Page 62 of 6 Clues Your Nemesis Loves You

I try picturing the polished Maggie I know flouting rules, causing damage and chaos. My mind rebels at first, but I recall her at the pond, lighting up when I’d dare her to do something crazy and fun. Those were the moments when she seemed most alive. “There’s nothing wrong with having a wild streak. I’m sure you gave your parents early gray hairs, but it sounds like no one got hurt in the process.”

“Luckily, no one did. But after the fireworks night, I couldn’t sleep and got up to get some water. I overheard my parents talking in their room. Not yelling or getting mad the way they sometimes would when I messed up. They sounded scared, and I’ll never forget it—my mom’s exact words.” Maggie’s next inhale feels unbearably weighted. “‘She’s too much like her. I don’t know what to do with her anymore. If she doesn’t hurt herself, she’ll hurt someone else. She’s going to break my heart, just like Nicki. Maybe we shouldn’t have adopted her.’”

“Jesus, Mags.” I wrap my leg over her and cup the back of her head, trying to shield her from the hurt she’s lived with for so long.

“Yeah,” she says quietly. “Worst words a kid could hear, and I gasped. Couldn’t contain the reaction. Ran back to my room and hid under the covers, hoping they didn’t hear me, wishing I hadn’t heard them. But they rushed into my room, apologized, and hugged me. Wiped away my tears. That’s when they told me about Nicki—what she was like and why they took me in. My mom apologized over and over for what she said, explained she was just scared, but I heard what I heard. I believed they didn’t want me, and I lashed out. Demanded to meet my birth mother until they agreed.”

I smooth my hand down her back. “What was she like?”

“Larger-than-life. So much fun. Nicki swept into my small-town world with fast car rides in her convertible and all the junk food I wanted. Dared me to jump off the cliff into Bear Lake. I was thirteen and she spent one week with me that summer, and I was hooked on her. Wanted to be her. Scoffed at my parents for their rules and thinking I was damaged. Then Nicki stole sunglasses and booze from a gas station and told me to stand watch inside while she left.”

Maggie fiddles with my jacket zipper, her voice getting smaller. “By the time I got outside, she was gone. She left me there like trash, off to chase another of her dreams. An easier life without a kid.”

I have no words. No jokes to lighten the mood. I pull Maggie up higher and kiss her forehead, her closed eyelids, her cheeks and jaw. Cover her with as much affection as I can, finishing with a soft kiss on her lips. “I’m so sorry.”

She sighs and presses another kiss to my lips. “As you can imagine, I changed after that. Refused to be like her. Worked my ass off to prove to my real parents who took me in that I was worth keeping. I made new friends, focused on school. Ms. Goody-Two-Shoes to the core, terrified I’d wake up one morning and find my parents had left me like Nicki, stranded with no one. I was determined not to be like my mother.”

So much about Maggie snaps into better focus: her facades in high school, always careful and poised, choosing boys back then and the limp-shaker recently who offered her easy predictability, even if mundane. The opposite of the guy I was back then, pulling pranks, landing in detention. A high school flunky causing trouble for a laugh. “That’s why I scared you.”

“You were everything I wanted, Lennon. Everything I tried to deny about myself. You were exciting and a little wild. You made life feel fun and unpredictable again, and fun unpredictability was a gateway for me.”

“But you didn’t go off the rails with me. We were wild and silly out here, but it didn’t affect your life.”

“Actually, it did.”

I freeze, everything in me going still. “What do you mean?”

A soft breeze cools the tip of my nose. Branches scritch and scratch in the stretching silence.

“I ditched a lot of schoolwork to hang out with you,” she finally says. “Failed a few tests and blew off curfew. My folks started getting nervous again. They had no clue what I was doing or who I was seeing, but I sensed how on edge they were.”

“I didn’t know.”

“I didn’t want you to know. I wanted you to think I was as free and fun as you.”

“The last thing I would’ve wanted you to be back then was like me, flunking classes, watching your friends leave for school. Enduring parental disappointment and disapproval is no fun.”

She shrugs, and my awareness of the negative part I played in her troubled youth grows. Maybe my father’s betrayal and WITSEC have a silver lining after all. Maybe the best thing I did for Maggie was leave. “Guess things went back to normal after I left town.”

“Lennon.” Her voice sharpens. “I fell apart after you left.”

I slowly shift to sitting, not liking the sound of that. “What do you mean fell apart?”

She sits up too, presses her hand to my thigh. “You were the center of my world back then. I knew I liked you, but I didn’t realize how much until you were gone. And it was like my mother all over again. Finding this person who shone brighter than the sun, who lit me up and I adored, then you left me without a word. Discarded me like I was worthless.”

A razor scrapes along my throat. The backs of my eyes burn. Delilah must have been right, assuming I was the guy who broke Maggie’s heart, but hearing it from Maggie—the larger extent of the damage I caused—hurts in new, painful ways.

“You’re the opposite of worthless. Leaving you gutted me. Like, fucking wrecked me. If it was up to me, I’d never have left.”

She cups my cheek, a sad smile tipping her lips. “I know that now, but I didn’t know that then. I ended up failing English and had to take a summer course. I withdrew from my family and friends, didn’t know how to explain what was wrong with me when no one even knew we were friends.”

“Fuck.” I rub at my eyes and shake my head. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

True, but I hate my father that much more. All the tragedy he caused. The pain.

She touches my hair, tunnels her fingers through the messy strands. “I eventually got my shit together, mostly because of Delilah.”