I definitely broke time now.

If it turned out that she hadn’t lost control of her power then what if she was stuck in this moment? Forced to pull the fire alarm over and over for eternity. Or not to. Maybe this was the universe’s way of telling her she was making the wrong choice. Max shook the thought from her head. There wasn’t a choice to be made – she had to hit the alarm. She had to save Chloe.

“Where’d you get that? What are you doing? Come on, put that thing down.” Chloe’s voice rang out. Time was moving forward again. Wait, where’s the third voice? Is it just Nathan and Chloe? Max hesitated. Nothing should have changed. She was so sure that there had been another voice. She didn’t imagine it. Right? “Wait,” the third voice started to plead. Another difference – but the reappearance of the other girl’s voice was enough to prompt Max to break the glass and to once again hit the alarm. The deafening screams of the alarm that now blared across campus helped to block out the sounds of the other three leaving the bathroom but the real distraction was the glass that lay shattered on the tile. It stayed put and she breathed a sigh of relief. *** “Well, you do look pale,” Principal Wells commented. To Max’s surprise her half-assed excuse worked this time. Thank you, side effects of time travel.

***

Despite all of the differences, and now inconsistencies, campus looked normal enough but something felt off.  Everyone was going about their daily lives and if this was going to go according to plan Max needed to get moving. First stop would be retrieving Warren’s flash drive and instead of going to her dorm first she went straight to Dana’s. One ruined cardigan later and she was inside the dorms. A strange sense of comfort washed over her as her eyes landed on Juliet leaning against Dana’s door as the latter begged to be freed. The conversation with Juliet went without change as far as she could tell – well, at the very least the outcome was the same. “Why would I have Warren’s flash drive?” Dana looked genuinely confused. So did Max. Why wouldn’t you have Warren’s flash drive is more like it…? “Oh,” Max stammered while she struggled to come up with an answer. “He said that I could borrow it and couldn’t find it and said you might still have it.” It was extremely evident that Dana wasn’t buying it. “I’m starting to think he’s pulling some prank on me,” Max offered weakly. “I didn’t know you two talked.” A small grin forced it’s way through Dana’s confused expression. “That’s kind of cute,” she added smugly. “Yeah… Only sometimes.” Apparently? Now that I think about it… “Anyway, I have to get going.”

Max stood in the girl’s dorm hallway staring down at her phone screen. Warren wasn’t and hadn’t been texting about the flash drive. In fact, there was no text history from Warren at all. There were already texts from Chloe which shocked her initially but that was the plan right?  She had actually stayed in contact with Chloe and after reading a few of the messages between them it seemed like they hung out often, too. Her phone chimed to announce another message had arrived. Max backed out of her message with Chloe only to have her eyes land on the newest message, a message from Rachel. A shiver went down her spine.   What the fuck? [(541)###-#### Rachel] did u not hear the fire alarm? evacuate the building!!!!! were waiting in the parking lot for u

Though she wanted to stare and read the text message over and over Max immediately shoved her phone into her bag and hastily made her way to the parking lot.

***

[206-###-#### Maxxxxx] did u not hear the fire alarm? evacuate the building!!!!! were waiting in the parking lot for u

Rachel liked Max well enough. She used to live in Arcadia Bay before she moved. Chloe had tons of pictures of them as kids. Rachel had met Max for the first time when she and Chloe took their a no-parents Spring Break road trip up to Seattle. Technically they stayed with Max’s parents, but that didn’t count because they were barely around. It wasn’t like they were absentee or anything, it was more like Max was such a straight-edge good girl that her parents totally trusted her. Which was stupid, because the three of them went raving every night.

Her phone background was a picture Max had taken that night. Chloe and Rachel were were dressed in all white, and they were covered head to toe with glowing neon paint as they danced. The memories made her smile. They were a calming distraction from the craziness that had just gone down in the bathroom. Nathan could have killed them both. But he hadn’t. They won.

She grinned at Chloe. “We just need one more and we can be Blackwell’s Angels. Speak o’ the devil,“ Rachel nodded towards Max who was finally getting over to them. She stood up and waved eagerly, though her excitement quickly died when she saw the girl pale and grab her head.

Chloe's mind raced, trying to figure out what to do. Are they supposed to take her to the hospital? The hospital wasn't too far, but maybe she just had an autumn cold and was pushing herself too hard. Maybe they should just take her back to her dorm? She hadn’t mentioned feeling sick.

