Word to the Chic, Max Isn't Meek

Chapter One

It's not like Max Caulfield's some extraverted social butterfly. She's easily drained, selective and cautious about who gets her energy. Even still, the pact-like silence that's following her around campus is startling.

She's been enrolled three days. An outsider looking in, this time not by choice. Maybe that's what bothers her – that she hasn't gotten chance to reject Blackwell's elitist bullshit before it can reject her.

And she would have, in her own reserved way.

She doesn't keep her finger on the pulse of all the latest fashion trends, nor does she cruise Arcadia Bay's streets in the kind of car that frequents rap videos.

Her shapeless graphic t-shirts and battered hatchback suit her fine.

She doesn't raise her hand in class and enunciate long-winded answers to showcase how knowledgeable she is, and she doesn't care to theorize about why Abella Couture collapsed on stage during her Super Bowl performance.

Her mumbled answers are to the point, and who even is Abella Couture?

She doesn't.

They do.

And she knows: that's why silence is her companion.

Not that she has some vendetta against silence. It's serene. Insights live there. Reflection. Possibility too. Observations dismantled and reassembled in infinite ways there.

Yes, these are the states that Max prefers. That's not what this silence is. This is Blackwell's own brand: uppity, scornful, and cliquey. Just as well. She prefers to dip her toe into social wells only when they're devoid of plastic. Only when there's depth to them and meaningful life roams abundant.

Unlikely at Blackwell Academy.

Wet toes are gross anyway, Max decides as she pushes her dorm room door in shut behind her. Her back sags against it. She closes her eyes, blindly tosses her bag to the foot of her bed. Listens to it slowly sag on its side, books, tablet, and cell phone slipping from its tattered mouth.

Her need to face the here and now is masochistic. Still it lifts Max's eyelids. She peers around her room. Her room, she scoffs. Nothing about Blackwell Academy is her. Nothing about this side of Arcadia Bay is her.

She misses Aurora Creek, the rundown musty bookstore that would swallow her for, it seems, days at a time. She misses Colton's Record Store, covets that time has rubbed away most of the establishment’s letters and she's old enough to remember when they winked in the distance. She got swept into the whirlwind that is Chloe Price in the punk rock aisle at age thirteen.

Within ten minutes Max was ghost-white and wearing handcuffs in the store's back because, "don't lie Chloe. I saw you stuffing CD's down your buddy's pants. Little shmucks."

The guy in the duck costume. The one who stands on Pacing Ave flapping his wings and encouraging passersby to toss money into his tin of nickels. For all the lulz, Max misses him too.

She misses the undercurrent of unity that colors her memories of Aurora Creek's people. The kind of unity that pricks the thumb and threads people together via mutual struggle. The kind that nods at its neighbor and says, 'I understand. We're in this together.'