The Last Time We Say Goodbye (22 page)

“Nope.” She picks at a hole in the knee of her jeans. “Gregory, she said his name was. He was a monk who died in the twelfth century.”

I stare at her, completely baffled. “What?”

Sadie laughs at my expression. “Madam Penny said he was my spirit guide. He was there to direct me on my soul path. We each have an invisible helper in this life, she said, someone to lead us and help us along our way.”

“If that's the case, then my spirit guide is fired,” I say.

“I know, right?”

“So . . . did you get to talk to your dad?” I ask, but I can already see the answer coming.

She looks off down the street for a few seconds before she answers. “No. She went on about this Gregory person for twenty minutes, and then I tried to get her to look at the watch and she started telling me about my grandfather, who died when I was two so I wouldn't have known him from Adam, and then she babbled on about a great lover I had in a past life, a guy in a bomber jacket who fought in the Second World War, who loved me like the moon and stars, I remember she said. He wanted to send me a message of love and forgiveness, she kept saying. Love and forgiveness. Forgiveness and loooooove. And then my time was up.”

It's quiet. Then Sadie finally says, “So it was a huge waste of money.”

I try to keep it positive. “Hey, but it was entertaining.”

“Right. It was a real barrel of laughs.”

“I'm sorry. That sucks.”

She shakes her head. “I was naive. God. A hundred dollars. It kills me to think about all the stuff I could have bought with a hundred dollars back then.”

“It was an experiment,” I say. “You went in with an open mind.”

“I really thought my dad would talk to me,” she says. “I thought I would get all the answers.”

She sniffles, and that's when I realize she's crying. It's been two years and she's still so disappointed that she didn't get to speak to her dad that the thought brings her to tears.

I envy her for that.

I reach into my backpack to find a pack of tissues, which I carry around on the off chance that one of these days my tear ducts will start working again and then I'll cry a fricking river. I hand her one. “But you still watch
Long Island Medium
,” I point out as she takes it and dabs at her eyes. “You're still a believer, right?”

“Yeah, well, I prefer to think that Madam Penny was flawed.”

“Seriously, seriously flawed,” I agree.

“I was so pissed. I egged her house later,” Sadie confesses.

My mouth falls open. Then we both start snickering. Then outright laughing.

“You really are a delinquent,” I observe when our laughter fades. “Wow. What did she look like? Was she all dark and mysterious and gypsy-like?”

Sadie thinks for a minute. “She looked like a cross between my
grandma and Betty White. I remember she was wearing a sweater with Christmas trees sewn on the front.” She blows her nose. Sighs. “Shit. I came here to cheer you up, not the other way around.”

“You did cheer me up,” I say. Which is true.

She bumps her shoulder into mine. “You're a good friend, Lex.”

No, I'm not, I think. “You're a good friend, too,” I answer. “I'm glad you saw me running that night. I'm glad you took the time to figure out why.”

“Hey, I was serious when I said we should start running together again,” she says. “Just as soon as the weather warms up. You and me. Jogging.”

“Don't push your luck,” I say.

She smiles, the traces of tears still silver on her cheeks.

IT'S FUNNY HOW SOMETIMES YOU DON'T SEE
the obvious things coming. You think you know what life has in store for you. You think you're prepared. You think you can handle it. And then—
boom
, like a thunderclap—something comes at you out of nowhere and catches you off guard. Like on Wednesday, when Ashley Davenport ambushes me before first period.

She's there on the other side of my locker door when I close it. I jump a mile.

“Hi,” she says.

She's dyed her hair again, a deep, glossy brown this time. It suits her, makes her face all about her huge blue eyes, which are focused on me like laser beams. Concerned. Determined.

“I've been hoping to catch you.”

“Um—okay?”

“I saw you at Patrick's wake,” she says, her voice hoarse like she has a cold.

She doesn't offer me any other explanation. She simply takes off her backpack and puts it on the floor and pulls out a familiar, tattered envelope.

For Ashley,
it reads.

“I think you should read this,” she says.

“Oh” is all I can think to say. I'm frozen. I don't really understand what's happening here. I thought that envelope was gone for good, that I'd never know what was in it, but here she is offering the letter, like what he had to tell her concerns me, somehow.

I swallow, hard. The text. The text.

“Do you want to go somewhere else? Like the library?” she asks.

“But don't you have class?”

The bell rings. She shrugs and smiles faintly. “I can be late.”

We go to the library. No one bothers us as we make our way to the lonely corner behind the stack, where Ashley holds out the letter.

My hands tremble as I take it.

“I want it back. So I'll be over there.” She tilts her head to indicate the study tables in the center of the library. “Take as much time as you want.”

Then it's just me and the letter.

I slide it out of its envelope. The paper crackles as I unfold it.

It's dated December 10. Ten days before Ty died.

I take a shaky breath and slide myself down against the corner, draw my knees up to my chest, and I read.

