"I remember being a teenager, I remember the desire to stir up trouble and be reckless. But to ruin an entire group of young people's lives to... what? Play a prank? Open our eyes? That's unforgivable."
-Todd Blume

ESTHER

It's funny how you realize how true some of the phrases you hear all the time are once something happens to you. The phrase "hindsight is 20/20" seems to both echo my mom's—well, Eleanor's—mantra that knowledge is power, and Milo's go to whenever he's feeling mischievous after winning an argument: I told you so.

Looking back on my childhood with Kay, I see the signs that she was Gunther's daughter, but I only now piece them together in any sort of connective way. From what I've learned about Gunther, he was narcissistic, cruel, torturous, and selectively tender. There have certainly been times when Kay has been narcissistic, cruel, torturous, yet selectively tender toward me.

Kay relates everything back to herself, whether I'm divulging secrets or telling a story, somehow it always gets back to her. When I broke my leg after falling from the tree house in our front yard, the conversations between Kay and I weren't about how I was feeling or whether I was okay. They were about when I would be back on my feet so that she could have someone to play with or about how I was holding her back from enjoying her weekends. That memory and the guilt I associated with it comes back with vicious clarity now. I should have seen it from the start.

Now, because of Kay's security breach, all of our technologies have been disabled, sending us back to a time before the blast, probably similar to what it was like when Declan was kid. The temporary blackout sends ripples of desperation through me as my mind lists all the ways I can get a hold of Milo in this situation. And just then, I hear the faint ring of the bell from the tree house. Milo placed it there for me after I was grounded for staying out past curfew with him. I wasn't allowed to go out and meet him, but since my bedroom window faces the tree house, I was able to peer out and see him smiling at me from the branches. Ever since, it's been our thing, and in thinking about how that bell was the first thought I had when I was asked to take some time to be alone and process all that's happened today, I realize how true another famous phrase by Emily Brontë is: "Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same."

I'm not grounded. I'm processing. So I slip out of my room, past Mom or Eleanor or whatever I'm supposed to call her now, and outside to "gather my thoughts while in nature." My family doesn't question it as long as I promise to stay on the property, which I do.

As I climb up the ladder to the tree house, my eyes begin to water. If ever I questioned whether or not I loved Milo, this feeling of coming home and of being overwhelmed by the prospect of simply holding him and being comforted by him sets me straight.

The bell rings again, just above me. "I'm coming Milo," I whisper so my family can't hear. I doubt they'd approve of me processing my feelings with Milo, which, based on what I've learned about their pasts, would be pretty hypocritical of them. Beatrice and Todd, Mom and Joe, Isla and Daniel, Celia and Julian... they have all grown through their love and their relationships. Why don't they trust that I will too? It's not that I'm too young, either, because I could go on and on about how each and every one of them were too young to get serious with someone at their ages too. Compared to my family, I'm a cautious prude.

"Not Milo," I hear a familiar voice say once I take hold of that last rung of the ladder. Kay has now not only interrupted my identity, but also my special place with Milo. I've come too far now, though, and no matter how angry I am with Kay right now, I still love her deep down. I feel sick admitting that, even to myself, but it's true. She's been a bad friend in the past, but then she's also been an amazing friend too.

I pull myself up to sit on the edge of the tree house, my legs dangling by the ladder in case I need to make a quick escape. I learned my lesson about jumping down without a safety net. "What are you doing here, Kayleigh?" I make sure to use her full name so she knows I'm mad. "Everyone is looking for you."

She looks off to the side as if I've just said something idiotic. "Thus the hiding."

"I'm leaving."

"Wait, stop. I need to clear things up with you."

I groan. "If this is going to be a speech about, like, never meaning to hurt me or never meaning for any of this to happen, I don't want to hear it. You made a conscious and planned choice to completely dismantle everything our generation of Perfects is built on."

"Right, but—"

"But nothing. If you didn't think about how that would affect me, then you're not a good enough friend for me to forgive you."

Kay bites her lip. She doesn't cry, but she bites her lip as if she is holding back tears. Now I wonder if this is part of some manipulative gene she carries from Gunther. "You're right," she says. "I didn't think it through and that says a lot about the crappy person I really am."

I roll my eyes. I'm not falling for it.

"I'm serious," she says. "I am Gunther Quail's daughter, like...." She bites her lip. "That's really messing with me."

"You could have gone on living your normal, carefree life without finding that out. We all could have."

"I'm sorry, Es. But you're not even thinking about how this might be affecting me too. You're Isla freaking Blume's daughter, how lucky are you? But I'm from the guy we're all trying to forget."

I lose my patience with this whole conversation. "It's not about winning the jackpot of parents. I already had parents, parents who loved me, and now it's like all of that was a lie. This extends beyond you, and that's the part you never seem to get. It's not about you all the time. You ruined a lot of families tonight, and a lot of people's ideas of what their identities were."

"But there was something else I wanted people to know. Something nobody got to because they cut off my presentation."

"Oh, stop, Kay. Pretending you were trying to be heroic is pathetic, honestly. You did this for you and to show off your skills, admit it."

"I didn't," she insists.

I start to climb down the ladder with a huff. "You know what? I don't need to listen to this. We're done Kay."

"Esther, you're my only friend in the world," she calls after me.

"You should have thought about that before you shattered it," I say before reaching the ground.

That's one way of processing it, I think. Another way is to sneak off your property to talk it all out with your boyfriend. I choose to try that option next.