Friday, September 6th

I sat at the edge of my dorm room bed, my crossed ankles rocking back and forth as I stared blankly at the far wall. On my lap, I clutched the edge of a folded set of papers: it was a newsletter, handed to me just a few minutes before by Juliet Watson.

It was funny, in a way, how quickly the fabric of a day could shift. It was funny, in a way, how much of a roller coaster the last couple of weeks had been. What wasn't funny at all was how that roller coaster had just flown off the rails and would, at any moment, crash into the ground.

And that's what it felt like: suspended in the air and completely numb. My heart had hollowed out. My mind had gone flat and quiet. Some small part of me registered surprise that I wasn't crying. I was too surprised, too shocked. And that was saying something, given what had happened already over the past several days.

The headline article of Juliet's newsletter read, "REMEMBERING CHLOE PRICE."

A photo below the headline, cropped in a way that gave it terrible composition, showed a girl with short blue hair riding a skateboard down a sidewalk. A lit cigarette poked out between two of her fingers and her lips were twisted into a smirk. At first glance, it looked nothing like Chloe, nothing like my long-lost best friend. But that smirk? Those eyes? It was her.

And the piece of it that slammed into me like an emotional freight train? I'd already seen pictures of the blue-haired girl and I knew what had happened to her. But I hadn't recognized her; for weeks, it had never seriously crossed my mind that that girl could have been Chloe. The horrible irony was that I'd finally worked up the courage to go see her. I planned on doing it today, bringing with me two exciting and crazy topics that I hoped would break the ice of what I assumed would be an icy reunion. But there would be no reunion, there would be no comments or shared tears or excited questions or hugs.

Chloe Price was dead.

Sunday, August 25th

Two weeks ago, I sat at the kitchen counter, poking at a toaster waffle with a fork as I tried to clear my head of its noisy thoughts. I'd mostly finished packing for the move back to Arcadia Bay; I had two suitcases and a small stack of boxes already parked in the front hallway. But I still had so much on my mind, the ups and downs of which gave me occasional jolts of adrenaline.

Sometimes it was nervous adrenaline, because I was about to move out on my own for the first time. Sometimes it was socially anxious adrenaline, because I'd be meeting entirely new people at Blackwell Academy, something more than a little terrifying. Sometimes it was excited adrenaline, because I'd be studying photography under Mark Jefferson, a thought that made me want to swoon. And oftentimes, it was guilt-induced adrenaline, because of the likelihood that I'd come across Chloe. Chloe, who I hadn't spoken to in five years.

After receiving the acceptance letter from Blackwell and deciding to go, I spent weeks trying to come up with what to say to Chloe. I entered Chloe's number on my phone (after digging through a drawer of notebooks to find it) and tried starting a text message at least fifty times, all the while unsure if the number still even belonged to Chloe. But I didn't get far enough to worry about that because I couldn't figure out how to apologize with words on a phone. How could I possibly make up for five years of silence with a text message? I'd known for years that I'd fucked up with Chloe; I'd known that from the moment I left her house without telling her a thousand things that I should have told her. I knew that I'd utterly failed as a best friend. But the totality of my slow-motion, silent fuck up didn't hit me until I fully internalized that I'd probably see Chloe again soon.

Wowser, I'd really fucked up.

And that's the subject my brain slipped into as I poked at that waffle. I started to form a plan to meet Chloe at the Two Whales diner, assuming it was still there. I even wondered if I could show up at the Two Whales and talk to Chloe's mom first, assuming that she still worked there.

With every plan I started, it quickly reached a point where I groaned and gave up…and I almost reached that point yet again when my dad came running down the stairs, interrupting my train of thought. I looked up and froze: he wore the kind of strained expression that only came with bad news and had a couple of papers clutched in his hand.

He glanced at me briefly, barely meeting my eyes, before scooting over to mom. I furrowed my brow and watched them: dad leaned in close and whispered something, holding out the papers. Mom took the papers and started reading. Her eyes widened, her face paled, and then, after her eyes darted down several more lines, she raised her hand to her mouth in an almost movie-like gesture of shock. She looked at dad and then both of them glanced at me before whispering back and forth with urgent voices. It didn't take a detective to realize that whatever dad had found, it had something to do with me and it wasn't something good. A pit deepend in my stomach and I set my fork down, waiting. Finally, they both nodded and dad came over.

"Hey, sweetie," he said, his voice overly gentle like when he'd come with the news that the family hamster had died, "I found some…news this morning that you should see. This might be hard but we decided you should read it yourself and then we can talk through it."

He slid the papers over next to my plate.

I looked down: dad had printed out (yes, printed out) a couple of online articles, one from The Oregonian and another from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. The first one read, "THREE DEAD, ONE INJURED IN ARCADIA BAY SHOOTOUT" and the second read, "REAL ESTATE MOGUL AND WELL-KNOWN PHOTOGRAPHER AMONG DEAD IN OREGON COAST SHOOTOUT, MORE CRIMES UNCOVERED."

I snatched the papers over, my breath catching in my throat.

The first article featured a blurry photo of four people: the first of them was clearly Mark Jefferson, a sight that made my stomach flip. I didn't recognize the other three: a man with a wide face and glasses, a teenage boy with blonde hair, and a tall girl with blue hair. Given the photo's poor quality, I guessed that it must have been cropped out of a larger one. The caption said, "Image captured of the four persons involved, less than an hour before the incident: Mark Jefferson, Sean Prescott, Nathan Prescott, and a teenager whose name has not yet been released by local authorities."

I read the story as fast as I could:

Arcadia Bay, OR - Three people are dead and one injured after a shootout in a sleepy coastal town known mostly for its fishing industry and for Blackwell Academy, a highly selective private high school. The incident occurred in the late afternoon on Friday, August 23rd, at a local junkyard. The deceased include Sean Prescott, a local real estate developer, Mark Jefferson, a renowned photographer and teacher at Blackwell Academy, now with an alleged record of crimes against students, detailed below, and a teenager whose name has not yet been released. Wounded in the event was Nathan Prescott, son of the deceased Sean Prescott.

