Chapter Text
“Thank you all for coming!” Kate said excitedly to the small group gathered in front of the closet that stored club supplies. Chloe, Steph, and Mikey were there, along with Dana and Alyssa, the other two members of the Christian Club. Dana had once privately confided to Chloe that she wasn’t particularly religious, but the thought of Kate running a club meeting and no one attending broke Dana’s heart. Alyssa had never said as much to her, but Chloe suspected she attended for similar reasons.
Chloe had managed to clear the trip to Pan Estates with her mom and David by promising she’d stay with the group the entire time and that Steph would give her a ride home afterwards. It was far from the first time she’d lied to her mom, and it almost certainly wouldn’t be the last.
“I think we could all start by saying a quick prayer,” Kate said, extending her hands to take Alyssa and Dana’s. Chloe and Steph looked at each other awkwardly while Mikey took Dana’s hand. Chloe sighed and took Steph and Mikey’s hands. Everyone except Chloe and Steph closed their eyes.
“Dear Heavenly Father,” Kate started. Chloe immediately tuned out the prayer, making a face to Steph. Chloe didn’t believe in God. At least an all-powerful, all-loving God. A God like that wouldn’t have killed her father when she was 14. A God like that wouldn’t make someone like Max go through all the shit she had to go through just to be who she was. And a God like that wouldn’t let so many of his followers persecute people just because of who they loved.
But as far as Christians went, Kate was a good one. She had worked with Steph on a joint GSA/Christian Club meeting a handful of times, and her club spent most of its time volunteering rather than preaching about how to be holier than thou. Kate had once even stopped volunteering at a shelter after finding out they fired a staff member for being gay, which had earned her a lot of points in Chloe’s book.
So, Chloe played along and closed her eyes just as Kate said “Amen” so she could open them again a moment later and pretend they had been closed the entire time. “Alright everyone, I have some flyers and candles ready for the vigil. The flyers have a last of resources for anyone struggling with their mental health, as well places to donate to help the victims’ families.”
The six gathered up a set of boxes, but there were only five of them. Chloe was left without a box, so she just took the one Mikey was holding and ignored his complaints on the matter. She set the shoebox full of Max’s things on top. The six made their way to the buses, where the football team and band were filing on.
“Hey, Mikey,” a voice called out. Chloe, Mikey, and Steph turned to see Drew North, Mikey’s older brother running up to them. Whereas Mikey was a few inches shorter than Chloe and built like a stick, Drew was buff and a few inches taller than Chloe. But other than, the two were clearly related. “What are you doing here?”
“We’re helping Kate with her vigil,” Mikey explained, nodding to Kate who was getting on the bus.
“That weird Christian girl?” Drew asked, making a voice.
“She’s nice,” Mikey said defensively.
“Whatever,” Drew shrugged. “Come on, you can sit next to me.” Drew threw his arm around his brother and walked on to the bus.
“For a jock, he’s pretty nice,” Steph said as the two walked up to the bus.
“For a jock,” Chloe agreed. The two plopped themselves into seats near the back of the bus. As the two buses pulled away from the school, they passed a Halloween decoration of a witch someone had hanged on a tree in front of the school. The name “Rachel Amber” was painted on its chest in red.
“Sometimes I think this town deserves to be cursed,” Steph sighed as the bus pulled away. Chloe nodded and pulled out her earbuds, putting them in and tuning out the world as the bus chugged along towards Pan Estates. The ride to Blackwell was always interesting. Ten minutes of a mix of abandoned or just run-down properties, ten minutes of woods, and then then ten minutes of luxury.
Arcadia Bay and Pan Estates used to be part of the same settlement on the East Coast back in the early to mid-1600s. However, they split and formed separate communities in 1666, shortly after the hanging of Rachel Amber. Since then, Arcadia Bay had become a shithole while Pan Estates had thrived. Pan Estates had gone for almost a decade without a single murder, and their property crime rates were so low that they were studied by the rest of the country. The mayor, Sean Prescott, spent a fair amount of time traveling the country and giving speeches to other cities’ officials about just how Pan Estates kept the city so safe. Not that any of them had ever managed to replicate it.
