Her laughter turns to burning, acrid cough pretty quick, but even that feels good. Even the tears that she knows are black, the snot dripping from her nose, also black, the burns on her hands.
Because it's Rachel.
It's Rachel, alive.
It's Rachel, who came out of nowhere and saved their lives.
They did it.
What did they do, exactly? she wonders suddenly. Is this real or another one of her flashbacks?
She looks for Rachel in the blur of her tears, frantically. She's there, a yard away, in her flannel and her shorts and her boots, exactly as Chloe remembers her, but is it too much like she remembers her?
A bit too convenient?
"Is it… Is it really you?" she croaks in between coughs.
Rachel tilts her head. Her face, Chloe sees now, is covered in mud, or soot, or both. So are her clothes and her bare legs. Her hair is matted. All of it suits her, because everything does.
"Now, why does everybody keep asking me that?" Rachel asks rhetorically. "Hi, Steph! Long time no see. I didn't know you were in town. You should have asked me before hanging out with this one. I could have warned you."
Steph doesn't respond. She's too busy coughing up her lungs. Like Chloe's, her face is sooty as hell.
Rachel seems fine with doing most of the talking for the moment.
"So. Are you all ready to tell me why you were inside a building on fire, in the middle of… uh, where are we, exactly? Wait, is that your stepfather's car?"
"It's the Prescotts' old farm," Chloe manages to say. She tries to sit up, but loses her balance and ends up falling back and conking her head against the beam of the wooden fence. There is a flash in her brain, and Rachel's photo. With her mouth taped. "Fuck."
"Oh, no wonder Nathan was here," Rachel says, looking around. "Ran off though, I guess."
Nathan, Chloe remembers, in more ways than one.
"That motherfucker."
"Why? What happened?"
Chloe looks up at her, rolls her head, shakes it. It's about the hardest question she's ever heard.
"Do you remember anything?" she asks in turn.
"Me?"
Rachel stares down at her, her face first surprised, then confused, then alarmed. And so fucking pretty. Matted hair and all.
"Well, let's see… I was out in the woods not far from the burned-down sawmill with… ahem, looking for you, actually," Rachel says, scanning her surroundings. "Anyway, it's a long story… Then… I must have gotten knocked out or something. When I woke up I was alone, in the dirt, in the rain, somewhere not too far from here. I saw the fire and came to see what was happening. Ran into Nathan, who said you were inside..."
She looks around again.
"Don't see any rail tracks, or the river... How far is this Prescott farm from the old mill?"
"Do you know what day it is?"
"Uh, Monday?"
Chloe shakes her head.
"Are you telling me I was out all night? Is it Tuesday?"
"It is Tuesday," Chloe says. "May 14th."
Rachel watches her with an amused expression, which slowly turns into alarm again.
"Chloe, I think your brain was damaged from breathing all that smoke. We need to get you to the hospital. Steph?"
Steph has stopped coughing, but she's not ready to pitch in her two cents. Or to help take Chloe to the hospital.
"Check your phone," Chloe says, sitting up again and managing to stay vertical this time. The world is starting to spin slower.
"My phone?" Rachel repeats, reaching into her pockets mechanically and pulling it out. "What does my phone…? What the fuck is this?"
An unseen raven caws, the sound echoing, and suddenly, for a brief moment, Chloe sees everything from up above, circling, a big circle of trees around the smoking rubble and tiny figures by the fence, and a curving glass dome of the sky above.
Rachel stares down at her phone, at Chloe, at Steph, at what's left of the barn and what's left of the clouds.
"What the fuck?" she repeats, addressing everything at once. "It can't be May… Wait is this some sort of a prank? A cyber-attack on the phone company? Did everyone's phone get hacked? Does yours say May 14th, too? Is that the big joke?"
"Mine says it too," Chloe replies, "but not because it was hacked."
"Well, fucking what, then?"
"You've been missing for three weeks, Rachel."
Rachel looks at them in turn again, as if waiting for the punch line, which never comes. She scoffs.
