Goodbye, Perfect

by Sara Barnard

  ‘Bonnie’ll come home,’ I promise, trying to give her shoulder a reassuring rub. ‘Real soon, OK?’

  Rowan shakes her head. ‘She won’t,’ she says, and then she starts properly crying, complete with squeaky gasps and shuddering sobs.

  ‘OK, let’s get you out of here,’ I say, putting my arm around her and leading her out of the doors and away from the gawping stares of the other students. I find us a bench and we sit down. ‘Now,’ I say, channelling my inner Carolyn, all patient and calm, ‘what do you mean, she won’t?’

  ‘She told me,’ Rowan says, her voice hoarse and low, shoulders hunching. ‘She said that if . . . that if I . . . She said she’d go and never come back.’

  I wait for a moment, hoping she’ll offer more of an explanation, but she just wipes at her eyes with the sleeve of her blazer and lets out another choking sob.

  ‘That if you what, Row?’ I ask, as gently as I can.

  Rowan drops her hands to her lap, threading her fingers together and squeezing them so hard they turn white.

  ‘You can tell me,’ I say into the silence.

  When she speaks, her voice is so quiet I almost can’t make the words out. ‘I’ll get into trouble.’

  ‘It’s just me,’ I say. ‘I won’t tell anyone, not if you don’t want me to. And whatever it is, I’m sure it’s not really as bad as you think.’

  She looks at me. ‘No?’

  ‘No way,’ I say. ‘I know trouble, Row. And it’s not you.’ In the instant before I say these words, I’m thinking that it’s a true, reassuring thing to say, but when I hear them in the space between us, I realize it’s not. Because I would have said the same thing about Bonnie, and I would have been wrong.

  She’s thinking this too, I can tell, but she doesn’t say it. What she says instead half breaks my heart. ‘It’s my fault.’

  ‘What’s your fault?’

  ‘Bonnie leaving. It was because of me.’

  ‘Oh, Row,’ I say. ‘Of course it wasn’t.’

  ‘It was,’ she insists, tears brimming and then spilling again.

  ‘Why would you think that?’

  ‘Because . . .’ There’s another long pause, which she eventually breaks in a breathless torrent. ‘Because I told her I was going to tell, and she said if I did she’d run away and never come back.’

  She doesn’t mean . . . ‘Wait, Row . . . Told her you were going to tell who? About what?’

  She turns to look at me, her teary brown eyes wide and Bambi-like. ‘About her and Mr Cohn. Tell my mum and dad, I mean.’

  For a moment, I can’t speak. ‘You knew about her and Mr Cohn?’

  ‘Well, yeah . . .’ Understanding is starting to dawn in her eyes. ‘You . . . um. You didn’t?’

  It’s obvious that she’d assumed I knew, too. And why wouldn’t she? Bonnie and I are best friends. We’re meant to be best friends.

  ‘She . . . she told you?’ I ask, stupidly. But none of this makes any sense.

  ‘Sort of. Not really. I kind of . . .’ Rowan’s cheeks have started to turn pink. ‘I kind of found out. It was so obvious something was going on, you know?’ Nope. Not to me. ‘She was so . . . different. And she’d stay late after school and ask me to cover for her, so I knew something was up. A couple of weeks ago I saw him – Mr Cohn, I mean – drop her off at our house after school before my parents got home. And she stayed in the car for a while, you know? It was so obvious. And so when she got in I asked her straight out and she told me everything.’

  Everything. There’s an ‘everything’.

  ‘What did she actually say? Did she tell you that they were planning to run off?’

  ‘God, no! Just that they were in love. And I was like, euw, obviously, but she was really happy, like a different person, and that was kind of nice for a bit, you know? She said they were working things out. I don’t know what I thought that meant, but I agreed to keep it all quiet for a while because it was all so weird and I didn’t know what to do. But then it started to get proper weird . . . like, he came into our house after school? While I was there?’ The words are spilling like they’ve been waiting for their chance, the agitation in her voice making every sentence a question. ‘And so I told Bonnie, this is all kinds of wrong, and I’m just going to tell Mum and Dad if you don’t stop.’ She takes a deep breath. ‘And she completely freaked out, said I was ruining everything, ruining her life, ruining Mr Cohn’s life, and she’d never forgive me if I told – stuff like that. And I said I didn’t care, and I just didn’t want to be involved. And that’s when she said the thing about running away and not coming back. And I said . . .’ She pauses, her breath hitching again. ‘I said, “Go on then!”’