Pan Estates was also incredibly rich, evidenced by the lack of single-story homes or high-density housing as soon as the bus came out of the woods between Pan Estates and Arcadia Bay. The lawns were massive and well-groomed, and the Main Street the bus passed through looked it was pulled out of a fucking Hallmark movie. The entire town was a pretentious rich white person’s idea of perfection. The town’s only school, Blackwell Academy, was a private school. The few Pan Estates kids that couldn’t afford it usually received “generous” scholarships from other parents to help them attend, and every so often, they poached one of the few promising Arcadia Bay students by offering the same thing. That was how Max had been able to attend.
Chloe couldn’t imagine Max in a place like this. Max was quiet and completive, but she wasn’t prissy or pretentious or any of the other things Chloe associated with Pan Estates rich kids. Max’s parents were middle-class, which made them rich as fuck by Arcadia Bay standards, but they were practically impoverished compared to most people in Pan Estates.
And yet Max was at Blackwell now. She’d gushed to Chloe about the school’s photography teacher, Mark Jefferson, after getting in. She’d gone on and on about his work until it became apparent that Chloe didn’t want to hear it. It had been a reminder that Max was leaving, that Max was joining a group of people that up until that point she and Chloe had mocked relentlessly.
Chloe hated that Max gushing about Mark Jefferson was the last time she had seen the other girl happy with her own eyes.
Their bus finally stopped as it pulled into Blackwell’s parking lot. The Arcadia Bay kids filed out of the buses and walked into the stadium. The school itself lay across a small road. There was a small stage set-up in the center of the field with a podium, and a number of Blackwell kids were already mingling on the field.
“Dana, Alyssa, and I can distribute the stuff. Thank you three so much for helping carry it,” Kate smiled as Chloe and Steph set their boxes down next to the stage.
“Don’t mention it,” Steph smiled. Chloe just gave Kate a nod, but her focus was mostly on the crowd. She was looking for a five-foot five girl with brown hair, freckles, and a camera. Unfortunately, if Max was there, she was hidden by the crowd of Blackwell football players. Chloe figured that none of them were shorter than herself, which was impressive considering Chloe was 5’9”.
Steph and Mikey started talking about something Chloe wasn’t paying attention to, so she slipped away and tried to make her way around the crowd to find Max. She tried to be subtle, but the punk attire and electric blue hair made her stick out, especially amongst the Blackwell kids. Not one of them had dyed hair. Well, at least hair that was dyed any unnatural color.
“Attention students of Blackwell and Arcadia High,” a girl’s voice came from the stage. Chloe looked to see a girl that looked Chloe’s age and dressed in a style that Chloe could only define as “sexy middle-aged businesswoman.” “For those who don’t know me, my name is Victoria Chase. I’m the president of the student council for Blackwell Academy.”
Chloe was familiar with Victoria. She’d egged her house a couple of times. Max had even come with her once, but thankfully not on the time Chloe had actually been caught. Chloe tuned out the Queen Bee as she continued to look for Max. God, why did the other girl have to be so short?
“And now, I’d like to introduce the mayor of Pan Estates, Sean Prescott,” Victoria finished, standing aside. Sean Prescott made his way to the podium with enthusiastic applause from the Blackwell kids and tepid to non-existent applause from the Arcadia High kids.
“This isn’t how I wanted to be here tonight,” the mayor started. Ugh, Chloe had always thought Sean looked like a creep. He looked like every white businessman that had gotten arrested for insider trading or defrauding their customers. His lips were pale, only a shade different from his skin, which added to his whole creepiness factor. “I wanted to be here as a fan,” Prescott continued. “Our Blackwell Devils and your Arcadia Bay Witches throwing down in some good old-fashioned American football.” The way Prescott tried to talk casually sounded so unnatural it made Chloe’s skin crawl. She almost gave up the search for Max so she could mock the mayor with Steph when Chloe heard the familiar click of a camera.
Chloe turned to see Max standing towards the edge of the crowd, shaking the polaroid photo she’d just taken. The other girl had her eyes on the stage and clearly hadn’t seen Chloe yet. Chloe took a step towards her when a boy a few inches taller than Max that had brown hair walked up behind her. He wrapped his arms around Max’s waist and Chloe froze. Then he kissed Max’s hair, and the way Max smiled in response made Chloe’s heart sink.
Cursing herself for being pathetic, Chloe turned and left the stadium. She found a wall outside she could sit against as she fought and failed to keep the tears away. They’d only been broken up for a month and half, and Max had already moved on. Chloe suddenly flung open the box. She needed evidence, proof that Max had really loved her and that their relationship wasn’t one long figment of Chloe’s imagination.
