He eyed me warily. “What is there to talk about? If you're still upset about this morning”—he hesitated—“you were right. I should have handled that better. You just… the changes took me by surprise.”
I sighed. Some things between us might have grown and shifted, but this was the same — I was still the more pragmatic one.
I took a breath and forced myself to take on a matter-of-fact tone. “You need to accept that this might be the end. That this”—I waved down at my solid-for-the-moment form—“is a temporary stay of the inevitable.”
“No,” he said without even looking at me, like that was all there was to it. He'd declared it and so it would be. Right.
I shook my head, exasperated. “You know what the Order said: Lily and I are dependent upon each other. I wasn't even supposed to have survived without Lily for this long.”
He lifted a shoulder in a stiff shrug. “And you'll be fine as soon as we find her again and—”
“If we can find her. If I have the strength to kick Erin out. If I can keep her out,” I said wearily. “Have you thought about that? What's to stop her from taking Lily back, assuming I can even boot her in the first place? How many times do you think I can go through that and survive?”
He didn't respond.
“And more important, what gives me the right? More than Erin, I mean.” The first time, I had done it to save Lily. But this wouldn't be about that. It would be about saving my skin, metaphorically, and I wasn't sure I could do that. It didn't feel right.
Will glanced over at me with a reproving frown. “You were sent back here to help me. Maybe Lily, too.”
Crap. It was, I supposed, time to come clean. I leaned my head back against the seat. “About that…” I hesitated. “You know, it's not exactly like there was a big booming voice in the sky giving me directions or anything.”
His frown deepened. “Uh-huh.”
I shifted uncomfortably. I shouldn't have waited this long to tell him. But when it happened, when I first came back, he was still mostly that guy who was kind of annoying and weird, but cute. And then, somewhere along the way, things had changed, and he became somebody I needed in my life for more than practical reasons, and telling the truth sort of became impossible. “I don't really remember anything,” I said quickly. “I remember feeling safe and warm and at peace, but… that's pretty much it.”
“Until you got sent back,” he said.
I grimaced.
“Right?” he pressed.
“I woke up in your room that first morning and saw your graduation gown hanging on your closet door and kind of freaked,” I admitted. It hadn't taken a lot to figure out that time — a lot of time — had passed. I'd actually come back on the morning after Will's birthday — I'd found the leftover cake and a small pile of unwrapped presents on the kitchen table. And I knew Will's birthday was at the end of May. Then there were the trees outside, much greener than I remembered, and the air, much warmer and closer to summer.
“I needed some time to think,” I said. “So I took off for a few days, trying to get things clear in my head.” At Misty's, I learned exactly how long I'd been gone: almost a whole month! That was also where I'd discovered Leanne's plot to humiliate Ben at graduation. “At the time, all I could think about was getting back to the light, and I only knew of one way to do that.” Which was to do exactly what I'd done to get there in the first place — help Will Killian.
“So… I told you I'd been sent back to help you,” I said, wincing in anticipation of his response. Oh, this was so not going to be good.
“You lied,” he said tightly, his knuckles turning white as he gripped the steering wheel.
“I… made a logical leap based on presumed facts,” I argued, even though I could hear exactly how weak that sounded. “You needed help, and suddenly I was back. It seemed logical that the two things were related.”
He pulled abruptly off the road and into an abandoned gas station and jammed the gear shift into park before turning to face me, his cheeks flushed. “You lied! Worse, you told me what you thought I would believe.”
“Which doesn't mean it couldn't still be the truth,” I said, resisting the urge to shrink back into my seat at the sound of the hurt and pain in his voice. He would not make me feel bad about a choice I'd made before I really knew him.
“Oh, my God, Alona.” He scrubbed his face with his hands.
“Well, what did you want me to do?” I demanded. “Say, 'I don't remember anything'? You would have thought I was hiding something.”
He shook his head. “Don't make this about me. It's all about you and getting rejected. You can't stand the idea that someone, somewhere, turned you down.”
Ouch. That stung.
I sat up straight. “Has the flip side of this occurred to you yet?” I asked, starting to get angry. “That I stuck with you and helped you even though it wasn't a mandate from God, or the light, or whatever?”
He was silent.
“No, I didn't think so,” I snapped, flopping back in my seat.
“You did it because it benefited you.” He gave me a dark look.
“And you, too,” I pointed out quickly. “But whatever. That's the past. I'm trying to do the right thing here and now.” I flipped my hair behind my shoulders, and for a moment, I was surprised when it actually stayed back. I guess I'd gotten more used to being Ally than I'd realized. “I'm telling the truth today when I didn't have to.” That was a big deal. To me, at least. Why didn't he get that?
He snorted. “Do you want a parade?”
His words landed as a heavier-than-expected blow, and I flinched. It wasn't like him to be quite this sarcastic. And I was trying to change, couldn't he see that? I forced myself to keep going, not to snap at him. “My point,” I said, emphasizing that I had one, “is I don't have the right to be 'Ally' any more than Erin has to be…”—I frowned—“well, whatever she's calling herself.”
I imagined Mrs. Turner trying to adjust to another name for her daughter and felt a surprising pang. She'd made my life as Ally more of a pain than it had to be, but only because she actually cared. Now she'd have to deal with Erin's version of Lily. And that wasn't fair at all to her. It was weird. If Mrs. Turner had been like my mom — out of it and only concerned about herself — then my pretending to be Ally would have been easier, and I probably wouldn't have cared half as much. But maybe some things are better when they're more difficult, I don't know.
“Even if we find Erin and get her out, I wasn't… sent here to do anything. To be Ally.” It killed me to say that out loud. To admit that I didn't know why I was back, that maybe there wasn't even a reason. But I couldn't let Will continue operating under that lie.
“The point is,” he said, mocking me, but with real anger threaded through his tone, “is that Erin doesn't give a crap what people call her as long as she's doing whatever it means to be alive. Her definition of it, anyway.”
I shuddered, imagining what that might be. It was like rental-car syndrome, only worse. That limo for prom? No one cared what happened on the inside, because it wasn't like it was our car.
“So forget about the reason you were sent back, or all the reasons you weren't—”
I flinched at the venom in that last word.
“—and just help me find Erin and Lily,” he said. “Then we'll worry about what to do next, and who has the right to do what.”
And how to deal with you… He didn't say it, but I could hear it nonetheless. Great. I'd be looking forward to that. Maybe I could disappear first.
“All right,” I said finally. I could help — or try, at least. If only to spare the Turners another call to the hospital… or jail.