The rain was hammering on outside as Max stared out of the window. She was seated in her biology class, barely listening to whatever it was the Professor was saying.

Maybe if Max actually listened during class, she could do well on the test they were to have the following morning, but Max couldn't care less. She genuinely felt that her efforts were futile and there wasn't much point in doing anything.

Max continued to watch the rainfall as the Professor's voice dragged on in the background. Her caramel eyes appeared distant. Although she was physically in the room, mentally, she was back home thinking of the encounter she had with her mother the previous night.

Max sighed deeply, guilt eating her up as she knew she brought her mother an undue amount of stress. It wasn't fair to her mom. Max knew she needed to be more appreciative of her. After all, she was all the family that she had left.

"Remember the test begins at 9 am prompt, so make sure you're here early," Max heard the Professor say, snapping back into the lesson before her.

All around, students were packing up their things and heading for the door. Max concluded that class was over and breathed a sigh of relief as she followed the small crowd of people dispersing from the classroom.

Max stepped out of the classroom, making her way down the hallway, when her phone in her left pocket rang. Looking at the caller ID, she saw ‌it was Jared. Max already knew what it was he was calling her for and ignored his call. She just wasn't in the mood to be around people right now.

Her phone rang again and Max continued walking, pretending not to hear it as she made her way through the remaining people in the hallways.

The second she stepped outside, the downpour hit Max in thick, heavy droplets.

Living in a town like Crowtney, one would think that she knew to have an umbrella on hand always. But this was not the case for Max. She constantly got wet as the town's heavy downpour always caught her unprepared. However, no matter how often it occurred, she simply could not be bothered to be prepared for once.

Campus was beginning to scarce out at this time of day. Not many people took evening classes. Most students preferred having their latest class in the afternoon, so they had the rest of the day free. Max, however, did not mind. Anything that kept her out of her house and out from the watchful gaze of her mom was good enough for her.

Max was now at the main campus car park and located her truck in her usual parking space. She got inside, strapping on her seat belt before driving out of the car park. Rather than heading home, she drove to the more deserted car park on campus: the library car park.

Hardly anyone ever used that carpark, and Max often came there whenever she wanted to be left alone. Doing a quick check to make sure nobody was around her, Max reached into her book bag, which she had placed in the passenger seat, and recovered a bong.

At that moment, her phone buzzed, startling her. She glanced down to see it was a message from Jared wondering where she was and informing her that a group of them were going to smoke in their usual spot in the woods behind the College.

Max completely ignored the text message and lit the base of the bong with her lighter as she took a deep inhale. She relished in the familiar bubbly sound and exhaled, rolling down her car window slightly as she did so. She went down on the bong a couple more times as she felt her head growing lightheaded and the tensions that were constantly all over her body ease up, instantly relaxing her.

Max sat there in the library car park smoking the bong, listening to the rain outside and feeling herself getting higher and higher whilst relishing in how amazing she felt. Her eyelids felt heavy, a side-effect of getting so high so fast. Max carefully placed the bong to the side of her before shutting her eyes and drifting to sleep.

***

"Hey!"

Max kept her eyes shut, choosing to ignore the person calling next to her. Hopefully, if she ignored them for long enough, they would simply just go away.

Unfortunately for her, the person began banging on the side of the truck. Max really wanted to keep sleeping, but decided against it for fear that her beloved truck would sustain even more damage.

"Okay, okay, okay," Max said, opening her eyes and raising her hands in defeat as she turned to look at the person standing outside her window.

She wound down her truck window and instantly came face to face with a girl. She looked familiar, and Max instantly recognized her as a girl from biology class. She usually sat up at the front and always answered questions during class. Max couldn't remember the girl's name, but she now stood squinting at Max from under a huge black umbrella, with the rain falling all around her.

"Um, may I help you?" Max asked, blinking at her. She was still pretty high, and the girl's face seemed to spin around in Max's vision.

"Aren't you going to go home?" The girl asked, peering at Max through the halfway wound-down truck window. "It's pretty late."

Max glanced at the clock on her dashboard and saw that it was already past midnight. She realized that even if she wanted to, she couldn't go home. Her mum would lose her shit if she saw her in this state. After all, just yesterday, she had warned her against it.

"Hold on," the girl outside suddenly said. She leaned in towards Max and sniffed the air.

"Are you stoned right now?" She asked, wrinkling her face in disgust as she shook her head.

"What are you? My mom?" Max retorted harshly.

At that moment the crashing sound of thunder sounded, and Max watched as the girl jumped in shock before getting ahold of herself.

"Whatever," the girl murmured, a bit embarrassed as she turned from Max and began to walk away.

Max stared behind her, feeling extremely dizzy.

"Wait!" Max yelled, stepping out of her truck into the downpour.

Whether the girl had heard her, she didn't know as the girl continued walking away. It was dark all around, with the only illumination coming from a few stray lights and the full moon up ahead.

Max groaned as she ducked her head slightly in the rain and picked up her pace to ‌catch up with the girl.

There was another crash of thunder and this time Max jumped, too. She grumbled to herself and quickened her pace. Her hair and clothes were drenched in water and stuck to her body uncomfortably.

