The Last Time We Say Goodbye

  For Ashley. Not to Ashley, but for her.

  FOR (preposition):

  Origin: before 900. From the Proto-Germanic fura. Old Saxon furi. Middle Dutch voor.

  1. With the object or purpose of

  2. Intended to belong to, or to be used in connection with

  3. Suiting the purposes or needs of

  4. In order to obtain, gain, or acquire

  5. Used to express a wish, as of something to be experienced or obtained

  For has too many meanings.

  “All right, class,” Mrs. Blackburn says abruptly. “That’s enough time, I think, to ponder the significance of a word. Let’s share.”

  I can’t share this. Ghost. Hallucination. For. Hello, class, I’m a crazy person.

  I sit quietly panicking while Mrs. Blackburn begins to wander between the rows of desks, occasionally stopping and gathering a word from a student: baseball from Rob Milton, beautiful from Jen Petterson, book from Alice Keisig—we’re a terribly original bunch, and apparently stuck on the Bs. “What I hope that you’re coming to understand as you study etymology is that a word is not simply a word,” Mrs. Blackburn says with that teacherly touch of drama, like this is life-changing stuff she’s giving us here. She’s that kind of teacher—the type who inflates everything, calls us by our last names instead of our first so that our conversations sound more formal, stresses the importance of each book we read, each essay we write, like it’s the most important thing for us to know before we head out into the big bad world.

  We will become cultured intellectuals if it kills her.

  She continues: “Each word has a specific history, a context, a slow evolution of meaning. Most of the words we use today come from a clash of cultures: Norman against Saxon, Latin versus Germanic, smooth against guttural.” She stops next to Eleanor. “Give me a word, Miss Green.”

  “Brave,” El says. Which is of course a word that El would come up with. El once caught a guy trying to steal the license plate off the back of her car on the street outside her house and ended up chasing him through the neighborhood with a baseball bat yelling like an Amazonian warrior queen. El is fearless.

  “French, am I right?” queries Mrs. Blackburn.

  “Yes.”

  “And what do you like about this word, brave?”

  “I like that it’s derived from a verb,” El answers. “Brave isn’t something you are. It’s something you do. It comes from action. I appreciate that.”

  “Excellent,” Mrs. Blackburn says, moving on. She turns around and heads back up the row. “Mr. Blake,” she says. “A word.”

  Steven clears his throat. His face goes slightly pink, but his voice doesn’t waver when he answers. “I picked love.”

  Mrs. Blackburn widens her eyes and smiles. “Love? So that’s what’s on the young man’s mind.”

  “It’s Valentine’s Day,” he explains with a hint of a smile. “So I’m thinking about it, yes.” His gaze touches mine and then moves quickly away.

  “Love as a verb or a noun?”

  “A verb,” he says.

  I love you as the plant that never blooms but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers.

  Crap.

  Mrs. Blackburn nods. “And where does the word love come from?”

  “Old English,” he reads off his laptop. “Lufian. To cherish, show delight in, approve. Which comes from the Old High German lubon, which meant something like joy.”

  “Something like joy,” Mrs. Blackburn repeats like she’s reciting a poem. “Wonderful. How about you, Miss Riggs?”

  I’m startled, and I’m not ready. Why would she call on me? I’m at the other side of the freaking room. Is my association with Steven that ingrained in everyone around us? “What?” I ask, like maybe I didn’t hear her correctly.

  “What’s your word?”

  “Oh. Mine’s not very good,” I say.

  She waits.

  I sigh. My eye falls on a word on my screen. “Delusion,” I say as my fingers type it in. See the seat of my pants, and see me flying by it. “From the Latin, delusio, it means ‘a belief that, though false, has been surrendered to and accepted by the whole mind as a truth.’”

  “Interesting,” Mrs. Blackburn says thoughtfully. “What made you pick delusion?”

  “Well, we were talking about love, right? Love is a classic example of a delusion.”

  Mrs. Blackburn chuckles. “Oh. I see. Not a romantic then, are you?”

