Work Text:
“Max?” she asks the closed door. She knocks again. “Are you in there? Jefferson’s class is kicking my butt, and I was wondering if you could…” Rachel trails off, making eye contact with Kate, who’s peeked her head out of her dorm. “Is Max not home?” she asks, in her mousy voice. Rachel has never had a one-on-one conversation with Kate before, but she is nothing if not charming, if not flexible. She smiles, trying to put the other girl at ease. “She might be out for a night photo session. You know the way she is.”
Rachel’s seen the way Max has almost daily tea sessions with Kate. She herself can never imagine doing something like that, something so proper. Rachel prefers the dirty, the grunge; Chloe and her hideout in the junkyard is where she feels most at home. Everything that is the opposite of the family she was raised in; her father, drinking sherry. Her mother (not her real mother, anyway), drinking tea from fancy china.
But Max has been an enigma from the day Rachel met her, three years back. The quiet girl in the back of the Blackwell classes; Chloe’s shadow, a polaroid camera always in hand.
Kate furrows her eyebrows. “She’s never home at night. She’s never in her dorm when I look for her.”
Rachel tilts her head, smile fixed. “Are you sure she doesn’t just have the lights off and music in her ears? Maybe she can’t hear us.”
Kate nods, slowly. She’s still halfway in her room, clutching the nearly-closed door like a lifeline. Rachel wonders if Kate sees her as more charming or off-putting. “That doesn’t quite sound like her, though,” she says, slowly. The conversation trails off, then, and they stare at each other awkwardly. “Well,” Rachel says, “it wasn’t a big deal anyway. Good night, Kate.”
“Good night, Rachel,” she says, and shuts her door.
Well. It’s fine. She doesn’t really need Max’s help, anyway. She wonders if Max is hanging out with Chloe, and feels a weird rush of jealousy, before quashing it down. Chloe isn’t Rachel’s. Sure, they hang out all the time. Sure, they kissed three years ago. But Max has been Chloe’s best friend since they were little. It’s a different sort of relationship. There’s nothing to be jealous of, there.
Nonetheless, there’s something that intrigues Rachel about Max. There’s been an itch in the back of her brain since the very first time she saw her. And Rachel does not like to let things lie.
She pulls out her phone, texting Chloe to ask if Max is with her. She gets a ? in response. no but why, is the next.
No reason, she texts.
Maybe Max really is out for a nighttime photo session. Either way, it’s not Rachel’s business, so she shrugs and goes back to her dorm, trying to write this stupid essay for Jefferson’s class.
“Dana,” Rachel shouts into the cheerleader’s dorm. “Can we talk party plans?”
Maybe it’s a bit rude to go knocking on someone’s door at midnight, the day before a Vortex club party. But it’s a Friday, and the light is flooding underneath the door, and it’s not like Dana’s never woken Rachel up in the middle of the night. She’s been trying to become a makeup artist, and Rachel’s been privy to too many three am makeup sessions.
Dana opens her door. “Hello to you too,” she says, a smirk on her face. “Sounds like someone procrastinated.”
“Just help me,” she pleads, and Dana nods. “Sure, come on in.”
Rachel steps through the doorway. She’d heard voices behind the door, and she expects to see Juliet sitting on Dana’s couch.
What she doesn’t expect to see is Max, sitting under a blanket. “Um, hi,” the girl says, with a little wave. She’s always been shy around Rachel. “Hi!” Rachel responds.
“We’re having a sleepover,” Dana explains, breaking through the awkwardness that’s startled to settle around them. “Max, you good if we talk Vortex plans? I know you don’t really like those parties.”
Max smiles. “No worries,” she says.
And so Rachel and Dana plan and discuss, and then that turns into watching a movie from a flash drive Max provides, and soon enough it’s three am.
God, please don’t let Dana pull out her makeup.
“So, I didn’t know you two were friends like this, doing a sleepover.”
“Oh, yeah,” Dana responds. “Every few weeks, I’d say. Sometimes she’ll just knock on my door and say ‘Dana, wanna have a slumber party?’ And I’m always down, as long as she lets me practice makeup on her.”
Rachel chuckles, but tilts her head. There’s something odd about it. Maybe Rachel doesn’t know Max super well, but the girl has never stricken her as a very forward or impulsive person. This seems a bit out of character. But she smiles at Max, trying to put her at ease. She’s shrunken into the blanket, a little embarrassed.
