The Good Goodbye

  One second the curtains were there; the next second they were gone. It had been so scary. The shrieking of the smoke detector had made me want to run from the room. Rory had just curled up in a ball, useless. I’d been furious with her until I saw her face.

  I look over at her, peacefully sleeping. Second night in a row she’s stayed home. In class yesterday, Hunter had beckoned me over to sit beside him and I had slid into the seat feeling claimed while Rory sat on the other side, doodling in her notebook. Is this how it happens?

  At the library, I pull down book after book from the shelves. Professor Lee wanted us to consult real sources, not just online stuff. I was planning to write about Giotto, but obviously I can’t write two papers on him. As I reach up to slot a book back into place, smoke wafts toward me. Me, or my clothes? I pull out a length of hair and sniff.

  Lunch? Rory texts, and I bundle books into my backpack. She’s saved me a seat across from her and Hunter, and beside D.D. Rory flashes me a quick smile as I set down my tray, but it’s not convincing. It doesn’t reach inside her.

  “Hey,” Hunter says. “We were just talking about you.”

  My face flames. I duck my head and let my hair fall forward. Why do you even hang out with Hunter? I’d asked Rory, because he’s so not her type. Usually, she dates rich jocks with huge biceps who think beer is a food group. She’d looked thoughtful before replying. I’ve never dated a baseball player before. He’s just an experiment to her. Why can’t he see that?

  “Tell us the truth. You’re the one who aced Lee’s quiz, aren’t you?” Professor Lee had stood in front of the classroom, chiding us. I don’t grade on a curve, people, she’d said. So you’d better knuckle down. “Come on, don’t be shy.”

  Don’t be shy, Aunt Gabrielle always tells me. You have to look people in the eye. Otherwise, they’ll think you’re being rude. I try to be as brave as Rory, who marches up to strangers and boldly extends her hand. They always smile back.

  “Wasn’t me.” I’d stared at the computer screen, confused. How could I have missed three questions? I thought I knew the material.

  “Huh. Must be the emo girl who sits in the front row.” He sits back and slings his arm around Rory’s shoulders. She doesn’t react, just keeps texting. “Who knows?” she says. “It’s a big class. Could be anyone.”

  She’s being so quiet. Doing it isn’t the same as getting along. Maybe she’s tired of Hunter. Maybe he’s realizing they don’t have as much in common as maybe he and I do.

  People at the table behind us are talking loudly.

  “…need to hear this song I just found. It’s a band that’s performing next week.”

  “Bathtub Mannequins?”

  “Yeah. They’re so sick.”

  “I don’t know. I think they’re weird.”

  “That’s because you’re an idiot.”

  “Oh, okay. Glad everyone is in such a friendly mood today.”

  “Do you guys have tickets?”

  “No, I’m going by the auditorium after lunch.”

  “They’re probably sold out.”

  “Really? I don’t think they’re even that big of a name.”

  “Every small, strange band is a big name here.”

  I sneak a peek at Hunter. He’s holding his sandwich and leaning forward to make his point. He’d felt it, too, that moment walking back from the sports center—hadn’t he? He catches me looking and grins. My heart beats faster.

  “Hey, Arden?” D.D. says. “You going to eat those?” She points to the fries on my plate and I shake my head. She plucks a fry free and dips it in the pond of ketchup I’d squeezed onto my plate, which is gross. It feels invasive. She brings a code with her I can’t decipher. She makes me feel awkward and slow. She’s the college version of Mackenzie, only with bright pink hair.

  Rory’s right. I don’t have many pills left. Quit is at the very top of my list. I’m not ready, though. Maybe in a month, maybe after finals. I’ve texted the guy I used to get my stuff from, a junior from the boys’ school whose parents are plastic surgeons. Can you mail a refill? He’d texted right back. Sure except it’s a FELONY. I’d stared at my phone. So this was where he drew the line? Like selling prescription meds wasn’t? It’ll b ok, I texted, but it’s been four days and I still haven’t heard back.

