“I know you’re not like old enough or whatever, but technically none of us are legal and they can make an ID that says anything for us.” If she really wanted to get technical, she would never be legal. Perpetually trapped at seventeen. And while she no longer felt depressed by that fact, Caroline still wasn’t sure how that all worked. Would she need to start again every ten years or so? There was only so long people would continue to believe she could look the same as she did at seventeen. But she wasn’t going to focus on that train of thought at the moment. Matt had agreed about Elena and so she studied him carefully, trying to gauge again what he might know.
“I don’t know how to help her. Not here.” Not home either really. Especially not when the last thing she’d done with her friend before appearing in Lawrence had been to get into a fight in the middle of the pageant. “She’s been through so much, Matt. She thinks so much of it is her own fault.”
Jenna. Jeremy. Tyler. Her own death and rebirth. How much guilt could one person take on before they finally snapped? Or in Elena’s case, snapped again.
“But its not. It’s not her fault people have been trying to use her and not cared who of us was taken out in the crossfire.” And why did one of those people have to confuse Caroline’s emotions as much as they did? “How do we take that guilt away? Is it even possible?”