Chloe pulled the stuffed animal she’d given to Max for her thirteen birthday, which Max had promptly left at Chloe’s house because “I practically sleep more here than my own house.” To her credit, Max had slept with the toy every single time she’d spent the night at Chloe’s house, with Chloe on one side of Max and the toy on the other. Next, Chloe pulled out her the necklace with half a heart she and Max had gotten for Valentine's Day two years ago. When the two necklaces were put together, they formed two Venus symbols intertwined. And finally, Chloe pulled out the photo signed “Maxine”.
Fuck, looking at that photo, Chloe knew what they had had been real. And somehow that made seeing that guy wrap his arms around her all the worse. Chloe hated herself when she saw a tear land on the picture.
“Chloe,” a voice said from her side. Chloe dropped the photo back into the box and stood up, quickly wiping her eyes. In front of her was Max. Despite how much things had changed, she looked the same as she always had. Same hair, same outfit. The only change was a nicer camera.
“Max,” Chloe replied awkwardly. Fuck, she’d rehearsed this conversation so many times in her head, but in a second all of her preparation left her.
“I didn’t think you’d come,” Max said. “I didn’t think this was really your thing.”
“I didn’t think it was yours either,” Chloe replied.
“I’m here for yearbook,” Max told her, timidly raising the camera a bit. “They bought me a nice polaroid camera when I joined.”
“Good for you,” Chloe replied bitterly, making Max cringe. “Here,” Chloe said, kicking the shoebox towards Max. Max looked at Chloe with those sad doe eyes of hers before crouching down and opening the box. She stared at it for a long moment.
“Is this my stuff?” Max asked Chloe, clearly on the verge of tears.
“Ding ding ding,” Chloe replied, wishing she could take pleasure in Max’s pain instead of wanting to cry herself. Finally, Chloe just walked past Max back towards the stadium.
“Hey, can we talk for a second?” Max called out.
“No,” Chloe replied immediately.
“You broke up with me, remember?” Max said. “So stop acting like I’m the bad guy.” That got Chloe to stop and turn around.
“I’m not the one who abandoned all her friends to move to Pan fucking Estates,” Chloe hissed. “I’m the one who practically ghosted her girlfriend so she could hang out with the same rich kids she used to make fun of. You made the choice; I just made it official.”
“Blackwell offered me a scholarship. My dad found a job here, we couldn’t pass that up,” Max said defensively.
“God, you couldn’t wait to get away from Arcadia Bay and all its fucking problems,” Chloe replied. She paused before adding “Away from me.”
“I am half an hour away,” Max replied, her sadness mixing with anger now.
“For all you reached out to me, it might as well be the goddamn moon, and you know it.”
“I don’t know anything,” Max said.
“Yeah, well I do,” Chloe replied. “I know you were always embarrassed of me. Of your girlfriend that liked to wave pride flags around and talk shit about rich kids.”
“I did all of that too,” Max replied, hugging her arms around herself.
“I had to fucking pull your teeth to get to do any of that,” Chloe replied. “You always wanted to be one of them, didn’t you? One of those pretentious rich kids that looked down on us.”
“I wanted to be normal!” Max practically yelled. “For once in my life I wanted people to just look at me like a normal girl.”
“Do you think no one here knows you’re trans?” Chloe asked. “Does that guy who was groping you back there know?”
“Of course they know I’m trans!” Max replied. “You think rumors stop at the town border? But no one here knew me as a boy, and everyone in Arcadia Bay did. They may know I’m trans, but they treat me like a girl.”
“Yeah, so they can win social value points for being inclusive,” Chloe rolled her eyes. “They don’t actually care about you.”
“You know what Chloe?” Max raised her voice. “I don’t actually care if they’re just being nice because they want to look progressive. At least they’re nice to me. At least no one bullies me. At least they don’t look at me and remember when they thought I was a boy.”
Chloe didn’t know how to reply to that, so instead she asked, “So you’re into guys now?” Max rolled her eyes.
“You broke up with me,” she replied.
“What’s his name?” Chloe asked.
“You broke up with me,” Max repeated.
“What’s his name, Max?” Chloe asked again, taking a step towards Max.
“Chloe, stop,” Max said, pushing past Chloe and walking towards the stadium.
“What’s his name, Max? The dude kissing you? Groping you?”
“Warren!” Max finally yelled, spinning around. “His name is Warren, okay?” Max wiped her eyes and took a deep breath to steady herself. “You don’t get it.”