"Come on, Price, that's hella impossible. Three fucking weeks? What, was I in a coma in the woods here for three weeks? Is that what you're saying? How would I stay alive? I mean… I'm not even hungry. And you're… the two of you… in that burning barn now… Chloe, just tell me. What the fuck is going on?"
"OK, I'll try, but I don't promise it'll make sense. Can we get out of here first though? They must have seen the smoke from the town by now. I don't really want to be here when the cops and firemen show up."
She gets to her feet with Rachel's help, and the two of them help Steph, who's just starting to regain color in her face. The muscle car has a shattered passenger window and a crack across the windshield and a dent across the hood from where a piece of a barn roof landed on it, but when Chloe tries the ignition it actually starts. She rummages for a rag and finds a roll of toilet paper in the glove compartment, which is not weird at all. They drive away, using the paper to wipe their faces somewhat.
About two minutes out of the farmstead they have to pull over to the side to let a fire truck through in the opposite direction. As they start again, Chloe finally begins to tell her story, omitting her trip to the Three Seals motel. Rachel doesn't seem to be paying attention. She stares out of the window, shaking her head, checking her phone every 30 seconds and mumbling things about three weeks.
Chloe mentioning her visions snaps her out of her trance.
"Flashbacks? Maybe this is what it is! A vision. Like the one I had about you and those railroad tracks. I know it's a weird thing to say to someone that they're not real, but is it as weird as missing for three weeks with nothing to show for it?"
"For what it's worth, I did get stuck in the points a few days back."
"What?"
"But that was last week. Not three weeks ago when you saw it."
"The vision I saw… you got hit by the train."
"The one I saw about you, you were murdered and buried in the junkyard." She wants to add "by your buddy Nathan Prescott," but doesn't.
"Charming," Rachel says. "So what happened with the points?"
"I was going to get to that, but fine. As we were looking for you, I ended up by that abandoned hut by the tracks, and while I was there I got caught in the points."
Rachel gapes.
"That's exactly what I saw in my vision. How did you get out?"
"Fuck if I know. Had another vision… of you, actually. You pulled me, and then I was out, and the train was going by."
"So I saved you then, too?" Rachel asks.
Chloe rolls her eyes. "I guess so."
Rachel shakes her head.
"That's too crazy. Let me pinch you."
"What is that gonna do? Pinch yourself."
She does.
"Ow."
Chloe has to pull to the side again, because now there is a cop car coming from town with lights flashing. As it comes closer, she sees that it's none other than Officer Anderson Berry. What's worse, he recognizes the stepdouche's car and her in it, and clearly does not approve of the condition the car is currently in. But then he sees Rachel in the front seat next to her and his eyes nearly pop out of his head. He slams on the brakes, skidding to a stop just past them.
"Fuck," Chloe exhales.
A moment later he reversed back to her window, in a cloud of burned rubber smoke, and shuts off the siren.
"Rachel Amber," he says, like Chloe's not even there. "You've got some explaining to do."
"Officer Berry."
"Don't you 'Officer Berry' me! We thought… Your parents thought the worst. Everybody's been looking for you, losing their mind, and you just come waltzing in three weeks later with…these two?"
Noticing Chloe and Steph now, he frowns at them like they were in on the whole thing.
"Yes, Chloe just picked me up from… the bus. It's a long story, which I should first tell my parents," Rachel says.
"I should take you to them myself," he says, "but I have to go investigate this fire. So you go straight home. You take her straight home, Chloe, you hear me? Say, isn't this your stepfather's car?"
"Yeah?"
"What the hell did you do to it?"
"Oh, that was…"
"Weather," Rachel says. "This freaky storm came out of nowhere when we were driving back. All of a sudden this huge branch fell on top of us. Almost ran us off the road. Did it rain in town?"
A staticky voice on the radio says something Chloe can't make out.
"Shouldn't be driving in crazy weather like that," the policeman mumbles. "Straight home, Chloe, you hear?"
