Read What Happens to Goodbye Online

Authors: Sarah Dessen

What Happens to Goodbye (28 page)

BOOK: What Happens to Goodbye
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“Hi, honey!” my mom said, her voice too loud in my ear. “Good morning! Did you get any snow there?”
“A little,” I said, looking out at the flakes still falling. “How about you?”
“Oh, we’ve already got three inches and it’s still coming down hard. The twins and I have been out in it. They look so cute in their snowsuits! I e-mailed you a few pictures.”
“Great,” I said. Thirty seconds down, another, oh, two hundred and seventy or so to go before I could get off the phone without it seeming entirely rude.
“I just want to say again how much I enjoyed seeing you last weekend,” she said. She cleared her throat. “It was just wonderful to be together. Although at the same time, it made me realize how much I’ve missed of your life these last couple of years. Your friends, activities . . .”
I closed my eyes. “You haven’t missed that much.”
“I think I have.” She sniffed. “Anyway, I’m thinking that I’d really like to come visit again sometime soon. It’s such a quick trip, there’s no reason why we can’t see each other more often. Or, you could come here. In fact, this weekend we’re hosting the team and the boosters for a big barbecue here at the house. I know Peter would love it if you could be here.”
Shit,
I thought. This was just what I’d been worried about by agreeing to go to the game. One inch, then a foot, then a mile. The next thing I knew, we’d be back in the lawyers’ offices. “I’m really busy with school right now,” I said.
“Well, this would be the weekend,” she replied. Push, push. “You could bring your schoolwork, do it here.”
“It’s not that easy. I have stuff I have to be here for.”
“Well, okay.” Another sniff. “Then how about next weekend? We’re taking our first trip down to the beach house. We could pick you up on the way, and then—”
“I can’t do next weekend either,” I said. “I think I just need to stay here for a while.”
Silence. Outside, the snow was still falling, so clean and white, covering everything. “Fine,” she said, but her tone made it clear this was anything but. “If you don’t want to see me, you don’t want to see me. I can’t do anything about that, now can I?”
No,
I thought,
you can’t.
Life would have been so much easier if I could do that, just agree with this statement, plant us both firmly on the same page, and be done with it. But it was never that simple. Instead, there was all this dodging and running, intricate steps and plays required to keep the ball in the air. “Mom,” I said. “Just—”
“Leave you alone,” she finished for me, her voice curt. “Never call, never e-mail, don’t even try to keep in touch with my firstborn child. Is that what you want, Mclean?”
“What I want,” I said slowly, trying to keep my voice level, “is the chance to have my own life.”
“How could you think it’s anything but that? You won’t even share the smallest part of it with me unless it’s under duress.” Now she was actually crying. “All I want is for us to be close, like we used to be. Before your father took you away, before you changed like this.”
“He didn’t take me away.” My voice was rising now. She’d fumbled around, poking and prodding, and now she’d found it, that one button that could not be unpushed.
I’d
changed? Please. “This was my choice. You made choices, too. Remember?”
The words were out before I could stop them, and I felt their weight both as they left me, and when they hit her ears. It had been a long, long time since we’d talked about the affair and the divorce, way back to the days of What Happens in a Marriage, that brick wall that stopped any further discussion. Now, though, I’d lobbed a grenade right over it, and all I could do was brace for the fallout.
For a long while—or what felt like a long while—she was quiet. Then, finally, “Sooner or later, Mclean, you’re going to have to stop blaming me for everything.”
This was the moment. Retreat and apologize, or push forward to where there was no way to return. I was tired, and I didn’t have another name or girl to hide behind here. Which is probably why it was Mclean’s voice that said, “You’re right. But I can blame you for the divorce and for the way things are between us now. You did this. At least own it.”
I felt her suck in a breath, like I’d punched her. Which, in a way, I had. All this forced niceness, dancing around a truth: now I’d broken the rules, that third wall, and let everything ugly out into the open. I’d thought about this moment for almost three years, but now that it was here, it just made me sad. Even before I heard the click of her hanging up in my ear.