“Well,” Rachel says. “If you ever want a sleepover in my room, I promise I won’t force you to do makeup.”
She’s not sure what she’s doing; Rachel is not the type of person who lets her mouth run before her brain. She always thinks before she speaks. But there’s something about Max that prompts her to do this. The itch in her brain increases.
“Hey,” Dana protests. “Don’t steal her from me! I need a model.”
But Max does a little half smile and says, “Thanks. Appreciate it.”
Her brain itches.
Well, like it or not, Rachel supposes: Max is not a huge help for Jefferson’s class. There’s another dumb essay, and Rachel would much prefer the action side of photography - either being behind the camera, or in front of it. She loves both equally. She doesn’t feel the need to write about and analyze photography philosophy, or techniques. She’s good at it, when she actually tries. She just doesn’t want to try.
So. She finds herself standing in front of Kate Marsh’s door. They’ve only spoken directly to each other once, and Rachel hopes that her smile is enough. She knocks, sure in her movements, and after a moment the door is opened an inch. “Hi,” Rachel says. “Sorry to bother you late at night.”
“It’s okay,” Kate says, cautiously. “What is it?”
“I was wondering if I could have some tea with you? I see you doing it with Max all the time, and I want to get in on the action.”
“It’s nine at night,” Kate responds.
“Yes,” Rachel says. “So, tea?”
Kate blinks. “Uh, sure? Come in.”
Rachel walks into the room, taking it in. It’s obnoxiously clean, which is the sort of thing she might expect. When her eyes land on Kate’s couch, she nearly jumps. “Oh,” Rachel says, voice sounding confident despite her pounding heart. God, Max seems so sweet, but sometimes she really unnerves Rachel. “Hi, Max.”
“Hi,” Max responds, her smile a bit more genuine than the last time she found her in someone’s room. “You said you wanted some tea?”
“Yeah,” Rachel starts. “That would be nice.”
“How do you feel about chamomile? Or do you want something with caffeine? Doing some night studying?” Kate asks.
“No, no. Chamomile is fine.”
Kate heats some water and hands her chamomile. She’s expecting to feel the similar anxious clenching of her heart in response to partaking in a ritual her mother does, but she’s pleasantly surprised to learn she feels nothing of the sort. The mug Kate hands her is not fancy china; it’s a simple yellow mug with “faith” scrawled across it in cursive. It’s the sort of tacky thing she’d find at Target for five dollars. Relief spreads in her chest, warm as the yellow tea.
“Max, do you want some, too?”
“That would be very nice, Kate. Thank you.”
The three of them sit in silence for a bit, just drinking their tea. Rachel thinks she’s starting to understand the appeal. Existing together, doing something as simple as this, is quite relaxing.
“So,” Rachel breaks the silence. “Max, would I be wrong in assuming you’re here for a sleepover?”
Max smiles. It’s a little bashful. “That’s right,” she says.
“You really like sleepovers, huh?”
“What’s the point of living right next to your friends, if you don’t have slumber parties?”
Rachel’s never really thought of it that way, but she supposes it makes sense. Still, it’s a little…she doesn’t know. Her brain is itching, and she doesn’t like it.
“I guess you’re right,” she chuckles. She lets the silence settle, like a blanket, before breaking it again. “Hey, would you mind if I join your tea sessions, every now and then?”
Kate smiles. It’s genuine. “That sounds wonderful. You’re always welcome.”
Max nods, too. She’s smiling. It’s soft.
Rachel feels like she’s earned something precious, somehow. It’s not until she goes back to her room that she realizes she never asked about the essay.
Rachel’s life falls into a pleasant rhythm. Her days are filled with school, broken up by Vortex parties, tea sessions with Max and Kate, and days at the junkyard with Chloe. The time passes, and she finds herself settling into a friendship with Max. There’s still a distance between them; they rarely, if ever, spend time with just them. But it doesn’t feel awkward. They make conversation. They laugh.
