The Stranger Game

by Cylin Busby

  I ran to my room, all done up now and pretty with the new blanket on the bed and curtains and a pink rug. I pulled the illustrated Bible book from the shelf and brought it out to show it to the lady. I couldn’t read, but I had every story memorized by the pictures. She seemed really interested so I told her every one. “My favorite,” I said, “is this one where the man gets swallowed by the whale. Or this one, with the nice lions.”

  Both Ma and the lady laughed and the lady said, “Liberty, you are a true delight. How lucky you are to have her. We don’t usually find a match right away for these foster kids, but I think we may have this time, I really do.” And Ma nodded, smiling at me.

  That night, there was ice cream—chocolate chip, my favorite—and Ma said, “You did good, kid. We’re a good team, aren’t we?” And after that we were. A team.

  CHAPTER 21

  THE THOUGHT HAD BEEN waiting just below the surface, in that realm where dreams from the night before swim, nagging at me, trying to tell me something. It had been there, but I hadn’t wanted to think it, really think it. The truth.

  Sarah.

  She had been my worst enemy, my torturer. She made my life hell. She hurt me, with her words and with her hands. She made me hate myself, and I hated her.

  Yes, I hated my own sister. Yes, I wished for her to die. And yes, my life got better when she disappeared. Paula’s did too—at first. We both got what we always wanted. Even though it came at a price—a steep and terrible price.

  Now Sarah was back, but she wasn’t the same Sarah. She was the sister I always wanted, I always needed. She was kind, open, loving, to me, to Mom and Dad. I liked her—I loved her, even. I was not going to let Paula ruin this for me, for my family. No.

  I heard the words of the school counselor coming out of my mouth. “If you think someone is dead, and they come back, it can take a while for you to get used to having them around again.” I was talking fast as Paula cocked her head to the side, hand on her hip. “The school psychologist explained it to me, it’s actually really normal to have doubts.”

  “Have you finished signing up?” A man stood impatiently behind us.

  “Oh, yes, sorry.” I moved out of the way, hoping he hadn’t heard anything we’d been saying.

  Paula grabbed my elbow and led me to the side of the front doors. “I’ve got to go. I have to get back.” I tried to pull away from her.

  “Back to what? That girl who claims she’s Sarah? That stranger—Are your parents in on this too? Do you even know who she is?” Paula hissed.

  “She’s Sarah!” I spat, wrenching my arm free. I heard my own words, the lie I’d been telling myself for months, because I couldn’t face the truth—what had really happened to my sister that day at the park. If Sarah was back, it had never happened. None of it.

  I walked quickly away, imagining Paula behind me, but when I turned to look she was gone. I stood on the stairs that led down into the dining room and looked at my family, my mother and my sister, sitting so close together, their identical blond heads, Sarah’s light brown roots just starting to show.

  I thought about the night she had come home from her date with Max, how she had crumbled, broken. The screams of terror in the night. Looking at her, I couldn’t bear the idea that someone would hurt this girl. That someone had burned her, tortured her, made her feel unloved, unworthy. But someone had done it.

  My breath slowed as I watched them, laughing, Mom stirring sugar into her iced tea, Sarah ordering dessert from the waiter. She looked up and caught my eye, her face warm and open as she smiled and waved me over. I couldn’t help but smile back.

  Sarah had been home for months now, and everyone else thought it was her. Everyone knew it was her. Max, Uncle Phil, even Gram when she came to visit.

  The problems between Sarah and Max were easily explained too. Sarah told me all about their last conversation: Max had confessed that he blamed himself. He was supposed to meet her on the day she disappeared. When she didn’t show up, he assumed she had been pissed and left. He thought he would see her again. “I can’t stop thinking about what would have happened if I had been there just fifteen, twenty minutes earlier, like I said I was going to be,” he told her.

  I hadn’t known that, for all these years, he had been living with that guilt. And seeing how Sarah was now, the damage that had been done, he couldn’t seem to get over it. Sarah told me he cried almost the entire time.

