The Last Time We Say Goodbye

  You kissed me. I curled my hand around the back of your head, your hair soft under my fingers, and kissed you back. Blue lights spun over our heads. You kissed the corner of my mouth. My cheek. My ear.

  I smiled. “So. This is romantic.”

  “Yes. I wanted to be romantic.” You laced your fingers with mine. “It’s December twentieth,” you announced.

  “Yes?”

  You tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear. “On June twentieth, six months ago today, we started this little experiment. In a bookstore, which was not the most romantic place, but the best I could do at the moment. I didn’t think I’d be able to get you in here back then. And on June twentieth, I kissed you for the very first time.”

  “It was a good kiss.”

  “Spectacular,” you remembered.

  “So happy six months,” I said.

  “Happy six months. Which is precisely 183 days.” You consulted your watch. “Which is 4,392 hours. Which is 263,520 minutes. Which have been some of the best minutes of my life. So far.”

  God, you were sexy.

  Irresistible.

  I pulled your head down to kiss you again, but my phone suddenly buzzed.

  I took it out and looked at it.

  It was a text.

  I never told you who it was from. I never said, “It’s my brother.” I never told you what it said.

  All this time, and I’ve never told anyone.

  But I’ll tell you now.

  It said, Hey sis can you talk?

  This is the part where reality unravels for me, the part where I turned the phone off, and slid it away from me, and we went back to kissing.

  But there’s an alternate version of what happened that night. There always will be, for me. In the alternate version of reality I get the text and I tell you, “Hold that thought,” and I kiss you quick, once, on the mouth, but then I get up and take the phone to the hallway and I call Ty. In that reality—which I know isn’t a reality but a fantasy, wishful thinking, a prayer that goes unanswered—Ty tells me what I need to know. That he is sad. That he’s stuck in the present. He can’t get perspective. He’s lost the future.

  Then I tell him that he’s strong enough to get through the sadness.

  I tell him I don’t want to go through this messed-up world without him, and I tell him that I need him.

  I tell him Mom needs him.

  I tell him even Dad needs him—he may not see that right now, but he will see it, sometime.

  I tell him that in 5 more days it will be Christmas, and I remind him that Christmas is his favorite holiday, and we’ll wake up early and bounce up and down on Mom’s bed like we did when we were little, and we’ll belt out “Silver Bells” as we scurry downstairs to the Christmas tree and unwrap our presents, and I got him something good this year, and doesn’t he want to find out what it is?

  I tell him that we have a minimum of 63 Christmases left to share with each other, and I don’t want to miss even one of those. Not one.

  I tell him I love him.

  And me telling him those things is enough to slay his demons.

  And he lives through the night.

  He lives.

  But instead, I turned my phone off, and I kissed you. We stretched out under the dark matter, that invisible, improvable stuff that binds the universe, and I looked up at you, all framed in blue lights, and I said that I loved you.

  Your eyes flashed with surprise. You didn’t expect me to say it. You thought I didn’t believe in love.

  But you didn’t hesitate to answer.

  “I love you, too,” you said. “So much.”

  “It’s impractical, how much,” I whispered.

  You nodded. “Totally impractical.”

  We drank the cider and talked about dark matter and talked about how we are all made of the stuff of stars, that wonderful quote from Carl Sagan. We are each part of the universe.

  Then somehow the conversation shifted to the subject of sandhill cranes.

  How every year, in March if the weather holds, 80% of the world’s population of sandhill cranes pass through this one part of Nebraska, millions of birds all at once, and how it’s supposed to be this incredible sight to behold, and how we’d both lived in Nebraska for our entire lives and we’d never seen the cranes. We would go, we decided. Before we went off to Massachusetts or wherever fate was going to take us, we would go see the sandhill cranes. Together.

  We kissed then, and time bent around us. Time went away.

  But somewhere in those missing seconds, my brother was walking into the dark cocoon of the garage with Dad’s old hunting rifle and a bullet I must have overlooked.

  To ruin everything, I think sometimes.

  To die.

  We only came back to ourselves when Sarah burst into the planetarium, and I knew the second I saw the look on her face that something was terribly, terribly wrong, and that something involved me.

  I remember she said, “She’s right here,” before she handed me her phone.

  I remember it was my dad’s voice I heard then, sharp, like I was in trouble for something, like he was grounding me. “It’s Ty,” the sharp voice said.

  I don’t remember what else.

  I was looking at you. He was telling me. My hand started to shake—not tremble, not waver, but shake, violently, like I was having a seizure. I couldn’t control it.

  You reached up and put your hand on mine. You held me steady.