Rachel wakes up one Saturday morning with a hunger only greasy diner food can satisfy, so she finds herself in front of the Price’s house, inserting the spare key Joyce gave her into the lock. She ascends the stairs to Chloe’s room, planning to startle her before offering to treat her to the Two Whales. And then they can spend the day at the junkyard. She’s been sinking too far into her studies, and she hasn’t been spending enough time with her favorite blue-haired punk. When she quietly creaks the door open to Chloe’s room, though, she’s faced with a scene that’s starting to feel concerningly familiar.
At the sound of the door opening, Max, who’s sleeping on one side of Chloe’s bed, jumps up, eyes wide. Her eyes snap to the door, and when they make eye contact, her body relaxes, her eyebrows furrowing. She glances to Chloe, who’s still asleep on the bed.
Rachel expects to feel some sort of jealousy, the type she usually does when Max and Chloe are together. But there’s none of it. Ever since she’s started to become friends with Max, it’s faded, gradually dissolving with each tea session they share.
“Uh,” Max whispers. “Good morning?”
“I wanted to take Chloe to the Two Whales,” Rachel whispers back. “Wanna come with?”
Max seems to ponder this, before nodding. She still seems a bit confused, but when Rachel whips out her smile, she smiles back.
Chloe is appropriately startled by Rachel, nonetheless, and the three of them eat greasy diner food, just the way Rachel wants it.
She thinks about the way Max was sleeping at Chloe’s. That’s not surprising - certainly less surprising than seeing her in Dana’s or Kate’s room. Max and Chloe spend a lot of time together. They’ve both lived in Arcadia Bay since they were born. They’ve gone to school together. They shared a few classes, despite Chloe being on the science track and Max being on the art track, until Chloe was kicked out of Blackwell.
The part that keeps replaying in her head, though, is the way Max had jumped, startled and tense. Rachel was trying to be quiet - how had she woken her up? Is Max just a light sleeper? If noise that quiet disturbed her sleep, Rachel can’t imagine she sleeps well in the dorms, whether that’s in her own room or someone else’s.
Or maybe she was already awake, and seeing the door open startled her. That’s probably what it was, Rachel reasons. She’d be scared, too, if the door to a room she was sleeping in just opened, and there wasn’t supposed to be anyone else in the house.
Her brain still itches, though, as she watches Max chow down on a Belgian waffle.
Rachel curses her own stupidity. She’d stayed out late, past curfew, and the replacement security on Blackwell campus isn’t going to let her back in, even if she can prove she’s a student. It’s a policy of Blackwell's she really hates, but since Chloe’s family is out of town, David Madsen isn’t on duty. He’d take pity on her, let her back into the dorms. He’d hated her for a long time, but he’s been coming around to her lately.
But Chloe’s out of town, and she doesn’t think the Prices would appreciate her crashing in their house, even though she has the key. Knowing David, he probably has surveillance around the place, and he’ll probably have a stupid alarm.
Of course, the obvious choice is going back home and sleeping there. But she and her dad are in the midst of another fight about Sera, and she’s giving him the cold shoulder. She’s not about to crack just because she doesn’t have a place to sleep.
So, of course, this leads her to the one motel in Arcadia Bay, a shithole with a communal bathroom that she’s pretty sure houses mold, like, everywhere.
Oh, well. Beggars can’t be choosers. Rachel has too much pride to beg someone for a place to sleep, so the motel it is.
She checks into a room. It’s dirt cheap, at least. She gets a room, and lays down on the bed. There are spiderwebs all over the ceiling.
There’s no way she’s taking a shower, but the least she can do is wash her face. She gathers up her courage to face the moldy communal bathroom, walking through the door.
And this, of course, is where she runs into none other than Max Caulfield.
“Max?” she asks, not able to hide the shock in her voice. “What are you doing here?”
Max furrows her eyebrows, and does a little smirk Rachel doesn’t understand. “What are you doing here?” she counters.
“Stayed out past curfew,” she explains. “Fucking security guard won’t let me back on campus, and Chloe’s out of town, so here I am.”
Max tilts her head. “Don’t your parents live here?”
Rachel winces. “I’m in a fight with them. I don’t really want to go home.”
Max nods, understanding. “So…” Rachel prompts.
“So…?”
“So, I told you why I’m here. Why are you here?”
“Same,” Max says. “I got carried away taking pictures of a doe in the sunset, and by the time I realized what time it was it was past curfew.”
“Your parents live here, too, right?”