  I tried to tell myself, as the long, hot days of summer wore on, that Paula would drop her craziness and leave us alone, as soon as she went back to the university. But anytime we were out—and especially at the club—I dreaded seeing her again, feared that she might say something shocking to my parents or to Sarah. But what she actually ended up doing was far, far worse.

  SARAH

  MA NEVER MADE ANY pretense that she wanted to be a mother or anything like that. He was the one who had wanted kids, and she couldn’t have any. Or she didn’t want to, after her first baby died, Billy, whose name she wore in a cursive tattoo on her inner wrist. So they got me out of foster care. I wondered what I was doing there—Had my real parents ditched me? Had I been adopted from birth, then put back into the system? My memories from before age four are just fragments: someone brushing my hair, someone yelling, a dark room. I don’t even remember the place I was staying before Ma came and got me. When I asked her about my history, she didn’t know much, or anything, really, about how long I had been there or what my story was. “I was using then, Libby,” she always said. “You could have been dropped at my door by a family of clowns in full getup and I wouldn’t remember it.” I knew it was hard for her to talk about that time, so I only asked once or twice, then I let it drop.

  After he was gone, she got clean. That took some doing, and a few relapses: nights of screaming fits, no food for days. She didn’t feel like going back to her waitressing job. She decided she liked the checks. She liked not working. And to be honest, she did like me a little. Or she started to right around then. I think after she kicked him out, she wanted someone around. I watched the shows with her during the day and she started to take me with her, sometimes, when she went to the store. She would always light up when people would say “What a pretty little girl!” and “Don’t you look just like your mom.” With her hair a ratted, yellow blond, her teeth bluish from so many years of drugs, she loved the idea that she was seen as someone’s mom, practically the Virgin Mary.

  At night, she went out on her own and left me in the house, still locked in my room, so I wouldn’t “get up to anything.” But she always came home the next morning and never left me for more than a day. And after she got clean, even that stopped.

  Before kindergarten started for me in the fall, we had another talk, a serious talk like we had before our Very Special Visitor. About what I could say at school and what I couldn’t say. I wasn’t allowed to ever, ever mention him. No one could see the marks on my back. If anyone asked about my arm, well—that happened before I came to live with Ma. We went over it lots and lots of times until I had it all memorized. We were a team, the two of us. Me and Ma. We had to keep our stories straight or they wouldn’t let us stay together. “And you never know where they’ll put you next,” she warned me.

  It was then, at age five, that I learned: The longer you tell yourself a lie, the more you believe it, until finally, it becomes your truth.

  CHAPTER 22

  I HAD ALMOST FORGOTTEN that I’d even signed up for the tennis tournament; I blocked it out of my mind along with everything else that had happened that day. But Sarah remembered. A couple days before the tournament she got busy picking out a winning outfit for me, and insisted that I take my racket to be restrung. She even picked out new laces for my tennis shoes—to match the skirt, of course.

  “Looking good is half the battle,” Sarah explained, trying a new visor on me at the sporting goods store while they worked on my racket. “High ponytail out the top—or maybe a braid?” She looked at me quizzically.
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  I laughed. “I’m going to be the best-dressed loser on the court.”

  “Don’t even say that,” Sarah scolded. “If you tell yourself you can’t, then you’re right—a teacher told me that once, and it’s true.”

  I wondered who had told Sarah that.

  “You have to believe in yourself, in your own self-worth. Remember when we were doing your math homework and you would always say, ‘Oh, I’m so bad at math’ or ‘I’m never going to get this’—but you did, didn’t you? You got an A in math this year.” She pulled off the pink visor and put on a bright turquoise one as I stood in front of her like a mannequin. She paused and met my eyes. “As much as I think you’re going to win, you have to believe it yourself to make it happen.” She put her hands on my shoulders and her face was serious as she added, “But not in this color, because it washes you out.” She pulled the turquoise visor off and hung it back up, opting for the soft pink.