According to a statement from local police, the four persons arrived at the junkyard at approximately 5:00pm, at which point an argument ensued and all four drew weapons. Investigations are still underway to reconstruct the incident but ballistics testing has confirmed that Nathan Prescott was wounded by a bullet from Mr. Jefferson's weapon, that a bullet from Nathan Prescott's weapon injured his father, and that bullets from the as-yet unidentified teenager fatally wounded both the elder Mr. Prescott and Mr. Jefferson. A bullet from the elder Mr. Prescott's weapon killed the teenager.

The exact causes of the incident are still in question but testimony from Nathan Prescott and subsequent investigations from Arcadia Bay's police force, assisted by security personnel from Blackwell Academy, have uncovered a plot that has shocked both this small community and the wider world of art: evidence strongly suggests that Mr. Jefferson, known for his striking use of black-and-white photography, was responsible for the death of Rachel Amber, a local teen that had been missing for several months, and has been engaged in a systemic pattern of drugging, kidnapping, and photographing young women without their consent during his tenure at Blackwell Academy and before. As many of the victims of Jefferson's actions are underage, their names are currently being withheld. Blackwell Academy has yet to release a statement regarding these allegations.

The Arcadia Bay police have also suggested that there is evidence implicating Sean Prescott in financial support of Mark Jefferson's actions. Whether or not the elder Prescott was aware of Jefferson's alleged criminal activities is uncertain at this time.

Nathan Prescott has also admitted to involvement in Rachel Amber's death and has suggested that the events surrounding Ms. Amber's death led to the confrontation at the junkyard. Ms. Amber's body was recovered at that same junkyard yesterday based on the younger Mr. Prescott's information.

As more information becomes available, this story will be updated.

I read the article three times, a sick feeling growing in my stomach. If I was honest with myself, I had something of a crush on Mark Jefferson. Yes, I'd been coy about it, even in my own mind and in my journal. But it was true. And it turns out that he'd been drugging and kidnapping Blackwell girls for some kind of sick photographic project (I just skipped right over all of the 'allegedly' bits). So what would have happened if he hadn't been killed? How many more students would've been drugged and taken away? And would I, somewhat infatuated with my famous teacher, have fallen prey to it as well?

I very much wanted to throw up.

I took a deep breath and squeezed my eyes shut as I pushed the nauseous sensation down. Finally, I raised my eyes to see my parents watching me, their faces concerned.

Clearly, there was about to be a lot of discussion.

. . . . .

It was, in essence, too late for me to back out of going to Blackwell. My parents had reassured me that they could make things work, perhaps getting me back into my old high school (part of me would rather risk predatory teachers than go back there) or finding some other last-minute school. But in the end, I found myself still wanting to go.

Without Mark Jefferson, my main reason for attending Blackwell had quite literally died. But his absence also meant that a hidden threat was gone, something that several messages from Blackwell (to both students and parents) emphasized. And in the messages to students with photography-based scholarships, Blackwell promised that they'd honor those scholarships and hire a replacement photography teacher as soon as possible.

So while the situation had big unknowns, it still had opportunities. I'd still learn more about photography at an institution with a strong reputation for the subject (Jefferson hadn't been the only prominent photographer teaching there over the years and it was likely that Blackwell would attract another well-regarded artist). I'd still have the opportunity to start over after a very lame three years in high school. And despite my nerves, meeting new people could be very good to make that kind of restart stick. And, most of all, I'd have the opportunity to meet up again with Chloe. And maybe, just maybe, Chloe would still want to be friends.

That idea gave me little jolts of excitement in my sea of nerves. And part of that excitement came from the notion that we could talk about the news: Chloe would surely have strong opinions on the shootout and those involved. It could be a way to slide back into something adjacent to normal without slamming so hard into the wall of their five-year separation.

And so my packing continued: in a few days, we'd be driving to Arcadia Bay.

Thursday, September 5th

I couldn't exactly say that I was fond of Blackwell so far.

With my Polaroid camera in hand, I wandered the lawn at the front of the school, telling myself to stop judging my situation so harshly. After all, it hadn't even been a full week yet.

But still…

I had no English teacher, still had no Photography teacher, and while the rest of the classes were fine, they weren't exactly all that better from those at my high school back in Seattle. Everyone continued to talk about "The Shootout," as it had come to be known. Most of the comments were about Mark Jefferson, with people loudly saying things like, "what a monster" or "he deserved it" or "I can't believe I liked him" while whispering questions about who his victims had been. They also talked a lot about Nathan Prescott, with people sometimes getting into arguments as to whether he was a hero or a villain in the whole thing: should he be condemned for his role in Rachel Amber's death or celebrated for helping to take down Jefferson? Little was said about Nathan's father and even less was said about the mysterious teenager that had died. The only concrete things I heard about her were that she'd dropped out of Blackwell, had a serious attitude problem, had been close to Rachel (people seemed to not know whether they'd been friends or lovers), and that she was the Blackwell security chief's kid. I'll readily admit that some small part of me gurgled with fear that the blue-haired girl had been Chloe, something I'd been too chickenshit to ask about or even really think about…but that last tidbit of information settled my mind: Chloe's dad was dead, he sure as hell wasn't the head of Blackwell's security. In the end, the first few hours of hearing the local perspective on The Shootout had been informative and interesting. But after a few days, it became tiresome.

And then there were the students…

I made friends with Warren Graham almost immediately. He had an infectious positivity that made me smile, along with an enormous dose of nerdity that I seriously appreciated. And Kate Marsh, who lived in my dorm hall, had the kind of open and friendly attitude that drew me in: I chatted with her every day over a cup of tea. She told me early on that after the drama surrounding Jefferson, her parents had nearly pulled her out of Blackwell. I hadn't really told her yet but I was very glad that she'd convinced them to let her stay: she was like a friendly lighthouse on a rocky shore of bullshit cliques…

The Vortex Club stood as Blackwell's swirling storm at the center of said bullshit. And the frosty eye of that storm, Victoria Chase, lived right across from me. Victoria spared no smirks, derisive laughs, or snarky comments on everything from my clothes ("what a sad little hipster"), my hair ("you couldn't find a nicer mop to stick on your head?"), my shoes ("your twelve-year-old self wants her shoes back, Maxine"), my camera ("looks like someone's permanently stuck in the retro zone"), to my demeanor ("look at me, I'm so shy and fragile; watch as I cry at the pretty shapes of clouds").