  Rory and Hunter go one way, and D.D. and I head back to the dorm. I watch their two receding figures, trying to decide if he’s leaning in to her or the other way around, then turn to D.D. Why is she spending so much time with Rory and me? Why doesn’t she find someone else to hang around with? “How come I haven’t seen Whitney lately?” Shouldn’t D.D. be spending time with her own roommate instead of trying to steal mine?

  She gives me a look that tells me she knows why I’m asking. “Ask her.”

  D.D. could hook me up. Rory says she can get her hands on anything, but I don’t trust D.D. I don’t know why, but I don’t. Still, I ask, “Can you get me some Adderall?”

  She doesn’t even look at me, but she’s smiling. “How many?”

  “Thirty.” Thirty will carry me to Thanksgiving break.

  “Okay, sure. No problem.”

  “How much?”

  A tick of time. “Twenty.”

  “Twenty each?” I stare at her, but she’s got her profile to me. “I used to pay ten.”

  “Because you were fucking your dealer?”

  I want to whirl around and stomp off in a different direction. I want to be anywhere but right here, walking down the sidewalk with this repulsive girl. But I stop myself. I won’t let her see she’s reached me. “I can’t do twenty.” Six hundred dollars. I don’t have anywhere near that kind of money. I could work every day until Thanksgiving and I wouldn’t come close to clearing that much. “Can’t you cut me a break?”

  “Sorry.”

  Which tells me we’re not friends. Which tells me we’ll never be friends. Not that I was hoping. “I guess Rory was wrong about you.”

  She glances at me now. Her gray eyes are wide-spaced. They make her look so innocent. Flames flicker at the sides of her face. Her skin is glowing. Listen, she says. I need to tell you something about Hunter.

  Rory

  DO NOT EVEN think about putting candles on my birthday cake. Don’t ask me to a bonfire at the beach, and you can just forget about ski lodges with their huge stone fireplaces. The two fireplaces in our house have to stay cold and empty. Sometimes, though, my parents light a fire when I’m not around. They put it out before I get back, but I can always tell. That ashy smell hits me the minute I walk in the door and makes my chest tighten so I can’t breathe. It’s because I got burned when I was little. Burned badly. Arden gave me her pink blanket later. A secret, because nobody knows she still slept with it; nobody knows I sleep with it now.

  “Are you sure we’ll have time?” Arden stuffs books into her backpack. “The bus leaves at noon tomorrow.” She sounds so hopeful.

  “The shop opens at ten,” I tell her, and she sighs.

  She’s late for art class and she hasn’t brushed her hair. She hasn’t said a word about the fire. In the morning, on the way to class, I saw her blue towel—at least, the charred bits of her towel—draped forlornly on the bushes beneath our window.

  I toss her a hairbrush and she catches it with both hands.

  “You checked this place out?” She swipes quickly at her hair and drops the brush with a clatter on the dresser.

  “Yup.”

  She opens the door and gives me one last pleading look. “Cut it out, Arden. I want this.” I’ve wanted this for eight years, more than I’ve wanted anything. Even more than Harvard. The door closes behind her and I hear her trudging footsteps in the hall slowly fade away.

  —

  “I’m glad to see you decided to stick with it,” Chelsea Lee says to me after class, which pisses me off. It’s not about giving up. I’m not a quitter, anyone would tell you that. Quitters don’t get into size-zero jeans by spring break. Quitters don’t date Blak
e Henderson for four months, and quitters don’t get into Harvard.

  “I’ve still got a week to decide,” I retort, and a corner of her mouth twitches up.

  “Guess I’ve just been served. Come on. I’ll buy you a cup of coffee, or whatever your favorite poison is.”

  Freshmen don’t have coffee with professors. So there you go again—not a quitter.

  The coffee shop’s warm and dark, with lots of quirky little tables and mismatched chairs. It smells of coffee and cinnamon and warm milk. We carry our drinks to a table by the window. She stirs sugar into her cup, pours in a splash of cream that spirals around the black surface before sinking down and going invisible. I tear open a package of sweetener and she hikes an eyebrow. “That stuff’s bad for you.”