My chest feels like it's in a vise, tightening, tightening. I brush my fingers over the words, Ty's words in Ty's messy print, and over the stains on the paper where Ashley's tears must have dropped when she read it. I read the letter again. And again. I try to memorize every word.

I sit there for a long time.

The bell for second period rings. The library stirs as if, up till now, time has been stopped, but it's going again. I find Ashley at the back table. When she looks up at me, her face wrinkles up like she's going to cry, but she contains it.

I hand her back the letter.

“Thank you for letting me read this.”

“He was wrong, though.” Her voice breaks. “I'm not perfect. I have dark days, too.” She wipes a tear off her pale cheek. “I could have helped him, if he would have let me. If he'd just given me the letter himself.”

“I'm sorry,” I say.

She looks up with shining eyes. “No. Thank you, for giving it to me when you did.”

I can't talk. I nod. She nods.

Then we both have to move on.

In the last photograph ever taken of Ty and Dad together, from back when we were still a family, they're playing chess.

June 24 is the date my mom scrawled on the back of the photo. The summer I was 14 and Ty was 12. The year before Dad traded us for Megan.

I remember that day.

There was a tornado—an F4 on the Fujita scale, and if you speak the tornado lingo, which pretty much everybody in Nebraska does, you'll know that's not the most powerful tornado (the F5 is), but it's still big enough to take out a town like Raymond. When the sirens started going off, the twister had formed 20 miles north of us. The sky turned green. Mom herded us all into the basement to wait out the storm.

We watched the news for a while on television, where a map of the area kept showing the tornado hovering above us, a swirling cartoon cyclone slowly moving in our direction.

Then Dad suggested a game of chess.

He'd been through his chess obsession a couple years before and hadn't played since. But there in the basement den was the beautiful mahogany board he'd purchased back then, and the marble pieces, and what else was there to do while we waited?

I played first. I lost. Spectacularly, if I remember correctly. In spite of my math affinity I'm not much good at chess. I'm shortsighted; I can't predict that far ahead, to the other player's choices and moves. I only see the pieces in front of me and react.

I wasn't surprised when I lost. I'd never won against Dad. He's not the type to let his kids win just so they'll feel good about themselves. In his chess phase I must have lost a hundred games to him, and every time he'd take my king, he'd say, “Well played, Lexie. You're getting better. One of these days you're going to beat me.”

But I never did.

So on June 24, when I was 14 and stuck in the basement with my family and a chessboard, I played, and I lost. I stuck out my tongue at Dad, and he chuckled at me, and then he said, “Tyler. You're up.”

Ty took his place on his side of the board with the look of an excited puppy.

Oh boy, I remember thinking. This is going to be quick.

But almost right away he made a move that surprised Dad.

“Where'd you learn that?” Dad asked, squinting down at the board.

Ty shrugged. “Is it a bad move?”

“No,” Dad said distractedly. “No, that was an excellent move. There's a name for it, even, if I can just remember it.”

Before long Ty made another excellent move. And another. And another.

Before long he was clearly winning the game.

Then we had to stop for a bit when the sky went black. The lights flicked out. We all went into the bathroom with candles, where the pipes would provide some extra protection if the wind ripped the top of the house away. Ty and I got into the empty bathtub with the emergency radio. Dad sat on the counter with his arm around Mom.

“The Caro-Kann Defense,” he said after a minute. “That's it.”

Yep, we were possibly about to die, and Dad was still marveling at Ty's chess moves.

I looked at Ty. He had a secret smile.

We didn't have to stay in the bathroom long.

The tornado skimmed by Raymond and carried on to the east, where it took out a whole string of farms before it dissipated, and we could come out of the bathroom.

Ty and Dad went right back to their game. Mom and I sat on either side of them, holding up candles to light the board, and watched it all go down, a rapt audience as Ty moved around the board like a pro. The whole time Dad looked so confused. I mean, Ty was 12 years old. When Dad had gone through his chess phase before, Ty had been like 10. He hadn't even really grasped the rules of chess.

“How are you doing this?” Dad asked finally when Ty took his queen.

“I've been playing a little on the computer,” Ty confessed. He sat back. “Checkmate.”

Mom and I crowed. “Oh, how the mighty have fallen,” Mom said,
and I think she got a little too much satisfaction out of Ty winning, because she also had lost a hundred games to Dad.

“I have to get a picture,” she said. So that's when the photo happened.

In the picture, Ty has just won the game and he's practically glowing, he's so happy. Dad is looking down, beaten, but he is smiling, too.

He was proud.

“Well done, son,” he said. He clapped his hand on Ty's shoulder and squeezed. “Want to go again?”

Ty shook his head. “I better quit while I'm ahead.”

The power came back on. We all blinked in the sudden brightness of the room. Ty grinned over at Dad. “I have this new game on the Wii. Tennis. Do you want to try to beat me there? Loser buys McDonald's?”

“Sure,” Dad said. “You bet.”

Sucker.

It was a good day. A good memory.

I don't want to be the kind of person who hates my dad.