Chapter Five
"I don't get it," Chloe said. "She's you? From another world? A doppelganger?"
Max curled up on the couch, feeling whole again: the fire warming her, Chloe on the opposite couch, face worn by concern. Max hugged her pillow to her chest. "She wasn't me, not exactly. She looked…different. Angrier, for some reason."
"Is she the one who pushed you down the stairs? Why would she do that? And why was she even here?" Chloe shook her head. "Is this The Thing? Are we gonna have to incinerate the other Max? Shit, maybe I'm a doppelganger – "
"Chloe! It's not funny."
"I know. I'm sorry." Chloe sat down next to her. Max put her head on Chloe's lap, enjoying her heat. Absentmindedly, Chloe stroked Max's hair. Max closed her eyes. Things were almost okay again.
"You say she caused that freaky blackout?"
Everyone in Lakeport had witnessed the stars vanishing. A dark so consuming Max still saw it imprinted on the back of her eyelids. You selfish, ungrateful bitch. Only one star survived, a pinprick of light in an all-consuming canvas, burning brighter and brighter with every hour.
Max saw it even now in the early Vermont morning, just beyond her window: a second sun, twice as bright.
Asteroid JX-187, the broadcast said, the largest asteroid to travel this close to Earth in the last one hundred years. Estimated chance of impact, zero-point-two-three percent…
"It's powers. Has to be. Not you, but someone else. It's the same fucking thing as Arcadia Bay. Something big's going to happen, Max. We have to stop it."
Chloe's hand trembled as she lit up her cigarette. Oddly, Max didn't feel afraid. Once you've annihilated an entire town, what was another apocalypse? At least this time it wasn't her fault. This time she wouldn't have to choose.
Summer found them in Yellowstone. They had meandered from Washington to California, then to Arizona and New Mexico, subsisting on the money Max's parents sent over and part-timing to cover the rest. Tipped off by a gas station employee just outside of Albuquerque, Max and Chloe had arrived to Yellowstone in early June. The park hired widely during the tourist season. The pay was average, but they got free access and discounts to everything on-site.
The AC in the employee dorm was broken. All of Yellowstone was a campground. They spread out the carp across the back of Chloe's truck, heating up packages of instant ramen on the portable stove. If they passed by Canyon Lodge they would get the huckleberry ice cream, a big carton, which they shared as they watched the bison amble along the plains.
"Ever wonder?" Chloe said.
"Every wonder what?"
Chloe scratched her bandaged hand (a fishing incident – don't ask). "Normally you'd be at college now, right? Studying for an arts degree or some shit?"
"I'd probably be repeating high school. I doubt my one semester at Blackwell counts for anything." Max rolled her eyes. "If you think I'd rather be stressing out about clubs and exams – "
"It's just – I mean, ever wonder what it would to be like to be one of those bison? Or like, a dog or something? Just living through life without a care in the world? – Hey, stop laughing! I'm serious!"
But Chloe was laughing now, too, teeth stained purple by huckleberry. Chloe rolled on top of her, pinning her arms down, and they shared a huckleberry-flavored kiss beneath the bruised sky. Cicadas buzzed in the summer damp. Max carded her fingers through Chloe's hair, grown long and matted, faded to its natural strawberry blonde. She had talked of dyeing it again.
Max's parents had been less-than-enthusiastic to find their eighteen-year old daughter giving up all her career plans to travel with her childhood friend (whom they hadn't seen in five years and who looked distinctly less, ah, reputable than they remembered). Max didn't give them a choice. At least it's cheaper than college.
To the east, immense hot spring basins reflected a setting sun, bleeding colors like an overwashed photo. The grass smelled of sulfur. Max took out her camera; she had vague ideas for a travel album. Her muscles felt pleasantly sore after eight hours of bussing tables. Chloe lit up a cigarette. For a while they existed in the same space. This hour without time. Tourist season ended when the kids returned to school. They had saved enough money for another few weeks. Chloe talked about heading north, maybe drive the Beartooth Highway (it sounds too badass not to try). I've always wanted to go kayaking. Ever been to Canada? Maybe it's time we got out of the US.