  “Everything’s bad for you.” I blow on the surface of my coffee before taking a sip.

  “Nice ring. Unusual.”

  I hold out my hand and study the engraved gold band. Same clunky style as when Bishop had been founded more than a hundred years ago, back when you sealed letters with blobs of molten wax and pressed the face of your ring down hard. All over the country there are Bishop women wearing this same exact ring. “My class ring.”

  “The privileges of a private school.”

  She makes it sound like a bad thing. “I earned this ring.”

  “I’m sure you did.”

  She can’t know. She can’t possibly know. I glance at her, but she’s sipping her coffee. “You did a great job in class today.” Her cheeks are pink, her eyes bright. She looks happy. I like this version of her. It’s much better than the stern one who stands at the front of the classroom with her head cocked and her hands on her hips. That one reminds me too much of my mother. “You have a real eye, you know. Not many people do.”

  She’d put up the slide and then, out of all the students waving their hands, called on me. I’d been reaching over to scribble something in Hunter’s notebook when I heard my name. She’d had to repeat the question and a few people laughed. How do you think the painter used light to define this space? I’d straightened in my seat, scanned the image on the screen, and then started talking. The words had just poured out. Hunter had leaned back to watch me, and some girl had turned around in her seat to stare at me. I’d hiked an eyebrow at her and she quickly turned back around, but how could I blame her, really? Girls like me don’t talk in class. That’s for the emo chick who sits slumped in the front row, chewing her fingernails and reeking of patchouli.

  “My cousin’s the artist. Arden. She’s taking your class, too.” Arden’s the reason I’d signed up for the class in the first place. We’d been on her pontoon boat, rocking gently on the water, going through the catalog. She’d been going through the catalog, actually. I’d been lying on my back, trying to angle my stomach into the sun. This one looks interesting, she’d said, and I’d pushed myself up on one elbow to see.

  “You don’t have to be an artist to be able to analyze a work of art,” she says.

  It had felt amazing, talking so easily about the way a person’s eye followed the lights and darks in the fresco. How could I understand something like that without even trying? It’s not as though I’ve ever taken anything but the basic art classes at Bishop—jewelry-making, pottery—the ones I’d had to take in order to graduate. Still, who cares? It’s not like it matters. It won’t get me anywhere. It’s like being able to pitch Ping-Pong balls into Flower Mart buckets, each landing with a satisfying plop. All you got for it was a lame stuffed animal. “I’m going to law school. So I doubt I’ll be analyzing many works of art.”

  “I wouldn’t have pegged you as a lawyer.”

  Meaning what, that I’m not smart enough? “Why not?”

  “You know how many papers you have to write in law school?”

  I don’t need this. She can’t buy me with a cup of coffee. I push back my chair and she reaches out, puts her long slim fingers on mine for a brief moment. A flash of knowing, and then her hand’s gone, back to circle her cup. I can’t move. “Tell me, Rory. Seriously. I want to know. Why law school? Of all the things you could pursue, why that?”

  No one’s ever asked me that. My saying it’s my plan is usually enough to stop them.

  “Is it because you want to be a champion for the downtrodden, a righter of wrongs? Or maybe you just want to rack up billable hours and put in an eternity pool?”

  Snarky bitch. Law school’s just two words that add up to three years on top of college. Seven years of my life planned and programmed. Seven years where I don’t have to ask the hard questions, and if I try to look too far into the future, everything blurs. I wake up every morning with a panicky feeling that makes me throw back the covers and sit straight up. Then I think, Why? The plan isn’t the problem, I know. The problem’s me. “What’s wrong with being a lawyer?”

  “Nothing. Someone has to be one. Why not you?”

  She doesn’t know me. She doesn’t know anything about me. “Like someone has to teach art history?”

  “Exactly. And someone has to pick up the garbage, deliver the mail.”

  “I’d rather go to law school.”

  She smiles. “Just wait until you’re halfway through your first year. Then we’ll talk.”

  It feels good, making her smile. Powerful. I feel the scales lift and rock back into balance. “So how come you’re teaching 101? I thought it was supposed to be someone named Llewellyn.” Her name hadn’t been the one listed in the catalog. Her profile isn’t even on the college website.

