Sometimes I Lie

It is New Year’s Eve, and Amber has been in a coma for nearly a week. She is happy when Jo from work visits. Jo cannot understand why Amber quit her work at the studio after the Christmas party. Amber, to herself, explains mysteriously that she only took the job six months ago to hurt Madeline. Amber, suspended in the half-world of her coma, now sees the little girl in the pink dress. The girl departs with Jo.

Amber then feels the presence of someone in the room. Her intuition warns her it is Edward, but Claire comes in and, failing to recognize Edward, treats him as if he were a doctor before Edward abruptly departs. Amber then has a moment of recollection about Christmas: She is bleeding, and Claire is there with her. She remembers driving Paul’s car home and finding Paul in the driveway, standing in the rain. She is aware that the little girl in the pink dress is standing next to her, crying. Even as she reels in her sudden memories, Paul fusses about the hospital room and pops open a bottle of champagne to toast the approaching new year. He whispers to her that he will never give up believing she will recover. To that end, he tells her that he has placed a motion-sensitive camera in the room in the hopes of recording any movement she might make when she is alone. When Paul leaves for the night, Amber feels a presence slip into her room. She feels her hair being stroked, then her chin, her lips, and then her breasts. A man’s voice whispers to her that he knows how to feed her the right combination of IV medication to keep her in a coma for as long as he wants. Amber feels the man slide his fingers under her hospital gown and stroke her thighs. Amber feels him climb on top of her and then feels him slide into her. She can do nothing. When he is finished, he pokes his fingers between her legs and then puts them into Amber’s mouth: “Taste that? That’s us” (213). She struggles to lift her arms in protest. For a moment, she thinks she actually sees the outline of her raised hand before she collapses into the dark, hearing somebody say, “She’s crashing” (215).

Amber reveals that Claire is not actually her sister, but rather a friend of hers, her only friend when she was growing up. She also reveals that Taylor was actually the name Claire called her because Amber never liked the name Amber and wanted to go by her middle name. She recalls when Claire’s family was moving and remembers inviting Claire to her house for a farewell sleepover. It is Christmas time and the house is decorated. Amber remembers waking up during the night with Claire standing over her with a backpack. Claire whispers mysteriously that she promises to protect Amber, and Amber smells smoke. Claire opened the gas burner on the stove in the kitchen. Claire tells Amber they need to get out of the house. On the way out through the kitchen, Claire tosses a handful of matches on the glowing burner. The two barely get across the street when there is an explosion and the house erupts in flames. Amber’s parents are dead. Claire, she admits, “killed them for me” (199).

Christmas Eve, the day before the accident, Amber goes shopping with Claire. Amber feels certain that she is pregnant but has not told Paul. She wants to wait for the right moment. Claire mentions Edward and cautions Amber about getting involved with him as he was something of a nuisance stalker before they broke up. In fact, Claire admits that when she became alarmed over Edward’s creepy persistence 10 years ago, she authored a series of letters, each written in a different style and each signed by different women, accusing Edward of sexual harassment. She sent them to the university medical school where Edward was studying. The university summarily expelled Edward. Claire sought him out and told him about the letters but said they had all been from Amber. Amber is shocked. She needs a drink. Over drinks, Amber tells Claire that she took care of Madeline, that she did what Claire wanted, and that now Claire needs to leave Paul alone. That, she says, was their deal.

Shaken, Amber returns to an empty house. Paul has put out all the Christmas decorations, and the house is festive, but she finds the oven burner left on, noting, “Something is wrong” (187). She finds Edward sitting on the sofa. She threatens to call the police, but Edward snarls angrily that everything they did she wanted to happen and that he has photos on his phone of her in his bed. She tries to run, but Edward grabs her, slaps her, and tries to choke her. She begs him to leave her alone, saying that she is pregnant. Only Paul’s unexpected arrival stops Edward—he steals out the back door certain that Amber will say nothing about his visit. Paul, for his part, tells her that when he was in the attic to fetch the decorations he came upon a box with diaries from Amber’s childhood. He presumes they are Amber’s. He thought it might be fun to read passages. Amber, suddenly panicky, declines the offer and heads to the bath. When she comes back downstairs, Paul has lit a romantic fire in the fireplace, but he quickly realizes the fire on Christmas Eve might trigger bad memories. Amber, for her part, says nothing about their baby but rather stares absently into the fire. When Paul teasingly pulls out a diary from 1992 to read parts, Amber tells him the diaries are actually Claire’s.

In the diary passages in this section, Claire writes that as Christmas approaches, the family is selling her grandmother’s house and that strangers are walking through the home and making insensitive remarks about the condition of the rooms. It is too much for Claire, who throws a fit and even aims the lead doorstop at a couple looking at the house. She arranges to meet Taylor/Amber at a nearby park, where Amber/Taylor assures Claire that she has made no new friends since Claire was expelled; she has made up an imaginary friend she calls Jo, and she tells Claire if she ever needs a friend to talk to, she can “borrow” Jo. Four days before Christmas, their money starting to run out, Claire’s father tells her that he has found a job in Wales and that packing up the house has become the first priority. Wales seems like a different planet. Angry, Claire takes scissors into the bathroom and cuts off most of her luxurious hair, leaving only a bob, like Amber/Taylor’s.

Three days later, on Christmas Eve, Claire invites Amber/Taylor to the house for a final sleepover. Her father comes home drunk and is passed out; her mother, still grieving the lost baby, has taken sleeping pills. The girls are on their own. Claire does not want to move to Wales. When Amber/Taylor falls asleep, Claire packs a backpack with her diaries and tiptoes down to the kitchen with a handful of matches she stole from the school’s science lab. Although no account of the fire is given, the following week Claire attends her parents’ funeral services. A social worker tells Claire that her only living relative, her Nana’s sister Aunt Madeline, refuses to take her in. After a dramatic, tearful performance as a helpless orphan, Claire is placed with Amber/Taylor’s family.