A/N: What's the best thing to do when you already have stories you should be finishing? Start another one, of course! Anyway, the title's from the Perishers song by the same name. Hope you enjoy it as it's a bit of a doozy. Let me know what you think! :)
Disclaimer: I don't own Veronica Mars. If I did, Jason Dohring would never be allowed to wear a shirt. Ever.
-x-
It's been ten years since my best friend Lilly Kane died.
To be perfectly honest, I don't always believe it – it's strange to think about how much time has passed since then, about how much she's missed. Parties, graduations, weddings – so many things she wasn't, and will never be, a part of. But it's even stranger to think about what would have happened if she had been here for all of that. I can't stop myself from imagining what she'd look like, or from wondering whether she'd be married by now – or maybe halfway across Europe doing things that would severely counteract her mother's Botox injections.
I know it'll drive me crazy if I play too many games of What if? but sometimes, especially on days like today, I can't help myself. It's just too tempting. What would everything be like if I had been with her on that day? If she and Logan hadn't broken up? If she had never slept with Aaron in the first place?
There are so many variables that played into her death – change one tiny thing and the whole picture shifts into something entirely unrecognizable. It's more than a little mind-blowing to think about. But no matter how I try to spin it, my remembering boils down to one truth: Lilly is gone, and there is nothing that will ever change that. The repercussions of her death, however, still linger.
It's been ten years since my parents' marriage fell apart. Ten years since my mother left town. Ten years since Celeste and Jake Kane lost their only daughter and Duncan lost his sister; since Logan lost his girlfriend.
Ten years, and it's still not over for everyone who survived.
Lilly's death hovers over us, leaving us haunted by the ghost of a girl who was rebellious and passionate – everything I desperately wanted to be at sixteen. Sometimes, I think it was just like Lilly to do something like that: to make a dramatic exit and leave us to pick up the mess. Not that I blame her - not really, at least. It was a stupid thing to do, sure, but high schoolers shouldn't have to worry about sex tapes and ash trays used as murder weapons.
But while we're busy still recovering, the nightmare is happening all over again. Only this time, it's not my family or the Kanes who have to live through the hell of losing someone like Lilly.
No, this time, that honor belongs to the Albrights, another Neptune family. It was a shock, of course, to learn that such a small town could be rocked by another murder of a just-turned-seventeen year old heiress. No one had ever imagined that a tragedy like that would happen again.
You really think we'd know better by know, wouldn't you?
-x-
A/N2: The next chapter should be up shortly (sometime tomorrow, I hope). Just think of this as an episode voiceover to lay the foundation of the story (which won't all be in first person and will hopefully be more interesting than the prologue)!