That night, Manny stood in front of Lilly's bedroom door. He had a blanket wrapped around himself which shifted awkwardly as he knocked on the door.
It only took a couple of seconds for Lilly to open the door.
"Manny! What's up?"
"Avery said I should talk to you. Can I come in?"
"Yeah, sure!" She opened the door wider, leading him into her room.
The walls were a soft lavender, covered with posters of fairies and princesses and all things sickly sweet. Photos of her and Avery were also scattered around the room. The bed was piled high with fluffy blankets, with a tattered teddy bear sitting next to the pillow. Lilly sat down right next to the bear and pulled it into her lap.
"You can sit here," she patted next to her on the bed. Manny sat and pulled his legs to his chest, wrapping the blanket around himself again so that he resembled a tent with a head atop it.
"Avery told me I'm going to therapy and she said to ask you about what it was like." He looked at Lilly.
"Therapy is fine. I mean, it's not the best thing ever, but Dr. Ashiq is really nice! She always has juice or hot chocolate to drink while we talk about things."
"But I don't want to talk!" Manny said. "I just want to leave it in the past and forget that it happened. It shouldn't matter anymore." Manny rested his forehead on his knees.
"It doesn't work like that though," Lilly said. "Refusing to talk about it just makes it worse. You keep everything bottled up until you feel even worse. It sucks, trust me it does, but talking about it is the better option."
"…What do you talk about?" Manny asked.
Lilly stared at her bear for a moment. "A lot of things. Sometimes it's just about what happened at school that day, sometimes it's about homework or what the latest gossip is. Sometimes it's about Avery, and sometimes it's about," Lilly took a deep breath. "The cult." She fiddled with the bear's ear a bit. "It…"
"You don't have to tell me if you don't want to." Manny was quick to say.
"No, no. I want to. Dr. Ashiq says that it's good to verbalize your feelings and express them."
Manny stared at her blankly. "You lost me." Lilly giggled for a moment.
"She's helped me figure out exactly what they taught me, what I thought was normal, and how it wasn't actually normal. And also just the little things about it. Like my parents." Manny took a moment to process that.
"You have parents?"
"Biological ones, yeah. I didn't just spawn into existence one day. Shrignold had a whole thing about how your 'Special One' was more important than anyone to you, and nothing should take away from them, so no one raised their own kids. We all just bounced around the village."
"You mean you don't know who they were at all?"
"Well, I know now. At the hospital, they did a bunch of tests and stuff and figured out who was related to who and asked if the parents wanted custody of their kids." Lilly paused for a moment. "My parents didn't. But it's fine, I never really liked them anyways. They were so stuck up."
"I'm sor—"
"Don't apologize." Lilly cut Manny off almost immediately. "I didn't want anything to do with anyone from the cult anyways. I want to be as far away from all the adults there as possible." Lilly looked at one of the photos on the wall, one of her and Avery at the park. "Besides, I ended up with Avery anyways, and she's the best." Lilly was smiling now. "Plus it means we get to be cousins!"
"Cousins?"
"Yeah! If Avery is taking care of me, and Harry is taking care of you, then we're cousins!" She furrowed her brow. "That's how family trees work, right?"
"Pretty sure, but Avery is taking care of me right now. That would make us siblings."
"You act like Harry and Robin aren't going to adopt you the second that they can. Avery is basically just babysitting you for them."
Manny looked at the photo of Avery and Lilly. "…You sure?" It made his heart soar to imagine that, the three of them living together as a family. But after everything that happened, all because they got involved with him, would they still want that? Besides, they had only asked if he wanted to live with them, not if they could adopt him.
"Duh! They literally act like your dads. I've seen it." She placed a hand on Manny's shoulder. "You need to stop worrying about it. Plus, Mom's told me that Harry—" Manny was smirking, causing Lilly to pause. "What, what's with that face?"
Manny laughed. "You called Avery 'mom'." Lilly's face flushed.
"Shut up! No, I didn't!"
"You totally did!"
"Did not!"
"Did too!" Manny hopped off the bed and ran to the other side of the room.
"Did not!" Lilly yelled before burying her face in her pillow.
"You definitely did!"
Lilly pulled her face away from the pillow to throw a retort, but the door opened before they could do that.
"Kids," Avery said. "I love you, but it's almost midnight. You need to sleep."
"Why are you up?" Manny asked.
"I was finishing up some paperwork. Come on Manny, you two can talk more in the morning."
Manny headed for the door, but turned around at the last moment and mouthed "mom" at Lilly. Her face flushed again and she threw her pillow at his face.
"Lilly!" Avery exclaimed.
"He started it!"
Avery rubbed her eyes. "It's far too late for this. We'll talk about this in the morning. And Lilly, don't forget that tomorrow is Friday!"
"'Kay! Goodnight." Lilly called after the pair as Avery closed her bedroom door.
Back in his room, Manny curled up on his bed, engulfed in blankets. Turning what Lilly said over in his mind, Manny fell asleep to thoughts of family dinners with Lilly, Avery, and Harry and Robin.