I had no idea why Victoria was such a bitch to me so I just tried to ignore her. I heard some people say that she'd been very close to Nathan Prescott; maybe his involvement with Jefferson's projects (and I'd heard a rumor that Victoria had been on Jefferson's list) had her lashing out. I had the strong sense that I could knock her off balance by being kind of nice…but I didn't have the energy to try.

All of those thoughts ran back and forth through my head as I wandered in front of the main building, trying to focus on something inspiring to point my camera at. But as soon as I thought about Victoria, it seemed to act as a summoning spell: Victoria and her friend, Taylor Christensen, came around a far corner from the parking lot just as I started to walk in that direction. Victoria pointed at Stella, one of the girls in our defunct Photography class, and whispered something to Taylor while smirking; Taylor laughed. I spun around and walked quickly toward the dorms, not wanting to experience yet another round of Victoria's shit.

As I took the steps down toward the dorm courtyard, my fingers danced at the pocket where my phone bulged out. I still hadn't sent a message to Chloe. On the car ride down from Seattle and in the evenings between homework assignments, I'd tried yet again to come up with something…

Hi Chloe, it's me, Max

Hi Chloe, guess who's back?

Hey, I wanted to let you know that I'm back in Arcadia Bay

Hi, I wanted to let you know that I'm back in Arcadia Bay

Hey Chloe, would you like to meet up at the Two Whales?

Hi Chloe, I saw all that crazy stuff about the shootout; I'm actually back in Arcadia Bay

Hey Chloe, it's been a while…

Hey Captain Bluebeard, your first mate is back!

I deleted every one of those attempts and finally decided that this wasn't a reunion that could happen over the phone; too much time had passed. No, I'd have to see her in person. Luckily, the weekend was almost at hand and I could get away as early as Friday to visit the Two Whales and see Joyce or, failing that, just go over to Chloe's house. And if that didn't work? Well, I could finally just start asking around, something I'd been afraid to start doing in case word got to Chloe that I'd come back before I was quite ready to face her.

I came around the corner of Principal Wells' residence and spotted a rabbit sitting on the lawn. When it saw me, rather than freeze or hop away like any sane rabbit would do, it stood up on its hind legs and twitched its front paws as if it was waving at me.

Now, when it came to visual moments like this, I never let surprise hold me back: in an instant, I had my camera up and my eye to the viewfinder.

But before I could take the shot, the rabbit scurried back. I sighed and lowered the camera, my shoulders drooping at the missed shot…but the rabbit stood up again and faced me from further along the courtyard. With a frown, I raised my camera and slowly approached the rabbit.

Twice more, the rabbit ran away as soon as I tried to take a photo. I found the pattern irritating but also far too intriguing for me to ignore…so I continued following. I soon spotted Kate sitting next to the big totem pole just beyond the edge of the lawn, her pencil scratching away in a sketchbook. I was sorely tempted to call out to Kate and point out the rabbit's bizarre behavior; Kate had a pet rabbit and could perhaps shed some light on whatever the hell was happening. But Kate had big headphones over her ears so I shrugged and continued to follow my wayward quarry.

The rabbit moved towards Kate and stood up again, only a few feet away from her. I pursed my lips to the side and approached again. I raised my camera, convinced I could finally get the shot, and heard something…

A groan and a series of snaps, as if something large was breaking.

I looked up to see the totem pole start to tilt…right towards Kate.

I gasped and cried out, "Kate!"

Kate didn't hear me through her headphones and continued to sketch. The totem pole began to tilt faster, its lower end splintering as it pulled itself up out of the ground.

I ran towards Kate, frantically waving my arms like an idiot.

She finally caught sight of me and smiled; she reached up to remove her headphones but it was too late: the totem pole broke and crashed down. In the last second, Kate's head darted up and she started to scream.

I'll never forget that horrible sound as Kate vanished under the totem pole, her scream suddenly cut off by a ground-shaking thud and a gut-twisting crunch.

Then I acted without thinking…

I raised my hand as if trying to push the totem pole away. I don't know what made me do it. My reflexes just kicked in with that odd gesture, my brain somehow thinking that it could push it all away.

And I did.

A sudden, terrible pressure built in my head and everything around me went blurry. A rushing sound, like wind whipping by, filled my ears. The whole world seemed to vibrate as I pushed at something I couldn't see but could feel in my raised hand. And then the impossible happened: among flashes of red and yellow light popping in and out of the air around me, the totem pole moved. It tilted back up and away from Kate. And Kate moved in reverse: her screaming horror turned into brief shock and then back into the smile of recognition and then into furrowed-brow concentration as she looked back down at her notebook.

The totem pole tilted upright, steadied, and sank back into the ground as the broken base knitted itself back together.

This can't be real; this can't be real, I thought, my eyes wide and my mouth hanging open.

The rushing sound rose in volume and a high pitched shriek began to rise with it. The pressure behind my forehead sharpened into pain and patches of red began creeping into my vision. I let go of whatever it was I was holding onto and nearly dropped to the ground with a sudden panting breath.

Everything looked normal again: Kate sat under the totem pole as if nothing had gone amiss. I looked at my hand, turning it back and forth as if there might be something written on it to explain what I'd just done.

What the fuck just happened? I thought.

Then a snapping sound came from the totem pole and I looked up in horror: it was about to fall on Kate again.

Somehow, I'd ended up far closer to Kate than I had been when I'd first heard the sound. But if I was right, the distance was still too great to reach Kate before the totem pole would fall. So I grabbed a pinecone off of the ground and hurled it at Kate: it hit her in the knee and she looked up, eyebrows raised. I pointed at the totem pole and beckoned Kate to move, exaggerating my motions so much that I nearly threw myself off balance. Kate looked over, saw the tilting pole, and her eyes went wide. She clutched her notebook to her chest and jumped away just as the totem pole came slamming down.

