"To him, Liv was a song, and Eddie loved songs. He memorized her every melody, every beat. Even the ones she deemed were off-key, he saw them as her own unique tune."
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Sp...
[ chapter twenty-two ] "She could still hear the sickening crunch of his ribs breaking as the Mind Flayer impaled his chest."
゜✧*̣̩☽⋆
Ms. Kelley's office smelt of books and lingering perfume. Max, using the key she'd stolen during her visit to the guidance counselor's home, had unlocked the door and quickly hurried inside, her flashlight illuminating the way. "It's like a mini–Watergate or something," Dustin spoke in awe from behind her, Steve trailing in last.
Max headed straight for a metal cabinet labeled:
STUDENT FILES Ten — Vic
"Hawkinsgate," Dustin added.
Max opened one of the three large drawers, flipping through the files of students. Some she recognized, some she didn't. She began with the ones whose last names started with an A, before working her way down the alphabet.
"Didn't those guys get caught?" Steve asked.
"Holy shit."
Dustin and Steve snapped out of it. "What?" They said, coming over to her.
"You found it?" Dustin sounded hopeful.
"Yeah, and not just Chrissy's file. Fred was seeing Ms. Kelley too," she plucked them from the cabinet, her eyes settling on the one behind Chrissy's. And so was Liv, she thought to herself.
She left the file—Liv's—as is. Liv had lost her mother in the battle of Starcourt, just as she had lost Billy. Of course, she would have a file with the school's guidance counselor. And she'd just lost her sister, Max didn't need to invade her privacy by reading about her most vulnerable moments.
A sense of dread twisted in her stomach as she held the stack out to Steve who, in turn, shined his flashlight on the papers. They all stared at each other, the moment swelling with tension.
Max was the first to break it, heading over to Ms. Kelley's desk and spreading the files across the surface. She took a seat and opened Chrissy's as Dustin held up his light for her. Steve perched on the edge of the desk.
Held in place with a paper clip was a picture of Chrissy's sweet, smiling face in the top right corner of the open file. Max didn't think that she and her twin looked much alike. Maybe once they were, when they were younger. But now Max seemed to think they drew on the opposites of each other. Where Chrissy's cheeks were plump and rosy, Liv's were hollow and gaunt. Where Chrissy's eyes were soft and round, Liv's eyes were hard and hooded. Well, maybe not all the time. Max had seen them soften when she'd given back Field back to Liv. It was just a brief moment, a flicker, but it was there.
Max turned to Ms. Kelley's most recent notes from sessions with Chrissy. But when her eyes skimmed the words, her heart felt as though it stopped to sink in her chest, that twisted feeling in the core of her gut tightening.
Max read it over and over a few times, checking to make sure it was Chrissy's name scrawled on the top of the paper, not her own. Because all of these symptoms...they'd been exactly what she'd been experiencing. Headaches?
"Can I see Fred's file?" She asked, looking around.
It was clutched in Steve's hands, his gaze coming up. "Yeah," he said, handing it over.
As soon as she opened it, the paper from his last session fluttered out and as Max smoothed it on the desk, she immediately noticed two words. Severe headaches.
She thought about how she'd been feeling lately, flashes coming back to her in a jumbled mess that was starting only just beginning to click into place. Like her ongoing migraines that just never seemed to go away, no matter how much Tylenol she swallowed.
Max, I know something's wrong. Her mind played Lucas' words, as clearly as when he spoke them by the lockers. She'd been angry at him then. Couldn't he see that she was just tired? But no...no, maybe he'd been right to sense that. Maybe something was truly wrong. If anyone knew her well enough to tell, it would be Lucas after all.
The next thing she saw in Fred's notes was that he'd been having nosebleeds. Nosebleeds. And she thought back to that day in math class when she'd been interrupted by drops of blood falling onto the white sheets of her notes. Her blood.
She skimmed over the words once again. Fred and Chrissy both had past trauma, it was noted in their files. Max couldn't be sure what Fred had gone through, but Chrissy's mother, Mrs. Cunningham, had died. All of a sudden, she was back in Starcourt, watching Billy face off with the Mind Flayer—a battle he never walked away from. And she'd watched it all happen in front of her eyes. She could still hear the sickening crunch of his ribs breaking as the Mind Flayer impaled his chest.
"Max?" Dustin asked. "What is it?"
But she couldn't hear him, not as he called out her name over and over again, not as her mind was whirring with questions and answers she hoped couldn't be true. But what she could hear was the chime of a clock—an old clock. And then a terrible voice drawled out her name. "Max..."
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