“You said it yourself.” Nicki pulls her hair back from her face, wrapping it with an elastic from her wrist. “I got knocked up.”

“You got pregnant on purpose.” It’s suddenly so clear to Finn. Nicki had never been stupid, even back then, back when Finn felt she needed to warn her about the risks of everything from smoking weed in the parking lot before school to driving home drunk from parties, from getting that fake ID so she could sneak into that Helix show to telling everyone those stories about what she may or may not have done with the drummer backstage afterward. Of course she knew about birth control. There was no reason she should have gotten pregnant unless she had planned it.

Nicki shrugged. “It wasn’t on purpose. I just didn’t care one way or the other.”

“But why?”

“Because Finn’s the smart one,” Nicki says in a high-pitched, mocking voice. “Finn’s the brave one. Finn’s the adventurous one. Finn’s the one who is going to make something of herself.” She keeps her gaze fixed out over the water. “I might as well have gotten pregnant, right? Dumb, trashy Nicki.”

“It didn’t have to be that way. You could have still gone somewhere, done something.”

“But I didn’t want to! Don’t you get it? That stupid map, those pins, the trip to Europe? I just thought it would maybe make her…” Suddenly she turns to Finn, her eyes hard. “And then what happened? After all that? You met Dallas. And you fucking stayed.”

It hits her then, how she’s always taken for granted that they had the same thoughts, when really she’s never known what Nicki was thinking at all. The realization hollows Finn out with such a deep, visceral grief that she is momentarily winded. She and Nicki stand next to each other on the breakwater and watch the bridge clang and wheeze to the top of its trajectory, allowing an expensive-looking cabin cruiser to glide underneath. In the cockpit, two figures are standing with their backs angled towards the shore, focused on the lake ahead of them. Even without being able to see their faces, Finn knows. It seems impossible, but she knows. London and Kate are on that boat.

She turns to Nicki, ready for something shrill, for Nicki to scream out at them, call them back to shore. But Nicki hasn’t seen the boat. She has her head down on the breakwater wall, resting on her arms, and she is crying.

“I think Mom and London stole Adam Pelley’s boat,” Finn says.

“That sounds about right,” Nicki mumbles into the wall.