“Oh, I get it,” Chloe replied. “Not much future with a dyke in Arcadia Bay. Best case is, what, dead on the mall floor after a double shift? Or maybe, if you’re really lucky, you’re the one holding the knife.”
“Dog, you’re doing it again,” Max said, moving to walk away again.
“Doing what?” Chloe asked.
“This town is cursed, woe is me. We’re doomed, so why try to make anything better?” Max answered.
“Shit is doomed,” Chloe replied.
“It doesn’t have to be. Stop hating on anyone who wants to make a better life for themselves,” Max said. “Don’t be mad at me because I wanted a different future.”
“It’s not your future if you’re pretending to be someone you’re not,” Chloe replied. The instant flinch from Max made Chloe realize how close what she had said sounded to the all the shitty, transphobic rhetoric Max had to deal with, even though that wasn’t what Chloe had meant in the slightest.
“Max,” Chloe said as Max roughly grabbed the shoebox and started walking away. “Max, I didn’t-“
“You know what Chloe?” Max said, turning around. She was crying, but Chloe had never seen that much venom in Max’s eyes before. “Go fuck yourself.” And then Max turned and walked away.
Chloe thought about running after her. Of apologizing and pouring her heart out and trying to get Max to see that Chloe was just angry because she loved Max so fucking much and Max leaving and then ghosting her had ripped her fucking heart out. But instead, she sat against the wall, pulled her knees to her chest, and cried.
Chloe wasn’t sure how much time had passed when she heard Steph say, “I take it that it didn’t go well.” Chloe wiped her eyes and looked up at Steph, who had what was quickly turning into a black eye.
“What happened to you?” Chloe asked, taking the hand Steph offered to stand up.
“Some Blackwell prick made fun of Arcadia Bay. Drew confronted him, and it turned into a big fight,” Steph said. “Someone accidentally elbowed me in the face. Not sure who,” she shrugged. “They ended up cancelling the game, so everyone is getting ready to leave.”
“Everyone okay?” Chloe asked.
“Drew got the mayor’s kid Nathan pretty good,” Steph said. “He’s gonna have a worse shiner than me come tomorrow.”
“Shit, is Drew in any trouble?” Chloe asked.
“Nah. I found this Blackwell girl who was staying out of all of it. She told me that Nathan’s dad makes him fight his own battles. Thinks he’ll get stronger that way,” Steph shrugged. “All he does for his son is give him a fuck ton of money.”
“How’s Kate holding up? She’s probably pretty broken up about the vigil falling apart,” Chloe said.
“You know, it’s actually really funny,” Steph said. “She ended up talking to the girl who gave a speech, Victoria, for a while, and afterwards nothing could get her spirits down.” Chloe raised an eyebrow. “I think Kate might belong in those GSA meetings as more than just an ally, if you know what I mean.”
“I mean, good for her, but… Victoria?” Chloe said confused.
“I mean, she is kind of cute,” Steph said, making Chloe stop and stare at her. “What, she is! That’s just an objective fact. I will agree that she is a prissy rich bitch, but she’s a cute prissy rich bitch.”
“You have horrible taste in women,” Chloe replied, rolling her eyes
“And what is your taste in women?” Steph asked. “Outside of mousy photographers named Max.” Chloe elbowed Steph.
“Hella low blow,” Chloe told her.
“Sorry, too far,” Steph said, rubbing her side as the two walked back into the stadium. The Blackwell kids were hanging out on and near the stage. Chloe couldn’t help but look for Max, and her heart sank as she saw Max talking with Victoria and Nathan, who was holding an ice pack on his eye and looked like he was fuming. Warren was next to her, his arm around Max’s shoulder.
Steph followed Chloe’s gaze. “Oh, so that’s why you’re so upset. I didn’t know she was into guys.”
“Neither did I,” Chloe replied bitterly, making her way towards the parking lot where the Arcadia Bay kids were filing on to the bus.
“You two never talked about it?” Steph asked.
“She told me she didn’t know if she liked boys,” Chloe said, having to forcibly keep her gaze forward. “She said she didn’t like the idea of being with a boy as another boy, but that maybe she’d feel different once she got further in her transition.”
“Well, I guess she feels differently,” Steph said.
“Not helping,” Chloe replied.
“Sorry,” Steph offered as the two reached the buses. Before getting on, Chloe stole one last glance back at Max. The two girls locked eyes across the field. And then Max looked away, and Chloe tried not to start crying again as she got on the bus.