I hurried over and helped Kate up.

"Wow, Max, that was really close," Kate said, breathing heavily, "you…I think you might have saved my life."

I opened my mouth and closed it a couple of times.

"Of…of course, Kate," I finally said, "I'm sure you'd get my attention too if something big was about to fall on my head."

"Of course, Max," she said with a grin, "and…maybe I'll just sketch in the middle of the lawn instead."

I forced a tiny chuckle and asked, "are you okay?"

Kate took a deep breath and said, "I think so. I will be."

"Okay, just let me know if you need someone to talk to, okay?" I said, "that was…intense."

"I will," Kate said.

Her movements were a little shaky but she dropped down onto a bench (away from any large objects), smoothed out her dress with her palms, and started to sketch again.

I watched her for several long seconds, my heart pounding in my chest, just to make sure something else didn't happen…or that she didn't have some kind of sudden freakout.

But I was having a low-key freakout: it sure looked as if I'd just reversed time.

A hint of motion caught my eye and I turned to see a doe standing just outside the treeline, a few feet away from the toppled totem pole: it stared right at me. I slowly turned, raised my camera again, and took the shot. As the photo developed, I glanced up to see the doe trotting back into the trees. When I looked down at the photo, it showed only trees: the doe hadn't shown up in the photo at all.

. . . . .

The whole time-rewinding thing wasn't some fluke.

Over the next few hours, I practiced with what I couldn't help but call a superpower: all I had to do was raise my hand, grip that invisible something that my brain somehow recognized, and push at it to send my surroundings backward.

I used it to help Alyssa avoid getting hit in the head by a football. I used it in two different classes to answer a couple of questions, feeling a glow inside at the satisfied nods from teachers but a pang of shame over what felt like cheating. And perhaps best of all, I used it on Victoria…

"Well, if it isn't Blackwell's selfie slut," Victoria said, leaning on a locker next to mine.

I groaned inside but didn't respond. Victoria smirked.

"I looked at your portfolio," she said, examining her nails, "you know, the photos you submitted for your scholarship. And for fuck's sake, Maxine, I thought your retro Polaroid shit was just for show but that's actually all that you sent in? Honestly, kind of sad."

"It's Max," I mumbled.

"Too bad we don't have a photography teacher yet," Victoria said, ignoring my mumble, "when we get one, maybe you'll actually learn something and not just spend your time shoving Polaroids into envelopes."

I glared at Victoria, which only made her smirk wider.

Then I gave her an overly sweet smile, which made her mouth twitch and her brow furrow. I rewound.

As soon as Victoria approached, I turned to her.

"Hey, Victoria," I said, keeping my voice calm and friendly, "I saw the portfolio you submitted for this year."

Victoria crossed her arms, her brow furrowed.

"Oh?" she asked.

"Your photos were really good," I said, "I'm hoping we get a photography teacher soon so we can do reviews and stuff; I'd really like to see more of your work."

"That's…that's nice, Maxine," she said, frowning.

"Oh, it's Max," I said.

Victoria's smirk returned.

"Good to know," she said, "and I saw your portfolio too."

"Oh, what did you think of my framing?" I quickly asked, "I feel like that's an area where I could use some improvement and where yours were just so good."

Victoria frowned again and said, "it was…it was fine. I'd have to look at them again."

"That would be awesome," I said, trying to hold back a laugh at Victoria's confused face, "hopefully our teacher will do some workshops. I'd love to get your perspective."

"Sure," Victoria said.

"See you later, Victoria," I said, hurrying away from my locker before she could recover.

. . . . .

By the time I got back to my room in the afternoon, a buzzing excitement in my chest had reached fever pitch: yes, my brand-new superpower was amazing by itself but I was even more excited to tell Chloe about it.

I ran it through my head dozens of times as I chugged through homework assignments, imagining Chloe bouncing up and down with her typical manic energy, her blonde hair dancing as I proved the superpower to her with all kinds of little tricks. I could practically see the twinkle in her eye: she'd undoubtedly come up with far more interesting ways to use the rewind than I could.

Friday, September 6th

When Juliet knocked on my door, I'd just returned from the shower and still had a towel wrapped around my body. I opened the door just a crack and Juliet tilted her head to look inside.

"Hi," I said.

"Hey, Maxine Caulfield, right?" she asked.

"Yeah, but just Max," I said.

"Great," she said, "sorry to catch you like this but I'm handing out my latest newsletter; it's totally separate from the Blackwell Totem but it's kind of like a draft of the stories I'm working on. You want one?"

"Sure," I said, snaking a hand out through the door.

She slid a folded set of papers into my hand with a grin.

"Awesome, let me know what you think," she said.

She turned to leave but I spoke up…

"Oh hey, is the newspaper named after that totem pole outside?" I asked.

"Yeah," she said with a frown, "too bad what happened; that's been there for a really long time."

"Do you know how it fell over?" I asked.

She gave a little smile and said, "well, I guess I'm giving you a preview of one of the Totem's biggest upcoming stories but hey, why not? I've already talked to a couple of Blackwell officials and teachers and it sounds like there was some decay in the base that no one noticed. I've got an appointment to talk to someone in town that actually makes totem poles so that'll either help confirm things…or maybe it'll just raise more questions. As it is, it's odd because Samuel said that he inspects it every month." She paused. "But then again, he followed that up by implying that squirrels had told him something unusual has been wandering the woods and suggested that some mysterious entity may have been responsible. So yeah, maybe it was termites or fungus or something. Or maybe it was Bigfoot."

She cracked a smile and I grinned back.

"Well, good luck finding out more," I said. I almost told her about Kate's near-miss but decided against it: I'd talked to Kate a few times since then and she still seemed a little shaken up so I didn't want her story to blare out from a newspaper, even a high school one.

"Thanks, Maxi…Max," she said.