  We went to the register and Sarah took out the credit card Mom and Dad had given her, paying without even glancing at the price tag. They wanted her to have some independence, a sense of herself as a nineteen-year-old, so they had opened a bank account for her and given her a credit card. I thought about those blank checks she had hidden in the duffel bag behind her desk and tried to convince myself there was a reason they were there. Maybe Mom and Dad had given them to her, for emergencies. Mom had also signed her up for driving lessons, but she hardly needed them. “You’re a natural, like you’ve been doing this for years!” the instructor exclaimed. She could parallel park with one hand on the wheel like the valet guys at the club.

  So far I hadn’t seen her abuse the card, but she really enjoyed nice things—one remnant of the old Sarah. The best restaurants, clothes, makeup, shoes. But Mom and Dad seemed to want her to indulge and they never complained. She was making up for lost time, in their eyes, and deserved every comfort after what she had endured.

  We went out to the parking lot and climbed into Dad’s Mercedes, the car he didn’t even let Mom drive, and Sarah skillfully backed out and navigated us home, chirping about tomorrow’s match and how I needed to carbo-load at dinner. “I’ve got it!” She hit the steering wheel with her palms. “How about that Italian place that Mom loves so much?”

  “Palermo’s?”

  “Yeah, let’s do dinner there tonight—pasta, pasta, pasta. And bread—that’s what you need.”

  “It’s so fancy, and pricey,” I protested.

  She looked over at me, a small smile on her face. “How often does my little sister play a tennis tournament? Come on, I’ll ask Mom when we get home.”

  And I knew there was no way Mom would deny Sarah anything she wanted.

  I didn’t realize until the next day, when we parked at the club, that my nerves weren’t so much about the tournament but about running into Paula. I knew she had signed up in the older category, so seeing her was unavoidable. I had thought about pretending to be sick and skipping the whole thing, but Sarah was so crazy excited for me, I just couldn’t let her down.

  I checked the schedule as soon as we got in to see which court I’d be on, and scanned down the brackets for Paula’s name, but I didn’t see it listed anywhere. Maybe she had chickened out, or she was too embarrassed about the stupid things she had said and done to show up.

  I walked out for my first match full of confidence—the relief at not having to see Paula washed over me and I felt invincible on the court. I cleaned up easily, winning 6–1, and hardly broke a sweat.

  “I told you pasta was the thing!” Sarah grabbed me as soon as I stepped off the court and wrapped her arms around me. Mom and Dad looked on, smiling politely—I don’t think any of us had grown used to how much Sarah hugged and touched us all now.

  I went on to win in the afternoon as well, Sarah’s eyes glued to the courts with an intensity that would rival a personal coach at Wimbledon. This match was closer, 6–4, but I still managed to pull it off and get myself into the semifinals the following weekend.

  That night, as we celebrated at home, the dark cloud over my head began to lift. We didn’t have to see Paula or deal with her ever again, I knew that now. She would be heading back up to the university soon, would go on with her life and leave us alone. Once she got over Max dumping her, she would forget all about Sarah, would stop sending me stupid, vague emails. We could all go on with our lives and put Sarah’s years of disappearance behind us.

  I told myself that, and I really believed it. Until Monday morning, when the doorbell rang. Dad was already at work, Mom was at the gym with her trainer. I was upstairs getting into my bikini, so Sarah opened the door. I heard voices as I came down, men’s voices. I recognized Detective Donally as soon as I got to the foyer, wearing his full three-piece suit even in the blazing summer sun.

  “Hey there.” He looked over at me. “Just the girl we wanted to see.”

  “Our parents aren’t here right now,” Sarah said protectively.

  “Do you know when they’ll be home?” the detective asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Sarah answered fast. “Not until tonight.” That wasn’t true; Mom would be home within the hour.

  “Okay then, we’ll stop by later,” Detective Donally said. He squinted his eyes at me, as if studying my face. “You girls have a nice day.” Sarah closed and locked the door behind him, watching through the window as his unmarked Ford pulled out of our driveway.

