all we can do is try / @rachelambre
she'd looked it up, once. the etymology of her name. she'd been bored. that's what you get when you're born and raised in the big suck that answers to the name arcadia bay. anyway, she'd looked up her name. and according to the world wide web, it means some stupid shit like blooming or young, green, shoot.
chloe doesn't feel like she's blooming. doesn't feel like a young, green, shoot, either; most days, she feels older than her years.
(she's looked up max's name, too. the greatest. ironic, she knows. some bitter part of her, deep down inside, keeps insisting that if max were truly the greatest, she wouldn't have left.)
she's hiding out in the junkyard, half wallowing (because what else is there to do?), half hiding out (because she can't go home, can't face the stepjerk, can't have the same fucking fights with her mom over and over and goddamn over again).
half wallowing, half hiding out, because when it comes to max, there is as much love there as there is hatred. and that's when rachel finds her, right when chloe is about to swan dive into the abyss that is her mind.
it's like rachel can tell; it's like she knows, somehow.
one with purity, according to the interwebs.
her angel, according to chloe, and that holds a little more weight.
"hey," she rasps, because of course she does and says, "nice rachel, we're having," like it's a secret code, like it's their little inside joke.