"Well," Rachel said, "A few days ago, I told Lizzy my 5-year-old sister would be a better mid player than her. I think I’ve said a bunch of awful stuff over the past week."

According to the signs we had just passed, we were already halfway to Shamesburry. A vague reflection of Rachel’s face was visible on the windshield, occasionally interrupted by the headlights of passing cars.

"Nothing a simple sorry can’t solve, right?" I said, bopping along with the jazz music playing in the car.

"Clearly," Rachel sounded upbeat and relaxed. "I still think it’s crazy that you just showed up like that." She raised her eyebrows. "Come to think of it, how did you even know I would be coming back from violin lessons at that time?"

I turned to her directly, a thousand thoughts suddenly rushing through my brain. Arthur had told me. Or rather, Arthur had told Riley, who had been pretending to be me over the last few days. So, in a way, it was Riley. I didn’t want to reopen old wounds, especially since there might still be some emotional baggage from her past with Arthur.

I quickly said. "Riley told me."

"Hmmm…I didn’t think I ever told her that I…"

Shit, I was really banking on that one. Well, I guess I might as well come clean on this one as well.

"Okay." I bit my lip. "She knew because she has been talking to Arthur."

"Huh?! Why-"

"-But! Arthur doesn’t know he has been talking to Riley. He thinks he has been talking to me, which he was, until 3 days ago."

Rachel sneaked a quick peek at me before focusing on the road again. "This is making less and less sense, Emmy."

"Okay, wait! Let me explain again, from the start this time. It started a few days after the boot camp when he messaged me…"

Over the next few minutes, I recounted pretty much every message Arthur had sent me, everything I had told him, and why. I felt ashamed admitting I almost ditched the team, but I guess Rachel and I had that in common. That must have been why she didn’t call me out on it either.

Rachel had been listening intently, only asking minor clarifying questions here and there. Eventually, I told her about Riley’s response, about the deal we made, where Riley took over the whole conversation to protect me. This is where Rachel couldn’t help but interject in my story.

"You two are ridiculous," she laughed out loud. "Why would you just let her do that?"

I shrugged. "She’s always been looking out for me, and in all honesty, I didn’t care for Arthur that much. He was just in the right place at the right time."

"That’s a crazy amount of trust you’ve got there." Rachel’s speech slowed down. "You know, I said that I was just angry because we lost against Arthur’s team last week. But that wasn’t completely true."

"Huh?"

"This is going to sound silly, but…Seeing the connection between you and Riley that weekend made me kind of jealous. The way you two could just exchange a glance and know exactly what the other person felt? It felt like something special, something I have never experienced with anybody. It felt like something I wanted as well."

"I’m sorry."

"Hey!" Rachel raised her voice. "We agreed you wouldn’t say that anymore."

I was about to apologize for saying sorry but managed to catch myself just in time. It’s weird, when I was with Riley, I always had the tendency to push back, to call her out on her stuff. But with anybody else, I often felt like I needed to retreat into my shell. When she wasn’t there, I felt helpless.

I sighed. "Sometimes, I feel like I rely on that connection a little too much. If you hadn’t brushed her off yesterday when she told you to come back to the team, I doubt I would have told you the truth today."

"Huh?" Rachel snuck a quick peek at me before focusing on the road again. "She has never talked about any Dota-related stuff with me. Definitely not yesterday."

Now I was confused. Riley said that she had talked to Rachel about her wanting to ditch the team. According to her, Rachel had said multiple times that she didn’t want to talk about it and that Riley shouldn’t get involved. But then, the cogs in my brain finally clicked together.

I couldn’t believe it. She did it again. She had lied to me. But this time, I wasn’t going to let her get away with some bullshit excuse. She had lied to me purely for her self-interest. Inside, I was fuming, I wanted to hit something. But I couldn’t, I shouldn’t. She had lied to me because she was just as obsessed with Rachel as she had been with Bree. She lied to me because somebody else was more important than our friendship. She had lied to me because of Rachel.

But this wasn’t Rachel’s fault, this wasn’t even Rachel’s fight. Count to ten, calm down. I could deal with Riley later; I shouldn’t make her pay for Riley’s lies. Another topic, quickly.

"That’s weird, I must have misremembered." I faked a laugh. "You know what’s also weird? Magnets! How do they work?"

***

While driving into the familiar cul-de-sac, I felt the metaphorical bricks resting on my shoulders getting heavier and heavier. The last thirty minutes had been an awkward mix of comfort and dread. Comfort through knowing that there were no more secrets between me and Rachel, that the air was cleared, and we could move forward again. But there was also dread, the dread of needing to face something terrible.

The rhythmic jazz sounds of the car’s radio came to a stop. Rachel looked at me with hopeful eyes. "Thanks for being a great friend, Emmy."

She pulled in for a sideways hug that I instinctively accepted. After the short hug, I climbed out of the car. My hand still resting on the door, I looked inside at Rachel. "Thanks for the ride."