  “He had to take an unexpected leave of absence. I was hired at the last minute. Lucky for me. I’d been looking for months.” She’d been teaching in Chicago, but a relationship turned bad and one of them had to split town. “I lost the coin toss.” She shrugs. I can’t tell if she’s sad or not, but I can’t believe she’s talking to me like this. I can’t tell how old she is. Not as old as my mom, but older than Liz, the prep cook at Double. So maybe thirty. But I bet the guy she’d been dating was older. Someone smart, funny, not necessarily good-looking. Someone who tucked in his shirt and wore bow ties and made her fondly sigh and shake her head. I wonder what had happened to make them break up. Maybe she’d gotten tired of the bow ties. Maybe he’d decided to go back to his wife.

  “Guys suck,” I say. They only want one thing.

  “Hmm.” She rotates her cup between her hands. She wears a silver ring on her thumb; her nails are all plain. “Maybe you just haven’t found the right one.”

  “Maybe.” I glance at my phone, see the time. “I have to run. Thanks for the coffee.”

  She nods. “See you later, Rory.”

  “See you later, Chelsea.”

  This time, she doesn’t correct me.

  —

  Hunter’s sitting on the low brick wall, talking with some guys on the team. I’m not sure how I feel, seeing him. Good, of course, but also a little worried. Isn’t there anything else he wants to do but hang around waiting for me? He waves when he sees me, and the big smile on his face twists me up a little inside. I can’t explain the spasm of guilt. “Sorry,” I say when I get to him. “Chelsea wanted to talk after class.”

  “Hey, Rory,” one of the guys says. “Hey,” I say back. I’ve been nice to all of them, pretending to be interested in hearing about their games and the other teams and their statistics, but really, it’s so tedious. We have nothing in common, but they still try; guys always do around me.

  “See you,” Hunter tells them, pushing himself off the wall and jumping down beside me. Today’s his rare afternoon off from practice and I’d wasted part of it at a coffee shop, sipping a drink I didn’t want, talking to someone I didn’t know. He takes my hand. “Chelsea, huh?”

  I like holding hands with Hunter, the comforting warmth of his palm against mine, the way his fingers slide around my fingers, swallowing them up. It makes me feel anchored, but in a good way. I think about that, not about how he’s looking at me, even while we’re walking. “That’s how I roll.”


  “So what did Chelsea want to talk to you about?”

  The other me would have rolled her eyes and told Hunter all about how pitiful it was that a professor was trying to make friends with a freshman. “She wanted to lend me a book on Giotto,” I lie.

  Arden’s at her painting class. She knows not to come back too early. I unlock my dorm room door and push it open. Hunter stops in the doorway. “Whoa. What happened in here?”

  “We decided to redecorate.”

  He sniffs. “You burn something?”

  “Arden did. It’s no big deal.”

  “Okay. Just, you might want to open the window.”

  “So open it.” I walk over to my dresser to plug in my cell. He’s right. That awful smoky stink is still here, lingering behind the scarves. I feel his arms wrap around me from behind and his breath warm on the nape of my neck.

  “In a minute,” he says. “I’m busy right now.”

  Hunter’s a total catch. He’s so hot he scorches the grass when he walks on it. There are a million girls who would jump him the minute I turn my back. I let him push me onto my bed and run his hand up my stomach to my breast. I kiss him back. He’s a good kisser, his lips soft and warm.

  He rolls me over on top of him. I look down at him, his beautiful blue eyes so serious. The late-afternoon sun paints shadows across his face, his bare shoulders and chest. “I’m transferring to Harvard next year,” I tell him.

  “Uh-huh.” He slides his hand beneath my shirt and dances his fingertips along my lower back, tingling my skin.

  I hold his face between my hands. “And then I’m going to law school.”

  “You’re going to make a kick-ass lawyer.”

  I will. I’m going to be a champion for the downtrodden, a righter of wrongs. It’s been the plan for as long as I can remember. I feel completely confused.