The Last Time We Say Goodbye (28 page)

WHEN I COME OUT OF DAMIAN'S HOUSE
, Seth is sitting on the porch steps smoking a cigarette.

“Is everything all right with the kid?” he asks.

“Yeah. He's going to be okay.”

“Good,” he says with genuine relief. “I was about to come in and get you. I have to go. I'm late for work.”

“You should go,” I tell him.

“You going to need a ride anywhere?”

I clutch my backpack to my chest. “I can get a ride. Thank you, Seth. Really. Thank you.”

“No sweat.” He takes a long drag. “I'll call you if I ever need to pick a lock. Damn.”

I laugh and take the cigarette out of his mouth and step on it.

“What the hell?”

“I'm trying to keep everyone from killing themselves today,” I explain.

He snorts and gives me a half-irritated smirk. Then he gets on the motorcycle, puts his helmet on, and starts up Georgia with a roar. I wave as he speeds away.

I can't believe I rode that thing.

I get out my cell. Mom won't be off work for another hour. I take a deep breath and dial another number.

“Hey, Dad,” I say when he answers. “Can you come get me? Everything's okay—I'm fine, but I need a ride.”

Dad pulls up to Steven's house and puts the car in park. We both peer out from the windshield for a minute. The Blakes' house is a white two-story farmhouse with a big wraparound porch, like a well-maintained and well-loved version of Damian's house. All the lights are on. The windows are bright, and the house looks warm.

Steven is lucky to live in that house, with his mom and his dad and his sisters, all under that roof.

I try very hard not to resent him for that.

I ring the bell. Sarah answers. I can tell by the look on her face that she's not sure what she thinks of me being here right now.

“Is Steven home?” I ask.

She pushes the door open and steps aside to allow me to come in. “Steven!” she yells as she stalks off. “Someone to see you.”

My heart starts going fast when he appears at the end of the hall. For roughly 2.5 seconds I almost chicken out.

“Hi,” he says softly. “How's Damian? I've been so worried all day. But I figured you would have called if . . .”

“Damian's all right. False alarm.”

Steven lets out a breath. “Good. Whew. Good.” He tilts his head to one side, confused now as to why I'm here, and looks at me hard, before seeming to decide something. “Do you want to have dinner with us? We just sat down.”

“Oh, thanks, but no. My dad's waiting for me in the car.”

“Your dad?”

“I just stopped by to give you this.”

I hand him the journal.

He looks at me blankly. “Should I know what—”

“No. It's an experiment, of sorts. It started out as an assignment from my therapist.” I find that I can't look directly at him when he's holding the journal. “I want you to read it. I mean, if you want to read it. You don't have to. Dave—my therapist—he said that I needed a recipient for my writing, like an audience. And tonight I figured out—I've concluded—that my recipient is you. If you want to read it. If you don't, I get that, and I can take it—”

“I'll read it,” he says, taking a step back like I might make a grab for it.

I think, Oh dear God, what have I done?

“Good,” I say, backing toward the door. “Have a nice night.”

Dad drives me home. He doesn't ask questions, which I appreciate. When I get to the front door, Mom comes out to meet me. She looks
a little bit freaked out. She watches Dad drive off without comment.

“Do I want to know?” she asks.

“No. Is there anything to eat? I'm starved.”

She finds us a box of macaroni and cheese, which she makes on the stove and then cuts some hot dogs into. I feel about five years old when I'm eating it, but I wolf it down. Mom watches me until I finish.

“Are you all right, Lexie?” She reaches across the table and grabs my hand. “Do you want to talk about it? I'm here for you, sweetie. I know things have been hard, but I'm here for you. I will always be here for you.”

I squeeze her hand. “I know. I know you are.” I take a deep breath. “I was at Damian's house this afternoon. He was one of Ty's friends.”

“Yes, I know Damian,” she says. “Did you know, he put the most beautiful paper rose into your brother's coffin? I've never seen anything quite like it.”

Wow, the things I did not know that would have been so helpful. “Anyway, I thought that Damian might be feeling like Ty and Patrick, and that he might need my help. But then it turned out that he helped me.”

She nods. “Funny how that works.”

“I'm sorry for how I've been.”

She blinks at me, startled. “How you've been? There's nothing wrong with how you've been. You've been getting by the best you can.”

“Well, I'm sorry for how I acted in the car on the way home from Graceland. That was not okay.”

“You said what I needed to hear,” she says. “I'm glad you did. It woke me up to what I was doing to you, while I was paying so much more attention to myself.”

“Mom . . .”

