Chapter Text
Part Three: Opposition
***
"'Sup Maxmantha! How were all the rich dudes? Bougie?"
"Hey, Max, hope you're good! Wanna hang this weekend?"
"Eh, no worries, anyway."
"How about tonight?"
"Hey, Max, been a few days, you all good?"
"Are we good?"
"K, just fucking ignore me I guess."
"Sorry, fuck, didn't mean to snap like that."
"Max, are you okay? Please. I haven't heard from you in nearly two weeks. Please reply to me when you see this?"
"Max?"
"Max?"
"Listen, if you're pissed at me for the kiss, please just tell me, I'm hella sorry. I not looking for you to come back or trying to get in your pants or anything just...listen, fuck, after Rachel I want to make sure you're okay. That you're safe. I hella care about you, okay? Like, yeah, a lot."
"Hey, Chloe."
"Oh shit," Chloe texted back thirty seconds later, "fuck, Max, are you okay? Are you safe? Kate was in the hospital and Warren wasn't helpful. What the fuck happened?"
"I can't text, Chloe."
"What, why? What the fuck are you doing?"
"I'll lose my scholarship," Max replied, twenty minutes later. "It's not fair, I know. And I'm sorry. I care a lot about you too. A lot a lot. But I sacrificed so much to be here. To study here. And I can't lose it. I'm sorry. If you want to curse at me, drive me away, be mad at me, I understand."
"...just go."
"I'm sorry."
"Yeah, guess we've both screwed up now. Sorry, too, for what I did. For everything."
***
Max sighed, and took a step backwards, looking at the pictures arrayed on the wall of her dorm room. This was her own space. She had survived the entire long summer, and everything that had happened in it, and she was back here, now. She was back at Blackwell, for her Sophomore year.
The summer had sucked. Her parents had been supportive of her gender since the earliest days, when she was just talking to Chloe online. They had always loved their daughter. But they did not understand her. They knew she loved photography more than anything, and they supported it, but they had not understood why she was so quiet, and nerdy. Almost a cliche, really. They had not understood why she had stayed in the closet so long, and had not understood, at first, the monumental disservice they had done her in outing her against her will.
And because of them this last summer had truly sucked. Or, rather, in part because of them. Other things had happened, of course, both before and during. But it was their actions that had led to the flurry of Blackwell emails hounding her about dorms, and paperwork, and pronouns, and names. But she had survived. She was still Max. She was still herself, and no one else. And now she was standing here, having finished decorating her own dorm room, in one of the girl's dorms.
The pictures were spread out in front of her like a collage. No good pictures, though. Too many selfies. No pictures of friends. Not that she had many friends to speak of, really. No pictures of Chloe. No pictures for whatever stupid contest Professor Jefferson had been emailing all his students about.
No, she stopped her train of thought. She had come to Blackwell for photography. She had saved, and worked, and slaved away, and applied for parasitic loans for photography, and there was no better professor here than Mark Jefferson. It was unofficially recognized that he pretty much was the entire department, and he had personally recognized Max, last year, in the last few weeks of school. He had said she had promise, and she thought he had probably pulled strings to get her into his class again this semester.
If only it had not cost her so much.
She shook her head, trying to stop thinking the thoughts running through her mind.
Outside her door people were talking. Women. Cis women. Girls. There were two girls named Dana and Juliet, who seemed close, a quiet girl named Alyssa, more whose names she did not know, and worst of all, somehow, on the same wing as her Victoria Chase. Even the thought of her, and all the others, made Max heart race. She fiddled with the string of yellow hoodie she wore constantly, despite the summer's warmth. She had started hormones young enough that she did not need laser, or electrolysis, her parents told her, as if she could even afford it. She passed fine, they said. She was just like any other college girl.
But she was not. She knew that. And worst of all, even if the rest of the dorm was commanded to be superficially accepting by Wells, they knew too. They knew who she was. Victoria knew. And she was terrified.
If only Kate was actually here, at Blackwell itself.
Max checked her phone, as she absentmindedly watered her plant, Lisa. Messages from her parents, of course, wishing her a fantastic day, and wondering how she was settling in. Even Warren had texted her about some sort of movie thing. But she was not interested in any of that right now. She flipped through her phone, until she found Kate, and began typing.
***
"Hey, Kate."
"Hey! Max!" Kate replied, five minutes later. "How's Blackwell. Classes start...tomorrow, right? They start in a week here at the community college."
"Yeah, yeah, they do," Max texted back. "How is life treating you and your dad?"
"Really good. It's good to actually be near downtown, where I can help people and also walk into my classes. A little cramped, yeah, and the land lord isn't nice, but Alice loves the apartment."
"Good. I am glad."
