eyes than join the Vortex Club, but that didn't mean she had to lay down and be useless when all the car accidents were waiting around the corner. I don't need to lay here and wait for the future to run me over.
At this point footsteps sounded from closer than she expected and Chloe lifted her head from one of the throw pillows beneath it. For the moment, Steph seemed to be entirely wrapped up in the book in her had, so much so that if Pompidou were as prone to being underfoot that day as usual, Chloe would probably have been picking her up off the floor. It seemed they were both caught up in something. She decided not to interrupt Steph and instead lowered her head back to the pillow as the girl walked into the room and settled into the La-Z-Boy she enjoyed so much. Chloe tried to turn her attention back to the problem of what she should be doing. After a few seconds of staring up at the ceiling more, though, she heard the book slam shut.
"Alright," Steph called, prompting Chloe to roll over on the couch, lying on her side as she lifted her head and looked at the girl. "What's going on in your head?" Chloe pondered very quickly the best way to put it.
"I'm kind of lost in thought," she oversimplified. Steph seemed fine with calling bullshit on that, because she sighed, sat her book aside and stood up almost immediately. "What?"
"My car, ready to go in five minutes," Steph instructed, tersely. For a moment, the auburn-haired artist stared down at her, challenging her to argue. Chloe slowly sat up and tried to figure out how she was going to get out of whatever Steph was plotting.
"I don't know," Chloe drawled, "I'm kind of-"
"You're frustrated and bored both," Steph told her. Chloe did not contradict this because she knew it was true. "You need to do something and then you need to figure out what to do." Isn't that kind of backwards? She knew what Steph was saying and did not think being a smartass would get her out of this or dispute what Steph was saying. "So, five minutes, at my car. We're going to do something special."
"When you say do something special, is it something expensive because I feel like enough of a mooch-"
"Shush." With that dismissive wave of the hand Steph took off, whistling for Pompidou. By the sound of the faint creak of springs Chloe was going to guess he was, even now, jumping down from her bed. Without having really agreeing to give in to Steph's demands, Chloe now found herself obeying. Though it took more of an effort than it had any right to take, Chloe rose from the couch and retrieved her boots from the back door. Pompidou and Steph returned a before she had gotten her feet in both and Steph opened the sliding glass door. Pompidou had no issue with returning to the back yard where at least he had room to run around or lie in the sun. The problem lie in the fact that a curtain thick grey clouds hid the sun away. That wasn't doing anything for her mood or the temperature outside.
Still, Chloe found herself in the front passenger seat of Steph's Cavalier within a couple of more minutes. Steph valiantly resisted her every attempt to pry any information about their destination out of her. By the time they were halfway out of the neighborhood Chloe had given up that line of questioning already. It was much easier to sit back and let Steph do what Steph wanted, something made all the more agreeable in that that was usually the right thing. Steph had guessed correctly that stagnation was starting to get to her. It felt like an ugly cycle to Chloe: she was tired and feeling a little hopeless so she did not know what to do but the lack of doing made her feel tired and hopeless.
"So, let's talk about it." This was the simple prompt Steph offered as they left the neighborhood and made for one one of the main roads which led out of the city. If Chloe was a betting girl, she would place their destination as the city of Bruss. The next largest city was an hour and a half away from them. This trip, at least, would be closer to forty-five minutes. That left a fair amount of time for the girls to do as Steph suggested and talk about 'it' no matter that 'it' was complicated and multifaceted. 'It' was actually rather difficult to define in a few words. Thankfully, Steph was patient and let her gather her thoughts as she watched and waited for the mostly dead foliage to change to burnt trees.
Rachel was not fond of any trips that took her out toward the site of her last fiery breakdown. Chloe couldn't say she blamed the girl. To put it very lightly, the land had been devastated by the fire and as far as Chloe could tell, the closer one got to ground zero the worse the damage was. Come springtime a great rebirth was supposed to occur but Chloe had seen the intensity of the flames that started the wildfire first hand. Out of curiosity she had taken a break from reading up on Mark Jefferson one day, and searched out the effects of a fire. The more intense it was, the more damage it did to the soil around it and the less nutrients that would return to the land. She rather thought the sight of Frank's suicide was going to be a ruined patch of land for a bit.
