The view from the top of the water tower is not much. On the left, the mansions of the rich part of Arcadia Bay stare like amber-eyed wolves at the glowing white orb of the Blackwell clock. You can hear their distant howling in the wind. Straight ahead, beyond the swath of dark woods, is the hoi polloi quarter and the Arcadia Bay Avenue, with all its gas stations and liquor stores and pawn shops flickering like their power is being cut off for unpaid bills. Two Whales Diner is in the middle of that, its aluminum reflecting the light cacophony, its own neon sign displaying some pattern lighting that was high-tech back in the 80s.
There is the infinite, badly stitched scar of the railroad. There's the beach. There's Frank's RV in its usual spot.
The right half of the world is the ocean, stretching on forever, still and solid like a mirror, reflecting the sky full of stars and the Milky Way that's arching back eastward across the glass dome, to the wooded hilltops and beyond.
Fine. It's pretty, but who gives a shit?
Behind her and the tower, invisible but for the beam of its sweeping, all-seeing eye, is the lighthouse.
Is it really looking, or is it just going through the motion, like the rest of the town?
She climbs down the rusty ladder, looks up and nods at her handiwork.
WHERE IS RACHEL AMBER?
Wake up, dipshits. Wake up and pray that when I find her, I won't have the same choice to make that SuperMax did in my headtrip.
That's not the only question, of course. Far from it. The water tower is not big enough to fit them all. Is Jefferson Rachel's "older male"? Is Nathan Prescott involved? What do Frank and the underground drug lab have to do with it all? On and on, and on.
And then there are the other questions. Questions that she would not graffiti for all the town to see. Questions she's not that eager to face even in private.
Why was her knife in Rachel's bag? What was that vision of her in the woods about? What did she do for two weeks between Rachel's disappearance and her participation in the study at the Frank Institute?
Those are the kinds of questions that make you climb the water tower to be alone, hoping for - and dreading - a flashback that would provide another clue. Which doesn't come, of course. Not when you need it. The flashbacks she gets while tagging the tower are pointless, random, kind of annoying.
"Bitch straight up lied to my face!" Chloe Price shouts, speeding south down Arcadia Bay Avenue, away from the Two Whales and that filthy RV.
There are two moons in the sky.
"What is that?" Max says. "Jesus, Chloe, look up at the sky!"
"Beautiful. I don't give a shit. The world is ending. Cool."
"You're not listening! Something major is going down!"
There's a big splash, as some kid cannonballs from the plank.
"Rachel Amber won't be coming, either," Max shouts over the music.
Justin winces. His red eyes regard Max uncomprehendingly.
"Damn, I was just thinking about Rachel and Chloe tonight… If they showed up together right now, shit would end. Rachel could always shut Victoria down."
"You want me to cut you, bitch?"
Chloe stabs Frank. Chloe stabs Frank.
Now, looking up at the tower and the sky, she gets another one.
"Are you sure you don't want to catch a bus, or…?"
"Nope," Rachel says. "If we're gonna skip, we're gonna do it right."
Rachel is wearing a blue flannel shirt torn at the shoulder and black jeans, making both look like they came from a Paris boutique. The two of them are standing under the same water tower, in pretty much the same spot Chloe is now, next to the office of the pointsmaster, or whatever the hell this box of concrete once was. There is no pointsmaster in there now, and there hasn't been one in like ten years. A northbound freight train is slowly passing by.
"Come on!" Rachel shouts.
They run.
When the flashback winks out, her heart beats like she's still running. She follows the railroad out of the woods, crosses the deserted street, passes the plain white building of the True Cornerstone Church, and walks over to Harbor Inn, a block away. The white and red sign with the arrow - Parking! Jacuzzi! - flickers like the rest of the town. Like it, too, is on the verge of winking out of existence.
Steph is in the Lotus position on the bed, with her notebook in her lap. Her spiral notebook. Retro, worthy of Arcadia Bay.
Her hair is jacuzzi-wet, but she's wearing the same clothes.
"How'd it go?" she asks.
"Come and see."
They walk out into the Parking! lot. Chloe crosses her arms on her chest.
"Wow," Steph says. "So bad. And impressive. I could never climb up there."
"Well… I could never be a Dungeon Master."
"Everyone would be dead in about fifteen minutes, I'm guessing."
"Five. So what have you been up to?"
"I'm just trying to outline the case."
"Oh… the what?"
They come back inside. Steph opens the notebook page and turns it around towards Chloe.
