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Audrey Jensen first learns about soulmates when she’s four years old.
Her parents are traditional, more religious than a lot of the parents in Lakewood. Her dad preaches at the local Baptist church, and there they believe that soulmate tattoos are given by God. So she sits down at the kitchen table with her father and a storybook and learns about why, someday, she’ll find words tattooed somewhere on her skin, and those will be the first words her soulmate ever speaks to her.
But of course, Audrey turns to atheism when she’s thirteen and her mother first moves to Boston, and science doesn’t really have an explanation for it yet. Many people have tried, but Noah likes to say that sometimes the best things in life don’t really have a rhyme or reason to them, and so that’s what Audrey chooses to believe (because of course all belief in God flew out the window when her mother came home with a positive result for Stage III breast cancer).
During Part One of her friendship with Emma (AKA their time together up until freshman year), they’d talked about soulmates a lot. They’d spent their youth sitting on each other’s beds, wondering who their person would be, what they’d look like, if they’d be funny or creative or smart. Emma had spent the majority of their tween years convincing Audrey that she was good enough for a soulmate, whereas Audrey had spent the majority of those years warning Emma that she was too good for some of the people she’d thought to be her soulmate (her soulmate words were fairly common — Hi, it’s nice to meet you — and that led to a lot of confusion on Emma’s part). They’d compared their soulmate phrases too many times to count; Emma’s are neatly scrawled across her hipbone, while Audrey’s sprawl down her left arm, starting at the top of her wrist and twisting around her vein.
They’re not soulmates, Emma and Audrey. That had left Audrey disappointed for so many years. But the first words Emma had said to her were some kind of toddler babble, something that Audrey doesn’t even remember (they’d been three, for God’s sake — oh, that’s ironic), so she can’t really quite say if they match the black script on her arm. For a while, when she’d been so desperately in love with Emma that nothing else mattered but her, she’d told herself that just because Emma’s words back then hadn’t been intelligible didn’t mean they couldn’t match her soulmate tattoo. Maybe that’s what she had been trying to say, Audrey had reasoned with herself. She could be my soulmate. And for so long, she’d felt like Emma was her soulmate. For too many years, her heart had been blind to anything but golden blond hair, bright green eyes and a dimpled smile. And it hadn’t necessarily been nice, or a good feeling, but it was what Audrey was used to. She wasn’t abnormal — plenty of people fell for Emma, she was Emma Duval, and she wouldn’t be the first girl in the world to love her best friend a little more than she should have.
But then Brooke Maddox had to come along and fuck everything up.
———
Second day of freshman year. Her friendship with Emma is still untouched by hatred, still comfortable and good. She’s standing by Emma’s locker, watching as the other girl grabs her Trigonometry textbook (the fact that Em is taking Trig as a freshman honestly doesn’t surprise her, the girl’s better at math than most engineers) and nervously applies a second coat of lip gloss. “Do you think Will will like it?” Emma asks, already biting her lip and wearing away at the gloss.
Audrey rolls her eyes. “Emma, he’s a junior and you’re a pretty freshman. You could probably wear ketchup as lip gloss and he’d still think you were the hottest girl at George Washington,” she says. Truthfully, it makes her skin crawl to even think about Will Belmont hitting on Emma — she’s heard about what he does to innocent freshman girls like her, and it’s nothing good — but the heart wants what it wants, and Audrey’s certainly not going to burst her best friend’s bubble this early in the school year. If she’s lucky, Emma will be over him by Christmas.
“Ew, Auds.” Emma scrunches up her nose in disgust, but she’s giggling, so Audrey knows it’s not real.
“Emma, right?” Audrey and Emma both spin around at the same time to find the source of the new voice, and Audrey has to hold back another eye-roll when she sees it’s Brooke Maddox, Nina’s right hand and resident Queen Bee of GW (which makes Nina resident, what, Alpha Bitch?). She’s dressed to the nines as usual and wields a tube of lipstick in her right hand like it’s a sword and she’s going into battle.
“Uh, yeah,” Emma stammers. “That’s — that’s me.”