I shut my phone, stuffed it in my pocket, then grabbed my backpack. Four hours away, my mother was crumbling and it was all my doing. The least I could have felt was a moment of exhilaration. But instead it was something more like fear that washed over me as I started down our walk, pulling my coat tightly around me.
Outside, the air was cold and crisp, the snow coming down hard. I turned the opposite way from the bus stop and started walking toward town, the snow making everything feel muffled and quiet around me. I walked and walked; by the time I realized how far I’d gone, there were only a couple of storefronts left before the street turned residential again. I had to turn around, find a bus stop, get to school. First, though, I needed to warm up. So I walked up to the closest place with an OPEN sign, a bakery with a picture of a muffin in the window, and went inside.
“Welcome to Frazier Bakery!” a cheerful voice called out the second I crossed the threshold. I looked over to see two people behind the counter, bustling around, while a few people waited in line. Clearly, this was one of those chain places that was supposed to look like a mom-and-pop joint: decorated to look small and homey, mandatory personal greeting, a crackling (fake) fireplace on one wall. I got in line, grabbing a couple of napkins to wipe my nose.
I was so tired from the walk, and still reeling from what had happened with my mom, that I just stood there, shuffling forward as needed until suddenly I was face-to-face with a pretty redhead wearing a striped apron and a jaunty paper cap. “Welcome to Frazier Bakery!” she said. “What can we do to make you feel at home today?”
God, I hated all this corporate crap, even before I’d heard my dad rail against it endlessly. I looked up at the menu board, scanning it. Coffee, muffins, breakfast paninis, smoothies, bagels. I looked back at the smoothie options, suddenly remembering something.
“Blueberry Banana Brain Freeze,” I told her.
“Coming right up!”
She turned, walking over to a row of blenders, and I took another look around me at this, the place where Dave’s downfall began. You could hardly imagine a place less likely to corrupt someone. There were needlepoint samplers on all the walls, for God’s sake. LIFE’S TROUBLES ARE OFTEN SOOTHED BY HOT, MILKY DRINKS, read one by the sugar, milk, and cream station. Another, over the recycling bins, proclaimed WASTE NOT, WANT NOT. I wondered where they’d ordered them, and if you could get anything mass-embroidered and framed. LEAVE ME ALONE, mine would say. I’d hang in on my door, a fair warning, cutely delivered.
Once I got my smoothie, I went over and took a seat on a faux-leather chair in front of the faux-roaring fire. Dave was right: after two sips on my straw, I had a headache so bad I could barely see straight. I put my hand to my forehead, as if that would warm things up, then closed my eyes, just as the front door bell chimed.
“Welcome to Frazier Bakery!” one of the counter people yelled.
“Thank you!” a voice yelled back, and someone laughed. I was still rubbing my forehead when I heard footsteps, then, “Mclean? ”
I opened my eyes, and there was Dave. Of course it was Dave. Who else would it be?
“Hi,” I said.
He peered at me a little more closely. “You okay? You look like you’ve been—”
“It’s just a brain freeze,” I said, holding up the cup as evidence. “I’m fine.”
I could tell he was not fully convinced, but thankfully, he didn’t push the issue. “What are you doing here? I didn’t know you were a Friend of Frazier.”
“A what?”
“That’s what we call the regulars.” He waved at the redhead, who waved back. “Hold on, I’m just grabbing a Freaking Everything and a Procrastinator’s Special. Be back in a sec.”
I took another tentative sip of my smoothie, watching as he headed over to the counter, ducking behind it. He said something to the redhead, who laughed, then reached around her to the bakery display and grabbed a muffin before pouring himself a big cup of coffee. Then he punched a few buttons on the register, slid in a five, and took out a dollar and some change, which he deposited in the tip jar.
“Thank you!” the redhead and other guy working sang out.
