Her reflection is a bespectacled king, wearing a ridiculous mustache a la step-douche. Behind it, the Blackwell bathroom is tagged floor to ceiling. All the words are backwards, but she knows them by heart. Them and the illustrations. The place is fucking TAGGED. Did she really do that? What did it take, total? Seven minutes flat? Her laughter is equal parts incredulity and pride. The baffled king approves.
"No wonder you got expelled, you dork," a voice says behind her, making her jump. "You absolutely ruined this bathroom."
She spins around, and there's Max, with her freckles and her hoodie and the shoulder bag, straight out of the hallucination, including the haircut that looks a lot like one specific old photo Chloe's got of them.
"That was before," she blurts out. Or was it after?
The walls are clean. The stall doors are clean. There's a janitor cart in the corner.
In the mirrors, the bathroom is still tagged, and there's no Max.
A blue butterfly is sitting on the edge of the bucket, raising and lowering her wings in slow motion.
"Go ahead, Max," she says. "Take the shot."
"I didn't tell my parents to move to Seattle to fuck you over, Chloe," Max says.
"I know," Chloe sighs. "It's just… I could really use a rewind right now."
"It's not all it's hyped up to be, let me tell you."
"Good enough for you to save my dumb ass, hippie."
"You know that wasn't really me, right?"
"Actually, in a weird, fucked up way, it was you."
The door flies open, admitting Nathan Prescott.
"As wicked dew as e'er brushed with raven's feather from unwholesome fen drop on you both! A southwest blow on ye and blister you all o'er!"
Prescott leans on the sink, looking at himself in the mirror.
"This is a girls' restroom, Prescott," Max says. "Get out, before I call Mr. Madsen."
"'Mister Madsen.' Do you think you can tell me what to do, bitch?" Nathan asks. Suddenly, there's a gun handle sticking out from behind his belt. Chloe knows there was no gun there when he walked in a second ago.
"Max. No."
Nathan pulls the gun out and points it at Max.
Chloe tries to get between Max and the gun, but she's in the restroom that's tagged, trapped on the other side of the mirrors. All she can do is watch.
"Well?" Nathan shouts. "Do you?"
"Get away from her, psycho," Chloe screams.
Max raises her hand.
The gun shoots.
"Max!"
She falls out of the dream flailing, knocking her shin against the steering wheel. Hard. Grabbing the sore spot with both hands, she spends a few seconds on her back, cursing.
Information trickles in slowly through the haze of her pain. She in the truck. At the junkyard. It's morning.
She bolts upright.
It's morning!
Shitting bigfoots.
The phone says 8:31AM. With a stop at the gas station, she's out of Arcadia Bay by 8:45. She gets to PDX by 11, parks at the curb and zones out, thinking about the dream and the flashbacks, thinking about the orange pill bottle and the knife, and about Rachel, until a cop tells her that she can't park there.
"I'm picking up a friend."
"So is everybody else. This is loading and unloading only. You can't park here."
"I just drove two and a half hours to get here. Now I have to drive in circles another half hour until she lands?"
"You can park in the lot."
"And pay the hourly rate of what? 20 bucks?"
"Look. You can do whatever you want, but you can't stand here for 30 minutes waiting. There's a million people trying to pick up those who've already landed. So move your vehicle!"
She has a couple of other things to say, but then it occurs to her that it might not be smart to antagonize Portland police with, like, half a case's worth of empty beer cans rolling around the cabin. So she shuts up and pulls away from the curb and circles at fifteen miles per hour. Her truck being what it is - a rare relic - and Chloe herself being not so common a sight, the cop clocks her every lap. She gives him one or two insincere thumbs up, but - to her credit - keeps the birds caged. On her fifth loop, Steph is standing on the curb next to the cop.
Jeans, sneakers, a red Arcadia Bay shirt, even a beanie. Was she afraid Chloe wouldn't recognize her or something?
Chloe cuts over two lanes, parking diagonally, and badly. The guardian of the Oregon law makes a move like he's about to unleash justice, but seeing Steph pull the door open and climb in, stays back and send justice with his eyes. The bird flaps against the bars of the cage, as Chloe pulls away with a look over her shoulder. The bars hold. That what you call maturity.
"Chloe Price, that is an amazing tattoo!"
"Fuck yes! Me and Rachel got tattoos… for her… 18th birthday. Anyway… And you, Steph Gingrich, bought no new clothes since your Sophomore year at Blackwell. Bootleg CD business not doing so well?"