“Pretty name. Just a tip — heard Will prefers lipstick. Try this one, red’s his favorite color,” Brooke says, winking at her best friend like they’ve known each other for years. She dangles the tube of lipstick from her fingers, waiting expectantly for a few moments before Emma finally processes what she’s said and grabs the tube, barely breathing out a thank you before she’s screwing the cap off with all the eagerness of a little kid on Christmas morning.
But then Brooke stares at her like she’s insane. “Uh, you’re joking, right? Proper lipstick application cannot happen without a mirror. C’mon,” she insists, taking Emma by the arm and leading her in the general direction of the girls’ bathroom. Audrey goes with them, because what else is she supposed to do? Just stand there? No way.
As soon as they get there, Brooke shoves Emma into the bathroom, telling her to come out when she’s done, and then it’s just her and the popular girl, the two that couldn’t be more polar opposites if they tried. Brooke fixes her with the kind of stare she hates, a pity-filled one that screams, Oh, you didn’t really think you were invited along, did you?
“If you’re trying to get me to leave, don’t plan on it. I’m comfortable right here, thanks,” Audrey hisses, leaning against the wall and digging her combat boots into the tile a little more just to prove her point. Something like surprise briefly flits across Brooke’s beautiful features, but she quickly replaces that look with one of condescension.
“Chin up,” Brooke sneers, “jealousy’s not a good look on you.”
The words echo in Audrey’s brain for a beat longer than she’d care to admit. Chin up, jealousy’s not a good look on you.
Then, time stands still. Because they’re it. Those are the words. Her soulmate words, the ones that have been on her wrist since they first showed up on her sixth birthday.
And it looks like her soulmate is fucking Brooke Maddox. Just peachy.
When Emma comes out of the bathroom sporting the bright red lipstick and an even brighter smile, Audrey’s already gone. And that’s the day she first begins to lose her best friend. (And her mind.)
———
Audrey quickly settles into a comfortable state of denial. If she just ignores it, it can’t be real, right? Except the problem is, her body thinks it’s real. Her body doesn’t process the reveal the same way her mind does; it doesn’t realize that this whole thing is a fluke, a genetic flaw, that their being matched for life must be some sort of scientific abnormality. Because Brooke Maddox and Audrey Jensen are the least compatible people on the planet. Brooke wears heels higher than Audrey’s GPA and calls the Cheerwine that Audrey consumes by the gallon “sugary arsenic for the body”; Audrey wouldn’t be caught dead in pink and personally finds most pop music to be a slap in the face to creativity. They couldn’t be more different if they tried — so why are their bodies screaming at them to be with each other?
The thing is, when the neurons fire away and do their thing in your brain and finally make the connection that the words that other person just said to you are your soulmate tattoo and they’re your soulmate, the chemistry in your body changes a little bit. You tend to crave that person a little more than you might have before. And Audrey’s body isn’t exactly happy that she avoids Brooke like the plague after the discovery. The room feels like it’s a hundred degrees if she even thinks of the other girl (which is unfortunately often as of late), her veins crackle with electricity if Brooke’s less than a foot away, and when Jake Fitzgerald even looks at her “soulmate”, Audrey instinctively finds herself baring her teeth in a snarl.
She doesn’t like it. This isn’t the nice, pretty, romance novel-worthy love affair she’d imagined having with Emma for so many years. This feels too driven by science to be wrong, but too driven by mistake to be right. Something in Audrey tugs her towards the blond girl in the hallway, but something else in her makes her walk in the opposite direction. Knowing that this is the person who’s supposed to be her soulmate doesn’t make her feel floaty or giddy like all the storybooks had said it would (then again, those storybooks also hadn’t said her soulmate could be someone of the same sex), and she doesn’t see things in a slightly rosy hue as she had when she was in love with Emma. No, the world is gritty and raw and the same as always around her, Nina still an insufferable bitch, Emma now a distant memory, Will Belmont always the smarmy douche who laughs at her when he thinks she’s not listening, Noah forever the well-meaning virgin who deserves far more than he receives in life.
But that’s just how these things go, Audrey supposes. You find out something about yourself that you don’t like, even if it feels strangely right, and you fight it with everything you have, even if it makes you more miserable than you’d care to admit. It’s the usual for her.