There's a numbered list:
1. Older male (Mark Jefferson?).
2. Letter.
3. Backpack.
4. Drugs
5. Ticket to the game
6. Knife. Except "Knife" is not on the list, because Chloe never told Steph about the knife.
Why not? What exactly made her omit the knife? So what that it was in the bag? Why does that scare her?
She can't say, even to herself, and that pisses her off. The fear is the enemy now. So fuck fear.
She takes the pen and adds the knife to the list.
Steph raises her eyebrow.
"What knife?"
"I found the knife in Rachel's bag. My knife."
"Was there…?"
"Blood? No. Fuck, no. Clean. But I was still too chickenshit to tell you about it."
"Why?"
"I don't know why, Steph. I don't know why the knife was in that bag. I don't know why I'm scared that it was. I keep thinking that maybe I know why, but the drug made me forget it, or… I'll have a flashback and remember, and…"
Damon Merrick stabs Rachel in the arm. Chloe sees it coming from about a nautical mile away. From the moment Rachel conjures a two-by-four and turns an increasingly frightening conversation into a battle. Chloe watches Rachel swing and connect, and Damon fall and drop the knife, and Frank trip and fall, and knows. She watches Rachel dial up another swing, and she watches Damon's hand grope in the dust for the knife, but it's like she's trapped on the other side of the mirror. Trapped in the block of ice.
Like she isn't even there.
Knife dripping. Horns. Dark jacket. Arcadian…
Chloe, Who Wasn't There.
"Let's just work the case, step by step," Steph says.
"Huh? The case? Oh, yeah. Number one: older male. So. We can tail Jefferson and see where he goes and what he does, but first we have to find out where he lives, which I guess shouldn't be that hard? Except, it might not be him at all, seeing how we have nothing but my trip vision to go on. Oh, and the letter, step two, which mentions that the man is older, which we're young, so nine out of every ten males in this dumbass town are older. And then there are out-of-towners. Fuck.
Sorry, Steph, I'm a bit overwhelmed here. I know you're here to support Detective Price, but can I be Watson to your Sherlock for the next five minutes?"
Steph frowns at the list, looks at Chloe, then at the backpack on the floor. Silently, she picks it up, dumps the contents on the bed and pushes the laptop towards Chloe.
"Let's start by you hacking that."
"I'm not a hacker, Steph," Chloe scoffs.
"All you have to do is guess her password, Chloe. You know Rachel better than anyone."
Do I, though? Chloe thinks. She rolls her eyes at Steph, but her hands are spinning the laptop around, opening it. The user: Rachel Dawn Amber. The password field is waiting.
She stares at it hatefully.
"Ugh. What do I do?"
"Just start typing. Try things."
She types "password." How dumb. Rachel would never.
RachelAmber.
RachelDawn.
ChloePrice. Yeah, right.
RachelChloe.
RachelMark. Ugh.
She keeps going, though. Going through a million ridiculous combinations. Getting frustrated and sometimes blushing (AmberPrice69).
"What do we have here?" Max says, pulling a sheet of paper from the behind the visor of David Madsen's car. It's a receipt from Two Whales, dated 11-27-08, for eggs and sausage, toast and coffee. Come Sea Us Again! Your Server: Joyce
On the back, there's a note from Your Server Joyce:
"It was an honor having you in the diner.
Nice to know that gentlemen still exist. Love to talk again with you soon.
BTW, the name is Joyce if you forgot :)"
If the note itself isn't enough to make her vomit, the acronym and the emoji might just do the trick.
"That might be a useful password…" Max says.
"Bullshit is what that might be," Chloe says out loud. "Why would Rachel…?"
She stops there, registering Steph's face.
"Don't worry about it," she says. "Just thinking out loud."
"No worries at all," Steph says, insincerely. She pulls out her phone and dives inside, for comfort.
There's obviously no way Rachel would use the date Joyce decided that a day short of two months was a suitable grieving period for a proper widow. Once again, the flashback was zero help. Probably…
RachelAmber722
Rachel722
Amber722
ChloePrice311
"Fuck!" She snaps, making Steph jump. "Sorry."
What's your password, Rachel?
Rachel is on one knee, Chloe's hand in hers.
"For but a little longer, I beseech, continue in thy service to my schemes. And when they are complete, I swear to thee: we shall fly beyond this isle, the corners of the world our mere prologue. I'll seek to make thy happiness so great that e'en the name of liberty's forgot. What sayest thou to my most hopeful wish?"
"Yes," Chloe whispers, back at the Inn.
Tempest
TheTempest
Tempest050810
Chloe shrieks.
The laptop screen turns blue. Words appear: Welcome, Rachel Dawn Amber.
