Page 49 of I Know How This Ends

Maybe Jules disappears from my visions because I kill her .

Clumsily, I get up from the floor and brush down my denim bottom.

“Did you do this on purpose?” I look from Lil back to Jules and back to Lil again. “Is this your lame attempt at a reunion?”

“Yeah.” Jules rolls her dark eyes at me. “I invited Lily and Aaron over weeks ago, then I sent out really strong vibes with

my spider mind to make you turn up, unannounced and dressed like a toddler, to park your rainbow ass on my welcome mat.”

“Good point,” I note briskly. “Forgiven.”

I can’t quite make eye contact with Aaron, so I look at Lily, still standing like a statue on the path. This must be why Sim

and Jules seemed so on edge: they knew she was on her way. I’ve spent the last nine months wondering how I would feel when

I saw Lil again— if I saw her again—and now she’s here...

Well, Jules was right: Instagram has been heavily edited, that’s for certain.

Lily’s still in that huge gray jumper, but when it’s not perfectly styled with toes peeking out of the bottom, it’s bobbly and misshapen and kind of hideous.

Her jeans are baggy at the knees, her red hair is in a high, slightly greasy ponytail with one stray piece sticking out like a rhino’s horn, and her face is tired.

Pale, a little splotchy. Her eyelids are pink, and when I glance down at her fingernails, they’re chewed to shreds.

Lil upgraded from chewing her own hair to chewing her fingernails when she was eleven, and it looks like she’s now just slowly eating herself in tiny pieces.

Every single cell in me suddenly aches. Lil. My poor Lil.

What the fuck has he done?

“Hi, Maggie,” she whispers, green eyes huge. “How... are you?”

This is the first time we have spoken since that night in the wedding garden. I have spent so many hours over the last year thinking of all the things I want to say to her. All the things I didn’t say at the time. Sometimes

it was pathetic, sometimes hostile, sometimes weepy, sometimes desperate, sometimes outright cruel. In my darkest moments,

I would script hour-long monologues that were as nasty as I could possibly make them: pulling her apart, causing her as much

pain as I physically could. I would picture her crumbling, the way I had. I would take glee in it.

Sometimes it was the only way I could fall asleep.

Now I don’t want to say any of it.

Because it’s hitting me all at once that so many of those monologues were aimed at Lily instead of Aaron—because she was the one I had loved more.

“I’m well,” I say gently, still looking only at her. “How are you?”

“Yeah.” Lil squirms uncomfortably. “You know. Good. Thank you for asking.”

I glance down at her belly: she’s not showing yet. Although, frankly, in that jumper she could be eighteen months gone and

there still wouldn’t be any visible sign.

“Congratulations,” I say genuinely. “Are you excited?”

Lily flushes guiltily, but I see a fire light up in her eyes and I’m so, so glad that something good has come from this mess.

“Yes.” She nods in embarrassment. “I really am.”

Aaron pointedly clears his throat next to her, clearly furious that he’s now being ignored by both of us.

“I mean, we are.” Lil coughs, glances to the side—unable to make eye contact with him—and I realize it’s some kind of weird loyalty to me: as if just looking at him when I’m here too would be the ultimate betrayal. “Aren’t we, sweetie?”

Then she winces, as if she’s just realized that accidentally adding sweetie to that sentence was an insult to me, but all it has done is prove I no longer feel anything at all.

With breath held, I finally force myself to look at Aaron: as if he’s still the sun and I need some kind of special gadget

to see him without doing considerable damage. He’s still beautiful, unfortunately. If anything, Aaron looks better. Tanned

from his exotic holiday. Slightly blonder. Still chiseled. Still incredibly tall. Henry can get so much more human into so

much less body.

“Yeah.” Aaron gives Lily one of his famous little crooked grins: the one I used to find so charming. “We’re excited. We’re

properly adulting now, hey, Lil.”

I’m assessing him carefully for any kind of emotion.

There is some discomfort—I guess that’s something—but underneath a faint, thin layer of performative shame and humility, he’s...

smug . Pleased with himself. As if the surface of him is carefully painted, like a lovely piece of furniture that once you get home

and sand down you realize is not real wood underneath, just laminate. He’s actually enjoying this. His new fiancée, his old fiancée, his ability to impregnate, the fight over him as if he’s the one Ken at a multi-Barbie

wedding.

It might also be because I’m wearing rainbow leggings and a sunshine smock: dude has to be hyper-aware now that he traded

up.

I search myself for any of the remaining pain, and realize it’s gone.

