The Last Time We Say Goodbye
Page 51

But I don’t know if any of that is real, or just a bunch of happy details I imagine to fill in the blanks of my parents’ fairy tale, which they’ve told so many times it’s started to feel like memory. I was 2 years old when Ty was born.
But I do remember this:
He cried. I think he cried every night, really, but I remember this one particular night. I woke to the sound of him crying, a thin wail that filled the house. I got out of bed and padded in stocking feet into his room, then boosted myself over the railings of the crib and lay down beside him.
He stopped crying to look at me.
I pulled his blanket back over him. He’d kicked it off. He was cold.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll take care of you.”
We stayed that way for I don’t know how long, looking at each other.
Then Dad was there, smiling down at both of us, his hand cupping the back of my head, and he said, “Well, look at you two, all quiet and cozy. You calmed him right down. Well done, Peanut. Well done.”
And I remember being proud. I had made things right when they were wrong.
20.
ON MONDAY, SADIE SHOWS UP at my back door before school. Just like when we were eight years old, when she’d stand on the steps and tap on the glass sliding door, like Can Lexie come out to play? until Mom heard her and let her in.
“Lex!” Mom calls down the hall. “You have a visitor.”
I come running.
“Think fast.” Sadie throws me a Pop-Tart, cherry, my favorite—she still remembers my favorite. “Breakfast is served,” she says.
I glance over at Mom to see if she’s offended by the notion that Sadie apparently believes she has to feed me, but Mom is leaning against the kitchen doorway smiling the nostalgia smile.
“I thought we’d wait for the bus together,” Sadie says cheerfully, even though I know she doesn’t typically ride the bus. “Two freezing ass—backsides are better than one, I always say.”
“Indeed,” I say.
Mom laughs in that muted way she has now of just breathing out her nose. “It’s good to see you again, Sadie. How are you?”
“I’m stellar, thanks,” Sadie answers. “What’s going on with you?”
It’s an awkward question these days, but better than “How are you?,” which we can never answer truthfully, and Sadie asks it in a completely casual tone. Mom doesn’t lose the smile.
“Lex got into MIT, did she tell you?”
Sadie swings her gaze to me. Blank face.
“Massachusetts Institute of Technology,” I explain, my cheeks heating.
Mom puffs. “It’s the best mathematics program in the country.”
Sadie gives a low whistle. “Congrats, Lex. Wow.”
I stare at my sneakers. “Thanks.”
“She’s going to do amazing things,” Mom says.
Sadie nods. “No doubt.”
This is getting to be too much. “Come on.” I grab my backpack in one hand and readjust my grip on the Pop-Tart with the other and lunge for the door. “We have to go if we don’t want to miss the bus.”
“You girls have a good day at school,” Mom calls as Sadie follows me out.
Like we are eight years old again.
“Your mom hasn’t changed much,” Sadie comments as we stand waiting.
It’s funny, her saying that.
My mom has changed so much since Sadie and I were best friends.
I have changed so much.
But every now and then it’s like we’re allowed to act like our old selves. It comes back. If only for a moment.
“I gave the letter to Ashley,” I confess to Sadie when we’re sitting in the front seat of the bus, the heater blowing loud and hot across our knees.
“Whoa,” Sadie says. “What made you decide to finally do it? Last time I saw you—”
“I talked to her,” I say before she recounts her own rendition of the Ashley-kisses-Grayson debacle. “She told me her side. Ty dumped her, not the other way around. Apparently he didn’t even give her a reason. So I thought the letter might provide some explanation.”
“You still didn’t read it.”
I shake my head.
“God,” Sadie says. “You and the iron self-control.”
We don’t talk for a while. Sadie plugs some earbuds into her phone and I do the same with mine. Sadie’s music choice: rap, by the sound of it. Mine: Rachmaninoff. We cruise along through the endless white cornfields. Then Sadie pulls one bud out and turns to me.
“So, Massachusetts,” she says. “That’s a long way.”
“Yes. It is.”
“It’s good news, though, right?”
“Right. But it’s going to be hard, leaving my mom.”
“She’s not going with you?”
I frown at her, boggled by the idea. “You don’t usually bring your parents to college with you, Sade. That would be weird.”
Sadie gives me a half smile. “I’ll look after her, if you want.”
“What are you going to do after graduation?”
She shrugs. “Find a job.”
“You’re not planning on college?”
“School’s not really my thing.” She grimaces like the idea of college is physically painful.
“You’re smart, though, Sadie,” I argue.
She looks startled.
“You are,” I insist. “You should go to college.”