The Good Goodbye

  “Your daughter’s been in an accident,” the stranger says, and everything slides away.

  Arden

  SOMEONE’S SHOUTING in my ear. “What do we have?”

  “Eighteen-year-old victim found unconscious.”

  I’m jostled up and down.

  “Where are the lines?”

  “We got two. Eighteen-gauge line in her right arm running saline…”

  “Which room?”

  “CAT scan.”

  A jolt. I open my eyes. Ceiling tiles swim past. A purple sleeve patterned with red hearts over my face. Above that, a hand gripping a metal pole. The light blinds me.

  I am rolled, then lifted. A face leans close. A man. He needs to shave. “I’m Dr. Saunders. You’re at Saint Luke’s. You’re going to be all right. Do you have any allergies?”

  I can’t remember.

  “Does anything hurt?”

  Panic rises in a huge wave.

  “Is it possible you’re pregnant?”

  His face is gone. I feel cold air against my legs, my belly. The smell of something sweet and burned, then a pain so awful it carves a deep hole inside me. I hear moaning. It’s me.

  “…need another line,” the man says.

  A new face, a woman’s, hovering above mine, worried. “We’re giving you some medicine that will make you feel better,” she promises.

  The whole white world telescopes to a dark dot and blinks into nothingness.

  —

  Buzzing. A fly, looking for a place to land. I try to lift my hand, but my arm won’t move. Why am I so sleepy?

  I’m in my bed. It’s early and peaceful; the twins aren’t up yet. I feel Percy on the covers by my feet. I try to move my foot to find him.

  That fly won’t stop whining. And there’s something else, a soft whooshing. The ocean, rolling in waves to the shore. So I’m not in my bed at home. I’m at Rehoboth, with Mom and Dad, Oliver and Henry, and Percy.

  The buzz is too loud to be a fly. A bee?

  I can’t open my eyes. I feel darkness pressing down on me. Something brushes my cheek.

  “…eight milligrams.”

  “When was her last morphine?”

  Who are they? Why are they in my room? Fear. I want my mom. I want my dad.

  “…think she’s awake.”

  “I’m Dr. Morris. I’m taking care of you. Are you in pain?”

  Yes.

  “You were in a fire. Do you remember?”

  So hot I can’t breathe. Flames and greasy, awful smoke. Rory twists away, her hair swinging out in a glowing circle, shrieking as Hunter flails around. I can’t help him. I’m going to be sick. I gag, scrabble at the sheets. Something’s stuck in my throat. I’m choking on it. My heart gallops, faster and faster. I’m screaming. Why can’t they hear me? Where’s my mom?

  “It’s okay. Don’t worry. That’s just a tube helping you breathe. You’re going to be okay.” Dr. Morris turns away. “Increase the drip.”

  Wait! A swoosh of heat. Flames leap across my bed, race up the walls. They claw at me. They hiss. Screaming so animal I feel my skin rip.

  You were in a fire. Do you remember?

  Why was I there? Why didn’t I get out? Why can’t I remember?

  Rory

  THE ENVELOPE ARRIVES thick, crisp, and white. My mom practically dances, handing it to me at breakfast; she doesn’t even do her usual up-and-down scan of what I’m wearing. It’s all about the envelope. Mom must’ve bribed the mailman to come to our house first. That’s just the kind of thing she’d do. My dad’s already left for work—not a big deal, he’s always at the restaurant, but I thought that today, of all days, he’d hold off going in. “Open it,” Mom urges. Her red hair’s combed back, her lipstick perfectly applied. She’s got on her alligator pumps with the three-inch heels—she must have a breakfast meeting with someone really important.

  She stood at the foot of the stairs calling up to me the whole time I was getting ready, but I’d taken my time, texturizing my hair and braiding it into a fishtail, trying on my Miu Miu sneakers to see if the ribbons were too much, switching them for Kate Spade flats—which looked great but told everyone I was trying—and ending up with blue Sperrys, then searching forever for my diamond studs. I’d dabbed concealer on the tiny scar on my forearm and spritzed on perfume. I sit at the kitchen table and pull my coffee cup toward me. “In a minute.”