Max nods. Rachel wonders, suddenly, if the two of them are more similar than she realizes. “Yeah, but…”
Rachel’s brain itches. She doesn’t say anything, hoping Max will continue. “I just don’t want them to ask questions, you know?” she says, eventually.
“Questions about what?”
Max bites her lip. “Well, about why I’m staying out after curfew. I don’t think they’d like it if they knew about that.”
Rachel nods. It makes sense. But she can’t help but wonder. There’s something off about this whole situation. It’s weird, the way she keeps running into Max in unexpected situations, and yet every time she knocks on her dorm door, there is no answer.
She wants to ask Max if she’s ever home, but that would be rude, and probably scare her off, so Rachel holds her tongue and smiles. “I so get it,” she says. There’s a moment of silence. “Well,” she chuckles, “see you in class tomorrow?”
Max smiles. “Yeah, see you.”
Rachel walks along the sand, letting the cold water hit her bare feet. The Arcadia Bay sunset really is something else. Rachel misses California, but Oregon has its own charm; the oranges and reds bleeding into pinkish lavender, cut in a crisp horizon by the ocean.
Even though it’s October, it’s still plenty warm. Rachel’s trying to snag as many warm beach visits as she can before winter comes and it gets too cold to get in the water.
She walks for a long time, shoes in hand, feet wading through the ocean. Eventually, the sun disappears, colors bleeding into stars, and she spots a log in the sand. She walks over to it, sitting, letting the constellations dance across her eyes.
When she leans too far back, she loses her balance, reaching a hand out to catch her in the sand. But she doesn’t hit the soft, sifting grains she expects to. What she makes contact with is, instead, solid, and warm, and makes an oof sound.
“What the - what?” she shouts, whipping her head back. It’s a person, laying behind the log. The first thought is that she’s stumbled upon some passed-out drunk or something, and she braces herself for the fact they might be combative.
When the person rolls over, though, she finds herself looking into the eyes of Max fucking Caulfield.
“ Max?” Rachel shouts. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Max sits up, slowly. “Would you believe if I said I wanted to sleep under the stars?”
Rachel gives her a look. “Are you drunk?”
“Drunk?” Max says, scandalized. “No, I’m not….” she trails off, and Rachel wonders what she’s thinking. “I mean, well, uh, you got me?”
What should be a statement is uttered as a question, and all it does is remind Rachel how bad Max is at lying.
Most people lie about not being drunk. Why would Max say that she is?
“No, you’re not,” Rachel says, and she surprises herself with how confrontational she’s being. But the itch has been turning into a sort of worry. Does Max ever sleep in her dorm? Would she rather sleep on the sand than at her parents’ house?
“Well, I wouldn’t call it drunk,” Max says. Her words flow out of her mouth with an uncharacteristic, frantic quickness. “It was just a drink or two. That’s just tipsy, it’s not, like, actually drunk or anything.”
“Well, that depends on the drink. What was it?”
“Uh,” Max says. “Like, a hard lemonade.”
“So why aren’t you sleeping at home?”
Max raises an eyebrow. There are little bits of sand stuck in it. “After I’ve been drinking?” she asks, dubiously. “Yeah, as if.”
“Why aren’t you staying at Chloe’s?”
Max winces. “I’ve been staying there a lot, recently,” she admits. “Plus, it’d be even worse if Joyce saw me after drinking than my parents. I can’t face her disappointment.”
This, at least, is something Rachel can understand. She can’t bear the thought of disappointing Joyce.
But the thing is, Max isn’t drunk. Rachel knows what someone who’s been drinking is like. She’d be able to smell it on Max’s breath. Max is acting completely sober. And Rachel has seen Max drunk. At the first Vortex club party of their senior year, Max got completely wiped. Rachel had been floored to see Chloe’s quiet best friend absolutely shitfaced, a blank look in her eyes, kissing everyone she came across. It had been enough to worry Rachel just the tiniest bit, but she was drunk, too; and besides, Max was in class the next day. She looked a little worse for wear, sure, but Rachel’s had that sort of hangover before, too. Not pretty.
So Max is decidedly not drunk. But Rachel’s not going to call her out on it. So, instead, she says, “How about you crash at my place? I’m not fighting with my folks anymore.”
Max is quiet for a moment, thinking. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure. My parents would love you.”
