An Awesome Pile of Trash

Chloe regrets what she said—and even more than the things she said, she regrets the way she said them. She kept practicing it over and over again on the walk home: what she would say to Rachel if she ever got the chance. Which she hopes with an unusual desperation that she will get to say… because if she doesn't…

Chloe can't imagine a world where those scrutinizing, hazel eyes aren't blinking up at her through a knowing smirk.

She decides she'll start with "Rachel, I'm an idiot" and see where it goes from there. Possibly an "I'm sorry I ever doubted you" and an "I can't bear to think of my life without you" might escape her mouth… but she hopes not. She really… really hopes not. There's a certain line that a phrase like that might cross… and while Chloe is normally very much into crossing lines, this isn't one of the easier ones to come back from. That fact isn't lost on her (at least not as completely as her mind is lost in thinking about Rachel). She knows for a fact that there will come a time when she has to make a crucial decision about what to say to the drama queen… and she'll either have to put everything on the line and tell the truth, or deny the unyieldingly cruel fact that butterflies have made a permanent nest in the part of her stomach that hears "Rachel Amber" and bursts into flame.

Maybe flame isn't the right word.

But something about her is definitely violent… and something about her is definitely blindingly beautiful.

"God, you're gorgeous," she'll say.

Wait.

No.

No, she won't, in fact. At least she hopes she won't. And now that she thinks about it, Rachel isn't all that beautiful. At least… not the Rachel who stormed off in the junkyard—the Rachel who Chloe had gotten excited about and wanted to impress—and who had promptly ruined the place that seemed like a second-hand heaven. Maybe the Rachel who twirled around in her Prospera costume and smirked into the mirror at Chloe in the dressing room… turned Chloe's hand over and over in her own on a train, and who told two truths and a lie…

Or maybe all lies.

Regardless, Chloe had played the game by the rules: told exactly the right amount of truths, told exactly the right amount of lies… she even got that stupid quarter that started the mess with the princess losing her temper. Just after that shining moment of "Too far?" … "I don't know" and "Nice Rachel we're having."

Nice Rachel, indeed.

But Chloe decides that this Rachel is not nice. This Rachel is awful. She doesn't care about anyone or anything. This is the smashy Rachel that doesn't even let smashing be fun. And there's nothing left to do when the smashing stops being fun because this Rachel says hurtful things and then leaves… like everything leaves. And Chloe can't take much more of that type of person. Not since the great betrayal of 2009 that sent her privateer partner to more Pacific pastures. Maybe there's a part of Chloe that wants Rachel to want to be the new Max, and that's why it's so hard for her to leave the past in the laundry with that dirty old pirate towel. Maybe Chloe needs a new partner in crime, and that's she's taking her anger with Max out on the only person in the world who might actually understand what it's like to lose the innocence of being able to hug her father… press her face into his chest and feel safe in the knowledge that there's nothing he can't do.

Rachel Amber.

Drama queen.

Princess.

Prospera.

Bitch.

No, no. Not bitch. Chloe wants to think it, but can't quite bring herself to mean it entirely. But she can try, at least for now. She's allowed to be mad, right? She's allowed to think she was slighted. She can't really say for sure what it is she lost out on, but it's definitely at least a friendship.

Definitely.

Maybe.

Well… they've only just met.

But it could have been more.

Or maybe all it was, like Rachel said, was… a pile of trash. Though Chloe was pretty sure Rachel meant the junkyard… she might also have just meant Chloe, herself. A pile of trash, indeed. But an awesome pile of trash. Right? Chloe, the awesome pile of trash: sea captain, adventurer, music thrash-ist, and… class-skipper-with-Rachel-Amber-ist. Class-skipper-on-her-own-ist. Weed-smoking, wine-stealing, car-punching… possibly-Rachel-liking… mannequin-smasher-ist. Maybe not so awesome after all, but nobody needs to know that. For a brief moment, before she leapt off that train and into the arms of the unknown, Chloe had, indeed, been awesome. And as much as she had also taken it away just as quickly, Rachel had given her that: a brief, shining "Too much?" … "I don't know…" moment of imagining this as something more than just the pile of trash it probably is.

That "I don't know" rolls over in Chloe's head again and again. For sure, it wasn't that Rachel had said it. It wasn't even the words that caught Chloe on fire. Lots of people say "I don't know" when they do know. It was more the way Rachel had said it. It wasn't a "yes" and it wasn't a "no"... and it certainly wasn't an "I don't know".

It occurred to Chloe even then that the drama queen had said exactly what she meant… because at the time, Rachel didn't know. But she also didn't mean to say that she didn't know. Not knowing has an indefinite way about it.