  At these final words, she lets out a little anguished wail and buries her face in her hands.

  ‘Row, it’s OK,’ I say, trying to make my voice soft and reassuring, like Carolyn or Valerie would. ‘Look, when did this happen?’

  ‘Thursday.’

  OK, so it makes a little bit more sense why she’d think it was her fault now. There’s no way that conversation and Bonnie’s disappearance aren’t connected. But I’m not a monster – I know that’s the last thing I should say.

  ‘Bonnie leaving is all on her, not you,’ I say. ‘It doesn’t matter what you did or didn’t say before she left.’

  Rowan peeks out at me from between her fingers, doubtful.

  ‘Honest,’ I say.

  ‘But I lied,’ she says, her voice still hoarse and quiet. ‘The police asked me, and my mum and dad asked me, and I just said I didn’t know anything, and that was a lie. But if I told them the truth they’d know I’d been lying before.’ Her chin is starting to wobble again. ‘So I don’t know what to do.’

  Bloody Bonnie. It’s one thing to make me lie – it comes easy, and it doesn’t really bother me that much. But Rowan? Rule-following, anxious little Rowan? That’s just mean.

  ‘I don’t think they’ll mind about the lying before,’ I say, even though that’s almost definitely not true. ‘Don’t worry about that. If you want to tell them, do it. But, Row—?’

  The bell rings with a loud, jarring screech and we both jump. Rowan’s eyes widen and she looks around, suddenly skittish. ‘I’ve got to get to English,’ she says.

  ‘Wait just one sec,’ I say, taking hold of her blazer sleeve. ‘Do you know where Bonnie is now? Have you spoken to her since she left?’

  She shakes her head, and I don’t know whether to be relieved or not. ‘No. Have you?’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘Let me know if she contacts you, OK?’

  ‘I will,’ she says. I watch her sweep her books into her arms and hurry off down the path away from me. She looks so small. Poor Rowan, carrying that kind of secret around with everything going on.

  When she’s gone, I pull out my phone and send a quick text to ‘Ivy’: Call me asap. I need to talk to you – it’s about Rowan!

  I wait a couple of minutes for her to reply, opening Twitter again and scrolling through the hashtag to read the 140-character opinions of total strangers. Whoever thought up this hashtag thing clearly didn’t think it through. It’s only being used for speculation and judgement, like all of Twitter. A clickbait website is already using the hashtag to run a mini-debate on whether it’s ever OK to have a fling with your teacher. I wonder who suggested the safer words ‘a fling’ over the likely more accurate ‘sex’.

  I let out a sigh that sounds loud in the silence of the school and lock my phone again. There’s nothing for me on Twitter, and nothing for me here at school, either. No Bonnie, no Connor. I sling my bag over my shoulder and head for the exit.

  8

  It wasn’t always just me and Bonnie. Like any twosome, we’d experimented over the years with extras and alternatives, even drifting away from each other at one point in favour of other people, though not for very long. The fact is that Bonnie and I are pretty different people, and though this has always been a good thing in our friendship, it’s also meant there’s not
really room for anyone else. We work because we balance each other out.

  When we were in Year 7, Bonnie got friendly with a couple of girls who were much more of a natural fit for her: academic, well-behaved, quiet types. She tried to make us into a kind of foursome, but it just never happened. They seemed, if anything, a bit confused by me and why Bonnie liked me so much. And they were just too bland for me, too polished, too nice. When we tried to hang out all together, I was so obviously the odd-one-out it was painful. I thought I might lose Bonnie, for a while, especially as there were girls who were more of a natural fit for me too, but it didn’t happen. She stopped trying to make us all be friends and returned to my side.

