Mad Honey

Three months before Lily’s death, she meets with a group of other musicians in the Adams High School gym for the first day of the Coös County Honors Orchestra rehearsal. Lily muses about how even instruments seem gendered in some ways: tubas, trombones, trumpets are all played by boys, flutes by girls; the deeper strings, like bass, are played by boys, violas by women; and so on. She finds it refreshing when someone breaks the norm—cellos are usually played by boys, but she chose the instrument when she was in the third grade. In the orchestra, the oboist is a female, which is unusual: a girl named Maya.

After practice, Dirk, who is narrating the piece played by the orchestra, comes on to Lily. Suddenly, Asher appears and steps in, pretending that Lily is his girlfriend, and Dirk backs off. As they leave the building, Maya greets Asher and introduces herself to Lily. After Asher leaves, Lily asks Maya if they’re together, but Maya blushes and says no. Maya invites Lily home to play music with her on the weekend, and Lily is thrilled to have found a new friend. When Ava asks about her day, Lily tells her everything that happened but keeps Asher a secret, savoring the memory of his arm around her waist as he pretended to be her boyfriend.

The jury takes three days to arrive at a verdict. At dawn on the third day, Mike visits Olivia at the farm to see how she’s doing, and they kiss. Later that morning, Olivia, Asher, Jordan, and Selena, along with Jordan and Selena’s son, Sam, head to the courtroom; the verdict is in, and Asher is found “not guilty.” Asher collapses in tears, as does Ava, at the other end of the courtroom. Jordan and his family head home.

Back home, Asher empties out the treehouse and boards it up, leaving the afghan that Lily and he used after they slept together inside. He replants daylilies at the base of the tree, and Olivia and he walk back to the house together.

Four months before Lily’s death, Lily and Ava arrive at their new house in Adams. While unpacking, Lily finds an album of old photographs from when she was seven and still went by “Liam.” Ava apologizes for still keeping them; she just wants some old memories around and offers to throw them out, but Lily understands and encourages Ava to keep them.

Lily remembers being sent to Pacific Day school, a private school in Seattle, as a “compromise” between her parents, when she was 12. Ava had hoped that if she agreed to this, she could perhaps save her marriage. Lily begged not to go, but her father was unrelenting. At school, Lily was routinely bullied, beaten up, and treated cruelly by students and teachers alike. She had no friends, and her academics floundered. At that time, Ava was away from home for work most nights of the week, so Lily was often alone at home with her father.

One day, the headmaster called Lily’s father to pick her up. She had a black eye and a contusion on her cheek from being dragged across the playground asphalt. She’d been beaten by the other boys for wearing nail polish to school; however, Lily was the one being suspended. The headmaster told Lily’s father that she could rejoin “[w]hen he’s ready to be a man” (416).

On the way home, Lily declared that she wasn’t going back to that school; she’d be free. At home, Lily used Ava’s makeup to cover up her bruises and do up her face. She put on Ava’s bra and blouse and brushed out her long hair. When her father saw her dressed up like this, he hit her so hard that she flew across the room and cracked her head against the wall. When she regained consciousness, she found herself tied to a chair while her father buzzed off her hair and wiped off her makeup. Her father refused to let her go until she acknowledged that her name was Liam. When Lily spat in her father’s face instead, he threw the chair backward, with Lily still tied to it, and left the house. Ava arrived later to find Lily sobbing on the floor, still tied to the chair.

Now, Lily and Ava drive around the town of Adams and take in their new home. Lily remembers conversations she had with Ava on the drive east about what it means to be a woman. After a number of arguments, Ava finally expressed how, for her, being a woman simply meant not being a man—and that a woman “always has to be on guard, lest someone else decide that you’re going to be his victim” (420). Lily decides that she won’t be a victim. She knows that Ava is worried about her, but thinks she’ll be fine. She tells Ava not to worry about her: “I’m a survivor” (421).

After the trial, things don’t completely go back to normal. People still whisper about and avoid Asher, so he finishes his GED at home instead of returning to school. He spends a lot of his time sketching at the base of the treehouse, disconnected from his friends and old life.

Three weeks after that trial, Maya finally comes visiting. Sobbing, she hugs Asher, upset about everything he endured. She suggests that he wasn’t even supposed to be at Lily’s house, since she was breaking up with him. Startled, Olivia questions how Maya knows this, because Asher never got the breakup text, and it wasn’t mentioned during the trial.

Maya reveals that she went to visit Lily the day she died. Maya has been in love with Asher for a long time, and it upset her to see Asher so heartbroken over Lily. Maya decided that Lily wasn’t good for him and wanted Lily to end things with him. When she realized that Lily planned to reconcile with him instead, Maya grabbed Lily’s phone and typed out a breakup text, but before she could send it, Lily tried to grab the phone. The girls struggled for control of it, and in the process Maya knocked Lily out of the way, causing her to lose her balance and fall down the stairs. Frightened, Maya fled, not knowing that Asher would arrive shortly after.

Now distraught, Maya apologizes to Asher; she never wanted to hurt Lily, she just wanted Lily to stop hurting Asher. Olivia insists that they tell the police, while Maya begs Asher to keep her secret the way he kept Lily’s.

A few weeks after Maya’s confession, Asher helps Olivia with the first honey harvest of the year and expresses his wish to go to Plymouth State for college; they offer a BA in graphic design and a Division III hockey team. Mike arrives, letting them know that prosecution isn’t pressing charges against Maya. Olivia and Mike move to talk privately, and he winds his arm around her waist and kisses her. She asks Mike why charges aren’t being pressed, and he observes, “Some bad things that happen are just accidents” (429).

Ten months after Lily’s death, Ava visits Olivia; Ava is leaving Adams and is on her way out of town. Asher is at Plymouth State, and Ava says that she’s glad Olivia didn’t lose her child: “‘I lost a son once, but that was okay, because I gained a daughter. But now […] I have nothing” (431). Olivia gives Ava a jar of honey before she leaves; although Ava says she’s always hated honey, she takes the jar. Honey will never go bad, and Olivia hopes that one day, when Ava has a sore throat or needs to sweeten her tea, she’ll find it useful: “It will keep, until she’s ready” (432).