Chloe sighed as she landed on a way to start the conversation at large.
"I don't think there's anything I can really do to help Max and Rachel when it comes to the Vortex Club and since we're not doing anything else about Nathan, I don't know what else to do. There's other stuff in life and I get it. I'm trying to do something about it but a large part of that is just waiting."
"Does that mean you called Skip finally?" Steph queried. If Chloe focused she could vaguely remember explaining her plan to Steph. After Skip had gotten himself fired from Blackwell security, he began focusing on his music in the form of a band called PissHead. On the other hand, the man still had to eat and Chloe had spotted him working at town brake shop. Chloe had reached out to the guy asking him for a recommendation to his boss. Whether he was going to give it or not remained to be seen. She hoped so, though. There weren't a ton of job opportunities for a teenager in Arcadia Bay that didn't make her want to roll her eyes.
"Yeah," Chloe answered. "But I didn't get an answer form him yet. That's just that one part though. I want to do something to help take care of Nathan and Jefferson but I don't want to put myself in a situation where I have to be in a room with Prescott all the time."
"Chloe," the calmer girl intoned, "so do I. The thing is, Max and Rachel are right. All we can really do is sit and wait for a sign." This earned a frustrated sigh from the bluenette in the passenger seat. One thing was for sure, she had forgotten about wondering precisely where Steph was dragging them. She decided to expose the heart of her frustration with this plan.
"That's just it, I've spent the last two years waiting on one thing or another. I don't want to wait. I don't want Jefferson looming over any of us, much less Max anymore. I don't want some horrible future event to hang over our heads for the rest of our time at Blackwell. I want this over. I don't want to have to worry about my girlfriends or my friends, not you, not Kate, not Brooke, not Stella. It seems stupid to leave Jefferson in place."
"Max scrapped trying to get Nathan help because her last two attempts didn't work," Steph led in. That, to Chloe, seemed like a hell of a way to remind Chloe that Max's attempts to neutralize the threat that was Nathan Prescott only seemed to end in him becoming volatile. "Are you thinking about that?"
"No," Chloe said, and then made a confession that Steph probably needed to hear. "We also scrapped it because if it somehow scared Jefferson off of Nathan and he started acting out on his own, there's no telling what his M.O. would be. For all we know, he could be more dangerous and harder to catch without Nathan acting like a millstone. There's one other way, though. Max and Rachel aren't sure about it but..."
"But?"
"But I think it might be smarter?" Steph prompted her to continue, drawing a circle in the air with her extended fingers. "Get rid of Jefferson." An uneasy look split the girl's face: her brows furrowed and she grimaced. The girl's blue eyes did not look directly at Chloe. "Okay, Steph – are you imagining me shooting someone right now because, if so, stop it."
"Sorry," she said, turning slightly red in the cheeks ."That was shitty of me." Really, Chloe thought, it kind of was. To say that shooting someone who was hurting those she loved was beyond her would've been a lie. Chloe had already asked this question of herself once or twice before considering they were all repeatedly put into situations where she thought Rachel or Chloe might be at risk. "Chloe, I really am sorry."
"It's whatever. I just mean that I'm thinking about asking Max to help me start a campaign against Jefferson. If we leak everything he's done to the school and the town and make sure people pay attention, it might be enough to get rid of him."
"That could put you in a lot of peoples' crosshairs," Steph counseled, nervously. It was true enough that Mark Jefferson was already incredibly popular with the student body at Blackwell Academy. Even Kate hero-worshipped him. Chloe could understand: there was someone out there who had done what you wanted to do with your life and at a pretty young age had accrued enough fame and fortune to retire to teaching. It didn't hurt that he was conventionally attractive. Chloe just had to hope that if people knew what Jefferson had been accused of already they might consider him enough of a threat to remove him from his position. "Max and Rachel are taking enough risk pissing off Nathan. You doing that could piss off Nathan and Jefferson and everyone else besides. Besides, Chloe, I know you. When you do something, you put your signature on it even if you don't mean to. Like, big time." Chloe wasn't entirely sure what Steph meant but there was a decent chance she was right about that, too.
"I'll talk to Max and Rachel about it, but I wanted to run the idea by you."
