Max has visited Joyce all of five times since Chloe has passed. It had taken her weeks to even step on their front porch again and she had nearly bolted after she had knocked. Seeing Joyce pulls at the wounds in her heart, her mind, and she spaces out her visits so that she can breathe. She misses the warmth in Joyce's words and hugs Max far more than she's comfortable with, but she lifts her head a little higher each time Max sees her. She wonders if she's changed, too, if she will shed her grief like a winter coat, set aside for the next winter. Joyce had given her a box filled with their childhood and it's only when she's packing her dorm, at the end of May, that she finds the courage to open it.

She flips through them, again and again, until she has the lines of their faces memorized, can nearly hear the laughter from those memories. It's haunting as it reminds her of rewinding and she feels the itch to reach forward and live those moments again. But her powers are long gone now. She is flesh and bone and utterly ordinary, once again.

She settles her own polaroids inside the box, nestled among the photos of toothy grins.

"Hey." Warren knocks on her doorway, a roll of packing tape in one hand. He'd promised to help her pack and immediately sets to work taping the boxes she'd finished packing. Tension builds in the silence between them. There is only the scraping of tape on boxes, sections of her life measured and shoved aside. She wonders how different it will be to be back home and if he will think of her. She is taking a year off before college, but she's enrolled in a photography class at the community college. A few other classes, too, to boost the GPA she'd destroyed this past year. It's not much but it's enough.

"I'm going to visit every weekend," Warren promises, hiding bleary eyes behind the fringe of his hair. "We'll have road trips and I'll even go retro and write you letters. It'll be like an adventure."

Max laughs because it's easier than crying. She doesn't know how she is going to deal without this boy who had breathed life back into her for the past nine months. "Every weekend is stretching it, isn't it?" she asks and settles down onto her couch, already exhausted.

"Well, maybe, except," he pauses, setting the packing tape down. "I was going to surprise you. I don't know, show up the first week of classes all cool with flowers or something." He pauses again, his face darkening and she jumps to her feet, finally connecting the meaning to his words. "I got into University of Washington. Full ride. So it'll be like I'm down the street."

"No way," she tries to say, but her breath leaves her before the words do. She takes one step towards him and his open arms and jumps into them. He stumbles, wrapping his arms around her, and they tumble into the boxes behind them.

"You were going to spend all summer without telling me? That was your big secret these past few months? Thanks, jerk," she tells him, smacking him on the shoulder and he laughs.

It feels good to laugh again, to fill her lungs with air and tangible joy. It has happened more and more these past few months, like she has awoken from a long nap.

He grasps her chin, calculating eyes upon her. "You are an amazing person, Max," he whispers and she blushes, trying to shake to her head. He holds her chin steady. "No, you are. The most amazing and bravest person I know. And..." He trails off, eyes dipping towards her lips and presses his mouth gently against hers.

She feels her breath bury in her chest, a ball of air, electricity, and disbelief. And then she exhales, falls into him, leaves herself. She is here, in this moment, flesh and bone, and alive. She is real.