“Is she lying?” I said to my father. “Or is it true?”
My dad took a half step forward, then paused.
I stood up straighter. “Tell me she’s lying,” I said. Then, yelling: “Tell me she’s lying!”
Where the hell was Joe when I needed him to flip the breaker and save me?
Oh, well.
I guess I’d have to save myself.
Twenty-Six
THAT MOMENT MUST have been so fun for Parker.
She broke me. She really did.
All that effort I’d made to be there and withstand it all and stay until the end?
Annihilated.
I charged past my still-motionless dad, through the still-gaping crowd, and pushed my way toward the exit, feeling weirdly like I was underwater and hoping desperately that there might be more air outside than in.
But nope.
Outside was just as airless.
I felt woozy. I stopped just past the entrance and pressed my palms and forehead against the brick wall, trying to pull it together.
Easier imagined than done.
Before I’d stabilized, I heard a voice. And sure, I wasn’t great at voices, but it didn’t take me long to figure out who it was.
“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!”