Until it’s not the usual. Until Nina Patterson bleeds out in her $60,000 pool, and Brooke Maddox and Emma Duval both come crashing back into her life at the same time. The innocent and the not-so-innocent, each staking their own claim in her heart.
It’s fucking pathetic. But Audrey lets them do it anyway.
———
The burden of having Brooke Maddox as a soulmate isn’t an easy one to bear. But Audrey bears it alone, all through freshman year, up until October of her sophomore year. The night after the video comes out, she sneaks out of her room (she’s grounded, of course, because first of all, young lady, Rachel is not your soulmate and God considers it impure to fraternize with anyone but your soulmate in that way, and second of all, I did not raise a lesbian daughter —) and rides her old childhood bike to Noah’s house. They’d planned her escape at lunch, everyone’s eyes on their backs, and Noah’s got her favorite type of tequila waiting for her when she climbs through his bedroom window.
He’s a lightweight and they have school tomorrow, so Noah lets her have the majority of the bottle, listening to her rant about Nina and explain about Rachel, until they get a little tipsier and it’s Noah’s turn to complain. He’s whining about how unlucky he feels to still be a virgin at 17 (he’s a junior, a year older than her actually), and Audrey doesn’t mean to say it but it just kind of comes out (that’s what tequila does to her, she finds). She laughs bitterly and goes, “Think you’re unlucky, Foster? My soulmate is fucking Brooke Maddox. How about that for unlucky.”
So that’s how Noah finds out. He’s supportive and sympathetic and honestly, Audrey can’t believe she’s lucky enough to have him in her life. Maybe she got stuck with a shitty soulmate (it makes her chest ache to even call Brooke shitty, though), but she’s found the best friend she could ever ask for, and that almost makes up for it.
When the murders start, though, Noah starts bugging her to talk to the other girl about it. “If she dies, Audrey,” he says, “you’re gonna feel beyond regretful about that.” And Audrey tries to ignore his advice at first, even though she knows he’s right, but when she has a panic attack upon finding out about the attempt on Brooke at the school, Audrey finally accepts that she has to do something about this. So the night of the Halloween dance, instead of sticking around and waiting for Emma to get her heart broken by another pretty boy with a perfect smile, she heads to Brooke’s and drowns her anger in expensive alcohol. From there, the confession should come naturally.
She’s sitting in one of those scratchy wicker chairs, the kind that probably cost $200 at Pier One, and sipping on a fancy craft beer that honestly tastes pretty crappy (but, hey, it’s alcohol so in the end it doesn’t matter what it tastes like, as long as it makes her forget) when Brooke struts over. “Audrey?” she says, sounding more than a little surprised. “Hey. Did not expect to see you here.”
Brooke sitting across from her really shouldn’t make her world tilt the way it does, but Audrey’s admittedly helpless under the magnetic pull of the blond next to her. The beer’s suddenly freezing in her fingers, her skin on fire. “That makes two of us,” she manages to get out. The magic of the moment goes away when Brooke picks up a Brandon James mask and dangles it from her fingers, the way she had with the lipstick their freshman year, and Audrey is very suddenly reminded that people have been dying and they are not safe by any definition of the word if Kieran really is the killer like she thinks he could be. “Nice mask,” she chokes out. “Big plans later?” The words are softened and the fear in her eyes dulled by the beer, so Brooke doesn’t notice how scared she is. But she doesn’t want Brooke to know, doesn’t want to seem vulnerable or pathetic, so she adds a chuckle, just to make sure.
“It’s tempting,” Brooke admits. “I mean, some psycho wears this to kill our friends, and people treat it like it’s a joke.” Audrey ignores the way her heart flutters at Brooke’s use of the word our, and instead focuses on the very real pain in Brooke’s voice. Their shitty circumstances may not be something she can fix, but the pain she can try to ameliorate, at least temporarily.
“That’s because people generally suck,” she tells her. It’s not her best, but Audrey’s a cynical person, she kind of has to ease into this comforting stuff slowly sometimes.