I closed the door and tossed the newsletter onto my rumpled sheets. Only after I finished drying off and got dressed did I plop down onto my bed and turn the newsletter over. I suppose my reaction would've been funny, had the subject not been so heart-breaking: I looked at the headline "REMEMBERING CHLOE PRICE," looked at the picture of the blue-haired girl on the skateboard, laughed, and then nearly choked as reality hit me.

I hurriedly skimmed through Juliet's article; I didn't want to believe it. I didn't want to believe it so badly that I skimmed the article five times.

Chloe was dead.

I sat staring at the far wall for about seven minutes; it felt like seven hours.

This can't be real, it can't be true, I thought, this…this isn't Chloe. Why would she have a gun? Why would she be at a junkyard and get shot? And how could she kill two people?

I gripped the newsletter tight and hurried out into the hallway. Without putting more than a half second of thought into it, I began pounding on Victoria's door.

Two seconds later, it swung open and I nearly fell inside.

"What the fuck, Max?" Victoria said, glaring at me.

"Is…is this Chloe Price?" I asked, holding the newsletter photo up with a shaking hand.

"Yes, of course that's Chloe Price," she said, "what the fuck does it matter to you?"

My legs crumpled underneath me and I slid to the floor. Victoria looked down at me with legitimate concern.

"Max?" she asked.

"She…she's…she was my best friend," I mumbled, my fingers clutching at the photo and my eyes going blurry with tears.

"What? Your supposed best friend's been dead for two weeks and you didn't know?" Victoria asked, crossing her arms.

I sobbed.

"Fuck," Victoria mumbled.

She crouched down in front of me and took my hand.

"What's really going on here?" she asked.

At that moment, Kate poked her head out of her room next door. Her eyes fell to us on the floor and she instantly bounded out, dropping down next to me and wrapping an arm around my shoulders.

"Max! Are you okay?" she asked.

I could only paw at the picture.

Kate looked at the newsletter and her brow furrowed.

"She says Chloe was her best friend," Victoria said; I could practically hear an eye-roll, "maybe she smoked something bad."

A decidedly unflattering whimper escaped my lips and Kate's arm tightened around my shoulders.

"Max," Kate said softly, "you knew Chloe?"

I nodded.

"From when?"

"When…when we were kids," I choked out, "I…she never even knew I came back. I was…going to go find her…today."

Victoria and Kate shared a look.

Kate took my hand and helped me up.

"Max, let's go to my room and sit down, okay? I'll make some tea," she said.

I nodded.

Victoria let out a long sigh and said, "I'll get her excused from her next class and find someone who can…help with this."

Kate mouthed, "thank you."

Victoria waved her hand dismissively and strode back into her room.

It took about an hour, three cups of tea, and a desperate need to pee before I managed to fully calm down. When I came back from the bathroom, I found Victoria outside of Kate's room, her arms crossed. I opened my mouth but she spoke first…

"You're excused from P.E., music, and anthropology today," she said, "Warren volunteered, quite enthusiastically, to bring you your anthro assignments for the weekend."

"Thank…," I started, but Victoria raised a hand.

"You also have a 9:00am appointment in the counseling office on Monday. They're absolute shit but give it a try. And I can recommend a therapist if you feel like you need it. If you need someone to talk to before then, you know where Kate lives," she said, gesturing at Kate's door with her thumb.

"Wow, um, thanks, Victoria," I said.

She snorted and slipped back into her room.

I stood in the hallway and took a deep breath. Every thought made me want to start crying again: Chloe dying when she was only nineteen. Chloe not knowing I'd come back. The fact that I never got a chance to reconnect with her. The fact that after five years, I'd only missed her by two weeks. That I'd never get to hear her voice or see her smile again, things that suddenly seemed so important.

I took another breath.

And then a different thought exploded into my head…

. . . . .

I could rewind time.

If I could rewind time, I could rewind back to before Chloe got shot and I could stop it. I could find Chloe and Nathan before the confrontation and tell them to do it some other way.

Somehow, I figured that this was why I'd been given this superpower: the chance to save Chloe. And so without thinking about what I'd say, where I'd end up (back in Seattle or here at Blackwell?), or how I'd even find Chloe and Nathan, I started to rewind.

I got to about two minutes before redness and pressure forced me to stop.

I stomped on the floor and tried again.

And again.

And again.

I tried to rewind right after rewinding but could never get more than about five minutes into the past.

For three hours, I pushed and pushed at it to no avail. In the end, all I had to show for my efforts was a bloody nose and a pounding headache.

Five minutes; that was it.

And as a brand new time traveller, I can tell you with certainty that five minutes is a hell of a lot less than two weeks.

Upon that realization, I dropped to my bed, tissues in my nose, and cried again.

Saturday, September 7th

When I woke up on Saturday morning, a grim determination seized me. No, not to try to rewind a full two weeks; I felt a depressingly concrete certainty that that was out of the realm of possibility. My new mission was to find out everything I could about Chloe and her life over the past five years. If I was going to properly grieve my best friend and move on, I felt the need to understand who she'd become.

Whether via Kate, Victoria, or Victoria's brief mission to get me excused from classes on Friday, the entire school seemed to know that Chloe Price had been my best friend. So as I moved about, looking for people to talk to, many Blackwell students gave me solemn looks or even said, "sorry, Max" or something like it.

Yep, I'd become a Tragic Figure.

And given that I'd essentially abandoned Chloe after her dad died and completely failed to contact her at any point, I felt that I didn't deserve any sympathy.

But I used that sympathy, with a small handful of rewinds, to get the information I wanted. There was…a lot. And a lot of it was unexpected…

Chloe was widely known as a troublemaker and had very few friends.

She smoked, both cigarettes and weed.

She dated a couple of guys but everyone seemed to agree that she was probably a lesbian, something that gave me a lump in my throat that I didn't quite understand.

Blackwell expelled her for some combination of absences and poor performance, something that clashed horribly with my memories of her as such a bright student.

She'd lost her dad; I knew that one, of course.