  The phone rings—Aunt Nat, for sure—and Mom frowns but doesn’t answer it. “Don’t be like that, Rory. Open it, or I will.”

  “It’s a felony to open somebody else’s mail,” I inform her, splashing in fat-free hazelnut creamer until my coffee turns a light brown. Her face sort of crumples.

  “Whatever.” I take the stupid envelope. I know what the letter says—I was online exactly at midnight and saw the results for myself—but I’m still nervous as I tear open the flap. What if it had been a mistake? But there it is, confirmed in black and white. I read the first word aloud, Congratulations, and my mom shrieks and throws her arms around me. You’d think she was the one who’d just gotten into Harvard.

  —

  At school, everyone’s buzzing in the halls. There are some girls with their heads down, not looking at anyone as they shove books into their lockers. They’ll be the ones stuck at the no-name schools clustered around Maryland and Virginia, where all you have to do to get in is breathe. Jessica got into Brown, and Beth is going to Cornell. Emilie got wait-listed for Dartmouth, but who cares, she says. She got into Smith, and Dartmouth can fuck itself. Mackenzie got into Princeton, but everyone knows her dad’s BFFs with the dean. It would have been pathetic if she hadn’t. I hug her anyway. “Congrats,” I say. “You’re going to do awesome.”

  “So? What about you?” she asks. I can tell she doesn’t really want to know. She’d applied to Harvard, too, but it’s obvious how that had turned out.

  By now there’s a crowd of girls standing around, listening. I shrug, but feel myself grinning.

  Jessica jumps up and down, her breasts jiggling. “I knew it. I knew it I knew it I knew it.”

  Arden comes in, her arms filled with binders and books. We meet at our lockers, and she peels off her sweater. I’ve tried to help her fit in, but Arden always manages to do things just wrong enough. Like straightening her hair. There’s always a section she misses, a wavy flag down the back of her head. Her green seersucker dress is wrinkled, her belt tied in a sloppy bow. I’ve told her a million times to do what I do and wear a leather belt instead of the lame fabric one that comes with the uniform. As soon as I graduate, I’m going to cut all my uniforms into ribbons. Not Arden. Uncle Theo’s making her donate hers to the school bookstore for the scholarship girls. I’d rolled my eyes when she told me, made her swear she wouldn’t tell anyone else.

  “Hey, thanks for not texting me back,” she says.

  “Yeah. Sorry about that.”

  “I had to find out from my mom.” She jams her books into her locker.

  “I meant to call…” My voice trails off. I should have called, but for some reason I hadn’t wanted to. I hadn’t slept at all.

  “Whatever.”

  “My mom’s out of control.” I lean against my locker, but Arden won’t look at me. My mom had been squealing on the phone with Aunt Nat when I left, and I’d bet anything she was still making phone calls. “Probably her manicurist knows now. Probably the president.”

  Arden’s mouth quirks up at that one, but only for a second. She’s really pissed.

  “Definitely CNN,” I continue. “And Good Morning America. Now she’s trying to find out if NASA can relay a message around the world.”

  Arden sighs and her shoulders relax. She can never stay mad at me for long. She looks at me. Her green eyes are kind of sad. We have the same eyes. Her lips are chapped, her lashes pale, so much like the face I look at every morning in the mirror, before I color it in. “Congrats.”

  “Thanks.” She’s going to art school out in California. She applied early de
cision and heard back just before Christmas. For the first time in our lives, we’ll be living thousands of miles apart. “We’re still going to do it, you know.”

  She doesn’t answer, but I know she heard me.

  The bell rings and lockers start slamming. Arden reaches in for her binder and hands me back my copy of Jude the Obscure. She hooks her purse over her shoulder and looks at me again. Then she reaches out to give me a quick hug. “You totally deserve it, you know.”

  She turns and pushes through the chattering girls, in a rush to get to class before the teacher does. I don’t know why she even cares. We’re seniors, coasting on our last few weeks. I watch her make her way down the hall until she turns the corner and I can’t see her anymore.

