A work in progress

Chapter 1

The ticking of the grandfather clock repeated endlessly on Max's ears. She glanced up, 7:34 it read on its old hands.

She was sitting in the dining room of her Seattle home, her eyes glued tiredly on a group of photos haphazardly sprawled across the dark cedar table. Each picture was different and unique, with memories tied to every one.

Good and bad ones.

Her eyes found the picture of a man, his baby blue eyes glowing with fondness and a blinding smile on his face.

She flipped the picture over. Not today, she decided.

Max stood, stretching as her mother came waltzing in, looking tired and drained. She always did look that way these days. Max tried to ignore the bruise on her jaw. "Max," her voice was hoarse, "you've been up all night again."

Max shrugged, "Couldn't sleep." Her voice was quiet, "I'm packed and everything is in the car. Blackwell Academy here I come." Excitement made her body buzz.

Maxine Caulfield was a photographer, she always had been since she got her hands on a camera for her tenth birthday eight years ago. She had a knack for polaroids and most of her work centered around her own selfies.

It was weird, but it was weirdly Max. No one was surprised at her passion and hey, she wasn't a shabby photographer.

But Max didn't wanna be an "okay" photographer, she wanted to be famous. Travel the world and map it with polaroids that would fill galleries. However that took an education, and no high school in Seattle offered such classes. Blackwell Academy, in her hometown of Arcadia Bay, Oregon did. In fact, it was the best in the country.

So, ever since she left the coast town behind, she had been working her ass off to go back.

And somehow, it worked.

"Max." Broken from her thoughts, the girl looked up. She shuffled in her gray hoodie as her mom looked her up and down. "Are you sure you want to go back? Aren't you forgetting someone....." she trailed off as Max purses her lips.

Oh right. No, she hadn't forgotten, how could she ever forget Chloe Elizabeth Price? Her childhood best friend and the girl she hadn't spoken to for five years out of fear. It was bad timing, Chloe had lost her father and the day of the funeral she lost her best friend.

"I'm going to call her." Max said with a strong voice and her mom narrowed her eyes.

"Are you?" She murmured, "Better do it quick, your flight is at nine."

Nodding, Max turned on her heel and bolted down the hallway into her cove. It was a large room that was supposed to be used as a game room or den but Max had fallen in love with the isolation of it and her parents couldn't refuse.

The walls were covered in posters of movies that she liked and a few fandom posters here and there but mostly it was band posters. There wasn't much of anything else, Max had packed everything except the excessive amounts of posters, some old Christmas lights that were broken, her bed (obviously though she did take the fluffy blue blanket from it), and a few other items that were fine being forgotten.

Max reminisced the times she spent in this room. It wasn't anything special, mostly pictures and movies but hey, they were happy memories.

And those were hard to come by these days.

She shook her head, refusing to think about it. She clicked her phone's home button and it lit up in response. She choked, seeing the screensaver was of her and Chloe at ages thirteen, dressed up as pirates and grinning like madmen.