Chloe ground her cigarette against the truck. Suddenly she was shy.
"Thanks, Max…I hadn't had the chance to tell you."
"For what?"
Chloe closed her eyes, splaying out, exhaling one last lungful of smoke.
"I'm glad I'm alive."
Max had never seen campus so full. Reporters swarmed by the quad's gates, demanding to speak with Yasmin or Colmenero. Headed by Loretta, a group of students picketed outside the administrative building. Loretta held a loudspeaker, one arm pumping as she led a chant. She was in her element.
Abraxas members crowded around Moses at the Everett Observatory. They seemed to take the asteroid as some sort of sign.
"This is not an uncommon event," Moses said. "We get fly-overs like this all the time. In fact, ten years ago, an asteroid struck Chelyabinsk, Russia – "
"Is it going to hit us?" someone said.
"The chances are very low…"
Max trudged up the slope to the overlook. Overnight it had snowed, great swathes of virgin white. Winter smelled fresh, like fir and running water, like a brand new whiteboard or roll of film. You could wake up tomorrow to a world completely erased. Growing up in Seattle, every time it snowed, Max would wake up early to see if they canceled school.
The afternoon greeted her, rising up the hill. At the top of the overlook, the entire campus spread out like a freshman's art project. She had always considered Caledon beautiful. When she first arrived, she could only imagine the locations she would photograph. All those sculptures. The pond. The lines of evergreens. The stately Georgian-style architecture. And of course her own Hellerton House, tucked outside of it all, where she had just drunk a cup of hot cocoa.
The Max on the bench said, "Took you long enough."
Max scrunched up the slip of paper in her pocket, written in her own hand. Meet me at the overlook. She watched herself stand up and tuck the beanie over her ears. The motion felt surreal. Did she really look like that?
"You've never belonged here, have you?" said the other Max. "I get it. We're the only ones in the world who understand each other."
One theory of time travel postulated that each decision led to a different universe. In one world you drank coffee. In another world you drank orange juice. Afterwards you wore a white coat, or maybe a black one. And so on. Each decision exponentially branched out into more decisions, an infinitely-expanding multiverse, an infinite number of you's slightly different from the you before.
Max didn't believe it. When you could rewind time, you developed a new perspective on how meaningless most decisions turned out to be. But the major decisions, the world-shaping ones…
"You're me," Max said. "From another timeline. One where I made a different choice."
The other Max smiled, and again Max felt unrealized, like the first time watching yourself on video or hearing the sound of your own voice. It was you but it was also a stranger.
"It wasn't so bad, at first. The worst was the first year. I had nobody to turn to. Who would believe you if you told them you could rewind time? That you had to kill your best friend in order to save your town? My parents brought me to different therapists, tried a bunch of different meds. After I lost my powers, things got better. Or maybe I got better, and so I lost my powers. I have this theory. Our power is tied to desire, to need. It fulfills a want. We wanted to save a girl."
"It was difficult for us, too," Max said quietly.
"Difficult? You two had each other! You think you know what it feels like, crying in the bathroom while your best friend gets shot?" The other Max gripped the bullets on her necklace. Her Chloe's, the dead Chloe's. There was anger in her Max recognized. "Despite our choices, we lived similar lives. We traveled. We took photos. I even took the same picture you did of that stupid Paul Bunyan statue in Minnesota. And in the end, we ended up here, Caledon University, artist-in-residence.
"I was miserable here. For the first time in ten years, I had settled down. I finally realized what I had been running away from. All those tight-knit groups of students. The professors who'd known each other longer than I'd been alive. I made a few friends, but none of them understood me the way Chloe did. You've had her so long you've forgotten how it feels to not have someone you can pour your soul into. It's easy not to feel it on the road. Everyone's lonely on the road. If it ever catches up, you pack your bags and head somewhere else.
