“Oof.”
“She got home from the trip, packed a suitcase without a word, and went to a hotel. She came back a few days later to get the rest of her stuff … and brought him with her. She brought him with her. To our apartment. She kept saying, ‘I thought you’d be at work,’ like that made it better. And then—long story short—I wound up beating the crap out of him.”
He paused, like I might think that was a bad idea.
“Good,” I said, holding up my hand for a high five.
“Yeah, well. I’m not normally violent. Just so you know.”
I looked at his forkful of linguine, resting lukewarm and forgotten in his hand.
Why had I pushed to talk about this? Poor Joe. Now I’d made him lose his appetite.
“Hot tubs,” I declared, like this might make him feel better, “are just crawling with bacteria.”
He went on. “It’s pretty cliché stuff when you think about it,” he said. “Happens every day.”
“But not to you.”
“No…” he said quietly. “That was a new one for me.”
But suddenly I was feeling mad for him. “What’s wrong with her, anyway? What could she be thinking?”
With that, I could feel myself signing up for Team Joe. If he was the terrible person I’d originally thought, he was hiding it really, really well.
Maybe there was a good explanation.
Whatever I’d heard in the elevator, it just couldn’t have been what it sounded like.
“You’re very handsome and nice!” I declared then, going all in. “She should’ve been thanking her lucky stars!”
“You don’t have to say that,” Joe said.
I mean, did I know for sure he was handsome? No. But who cared? Sue said he was—and she was picky. “It’s true,” I insisted. “She squandered you.”
“I’ll bounce back eventually,” Joe said. “I just … haven’t found a good reason to.”
I pointed at him. “Yet.”
He sighed.
“Come on. Say it with me. You haven’t found a good reason to—yet.”
His shoulders sank as he resisted—like my forcing this optimism was just insulting. “Yet,” he finally said. And then he stuffed that whole forkful of cold linguine in his mouth, made himself chew it, and swallowed it down.
Then, like a man who’d just accomplished something, he said, “And what’s your deal?”
“My deal?”
“With that woman,” Joe said, gesturing with his now-empty fork. “Across the hall.”
That woman. Across the hall. Actually, Parker might come in handy as a distraction. I sat up straighter, ready to shift our focus from his misery to mine. His life might start looking better by comparison.
“She’s my evil stepsister,” I said.
Joe wasn’t the only person here with a past.
“Wow,” Joe said. “Okay. They still make those?”
I gave a little shrug. “Not just for fairy tales anymore.”
Then Joe said, “Can you define evil here?”
I thought about it a second. Being vague was always an option in times like these. But why not just tell the truth? If she was going to keep fainting herself into his arms, he should know what he was dealing with.
I took a breath.
“After my mom died, my father married her mother—like, six months later, by the way—and Parker moved into my house, started attending my school, framed me for some vicious bullying that she herself was doing … and then got me kicked out.”
Joe took that in. “Kicked out of school? Or out of the house?”
“Both.”
“Wow.”
I nodded. “The girl she bullied was this sweet kid named Augusta Ross. We’d been friends since we were little. She used to bake sugar cookies with me and my mom. Parker left menacing typed anonymous notes in her locker every morning. Stacks of them. She told Augusta that she was ugly—going into great detail about what was wrong with every feature on her face and every part of her body. She made up lies about how much individual people hated Augusta—and fabricated terrible things they’d supposedly said about her. She was relentless.
“And here’s the clincher: She told Augusta that if she ever told anybody about the notes, she would poison her cat, Cupcake. And then she printed off pictures of cats and cut their eyes out—and started leaving those in Augusta’s locker, too.”
Well. We certainly had changed topics.
Joe seemed to have forgotten all about his ex-wife.
He slurped a forkful of linguine.
I went on. “Her bullying got so bad and was so relentless for so long that Augusta one night tried to swallow a whole bottle of Tylenol—which really will kill you, by the way.”
Joe nodded. “Liver damage.”
“Luckily, she was terrible at taking pills. When her parents walked in on her in front of a giant pile of capsules, the whole story came tumbling out. The school got involved. An investigation happened. And Parker, who had apparently been typing those notes in a hidden file on my laptop, went to the administration and handed it over.”
“You got blamed,” Joe said, astonished.
“I got kicked out,” I said. “They sent me away after that. To a thing they called ‘boarding school,’ but it had distinct ‘correctional facility’ vibes.”
“Nobody stood up for you? Nobody helped you?”
“Everybody sided with Parker. Including my own father.”
“How could he do that?”
I shrugged. “He said the evidence was incontrovertible.” I took a sip of water. “That’s actually how I learned the word incontrovertible.”
“Wow,” Joe said.
“Yeah.”
“She sounds like a psychopath.”
I nodded. “She basically stole my life. By the end of high school, she was living in my room, wearing my clothes, hanging with my friends, and sleeping with the boyfriend who dumped me after the scandal.”
Joe shook his head in protest.
“But the worst part,” I said, in conclusion, “was Peanut. I couldn’t take him with me. He had to spend two years living with those monsters. The day after I graduated, I made Lucinda bring him out to me on the front walk, and I never looked back.”
Finally Joe said, “Holy shit.”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“And now she’s moved into our building?”
“Yep.”
“Not by accident, I’m guessing.”
“Agreed.”
“But why?”
“I don’t really know,” I said. “But it’s not because she’s suddenly changed her entire personality, I can promise you that.”
“Do you think she’s here to mess with you?”
“I guarantee it.”
“But…” Joe asked again, looking befuddled. “Why?”
I thought for a second. “You know those children who try to trap ground squirrels so they can torture them?”
“I guess so?”
“That’s her. And I’m the ground squirrel.”
Joe took that in.
“Anyway,” I went on, “now she’s set her sights on you, so be warned.”
“What makes you think that?”
I looked into his puzzle-piece face. “She told me.”
Joe paused like that was completely nuts—which, in fairness, it was. “Why would she tell you that?”