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The first time they have sex, it’s angry and desperate. They’re in the middle of Nowhere, Massachusetts, in a cheap motel that makes Chloe queasy. Halfway through, Safi turns into Max. Chloe punches her in the face. Open and angry, blood running down her nose, the flickering girl (Max/Safi/Max/Safi/Max) looks just like the real thing from Chloe’s nightmare.
“If you ever do that again,” Chloe snarls, “I’ll kill you. I’m fucking serious.”
Safi spits out a mouthful of blood on the sheets. It expands into a flower-like shape - or maybe a butterfly. Chloe has the impulse, inexplicably, to dip her finger into the stain, and lick the blood off. She ignores it.
“I could be anyone you want. I’m a blank slate, baby. And you’re in luck, because I don’t particularly feel like being myself at the moment.” Safi, now fully herself again, opens her arms as if offering herself up. Her smile is toothy and her eyes are wide. Not for the first time, Chloe is hit by the thought that, if Safi was unstable before, she’s truly off the rails now. Then again, so is Chloe, so who is she to judge. Grief had always made her fucking insane.
***
Max had said —
***
Joyce has been calling and calling non-stop since she found out. Chloe has been letting the calls go to voicemail (I’m worried about you Chloe please pick up the phone text me tell me where you are) because when she answered the first time and heard her mother’s voice (a time anomaly, like mother like daughter) her resolve almost collapsed. She knew that if Joyce asked, Chloe would come back to Arcadia Bay. She can’t be there. If she has to look at the fucking lighthouse she might just destroy the whole town herself. And in the eye of the cyclone that would tear down the place that took everyone she ever loved away from her, maybe she’d finally find some quiet.
So she drives. What else is there to do ?
***
She had offered Come with me, we’re the same. And although her first instinct had been to throw back, we’re nothing alike, she had known then it was a lie. Both of them would burn it all to the ground to get Max back. Utter destruction. If the world gets to take everything from me, I get to tear it all apart.
Which is why, Chloe supposes, they were not the ones who got to make that choice.
They had ditched the funeral.
***
Max had said I’m sorry.
Max had said I love you.
Max had said I can’t—
***
During the day, their conversations are civil at best. They pick a direction on a map and drive towards it. Chloe knows that Safi is getting better at telling from the angle of her mouth if she’s been there before ; Chloe is getting better at spotting when Safi has to stop for a cigarette break.
“I think I’m fundamentally a selfish person,” she says once, struggling with her lighter. This is the closest they’ve come to Talking About It since that night in the motel. “I don’t get wanting to play the martyr.” She blows smoke in Chloe’s face. From that angle, Safi looks like a picture someone would take — someone who is not there to take it anyway.
Chloe sidesteps the feeling. “What’s with you poets and religious metaphors ?”
Safi laughs. It’s unkind. “You know much about poetry ?”
“Nope.”
“I guess the point of the metaphor is finding beauty is the ugliness. I’m having trouble finding any beauty at all at the minute, though.”
Chloe shrugs. She reaches out and steals Safi’s cigarette.
The absence has carved a hole in both their faces ; a river of grief makes its way among their frown lines. They don’t have much to talk about. Sometimes it feels like what they’ve lost is the only thing they have in common. Maybe, in another life, a kinder one, they would have been friends, and this trip would have been an adventure of three. This is not that life. Most days, Chloe is lucky if she doesn’t wake up hating Safi entirely. The feeling comes easily, an old friend. Hating your reflection.
***
They keep going. The road, like the grief, is endless.
***
Two days later. She forgot where they stopped to sleep. Twin beds are comically close - saving space, saving money. The covers are scratchy and the fabric is of that off tint of yellow that used to be white. Right in front of her bed, the head of a deer is fixed to the wall. It does nothing good for her dreams, already filled with fire, blood and ache.
Safi shakes her awake. The glint in her eyes betrays her erratic state.
A gun is set on the ground between them - since when did Safi have a gun ? Fear, animal fear carves out a pit in her stomach. Its appearance is almost reassuring, like a forgotten quiet companion.
“I need you to kill me.”
“I’m not going to kill you, what the fuck ?” Chloe pushes the covers back, suddenly wide awake.
“I need your help. I tried and I can’t do it myself. You have to do it for me.”
She’s shaking. Chloe doesn’t have to look down to know that she is, too.
“There’s nothing left for me, Chloe. What else is there to do ? I can’t stand the fact that Max is dead and that it’s my fault and that I lost everything.”