Rachel meant "I'm waiting for you to show me."

Chloe could've taken it as a test if she liked, but she doesn't like, and the more she thinks about it, the less she wants to be tested by Rachel "princess" Amber: the girl who's used to getting what she wants. Chloe wonders what that must be like, but she doubts she'll ever have reason to find out.

Her phone vibrates in her pocket.

Chloe picks her head up off the warm metal of the railroad track and digs through her ripped jeans to find her phone. It slips through the tear in the front of her denim leg and clacks onto the wooden cross beam. From the lit screen, she can already tell it's a text from the princess herself. A rather cryptic text at that: "Meet me by the tree where it happened."

Where what happened?

Where they were trailing past in the train and Chloe told Rachel her first lie? Where Chloe had stood just a little too long looking at a poster of The Tempest with Rachel Amber's face glowing through that typical Rachel smirk? Where Rachel had said goodnight after the Firewalk concert by the old mill… turned… and walked off into the night? Where Rachel's mood had gone from "Nice Rachel we're having" to "Last I checked, you were Chloe Price"?

Chloe hopes that's not the tree.

Anything but that tree—that tree is cruel. That tree has a memory that stretches back all the way to a time when there was a possibility of Chloe looking at Rachel and not feeling knives in her chest.

And then there's that burning… the butterflies…

Chloe is confused. She knows how she wants to feel: she wants to feel unbothered by the fact that she was picked up, cracked open, and then dropped like an empty nutshell in a single afternoon. She wants to not feel so disarmed by the tempting forbidden fruit that is the drama queen—fifteen years old and already more ubiquitous at Blackwell than water. And water's been working for centuries.

Yet… there is something about that smirk. It knows everything. It wants everything. It's shameless, the pouting lips of a girl who gets what she wants. Rachel Amber: breaking hearts and confusing sexualities since 1994. What a piece of work.

And still Chloe is making her way back to the park. To the tree with the memory. She begs her feet to stop moving, but the fire burns hottest when it's headed towards that tree, and nothing can put it out tonight. The moon is a sliver in the twinkling Oregon sky, glittering in the smattering of stars peeking through the occasional cloud. Chloe wonders if Rachel knows which constellation is the lion. Of course she must. People who love stars are bound to know that sort of thing, especially if it means they get to talk about it on a train while touching your hand... which happens to be scarred by a skateboarding fall… not punching a bitch out over a YooHoo.

So Chloe walks. She just walks and tries her best not to think about how horrible this meeting might actually be. She tries not to think about those hazel eyes and how hurtful their gaze could become the instant they weren't getting what they wanted. And they were usually getting what they wanted.

It takes her what feels like forever to get back to that horrible tree in the park. At first she thought it was the tree by the trashcan… to the left of the fountain… but, well… no, it had a big hanging branch, sort of like—ah! That one there! No… wait a second. The leaves were the wrong shape. And now that she's standing under this tree… she feels like it's not quite right. It's a park… full of trees… how is she supposed to pick the right one? She can't see the viewfinder over the ridge to figure out which direction she's supposed to be heading in, so she just wanders off into the dark, too afraid to ask Rachel which tree. If she cares about Rachel, she'll know which tree. And she does care about Rachel… doesn't she?

At least… she thinks she does. Something makes her hope she doesn't, but she thinks she does anyway.

Through the darkness, she can make out the shape of a thin line wavering in the distance… a thin girl shifting agitatedly from leg to leg, trying to find a position to stand in that doesn't make her look like an idiot when Chloe shows up.

Chloe doesn't remember seeing this side of Rachel Amber on the train. That Rachel seemed unapologetic and sinfully self-assured, to the point where it was difficult to know who Chloe had really been talking to: the actress, or the girl. But this Rachel seems much more uncomfortable in her ripped jeans and faded flannel. There's a nervous energy that pulses out from where she stands at the foot of—well I'll be damned—the tree where that man was macking hard on that skinny blonde chick.

Chloe moves closer to the tree until Rachel is almost close enough to touch.

"You came," Rachel says, her voice wavering and her back to Chloe. "I'm glad."

"Are you sure about that? I got kind of a different message this afternoon."

Rachel looks, even in the dark, like she's been crying. She lets out a simple, "Yeah," and pauses, trying to think of something to say that isn't the truth, but that's as close as she can come without it sounding unreal.

"Chloe… I wanna talk to you about something, but…" she pauses. Chloe can see her struggling to put down the tiara and say what's on her mind. "I don't know how to talk about this."

