Chapter One
The remains of the bowling alley sprawled like a murder victim. The snarling grind of metal as the lock shattered against the bolt-cutter. Max stepped inside, inhaling stale air, the breath of dead things. She loved most this first moment of trespass. All that latent potential.
Behind her, Chloe let out a low whistle, closing the broken door.
"How long d'ya think this place has been empty for?"
"Ten years, according to Safi," Max said. "Help me move this out of the way."
They wrestled with the broken bookshelf. In the low light, Chloe's muscles corded like guitar strings. The dry air made Max sneeze. Gingerly, she picked her way through the flotsam of wood and glass, rotten bowling pins, shoes like a colony of insects. The event board displayed the winners of the annual bowling tournament. Caledon alumni had carved their names into the countertops.
There had been joy in this place, once. The thought made Max unbearably sad.
The hiss of a spray can. Chloe tagged a wall with an electric-blue butterfly.
Max couldn't help herself. She snapped a picture.
"You better delete that," Chloe said, not turning away from her graffiti. "That's admissible in court, I'll have you know. Unless you want your girlfriend to get arrested."
Chloe wore a black tank top, the dark blue spaghetti straps of her bra poking out. Her body was as much a work of art as the murals lining the walls: tattoos along both arms and the small of her back, bullets and skulls and butterflies. The blue had faded from her hair tips, bleeding into green along the shaft, regressing at the roots to her natural blond.
Max crept up on Chloe from behind, arms draped across Chloe's waist, breathing in her smoke-and-menthol scent. Chloe's flesh goosebumped in the Vermont chill. Max pressed her lips against the taller girl's neck. Laughing, Chloe tried to shrug her off, misting spray paint against their bodies.
They set up pins and played a round. Max's ball rolled into the gutters; Chloe's knocked them all down. She whooped. The crash of striking pins pierced the quiet like a gunshot.
Max took pictures of glass bottles and the caved-in roof and the massive mobile hanging from the ceiling. The beauty of the stars lay in their eternality. The beauty of a photo lay in its ephemerality. One moment vs. an infinitude. Dead dreams, forgotten masterpieces. They sat at the broke-down bar, sipping beers they had brought. Chloe lit up a joint. This place would be a helluva place to get high, she said. Demons on the wall. If you squinted, that stain looked like a face.
"They're demolishing this place soon," Max said. "We might be the last people to ever be in Nebula."
Chloe's face shifted. She's remembering, Max knew, same as herself. Seeing a diner. They had never returned to Arcadia Bay, not for the rescue efforts, not even for the mass funeral. Call it cowardice, but if cowardice allowed them to live…
That was the trouble with lost things. This place, so derelict, so beautiful, so new! Only someone broken could appreciate a broken thing. On their eternal roadtrip across America, they had explored abandoned hospitals, train stations, factories, schools, and once climbed the wings of a decommissioned plane…Maybe this was their way of returning to a home that no longer existed.
They kissed. Max shared a drag from the joint, savoring the peppery taste of the paper and the sweet smoke, a taste distinctly Chloe –
A crash. Something falling. Max's head swiveled. There, by the upstairs window –
A shadow.
"There's somebody else here," Max said.
"What are you looking at? I don't see anything. This place is practically falling apart by itself." Nonetheless, Chloe stood up, stretching. "You having a bad trip? I got this from Gwen, supposed to be some real heavy shit – "
"Chloe!" Max said, mortified.
"Lightweight," Chloe teased. "Come on, let's grab some food."
At the Snapping Turtle, they ordered burgers and fries and beer on tap. At six p.m. on a weekday, the bar was quiet. Santa Monica Dream played quietly from the speakers. Amanda had changed the décor again – the pirate in the hearth room sported a new pistol, grinning luridly. No shortage of cheap artists in Lakeport. Caledon students would decorate for free.
"…stage-dived still hanging onto the mic," Chloe said, slurping up fries. "Luckily someone broke her fall, but I had to re-rig the whole audio system…"
"Smash Attack?" Amanda asked.
"Opening act."
