Page 138 of Hello Stranger

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 girlate a whole bottle of Tylenoland 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 forover 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.

“Sheengineeredthis. 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.”

Just as I said it, a woman stepped out of the crowd and walked up to us all, standing there. “Hello,” she said, in a chipper voice.

It was so odd that she would approach us right then, mid-fight. I mean,Come on, lady. Read the room.

But she clearly wasn’t put off by the family squabble.

She just plowed right on ahead.

She stuck out her hand to shake Lucinda’s and then did the same thing to my dad, and then she said, “Mr. and Mrs. Montgomery, you probably don’t remember me…”

My dad and Lucinda shook their heads to confirm.

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