This man was the person I brushed my teeth next to for ten years, and now he’s just a stranger I don’t like, standing on a

lawn.

“Hello, Mags.” Aaron attempts to look humble and ends up looking like he’s just trod something sticky into a carpet. “You’ve

cut your hair. It suits you.”

He’s clearly expecting the same grace with which I greeted Lily and he is going to be sorely mistaken, because fuck him.

“Yes,” I say curtly. “I bloody know.”

“Um...” Lily anxiously switches her weight from one foot to another and curls her jumper down around her hands. My heart

hurts again: she looks exactly like she did in the dinner queue at school. “Maggie, are you having dinner with us too?”

I glance at Jules, who lifts her eyebrows: you can if you want .

“No.” I clear my throat. “Thank you. I have plans.”

“Ah.” Lil nods. “Of course. OK.”

There’s a silence.

A long, extremely heavy silence, because now what the hell do we say to each other? The weight of our shared past is making

polite conversation impossible.

“Actually.” I frown. “Aaron, there is something I want to say to you.”

He shuffles slightly, his sense of enjoyment at the situation waning.

“Of course.” He nods sheepishly, taking a deep breath and lifting his chin: a warrior of compassion and courage. “Anything.”

I open my mouth and he quickly adds, as if holding up a shield:

“But before you do, I’m sorry that I fell in love with Lil, but it just happened, it wasn’t my fault, the heart wants what

the heart wants and—”

“Nope.” I hold up my hand: what an incredible non-apology. “Don’t give a shit.”

Aaron blinks. “Oh.”

“All I want to say is can you please fuck off inside so I can talk to my best friends without you?”

Aaron’s entire face falls—he’s rendered irrelevant—and Jules snorts next to me.

“Ummm...” He runs a hand through his fringe in annoyance.

I can see him wondering where my tears are, where my pain is, where my sadness and hurt have gone.

Because how the hell is he supposed to feed off my emotions when there aren’t any left?

“Yeah. OK. If that’s what you want. Sorry.

Again. For everything. See you in there, Lil. ”

Aaron leans over and gives her a quick kiss on the lips, as punishment for me.

Lily’s eyes are still locked on mine, and she flinches.

Then Aaron disappears into the house, where we hear Sim do her absolute best to sound thrilled to see him.

The door closes and finally— finally— the three of us are alone.

“Margot.” Lily’s whole body has just relaxed, and I don’t think she knows yet that this is how it will be now: tense, every

time he’s near. “Please let me talk first, even though I know there is nothing I can say. I’ve written so many letters and texts and they’ve all gone in the bin because you made it clear you didn’t want

to hear it, and every time I try to say sorry, it just sounds so... pointless . What good can an apology do? You say sorry when you break a teacup, not someone’s entire life .”

Her eyes are full of tears and her pointy chin is wobbling.

“But I am sorry. I didn’t even know I had it in me to do that.

I honestly didn’t. I used to think I was a nice person, that was my entire identity .

Jules was the clever one, Eve was the fun one, you were the fierce one.

So I told myself I was nice . And that was enough, my one strength .

And maybe I got tired of being nice, or maybe I was never really nice to start with, or maybe I’m just looking for an excuse

because I’m selfish and horrible, because it turns out I’m not nice at all.”

She’s saying the word nice way too much, as if it’s become a mantra for her, and I wonder how long she’s been building herself around that word.

My chest aches and I take an instinctive step toward her.

“No.” Lil holds up a hand and moves away. “Don’t. Don’t be kind to me. I can’t bear it. I need you to hate me, Maggie. I need

you to, because that’s the only way it feels fair. I can’t have you be kind to me on top of everything else.”

Her entire face crumples and she sticks a fingertip in her mouth and starts aggressively ripping apart her one remaining nail.

“But I’m not nice anymore,” she bleats desperately. “I’m bad and I know it, all the time, every second, and I’m carrying it with me and I can’t put it down. I can’t get away from it,

and I don’t know who I am anymore .”

Lil puts her hands over her face and starts sobbing.

Is this what we all do? Just hate ourselves, constantly, for not being perfect? For making mistakes? For somehow not living up to whatever identity we’ve created

in our own heads? Are we all just walking around, living in our own guilt and shame and flaws like snails in houses we’ve

made from ourselves?

Jules makes a move toward Lily, but I get there first.

“Stop,” I whisper, wrapping my arms around her and pulling her tiny, ridiculously woolly body toward me. “You’re not bad , sweetheart. You have never been bad . You screwed up, that’s all. It’s not the same thing.”

Because it’s just hit me who else is missing from my visions: Lily.