Chapter 2: 02

For her efforts, the book store gave Maxine a free copy of the book.

"Guess I'll be reading it after all. Thanks," she said with a wink, and slipped out into the sunshine just before the police arrived to talk to the would-be-robbers.

She pulled down her sunglasses against the glare and flipped through the pages as she walked to the train, blending into the crowd of people in black rushing away from the early Spring sun.

Back when Maxine had first heard about the book she felt a little nostalgic, sitting up late one night in front of her laptop with a bottle of Jack Daniels, following one blurry YouTube video after another through the kind of warm, sentimental haze that made her remember everything much happier than it had been. There weren't many – the show ran for one season in one territory and time had made it kind of obscure. But the fans, if that was what they were, were dedicated to discussing their theories in the comments and uploading whatever video they could find. Her favourite comments were the conspiracy theories, that it had all been staged, even down to the drama that ended it. If only.

They had been so young, so naive. She sometimes wondered how anyone had convinced themselves the show was a good idea – did bad old Richard say, hey, you know talent program reality shows? Well, what if they were more like Sailor Moon? Unfortunately, and unsurprisingly, for everyone, it ended up more like X-men, trauma and mutilation, but before Claire's disappearance it had felt like the first good time in Maxine's life.

It was hard not to laugh at her past self's wide-eyed confusion and hopeless attempts at looking tough in each video. The sob stories in the audition episodes were ridiculous. The shaky hand-held camera work was obviously meant to add a sense of gritty realism whenever they went out to save kittens stuffed up trees of fight that alien who claimed he was the prince of a galactic empire (if he was a prince, then he was a prince nobody on his home planet wanted). But all it added was a feeling of amateurishness.

So absorbed was she in her thoughts that, for once, she didn't look where she was walking.

*

On the other side of the city, Tori felt like she couldn't get away from that book fast enough. Every time she saw someone on the train reading a copy, the lurid copy of the hard-cover gleaming under the train lights, she felt like she was going to crawl as far into herself as possible. She wished she could curl up into a ball and be inconspicuous.

Getting off the train didn't let her escape it. There was at least one person reading the book on the train platform. She tried not to stare too long in fear. Up the escalators and off the platform, and there was a pile of books at the front of the WH Smith. All of them bearing that blasted publicity photo from when she was 14 and a back cover with her old name. She had to remind herself she wasn't Claire Webster any more and had no reason to be afraid.

She put the book down and moved on, but thoughts of it bothered her all the way down the street.

She couldn't help herself and sneaked into the City Library to see if they had the book there, too. It was, almost glowing bright under the lights illuminating the one-week-loan racks.

She looked around to make sure nobody was watching her, and then opened the book straight to the pages of colour pictures in the middle. There she was, looking big-eyed, confident, naive; Jill, who at the time loomed so large with power and maturity, and now looked young and full of pointless bravado in old photos; Astra, always looking sceptical at the camera, eyebrows raised under that rainbow hair; Maxine, even smaller than she remembered; and a series of interchangeable fifth members she barely even remembered.

She couldn't bear to read the captions and know what they said about her, about all of them.

She looked around the library again, one more paranoid check to make sure nobody was looking at her. Surely anyone could look at the book in her hand and recognise her. But nobody was looking. Everyone was browsing books on their own, or laughing in groups in the attached cafe. Nobody was going to notice her checking the book out.

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In fact, she did it in such a daze, she barely noticed she checked the book out, either.

As she hurried down a crowded street, head down, she was too busy worrying that people could see the book through her canvas tote bag to notice someone walking straight toward her. Unfortunately, that other person must have been too distracted to pay attention where she was going, either.

The other woman smacked shoulder first into Tori's side, sending her stumbling. Tori felt the breath leave her with a huff.

“Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry,” she mumbled.

She swung her eyes from the ground to look up at the woman who was peering at her like some sort of curiosity.

“Claire?” the woman said. “Claire Webster?”

Tori felt like she couldn't breathe. Nobody had called her by that name for years, not even her parents. Her fears from that morning seemed to be already coming true.

She clutched her tote bag tighter to her body as she said, “That's not my name, sorry. I don't know who that is.”

“It's me,” the woman said, as she pushed her sunglasses back on top of her dark blonde hair, smiling as if that was supposed to clarify anything. “Maxine. Come on, you have to remember me. I know it's you. I never forget a face.”

“I don't know who that is,” Tori gasped, and turned to rush the other way.

She was half-way to the train station by the time she realised she'd lost a shoe, and by that point it seemed to late to walk back to look for it.

*

Maxine couldn't help smiling as she watched the woman limp away in a panic.

Now, it seemed, Claire was back in her orbit. Maxine had always felt there was some unfinished business she had to settle with the show that made her who she was. Maybe Claire – if that was actually who she'd bumped into – could be the key to settling it.

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