  —

  My parents are waiting when I get home that night. A bunch of us had gone to Georgetown to celebrate, taking up three long tables in Mitchell’s, my dad’s biggest competitor, talking and laughing our heads off. When I’d ordered a bottle of Cristal, Mitchell raised his eyebrows. I remember when Aunt Nat was his sous chef. Come on, I begged, we’re celebrating! I gave him a special smile and Mitchell caved, like I knew he would. Before I left, I slid the empty champagne glass into my bag. A memento.

  I’m still kind of buzzing when I pull my car into the driveway and see Dad’s SUV in the garage beside my mom’s. Usually he doesn’t get home until after midnight, but my mom probably nagged him into coming home early. Then again, maybe not. He’d been pretty quiet on the phone when I called the restaurant to tell him the good news. He’d gone into his office and closed the door so he could hear me.

  I’m expecting crème brûlée set out on the dining room table, or a plate of basil and lavender macarons beside that gorgeously wrapped gold bracelet I know my mom got to surprise me, just in case. I expect my parents’ faces to be proud and glowy, and prepare myself for all the hugging I’m going to have to endure. But when I step through the front door, they’re in the living room, my mom on the couch with her hands knitted together and my dad standing by the fireplace and not looking at her at all. Something’s happened. I calm myself. I tell myself: only four more months and I’ll be out of here.

  “What?” I say.

  “You tell her.” My mom’s twisting her wedding rings around and around her finger. “It’s your fault. You tell her.”

  They’re getting a divorce. “Tell me what?” Am I upset? Relieved?

  “Stop it, Gabrielle.” My dad’s still in his chef’s jacket and he hasn’t even taken off his clogs and lined them up in the garage by the back door, the way my mom likes us to do. She always makes him shower, too, no matter how late it is. She hates the smell of the restaurant clinging to his clothes, his hair. “That’s not helping.”

  “It’s too late to help, isn’t it?” my mother snaps.

  “Will you guys cut it out and tell me?”

  My father’s face is settled in heavy lines. “Are you sick?” I whisper. I look to my mom, her hair pulled back tightly, making her cheekbones look sharp. “Are you?”

  She presses her lips together.

  “We’re fine,” my dad says. “Here’s the thing, honey. I made a bad investment.” He says this fast, his face flushed. He and Mom have been going at it for a while, I can tell.

  “So?” I say. Dad’s always making bad investments and good ones. There’s champagne and flowers and little gifts when he makes a killing, or silence when he doesn’t. He stays up late, checking his computer; he has an app on his phone that’s constantly chirping. Sometimes I think he loves the stock market more than he loves Double.

  “Don’t make it sound like it was just one of those things, Vincent.” My mother stalks over to the dry sink and bends to unlatch the wooden door. I hold my breath. Will she notice the vodka bottle? She pulls out the big green bottle of gin and the glass with the grapes etched on the side. Okay, so she hasn’t noticed.

  “But it was. I pored over their financials. I talked to the right people.” My dad rubs his face with the flats of his hands. “Everything was coming together. We all thought the patent would go through.”

  “But a million dollars?”

  “It was the only way we could buy in.”

  “Don’t make me part of this. This is all on you, Vincent.”

  I’m beginning to panic. “What million dollars?” I’m always sneaking looks at my parents’ bank account statements. I’ve never seen numbers that large on anything.

  “That’s how much your father owes the brokerage company,” my mother tells me. “He borrowed a million dollars to buy this sure-thing tech stock, and this morning it’s worth nothing. Nothing!” She puts down her glass without taking a sip. “They don’t care. They still want their money.”

  “Why can’t we just declare bankruptcy?” Other kids’ families do it all the time. It’s like a joke at Bishop.

  “We can’t,” my father says tersely.

  “We’ll lose everything that has your father’s name on it. The restaurant, our house, my business. We’ll have nothing left.”

  “We’re going to have to liquidate what we can,” my dad says. “We’ll persuade the brokerage firm to let us keep the restaurant so we can make payments. And I’m sorry, Rory.” He sucks in a breath, releases it. “But this means using your college fund.”

  I stare at him. He won’t look at me. “Seriously?” I say, and hear my voice quiver.

