Here We Lie. Paula DeBoard Treick

       OCTOBER 17, 2016

      Lauren

      It was raining, and I was going to be late.

      The press conference was scheduled for ten o’clock, and by the time I found a parking space in the cavernous garage, I had twenty minutes. I slipped once on the stairs, catching myself with a shocked hand on the sticky rail. Seventeen minutes.

      I followed a cameraman toting a giant boom over his shoulder, navigating a path through the crowds of the capitol. Thank goodness I was wearing tennis shoes. I passed a group of schoolchildren on the steps, prim in their navy blazers and white button-down shirts. Their teacher’s question echoed off the concrete. “Who can tell me what it means that we have a separation and balance of powers?”

      Only one hand shot into the air.

      Balance of power, I thought. A good lesson for today.

      I glanced at the display on my cell phone and quickened my pace, taking the rest of the steps two at a time. Twelve minutes.

      * * *

      I set my shoulder bag on the conveyer belt at the security checkpoint and watched as a bored guard picked through it with a gloved hand—wallet, cell phone, tube of hand lotion I’d forgotten about, an envelope with twenty-five dollars for the giving tree that should have been turned in to Emma’s teacher that morning. Shit. Annoyed, the guard removed a water bottle, waving the offending item in front of my face before tossing it into the trash container at his feet. His eyes flicked over me, already disinterested, already moving on to the next threat, which was apparently not a suburban mom in her stretchy pants.

      I followed a directional sign for the press conference and hurried down hallways and around corners before arriving outside the door, where another line had formed. A woman at the front, officious in a burgundy blazer, was checking press credentials. My heart pounded. Each time one of the double doors swung open, I caught a glimpse of the people collected there, accompanied by their cameras and cords and laptops and phones.

      Then I was at the front of the line, and the woman in the blazer was blocking my entry, shoulder pads increasing her bulk. “Show your credentials, please.”

      I reached in my purse for my wallet. “I don’t have—”

      “I can’t let anyone in without appropriate credentials,” the woman said, more loudly than necessary. She was a head shorter than me, but her voice carried enough authority to make up for it.

      “I’m not a member of the press, but I have to get in there,” I pleaded. I flipped my wallet open to a picture of my face—my name, address, vital statistics. Behind my Rhode Island license was my old one, a Connecticut ID with my younger face, my maiden name.

      She frowned at me, waving two others past, identification badges hanging from their necks. “Ma’am, I have to ask you to step to the side. This conference isn’t open to the general public.”

      I gestured again with my open wallet, pointing desperately to my name. “I’m family,” I said finally, catching the attention of those waiting behind me. I could feel their ears perk up, the unsubtle uptick of their interest. Did she say she was family?

      Finally, this got me her attention, in the form of slow blink and unabashed pity. “Go,” she hissed, and I darted past before she could change her mind.

      * * *

      I stayed close to the back wall, trying to find a vantage point but at the same time be invisible. At the front of the room was a podium with a microphone, and off to the side was the Connecticut state flag, its baroque shield visible on a blue background. A woman was at the microphone, saying Megan’s name.

      And then she was on the stage, instantly recognizable despite the years between us. I gasped, catching the back of a folding chair for balance. She was more polished than I remembered, but then, she used to wear oversize sweatshirts and thrift store jeans, which either fit her waist or her inseam, but never both at once. She had been a teenager then, brash and funny and lovable and so different from me. The person at the microphone, of course, was thirty-five.

      Still, I remembered her in our shoebox of a dorm room, drinking from my contraband bottle of schnapps.

      I remembered her on our bike rides, the sun so bright on her hair that it looked like her head might, at any moment, burst into flame.

      I remembered her that New Year’s Eve, wearing a borrowed dress, her feet wedged into my too-tight shoes.

      And I remembered her as she’d looked that last night, sitting on the edge of my bed, hugging her arms to her chest.

      Her voice now was shaky at first, as if from underuse. “I’m here today to right an old wrong,” she began. Camera shutters clicked, and she blinked away the flashes that momentarily blinded her. “I’m here today to tell you what happened to me fourteen years ago, and why, for far too long, I’ve kept silent.”

      It was too much all of a sudden, and I bent down, hands on my knees, struggling for breath like a kid beaned in the stomach with a playground ball. Fourteen years. That was a long time to live a lie.