Rachel turns to look at her, and Chloe isn't sure what to say. She might've said "It's okay, you don't have to tell me anything you don't want to" or something comforting, like "Don't worry, you don't have to explain it. I'm not mad about what happened earlier." But in truth, Chloe is mad. She's annoyed and she doesn't want to say something helpful right now. She wants let the princess blubber about in her own mistake until the silence fizzles out and the two of them are left standing in the embers. An awesome pile of embers.

But Rachel speaks again, ruining Chloe's spiteful silence: "You remember that guy we saw under this tree with that... woman?"

"The ones who were making out?" Chloe asks.

She regrets that almost instantly as Rachel goes on to say, "That was my dad."

"Oh…" Chloe says. "Alright…"

"And that… woman… was definitely not my mom."

She sounds dumber than a box of nail clippings, but all Chloe can manage is a stifled little, "Oh…" and nothing more.

"And the worst part is," Rachel goes on, "I'm not surprised. I've felt like my dad's been lying about something for a while… I just… I didn't know what it was. So when I saw that he got a text from an unknown number, asking if they could meet… I thought I could catch him or something…"

"I'm… so sorry, Rachel," Chloe says. She hopes she means it. "I don't know what to say."

She means that she feels bad for thinking so many awful things.

"Neither do I," Rachel says.

Something about the princess shifts when she speaks again.

"Chloe… I love my dad. I love him, and… I never wanna see his fucking face again."

For the first time, Chloe is afraid of Rachel. She isn't sure what to say. There are layers to the grudge on Rachel's face… layers of "working late" and "it's no one" on the phone. But anger… Chloe can work with anger. Chloe can work with smashy.

"When my dad died, I was so mad at him," Chloe says. "For months, I felt… wrong. Because half the time I thought of him, I wanted to scream. And the other half… I forgot…"

"Forgot that anything had changed?" Rachel asks.

A light flickers out for Chloe.

Yes. She often used to forget anything had changed. She forgot her soulmate ducked out on her nearly every day back then. And then she would remember… and the cracks would widen again.

She knows better now.

Rachel reaches into the chest pocket of her blue flannel and pulls out a tattered square.

"It's silly, but I've carried this photo around with me for years," she says. "It's from Mount Hood. My Dad took me hiking there when I was ten. It started raining, and I fell and broke my arm three miles from the car. I remember screaming like I was gonna die, but my Dad… he carried me down the mountain. I still remember the smell of his coat… and how calm he was. And the sound of his voice…"

Everything about William rushes back to Chloe… she can almost see him through the trees… warning her not to get too close to the flames.

"He was just so strong, you know?" Rachel says. "And… I felt safe."

Chloe realizes Rachel handed her the photo some time after pulling it out of her pocket… but she can't determine how long she's been looking down at it and seeing her own face instead of Rachel's.

"You trusted him," Chloe says lamely. She can't tell if she's talking about herself or about Rachel anymore.

"Completely."

Chloe hands back the photo, the impression of the girl's face burned into her retinas.

"Chloe, I owe you an apology."

"Hey, we both were kinda the queen of shitty…"

"No, I mean it," Rachel says. "Whatever's between us, it's… intense. And new. And awesome, and… you had the courage to tell me that you feel it, too. And I treated you like shit."

"Courage?" Chloe says, wanting to laugh, wanting to undermine the fact that Rachel Amber just admitted to liking her back so Rachel wouldn't take it away again… "I don't know if I'd call it that. More like blind desperation… and maybe the wine—"

"I just want you to know that I'm lucky you were with me today. You're a badass, Chloe Price."

"What?"

"Remember that biker asshole who wouldn't let you into the mill? You talked your way right past him."

"You… you saw that?"

"And those skeevy douchebags who followed you upstairs? You dropped that one guy with a knee to the balls."

"Only because you showed up at the last minute and—"

Rachel reaches for Chloe's face. A gentle caress of her thumb send the coverup on Chloe's cheek smearing out of the way of the purple welt from the "skeevy douchebags".

"See?" Rachel says. "You're the real thing. You came with me today, no questions asked."

"I don't need to know where we're going to know it'll get me out of Chemistry," Chloe admits.

"I guess tomorrow there'll be hell to pay," Rachel says.

"My Mom might forego a good grounding in exchange for manual labor… or maybe the death penalty… though pain and suffering seems a more fitting punishment for a well-spent afternoon of gallivanting…"

"I've never really done anything like this before. I wonder if my Dad'll even know what to do with me. I don't think he knows punishments exist outside the courtroom."

"Fuck your Dad," Chloe says.

"Fuck him," Rachel replies, almost a whisper.

"What I wouldn't give to leave this place and never look back."

A glint shines clear through Rachel's tears and Chloe senses mischief returning in the form of that cheeky little smirk.