"Heard it was good. Saw them two years ago at Killington. You picking up a shift tonight? Julie called out again."
"Can't. We're going stargazing or some shit."
"It's a meteor shower," Max said.
"Heard Moses talking it up," Amanda said.
"You're free to join us," Max said, "assuming, er, you're done with the bar. Maybe you can close early."
"You're a sweetheart." Amanda smiled, leaning forward with her chin tucked in her hands. "Next time, let me know ahead of time, alright?"
"You know she was totally flirting with you, right?" Chloe said as they headed back to Caledon, bolstered with an extra six-pack. The sky was clear and full of stars.
Max turned red. "She's just…She knows we're together. I think she's just having fun."
"She's obviously angling for a threesome."
"Chloe!"
"What? You know it's true. She's cute. Good taste in music, too."
On the observatory roof, Moses and Safi had already set up. Max and Chloe dropped off their bounty of alcohol and store pastries and warmed up by the space heater, sipping on hot cocoa. An owl stared at them from a streetlamp.
Curled up in a lounge chair, sharing a blanket, Max pressed herself against her girlfriend's side. Static, skin against skin. There were chemicals inside them that reacted upon touch. Chloe's multi-hued hair threaded with Max's plain brown. Tomorrow was Friday; Max didn't have seminar until the afternoon.
"You'll be able to see it with your naked eye," Moses said. "The telescope's for capture. I'm planning to show it in class tomorrow."
"…another four papers to grade after this," Safi complained, "and an early class tomorrow, and office hours before lunch…"
"When's it gonna start already?" Chloe asked. She bent down, whispering into Max's ear, breath sweet hot wet. "I want to fuck you so bad right now."
Tones trembled down Max's spine. Chloe's arm around Max's shoulder radiated heat. Chloe burned always like a furnace feeding on itself. The melancholy of Nebb's Pub lingered; Max clutched that desolation close among this surplus of joy. She felt sleepy but also terribly, electrically alive.
What would you do if the world ended tomorrow?
The same thing I've already done.
The first star fell. A white streak against a blue so dark it was black. Trails of thousand-degree fire. Chloe ooh'ed, clapping her hands like they were twelve again, huddled beneath blankets on the lawn with their toy telescopes. Make a wish, Max! I wish we could be together forever. Max had never thought of the sky as alive. To see motion in what was otherwise still. The night breathed, whirling around them, one long-exposure. Like walking through a storm without getting wet, she remembered – that was the probability of a world-ending impact event.
I wish for an end to impossible choices.
I wish for this to be the start of the rest of my life.
The meteor shower died down by degrees. Safi snapped pictures on her phone while Moses fiddled with the recording software on his laptop. Chloe, two beers deep, had begun to nod off against Max's shoulder.
Grinning, Max held up her camera, angling the bulb towards themselves. "Say meteor – "
– she's standing atop the overlook with the smell of cigarettes in the air. She can't remember how she got here, not just here but here. She's made a terrible mistake. She can't remember why, but when she takes that final step forward she catches the fleeting glimpse of –
"Max? Max! Holy shit, call 911!"
The world came into focus like a shoddy camera. Max felt first the cold stone against her cheek. Chloe's face hovered over hers, tight with panic, enormous blue eyes like solar systems. When Max whispered Chloe? Chloe cupped Max's face in her hands, murmuring continuously like a prayer, Thank God, thank God, for a minute there you blacked out and I thought…
Shakily, Max stood up. She wiped her nose with her sleeve and came away with blood. Safi said, I'm calling campus police, to which Max said, I'm fine. Her head throbbed. She saw double: two Safis, two Moses (Mosi?), two telescopes and a duplicate of every star in a duplicate sky.
But Chloe was solid, clear-lined. Max clutched her like a tether in a fading world. This headache and nosebleed and the sensation of being out of place were sickeningly familiar.
"I'm alright," Max said. "Stood up too quickly, I think."
But Chloe wasn't looking at her anymore. Open-mouthed, Chloe, Safi, and Moses all stared up at the sky, where two moons shone.