  “No,” I say flatly. “I don’t believe in romantic love.”

  “Why not?” she asks.

  Here we go. “Because what we associate with the idea of love is purely chemical. It can be broken down into scientifically proven phases: it starts with a dose of testosterone and estrogen, what we would think of as ‘lust,’ followed by the goofy ‘lovesick’ phase, which is a combination of adrenaline, dopamine, and a drop in serotonin levels—which, by the way, makes our brains behave exactly like the brains of crack addicts—and ends up, if we make it through phases one and two, with ‘attachment,’ where the body produces oxytocin and vasopressin, which basically make us want to cuddle excessively. It’s science. That’s all.”

  “Hmm,” says Mrs. Blackburn. “That’s quite the speech, Alexis.”

  Steven smiles at me again, but it’s a sad smile this time. A pitying smile.

  It makes me mad.

  So I keep talking. “All this Valentine’s Day stuff comes from big business capitalizing on the delusion of love. All the candy, the candlelit dinners, the flowers . . .” I meet Steven’s gaze and hold it for a second and then look away. “It generates more than a billion dollars in revenue every year. Because people want to believe in love. But it’s not real.”

  Mrs. Blackburn shakes her head, frowning. “But have you considered the notion that what we believe in—what we choose to believe in—is real? It becomes real, for us.”

  I push my glasses up on my nose and stare at her blankly.

  “Perhaps you’re right,” she adds, “and what we feel as love is nothing more than a combination of certain chemicals in our bodies. But if we believe that love is this powerful force that binds us together, and if this belief brings us happiness and stability in this tumultuous world, then what’s the harm?”

  My chin lifts, like I have something to prove here. Maybe I do have something to prove. “In my experience, love doesn’t bring happiness and stability. But believing in love can cause a substantial amount of harm.”

  Like with my parents.

  Like with my brother.

  Mrs. Blackburn straightens her wedding ring on her finger for a minute before speaking again. “I find that love is a concept much like bravery, Miss Riggs. I, for instance, have been married to the same man for thirty-two years. And, in all that time, I haven’t felt ‘in love’ with him every day, not in the way love is described in romantic comedies and romance novels, but I have loved him. Love is a choice I’ve made. A verb. And that, because I believe in it, because I act on it, is real. Love is a very real thing to me.”

  The class goes silent. The discussion has veered off into weird too-personal territory. We don’t want to think about the romantic lives of our teachers.

  I stare at my hands for a minute. I know I shouldn’t argue with her. I don’t even know why I want to argue with her—because I don’t want to let Steven get away with the rose?—but I can’t seem to help myself.

  “There was this study,” I say finally, “where a scientist made people ‘fall in love’ with a simple series of actions: he had them talk about certain personal topics and look into each other’s eyes for a determined period of time and have this specific physical contact, and if you put those factors all together then, bam—anyone can fall in love with anyone. Some of the people in that study got married later, and they had a lower divorce rate than the national average. It’s that simple. You do these certain things, you fall in love. It’s biology. Period. That people believe in it as anything else is just proof of
how deeply ingrained the delusion is in our society.”

  Mrs. Blackburn gazes at me all red-faced like she’d like nothing better than to send me to the principal’s office, but she can’t think of a good enough reason—being the official rain cloud over the V-Day love parade is not going to cut it.

  The back of my throat feels tight. I swallow against it.

  The round clock over the doorway ticks off its seconds. Then Jill, always the one to come to the rescue in moments of social awkwardness, says, “Hey, I have a word. Moist. I hate the word moist—it just sounds yuck. Who would come up with a word like moist?” She refers to her notebook. “It turns out that it comes from something called ‘Vulgar Latin’—whatever that means—muscidus, which means ‘slimy, musty, moldy.’ Yuck, right? And then somewhere in the thirteenth century it morphed into the Old French word moiste, which means ‘damp.’”

  Mrs. Blackburn blinks, like she’d forgotten what she was going to say, then gives a short laugh.

  Thank you, Beaker.

