The Last Time We Say Goodbye (17 page)

ON MONDAY, SADIE SHOWS UP
at my back door before school. Just like when we were eight years old, when she'd stand on the steps and tap on the glass sliding door, like
Can Lexie come out to play?
until Mom heard her and let her in.

“Lex!” Mom calls down the hall. “You have a visitor.”

I come running.

“Think fast.” Sadie throws me a Pop-Tart, cherry, my favorite—she still remembers my favorite. “Breakfast is served,” she says.

I glance over at Mom to see if she's offended by the notion that Sadie apparently believes she has to feed me, but Mom is leaning against the kitchen doorway smiling the nostalgia smile.

“I thought we'd wait for the bus together,” Sadie says cheerfully, even though I know she doesn't typically ride the bus. “Two freezing ass—backsides are better than one, I always say.”

“Indeed,” I say.

Mom laughs in that muted way she has now of just breathing out her nose. “It's good to see you again, Sadie. How are you?”

“I'm stellar, thanks,” Sadie answers. “What's going on with you?”

It's an awkward question these days, but better than “How are you?,” which we can never answer truthfully, and Sadie asks it in a completely casual tone. Mom doesn't lose the smile.

“Lex got into MIT, did she tell you?”

Sadie swings her gaze to me. Blank face.

“Massachusetts Institute of Technology,” I explain, my cheeks heating.

Mom puffs. “It's the best mathematics program in the country.”

Sadie gives a low whistle. “Congrats, Lex. Wow.”

I stare at my sneakers. “Thanks.”

“She's going to do amazing things,” Mom says.

Sadie nods. “No doubt.”

This is getting to be too much. “Come on.” I grab my backpack in one hand and readjust my grip on the Pop-Tart with the other and lunge for the door. “We have to go if we don't want to miss the bus.”

“You girls have a good day at school,” Mom calls as Sadie follows me out.

Like we are eight years old again.

“Your mom hasn't changed much,” Sadie comments as we stand waiting.

It's funny, her saying that.

My mom has changed so much since Sadie and I were best friends.

I have changed so much.

But every now and then it's like we're allowed to act like our old selves. It comes back. If only for a moment.

“I gave the letter to Ashley,” I confess to Sadie when we're sitting in the front seat of the bus, the heater blowing loud and hot across our knees.

“Whoa,” Sadie says. “What made you decide to finally do it? Last time I saw you—”

“I talked to her,” I say before she recounts her own rendition of the Ashley-kisses-Grayson debacle. “She told me her side. Ty dumped her, not the other way around. Apparently he didn't even give her a reason. So I thought the letter might provide some explanation.”

“You still didn't read it.”

I shake my head.

“God,” Sadie says. “You and the iron self-control.”

We don't talk for a while. Sadie plugs some earbuds into her phone and I do the same with mine. Sadie's music choice: rap, by the sound of it. Mine: Rachmaninoff. We cruise along through the endless white cornfields. Then Sadie pulls one bud out and turns to me.

“So, Massachusetts,” she says. “That's a long way.”

“Yes. It is.”

“It's good news, though, right?”

“Right. But it's going to be hard, leaving my mom.”

“She's not going with you?”

I frown at her, boggled by the idea. “You don't usually bring your parents to college with you, Sade. That would be weird.”

Sadie gives me a half smile. “I'll look after her, if you want.”

“What are you going to do after graduation?”

She shrugs. “Find a job.”

“You're not planning on college?”

“School's not really my thing.” She grimaces like the idea of college is physically painful.

“You're smart, though, Sadie,” I argue.

She looks startled.

“You are,” I insist. “You should go to college.”

She sits back, surprised and pleased, and stares out the window for a while.

“I'm not smart like you are,” she says.

“Well.” I hold up my hands. “Nobody's smart like I am. Obviously.”

She grins. “Right. You're MIT material.”

“I'm MIT material,” I agree, and it feels good, that someone else knows.

We go back to listening to our respective music for a while. Sadie's head bobs. I close my eyes and try to get lost in the Piano Concerto no. 2.

Sadie taps on my arm. I pull out my earbud.

“You were brave, giving the letter to Ashley.” Her black-ringed blue eyes, so close to mine, are earnest, admiring. “That took guts.”

“It took forever before I actually did something about it,” I say.

“True, but you did something.”

True.

“And now Ty can move on,” she says, lowering her voice when she says his name so people don't hear. “He can be at peace now.”

I don't know whether or not to believe her. But, for once, I hope she's right.

“Yeah,” I say. “Maybe now things will start to get back to normal.”

When we get to school, it's immediately apparent that something's wrong. It's too quiet. Students are standing in groups, whispering, the boys with their heads down, the girls looking tearful. Even the teachers are somber as they shuffle toward their classrooms.

Something has happened.

I don't like the way people are looking at me. There's a new awareness in their stares, which burns me before they turn away and go back to their hushed conversations. Something has happened that involves me in some way.

My brain goes straight to the letter for Ashley. It must have had something to do with me, and she must be telling people about it.

I knew I should have read the dumb letter. Why didn't I read the dumb letter?