  And then, when we were in Year 9, I’d found a group of friends who were more like me. Or at least, the me I felt like I was expected to be, and tried to be, for a while. But that didn’t last, and ever since it’s just been Bonnie and me, plus Connor for the last year or so. And that’s how I like it. Don’t get me wrong, she’s not my only friend. I’ve got plenty of non-best friends, the casual kind I’ll hang out with at parties or whose pictures I’ll like on Instagram. But they don’t know anything real about me, and they don’t know me; I don’t trust them with my secrets or my heart. And for good reason, it turns out – they haven’t checked in to make sure I’m OK, what with Bonnie being missing; they’ve just sent a stream of OMG DID YOU KNOW? texts that I ignored completely. Some friends.

  I might be talking a lot about all the things that are different about Bonnie and me, but of course there are things we have in common, too. We both love horror films, especially the psychological ones that totally mess with your head. We both think the person who thought of adding chilli to chocolate is an actual genius. We both think getting drunk is overrated, and have a low tolerance for other people’s annoying habits. We watch the Eurovision Song Contest together every year – usually at my house – and we always get overly invested in whichever country we’ve each picked out of a hat. We both love Harry Potter – her, the books; me, the films. We both took the Sorting Hat test last year to see what house we’d be in, because Bonnie said it was an important part of understanding our own identity. And then she got Slytherin and got cross and said the whole thing was just a story and it didn’t mean anything. I got Gryffindor.

  People talk about friendship like it’s only about shared loves, but it’s not. It’s also about finding the same things annoying and getting excited about the same silly, irrelevant things. It’s the person you can share a joke with, sure. But it’s also the person you can subtly roll your eyes at when someone else is talking too loudly. The person who makes the fun things better and the boring things more bearable. That’s Bonnie for me.

  The thing is, Bonnie and I aren’t friends despite our differences; we’re best friends because of them. I need Bonnie’s steadiness and level head to ground me, and she needs my occasional recklessness and wild spirit to lift her. Together, we’re in balance. That’s how it’s always been. Through secondary school, my influence protected her from the bullies who would otherwise have preyed on her mercilessly. Her influence protected me from the teachers, who still didn’t like me, but at least tolerated me in a way they didn’t the other girls like me who just hung around with each other. The bullies looked at Bonnie and thought, She must be all right, if Eden likes her. And the teachers looked at me and thought, She must have something, if Bonnie likes her.

  This probably makes it sound all a bit like a you-scratch-my-back kind of deal we made, like it was a calculated decision to make school bearable, but that’s not how it was at all. I love Bonnie. I’m picky about people at the best of times, but when it comes to my inner circle, the people I let into my heart, I’m ruthless. Bonnie is fiercely loyal to the core, and in an active way. So she won’t just quietly tell me she’s on my side if someone’s giving me a hard time; she’ll tell them, too. Loudly. She’s sharp and funny, but generous with it, using it to lighten the mood of a room rather than bring anyone down.

  Bonnie is like the sunshine of my life, and I don’t mean that in a soppy, shut-up-Eden-you-cheeseball kind of way (though maybe I do a tiny bit). It’s more than just that she makes my life brighter; it’s that I can count on her to be there, rain or shine, every single day. I know I can be a cold, grey, bitter person, sometimes. With Bonnie, I’m brighter. I don’t even know who I’d be without her, but I do know that this isn’t how I want to find out. Left suddenly solo with no warning or preparation, pushed to the side in favour of this new, surprise twosome.

  Maybe, while she was all these things to me, I wasn’t enough for her. The thought makes me feel heavy. She chose to run away, and I didn’t have the slightest idea that was even a possibility. What does that say about our friendship? What does it say about me? And who is there for me to talk to about all of this if she’s gone?

  With these questions in my head, I don’t feel like going straight home. What’s waiting for me, anyway, except revision and more rolling news? I go on a detour through the park and into the play area, sitting at the bottom of the slide and taking out my phone to wait for Bonnie to call. I just need to talk to her properly. I need to hear her voice.

  After a few minutes, I press the call icon for ‘Ivy’ and watch the screen connect. No answer. I call again. No answer.

  ‘For God’s sake, Bonnie!’ I snap into the empty air. I tap the message icon and type: Where are you? Call me!!

  I decide I’ll wait fifteen minutes for her before I give up and go home. After seven, my screen lights up. It’s Ivy.

  ‘Take your damn time!’ I say in greeting.

