God, this night couldn’t end soon enough. Because if her eyes kept meeting Eva’s over the heads of the student body dancing between them, Lily was going to wrap a hand around her wrist and drag her back to that balcony.
It was a relief when the dance wound down, kids getting picked up, no doubt off to some after party or another Lily would pretend not to hear the details about at school on Monday.
Once the last of the students had been herded from the room, the teachers were quick to follow. Lily ended up walking out beside Eva, their shoulders brushing with every step. Lily should say something, shouldn’t she? Something to shatter the oppressive silence between them.
“I—” Lily paused, Eva’s screensaver lighting up as she checked the time. The photo should have been innocuous. Lots of people had animals as their backgrounds. Lily’s had been Hades for as long as she’d had her. “You have a dog?”
“What?” Eva turned to her with a frown, but Lily had her gaze focused on Eva’s hands, on the brown eyes of a black Spaniel, a red collar fixed around its neck.
A dog she’d seen before.
Dozens of times.
“Yes. Why?”
“What’s his name?” Lily said, voice a whisper. She already knew.
“Why are you being so—”
“Eva.” Lily stepped closer. “What’s his name?”
“Franklin.”
Eva stared at Lily like she’d grown a second head, and Lily was spiraling, Lily was panicking, Lily was realizing the woman she’d been talking to for the past few months—the woman who might know her better than anyone else in the world—was the one standing in front of her now.
Oh, God, she was going to be sick.
“Why does it matter?”
Lily shouldn’t tell her. Lily should take this secret, lock it away, and take it to the grave. But was it fair to hide it? Christ, Eva was going to kill her. Her body would never be found.
“Franklin,” Lily said, her voice sounding very far away. “Springer Spaniel. Black. Likes long runs in the park, terrified of the vacuum cleaner.”
It could still be a coincidence, Lily thought out of sheer desperation.
“How…how did you know that. You can’t know that.”
Lily reached for her own phone and searched for the message thread with shaking fingers. “I do. Because you’ve told me all about him,” Lily said, turning her screen around to show a photo Elsa had sent the night before, of Franklin sprawled out on the end of her bed.
Lily waited for Eva to accept the truth, watched Eva’s nose scrunch, watched her brain work, her eyes darken with denial. “You’re Molly?”
“And you’re Elsa.”
Eva shook her head violently. “No. That can’t be. I won’t have it.”
“Except it can.” Lily thought of all the things she’d filed away about Elsa, things that, looking at Eva now, she could see reflected back at her.I don’t trust easily. I don’t have many friends. I find it hard to open up to people. I don’t mind my job, but I don’t love it—and I can’t stand the people I work with.
Of course, Elsa was also things Eva was decidedly not—like warm and funny and vulnerable when she felt like opening up. Although hadn’t Lily seen a hint of that in Eva, too? Through the cracks in her walls?
“All this time—it’s been you.” Elsa. Eva. Molly. Lily.
“No.” Eva seemed to be in a heavy state of denial, and Lily didn’t blame her. What a betrayal this must feel like, to expose so much in the safety of anonymity only to discover the person you confided in was someone you saw every day. “No, you’re not Molly. This is some kind of cruel joke.”
“MollyCule13,” Lily said, and Eva flinched. “Molecule, because I teach chemistry. Thirteen, because that’s my birthday. I—”
“Stop it.” Eva’s voice was low and pained. “Just stop.”
“But—”