To be honest, she’s kind of hoping she can avoid having too much of a conversation. Even when she’s not actively fighting with them, things are tense. They’re just not the same. She doesn’t want them to be the same, anyway.
So she takes Max home with her. It’s late enough that her parents don’t bug them to have dinner; her mom just sends them up with a cut-up plate of oranges and some tea, in those fancy china cups. Rachel yearns for Kate’s tacky Target Mom mugs. When did a random girl in her year start to feel more like home than her actual family?
They don’t talk, much. She lends Max some of her pajamas, and texts Chloe about what happened, who says Max never drinks. It confirms Rachel’s suspicions, except for the fact that Max drank at that party.
Oh, well. It was around her eighteenth birthday, anyway. Maybe she was just fast-tracking some teenage rebellion, and didn’t realize how much she couldn’t hold her liquor.
When Max comes back into the room, having showered the sand out of her hair, she settles on the ground. “Hey, you can share my bed, if you want,” she offers. “It’s more than big enough.”
Max smiles, thanks her, and gingerly crawls onto the bed, hugging the edge of it so much Rachel’s afraid she might fall off. “What’s it like, having a queen bed? I’ve only ever had twin beds. That’s why I’ve always slept over at Chloe’s house, not really the other way around.”
“Comfy,” Rachel responds, and the both of them laugh. This is less awkward than Rachel would expect, all things considered.
They don’t talk much after that, Max rolling over and falling silent.
It’s sometime in the middle of the night that Rachel is roughly woken. Max’s arm whacks her in the face, and ow, and the hit distracts Rachel for a bit too long. After maybe 10 seconds of getting over the shock, she finally tunes into what Max is saying. It’s mostly incoherent muttering, but Rachel catches the word no uttered over and over. Suddenly, she shoots up, eyes wide. Her hands are white-knuckled around the blanket, and she’s staring into space.
“Max?” Rachel chances, her voice uncharacteristically quiet. Max slowly turns her head back to Rachel, and she can see the moment the recognition sparks in her eyes. “Yeah?” she answers, her voice barely above a whisper.
“What was that?”
“What was what?”
She’s defensive, suddenly, and this moment strikes Rachel as one of incredible consequence. If she says the wrong thing, she will never be able to figure out what’s happening with Max.
“Nothing,” Rachel laughs. “You just whacked me in the face. You move around in your sleep? Must’ve been hell for Chloe growing up.”
Max laughs. It’s tense, but Rachel senses she made the right move. “Don’t worry. She punches right back.”
Rachel laughs, a real one. It’s a funny image.
Rose gives the two of them a ride to school. They get through classes, and a tea session with Kate, and neither of them mention anything about it.
The itch in her brain is stronger than ever.
It keeps going just like that. Rachel can never find Max in her room when she looks, but she always runs into her when she least expects. On an early morning hike to the lighthouse, she spots Max sleeping on the bench. She doesn’t wake her up, and she never tells Max about it. She keeps finding her in Dana’s room, and in Kate’s, and, of course, at Chloe’s.
She sleeps in class, sometimes. Rachel never brings anything up about it. But she finds that most of her time is spent staring at Max, now. Trying to figure out what’s going on.
She asks Chloe about Max’s parents, one time. She tries to play it off, but Chloe’s smarter than that. But she’s smart enough to keep her mouth shut, too. So she answers the question: Max’s parents are perfectly fine. They’re strict, and they’re overprotective, and they’re a bit emotionally distant. But they’re nice enough. Rachel knows what she’s saying. It’s not Max’s parents they need to worry about.
It’s the fact that Rachel’s pretty sure Max never sleeps in her room.
Maybe it’s not exactly on the up-and-up, but on a night Rachel knows Max is staying at Chloe’s she goes into her room. It’s not like Blackwell has locks on the doors, anyway. And it’s…clean. It’s really clean.
In fact, it looks like no one even lives here. It’s like one of those Ikea rooms.
The bed is perfectly made. It looks like it’s been like that for a while.
The only part of the room that looks lived in is the closet; clearly, that’s opened quite often. Max needs to get dressed, of course. But her desk is covered in a layer of dust, as is her chair. Like she hasn’t sat here for a long time. And the blinds are drawn. And her plant (Lisa, Max mentioned one time during a tea session) looks in desperate need of water.