Chloe doesn’t say that Max’s death wasn’t Safi’s fault. She’s not that kind. She’s not a liar. Max’s death, if anything, was both of their faults. She had decided, without consulting anyone, that only by removing herself from the equation would the universe allow Safi, Chloe and Arcadia Bay to live. No matter how much Chloe resents her for it, she can’t let her death go to waste. So they have to keep living. Surviving, really. Max would never forgive her if she let Safi die.
“Fuck that. If I’m staying alive, so are you. This isn’t Thelma and Louise, this doesn’t end with a double suicide, you hear me ?”
Safi laughs helplessly.
“How does it end, then ?”
“We keep going.”
“Isn’t that just running away ?”
The white noise of the TV answers her.
***
Max had said : I'm so sorry Chloe. But I’m done making other people pay for my mistakes, and my weird blip of existence in the universe. I love you forever. You’ll always be the most important person in my life. And if there’s… if there’s something after this, I promise I’ll watch over you. I love you so much. But I can’t let anyone else die.
And then, once again, she had left. And Chloe was alone.
***
She dreams of a lighthouse, on fire. A storm of blue butterflies swirls around her, a hivemind intent on her destruction. She tries to swat them away, to no avail.
“They’re part of you, kiddo. You have to make peace with it.”
Dreams of her dad are not new but they tend to be less frequent, nowadays. She turns to him. William looks unchanged from the day his car went up in flames on the road. Ghosts don’t age. One day, soon, she will be older than he ever was.
“I didn’t want any of this, Dad. I didn’t ask for it.”
“We never do,” another voice answers.
Her dad is gone. In his place, Rachel. Her silhouette is inconsistent, switching between the idealised version of her that Chloe can’t seem to shake off and the rotting corpse of her, the image burned onto her eyelids ever since she found her in the junkyard.
Rachel (her corpse) comes standing next to Chloe. There’s a faint odor of sulfur and decay emanating from her. She places her hand on her shoulder - it oozes a viscous liquid that spreads along her sleeve, along the motif of her old tattoo.
“Look at the stars, Chloe. They’re dead too. That’s just life. Life and death. Just like me. Isn’t that funny ?” Rachel’s teeth part into a sick smile. It feels wrong, so utterly different from the real thing. Chloe recoils and falls back.
She lands on her bed. At first, she thinks she managed to wake herself up. But Max is in the room where she fell asleep. So she has to still be dreaming.
She’s sitting on one of the beds, hands folded on her lap, head down. For a second, Chloe is scared she’s about to see another corpse. Yet suddenly Max raises her head. Her eyes find Chloe’s in an instant ; she doesn’t let her go.
“What are you doing, Chloe.”
“What do you mean, what am I doing. You’re gone. You’re dead, you fucking left me.”
“Well, in case you forgot, not everything is about you ?”
In her nightmares, Max is mean. Even though she knows that she’s asleep, she suddenly feels very tired. The kind of tiredness you carry in your bones, on your back, everywhere.
“It was, though. You, dying. It was about me. And Safi. And everyone. You couldn’t leave it alone.”
Max’s lips quiver.
“I couldn’t let another storm happen. It’s me, right ? Every time. I am the storm. Or I cause it. Either way, it’s the same thing.”
She wonders if they already had this conversation, a lifetime ago.
“So you die. That’s not fair.”
“It’s not about fairness. It’s about balance.”
She feels herself start to cry.
“But I just got you back. How can you be gone ?”
Max delicately takes Chloe’s face in her hands.
“You’ve survived so much already. You can survive this too.”
“I’m tired, Max.”
“I know. But you have to live on anyway. Promise me.”
“I-”
She wakes up. She wakes up. She wakes up.
Alone.
Yet she’s not, not truly.
On the bed next to hers, Safi is sleeping.
Through the window, a deer crosses the parking lot and into the forest. Chloe laughs helplessly, and runs a hand through her hair. Delirious, she stares right at the deer, and promises.
***
They stop at a gas station. Safi fidgets with the last of her cigarettes. She’s trying to quit - again. Chloe is hit by the thought that she wants to see her succeed.
“So ? Where are we going next ?”
“Well, we’re not dead yet.”
“Aren’t we ?”
“We’re not. So let’s stop acting like it. Let’s go home, Safi. Let’s find a reason to keep on living.”
She holds out her hand —