“I know. Even the ones I like,” Brooke says lightly. It’s meant to come off as non-chalant, but there’s an undercurrent of hurt in her tone that’s impossible to ignore. “Emma bailed on me, Jake spied on me and everyone else, well, they’re gone, so…” She trails off for a second before smiling brightly at Audrey and chirping, “Looks like you’re officially my favorite person at this party.”
It catches her way off-guard, because one, those are words that Audrey never expected to hear from Brooke Maddox’s mouth, and two, is Brooke forgetting that they’re poorly-matched soulmates who are supposed to hate each other? Okay, maybe all the shit they’ve been through in the past couple of weeks could warrant a mutual tolerance instead of hatred, but still. Brooke’s not supposed to be nice to her like this.
She handles it with sarcasm, the way she handles pretty much everything in her life these days. “So not exactly a banner day in the Maddox household.”
“Nope.” And Audrey’s relieved to hear that, honestly. With Rachel’s death still killing her inside and her newfound “friendship” with Emma still a confusing mess of emotions, the last thing she needs is to be worrying about her so-called soulmate, too.
But Brooke lets her down. She doesn’t stop at that. Instead, she takes a breath and asks softly, “So, uh, what brings you to my pity party?”
Audrey opts to tell her half of the truth, the part about Kieran possibly being the killer who’s been terrorizing their town for weeks. She leaves out the part where instinct basically forced her into coming here so she could make sure Brooke was okay. That part wouldn’t help anyone. “I found something that looks like Emma might be sleeping with the enemy, but she didn’t want to hear it, and I didn’t want to see it,” she replies.
It’d be nice to see someone take her seriously tonight, but it’s Brooke and they’re both a little buzzed, so the blond just laughs and says, “No, Kieran can’t be the killer. He’s too pretty.” Audrey’s a little more reassured of the girl’s intelligence when she pauses and adds, “Although I guess Ted Bundy kinda proved that hotness doesn’t cancel out crazy.”
“True,” Audrey agrees. The alcohol has made the weight of her emotions feel heavy, but the truth is even heavier, and it comes out as she leans forward and admits, “I just don’t wanna see her get hurt.”
“I know,” Brooke says. “You’re just looking out for her. It’s what friends do. Or, at least, they should do.” She’s got a haunted look in her eyes, and it’s the rawest Audrey has ever seen her, but she’s not sure whether to be saddened or heartened by this change.
“You know, I kind of like this whole real human thing you got going right now,” she murmurs, and when Brooke locks eyes with her and grins, the heat of it all is almost smothering.
“Are you flirting with me?” Brooke giggles. Yes.
“Oh, you wish,” is her actual snarky reply. And maybe it’s just another lie in a year that’s been full of those, but when they both laugh and smile at each other, it’s the nicest feeling that Audrey’s experienced in a long time. After Rachel died, she didn’t think she’d get to be happy again. Well, maybe she can be.
“Hey, look at us bonding,” Brooke says affectionately.
“Chicks before dicks,” Audrey declares, knocking her beer against Brooke’s red solo cup.
“Oh, let’s not get crazy,” Brooke laughs.
She’s about to tell her. Hey, you’re my soulmate and we’re supposed to hate each other, but I’m terrified of losing you. But then Jake Fitzgerald comes along and ruins everything, and Audrey thinks to herself that she was stupid for ever believing she could be happy with Brooke Maddox anyway.
———
Three months later, after Piper is long dead and the killings a thing of the past, Audrey still hasn’t told her. Because what’s the point now? Brooke almost died in that freezer, and Jake Fitzgerald came and saved her. They’re in love, they’re together, and that relationship does not have room for Audrey Jensen. (Although, to be fair, both Brooke and Jake should be aware that their relationship can’t last forever — they both have admitted they know they’re not each other’s soulmates.)
Then everyone around her starts dying again. Jake goes first, and Audrey feels awful about it, because Brooke’s in pain and that’s always the worst. And then her heart breaks even more for her maybe-soulmate, because one night Brooke comes over and confesses tearfully on her bed, “He wasn’t my soulmate, but I was Jake’s. We never told anyone because —” She hiccups, her sobs temporarily interrupting her. “Because Jake didn’t want me to feel bad. And he didn’t have to date me, y’know. He could’ve just said, ‘Well, we’re not soulmates’ and left it at that. How did he know that I wasn’t gonna find my soulmate and leave him? But he stayed with me anyway, because we were happy and he was so good to me, Audrey. And, God, I don’t think I’m ever gonna get over him. He wasn’t my soulmate, but I loved him. We should’ve been soulmates.”