"It was right here." The other Max stepped forward to the precipice of the overlook. "It was a couple of weeks ago. I had just finished seminar. The students asked some questions I wasn't prepared for. I felt so worthless, that at any moment everyone would realize what a fraud I was. I remember sitting on the bench wishing how fucking badly Chloe was here. I've never stopped missing her, not a single day. I couldn't take it any more. I stood on the edge. And I thought about throwing myself over.
"And then the most curious thing happened."
She held up her right hand. Instinctively, Max flinched, conditioned by Pavlovian vertigo. Her head throbbed. The asteroid shone so bright it seared spots in her vision.
"I saw her. Chloe. My Chloe. I thought I had gone insane, yet there she was, kicking her feet in the snow like she used to do all the time when we were kids. She looked different – a new hair style, a couple more tattoos – but I would recognize her anywhere. And then I saw she was with someone. You. Me."
The other Max circled her like a predator. "I realized then, this new power I was given. The power to see into alternate realities. Not just see but to go in to and act. Of course, I didn't want to do anything except to be with Chloe again. But there was a problem."
"You're the one who pushed me down the stairs."
The other Max tossed her hair. "Seeing her with you… I was so jealous I couldn't stand it. I saved thousands of people and this is what I get?"
What an odd feeling, to be castigated by another version of yourself. It would've been even weirder to apologize to yourself.
"Maya's manuscript. You gave it to Loretta."
The other Max shrugged. "Colmenero's a piece of shit. I couldn't stand to see him acting like he earned any of it. They're all guilty. Yasmin, Gwen, Lucas, even Safi…it makes me sick to my stomach. After all, if I'm going to live here permanently, I wanted it dealt with."
Max sat down on the bench. The headache had spread to consume the entire right side of her head. Her eyeball felt like it would burst. The sky roared. The other Max, for all her vindication, pressed her fist against her forehead. Blood dripped down their throats.
"The timelines are merging. The more I use my power, the harder it becomes to go back. It's because it fills a need, you see? Once the need's been filled, we lose our power. There'll be no going back. Our worlds will be one. I can finally leave it all behind. I can finally be with Chloe again."
"Haven't you learned anything from Arcadia Bay? Our powers always – always – have consequences!" Max gritted out. "Look up! The asteroid! It's the storm all over again! Caledon, Lakeport – it's all going to be destroyed!"
"I'm making the right choice this time."
"You'd be that selfish?"
"Selfish? Selfish! Why is it okay for you to do it and not me?!" the other Max shouted. "You think you have any right to call me selfish?"
The asteroid blotted out the sky. Max felt its heat as a pressure inside her chest, that world-shattering force. Below, at Caledon, chaos had erupted. The students stared at their phones, and over the scream of emergency sirens, the campus loudspeakers blared, Sudden change in trajectory and acceleration…predicted to strike Lakeport…get inside your homes…
"Max?"
They turned their heads at the sound of that voice. Chloe crested the bend, looking from Max to Max, her words dying, did you hear the news? We should get back…
"Chloe," they said in unison.
"She's me," Max said through the haze of pain. "She's me from the timeline where she sacrificed you instead, Chloe. She's merging our worlds! She's responsible for the asteroid!"
Did Chloe see the similarities or the differences? She understood in the way only someone confronted with the impossible could understand. She studied this Max she did not know. Yet they knew each other absolutely, utterly. Summers spent swimming in the pond. Pirates sailing the front lawn. Police knocking on the door. What was ten years compared to the immortality of childhood?
I remember you dying. When we met again we had already become inextricable.
"It's good to see you again, Chloe," Max said. "I never forgot you."
Chloe had changed. Chloe had stayed the same. She was beautiful like a lightning bolt. Max had only observed her from a distance or from the looking glass of an alternate reality. She was too much to believe in.
Chloe backed away.
"You were standing right there, by the cliff, with the rain soaking your hair," Max murmured. Some traumas, instead of fading, grew more vivid with time. "I wanted to kiss you so badly. But you begged me to let you die. Do you remember? You always acted like you didn't care but you did, more than anyone. I didn't feel like a hero. I had failed you all over again. Do you still remember how it feels to get shot? Fuck the universe! This is my farewell gift to you. I'll burn this place to the ground and on its ashes build the life we should've had."
