by Chris Lynch
“I told you I should be here,” Fabian says. “You should know I say what I mean.”
“This is astounding,” I say, waving him inside. “How?”
He pulls a crumpled couple of pages from his pocket and holds them up like a kid just in the front door with his proudest schoolwork.
“I just got out your old itinerary, the one Ray forwarded us before your arrival at the school. And I just organized one in reverse. College bereavement policy allowed me five days for the loss of my uncle Ray, plus two travel days. I’ll still miss a few classes, but that’ll give them a chance to catch up at least.”
I shake my head in admiration and shock. Then I look down at mail that came in through the slot sometime earlier. It’s a card. It has my name handwritten on the envelope but no postage or address.
“Keir?” Fabian says.
“Yeah, sorry, man.”
“Are you doing okay? You look a little unwell.”
“What? Oh, not at all. Listen, give me just a minute, will ya? Feel free to poke around all you like.”
“Great,” he says, starting his own self-guided tour. “I love poking around.”
I take the card into my room, the last time it will still be my room. I started loving Gigi Boudakian as a little boy living in this room. I sit on the blue bed and open the envelope as a very anxious man.
The outside of the card is printed, With Sympathy, through these difficult days. The inside is all Gigi, all lovely script and brevity.
I was truly saddened to hear about your father. He tried to be a good man. He was kind.
It was good that you wrote. Even if only for yourself, this was an important move forward. But no, I do not want to pursue anything. I don’t want to see you in jail (anymore). But I don’t want to see you anywhere else either. You offered to surrender yourself quickly and quietly so I could be “done with it.” You still have a very long way to go to understand what you did. I will never be “done with it.” It is mine, every day, until I die. Just like it is yours, until that day comes for you.
The only thing you can do is go. And stay gone. I should not have to look at your face ever again, and you should not deny me that one small gesture to spare me any more anguish over your actions. If you have any true remorse, then don’t ever come back here.
You said before that you loved me, and I hated that. I told you to stop it. Stop saying it and stop thinking it. But if you were not lying, if you did ever feel love for me, I want you now to remember that. Finally admitting your guilt to me was a start. But it’s a start to something that doesn’t have a finish. You cannot undo what you did that night. The effects are irreversible.
What you can do is remember me. Remember loving me, and remember destroying me.
If there is any human soul to you at all, you will be sickened whenever you think of that. And if so, then you will never be able to do this to anybody else.
“Ah, um, Keir? Hey, how you hanging in there, okay? I already saw all the other rooms, but I can go back out if you need more time by yourself.”
I shake my head no, then place the card inside my duffel bag, which is all ready at my feet.
“I just have to do one last thing, Fabian. I don’t want to go until I leave a message for Joyce.”
“I guess it won’t wait till you’re on the bus.”
I shake my head, point at my feet, and say, “Right here.”
• • •
“Joyce, I’ll make this brief because otherwise I’ll get stupid.
“I came home and buried Ray. My dad and best friend. I closed down our house.
“I also saw a lot of myself. Not the best stuff. Some of it you saw before me, I think.
“I believe the world probably shows us true fineness only a few times ever.
“I believe one of those was you.
“In three days, two hours, and twenty-five minutes or so, I will be perched on a big glacial erratic.
“Hoping to see true fineness there.”
• • •
“I guess that’s all she wrote, as they say,” Fabian says.
“That, my friend, is very much all she wrote. You sort of missed everything,” I say to him. “I’m sorry about that. You came all this way.”
“No problem at all. I knew I was going to be too late. I made up my mind to come all this way anyway. Just to see. To make the connection. And to bring you home.”
“To bring me . . .”
“Figured company just now might be no bad thing.”
“You’re ready, to turn around and get right back on that bus, and the five more after that?”
“Ready if you are,” he says.
I grab my bag, and my friend, and together we leave this house permanently behind.
“Are you still ready if I say I need to tell you a terrible story on the way? About something I did that was inexcusable?”
“I am ready for that,” he says. “I’ve been ready for that for some time now.”
“It’s time now,” I say, locking the front door behind me, sticking the keys back in through the mail slot. Leaving no way back to this place.
CHRIS LYNCH is the Printz Honor Award–winning author of several highly acclaimed young adult novels, including Printz Honor Book Freewill, Iceman, Gypsy Davey, and Shadow Boxer—all ALA Best Books for Young Adults—as well as Killing Time in Crystal City, Little Blue Lies, Pieces, Kill Switch, Angry Young Man, and Inexcusable, which was a National Book Award finalist and the recipient of six starred reviews. He holds an MA from the writing program at Emerson College. He teaches in the MFA creative writing program at Lesley University. He lives in Boston and in Scotland.
Simon & Schuster • New York
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ALSO BY CHRIS LYNCH
Angry Young Man
Freewill
Gypsy Davey
Iceman
Inexcusable
Kill Switch
Killing Time in Crystal City
Little Blue Lies
Pieces
Shadow Boxer
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2016 by Chris Lynch
Jacket photograph copyright © 2016 by Jon Pack
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Book design by Krista Vossen
The text for this book was set in Minion.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Lynch, Chris, 1962– author.
Title: Irreversible / Chris Lynch.
Description: First edition. | New York : Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, [2016] | Sequel to: Inexcusable. | Summary: Keir Sarafian must finally confront his past when tragedy strikes during his first year of what has been an eye-opening first year of college.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015037853| ISBN 9781481429856 (hardback) | ISBN 9781481429870 (ebook)
Subjects: | CYAC: Conduct of life—Fiction. | Fathers and sons—Fiction. | Colleges and universities—Fiction. | Family life—Fiction. | Rape—Ficti
on. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Social Issues / Sexual Abuse. | JUVENILE FICTION / Social Issues / Dating & Sex. | JUVENILE FICTION / Law & Crime.
Classification: LCC PZ7.L979739 Irr 2016 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2015037853