Chloe gives a military salute, and off he goes, with the siren on again.
They drive on in silence, until Rachel says, "So it is true. I've been missing for three weeks."
"Oh now that the cop told you, you believe it?"
"Shit, and he's right, too. My… parents."
"Yeah. Actually more of them than you think."
"What? Oh, no."
"Yeah. Sera's in town, too. Just got in the other day."
Just when I needed your blood for a blood ritual which ultimately maybe saved you. And maybe the world. Might have to save that one for a later time. When we're both high or something.
"Fuck, I do have to go home," Rachel says. "And act like I didn't just see them yesterday."
"You'll be alright," Chloe says, drawing from Rachel a quick glance.
"Hopefully safe, too," she adds quickly.
First houses of Arcadia Bay creep into view, peeking from under the firs. The road turns and there is the ocean, and Arcadia Gas, and the docks, and in the distance, the lighthouse.
"Why would I not be safe?" Rachel asks.
"Rach, what happened to you, didn't happen on its own. Somebody made it happen."
"So you're saying they could try again? While I am at home? At the house of the District Attorney?"
"I don't know if it matters where you are. I know it sounds crazy, but I think we're dealing with supernatural shit here."
"I can handle crazy," Rachel says. "Are you talking about magic? Witches?"
"Witches or witch? Someone sent you into another reality, another universe, for three weeks. We don't know why or what for, exactly, but it had something to do with today's storm, and I'm pretty sure that person or people are still around. The hope is, what they did three weeks ago cannot be easily done again, and what Steph and I did by burning the totem and busting you out set them back far enough at least to have to regroup. Which should give me time to catch Stella Hill and the Prescott scumbag and beat the info out of them."
"Nathan did say something about Stella. What does she have to do with this?"
"Something. Strange shit was happening and she seemed to know a lot about it. I'll make her tell me who she works for."
Rachel turns to Steph.
"Stella, witches, burned a totem? Shit, I'm so lost. I have to go home, but later you'll have to tell me everything. Before you go off hunting for people."
"Fine. I got some questions, too," Chloe says. "Oh, and you should take this."
She extends her right hand towards Rachel.
"My bracelet? Where did you...?"
"Found it there by the hut. Take it. It... works. I'm pretty sure."
Rachel hesitates, waiting for Chloe to go on, then, when she does not, slips her hand into Chloe's like she's going to give her a handshake, but grabbing the wrist instead and transferring the bracelet over in one motion like she's done it a million times before. With the bracelet back around her wrist she looks up into Chloe's eyes and Chloe nearly runs the truck off the road.
"Tonight," Rachel says.
"Tonight? Are you sure?" Chloe repeats, clearing the frog out of her throat.
"I've been missing for three weeks, Chloe. This can't wait."
They turn towards Posh Bay and Rachel settles back in her seat and makes Chloe start telling the story from the beginning again, so she tells her about the flashbacks again and digging in the junkyard, and going to the Amber house and the ticket stub and Blackwell and calling Steph and going to the Prescott barn for the first time. She gets as far as how she went and picked Steph up from Portland, when the Amber house pulls up. The lights are all on, even though it's still daylight.
"The rest later," Chloe says. Whispers, actually.
Rachel looks at the house, just as the door opens and Rose Amber steps out on the porch, with a hand over her mouth.
"OK, I have to…" Rachel says, pulls on the door handle to open the door, then suddenly spins around and embraces Chloe and holds her for three seconds, her cheek on Chloe's ear.
"Thanks, Chloe," she whispers, "and… I'm glad you're OK."
Then louder, as she pulls back, to both of them, "I'll see you tonight. Steph."
Then she inhales deeply and gets out of the car.
"You hella saved my life," Chloe Price tells Max Caulfield in her room on October 8th.
Back in May, she only thinks it, because Rachel is suddenly gone again, and it's too late to say it, and it's too late to ask her about...
No.
Later.
She makes a u-turn and drives away before she sees the Ambers hug.