The words sting, and Audrey swears to herself that night to never tell Brooke that they’re soulmates. She spends her days constantly wondering if Brooke’s just denied it for so long that she’s forgotten, asks herself why Brooke has never said anything to her about it, and it’s painful but pain seems to be all she knows when it comes to the girls she’s loved. Emma left her. Rachel died because of her. Brooke doesn’t want to be her soulmate and will probably spend the rest of her life wishing for Jake Fitzgerald.
And the worst part of it all is that it’s Audrey’s fault. She brought Piper to Lakewood. When the killer pastes her letters all over that bathroom stall in the Zenith, Audrey’s body instantly seems to turn towards the phrases that hurt the most — the ones where she talks about Brooke. And Emma’s new friends are just as phony as her. The queen bee, the pretty one, her name is Brooke Maddox. She’s a bitch. I can’t stand her, either. She’s probably the worst of them. She loves to talk shit about people and she’s helped Nina make my life miserable for years. We have to make her pay, too. She puts on this fake, nice-girl persona, but this documentary will expose her for who she really is.
Brooke is one of the people who’s suffered most at the hands of these killers. Piper made her feel responsible for Riley’s death. Piper locked her in a freezer and left her there to die. This new killer gutted the boy she loved. And eventually, her father dies at the hands of the killer too.
And it’s all Audrey’s fault. She did this to her soulmate. The guilt is crushing and overwhelming, and it’s only made worse by her clashing with Emma. Suddenly, it feels like she doesn’t have anyone on her side. Even Noah has defected to Team Zoe. And it’s ironic, because soulmates are supposed to be there to help you through the worst times in your life, but Audrey’s the reason that Brooke’s going through the worst time in hers, and she doesn’t deserve to have Brooke by her side. They’re not even supposed to be soulmates, anyway.
It all comes to a head when Brooke is stabbed in the movie theater. Audrey doesn’t even find out about it until Kieran’s been hauled off by the police and she’s comforting a sobbing Emma in the back of the ambulance on the way to the hospital. They’re being taken there for secondary evaluations, so Audrey can get a doctor’s opinion on that nasty bump on her head and so Emma can receive stitches for the gash on her arm. The police have their phones, so they have no way to get in contact with anyone they love. Emma held it together at the orphanage, but she’s been inconsolable from the second she stepped into that ambulance, begging for someone’s (Audrey doesn’t know whose) forgiveness about shooting Eli and crying into Audrey’s shoulder about being so naïve with Kieran.
Finally, two EMTs hand them cell phones, making them promise not to say a word to the police about it. Emma calls her mother, and Audrey dials Noah’s number. He picks up on the first ring and, after making sure she’s alive and getting a 90-second version of Kieran’s reveal, tells her about Brooke. Audrey’s world shatters, and the next thing she remembers is waking up in the hospital with an oxygen mask.
The doctor tells her she’d passed out in the ambulance, and says the oxygen was just to help her through the panic attack. She’s evaluated quickly and diagnosed with a minor concussion, but the first thing Audrey wants is to go check on Brooke. So twenty minutes later, she’s in Room 212, watching her soulmate’s chest rise and fall.
Noah is with Emma, and her dad’s actually on the first flight back to Lakewood, having been at a ministers’ convention in Las Vegas, so Audrey’s alone for now. Her chest is tight and tears are beading in the corners of her eyes, because Brooke almost died and it’s all her fault. She almost killed her own soulmate. And suddenly, the words spill off of her tongue, because fuck it Brooke’s asleep and she won’t hear her anyway: “You’re my soulmate. The first words you ever said to me, in the hallway with Emma that day, they’ve been on my arm since I was six years old. And I’m so sorry, God I don’t think there are words for how sorry I am. I brought Piper to Lakewood. I lied to you about Jake. Your dad, Jake, Riley, even Branson, they’re all dead because I got jealous and wanted to make a revenge documentary with someone I idolized, and fuck it was so stupid. I’m sorry, Brooke. You don’t deserve to have a soulmate like me. You deserve so much better.”
