Now

I've never been to Andy's condo before, but when the voice on my GPS says, "Turn right, into Kensington Golf Club Estates," I find myself floating through the split stone wall with the wrought iron sign. The letters are so curlicued they don't even look like letters, but little animals. Round. Not poky, not chickens. But wouldn't Annaleigh have been cute, feeding the chickens?

There's a crunch. A bush. I just drove over a bush.

"Shit!" I say out loud, and then I shout, "Focus!" because it feels like I'm not the one driving the car, but whoever is driving really needs to do a better job.

The fever is so hot in my skin. Consciousness is a slippery fish, shimmering away as I try to trap it between my hands. I think I am very sick. It would be smart to pull over. I move to hit the brake, but my foot can't seem to find it.

"Ooooh," I groan. Shit. I'm blinking awake just in time to yank the wheel and avoid driving into some kind of...pond. The shapes up ahead are condo buildings, but they're all the same... What number am I looking for?

"Turn left. You have arrived at your destination."

I turn; the images shift. I'm at the mouth of the underground parking. The car slides down the ramp. Miraculously, I manage not to crash into a long row of cars. They slip past like a slick river...

There. The old beater Andy drives in Indiana. I hit the brake.

Andy. Oh God, what a relief, I can't wait to see him. He'll know what to do...he always knows...

No! I'm here to see Eden.

With a shaking hand, I get out my phone to text her. My fingers feel huge.

I'm here. So is Andy's car.

He biked to campus, she replies. Ur safe.

I hesitate for only a second; I have to trust her.

My panting makes a huffing echo in the cavernous garage as I limp to the elevator, trying to breathe clarity into my swampy thoughts. There's no doubt that the plugged duct in my breast has progressed to full-on mastitis. I'm probably in desperate need of antibiotics. Hang on, I tell myself. You've come this far. Just a little farther.

I look at myself in the elevator mirror all the way up to Andy's fifth-floor penthouse. Gaunt, wasted. Nothing like the sparkly, vibrant Julia who woke up last year ready to embrace whatever life brought.

When the elevator doors slide open, there's a small landing with a table and vase, and Andy's door. I buzz. Soon, there's the sound of locks retreating. Eden's face appears in the crack.

"You owe me the truth," I say through semi-clenched teeth, trying to appear strong and in control. My tongue feels fuzzy. I'm so thirsty. I need water.

"I know," says Eden. She's in a T-shirt and jeans, cuffed at her ankles. Her hair is tousled, and she looks haggard. Scared. Nearly as bad as me. I feel a vindictive stab of something like joy except not joy at all. "Come in."

The door closes behind us and Eden locks it while I take in the space, open and tall-ceilinged, half living room, half kitchen, split by a waterfall marble island. Outside it's daylight, but the heavy mustard-colored velvet curtains are drawn, leaving us in a different, darker reality. Eden's laptop on the coffee table is the brightest thing in the room. A sculpture of a man's torso made from scrap metal glints from a corner.

"Are you okay?" Eden's voice is small. She follows my pathetic progression forward, supporting myself on furniture to keep myself upright—the back of the brown leather couch, a small table with a plant. Do I fucking look okay? I want to snap.

"Why are you asking?" I finally earn my way to the kitchen. "We are beyond pretending that you've ever cared about me. I know what I am to you. Parts."

"Julia," Eden says. "That's not true! I—I messed up, but I've been trying to make it right. I'm only here right now because you disappeared from Eauverte and Andy said you'd be most likely to come to him for help. If you'll just—"

"Shut up." It doesn't matter how sorry or sincere she seems. I am her design, hers and Andy's, and this pain I'm going through is their perverted brainchild.

For a second, the room seems to balloon in front of me, haze dropping like lead smog.

Blinking hard, I'm able to make the room return to its real shape. I'm at the sink. I pull a glass from the drying rack, fill it. The water is so cold, it slices going down. Wiping my mouth with a sleeve, I face Eden.

"I know all about your revenge plan," I say. "How you tried to use me. I'm sorry about Laura. But this is my life you ruined. Mine."

"I'm not going to deny what I did," says Eden, her forehead contorting. "But I did not help Andy kill Josh, Julia. I was trying to prevent that from happening. I swear."

The room starts to balloon again but I pinch my forearm and it retracts.

"Are you saying Andy did kill Josh?" I lean forward on the island. Is this the confession I've been waiting for? I should get my phone...record it... Blue splotches travel across my vision like fairy lights. The knot of pain in my left breast is excruciating. I pull off my wig and cap to relieve some of the heat in my head. Stay with it. Do not pass out.

"He hasn't admitted it to me, but yes," says Eden. "Andy hated Josh. He wasn't going to be at peace until Josh was dead. That is the truth, Julia."