  “I’ve never liked that word, either,” Mrs. Blackburn says as she glides smoothly back to the front of the class. “Something about the way it sounds is unpleasant, I agree.” She laughs again. “The study of words always brings out an examination of our feelings, which I think has become evident today, hasn’t it? That’s what words do. At the basic level they are simply a collection of symbols grouped together in order to represent an object. C-H-A-I-R represents this”—she puts her hand on the back of her empty seat—“chair. But each word represents something different for each of us.”

  The bell rings.

  “For Monday,” she says, raising her voice above the shuffle of papers and feet, “write a thousand words about the meaning of one word, and how the word makes you feel, and why.”

  Oh, brother. The class gives a group sigh.

  “Class dismissed,” she says. “Enjoy the rest of your day of Saint Valentine’s.”

  “Hey, Lex, wait up.”

  Beaker’s running to catch me as I flee the classroom. I stop in the hall and wait. She pulls up in front of me, her bright, curly hair falling wildly around her shoulders and getting stuck in her hoodie as she puts it on. She tugs at it and smiles breathlessly.

  “El and I, we’re going to have an anti–Valentine’s Day party at El’s house tonight. It’s not a party, really; it’s an un-party, just pizza and a couple of slasher movies and maybe a game or two of Settlers of Catan.” She bites her lip and stares up at me hopefully. “Will you come?”

  I love Settlers of Catan.

  I love pizza.

  I even love slasher films.

  For all of two seconds I let myself imagine it: me and Beaker and El in our pj’s in El’s basement, the way things used to be. And maybe I’d tell them. We’d curl up on El’s old ratty couch with mugs of hot chocolate, and I’d spill out everything that’s been going on: Mom and her theory that Ty’s still in our house and how I’m not so sure now that she’s wrong, the letter to Ashley so I could ask them what they think I should do with it, and maybe I’d even talk about what happened that night Ty checked out. With Steven. With the text.

  But the instant I really let myself picture it, I feel the hole coming on. If just thinking about this stuff makes me feel like I’m going to die, what would saying it out loud do? And then I consider how Beaker tends to laugh when she’s nervous. I imagine El’s face, that look she gets when someone has said something too ridiculous to be believed. And I think, No. No. I can’t tell them. I can’t.

  “Lex?” Beaker prompts gently.

  I shake my head. “I should be home with my mom tonight, you know?”

  And that would be true, if my mom wasn’t working tonight. So it’s not technically a lie.

  Beaker’s mouth goes into a frustrated line. I can see her considering her options and then deciding there are none. Nothing trumps sad, lonely mother.

  “Anyway, why aren’t you going out with Antonio?” I ask.

  She tucks a curl behind her ear. “Oh. We’re not together anymore. He’s a skeez.”

  “I’m . . . sorry,” I say lamely. I never liked Antonio. He was the kind of guy that always wanted to make out with Beaker, but never seemed to want to talk to her.

  He was unworthy.

  Beaker waves her hand like she’s dismissing the thought of him, makes a pfft sound. “Well, love isn’t real, like you said, right? And Antonio’s hormones decided to react chemically with someone else.”

  “That sucks.”

  “Yeah, it kind of does,” she says with a bitter laugh. “Are you sure you won’t hang out with us? I miss you. We all . . . miss you, Lex. That was boss the way you kind of took down Mrs. Blackburn.”

  We all, she said.

  “Is Steven going to be there?” I ask.

  “He doesn’t have to be,” she answers, which means yes, he’s supposed to be, of course he is, he’s their friend still even though he’s no longer my boyfriend, but she’ll uninvite him if it would make me feel more comfortable.

  I can’t face Steven. But I can’t kick him out of the party, either.

  “Like I said, I have to keep my mom company tonight,” I say. “Sorry. It sounds fun.”

  “Okay, well.” She puts her hand on my shoulder. “Hey, if there’s anything I can do . . . If you ever want to talk . . .”

  “Right. I have to go,” I say. “I have class.”

