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HAPPY BIRTHDAY AADLER! And story.
On the way down, I wrote a story, had the first draft finished before going to sleep Friday night, and then started the second draft, using the Snowflake method (or at least parts of it, because it’s too short to have used all the steps).
Rain and Disillusion
Sometimes, Veronica thought she might actually hate Lilly Kane.
She wasn’t sure when exactly her feelings had changed from unquestioned love and loyalty to this murky cesspool of tangled emotions. She just knew that that realization struck her one day as she was talking to Weevil; she’d tossed out the type of verbal jab at him that was the basis of at least 98 percent of their interactions. She didn’t mean anything by it, and he knew she didn’t mean anything by it, but the hurt had still bloomed in his eyes so suddenly and painfully that Veronica had felt the ache of it in her own chest. And that was the moment that she realized that she might hate Lilly for what she did to people. It hit so suddenly that she actually stared at Weevil long enough to prompt him to snap his fingers in front of her face and say “Earth to Mars. Mission Control calling Veronica.” She’d surprised them both by giving him an impromptu hug — seriously, Veronica, hugging a friend and one of the few people in town that you trust who happens to be the leader of a biker gang is still hugging the leader of a biker gang — and telling him that she’d never let someone make him their dirty little secret again, before rushing off to the beach, needing to sit on the rock that she used to figure out the world and make it make sense again.
She didn’t notice when the rain started to fall. When she did notice it, she was grateful for it, because it gave her an excuse for her wet cheeks, as tears and rain mingled on her face. She didn’t notice when Weevil sat next to her silently. When she did notice it, she was grateful for it, because she was able to lean against his leather-clad solidity and borrow some of his strength just for a moment. Not loving Lilly was another death in a year of too many deaths.
She’d loved her best friend wit the pure adoration that only kids and puppies can really possess. Lilly had been Lilly, and Veronica had known all Lilly’s faults, even if she hadn’t known the extent to which they ran, and she’d still loved Lilly. Lilly had been excruciatingly self-involved; everything always came back to her, how it affected her, how she felt about whatever it was. But somehow, that only added to her charm. Lilly had been manipulative, simply because it was easier to get people to do what she wanted than to deal with the complications of them doing their own thing and adjusting her plans accordingly. Lilly had lied as easily as she breathed, and had no compunctions about doing so when it suited her, and it suited her far more often than Veronica liked. But Lilly had never lied to Veronica about anything, and Veronica knew all the tells that Lilly gave when she lied. The older girl might refuse to say something, like when she’d apparently found out why Duncan had dumped Veronica so abruptly, but she’d never outright lied to Veronica. Lilly was disobedient to anyone in a position of authority, with the single exception of Keith Mars. She resented being told what to do by anyone, and would either ignore the direction and just do what she wanted to do, or go out of her way to disobey. But Lilly and Veronica had been good counter-balances to each other in that regard, because Veronica would have obeyed anyone unquestioningly (well, not a stranger on the street because she wasn’t stupid) and Lilly would have disobeyed anyone simply for the sake of disobedience, so they kept each other in check, with Veronica encouraging Lilly to think about a rule before she broke it and Lilly enabling Veronica to live life. Lilly would frequently be bitchy for no reason other than because she felt like it, but she never directed it at Veronica and she was never outright malicious; she just didn’t care if she hurt someone’s feelings.
But Lilly was also a sixteen-year-old girl when she was murdered. If she’d been allowed to grow up, she probably would have changed a lot of her behaviors once it clicked for her that her actions affected real people.
Lilly had still been Lilly, embracing life with everything she had, loving everything she did with all that she was, living each moment fully. Lilly had still been the girl that used to wear butterfly clips in her hair. She had still been the girl that sang along to any Beatles song that Keith played on his turntable, loudly and off-key, while either watching Veronica and her dad two-step around the living room, or taking her turn as Keith’s dancing partner.
Keith had put his Beatles records away after Lilly died, and was only just now starting to play them again.
Lilly had still been the first-grade girl that had placed a tiara on Veronica’s head and pronounced the kindergarten Veronica to be a princess just like her when Madison Sinclair and her groupies (yes, she had had groupies even back then) had tried to make Veronica the servant girl at recess, the first time that Veronica and Lilly had really interacted. Lilly had still been protective of Veronica, and hadn’t allowed any guy to come close to taking advantage of Veronica (though Veronica did sometimes wonder if Lilly had pushed her to Duncan so that Veronica would be taken care of, or so Veronica would no longer be competition, though Veronica herself didn’t consider herself anything remotely approaching competition for the beautiful and vivacious Lilly Kane, or a little bit of both).
But Lilly had also been the girl that had done everything she could to hurt Celeste, though it was hard to say which had hurt each other more. Lilly had been the girl to play one guy against the other simply because it was fun for her. Lilly had been the girl to whom monogamy had no meaning, so she’d slept with whomever she wanted, whenever she wanted, regardless of whether or not she was dating Logan at the time and how much it would hurt him. But heaven help Logan if he so much as looked at another girl. Lilly had been the girl that told Weevil that Logan hit her, for reasons that Veronica still couldn’t figure out, and nothing Veronica said could convince Weevil to ever trust Logan to not hurt Veronica, even if Logan and Veronica were no longer dating.
In life, Veronica had loved her best friend more than she loved anybody else in the world, with the sole exception of Keith Mars. And she knew that Lilly loved her, too; that she was possibly the only person other than Lilly Kane that Lilly loved.
But in death, when all Veronica was able to see was the destruction that Lilly had left behind, the people she’d hurt and whose pain she could never soothe away because she wasn’t there anymore, the hurt that lived in Logan and Weevil’s eyes …
Sometimes, Veronica thought she might actually hate Lilly Kane.
End