  “What did they want?” I asked her quietly, watching over her shoulder.

  “He said they had some questions,” Sarah started to say, “for you.” She turned to me and I saw that her face had gone ashen white. “He said someone involved with the case had come forward with new information.”

  “Paula?” I asked, hearing my voice break on the syllables.

  “He didn’t say.” Sarah reached over and took both of my hands in hers. “Why do you think it’s Paula?”

  The emails. They had started two years ago. It wasn’t long after we had Azul over to the house, for her stupid psychic vision. So when I got an email from someone calling themselves “SarahsFriend,” I didn’t know who it could be, but I had my suspicions. The first message said: I saw you. That’s all. Just three words.

  Then, a week later, another message, from the same account, “SarahsFriend.” Again, just two words, but this time: I know.

  I saw you. I know.

  I deleted them, fast, pretending it never happened. Weeks went by, and no new emails. Then another one showed up, asking: Where is she?

  Then nothing for a while. I’m going to tell.

  I realized it could only be one person: Azul. Blackmailing me, or trying to. Shaking me down for cash—she had already taken $250 from my parents for nothing. The way she said “There is someone who isn’t telling you everything. . . .” Did she really have a vision, or was it just a hunch? She looked at me like she knew. Knew that I wasn’t telling. And I never would. Maybe she wasn’t such a bad psychic after all.

  It didn’t take me long to track her down. She worked part-time at some new age store one town over. I told my parents I would be late at school, working on the newspaper, and that Tessa’s mom would drive us home. Instead, I hopped a downtown bus after school. It took one more transfer and a long walk in the slush to reach the Healthy Mind Emporium. By the time I got there, it was already growing dark, the winter sun dipping below the roofs of the gray buildings.

  The door chimed with brass bells when I pulled it open, and I was hit in the face with a strong stink of incense. Maybe that’s why Azul smelled so funny—she spent all day in this place, her clothes and skin soaking it in.

  “I’d like to see Azul,” I told the blond guy behind the counter.

  “She’s with a client. Do you have an appointment?” he asked.

  “I’ll wait.” I walked around the shop, picking up different tarot decks and candles, looking at the prices as if I was really interested in them before putting them back down. Finally, an older lady came out from behind an
Indian print curtain and paid the guy at the register. When the bells at the door chimed her exit, I heard him say, “Miss? You can go back to see Azul now.”

  I pushed through the curtain into a dark hallway and saw Azul sitting in a small room at a table. She looked different, and it took me a moment to realize she had a scarf tied over her head, covering her wild hair. She was shuffling a deck of oversized cards as I walked in. “Hi there.” She looked up at me. “Are you here for a tarot card reading or a psychic reading?” She looked into my face as if she had never seen me before.

  I swallowed hard. “You know why I’m here,” I finally managed to say.

  She stopped shuffling for a moment and studied me with her brows furrowed, then she suddenly laughed. “Oh, I get it. A psychic joke! I should know why you are here. Hmmm, I would guess tarot reading.” She smiled innocently. “Am I right? Have a seat, sweetie.”

  I pulled out the chair opposite her and sat lightly, ready to jump up if I needed to escape. But the longer I looked at her, the more I realized she had no idea who I was.

  “Have you had your cards read before?” she asked, cutting the deck.

  “No.” I shook my head. “I mean, no, I don’t want a tarot reading. That’s not why I’m here.”

  Azul put her hands on the table. “Psychic reading?” she questioned. “How old are you, anyhow? If you’re not eighteen, a parent needs to be here with you.”

  “You came to my house,” I reminded her. “About my sister.”

  Still, Azul’s face was a blank.

  “You said you’d had a dream about her, a vision. Then you did this reading, you held her stuffed bear. . . .”

  “Oh right,” she said vaguely, as if trying to place me. “Uh-huh, and was that helpful to you?” She picked up the cards again, absentmindedly shuffling. “Is this a follow-up session?”

  “My sister has been missing for years. You said she was probably dead,” I pointed out.