"All ears," Steph told her, before focusing her eyes back on the relatively clear road in front of her. Few people drove out to Arcadia Bay for much of anything. It was seen by towns like Bruss as something of a shithole. Most days, Chloe wasn't in a position to argue, but Arcadia Bay did have the people Chloe loved, so it was her shithole.
"Well, Max has the mailing list for the school, both internal and external. She's had it for about a year. After that, all I need to do is tell people about the shady shit in Jefferson's past. At least six different women have accused him of not knowing the word 'no' without a restraining order and with the shit Rachel found the other day, it looks like he's really unpredictable. If I spread it to enough places, emailed some local newspaper or something,I could get Wells to fire him. If he leaves Blackwell he might not be able to hurt anyone here." Steph did not immediately answer. Her fingers drummed against the pale grey steering wheel and though her face didn't change Chloe could tell that she was thinking.
"This is kind of like that conversation we had with Max about what happens if Nathan goes after someone else, isn't it?" Chloe hadn't particularly thought about it and she was left with a sour taste in her mouth at admitting it, but yes, that was familiar. "Should we stop it, can we stop it?"
"I don't follow," Chloe lied. She mostly did so to prompt Steph to lay it all out in plain language. Sometimes you had to put it in 'Captain Dummy' talk.
"Well, maybe if we get Jefferson kicked out, he won't hurt anyone here, but he could hurt someone somewhere else." Chloe had heard that argument too many times from Max. She hated that a bit of the frustration there came out when she turned to Steph but the annoyance in her own voice rang crystal clear.
"Maybe, but we're not responsible for every bad thing that happens all over the world, right?"
"Chloe," Steph said, "we're not responsible for most of the bad shit that happens at Blackwell. But Max has always put that on herself and it looks like you and Rachel are too. I'm willing to do the same for you three and because I have friends here, but I just want it said: we're not responsible for making this decision."
"Someone has to be," Chloe told her. "Maybe this was a bad idea. Next year I could totally take a photography class, but that's next year. This year, I'm kind of shit out of luck." Steph nodded.
"So what do you want to do? Want to talk to them about your idea anyway?"
"No," Chloe sighed in surrender as she turned back toward the windshield and was forced to adjust the seat belt digging into her shoulder. "You're right, we have to stop him while we have a chance."
"I didn't say that. I wouldn't push you to think like Max and Rachel just because I agree with them."
"Then I guess I've thought it through and I do, too. But you know what this means?" Steph shrugged in response. "This means that even if I don't join the Vortex Club, I'm gonna have to help them out if I want to be able to be in the middle of it with them. Gross." It was gross. The Vortex Club might throw parties but it was also the most epic example of privilege and power in wealth. The club was essentially invite only and half of its membership (before Max and Rachel had gotten aboard) was made up of the four richest families represented at Blackwell. To top it all off it had been essentially headed by Nathan Prescott. His power and privilege kept the school from asking any questions, it allowed them to do blatantly and obviously illegal things in broad daylight. It was just an exercise in the same power that protected Nathan from the repercussions of his behavior on a day to day basis.
"If you come up with another way, run with it. I mean, I'm not gonna start helping the club out. I don't particularly want to spend a bunch of time with Little Psycho and Victoria and her people, but whenever we need to plan something or do something I'm in. When we wanna drink and play tabletop I'm in, when someone fucks with my family and I need to egg their houses or keep you three from kicking their asses too hard, I'm in."
"And that's why we love you, Steph." Chloe grinned widely at the girl beside her. "You're willing to get down and dirty with us."
"If this is you flirting, you gotta cut it out, someone's going to get the wrong idea."
As Chloe had predicted, Steph's idea of something special was something expensive. They had a very early dinner sitting side-by-side around a hibachi grill alongside a group of strangers who seemed hell bent on talking to one another as much as possible during the meal. As Steph said herself, the only things missing were Max, Rachel, Mikey and Brooke. Next time, they agreed, they would plan ahead. In the end, though, Chloe had to admit that as they picked at their meals and mutually decided it would not be worth the risk to try their fake IDs for a beer, she felt a little more awake and alive. Steph had been right from the beginning: Chloe had just needed to do something. The fresh air, the sound of people enjoying themselves and a dinner that consisted of more than frozen meals or something that could be whipped up in less than ten minutes all did her good.
So, maybe it was time to see to it that she did something, after all.