I spot Damian standing by the door to the counselor's office. He's crying. He sees me, and he starts crying harder.

My heart is ice as I approach him.

“Hey,” I rasp nervously. “Are you okay? What's going on?”

“Patrick Murphy is dead,” he chokes out. “He was a sophomore. He was my friend. He was—”

I know who Patrick Murphy is. One of the three amigos.

“How?” I ask, but part of me already knows the answer.

“He killed himself.” He wipes a fat tear that rolls down his chin and gives me a look that's pure despair. “At the train yard, about an hour ago.”

My vision goes white. I lean against the wall and wait for the color to return. When it does, I'm so angry my hands are shaking. I know it's inappropriate and completely selfish, but at that moment, I'm furious at Patrick. Not for doing something so stupid as dying. Not that. But for the way I know my mother's face is going to look when she hears the news. I'm mad at the way, just five minutes ago, I'd finally felt like I had the ground under my feet for the first time since Ty died.

And now this.

Damian goes back to crying, hard, like he doesn't care who's watching, his thin shoulders racked by sobs.

I think, if I put my hand out and touch him on the shoulder, will it make it better or worse for him?

I think, if I put my hand out and touch his shoulder, will I be able to hold it together myself?

I think, no.

“I'm sorry,” I murmur. I don't know if he hears me.

Then I back away.

There are so many people crying. I walk among them like a zombie. I think, I have to keep moving. I have a big German test
later. I have to keep my grades up for MIT. I have to pass with flying colors. I have to keep going.

But the ground is flying out from under me.

Something roars in my head. I hate everything, in this moment. I hate the world. I hate life.

Ty.

Now Patrick.

Another boy dead.

SOMEHOW, I'M NOT EVEN SURE EXACTLY HOW
, I get through the rest of the day. I ride home. I make my way silently up the driveway and into my house. I take off my shoes and coat and set my backpack by the door. I pad down the hall into Mom's bedroom, through the room, into her bathroom. I open her bathroom cabinet and take down her bottle of prescription Valium.

If this were
Brave New World
, I'd take the stupid soma.

I wonder if Mom knows yet. My heart squeezes at the thought. For a minute I'm struck with a childlike desire to have her hold me and stroke my hair and tell me everything will be all right. I'm upset, and I want my mother to comfort me. That's what mothers do. But with this news about Patrick, I suspect it's going to be the other way around.

She's going to need me.

I need to keep it together.

“We must learn to deal with the facts,” I whisper. I look at the single bright pill in my hand for a minute, and then I put it in my mouth and lean over the faucet to swallow it down.

I go to my room and curl up on my bed.

0.

1.

1.

2.

3.

5.

8.

13.

21.

34.

55.

89.

144.

233.

377.

610.

987.

1,597.

2,584.

4,181.

6,765.

10,946.

17,711.

28,657.

46,368.

75,025.

121,393.

196,418.

317,811.

514,229.

832,040.

1,346,269.

2,178,309.

3,524,578.

5,702,887.

9,227,465.

14,930,352.

24,157,817.

39,088,169.

My head goes fuzzy. I imagine the Valium doing its work inside me, binding to the receptors in my brain. I can feel myself sliding, sliding, off to the gray space. To sleep.

I don't dream about anything at all.

Here's my last real memory of Patrick Murphy: the day I caught Ty and his friends smoking in the playhouse.

They were 12.

Oh, yeah. They were busted big time.

Building stuff was one of Dad's temporary hobbies when I was about 9. It started when he decided to construct a custom doghouse for our dog, Sunny. He spent about two weeks on it in careful construction, nailing and sanding and laying real roof tiles on the top to keep the weather out. He even painted it to match our house: green, with white trim.

Sunny hated it. She much preferred the family-room sofa.

It didn't matter. Dad was so pleased with how the doghouse turned out that he decided to try his hand at something bigger. A playhouse. He went to Toys “R” Us to study the pictures of the thousand-dollar playhouses they sold and came home with a solemn promise to Ty and me
that he would build us the best playhouse this side of the Mississippi—not some roughshod half-plastic monstrosity that would only look good for a summer or two, he said. Something solid.

Something that would last.

He enlisted the help of Aunt Jessica, who's an architect in Missouri. She drew up the blueprints for a 500-square-foot, one-and-a-half-story playhouse, which was basically a square little room with a ladder and a loft.

Dad bought the materials. He laid a set of pretreated railroad ties as the foundation for the structure, in case we ever sold our house and wanted to move the playhouse, he said. He dug a 30-foot-long trench between the house and the far corner of the backyard, so he could run electricity to our playhouse. So we could have lights.

It was a big freaking deal.

Dad built the frame first, then the roof. He put real insulation in the walls, to keep it warm in the winter and cool in summer. Ty and I wrote our names on the inside of one wall before Dad sealed it up with drywall and painted. He installed real glass windows that opened and closed, complete with screens to keep the bugs out, and a real full-sized front door with a little window in it. Then he set down a layer of cheap black-and-white-checkered linoleum on the main floor, and green carpet in the loft. The outside he painted to match our house, too. Green with white trim. Topped off with a tiny front porch with a porch light and everything.

