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𓆩♡𓆪
MAX LETS OUT A loud gasp of air, staring up at her friend's concerned stares. Her knuckles are white as she takes in her surroundings. She's pale. Max looks at each of them which now include the four other girls.
"Why am I not in the hallway?" Max asks, her chest heaving. "What? You never left this room, Max!" Dustin shouts, panicked. She pushes the chair out abruptly, "Where's the—the clock? The grandfather clock!"
Brooke's grip on the edge of the desk tightens. A clock? She glances over the symptoms again, thinking right back to when she heard the mysterious clock chimes in her house but no actual clock. Steve watches Brooke's muscles flex in her hands, her nails basically digging into the wood of the desk. Meanwhile Stella stands behind them, a hand to her chest, waiting for her panic to settle.
"What clock, Max?" Paisley asks. She has no idea what they just walked into. There's files all over the desk and Max looks like she might pass out. "The—The," Max stutters and scoffs, running out of the room without further explanation. Brooke is the first to follow her out. The chiming of the clock won't stop chiming in her head now. It's replaying over and over again.
"Have we all officially lost it?" Robin asks but turns on her heel to follow the girls, the others following behind. Max stops at a dead end hallway, staring at the wall like the clock will form if she stares for long enough. Flashlights bounce off the school walls. "Max, there's no clock," Brooke states the obvious. The others are now behind her.
"No, no. It was right here. The grandfather clock," Max quietly says. Brooke contemplates saying that she heard the chimes but that would mean she's confirming to herself that she's cursed. It's most likely but she won't say shit until she knows. "A grandfather clock?" Nancy questions. "It was so real," Max says, "And then, when I got closer, suddenly I just....I woke up."
"It was like she was in a trance or something. Exactly what Eddie and Stella saw," Dustin recalls. Brooke's hand is shaking ever so slightly. She can feel eyes on her. She looks over her shoulder and Steve is shamelessly staring at her, trying to hide the panic behind his eyes. Whatever this Vecna fella is, it's now directly going after the others, not just Will or El. Max turns slowly, her eyes glossy, "That's not even the bad part. I need to show you something." Max walks between the group. The urge to beat her to the office and hide her own file comes to mind but they all quickly follow after Max so Brooke can't do that.
It feels like every step Brooke takes is further away from denial and closer to hurting the others around her. The seemingly inevitable death that comes with possibly being cursed.
She lags behind and walks in on Max's explanation. ".....they both came to Miss Kelley for help," Max says, purposely locking eyes with Brooke, "Uh, they were both having headaches, bad headaches that just wouldn't go away," Brooke doesn't move any closer, it's too late to hide anything now, the symptoms on there her close friends and Steve know she's been struggling with as well, "....then the nightmares. Trouble sleeping. They'd wake up in a cold sweat. Then they started seeing things. Bad things. These visions, they just.....they kept on getting worse and worse until eventually.....everything ended."