She smiled. "It’s the least I could do."

I nodded and closed the door. The car drove away, and right in front of me stood the only house I’ve ever lived in. The same house I had snuck into the last time Rachel dropped me off when I ran away from my problems.

I turned around, another, almost identical house now in front of me. Without a second thought, I walked forward. I knew what I was looking for; I was looking for her to understand what she did, I was looking for her to say the magic words.

Some small lights on the ground floor were still on, indicating that she probably wasn’t asleep yet. Walking up the driveway, it felt like my steps were getting heavier and heavier. I got to the yard and swung open the backdoor, the sounds of gunshots loudly playing from an unseen device inside.

The sounds ceased, silence taking its place. Riley was sitting in one of the lawn chairs, the light of her phone screen illuminating her tall body. She looked already dressed for bed. When I closed the door behind me, Riley’s face turned towards me.

"Hey, bud," she looked worried, as if she were expecting bad news from a doctor. "How did it go?"

I walked into the kitchen, delaying the confrontation by grabbing a glass of water. I heard Riley’s chair creak as she got up. With an emotionless expression, I responded, "Pretty good."

Riley looked confused, her head tilted. She took slow steps. “What do you mean? What did she say?”

“She said a bunch of stuff, some really good stuff.”

“Great!” She threw up her hands. “So we are all good for the weekend.”

"Well," I paused, allowing silence to fill the room again, only interrupted by the sound of streaming water as I opened the faucet, and immediately closed it again when my glass was still half-empty. “Me and Rachel are good.”

A kitchen island was currently the only thing separating me and Riley. Confusion had once again taken hold of her face. “But the rest of the team?”

“I’m sure they're good as well.”

“Then why are you acting so weird?”

I took a swig of water, imagining it to be liquid courage. “You promised me something, in fact, you promised me several things.”

With a confident smirk, she said, “I promise stuff all the time.”

I was annoyed; she clearly didn’t understand what was going on. It infuriated me. Did she even have any self-reflection? Unable to hide my frustration, I raised my voice. “Promises that you never keep! You make it all seem so damn easy and carefree because… you simply don’t care.”

Riley took a step back, holding her hands to her body like she was trying to protect herself from a shockwave. “Wow! Calm down, buddy.”

“No, I’m not calming down. I’m done listening to you. It’s time you listened to me for a change. You said you talked to Rachel, but that was nothing but a bold-faced lie. After all the shit we went through over the last few weeks, you are still incapable of telling me the truth. You said you wanted to protect me, that you cared about me. But now I know, that too, was a lie. Because the only person Riley cares about is Riley.”

Riley’s face turned to stone; her lips were sealed when she stepped back up to the kitchen counter. Her eyes went wide, and she spoke. “So now I am the self-centered one? Me? The one person that stood by your side through this whole gender journey of yours. For weeks, I have done everything in my power to support you, to help you get what you need, to be happy. But when there is one thing, when there is one person, who could make me happy? I am supposed to risk that for some stupid Dota tournament?”

“Yes! You are! You didn’t do it for me, you did it for yourself. I was your little project, something to keep that crazy mind of yours busy. But as soon as you needed to do anything hard, you backed out. You pretend to be this tough bitch that doesn’t take no shit from nobody, but when it comes down to it, you’re a coward who can’t even stand up for their only friend.”

Tears started forming in Riley’s eyes, but the anger in her voice wasn’t subsiding. “I did everything I could to help. I took you to the mall, I bought you clothes, I covered for you with your mom. FUCK! I even talked to my parents about letting you stay with us in case your mom wouldn’t accept you. And this is what I get back?”

for the third time tonight, I felt a waterfall forming behind my own eyes. She had helped me a lot. But Rachel’s words were still echoing in my head; I should stop saying sorry for everything. “I never asked for any of those things. I only asked for you to be honest with me, I only asked for you not to get obsessed with somebody again.”

“Well, I’m sorry,” Riley straightened her posture, wiped away her tears, and looked me in the eyes.

For a second, I had hope. I just needed her to admit to a single mistake.

“I’m sorry, that you are so flipping insecure that you can’t handle me caring about anybody except just you.”

Rage, pure rage, was coursing through my body. I clenched my fist. A loud snap. The glass in my hand shattered, and all I could feel was pain.

“Arghhh!” I yelled loudly as I saw blood appear on my hand. I didn’t want to look at it, or at her, I didn’t want to be here. I turned around, and with giant steps, I left the house. She was yelling something as I left, but I didn’t respond. I didn’t even want to hear it.

A throbbing pain was all I could feel. Pain in my hand and pain in my brain.

I pushed open the door to my own home, almost leaving traces of blood on the handle. Still cursing under my breath, I walked into the kitchen, grabbed the first aid kit, meaning to start cleaning my wounded hand.

It was hard to see without the light on. But before I could turn around to find the switch, a flash illuminated the room. Two faces were now visible in the window’s reflection: my mother’s sleepy visage, and my own shocked expression.

Gwenington

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