"Lily and I met our freshman year of college. We had been randomly selected to be roommates, and it was the luckiest moment of my life to be put with Lily. Anyway, our first day of college comes around and we met for the first time. I was already in the room just unpacking a few things when I heard someone knock on the door. Before I could even respond, she burst through the door, a huge smile on her face. She started to introduce herself, but she tripped over one of my boxes in the middle of the room. We both started cracking up, and I helped her stand up. 'Lets try that again,' she said. 'Hi, I'm Lily Cartin. You're Ash, right?'
"I nodded. We talked for a while as we unpacked, and I remember thinking that we were pretty much the same person. I mean, so alike, it was creepy. We liked the same music, the same movies, the same food, even the same clothes. It was uncanny, but it was the beginning of something amazing, and I think she knew it too.
"Lily was . . . she was so ambitious. She would do anything for a laugh and she wouldn't tolerate boredom. I remember one time, I was doing homework in the room, and she ran in, the goofiest smile on her lips. As she was dragging me out and down the stairs, she explained to me that she had rented a car and we were going on an impromptu road trip. When I asked her where, she said something I'll never forget. 'I don't know, we're just gonna keep driving and driving until we're happy with where we are.'
"I don't really know why I remember that. Maybe becuase it was just so . . . Lily. And maybe because I think I knew that she would never be happy, no matter where we were.
"Lily met this guy, Liam Payne, our sophomore year. He was the sweetest guy around, he really was. They started dating, and she was always happiest when he was around. Er, she always looked the happiest when he was around. The three of us . . . we have some pretty awesome memories. I didn't really mind being the third wheel because they never made me feel like a third wheel, you know? It was never Lily and Liam on a date plus Ash, it was Lily and Liam and Ash hanging out. It was . . . perfect.
"She had had a hard life. Her dad was a dead-beat, and her mother died in a car crash when she was six. Lily had lived with her aunt for a while, but her aunt couldn't deal with Lily because she reminded her too much of Rebecca, Lily's mom, so she handed her over to foster care. She had bounced around foster family's for a while, never managing to stay in one family for long. She was smart and worked hard in school, though, and that's how she earned a scholarship to our college.
"It took me a while to figure out that she wasn't truly happy, no matter how much she smiled and laughed. I started to notice how her smiles didn't reach her eyes and her laugh sometimes sounded forced and how she would sometimes just . . . zone out, as if she wasn't fully there. Most of the times when I asked her, she would just brush it off and change the subject. Finally, towards the middle of our junior year, she opened up, telling me and Liam about how unhappy she actually was.
"She said that it started her freshmen year of high school, when kids started to bully her and stuff. It was never physical, but it hurt her just the same. Half the time, she would purposefully try to get her foster parents to return her just so she could switch schools. She talked about how she felt guilty that she looked so much like her mom because it upsetted her aunt. And she talked about how she had tried to reach out to her father, but he had told her that he never wanted to talk to her and how she shouldn't even be alive and that he hated her. It was the first time I'd ever seen Lily cry. Liam and I supported her even more than we had before she told us everything, and I think that helped some what. I hope that helped some what.
"March 28th of our senior year. It was a Wednesday. My parents had come down to visit, and I was out to dinner with them. My phone had rung several times throughout the dinner, but my parents hated when I used my phone at the dinner table, so I hadn't answered. Anyway, once we had finished, I started driving home and checked the calls I had missed. All five of them were from Lily. Frowning, I began listening to the messages.