“I kept feeling your brother near me,” she says with a sigh, looking down into her lap. “Sometimes I would smell him, or I would hear his footsteps on the stairs, and I was trying to drink it away, Lex, and I'm sorry for that. I won't do it again.”

“Okay.”

“About a week ago, I was driving back from work,” she says, “and I felt this presence with me, in the car.”

Uh-oh. Ghost in the car. Never a good thing.

“I was crying, the way I . . . do sometimes, and then I just felt it so strongly, that someone was there with me.”

She shakes her head like she still can't believe it.

“And then what?” I prompt.

“Then I heard the voice.”

I stare at her. “And what did Ty say?”

She glances up at me, startled. “It wasn't Tyler, sweetie.”

“It wasn't?” I'm confused now.

“It was another voice. And it said, ‘Will you put your son in my hands?'”

I swallow, hard. “Mom . . .”

“And I said yes,” she murmurs. She lowers her head again, but she's not crying. “I said yes.” She takes a deep breath, the kind of breath you take when a weight has suddenly been lifted from your shoulders.

“I haven't felt Ty since then,” she tells me.

I put my hand over hers.

It has been one crazy day.

The doorbell rings. Mom and I glance at each other.

“I'll get it,” I say.

I go to the door and open it. On the other side is Steven, the journal in his hand. He looks thrashed, red-eyed and bleary, and his hair in the front is all poufed up like he's been tugging on it.

Steven's a fast reader. I'd forgotten that.

“Hi,” I whisper.

He's crying. He lunges through the door and folds me into his arms, crying.

“I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry,” he says, and sobs into my hair.

Something inside me fractures. Breaks.

“I'm sorry, too,” I say, and I'm crying then, finally, like the floodgates have opened, and we're clinging to each other, weeping, as the water pours down and down.

IN THE DREAM, THIS LAST DREAM
, I'm playing solitaire in a dark room. It's like an interrogation scene from a movie, a small card table and two chairs, a dim overhanging light. I am comfortable here. I turn the cards over one by one, not making sense of them. Sometimes I see them as little yellow Post-its. I keep turning the cards over: a king of hearts, an ace of spades, and then the note to my mother.
Sorry Mom but I was below empty.

I lay this card in the discard pile.

Then Ty is there, on the outside edge of the light.

“How did you get in here?” I ask.

“I don't know. It's your dream. You tell me.”

He sits in the chair across from me. He doesn't look like a ghost. He seems real. He even looks taller to me, and older, like he's aged during the time he's been gone. He is not quite the Ty I knew.

“Do you remember how to play war?” he asks.

I give him a look like,
Oh, please.

“You always cheated,” he says.

“Did not.”

“Did.”

I hand him the cards. I watch his long fingers shuffle them easily. He divides the deck into two even piles and gives one to me. Then we begin to lay cards down in threes to fight each other. Higher numbers beat lower. Jack of spades beats nine of diamonds. Five of hearts beats two of spades. Aces beat all. The goal to win the entire deck.

“What do I get if I win?” he asks suddenly. He has just taken three of my cards.

“What do you want?”

“I think,” he says without emotion, “that if I win you have to stop watching me die. It's a little morbid.”

He takes three more of my cards.

“So what do you want?” he asks. “If you win.”

I stare into his hazel eyes. I want to answer that text in time, I think. I want to save you. But underneath it all is: “I want to have a chance to say goodbye. I never got to say goodbye. You didn't give me that.”

He exhales a laugh. “Okay. Deal. If you win you can say goodbye.”

This seems unlikely. He's winning the game. He has most of the deck. I know it will be over soon, and I am terrified to wake up and never see him again, never be able to talk to him.

“Ty . . .”

“The people we love are never truly gone,” he says. “Haven't you learned that?”

“Oh, don't tell me you listen to Dave.”

He looks at me steadily and takes another set of my cards. “You did say goodbye to me, you know. Don't you remember?”

“What?”

“That morning. You said come on, I was going to miss the bus. I said one of my friends was going to give me a ride.”

“Which was a lie,” I add.

“Yes, it was,” he admits. “But then you said, ‘Okay, see you later,' and I said, ‘Love you, sis.' And you said, ‘Love you, too, bro. Bye.'”

“I said that?”

“You said that.”

I remember. I remember.

And as I sit there, remembering that small single moment in time, I'm suddenly flooded with other memories of Ty.

Good memories.