  “I’ve called Harvard,” my mother says. “They’ve agreed to keep a place open for you for next year.”

  Next year? “But I’m not the one who owes a million dollars!”

  “Je sais, ma cherie,” my mother says, and I know this is real. My eyes burn and my palms are sweating.

  “Call them again,” I insist.

  My mother’s pacing, her heels clicking sharply against the wood. “It’s no use. The scholarship money has been disbursed.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Years. I’ve spent years, my whole fucking life, trying to get into Harvard. Maybe my grades weren’t perfect, but I had rocked the personal interview; I had scored the best teacher recommendations. All those AP classes, that horrible volunteer job at the nursing center, the lame cupcake business I started just because it would look good on my résumé, everything.

  “It’s just temporary,” my dad says. “It’s just one year. We’ll set up a payment schedule; we’ll get on our feet—”

  “So that’s it?” I refuse to cry. “I’m not going to Harvard?”

  The look on my dad’s face tells me it’s true. I can’t stand it. All my friends will leap ahead of me. I can see them pulling away. I’ll never, ever catch up. What will I do for a whole year? My cell phone buzzes, a text coming in, and something occurs to me. “Wait. What about Arden?” Her mom and my dad co-own the restaurant.

  “Yes, what about her?” my mother spits, which tells me Arden isn’t going to art school in California, either. She stops pacing and spins to face my father. “How can you live with yourself?”

  “You’re happy enough when I make money, Gabrielle! I don’t hear any complaints then. You think I planned this? You think I wasn’t careful? I was careful. This is just one of those things. One of those goddamn things!”

  I back out of the room and they don’t even notice me go. Upstairs, I close my bedroom door and their voices grow dull. I sit in the window seat, my knees drawn to my chest. On the other side of the Potomac, Arden’s probably crying in her room. She’s been texting, but I can’t answer. My cell thrums in my pocket, another incoming text. Or maybe somebody’s Facebook update: MIT or Stanford?

  I hug my knees tight, so hard I can’t breathe. A door slams below me, Mom retreating or Dad going out. On the other side of the window the garden is dark and ghostly, filled with grass and trees and bushes, the flowers my mother plants every spring. I feel it starting to sink in. A million dollars. I’m not going to Harvard. I hold my breath until specks dance before my eyes. I picture my dad’s face, narrow with anger, shame, too. My breath explodes out of me.
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  I’m not going to Harvard.

  A single feeling detaches itself from all the others churning inside me. It starts to grow, clear and sharp and strange.

  Joy.

  Natalie

  WE HAVE TO get to the hospital. We have to get to Arden, but I can’t move. People push past on the sidewalk. Rain taps my head and shoulders. Keys. Where are my keys? I fumble in my bag, clutch at the metal ring. Theo’s talking, asking questions. His face is lit by orange neon. I watch his mouth move and try to answer. My words come out jumbled. I hear a loud whooshing, realize it’s my blood pounding in my ears.

  Theo grabs my arm. “I’ll drive.”

  We inch through traffic lights. I press my foot against the floorboard as though I can force Theo’s foot to punch the pedal harder. I’m trapped in this car and it’s not going fast enough. “Take 295.”

  “New York’s quicker.”

  “Not this time of night.”

  Rain smears the windshield. The dark road leaps from side to side. Oncoming headlights, the sailing blare of a car horn.

  Theo glances over. “Your seat belt.”

  I fumble for it. He leans across and drags the belt over my lap. “Call your mom.”

  Yes, my mom. The boys. I pull my phone from my bag and stare at the display. I have to think before I press my own home number. “Mom?”

  “Mm?”

  I’ve woken her. “Arden’s been in an accident. We’re on our way to the hospital.” Each word nails this down.

  “What?” Now she’s alert.

  “She was in a fire. She jumped out her dorm window to escape it.”

  My mother gasps and I squeeze my eyes shut. Four stories high.

  “Oh, my God. Is she—”

  “She’s in critical condition. She’s…she’s unconscious.” She’s suffered trauma to multiple parts of her body. We are doing everything we can to stabilize her. I’m having trouble breathing. I press my hand to my chest.