She'd become best friends with Rachel Amber and most people figured that they were more than just friends. I had a weird reaction to that. When I first heard that they were best friends, I thought, oh, good thing she found someone. But when I heard that they might have been more than that, I felt a sudden and sickening resentment towards both of them. It wasn't a particularly strong feeling but I couldn't really ignore it. I shook it away as I continued learning more.

I found out that Chloe had an old, beat up truck and that her and Rachel had talked about using it to skip town and move to LA.

She'd started dying her hair blue and wearing intensely punk outfits only about a year before.

She had a terrible relationship with her stepfather, David Madsen, the head of Blackwell security. That information finally connected the dots that had confused me before. It also gave me a moment of shock that Joyce had remarried (I don't know why: I guess it had just been a childhood fact that Joyce and William were married and anything else clashed with that)…and to someone who sounded so different from gentle William.

I also dug into any information I could find about the incident that had led to Chloe's death. I gathered notes and stories about Mr. Jefferson, Rachel, and the Prescotts.

And in the end, from several sources, I constructed something of a narrative of what had happened…

Mark Jefferson had been drugging Blackwell girls, often with Nathan's assistance, and taking them to a storm bunker under a barn, where they'd take photos for some kind of twisted project. In some ways, it wasn't as horrible as what I'd imagined had been happening. But in other ways, it was so much worse, knowing that Jefferson was collecting binders full of images that their victims had no recollection of.

Sean Prescott, Nathan's father, had allowed Jefferson the use of the bunker and had bankrolled much of Jefferson's equipment. Rumors about Prescott's motivation swirled everywhere and ranged from the mundane (he didn't know what was going on) to the absurd (Prescott built expensive storm bunkers and had Jefferson kidnapping girls because he thought some supernatural event would happen that he could take advantage of). Of course, given the fact that I could rewind time, I found that I couldn't dismiss the more fanciful theories behind anything that Prescott or Jefferson were up to.

And Nathan, as Jefferson's apprentice, had apparently felt that what he and Jefferson were doing was fine. After I found out that Victoria had visited Nathan, I managed to trick her into revealing Nathan's thin excuse: he felt that because the girls didn't remember what happened, there was no harm done. A thin justification, for sure, but probably the only thread he had to cling to.

But that thread had snapped after Rachel.

No one was entirely sure if it was Nathan or Jefferson that messed up. Nathan wouldn't tell and it sounded like he wasn't sure either. But whoever it was, the dose of their drug cocktail was wrong and it killed Rachel.

From what I could gather, Rachel's death left Nathan at a crossroads: he could either double-down with Jefferson and keep everything hidden or defy both his mentor and father and find a way to end the whole thing. Apparently, a random philosophical conversation with Victoria about keeping the subjects of photography at a distance led him to the latter path.

It took him a long time to act…months, in fact. He wanted the kidnappings to end but didn't want to admit his part in Rachel's death and didn't want to land Jefferson or his father in jail.

How he and Chloe ended up as a team remained something of a mystery. Nathan wasn't saying much about it but it sounded like he'd revealed at least part of what happened to Chloe and that Chloe convinced him to confront his father and Jefferson directly and forcefully. Nathan hoped it would frighten them into abandoning the project (or at least convince the elder Prescott to give it up) but he (and everyone else) suspected that it had always been a ploy for Chloe to seek violent revenge for Rachel's death.

Chloe and Nathan brought Sean Prescott and Mr. Jefferson to a junkyard and casually pulled out guns to show they were serious. However, they didn't realize that Jefferson and the elder Prescott were also armed. Events, of course, went south from there.

And as Nathan lay in the dirt, bleeding, he could see that his father and Jefferson were both dead. Chloe could see it too…and she laughed until she breathed her last.

Chloe had her revenge.

. . . . .

On Saturday afternoon, I took the bus into town and walked the four blocks up to Chloe's house.

I slowed down as I approached: the house looked almost the same as I remembered it. Even the paint job that William had started remained unfinished.

I saw no movement or any sign of life from the house but I guessed that someone had to be home: an unfamiliar black car sat in the driveway next to a beat-up old truck that must have been Chloe's. I stared at that truck for several long seconds before walking up to the door.

At least a minute passed after I rang the doorbell before the door cracked open.

I recognized the man behind the door as David Madsen; I'd never seen him in person but his picture had been in an issue of the Totem and in a local news story about the incident. He looked looked as if he hadn't shaved in a couple of weeks and had bags under his eyes.

"What?" he asked, his voice rough.

"I'm…I'm here to see Joyce," I said, my voice small.

David's eyes went fiery and he said, "you aren't some reporter, are you?"

"No, I…"

"Max? Max Caulfield?" came a thin voice from inside.

David reluctantly opened the door further and in the dark hallway beyond, Joyce stood with her mouth open.

"Joyce," I began, my voice catching, "I'm…I'm so sorry."

I didn't get out any more: she hurried forward and wrapped me in a tight hug.

"Oh, Max, you've grown up so much," she said into my hair, "I wish…"

She started crying, I started crying, and David stood off to the side looking incredibly awkward.

. . . . .

Once Joyce and I both calmed down enough to talk, we talked. David brought us coffee and excused himself, disappearing into the garage.

For an hour and a half, Joyce and I reminisced over Chloe. I apologized over and over for not being there but Joyce shushed me each time, insisting that she was just happy to see me. She said that I brought back good memories of Chloe. I told her that if those memories were painful, I'd stay away. But Joyce was having none of that: she told me that I'd be welcome with her and David any time and practically demanded that I stop by the Two Whales once she went back to work.

I could tell that Joyce was only being half-truthful: any reminder of Chloe had to hurt. But I chose to trust her that my presence was more positive than harmful.

When we'd exhausted the stories at the tops of our heads and the tears that they brought, Joyce brought me up to Chloe's room.

"Probably different than you remember," she said, opening the door.

"Yeah," I said, taking in the sight with wide eyes.