"Hey, Max? I know I have already said this like, a million times, but thank you so much. Without the money you gave us, with my mom, and, like, everything that happened this summer when she...she found out who I was and about the video, well, I don't know what my dad and me would have done. And instead of being homeless we were able to move here, he was able to find work and I've even got my classes."
"It wasn't my money. Someone gave it to me, like I said. I'm just glad it went to a good cause."
"I've said it before, and I'll say it again, but you're an angel, Max."
"That would be you, Kate."
"Then I guess you're this angel's angel. But what can I help you with today?"
"I guess I just wanted to say hello to a friendly face."
"Hello! Sorry I'm not up there at Blackwell, but, well, you know."
"Memories."
"Yep. And money too. But you take care of yourself."
"Will do."
***
Kate did not text her back. Max sighed, as she sat down on the bed. She saw the name staring back at her, of course, reminding her of all the long summer, and before, with the bath, and the kiss. She had not meant to do what she had done. She had not enjoyed it. But Jefferson mattered. Photography mattered. Her thumb hovered over the name, and then she lay back down, with a heavy sigh.
A sudden sharp, short knock on her door broke her out of her haze. She checked herself once in the mirror, mussing her brown hair, back and forth, and regretting the bangs. She looked...boring, really. Like herself. Maxine Caulfield, in the flesh. She sighed, and went to open the door.
"Victoria?"
"Hey, Max."
"I...what are you doing here?"
The blonde was just as impeccable as the first day Max had met her, what seemed like a life, and a gender ago. She was buttoned up, calm, and collected. Steely, was the right word for her. But Max had heard of the video. She knew that she had kissed Kate, and she had seen her crying, on the roof top, in the rain. It had been all summer, but Max still felt on edge, defensive, and ready for prejudice, or whatever snide comments she might hurl.
"Just checking to see how you're settling into the dorms. The girls, dorms, I, umm. Guess. No, that's stupid."
"Uhhh, fine?"
Max looked at her face remembering what she had done to Kate, when Kate was far, far too inebriated to even remember. She remembered rescuing Kate from that party, along with Chloe, and how, thanks to Wells, no doubt, nothing had come from that. She had no way of knowing if it was Victoria who had drugged Kate, or even if Kate had been drugged. But she had kissed the Christian girl. And who knows what else would have happened if Chloe and she had not been there. She felt something boil inside her, and focused on Chloe. What would Chloe do in a situation like this? What would she say, and how would she act? She tried to let that guide her.
"Good, well, I know that you and I will be taking Mark's class together, so I figure we would need to figure some things out between us." Victoria continued, a little awkwardly.
"Mark?"
"Mr. Jefferson," Victoria said, with an exaggerated sigh. "Mark. And, well, everything that happened last semester still happened."
"Victoria," Max said, speaking slowly, and deliberately, "are you apologizing to me?"
"I don't think I have anything to apologize for. At least, not to you specifically."
"You did call me a boy a lot of times," Max said, trying to channel what Chloe would have said. "There is that. I think your precise words were, what, sad boy?"
"Listen, you weren't out yet, so it can't be transphobia. Like, if anything it's your own fault for not telling me," Victoria started, before catching herself, like she was trying to be more polite. "Listen, Max, I get, like, everything. I'm not a bigot, and it's not bigoted to call you a little bit of a bitch, sometimes. But, like, this isn't about your gender things, or why you are here, or anything, this is solely about the Vortex Club and...everything, last semester. I'm still a part of it and it matters to me, but I know...what happened. So I figure you and I need to talk about it."
"You want to talk about how you were involved in a party where Kate got drunk, maybe drugged, and somewhere in there you kissed her," Max snapped. "Or did you want to talk about how she tried to overdose, went to a psych hospital, and got outed, which made her parents break up? Or do you even care about any of that?"
"I do," Victoria began, with a slight waver to her lower lip, "I do care. But I don't remember what happened that night either. I was too wasted to remember. And I am not leaving my friends. This is my world, Max. And I need to find out some way of getting through this next semester with you here."
"So do you want to settle it right here? Right now? In this hallway, where everyone can hear us?"
Victoria paused, took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and then spat her next words out with venom.
"You are being such a little bitch right now, you know that right? No, not right here in this filthy hallway. Off campus, somewhere. Dinner. I'll buy you it. You could probably use it, and never afford the places where I eat either."
"What?" Max asked, both the internal model of what Chloe would ask, and herself failing to think of any other response.
"Dinner. I'll pick you up out the dorm, this Friday," Victoria replied, with renewed confidence, as she turned on her heel, and stalked away. "I am not asking again."
Max stood in her door, and watched her go. This did not make sense in any timeline, she found herself thinking. And her mind could not make sense of it. She glanced once more at the name on her phone, before she returned to her dorm room and shut the door behind her.