Well, Rachel comes to the conclusion that she’s right. It’s the one time she doesn’t want to be.
If Max never goes in her room, and she doesn’t go to her parents’ house, either, where does she live?
Of course, the answer is clear: Dana’s room. Kate’s room. Chloe’s house.
The motel, and the beach, and the lighthouse.
Why?
There is one drawer in the desk that doesn’t have dust. Against her better instincts, Rachel opens it.
Max’s diary.
She absolutely should not open this. That would be crossing a serious boundary, way more than she already has by sneaking around her room.
But the itch in Rachel’s brain is nearly irresistible, and she almost can’t control herself as she reaches for it, opening it.
She’s confronted with pages and pages of writing. She doesn’t want to - she’s not going to read the whole thing. She just wants to figure out what’s going on. So she flips to the date of the first time this happened - the date of when she saw Max in Dana’s room.
There’s barely any mention of the sleepover with Dana, though there is a drawing of her. Discussion about classes, about Jefferson, about Principal Wells being on her back again. Rachel does catch her name mentioned - Max wrote about them watching a movie together. Rachel flips to the date of the next time, the sleepover with Kate. Max writes about her coming in, them having tea together. She writes about being surprised by the Rachel Amber wanting to have tea 8with them. It makes her chuckle. But nothing about the sleepover itself, anyway.
The date of her sleepover with Chloe. Just mention of the Two Whales. But there’s nothing weird about it.
The first time she catches something is the date of the motel. Motel tonight, it says. Chloe’s out of town. Oh, by the way, Debbie says hi.
Debbie…? Rachel wonders. Was that the name of the motel clerk?
You’ll never believe this. I ran into Rachel Amber at the hotel. Something about staying out past curfew. She was asking all these questions, which was kinda weird, but…glass houses, right? I’m the nosiest of the nosy. That’s what everyone says about me.
Rachel huffs amusedly at that. Max and her are turning out to be much more similar than she would’ve ever expected. Rachel thinks her fatal flaw might be her nosiness; here she is, reading another girl’s diary.
The next entry, from the beach, is the most interesting. It was warm tonight, it says. Thought I’d try the beach again. Dana’s starting to get a little bored with the whole makeup thing, so I want to give her a break. Kate has a call with her dad and sisters tonight, and Joyce started asking questions, so I better just suck it up and deal with sand. It’s nice, with the sound of the waves. Reminds me of when I was little and Chloe and I would build sandcastles. Anyway, pray I don’t become seagull food. Guess we’ll find out in the morning.
Rachel turns the page, where the entry for the next day sits. On the side of the page, there is a drawing of her. It’s surprisingly good. Crazy coincidence. I keep running into Rachel Amber. And I was trying to sleep and she just SITS on me. Like, who does that? But she asked if I was drunk, and far be it from me to touch alcohol anymore. I’ll never do that again. But, like, that’s probably a better reason for sleeping on the beach than ‘Oh, yeah, everyone’s getting suspicious, so time to sleep in the fucking sand.’ As if. But, hella weird (is that the right way to use it? Chloe’s so much better at this than I am) she took me back to her place to spend the night, which is really nice. And her house was so fancy. Her dad is the DA, after all. And then I totally ruined it by punching her in the face while I was sleeping. Ugh, so embarrassing. I don’t even remember the dream I was having, but it’s probably the same one as always. I don’t even want to write about it, even now. But her mom drove us to school, and I’m in class now. Guess I should pay attention, keep myself at that solid 2.8 GPA. Sigh.
And there it is. Proof that confirms Rachel’s suspicions.
She should probably get going. But she’s nosy, and the way Max wrote about alcohol, and the itching in her brain - it all makes her flip to the day of the Vortex party where Max got drunk.
There’s no entry for that day, but there is for the next. The first thing that confronts Rachel is a drawing of Nathan’s face.
I shouldn’t have gone to that party, scrawls Max’s handwriting. It’s less neat than most of the other entries, like her hand was shaking when she wrote it. Fuck the Vortex club. Fuck Blackwell.
There’s a small drawing of Max, her middle finger out. It makes Rachel smile against the tightness that’s startled to settle in her stomach.
I don’t even remember what happened at the party. I remember drinking…a soda? Or maybe it was the punch? It tasted weird, salty. But the rest of the party is just…gone. I think I remember talking to Nathan, and him acting all weird.
