No wonder the atmosphere was so charged after we graduated high school. Aimee acted so weird, especially once we got to college. No wonder she encouraged me to move to the nicer building without her. No wonder she got so visibly uncomfortable every time I joked about having stayed home for her. Clearly, I had been veiling my own resentments, but I’d based them on what I thought was the truth.

Every time things sucked, they double-sucked for her because she felt guilty I was there, ostensibly, for her.

“But I saw the letter,” I say.

She shakes her head. “No, you didn’t.”

I have an image in my head of the rejection letter she received. I can see it.

But as quickly as it appears, the memory begins to go up in flames, as if I were holding a match to the edge of the letter itself.

“You never asked to see it,” she says. “I think you knew. You must have, somewhere.”

I feel a strange tremor run through my skeleton and I wet my lips and clear my throat. “No, that’s—no.”

“I kept thinking you’d ask to see it, but when you didn’t, I didn’t volunteer it. Obviously. Because it was a lie.”

A small waft of amusement goes between us and I can’t help but scoff.

“This changed my whole life, you know. That decision. That’s what this whole thing is about. I think. My being here at all. I had two lives. I picked one. The one where I stayed with you. And where I lost you.”

“You should have come,” she says to the ground. “This is what should have happened. To me, it is what happened.”

“Why didn’t I? If I knew? Why would I stay in Florida with you if I secretly knew?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know. I don’t know if you knew or didn’t.”

We look at each other now, and I feel like we’re two fairies trapped under a jar. Both easily apprehended because we were paralyzed with fear, too afraid to take flight.

“So this is why we were fighting?”

“I mean, it started as an argument about Theo. Then I told you the truth about my acceptance. I was so mad. I wanted you to learn to like Theo and when you wouldn’t, after all this time, I snapped. Told you. I knew it would make you as angry as I was. I think my logic was that you’d see that you were selfish, you broke our deal and came without me. Which is stupid. I knew it was stupid.”

“And … how did you end up coming here? To Avalon? If you didn’t want to.”