Send me a 🎃 and I’ll generate a number from 1-25status: accepting

13. Our muses are having a scary movie marathon.

  Maybe it wouldn’t work – rewinding the whole week and then immediately going through a photo? What was I thinking? With my track record I probably just made everything worse. But can it get worse? It can’t – there’s no way. 

Max’s head pounded. When she opened her eyes everything was out of focus and little black spots danced around the room. Her head felt feather-light, threatening to float away at any second but physically it was as though she was being restrained. As her vision cleared it was becoming more apparent that she was back in the classroom on the day it all started.

“Diane Arbus,” she heard Victoria chime through the ringing in her ears.  “There you go, Victoria! Why Arbus?” Came Mr. Jefferson’s usual response. 

With shaking, uncooperative hands Max picked up her camera and willed herself to take a selfie. The flash did nothing to help her already spotty vision and to be perfectly honest she wasn’t even sure she was in frame. 

“Sh sh sh, I believe Max has taken what you kids call a ‘selfie’ – A dumb word for a wonderful photographic tradition. And Max… has a nosebleed. Go on and head to the school nurse.” 

Max automatically reached for her nose and felt the slick blood on her upper lip. It didn’t seem particularly worse than usual to her relief. She stood, gathered her things, and left the classroom which proved to be a lot easier than taking the selfie. There was no way she was going to the school nurse. Who knew how long that would take and she had to go save Chloe.

That was …different. Max looked at the blood on her hand as she walked through the empty hallway on her way to the girl’s room. Once inside she used the extra time to recompose herself and splash just bit more water on her face to clean off the blood. Her reflection looked tired. She figured it made sense as she couldn’t recall the last time she’d actually slept. Time to tear the photo.

Her body seemed to be moving more fluidly again once she threw the torn halves to the bathroom floor. Either that or she’d done this enough times for it to be muscle memory. Max turned to watch the butterfly make its way into the bathroom. “Well, you’re right on time,” she greeted and made her way after the blue winged insect. After she focused the butterfly in the viewfinder Max shut her eyes and took the photo to avoid the reflection of the flash off of the bucket of water. She didn’t need any more spots. Next she preemptively moved Samuel’s cart to get the hammer. Right on cue Nathan Prescott entered the bathroom talking to himself and Chloe followed shortly after.  

“We know you been pumpin’ drugs n’ shit to kids around here.”

Rachel did her best to look commanding and authoritative while Chloe checked through stalls. “I hope you checked the perimeter, as my step-ass would say. Now, lets talk bidness.”

“I got nothin’ for you two.” Nathan spat between clenched teeth. Rachel could sense his rage, just below the surface, ready to boil over. She had seen this before in Frank… and Chloe.

“Wrong! You got hella cash.” Chloe got all up in his face, looking intimidating and badass.

“That’s my family, not me.” What a pathetic excuse.

“Oh boo hoo, poor little rich kid. We know you’ve been pumpin’ drugs n’ shit to kids around here. I bet your respectable family would help us out if we went to them. Man I can see the headlines now…”

“Leave them out of this, bitch!” It wasn’t like they could just back down now, but Rachel’s gut twisted and churned and told her this was about to go really wrong.

Chloe didn’t seem to notice the rising tension, and was only egged on even further. “We can tell everybody Nathan Prescott is a punk ass who begs like a little girl and talks to himself-”

And the rage surfaced over. Suddenly there was a gun in his hand and Nathan had Chloe against the wall. “You don’t know who the fuck I am or who you’re messing around with!”

“Woah! Put that away, there’s no need for that, we’re just talking,” Rachel tried to reason.

And so did Chloe. “Where’d you get that? What are you doing? Come on, put that thing down.”

What was she going to do? Rachel was panicking, trying to find a way out of this. She could try to rewind to before they came in the bathroom and try to stall somehow, maybe.

But she didn’t need to, because deafening scream of the fire alarm blared all over campus. “Don’t EVER touch me again, freak!” Chloe shoved Nathan back hard, and Rachel booked it out of the bathroom with her.

It made her nervous to just be lingering on campus like this. Then again, what damage could Nathan do, now? They had his weapon, and it would be impossible for him to report it to anyone without admitting he'd brought it on campus to begin with, or without putting himself in an even easier position to blackmail.

Chloe relaxed a bit at the thought, letting her weight drop against her truck. "At least we got his gun. Not as good as money, but at least we're both locked and loaded."

She took a moment to survey the Blackwell students, slowly spilling across campus. They had planned the meeting to be during class, but even with the alarm shut off, no one seemed to be heading back inside or even lining up for head-count.