Max Caulfield has a very, very bad habit.

After the day Chloe was shot in Blackwell's girls restroom, Max hasn't been the same. She's meticulous in trying to fix things constantly, trying to keep things in a certain, allocated order. It occurred to her, as she and Chloe established in front of that terrible, travesty of a storm that threatened to decimate Arcadia Bay, that Chloe beating death was the reason why the end of the world wanted to fucking happen. How does she know?

Well, there's no storm. No devastation. Only one death. Life goes on. Life is normal.

Max scribbles her thoughts fervently into her diary as she idles next to her door to her dormitory. It's her only solace, her only way of coping. Nobody understands what's happened to her. To Chloe. Likely, they never will. This is her burden to bear.

The sounds of giggling emerges from her arch nemesis and photography rival, Victoria Chase's, dorm, causing Max to perk up, distracted by it. The door swings up, and you come stumbling out Victoria's room, your neck covered in mouth-shaped lipstick stains; it's obvious, and Max is surprised. Victoria, the Queen Bitch of Blackwell, actually likes someone?

"Mad Max!" you exclaim once Victoria shuts the door behind you. She's muttering something affectionately — like a hard swear, something Chloe would say but Max wouldn't dare repeat it — as you waltz out into the corridor where the faint, haunting melody of Kate's violin waft through the walls.

"Are you and Victoria?" Max sputters awkwardly, her cheeks reddening, "—did... did you and Victoria just—"

A pensive tension falls over the two of you, and the crooked smile on your face starts to dim.

Oh, no! Max thinks in a panic, Shit, shit, shit!

Max has to get it right. She has to be normal. You are her friend. What you do is none of her business. She doesn't waste time raising her hand and pulling back the fabric of time.