The Lies I Tell

Meg’s prowess as a con artist deeply contrasts with Kat’s naivete in this section, and this contrast is conveyed through dramatic beats paired with figurative language.

This section begins with another step back in time to when Meg pulled off one of her many other infamous cons. It starts with her seeing a mother complaining on social media about how horrible her soon-to-be ex-husband is making her life and how he’s not looking out for his children. Meg immediately latches onto this and does her own investigating. Most people might feel sympathy and scroll on, but Meg isn’t most people. Meg believes in Girl Code to an extreme degree. She has devoted her adult life to the art of the con and seeks to bring justice to the men who have used the system to disenfranchise others. Of course, Meg, in her usual fashion, uses The Ignorance of the Rich and Powerful to pull off this scheme. But her path to success isn’t easy or straightforward. She has carefully mapped and researched everything, and still, she must tread carefully:

There can never be any question you aren’t who you say you are. And it doesn’t matter what backstory you build for yourself. If the visual details don’t match, it’s like an out-of-tune piano. Hit a wrong note enough times and people are eventually going to notice (182).

Using a simile to illustrate the nature of her work, Meg demonstrates how delicate a process this is and how it is an art to effectively con people by maintaining their trust. This is precisely how Meg figures out Kat is lying as well: the small details. Kat’s car and clothes don’t match the story she tells, and those off-key notes make Meg realize quickly that Kat is lying about who she is. The choice of a piano for the comparison is important because tuning a piano is both an art and a science, and like Meg, anyone can hit a piano key; anyone can lie about who they are. But to do it effectively and convince others like Meg, it takes years of grueling practice and hard-won skill through life experiences that makes a person able to play the part of someone else so well.

Similarly, Clark uses figurative language to depict Kat’s naivete, with sentences like, “My breath hitches in my chest as my eyes scan the list, the familiar names of gambling sites that have haunted my dreams and my darker moments lining up to reveal how well Scott lied” (221). The choice of words with a negative connotation, like “hitch,” “haunted,” and “darker,” paired with the personification of Kat’s dreams, demonstrates how impactful this moment is on Kat. She ignores her intuition so much that she lets herself fall into a bad situation. She chooses to be naive and prioritize her preferred view of the world, rather than to see what is in front of her: that Scott is lying and Meg is right.

This juxtaposition of Meg and Kat through figurative language sets the stage for the next section when they begin to experience a role change as they move forward on their arcs.