Page 150 of Hello Stranger

Which, as we know, had never been my thing.

But I wasn’t asking anyone for anything hard, I told myself. I wasn’t asking for help with trigonometry, or climbing El Capitan, or storming the beaches of Normandy. All anyone had to do was answer one easy little question.

This, I reminded myself, like all hard things in life, was an opportunity.

A chance for me to practice asking for help.

And:Have we met before?You couldn’t buy a better starter phrase for that. A person could fulfill that request withone syllable.

That’s what I told myself. No big deal.

I practiced it over and over while I was getting dressed, and then I’d walked across the roof—as ready as I’d ever be—while arguing with the nervousness in my chest in a way that would make Dr. Nicole very proud. This was doable. No dry heaving out behind the mechanical room necessary.

I could just… breathe.

And admire Mrs. Kim’s magazine-worthy tables. And feel the rays of the setting sun warming my skin. And enjoy my skirt’s ruffles swishing around my calves. And sway a little bit to the music of the band.

If that’s not a triumph, I don’t know what is.

ON A SCIENTIFIClevel, it was totally fascinating to watch the fusiform face gyrus somewhere in between functioning and not functioning—seeing it do its thing in real time. It kept prompting me to think about everything my miraculous body did all the time without ever needing help or acknowledgment.

Which made me feel grateful. Scientifically and otherwise.

There was one confounding variable, though, in my data-gathering. One totally unfamiliar face that should have—by all established patterns—been unintelligible… showed up on the rooftop fully intact.

I could see it loud and clear.

A guy in a dark blue suit arrived maybe half an hour in… and I recognized him right away—even though I’d never seen him before.

I sidled my way over to Sue and elbowed her until I had her attention.

“What?” she said.

“Tell me who that is,” I said, tilting my head in the blue suit guy’s direction.

Sue peeked over. “Oh god, I’m sorry!” she said. “My dad invited him.”

“Tell me it’s not—”

“It’s Joe,” Sue confirmed, with a no-sense-fighting-it nod.

“No, no, no,” I said. Had Ijustbeen boasting about how okay I was?

“My dad loves him, apparently,” Sue said. “He’s helped him move furniture so many times, my dad nicknamed him Helpful. Did you know that?”

“I did,” I said.

“My dad invited him as a setup! For you! I cleared it all up and explained that being willing to help move furniture does not definitively make anyone a good person and that a setup was useless because he’d already dumped you and broken your heart. But by then it was too late.”

He’d already dumped me and broken my heart.

Wow. He sure had.

While Joe greeted the Kims, up here in the breeze, against a brilliant pink sunset, I let myself watch him.

Seeing my mom’s portrait had been bittersweet bliss. Seeing my own real face in the mirror had been a relief. Seeing Sue and the Kims and various friends from art school had been all varying levels of fun.

This was something different.

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