Hello Stranger(83)

“There you are! It’s not over is it? I was just parking, but your dad should already be in there. Did he find you? I’m so glad I double-checked after we got Parker’s email,” she was saying. “We almost missed this entire thing!”

I lifted my head away from the brick wall and turned around.

I looked straight at Lucinda’s scrambled face, still breathing hard. “What,” I asked, “did you double-check?”

Lucinda took a step closer. “The show tonight,” she said. “Parker thought it was canceled.”

In that moment, my dad showed up behind Lucinda. And Parker behind him.

I took in the scene. Lucinda, very slow on the uptake about what was going down; my dad, looking crushed, upside-down bouquet still forgotten in his good hand; and Parker, standing behind them both, her face the very definition of smug.

“Parker emailed you,” I said then, “to say that the art show was canceled?”

Lucinda nodded. “We almost didn’t come. Good thing I—”

“The show was never canceled,” I said.

“We know that now,” Lucinda said. “Thank goodness I thought to call the gallery.”

But she was missing my point. “Parker lied to you.”

“No, no,” Lucinda said. “I’m sure she—”

“She lied to you,” I said, “because she wanted you to stand me up.”

Lucinda’s utter incomprehension at this idea made me want to light myself on fire. She shook her head. “I think she just—”

But I couldn’t bear to listen to her try to explain.

I cut her off. “She lied to you because she always lies to you. She lied to you because she wants us to hate each other. She lied to you because it’s fun for her! Because she delights in messing with people! Because you let her! You never question her. You never challenge her. You never use any kind of critical thinking. Even when her facts don’t add up! Even when nothing makes any sense! She’s making up a story of this family—and it’s not even a good one! But you just believe it—every damn time.”

“I know you’re upset,” Lucinda said. “But let’s not slander Parker. She really thought it was canceled. If I hadn’t texted her to set her straight, she’d have missed it, too.”

“You always believe her—no questions asked! And you never, ever believe me. Even when—as always—I’m telling you the truth.”

Lucinda and my dad looked at each other, like, Here we go again.

Sure. Had I said this to them a thousand times? Yes.

I had yelled it to them as an angry teenager. I had sobbed it to them in a school parking lot. I had written it to them in countless careful, logical, please-believe-me letters.

Had it ever worked?

Never. Not once.

Talk about confirmation bias! They had decided decades ago who Parker and I both were—and those decisions had hardened into stone by now. But I didn’t care.

Here we went again. “If Parker said I stole your grandmother’s ruby hat pin out of your jewelry box, you believed her. Even though it was Parker who stole it and took it to a pawnshop downtown and used the money to buy tickets to a concert she wasn’t even allowed to go to! She had to sneak out! But she told you it was me, so it was me. I got grounded for stealing, and she took my boyfriend to a concert!”

Lucinda tried to make her voice soothing, like you would with a dog. “Sweetheart, that was all so long ago—”

“Was it? Is it? It’s still going on! Right now! This, right here, is Parker telling you I crashed your car—and you believing her. This is Parker telling you the stolen math exam answers in our room were mine—and you believing her. This is Parker—bullying the hell out of poor, kindhearted Augusta Ross so viciously and so toxically that the girl ate a whole bottle of Tylenol and then telling the school administrators that it was me—and you, all of you, believing her!”

I could hear my voice go off the rails. Starting to sound like Janis Joplin. Louder and screechier—as if volume or desperation or hysteria could get through to them.

Though it certainly never had before.

A new crowd of people was starting to gather around us. Lucinda glanced around at them uncomfortably. She lowered her voice. “Sadie, let’s all just try to move on.”

Which made me want to bang my head against that brick wall.

What did any of them think I was trying to do?

“When did you text her?” I demanded of Lucinda then.

“What?”

“When did you text Parker to let her know that the show was happening after all?”

Lucinda looked over at Parker, like Parker might hint at how to answer.

“When!” I shouted.

“About ten minutes ago,” Lucinda said.

I nodded. “Guess when Parker got here? An hour ago. She’s been taunting me at my own art exhibition for over an hour. And guess what she said right as she walked in? She said, ‘Guess they stood you up.’”

Lucinda stared at me, taking that in.

“She engineered this. She created it. She saw you trying to be nice to me, and she torpedoed us all. Again.”

But Lucinda was shaking her head. “Sweetheart, I—”

“You never believe me,” I said. “But it’s the truth.”