  After I hung up, you guided me down the hall toward the parking lot. You put my coat around my shoulders. You knelt beside me when I suddenly veered off and bent and vomited my kung pao chicken onto the snowy sidewalk next to the giant mammoth statue in front of the museum. You helped me stand up. You smoothed the hair away from my face. You reached over me to buckle my seat belt, once you got me in the car.

  There were Christmas lights all along the way to the mortuary, red and green and white, strung through the trees.

  The whole time, your eyes were wide and incredulous, like this couldn’t really be happening.

  At the mortuary, you waited in the hall while the funeral director took me and Mom and Dad into her office and played us a recording. Ty had called 911, seconds before he pulled the trigger. It took me a few days to piece together why he would do this, but it was a kindness, I’ve concluded, so Mom or I wouldn’t come home and find him when we opened the garage.

  We listened to his voice and confirmed that it was Ty.

  He said, “There’s a dead person in the garage in the green house on the corner of Nickols and Second Street. He killed himself.”

  That was it. He hung up. It was 12 minutes before the ambulance got there, they told us, but he was already gone.

  He didn’t sound scared, in the recording. He didn’t sound sad. He was perfectly matter-of-fact about it.

  They took us into a back room, where Ty’s body was lying on a steel table with a sheet covering him up to his neck. We stood for a minute in a tight semicircle just looking at him—Dad in his suit and tie, then me, then Mom in her scrubs—the last time we were truly a family together.

  Then Mom stepped forward and laid shaking hands on Ty’s chest, like maybe she could wake him, and when he didn’t stir, she tipped her head back and a sound came out of her that was sheer pain—a mix of howl and wail that didn’t even sound like her voice anymore, that didn’t sound exactly human. I’m sure you heard it, from where you were.

  Dad put his hand over his mouth and closed his eyes and stumbled back to a chair against the wall.

  The sound kept coming out of Mom, and it was unbearable in the way it filled my ears and my head and solidified everything.

  My brother was dead.

  Mom’s knees gave out. I caught her before she hit the floor and dragged her to the chair next to Dad’s, and she stopped howling and cried in breathless, ragged bursts.

  There was nowhere for me to sit next to them. All I could do was stand and stare at Ty.

  He loo
ked like he was made of wax. One of his eyes was coming open. He had beautiful eyelashes—thick and dark and curved just right—and between the seam of lashes there was a sliver of pale gray, like dirty snow. His lips were almost black. This was before you saw him, before the makeup and the formal clothes and the stiff folded hands. There was a smear of blood on his neck, disappearing under the sheet. I was struck with the urge to pull back the sheet and see the wound that killed him, something that would explain this terrible mystery of him being this empty thing when I’d just seen him twelve hours earlier, at the breakfast table, and he was fine.

  I would have looked, but Mom and Dad were there. I backed away and stood by Mom and held her hand and cried with her until we both ran dry.

  I can’t cry anymore. I think that part of myself is broken.

  When it came time to leave, Mom didn’t want to go. She would have stayed with Ty all night, all day, until we buried him. But they made her go back into Jane’s office to sign some papers and talk about the next steps in the process of losing her child.

  You were still waiting in the hall. You stood up when I opened the door. Your eyes said you believed it now.

  That’s when I remembered the text.

  I took the phone out of my pocket and checked, and it was still there.

  Hey sis can you talk?

  Ice washed over me. Dread. Numbness. I shoved the phone back into my pocket. I looked up at you. I thought, This is your fault.

  If you hadn’t kissed me.

  If you hadn’t distracted me.

  If I hadn’t been so tangled up in the emotions I felt for you, the impractical emotions, I would have answered the text.

  I would have stopped this.

  I didn’t stop this.

  And I thought again, It’s your fault.

  I thought, I wish time travel was a viable option. If I could make a time machine, I would go back to that moment, and I would answer that text.

  I’d save him.

  I understand now that nobody could have saved Ty but Ty. There’s no one else to blame. Not you. Not me. Ty was holding all the cards.

  I understand this now, with my head.

  My heart still wishes for the time machine. I will have to make my heart forgive us for that night.

  I can forgive you so much more easily than I can forgive myself.

  And there’s so much I would ask you to forgive me for:

  For shutting you out.

  For the way I stopped talking to you.

  For the absolutely stupid reason I gave as to why I wanted to break up.

  I didn’t break up with you because of your sperm. Or because it wasn’t working between us, because it was working. It worked.

  You deserve the truth.

  Whether you choose to forgive me or not, you deserve to know that I meant it. What I said that night.

  I love you.

  I tried really hard not to. You have no idea how hard I tried.

  Or maybe you do have some idea.

  But I love you.

  If you don’t know what to do with this information, that’s okay.

  I just want to tell you everything, if you want to hear it. If you want to know.

  I’ll start with this.

  36.

  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 tu
rned 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.