"Please wait!" Max yelled out once again through the heavy pattering of the rain, "I need to ask you something!"

Max watched as the girl finally stopped and turned around. She was standing next to the Richard Crowtney statue, the man who had first settled in the small town about 200 years ago.

The statue was made completely of iron and stood 9 feet tall. Similar statues like these were littered all over the town of Crowtney, with Richard Crowtney posed the same in most of the statues. He was sitting, reading a book, and had his glasses hanging by the crook of his nose. In this statue, however, Crowtney stood with his arms outstretched and a weirdly sculptured smile on his face. It low-key crept Max out.

"Well?" the girl said when Max finally made her way to where she was standing.

She was soaking wet, and the girl generously stretched out her arm so the umbrella protected Max as well from the harsh element.

"Maxine, isn't it?"

"Max," Max curtly said, correcting her.

"Okay, Max," the girl seemed to become more irritable. "And what do you want?"

Max took in the features of the girl she was now standing face-to-face with. She stood about a head over the girl and had to bend her head slightly as she talked to her. The girl was dark-skinned with dark eyes. She had blondish-brown braids which fell just past her waist and perfectly framed her oval-shaped face. Max looked down at the clothes she was wearing and instantly thought to herself that the girl was dressed weirdly. She was wearing overalls with sandals which seemed so out-of-place given that they were standing in the pouring rain at about 1 in the morning.

"Hello-" the girl said, dragging the word out, "do you speak?"

Max held back from rolling her eyes, knowing it wouldn't do her any good for what it was she was about to ask.

"You're in my biology class, aren't you?" Max asked, although she already knew the answer. "I was wondering if you had made like a review sheet or a study guide for the test tomorrow-"

Max trailed off when she caught sight of the expression on the girl's face.

"What's my name?" the girl suddenly asked.

What?

"What's my name?" the girl repeated.

Max blinked blankly at her, wondering if this was a joke. She knew she had heard the girl's name a couple of times, but she wasn't good with names. And frankly, she was way too high to take any intelligent guesses.

The girl in front of her scoffed and shook her head.

"You don't even know my name, but you want to use my revision notes for the test tomorrow morning? People like you are the worst. You don't care for people, but just use them where you see fit."

Max blinked as she stared at the girl. She couldn't comprehend what was going on. All that she had asked was to borrow her notes. Why was she flipping out like this?

"I work so hard," the girl said exasperatedly. "I really work so hard. I pay attention in class, I study, and do my homework. And people like you that make little to no effort decide to come up to me and try to benefit from my hard work. I'm sure you've had everything just handed to you in life. That's it, Isn't it? You're nothing more than just a privileged white girl, nothing I haven't seen before. I know your type."

"Mixed actually." Max said as a smirk grew on her face, "I'm half Asian, but I am quite white-passing, so I'd give you that."

The girl in front of her suddenly felt really stupid, shuffling on her feet nervously.

"So, um, the review sheet?" Max asked.

Honestly, she was feeling a headache coming on and couldn't really be bothered to deal with whatever preconceived notions that a random girl from class had of her.

The girl stared at her blankly for a while, then sighed as she handed the umbrella to Max and dug in her bag. Max held the umbrella tightly as she leaned against the Richard Crowtney statue.

The girl found the paper she was looking for and held it out to Max.

"Take a picture on your phone because I need to use this to revise."

Max nodded her head and reached out to take the paper from the girl's hand. Just as she did so, something incredible happened.

There was a roaring clap of thunder followed by lightning that seemed to turn the whole sky a purplish-silver color. Max watched in awe as the lightning struck the Richard Crowtney statue she was leaning against. She felt a current run through her and watched in horror as the paper being handed to her caught on fire.

The girl let out a small scream and Max dropped the umbrella in her hand and grabbed hold of the girl, moving her away from the flames as she threw the paper away from the both of them. The current that Max had felt just a few moments ago was now being felt by the girl in front of her, who now stood paralyzed as her bottom lip quivered slightly.

There was another loud clap of thunder and it seemed like an invisible force had come between the two of them as they both went hurling backward in opposite directions. Max stumbled but was able to regain her balance whilst the other girl fell flat on the floor. She stood up slowly from the wet floor as the rain fell silently around her, wondering what ‌had just occurred.

"Did you feel that?" Max asked in disbelief. "Or am I just a lot higher than I thought?"

The other girl suddenly felt really strange. A look of annoyance grew over her face. She had wasted enough time talking to Max when she should be in the library studying, but now she didn't even have a review sheet as that had somehow caught on fire.

"Hey, you okay?" Max said, noticing the look that was spreading across the girl's face.

The girl looked up, glaring at her.

"This is your fault! Why the fuck would you lean on an iron statue during a rainstorm?"

Max had to admit, the girl was right. She suddenly felt terrible knowing that her review sheet was destroyed, and it was basically her fault.

"I'm sorry. I honestly-"

"Just leave me alone!" the girl shouted angrily as she turned on her heel and walked towards the library entrance. The rain was beating down on her, but she couldn't be bothered to turn around and recover her umbrella. If she had turned around, she would have found out that her umbrella was nowhere to be seen.

Max watched behind her in dismay before turning on her heel and heading back to the library car park.