  She knows that. She has class, too, the same class—AP History—and then third-period calculus, fourth-period physics, fifth-period computer programming, sixth-period calc lab, and then lunch, all of which she and I have together until seventh period, when she takes French and I take German, and then eighth period, when I am a teacher’s aide in Mrs. Seidel’s chemistry class, and Beaker has a drama class that serves as the first hour of the afternoon rehearsal for the school play.

  But she lets go of me, and I back away, and then I walk off before I have to look too long at the disappointment on her face.

  8.

  FOR DINNER I MICROWAVE a frozen chicken pot pie and sit watching the news on our tiny kitchen television while I pick at it, until the coverage of all-things-love-related for Valentine’s Day becomes too nauseating. I turn off the TV. Outside, snow is falling, the passing of yet another winter storm.

  I should shovel the driveway, I think. That would make a nice surprise for Mom when she gets home.

  But that would mean going into the garage.

  I don’t go into the garage.

  The phone rings. I pick it up, but there’s nobody there—just silence for a moment while I say hello a few times, and then I hang up. It’s the old phone in the kitchen, so I can’t see the number.

  I wonder if it’s Steven, checking up on me.

  I wish he would have said something, if it was him.

  Not that there’s anything left for him to say. Not that I’d know how to respond if he did say anything.

  I finish my pot pie. It’s not a candlelit Valentine’s Day dinner while I’m being serenaded by a string quartet, but as freezer meals go, it’s not too bad.

  There’s a noise in the hallway, the sound of something heavy hitting the floor.

  I go to investigate.

  A picture has fallen off the wall. I pick it up, turn it over in my hands. The photograph is missing. I search the floor, but it’s not there. The back of the frame is fastened, so someone must have removed the photo and then hung the empty frame up again.

  That’s weird.

  I know the missing picture. It’s a photo of Dad and Ty, four years ago, pre-Megan, as they were about to head off on Ty’s first deer hunting expedition. They were wearing neck-to-toe camo and neon orange caps. They were both smiling, holding up their rifles, but Ty’s smile was strained.

  He didn’t want to go. He’d been dreading it for weeks.

  But he went because he thought it would make Dad happy.

  I remember the day they came home from that trip. They had a deer, a small scraggly lit
tle guy with a tiny rack.

  “Uh-oh,” I said when I went out to watch them hang it from the rafters in the garage. “Bad day for Bambi.”

  Ty smiled at my joke, but he was quiet. Dad was proud, talking about the difficulty of the shot that Ty had made, what a clean shot it was, so the animal didn’t suffer, but Ty didn’t say anything. He didn’t have much of an appetite at dinner. He went to bed early that night. When Mom framed this photo and put it up, he never stopped to look at it as he passed in the hall.

  I feel the beginning of the ache in my chest. The hole.

  Then all of a sudden I’m flooded with the sense that I’m not alone. If I turn and look, I’ll see a shadowy figure at the end of the hall. I’ll see him.

  Ty.

  The hairs on the back of my neck stand up at the thought. I never knew they would actually do that, before—stand on end like that—but they do. I have goose bumps up and down my arms. My shoulders are so tight it hurts. My mouth is dry. I suck in my bottom lip to wet it.

  I won’t run this time, I think. I’ll face it.

  Slowly, I turn.

  There’s no one there. The hallway is empty.

  I let out the breath I was holding, then try to laugh at myself. Delusion, I think. A belief that, though false, has been surrendered to and accepted by the whole mind as a truth. Not a ghost, not a hallucination. A delusion.

  I hang the empty frame back in its place on the wall.

  14 February

  Sometimes I miss being kissed.

  It seems like such a small thing, a trivial thing, my lips meeting his, but sometimes, like tonight, I lie in bed unsleeping and stare up at the ceiling and remember what that felt like, not just the kissing part but that moment right before, when our faces were so close together, when I could feel his breath and see his eyes up close, the curve of each dark eyelash, the tiny crease where his neck met his jaw. The seconds before he kissed me. The anticipation. The rush of his lips on mine.