Mom sewed some curtains for the windows. She bought a large play kitchen set from a garage sale in Lincoln: a toy refrigerator, stove, and sink, with storage where I could keep my food play dough molds, my plastic dishes and cups, and my tea set. She even splurged on a
child-sized wooden table and chairs.

Suddenly all the neighborhood kids wanted to come to our house to play.

Sadie and I practically lived in the playhouse from ages 9 to 12, our sleeping bags always ready to roll out in the loft. The green carpet became grass for our My Little Ponies and Barbie's front lawn, and the light blue walls were the sky, and we stuck glow-in-the-dark stars to the sloped ceiling.

It was our own private world.

I feel I must guiltily confess that it wasn't Ty's own private world, not until Sadie and I lost interest, which took a few years. Then, after dollies and Barbies and playing at being grown-ups lost their sparkle, the playhouse passed to Ty.

So. That time with Patrick. Mom sent me out to the playhouse to bring Ty, Damian, and Patrick in for dinner. I knew there was something going down the minute I came through the door and heard all this scrambling up in the loft.

I smelled the cigarettes right away. I mean, they hadn't even opened the windows.

“Hey, you guys,” I said cheerfully. “What are you doing?”

I climbed halfway up the ladder and stuck my head into the loft. The boys all looked at me with wide, innocent eyes.

“Nothing,” Ty said. He gestured to Dad's old boom box, which was playing “Stairway to Heaven.” “We're just chilling.”

I looked at Damian and Patrick. Damian looked the same as he does now: thin and birdlike, his clothes hanging off him in various shades of muted colors, gray eyes wary like any second he expected
somebody to attack him. Patrick was one of those kids who had orange hair like a sweet potato and white, white skin with freckles all over. His face was bright red.

“Are you okay, Patrick?” I asked.

He started coughing. The minute he opened his mouth a puff of cigarette smoke came out. He coughed and coughed and coughed.

I looked down for a minute. “Hmm,” I said. Sigh. “Okay, boys. Hand them over.”

Ty's face was a little green. He started to say, “Hand what over?” but I gave him a look that said he didn't want to mess with me. Ty brought his hands out from behind his back and produced their hastily stubbed-out cigarettes. They'd put them out on a piece of my porcelain tea set, the thoughtful little sweethearts.

At least it's not pot, I thought. I stared at the plate, then rolled my eyes. “Where's the rest?”

“The rest?” squeaked Damian.

“The pack. Where is it?”

They exchanged glances and then decided there was no getting past me. Ty opened up the My Little Pony Dream Castle, where he'd stuffed the pack of Virginia Slims.

I choked back a laugh. “Where did you get these?”

Silence.

“Tell me or I tell the grown-ups.”

“I swiped them from my mom's purse,” Damian confessed.

I rubbed my eyes. Sighed again. “You guys. Wow.”

“Please don't tell,” pleaded Patrick, almost in tears. “My dad would be so mad.”

“You know why he would be mad?” I asked. “Because only morons smoke cigarettes.” I looked at Damian. “Sorry, Damian, but your mom's a moron.”

He didn't argue.

I held up the Virginia Slims pack. “These kill you. It's slow so you don't really notice, but they will kill you. They also make your breath smell bad and turn your teeth yellow and wreck your voice and stain your fingers and empty your wallet and about a hundred other terrible things.”

“We were trying it out once,” Ty said. “We weren't going to start smoking or anything.”

“The girls at school think it's cool,” Patrick said defensively.

“Right. The girls in your middle school. Whose center of the universe right now is the fricking Rainbow Loom. I'll tell you what, I would never, ever kiss a guy who smoked. Uck.” Not that I would ever kiss a guy period, I thought wistfully. This was a few months before the infamous Nathan Thaddeus Dillinger II.

Damian and Patrick looked thoughtful.

“So are you going to tell Mom?” Ty asked.

I thought about it for like 2 seconds. “No. But only if you guys promise me you'll never do something this moronic again.”

“We promise,” they said immediately.

I made them pinky swear. The most solemn oath.

“Lexie?” Mom yelled from the back porch. “Boys?”

I turned to the 3 amigos. “Here's what you're going to do. You're going to go straight into the house and say I told you to wash your disgusting boy hands. Which you will do. Then we have to do something about your breath.”

“We could use Dad's mouthwash,” Ty suggested.

“Too obvious. I'll bring by a box of Tic Tacs while you're in there. You'll come out and have dinner, yum yum yum, and then Damian, you're going to go home and tell your mom you stole her cigarettes, and give them back.”

Damian's face went pale. “What?”

“You're going to tell her you stole her cigarettes because cigarettes kill people, and you don't want her to die. She'll forgive you if you put it like that. Okay? Got it? Do we understand the plan?”

3 nods.

I marched them down the ladder and out of the playhouse.

“You have like the best sister ever,” I heard Patrick say to Ty as we crossed the yard.

“She's all right.”

And that's the last thing I remember about Patrick. Saying I was the best sister.

Wishing that he had a big sister like me.