So many good memories. Building my first snowman in that front yard with Ty. Helping Mom in the garden. Ty trying to eat corn on the cob without the benefit of his two front teeth. Raking leaves with Ty. Teaching him how to drive. Clinging to his arm when we secretly rented
Jurassic Park
when I was twelve. The funny way he laughed. The time he tried to cut his own hair. The male Man. The time when I was four and I dressed him up in my old clothes and put a wig on him and walked him around the neighborhood introducing him as my new sister, Vikki. The way every year
on the first day of school Mom had us stand in the same spot on the front porch and she took our picture together, holding hands, year after year after year.

My first day of kindergarten, when he clung to my hand and wouldn't let go when I tried to go off to school without him.

“Take me with you,” he begged.

“I can't. You have to stay,” I said. “But I promise I'll come back. And then we'll play.”

“See?” he says now.

I say, “I miss you. I will always miss you.”

“I miss you, too,” he says. “For what it's worth.”

I lay down a king of clubs, which he takes with an ace, and a ten of diamonds, which he beats with his jack of hearts. I only have one card left.

“Bye, Ty,” I whisper.

He smiles and turns his card over.

My brother killed himself in 1999. He was seventeen years old and a junior in high school; I was twenty and a junior in college. I miss him every day. Those are the facts.

Having said that, I want to clarify that this novel is a work of fiction. My facts are not the ones that occur in these pages. Ty isn't my brother, and I'm not Lex. I am not a math genius—that much should be obvious. My mom didn't respond to my brother's death by taking up drinking (which would have been a disaster, since my mom is a complete lightweight), my father is not a bored accountant (and he's never graced the deck of a sailboat as far as I know), and my stepmom is not, as Lex phrases it, a walking cliché (my stepmom's actually a book geek, which has served us well over the years). I'd also like to say that, unlike some of Ty's friends in the book, my brother had amazing, thoughtful friends. I've always been thankful for the way our community of friends and neighbors
tried to take care of our family in the days after he died, and the way they've continued to show us their love and support in the years since.

So. With the disclaimer out of the way, I have a lot of people to thank for making this book possible:

Erica Sussman. Thank you for laughing at Lex's jokes and crying at Lex's tears and always making sure I had a thorough understanding of what you loved about this story, even when the editing road for this book was long and difficult. You are the most brilliant of editors.

The always-finding-new-ways-to-amaze team at HarperTeen: Stephanie Stein, Christina Colangelo, Kara Brammer, Ray Shappell, Melinda Weigel, Alison Donalty, and Karen Sherman. You make me look good as a writer when most of my real job involves messy hair and yoga pants.

Katherine Fausset. I say this every book, but it continues to be true. You are the best agent a writer could hope for. I'd be adrift in an ocean of doubt without you. Thank you.

My friends:

Amy Yowell. Wow, I have so much in the way of thanks for you I don't even know where to start. For being on my speed dial for math stuff. For your unwavering support of the book and your time reading it and your honest opinion, even though I know it was particularly hard for you to go there. For being the embodiment of a true friend. For driving me home that day.

My Spring ladies: Anna Carey, Veronica Rossi, and Tahereh Mafi. I don't know if this book would exist if not for a late night
in Miami when the three of you read my first fifty pages on your phones and had a fierce discussion of what it needed. You made me think and you made me laugh and you rock.

Brodi Ashton. For being there one rainy day in Idaho, even though I didn't know you, and there again one rainy day in Texas thirteen years later, when I did, and there so many days after that. If I have to pick a person to be beside me on a roller coaster in the dark, I'll always pick you.

Jodi Meadows. Thanks for being such a quiet fountain of encouragement. And for taking such excellent notes when I dragged you off to research my session with Miss Penny. I'm so happy to call you my friend.

And finally, my oldest and dearest bestie, Sarah McFarland. The one who takes me to Jamba Juice in the middle of a crisis. The one who's just there, no matter what, no matter how many miles separate us.

My family:

My mom, Carol Ware. Thank you for letting me talk through this time in our lives more this year, even though it hurt. You're always the first person I want to talk to whenever something wonderful or terrible happens, and I'm glad we have that. I love you. I also want to thank Jack Ware, for being very real proof that happy endings are possible even in the saddest of stories.

My dad, Rod Hand. You always tell me that I can do anything, and then you stand back to let me do it. I'm so grateful for that, and I love you.

John. You helped me to understand that, in spite of how
impossible it seemed, I really did have the strength within me to write this novel.

Maddie. Thanks for always wanting me to be the one who sings you to sleep, and for how quickly you learned to say, “I love you too, Mom.” I needed that.

Will. My little boy. When you heard I had a brother who died, you went and made a headstone for him out of cardboard in the backyard and put flowers on it. The neighbors might have thought it was a bit morbid. I thought it was the sweetest act of empathy I could imagine, and I love you so much, and it breaks my heart that my brother isn't here to get to know you.