"Well what's stopping us?" Rachel asks.

"I was kidding," Chloe says. "I mean sort of… not really, but—"

"There's nothing keeping me here," Rachel says. "I skipped school—I'm practically an outlaw now."

"Are you serious?" Chloe asks.

"Why not? Let's do it. Let's pack our bags—tonight."

"Um… okay, but—"

"No buts. We're refugees… on a quest."

"What kind of quest?" Chloe asks.

"One that takes us home."

"I… kinda like the sound of that," Chloe says. Her heart is racing. There's nowhere on earth she'd rather be than the open road with Rachel "princess" Amber. She's eight again, bouncing around the backyard with Max with a paper towel tube sword, screaming "ARRRGGGGH!" at the top of her eight-year-old lungs.

But Rachel's face is calm, her voice even… her gaze fixed on the photo in her hands.

"Chloe, can I borrow your lighter?"

Chloe's heart sinks. The racing screeches to a halt and everything feels quieter somehow. She isn't sure what noise she was hearing before, but it's gone now.

"Um… yeah, sure," she says, producing the lighter.

Rachel thanks her flatly and wanders over to a nearby trashcan, her eyes never leaving the photo.

And then she lights it.

First the corner…

Then, satisfied with the results, the edge…

Then she holds onto it for a minute, and Chloe can tell she's waiting for her father's face to catch.

And then she dumps it, burning, into the other garbage…

The whole can is alight in seconds.

The two of them stand there for what seems like forever, both acknowledging and not wanting to acknowledge what's happening. Both scared… both mesmerized by the orange flicker consuming Rachel's memory… both wanting to reach into the trash and bring out something beautiful.

"Come on," Chloe says. "Let's go."

With the silence broken Rachel seems like a different person entirely. She moves slowly at first… and then—

A sharp kick to the trashcan topples it, spreading the flames to that hideous low-hanging branch. The memory tree is ablaze. The world is glowing with fire. An unearthly scream like nothing Chloe has ever heard before pierces the smoldering air as a thick gust of wind carries the fire through the branches of the tree like burning hair off a scalp.

Rachel is on her knees.

Chloe tries to hold onto her, but there is a moment where she can't feel her arms anymore. She can't feel Rachel in them… she can't see anything but fire, and the panic becomes a sensation more lifelike than touch. She hopes she is going through the motions of holding Rachel's pieces together before they go spilling out onto the grass, but she isn't sure her arms are wide enough. She isn't sure there aren't holes burnt clear through her insides to her skin from the butterflies trying to escape.

She understands now that those butterflies aren't love. That burning isn't passion. That fire there isn't hope for a life with a girl who can finally admit to liking Chloe back.

Those butterflies are fear.

And that fire draws them in.

A part of Chloe escapes with the ashes strewn about in the wind, carried off with the gray shards of Rachel's father and childhood. She can't see the princess anymore, only this huddled little child balling in the grass. When Chloe can finally feel her feet again, she staggers to them, propping Rachel on her shoulder, unable to remember the girl from the train or the dressing room. This is Rachel now: this un-smashy, very-much-smashed-herself fountain of misery flowing from the flames and coughing in the smoke and ash. Chloe wants very much to reach into her and pull out something beautiful… but as she carries Rachel away from the fire and the cloud of wind-whipped leaves, she realizes that the fire is the beautiful something.

The anger.

And Chloe understands anger.

"Are you okay?" Rachel manages finally when they are far enough away from the smoke to stop the coughing.

Chloe doesn't dare look over her shoulder at the spreading glow. She looks down at Rachel who is starting to walk more on her own, wondering what a word like "okay" could possibly mean at a time like this.

Rachel might be asking "Are you physically injured?" or "Did I scare you?" or even "Do you still wanna run away with me tonight?". Chloe can't answer any of those, though. She isn't sure. And a person should be sure before committing to something that could mean something they don't mean for it to. She'll be sure later, she knows. She'll know more when she can feel her hands again, or when she doesn't smell smoke on her clothes.

"Chloe?" Rachel asks again. "Are you okay?"

"Well… I don't know," Chloe says.

And it isn't so much that she says it that makes Rachel's face crease with a frown. It's the way she says it. It's not an "I don't know" as in "I have no idea". It's an "I'm waiting for you to show me."

So as the two make their way through the park to the Amber House, Rachel is filled with exactly one determination: the events of today have been beautiful… and awful… and terrifying… and… she isn't sure how to categorize them. She can't think clearly enough to even begin. They've been… a pile of trash, she decides. A scary, dangerous, smashy, horrible... awesome... pile of trash.