She walks away sobbing, and quickly pulls her shit together when she spots Stavo in the hallway, coming back to Brooke’s room with a coffee. She has Stavo. She’ll be okay, she tells herself, and leaves it at that for now.
What she doesn’t know is that Brooke heard.
———
Yes, Brooke heard, everything, and that’s how she finds herself sitting on the blond’s bed two weeks later, listening as she’s confronted with a gusto that Audrey’s never heard from the other girl. “So you knew, all this time, that I was your soulmate, and you never bothered to tell me?” Brooke says angrily. “I mean, God, Audrey, I spent a year thinking that you either hated me or that I wasn’t your soulmate. I never told anyone else because of all that.”
“I didn’t tell you because it didn’t seem like we should be together,” Audrey responds, everything seeming to move slower when Brooke’s alone with her. “We’re totally different people, Brooke.”
“Opposites attract,” Brooke points out. “But we’re not as different as you think. Look at all we’ve been through, together, over the past few months. People who weren’t meant to be soulmates wouldn’t be able to get through that, would they?”
Audrey doesn’t respond, just stares down at the fancy wood floor, so Brooke adds, “Audrey, you’re my soulmate. I literally have the first words you said to me tattooed on my ribcage. We could at least try to make this work.”
Audrey lets out a long sigh. “Brooke, aren’t you tired of people telling you what you have to do or what you’re supposed to be? I, for one, am sick of having people say to me that just because you’re my soulmate I’m supposed to be with you when it would just make you miserable. That’s bullshit. Why do we even have soulmate tattoos, anyway? I prefer to make my own destiny.”
“Do it, then,” Brooke says lowly, her face suddenly very close to Audrey’s, eyes shining with something she can’t describe. “Make your own destiny, and choose me.”
“You deserve better than me,” Audrey whispers, shivering as Brooke searches for something in her eyes — what she’s searching for, Audrey doesn’t know, but she hopes she finds it.
“Maybe I do,” Brooke agrees, hand resting on Audrey’s knee, “and maybe you deserve better than me. But guess what? I don’t care. No matter what anyone else says, no matter what our tattoos say or what other people think about them — I choose you.”
And that’s all Audrey has ever wanted to hear. All her doubts and fears fly out the window as she closes the gap between them, breathes, “I choose you, too,” and presses her lips to Brooke’s.
She’s never been so happy.
———
They are together, by their own choice, not by the choice of whatever scientific phenomenon or god put those words on their skin, but there are still things Audrey will never tell Brooke. She’ll never tell how she bought her first leather jacket after that day their freshman year, so the long sleeves could hide the words on her arm, or how she’d pile on bracelets in the morning so she didn’t have to look at the Chin up, jealousy’s not a good look on you scrawled across her skin. She’ll never tell about the panic attack in the ambulance the day of Kieran’s reveal, or the absolutely soul-crushing feeling she got when Jake waltzed in to the party Halloween night. And she’s sure there are things that Brooke will never tell; she’s heard a few things from Emma, stories of nights spent crying over the If you’re trying to get me to leave, don’t plan on it inscribed on her ribcage and parties filled with alcohol to numb the pain, but Audrey makes it a point not to pry. She and Brooke are different, and they love each other all the more for it, but they’re the same in the sense that they’ve been equally broken before, and they both want to move on from it. There’s no sense in talking about the past, not anymore. They’ve grown up and moved beyond that.
Maybe soulmates can be scientifically explained, maybe they can’t. Maybe there’s a reason for why they spoke to each other outside the bathroom that day freshman year, maybe there’s not. Maybe someone could lay out all the DNA sequences or heartbeat patterns that prove they were made for each other. But Audrey and Brooke don’t care about that anymore. They love each other, and that’s enough. Even in the face of Piper and Kieran. Even in the face of death.
And Audrey thinks that maybe she finally knows what a soulmate is really meant to be.