Pieces of Chloe's new punk style were everywhere in that room. The posters, pictures, and hand-written, um, decorations were all completely different from what I remembered. I walked into the room in a daze and Joyce left me to wander. And wander I did, looking at each and every decoration and then pawing through the papers on Chloe's desk. My eyes swept across her shelves, taking in William's old camera, so much like mine, and a bunch of dusty books that Chloe had been reading back when I was still in Arcadia Bay.

At first, I felt like I was invading Chloe's privacy. But my previous mission leapt back into the front of my mind: I wanted to find out everything I could about who Chloe had become. And so I let myself go through her drawers and rifle through her closet. I even found a stack of old photos and drawings, ones of her and I. The fact that she'd kept those made me smile and almost made me break down crying again.

I picked one of the photos, of Chloe and I in her living room, and looked at every little detail, trying to remember what it had been like, all those years ago. As I did that, something strange happened: the light around me seemed to shudder and I felt like I could almost hear us back then. I quickly looked away: whatever was happening there, I didn't feel at all comfortable letting it continue.

By the time I left, I'd promised Joyce three times that I'd stop by for dinner next week.

Then, with the sun setting, I walked all the way back to Blackwell, my thoughts consumed as I continued to reconstruct Chloe's life in my head.

Wednesday, October 9th

After more than a month at Blackwell, everything had normalized, more or less. A new photography teacher, Stacey Potts, had started a couple of weeks in and she was far better than I could have hoped for. I felt as if my skills gained a new lease on life, especially after some very honest and open feedback sessions in class (Victoria could stand to be less of a bitch but her feedback really was valuable).

Every Saturday, I had dinner with Joyce and David. It was always a bit of an awkward affair, with both Joyce and David still deep in sorrow. I felt bad that I didn't share the depth of their grief: I should have, really, given my deep history with Chloe. But those five years made for a big gap. I imagined that if I'd had even a few minutes with Chloe before she died, I would've felt very different. And when Joyce returned to the Two Whales, I went at least twice a week, ordering delicious waffles and talking to Joyce about old times whenever other customers weren't clamoring for her attention. I kept worrying that I was making things worse with my words or even my presence…but Joyce continued to insist that it helped her feel as if something of Chloe was still alive when I was around. Boy did I cry a lot the night she first told me that…and it was around then that I reallized that I'd cried more during the past month than I had in the past five years.

But I was happy to find my social life improving: I hung out regularly with both Warren and Kate and I had a warm and cozy feeling with both of them that I never got with Kristen and Fernando back home. Warren in particular seemed able to find me wherever I went and he started to play up the idea of going to a drive-in film together. It sounded fun but I wondered why he wasn't asking Brooke Scott, who seemed far more interested in that kind of thing. I also started spending time with Alyssa and Daniel. And after using my little superpower to diffuse some Victoria-related drama, I got a friendly thing going with Dana and Juliet.

Yes, my ability to rewind time stayed with me. And if anything, it became stronger and more reliable as time went on. I discovered that I could stop time altogether and move around in a frozen, fuzzy landscape. I could also go back further than before…but only about fifteen minutes at most, which kept Chloe's death firmly out of my reach. I started to really think about what I could do with the power, especially if it stayed with me long-term. And I found myself frequently wishing that I had Chloe to ask; she'd have had great (and terrible) ideas.

However, odd things continued to happen…and for the past three days, they'd been happening far more frequently, something that was starting to give me an uneasy feeling.

The mysterious doe, which had been popping up every few days, began to appear multiple times each day. It would watch me, as if it was following me around and keeping track of where I was going. A few times, I turned and hurried toward it, trying to catch it…but it always leapt away before I could get close or simply vanished when I lost eye contact.

And that wasn't all: whenever I rewound, I started to feel as if I could see something in the corner of my vision, something that looked like a dark and stormy night, to be cliche about it. And I could almost feel a mist-like rain on the back of my neck at those times. When I'd turn, though, I'd only see my blurry surroundings, sliding backwards in time.

Then there were the voices. Ever since Monday, I'd occasionally hear whispers that came otu of nowhere, usually when I was alone or dozing off in a boring class. Most of the whispers sounded like my own voice; the other voices sounded vaguely familiar and there was one I didn't recognize at all. As for what they were saying? I couldn't make out any of it.

Without any books on the subject of real-life time travel, I had no idea how to interpret these new events. Flickers of worry grew into a steady undercurrent of anxiety and I made an effort to rewind less, just in case my powers were causing some kind of weird reaction in nature.

But the doe continued to show up, I still saw weird visions in the corners of my rewinds, and the whispers floated into my ears at random times.

. . . . .

Ms. Potts told us, in dramatic fashion, that after being inspired by a dream, she'd decided to take us on a field trip out into the woods. On Friday, bright and early at 9:00, we'd load up into the little Blackwell bus and zip out to some spot near Overlook Park, where we'd let ourselves be caught up in nature, searching for photographic inspiration among trees, bushes, and bugs.

Many of the students groaned but excitement bubbled up inside of me and I smiled: almost all of my photos so far had been at Blackwell or in town. And while I'd captured some great images, especially during an emotionally-fraught tour of the places Chloe and I had frequented as kids, I certainly needed some new inspiration.

As Ms. Potts turned to the board to start the day's lessons, I happened to glance out the window: the doe stood right outside, staring at me.

Friday, October 11th

I wish that I could say that I was bright and chipper as I hopped off of the bus for the photography trip…but I was just as bleary-eyed as the rest of the class. Ms. Potts, grinning and practically bouncing with caffeine-induced energy, led us off of the bus and began pointing off in seemingly random directions, gesturing at trees, leaves, birds, and a raccoon that sat watching us as it nibbled on what certainly looked like a sandwich.

Two minutes later, she told us we were free to wander.

Rather than absorb the zombie horde energy of the rest of the class, I decided to copy Victoria and strike out in a single direction. Whereas she chose to march off towards Overlook Park, I walked out towards the train tracks, barely visible through the trees ahead.

The chatter of the class fell away as I picked my way through bushes and out to the tracks.

I took a deep, relaxing breath and listened to birds chirping in the trees.

