"Is everything okay between you two?"
"Of course it is. Why shouldn't it be?" Her tone remained defensive, as if she felt I was accusing her of something.
"I don't know. Since you mentioned Oliver, I thought..."
"I'm more in love with your brother than ever," she interrupted me. "He's the sweetest, most thoughtful, and most caring man in the world. I wouldn't be surprised if he asked me to marry him when we graduate. He's the best boyfriend in the world."
So my brother did love Brandy, and everything was fine between them.
It must have been a huge shock for Brandy when the video of the party got out. I remembered how devastated she was, her mascara-streaked face as she screamed at Leo in the school hallway. How quickly her love had turned to disgust and shame. But I felt it was all an act, just like what she is doing now, pretending to be my friend.
"I'm glad to hear that you two are so in love," I lied, knowing that Brandy had never been to see my brother in prison in these ten years, even though he told me he had sent her letters to apologize to her.
I know she is a fake person somehow, but I just don't know at what level.
"Okay, let's stop talking about me; let's get back to you. Tell me about Kyle," she replied.
"I think being together all the time has made us realize that maybe we were going too fast with everything," I lied. I didn't want her to think I brought her to the cafeteria to question her. Especially when in the past we used to talk about everything.
It's hard to act like someone you're not anymore just so the people around you feel like you're still the same person, especially when you don't even know who you are. I decided to extend our conversation to address how I've been focused on many other things, like college and my family, so she would believe my whole story.
And by doing it, I came up with a good way to approach my brother.
Maybe Brandy wasn't very useful today with the information I needed, but I found a way to continue with my plan.
The more I thought about what happened ten years ago, the more I realized how little I truly knew about the events that led to that fateful night. I'd spent years believing one version of the story—That Jeremy had a fight with my brother that made Oliver take action and record a video, that Oliver then spread that video, and that then, because of Oliver, everyone started bullying my brother for something that he had no control over or fault of his own.
But what if there were pieces I was missing? What if the narrative I'd built in my head wasn't the complete truth?
That's the problem with being in the dark for so long. You construct a reality based on fragments, on whispers andassumptions, and you accept it as fact because the alternative is to admit you know nothing at all. And that was incredibly terrifying. I didn't want to feel like I had made an enemy out of someone who wasn't really to blame for anything.
I'd never considered that Brandy might have known about the video before it went public, as Kyle told me. I'd never questioned her role in all of this beyond being the heartbroken girlfriend who cut ties with us. But now, seeds of doubt were taking root. Her casual dismissal of Oliver, her supposed control over him. It painted a different picture than the one I'd thought about for ten years.
And if I was wrong about that, what else might I be wrong about?
That same afternoon, I arrived home and ran straight to Leo's room. He was at his desk with his headphones, doing his homework, so he didn't even notice I was there until I lunged at him.
"Tell me, Lily, what brings you here now?" he said, taking off his headphones and stretching, as if he'd been concentrating for a long time. I sat down on the bed, and he turned his chair toward me to give me his full attention.
"I have something important to discuss with you," I said. "It's about Kyle."
He looked at me strangely. Up until that moment, I had never spoken to him about Kyle, at least not in this timeline. "From what I've heard in the halls and seen, it seems there was a fight brewing between you two."
I looked at him, wide-eyed. "Why is everyone saying this?"
"That's what it looks like. I know you, Lily. You used to talk all the time about the good things he did, and you used to make plans with him all the time. He used to come here on the weekends. But you've been trying to spend time with me for two Saturdays, not with him. You don't go out, you don't see each other at school anymore."
I'd thought I was being subtle, that my distance from Kyle wouldn't be so obvious to everyone around us. But apparently, our relationship (or lack thereof) was the subject of school gossip. "Maybe I have been busy or wanted to spend time with other people. That doesn't mean I don't want to be with him."
"Nah, you never want to spend time with other people. You keep all the boys away from you but him. You're like a sun, giving everyone warmth, not letting them get close because you could burn. But Kyle seemed immune to that barrier, and he penetrated it like nothing. Until now."
I remained silent for a moment, trying to process my brother's words. Was that how people saw me? A sun that keeps people at a distance? It was strange to hear my teenage brother articulate something about me that I hadn't fully recognized in myself until I was much older. It made me wonder how much I'd underestimated him back then, how much I might still be underestimating him now.
It felt weird hearing my Leo put into words something I hadn’t even realized about myself until years later. I always thought the walls I built after everything fell apart were new, just something I threw up to protect myself. But maybe they’d been there all along, even back when I was seventeen and believed I was open and trusting.
I always saw myself as someone who completely changed overnight. But it seems like all the characteristics that make up my adult personality have always been there, in one way or another.
Maybe I'd always been someone who kept people at arm's length. Maybe losing Kyle and Leo hadn't created my isolation; it had just given me an excuse to perfect it. It made me wonder how much else I'd gotten wrong about myself, how many of my adult struggles had roots in the person I'd been before tragedy reshaped me. But the best thing I could do nowwas use his observation to introduce the conversation I actually wanted to have.
