I paused then, in case she might have something to say.
She didn’t.
So I went on. “The irony of it is … I always wanted a sister.”
This moment was almost over—I could feel it. And the shadow was still listening.
Then something became very clear to me: As terrible as Parker made my life, she made her own even worse. Nothing she could do to me was as soul-crushing as what she did to herself. In turning away from kindness, she’d chosen a life of torment.
Maybe I didn’t have to punish her.
Maybe she was already punishing herself.
Spoiler: I would find out the next day that my portrait came in dead last in the contest. I would get a total of zero votes from the judges. But I really would come away with a whole new understanding of what it meant to win. And standing in that dark street alone, talking to Parker’s shadow, I was already getting a glimmer of what that would feel like.
“I just want you to know,” I said then, “that it doesn’t have to be this way. We don’t have to be enemies. I believe you can change, and I know I’m not vindictive. If you ever decide that you want to stop acting this way … I will genuinely try to forgive you.”
Twenty-Eight
THAT NIGHT, ON top of it all, I left the most bananas voicemail of my entire life.
Because that apology I’d gotten from my dad? It didn’t magically fix everything about my childhood—of course. We can’t go back in time.
But it did leave me thinking a little differently.
Like, hearing his side of the story changed my understanding of the story.
Hearing him apologize for the way he’d left me out in the hallway all those nights? It had never once occurred to me that what happened then had been anything other than my fault.
I’d always figured that my desperate neediness all those nights had driven him away.
My fourteen-year-old interpretation had been to assume that I’d caused that moment to unfold that way. That I’d driven my father away with my neediness. And I’d emerged from that time in our lives with a wrong lesson about how the world works, thinking that if I wanted to be loved—and who doesn’t?—I needed to make sure to never need anybody. Ever.
Oh, the comedy.
All this time, I’d been doubling down on the wrong thing.
I thought that the only way to be close was to stay far away.
Except for with Joe, of course. Who wouldn’t take “far away” for an answer.
A montage of memories kicked off in my head. Joe coming up to the roof to tell me my lock was broken. Joe offering to be my model. Joe taking me for a Vespa ride. Joe guiding me through a panic attack and then ordering us a pizza. Joe so patient while I ran my hands all over him.
And on and on.
If there was anyone on this earth who was not put off by neediness, it was Joe. He had a superpower for seeing me at my worst—and not turning away.
No wonder I’d fallen in love with him.
He’d bypassed all my usual rules.
Of course … then he’d disappeared. Full ghosting—with a dash of hostility.
Why had he done that again?
I still wasn’t totally clear on it.
But I thought about Dr. Nicole saying that my brain was an unstable ecosystem these days. And I thought about how desperately I’d tried to hide that from everybody who knew me for fear that it might make me seem pathetic. Or ridiculous. Or—god forbid—needy.
The more I’d liked Joe, the less I’d wanted him to know what was going on with me.
But if that mental montage had just made anything clear, it was that Joe didn’t turn away when I needed him. He came closer.
Before I knew it, I was picking up my phone to call him and leave the longest voicemail in the history of voicemails.
* * *
I SAT OUTSIDE on the roof, and looked up at the stars, and decided to be honest about my life at last.
Here’s the full, unedited transcript: “Hey, Joe. This is Sadie. I’m leaving you one last message. Don’t hang up! It’s a nice message. You told me not to contact you anymore—and I won’t after this, I swear. But I just really need to say one last thing, and it’s: Thank you. I’m calling to thank you. Sincerely. I don’t know … what exactly happened with us. But I do know this. The show happened tonight, and our portrait did not win. Which is no surprise. It got zero votes from the judges … but they didn’t light it on fire, either, so that’s something. I like it, personally. I think you will, too, if you ever see it.”
I sighed.
“Why am I calling you? Why am I really calling you? Some crazy shenanigans went down tonight at the show, and now I’m up here on the roof thinking about what really matters in life, and who I want to be, and how I want to live. And I’ve decided to share the fascinating news with you … about me … that part of the reason I’ve been falling apart so much lately—part of the reason you keep finding me weeping in corners and hallways—is that…” I coughed a little, then went on: “Wow, it’s so strange to say out loud … but the, little, uh, brain surgery I had not too long ago … it left me with a condition called acquired apperceptive prosopagnosia. A lot of syllables there, huh? It basically means face blindness. It means that I can’t see faces anymore. I can see other things. All other things, in fact—just not faces. Ever since that surgery. Which was six weeks ago now. The doctors really hoped it would resolve at some point, but it hasn’t yet, and it might never resolve, they tell me. Or it might. I maybe should’ve told you about this sooner. But I … didn’t want to, you know? I didn’t want to say it out loud. I didn’t want it to be true. I didn’t want people to feel sorry for me—or to be broken or changed or different. I didn’t want to not be okay. I thought, if I just pretended to be fine and not need anyone or anything, that would be enough. That’s how I’ve always managed. I’ve been pretending to be okay pretty much since the day my mom died. But I’m not okay, Joe. That’s the truth. I’m absolutely, astonishingly … not okay right now. And I don’t even know sometimes what okay even is. But my neuropsychologist says you can either pretend to be okay or you can actually be okay, but you can’t do both. So this is my first step, I think. To stop pretending. To start being honest about my life in the bravest, boldest way possible: on a voicemail that no one will ever listen to.”