"Sadly, it folded. I'm actually going to intern this summer. At Warner Bros."
"Well, shit. I might intern at Mike's Garage."
"Are you OK, Chloe?"
"Yeah, fine. No. Not fine. I'm scared and I'm worried, and my brain is not working right."
"Two brains are better than one that's not working right. Tell me everything."
So she does. Or near enough. Maybe. It takes the better part of the long drive along highway 6 and lunch at Frank's "famous" Smoke Shop, which sells smoked meat and fish instead of weed for some reason and which, fine, serves a pretty mean sausage. While they eat, Steph looks through Rachel's bookbag. There's no knife in it. Chloe moved that to the glove compartment, and out of her overall story. She can't tell why. She also doesn't tell Steph about the flashbacks she get regularly while driving. Kinda self-explanatory, that one.
That aside, it feels good to share, to unload the burden. Even to eat (Steph's buying). It makes her feel less crazy, even though she sounds like a strung out junkie.
By the time they pass that pulloff that offers the first scenic view of the ocean, marred with the blotch of Arcadia Bay, it's nearing 3 o'clock.
"The lighthouse!" Steph says. It's the first thing she said since Chloe finished her story, about twenty minutes earlier.
"So," Chloe segues in, "you think I'm a nutcase."
Steph shrugs.
"Among other things. But you're not a liar. Though I feel like there are things you're not telling me."
"What about that ticket?"
"The school trip? I don't know, Chloe. It's weird that there's a chunk of time she's unaccounted for, but maybe she just wanted to be alone. Maybe she hopped a bus to the next town, sat on the beach all day and ate ice-cream."
Maybe.
Maybe that's where she met that guy.
Or maybe she met him before and went there with him. To sit on the beach and eat ice-cream all day. And whatnot.
"You know what's weird, Steph?"
"What?"
"You know how I told you about Rachel saying she met someone, right?"
"Yeah, but…"
"Nevermind that. What's weird is why is he not looking for her?"
They've crossed into town now - that sign again - and Chloe flashbacks several times back and forth between the now and the future, in which she's just rescued Max from Prescott in Blackwell parking lot. It's always the same conversation, different versions of it.
"You came back to Arcadia Bay for a teacher... not your best friend."
"Don't you think I'm happy to see you?"
"No. You were happy to wait five years without a call, or even a text."
Steph is thinking, meanwhile.
"How do you know," she finally begins, "that he…"
"What? Like Rachel maybe never mentioned me to him, you mean?"
"No. No. Not like that, Chloe."
"He'd still be in town, don't you think? A new person, asking about Rachel. I would hear something."
"Arcadia Bay isn't that small…"
"Rose would mention it to me. He would have to go to Rose, at least, Steph."
Steph-Max is thinking, shrugging.
"Unless…"
"Unless… they left together."
Steph is making a face like sun is her eye, even though Arcadia Bay is about to get drenched.
"I was going to say unless they... uh, broke up by then and he went wherever, or, if not, then maybe he's just sitting back letting the cops do their job. Not everyone has it in them to go all PI like you."
"Yeah, not everyone cares like me. You think maybe they... broke up, though?"
"I mean, assuming they were ever... You said Mrs. Amber haven't even heard about him."
"Yeah, well, Rachel hasn't exactly kept her parents in the loop lately. Hell, who does?"
"I don't know. What's your theory here, Chloe? This guy kidnapped Rachel?"
Chloe stares straight ahead, watching this ridiculous theory take shape. There's no way Rachel wouldn't see right through that creep, is there? Was she really thinking that, or was it... hope? Fuck.
"Shit," she says. "I hope not. What about the backpack? Why bury it?"
"I don't know, Chloe. But it's all school stuff. Not super-useful or necessary if you're running away."
"What if you're not running away?"
"Then… I don't know. I don't get it."
"If you're not running away, then you'll still need the stuff, but it's heavy. So if you need to walk a mile or two somewhere, you hide it here, thinking to come back for it later."
"A creepy, dirty junkyard, though?"
"Hey, watch what you say about my kingdom!"
"Your what? Did you, like, hang out at this place?"
"Still do. We have a shack and everything. I'll show you. We're almost there."
"Uh… great…"
Once again, Arcadia Bay pans around its landmarks: lighthouse on the left, Blackwell on the right, the Two Whales, the water tower covered in graffiti - PRESCOTTS SUCK BALLS - everything ringed by green mountains and domed by glassy ocean and skies.
"Welcome home, Max," Chloe Price says.