"Lily," I said softly, breaking the silence that had fallen between us. "I need to tell you something. Something I should have told you years ago."
She looked at me with her eyes still teary from everything she had just confessed to me, and I wanted to swear right there that I never wanted to be responsible for her tears again.
"One of the reasons I left for Sydney after school was because I wasn't sure anymore. About Leo's guilt, I mean." I swallowed hard. "I couldn't stay here, carrying that doubt, seeing your family broken because of my testimony."
Her eyes widened slightly. "What do you mean you weren't sure?"
"I went to see Leo in prison a year after the accident."
"You what?" She stood up abruptly. "You had no right?—"
"I know, I know. But I had to. I needed to hear his side one more time, without the lawyers, without the court, just... the truth."
Because after the trial, none of us was sure anymore if we made the right decision. And knowing for a fact that Lily told me she was with him made everything harder every time.
I remembered the visit clearly. The disgusting visitation room. The guards watching from the corners. Leo was thinner than I remembered, with shadows under his eyes, but still with that same gentle demeanor that made the accusations against him seem so incongruous.
"Even though he was in there because of me and my friends, he was kind, Lily. He talked to me. And he told me exactly what happened that night, detail by detail. The movie you watched. The snacks you ate. The time you both fell asleep. Every single detail was consistent with what you had told me a year before."
I ran a hand through my hair. "No one remembers a lie with that kind of precision. Not after a year in prison, with nothing else to lose. And that's when I knew, beyond any doubt, that he was telling the truth."
Lily sank back onto the bench again, her expression unreadable. "So you figured it out a year too late. What good does that do now?"
"None. It did no good at all. But now we have a chance to change it all. We can prevent the sequence of events that led to Oliver's death and Leo's imprisonment."
"How?" she asked, looking at me with doubt. "We know Oliver recorded my brother, we know the video spread, we know everything that followed. How do we stop it?"
"That's just it," I leaned forward. "I don't think Oliver was the one who spread the video."
She stared at me. "What are you talking about?"
"On Monday, after the party, Oliver came into class and told us about the video. He was so happy because he was finally going to get Brandy and Leo to break up. He told us that he showed the video to Brandy privately that night, and she freaked out, and that day she was finally going to break up with him. But when he was about to show us the video, teacher Florence came and took his phone away, saying that we should be paying attention to class instead of being distracted."
I could see her mind working, processing this new information. Meanwhile, I continued telling my version of everything that happened.
"Oliver didn't have his phone back until after 2:00 PM, and the video was already spread everywhere before then."
Lily opened her eyes and looked at me in disbelief, but immediately turned to her serious expression, "This doesn't change anything. He recorded the video."
"We can't prevent Oliver from spreading the video becausehe didn't do it, or so I think, but we can prevent it from being recorded at all. Without video, there would be no way Oliver and Leo could fight at all."
I'd thought about this so many times over the years—the sequence of events, the domino effect that led to tragedy. If we removed the first domino, none of the rest would follow.
"But the party is in February, and it's still January. What would happen if we returned to the present before then? How would we prevent the video from being recorded?" Lily asked.
It was a valid concern. We had no idea how long this strange time-travel situation would last. We could wake up tomorrow back in 2025, with no chance to change anything.
"We have to make sure Jeremy and Leo don't go to that party."
Saying Jeremy's name brought back countless memories. I hadn't considered that he was affected by all of this, too. He and Leo were best friends, and he too suffered greatly from everything that happened.
"Why, Jeremy? Leo would be enough." She responded.
"We can't afford any margin for error. Jeremy is Leo's best friend right now. They go everywhere together. If we convince both of them that going to that party is a bad idea, and neither of them is in the mood to go, then there won't be any problems."
"There's one more thing," I added, "we need to gain their trust so Jeremy can confess his feelings to Leo before the party, and so Leo can handle this conversation in the best possible way so there are no misunderstandings."
"What do you mean?"