Rachel’s getting an awful feeling about all of this.
I’m getting all these texts. People took pictures of me. It looks like I got blackout drunk. I don’t remember any of it.
I woke up this morning, though, and I felt wrong. I was in the clothes I wore to the party, including my shoes. I can’t even explain the feeling, but…I knew something was wrong.
And then the worst part. I got a text from a blocked number. I thought it was junk, but when I clicked into it, it was a picture of me. On the floor of my room. Last night. And I don’t remember it…
The text just said ‘I had fun last night.’
And I don’t know what that means, and I don’t know who it is, but I keep imagining scenarios in my head, over and over and over. I feel sick.
Rachel closes the book sharply, feeling sick herself. Oh God. Oh God, Max hadn’t gotten drunk, she was drugged. And someone did something to her in her room, took pictures.
And Rachel’s almost certain she hasn’t slept in this room since that night.
It all makes sense, now. Max’s nightmare, the way she sleeps everywhere but here. The tightness she’s carried in her body ever since the start of the year. Rachel had noticed since the semester started, but she thought it was just typical anxiety.
She never could have imagined something like this.
“Uh, hello?” comes a very familiar voice, anger coloring her tone. “What are you doing in my room?”
Rachel slams the drawer, but it’s much too late. “Were you reading my diary?”
“Um,” Rachel says, at a loss for words for maybe the first time in her life. “Yes?”
Max’s face is pinched. “ Why?”
“I’m too nosy for my own good?”
Whatever Rachel expects to happen next, it’s not for Max to snort, and then laugh. All of the anger bleeds out of her features. “Don’t I know it,” she says, between her laughs.
“Max?” Rachel tries, a little unnerved.
“No, it’s just, I’ve never read someone’s diary, but I’ve done worse things. I’m really nosy, too.” She pauses. “What are you doing in here, though?”
“I thought you were at Chloe’s tonight,” Rachel says, instead. Max furrows her eyebrows. “Was this planned?”
“Not exactly,” Rachel defends. Max looks at her for a minute, clearly suspicious, but sighs. “I was just coming to grab some things I forgot.”
“Oh,” Rachel says. “I, well, I came in here to - be nosy, I guess. I’ve been trying to figure you out.”
“Figure me out?”
“You keep - making my brain itch. I needed to figure it out.”
Max narrows her eyes. “Okay. That’s kind of weird.”
“So is running into you sleeping on the beach, or at the lighthouse, or in a motel.”
“That’s - well, I guess. Yeah. So, you read my diary?”
Rachel takes a breath. “I did. I shouldn’t have done that.”
“Did you, um…”
“I read what you wrote about the Vortex party.”
“Oh,” Max says, quietly. “Okay.”
“I’m sorry. I really shouldn’t have snooped.”
“Well it’s not like you can change it now.”
“I can…I can leave and pretend I never saw it, and things can just go back to how they used to be. Or, if you hate me, I guess, I can stop coming to tea, if you want.”
“No,” Max says, immediately. “It’s nice, having you at tea. And, um, it might be - nice, to have someone who knows about…that. I don’t know. I just think that the Vortex parties are really awful and unsafe.”
“You’re right,” Rachel says. “I never thought about it until now. I’m…really sorry that happened.”
“Can we not talk about it?” Max rubs her arm, pulling it close to her body. “I’m trying to just, like, move on.”
“Of course,” Rachel says. “Of course. But, you know. I saw what you wrote about not wanting people to be suspicious of you staying over too often. You could stay over at mine as often as you wanted. I even - I have a lock on my door. My dad’s obsessed with security, being a DA and all. There’s no pressure, but I just thought I’d…”
Max bites her lip. “I should probably try to stay in here,” she says. Her shoulders hike up. “But I don’t know if I’m ready for that, yet. You sure you’re okay with that? I might punch you in the face again.”
Rachel laughs. “If you’re okay with me punching you back.”
And Max laughs, and then the two of them are laughing. And maybe it’s just a little too loud, a little too on edge, but Max looks relieved for the first time in a long time. And Rachel follows her back to Chloe’s house, and they sleep there and go to the diner in the morning, and Rachel sees Max smile - really smile - and the itch in her brain finally ceases.