I offer this to you, my friend, my regret, my almost-lover. The universe deserves retribution for what it did to you. What it did to me. Power this grand demands to be used. The fires of your funeral pyre will incinerate the world.
I'm the fury in your head.
Chloe whispered, "Don't do this."
"You'd let her do it and not me?" Max snapped. "In case you forgot, she's already destroyed an entire town! Ten years of suffering! Don't I also deserve happiness?"
"This isn't you, Max." Haltingly, Chloe reached out a hand. Max clung to it, electricity circuiting through their veins. The same touch, the same calluses.
It's always been you.
Chloe folded her into an embrace. Their bodies curved into each perfectly, as they always did, as they always would. The touch was foreign and so, so familiar. Envy turned to explosive anger, that her doppelganger experienced this every day of her life. Max hadn't seen Chloe in ten years and already felt she couldn't live another day without her.
Max wept.
"You got shot in a dirty highschool bathroom! You died thinking we – I – abandoned you!"
"That wasn't your fault, Max."
"I should've saved you! How can you stand it? – the injustice! Nobody else knew the sacrifice you made! What did you do to earn the universe's wrath? Everyone you've known eventually left you. And at the end, when it came down to it…so did I."
"I've always loved you," Chloe said. "Even after you left for Seattle, when I convinced myself I hated you, I still loved you. I'll never hate you for the choice you made. I'm grateful you saved Arcadia Bay, saved my mom. I wish I could see her again. You didn't make the wrong choice or the right choice. You made the only choice."
"I haven't been happy since that day," Max sobbed. "I'd give anything to be with you again. Anything."
"No, you won't." Chloe clutched her tight. "No matter which timeline you came from, no matter what you've done before – you're my Max."
"I couldn't live with the choice I made."
"Oh, Max, you don't deserve this. When has anyone gotten what they deserved? I know the guilt of living when you shouldn't have. Of sacrificing others so you can try to be happy. It won't work. I miss them still. If I could trade my life for theirs, I would do it in a fucking heartbeat. That's always been the difference between us. You're the one who makes the choice."
They stared at the sky, at the burn of the asteroid scattering like fireworks. The world trembled. Max thought about Arcadia Bay, about the way the water rippled when sunlight struck it just so during the Golden Hour. She thought about Joyce at the Two Whales, humming as she cooked. She thought about Victoria, attending some fancy post-grad program in New England, and she thought about Kate volunteering at the soup kitchen. Years later she had come across Nathan, after he got out of prison, in a middle-of-nowhere bar. Small world, isn't it? Dana and Trevor, still together. Warren spamming everyone's social media with pictures of his son. David Madsen in the Arizona Desert, somehow at peace, despite everything.
She loved them all. This Chloe wasn't her Chloe, would never be her Chloe. This world wasn't her world. She didn't want to go back.
She felt the asteroid's vibrations in her teeth. She thought this was a nice way to die.
She had never been able to refuse Chloe even the first time.
"Don't you forget about me," Max said.
Gently, she untangled herself from Chloe's arms. This wasn't farewell. This was a reunion. She knew it as much as you could know anything. They would meet again. They had never been apart. You carry my heart with you.
All that reality-warping power was a paltry thing.
She walked by the other Max, this timeline's Max, mass-murderer Max, collapsed on the bench. So long without powers had left her unprepared for the backlash.
What made us different? You made one choice and I made another.
Max bent down to her ear and whispered –
"You're sure?" the other Max said in wonder.
Your life isn't my life, Max reflected, staring at herself. I'm envious of your love, but I never asked if you were envious of me. You'll never eat Joyce's waffles again! If that's not tragedy, I don't know what is. If anyone can appreciate Chloe, I know it's us. Give her an extra kiss for me. I'll tell Joyce you said hi.
Max placed both hands in the empty air, the doorway between timelines, and pulled –
A/N: Final chapter up tomorrow.