  ‘Sorry!’ she says. ‘Jack and I were at the beach.’ Of course they bloody were. ‘What’s going on with Rowan?’

  ‘She’s hanging on by a thread!’ This is maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but Bonnie doesn’t need to know that. ‘She thinks you leaving is all her fault!’

  There’s a moment of silence. Then Bonnie’s voice sounds in my ear again, more cautious this time. ‘Why does she think that?’

  ‘You know why she thinks that,’ I snap, trying to control my annoyance. Why is she still being so cagey with me? Aren’t I supposed to be her confidante in all this? The fact that I’m the one she’s choosing to be in contact with is really the only thing that’s making her previous lies bearable, and even that is depending on me not thinking about it too much.

  ‘She told you about the fight we had?’

  ‘Well, I didn’t guess, did I?’

  Another silence.

  ‘What were you thinking, telling her?’ I ask. What I mean is: Why did you tell her and not me?

  ‘She found out,’ Bonnie says. ‘I didn’t mean to tell her. No one was meant to know. That’s what made what Jack and I have . . . ours.’

  ‘Was it Mr Cohn who told you to keep it a secret?’

  ‘He didn’t need to tell me; it was obvious.’

  ‘Wasn’t that a bit of a warning sign, Bon? If something needs to be kept a secret, it’s probably a bad thing?’

  ‘Lots of relationships have to be kept secret,’ she replies. ‘When people are in love, that’s the most important thing, that’s why. Romeo and Juliet had to keep it a secret.’

  ‘Do you want to try an example where they both don’t end up dead?’

  ‘You’re missing the point!’

  ‘I’m missing the point?’

  ‘Look, just calm down, OK?’ Bonnie says, sounding suddenly so much like the Bonnie I remember that my throat closes up. ‘No one’s ending up dead. That’s part of the problem with this whole thing, you know. Everyone’s being so overdramatic.’

  I close my eyes and let out a small laugh to release some tension. ‘I think the problem is you’re being under-dramatic. You ran off with your teacher. That’s literally headline news.’

  ‘We wouldn’t have needed to run off if we’d been allowed to be together,’ she replies. ‘There’s such a taboo around age gaps in our society. It’s so prudish.’

  ‘Bonnie,
this isn’t like you being twenty-five and him being thirty-eight, or something. You’re underage. It’s literally illegal.’

  ‘So?’ she says, which is such a baffling response I don’t even know how to process it. ‘Besides, even if I was a few months older, it’s not technically allowed until I’m eighteen, because he’s my teacher. Why should I wait that long, when I know I love him, and he loves me?’

  I don’t know how to reply to that either. I try, ‘Because he could get arrested?’

  ‘Yeah, hence the running away,’ she says, like I’m being stupid on purpose.

  God, there’s no arguing with her, is there? ‘Couldn’t you at least have waited until after your GCSEs?’

  ‘Don’t bring up those,’ she says. ‘Some stupid little exams. They don’t matter.’

  ‘But . . .’I still don’t know what to say. ‘But, Bonnie . . . They’ve always mattered to you.’ I feel like I’m reminding her that she wears glasses or something. Bonnie being studious and academic is just a thing; it’s who she is. Or was?

  ‘Yeah, and what good did it do me? Worrying all the time? Never getting to do anything fun? None of it ever being good enough for my parents?’ This all comes out in a bit of a torrent. ‘Other girls at school laughing at me and calling me a nerd? You used to tell me I needed to chill out. You said I worked too hard and it was all so pointless. Well, you were right.’

  ‘I never said it was pointless!’ I protest. ‘I said it didn’t matter to me, and it doesn’t, but you want things that are different from what I want. You were working towards something.’

  ‘Well, I’m not any more. Now I have Jack.’

  ‘And, what? That’s your life plan?’

  ‘Why can’t it be?’

  ‘Because you’re fifteen?’

  ‘Love is love, Eden. However old you are.’

  I swear I almost hang up on her. ‘Can you be Serious Bonnie for just one minute?’ I ask. ‘What about when you need to get a job? You think you can just be on the run forever?’

  ‘I already told you this. No, not forever. Just until everything calms down. When they all realize we really do love each other and no one has to get arrested.’