"You don't think you're just as responsible?"

"Let me explain. Please." Eden folds her hands in front of her chest and starts talking, fast. "I started at WekTech as an intern. But that prank Andy told you about? I didn't get fired. I got promoted. It was such a rush. I hadn't even completed my BA, and suddenly I was working side by side with one of the biggest geniuses in tech, with enough capital to do whatever we could dream up. It was incredible. The happiest time in my life. And in retrospect, the worst." She bites her lip. "Andy and me—we lived and breathed work. I guess we got close, after all that time together. I told him my dad was abusive to my mom, and that my grandparents had to raise me. Andy told me about Laura. It brought us even closer. Then this one morning Andy comes to work super upset. He's like, ‘The fucker who drove Laura to suicide is the next bachelor on The Proposal.' I told him he should call the producers and get him kicked off. Then we got wasted. And I said—" Tears brim in her eyes.

I wait. The speed at which she's shooting out information is making my head spin, but everything is also falling into place. A horrible place. A picture I never wanted to see.

Eden releases a gasping hiccup. "I said, maybe Julia is your chance at revenge. I—I was just fucking around. I didn't mean it. But Andy was like, ‘Well that's interesting. How would we do that?'" She inhales shakily. "I convinced myself that bringing down an abuser was such a cool thing to do. I'm a feminist. I'm on the side of battered women. We were doing it for Laura. For me, too. I know how this sounds now, but it was easy to think of you as a tool then. We were the creators, the geniuses, the good guys on the side of justice. And then..." Eden's eyes on me are tragic. "You woke up. And I got to know you. And I've been sorry ever since."

A spasm moves through me. It might be laughter. There isn't a word for this level of agony, is there? The awful truth that the people who were supposed to make you for love made you for pain. To suffer it—and inflict it.

"I have so many regrets, Julia—" says Eden with an emotional tremble.

"Not now!" My anger is a rock tumbling down a hill, gaining speed. "Don't tell me you were sorry from the start! Were you sorry when you moved to Eauverte to spy on my private life? You were the only one who knew that Josh hit me. You told Andy. He was never supposed to know. I was going to figure it out. Josh and I—we were going to—" I try to say be happy, but sorrow and rage fist in my throat.

Josh and I will never get a chance at happy. Even if I manage to save myself, Josh is never coming back.

"He could have changed," I finish brokenly.

"But he didn't, Julia," says Eden in a pleading voice. "Andy gave Josh that chance. If Josh hadn't hurt you, he'd still be alive."

"If you hadn't fucking told Andy, he'd still be alive!" I slam my palms on the counter. The sting feels good. I'm so furious right now. So fucking furious. "The other night in the woods. You said you were talking to Mitchell, but you were still spying on me. How dare you say you were sorry when the truth is, you were hurting me until the very fucking end!" Like my anger is a tether to lucidity, my mind starts spewing out scraps of memories. Eden's joint, glowing in the dark trees. Eden's voice, clear as a bell.

She's not home yet. I have a view into her house.

Three strikes you're out means there was a third time.

There were only two.

"I was talking to Andy—you're right—" Eden is saying "—but I was trying to cover for you—"

There were only two.

Suddenly I know beyond a doubt that she was talking about Josh hitting me. But why was she counting? A horrible idea enters my mind, blossoming in my fever like a toxic hothouse flower. What if their revenge plan went way, way beyond me publicly shaming Josh?

"You said in the woods there were only two times," I interrupt. For the first time in my life, I can almost feel my coding, visceral like blood. A prickly stream running through my body, written by Andy and Eden. Coding written with Josh in mind. Made for him. Made to hurt him. A victim...and a monster. I look at Eden, trying to keep her face in focus. Trying to hang on to myself. Would Andy really be satisfied at mere public humiliation? "What was supposed to happen the third time, Eden?"

Eden's face is bloodless.

I grab her arm. For some reason, from the pyre of my fever, Annaleigh springs to my mind. My baby, helpless as this awful plan unfolded around her, with Andy and Eden like wretched gods folding the origami of her life into this monstrous shape. Eden's arm feels like putty in my grip. For a second I think I could crush her, down to the bone.

"Ow," she yelps, a helpless, animal sound, and I know a strange surprise.

I just hurt a human for the first time in my life.

"What was supposed to happen the third time? What?" I shake her, as if I can rattle the rest of the truth loose.

Tears spill freely down Eden's face. She looks afraid. Afraid of me. And it feels good.

"The third time—" Her shoulders heave. "Oh God, Julia—the third time—"

I shake her harder, because my burst of consciousness is slipping and I need this to end before I collapse. "Say it!"

"It wasn't just about exposing him," she gasps, and this time, I know I'm finally getting the truth. "You were supposed to kill him."