“You’re welcome!” Dave said. Then he started back over to me.
Good Lord
I thought as he approached.
I just don’t have the energy for this today.
But it wasn’t like there was anything I could do. I was in a public place, not to mention one that he knew well. It was almost funny that I’d ended up there. Almost.
“So,” he said, standing over me now, muffin in hand. “You skipping out today or something?”
“No,” I said. “Just . . . needed some breakfast. I’m about to go catch the bus.”
“Bus?” He looked offended. “Why would you take public transport when I’m right here with my car?”
“Oh, that’s okay. I’m . . . I’m fine.”
“You’re also late,” he pointed out, nodding at the clock behind me. “Bus will make you later. There’s no pride in tardiness, Mclean.”
I looked around the room. “That sounds like something that should be needlepointed on one of these samplers.”
“You’re right!” He grinned. “Gonna have to take that up with management. Come on. I’m parked out back.”
I went, following him down the hallway, past the restrooms, and out a rear entrance. As we walked, he continued to eat his muffin, leaving a trail of crumbs behind him like someone out of a fairy tale. I said, “What did you call that again?”
“What?”
“Your breakfast.”
He glanced back at me. “Oh, right. The Freaking Everything and the Procrastinator’s Special.”
“I don’t remember seeing that on the menu.”
“Because it isn’t,” he replied, starting across the lot. “I kind of created my own lexicon here at FrayBake. Translated, that’s a muffin with everything under the sun, and a coffee that guarantees multiple bathroom breaks for the next few hours. It caught on, and now all the counter people use it.” He jangled his keys. “Here we are.”
I watched him walk around a Volvo pockmarked with dents. On the passenger seat was one of those beaded covers I associated with taxi drivers and grandmothers. “This is your car?”
“Yep,” he said proudly as we got in. “She’s been in lockdown, but I finally got her sprung last night.”
“Yeah? How’d you manage that?”
“I think it was the lives of cells that clinched it.” He turned the key, and the engine, after a bit of coaxing, came to life. “Oh, and I also agreed to work in my mom’s lab after the Austin trip, until I go to Brain Camp. But you do what you have to do for the ones you love. And I love this car.”
The Volvo, as if to test this, suddenly sputtered to a stop. Dave looked down at the console, then turned the key. Nothing happened. He tried again, and the car made a sighing noise, like it was tired.
“It’s okay,” Dave called out over the sound of the engine making ticking noises, like a bomb. “She just needs a little love sometimes.”
“I know all about that,” I said. “So did Super Shitty.”
This just came out, without me even really being aware of it. When Dave looked at me, though, eyebrows raised, I realized what I’d done. “Super Shitty?”
“My car,” I explained. “My old car, I guess I should say. I don’t know where it is now.”
“Did you crash into a guardhouse, too?”
“No, just left town and didn’t need it anymore.” I had a flash of my beat-up Toyota Camry, she of the constantly blown alternators, hissing radiator, and odometer that had topped 200,000 miles before it even came into my possession. The last I’d seen it, it had been parked in Peter’s huge garage, between his Lexus and SUV, as out of place there as I was. “She was a good car, too. Just kind of . . .”
“Shitty?”
I nodded, and he pumped the gas, then the brake. I could see a car behind us, turn signal on, waiting for the space. The person behind the wheel appeared to be cursing when the Volvo suddenly roared to life, a burst of smoke popping from the tailpipe.
“Nothing like driving in the snow,” Dave said, hardly fazed as we turned out of the lot and headed down the hill to a stop sign, flakes hitting the windshield. As he slowed, the Volvo’s brakes squealed in protest. He glanced over at me, then said, “Seat belt, please. Safety first.”
I pulled it on, grateful he’d reminded me. My door was rattling, and I was just hoping the seat belt would hold me in should it fly open at forty miles an hour. “So,” I said, once we’d gotten going, “thanks for the thyme.”
BOOK: What Happens to Goodbye
2.83Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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