I stepped over to the train tracks and, after listening for any incoming trains, I stood in the middle of the tracks and took a photo down the line, where the tracks disappeared into the distance. I spun around and took a shot in the opposite direction, to where the tracks curved away into the trees.

Then I sat down next to the tracks while I waited for the photos to develop. I looked up at the blue sky and sighed: Chloe and I used to come out here. I could almost see her leaping back and forth across the tracks, laughing as she dared me to walk along the tracks with her.

I smiled: the memories were becoming less sad. Was that a good thing? I wasn't sure.

After reviewing my photos and slipping both into my bag with a nod, I stood up and spun around slowly, looking for more inspiration.

The doe stood just a few feet away, looking at me.

I could always tell when it was the doe. How? I wasn't quite sure. It was just a feeling, as if there was some extra thoughts or expectations behind that doe's gaze.

Then I frowned: the doe looked almost…disheveled, its fur wet and matted as if it had traveled a long way through a rainstorm. I raised my camera and took a shot; the doe watched me patiently as I held the photo up. I'd largely given up on capturing the doe, so you can imagine my surprise when the film developed to show the doe, exactly as I saw her.

"You're real?" I asked aloud.

The doe tilted her head at me and then turned away, trotting off towards the trees on the far side of the train tracks.

I paused for only a second before tucking my camera into my bag and following, looking both ways before crossing the train tracks. On the other side, I climbed up a low rise and into the trees, spotting the doe out ahead of me as it slipped through the trees. I furrowed my brow: something felt familiar about this place.

When I found the doe again, she stood next to a tall tree standing by itself in the center of a clearing. From a thick branch, an old swing hung down, its plank rotting away. I approached slowly and the doe remained where she was, her eyes tracking me as I came closer.

The place was familiar: Chloe and I had come across it when we were in fourth grade. Back then, we remarked that the old swing made it feel like a waypoint for adventurers long gone. It reminded us of The Goonies and we'd considered turning the area into a pirate fort…but it was much further away than the spot we actually used as our pirate fort and so we'd only ever come out this far on rare occasions, often when something went wrong at school and we needed somewhere far away from anyone else.

I walked up to the swing and touched my fingers to the ancient rope: it still held strong. The doe, only a few steps away, looked at me in a way that felt so suddenly human. It seemed ridiculous but I could see sadness and longing and something that looked a lot like hope in those eyes.

I took a few steps back to find the best lighting, dug my camera out of my bag, and captured a shot of the swing under the tree. I walked in a circle and took another shot, capturing the doe and the swing. Then I put the camera away; I approached the doe.

"Who are you?" I asked.

She looked over at the tree.

I frowned and leaned in: Chloe and I had carved a skull and cross-bones into the tree along with our initials; it was still there. Under it, a more recent carving spelled out, "FUCK EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING" with the initials CP and RA underneath it. It took a few moments for the implication to hit me. I spun back to the doe. It was ridiculous and utterly impossible…but then again, so was the ability to rewind time.

"Chloe?" I asked. "Um…Rachel?"

A loud crack split through the quiet air, sending birds scattering into the air and a pair of squirrels clambering up into the highest branches above.

Next to the doe, something appeared. It looked like a black line etched into the air, with streaks of mirage-like gray lines snaking into it.

The doe turned and moved toward it…and with a flash of light, the doe vanished.

"What the…what?" I asked aloud, my voice hoarse.

The line in the air crackled and a rushing sound of wind leaked out of it. About half of my instincts told me to get the fuck away from whatever it was. But my curiosity won out. After all, if something went wrong, I could just rewind, right?

I crept closer to the line; the sight of it wiggling and wavering in the air made my brain feel weird, as if I was trying to look at two different things moving in two different directions at the same time. I focused on a point just to the left of the thing to stop my growing sense of a headache.

The line flashed with light and I stopped, my adrenaline spiking. But it darkened and remained as it was, writhing and hissing, almost like a snake. That particular comparison did little to help my nerves but I advanced a little further, raising my camera. I took the shot and then held the photo up, waiting. If I did capture an image of this thing, I'd have to show it to Warren. Then a pang hit my heart: this weird shit was exactly the kind of thing that would have had Chloe ecstatic: she'd be delighted to try to figure out what it was. Almost as soon as I thought about Chloe, the rip in the air vibrated and expanded. My eyes widened as it split open, showing what looked like a grey and rain-drenched forest.

I started to take a step back but suddenly felt myself jerked forward. If I'd had half of my wits about me, I would've rewound. But I didn't: my camera slipped from my grip and dropped to the ground; I could hear it smash against a tree root. I gasped and tried to reach out for the camera but I toppled over, falling and falling…falling too far.

A flash of light washed over me and then I hit the ground, hard.

Noise crashed down around me: howling wind, snapping branches, and the groan of bending trees. I rolled over and looked up from where I lay on soft, damp dirt.

I gasped.

The morning daylight had vanished, replaced with roiling, dark grey clouds. The trees aboved whipped back and forth and it took me a long moment to realize that it all looked wrong. The trees seemed to move in random directions, their tops and branches blurring and then jerking to different places. Pieces of trees…and entire trees…were snapping away and then suddenly ending up back where they were. It was as if the forest was using my rewind power in a million different spots. And the rain…torrents of raindrops flew by in a horizontal sheet, far above my head. Lightning arced across the sky and then a bolt flashed down through a tree, splitting it in half. A moment later, the tree was whole again.

My breathing came heavy and my heart pounded: where was I? What the fuck just happened?

I looked side to side and saw no sign of the doe; in the gloom, which seemed surprisingly bright for such a heavy storm, I could make out the swing on the tree, hanging with shockingly peaceful stillness.

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, a figure towered over me.

"Maxine?" came a loud voice, a voice that sounded familiar in a way that pierced my heart, "what the fuck are you doing out here?"

The figure leaned in closer: she had blue hair, just like in the photos. But it was longer, and tied back in a loose ponytail. A beanie sat atop her head and now that I saw her face up close, I realized there was no way I wouldn't have recognized her up this close.

"Chloe?" I asked, my voice nearly lost in the cacophony around us.