This is What Goodbye Looks Like

by Olivia Rivers

  “I know,” I say, but the logic doesn’t seem nearly as convincing as it had before I met Seth.

  Jeremy’s voice softens a little. “I have to admit, you’re dealing with this a lot better than I thought you would.”

  “Yeah. I’m doing fine. Coming to Vermont wasn’t a totally bad idea.” He doesn’t reply right away, so I bite my lip and hesitantly add, “I can kind of understand why you went to Colorado. It’s been nice to have some distance. I mean, obviously I miss Camille like hell, but Dad isn’t even letting me visit her in the hospital, so there was no point staying in San Diego. Right?”

  I hold my breath, hoping he’ll tell me I’m right. Every day, I wake up and miss Camille, and, every day, I wonder if I made a mistake by leaving her. But Jeremy will tell me I did the right thing. He has to.

  Silence stretches between us for so long, I think he’s hung up. But then Jeremy quietly murmurs, “He didn’t tell you, did he?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Dad. Have you talked to him recently?”

  “Of course. He makes me talk to him a few times every week.”

  More silence. The pattering of sleet outside suddenly sounds like an ominous drum, and I want to slap my hands over my ears, block it all out.

  “What’s wrong, Jeremy?”

  “I can’t believe the bastard hasn’t told you,” Jeremy mutters.

  My throat tightens, and I can barely make myself repeat the words. “What’s wrong?”

  “Hang up and call Dad.” Jeremy’s voice grows loud and harsh, but I get the feeling his anger isn’t towards me. He takes a ragged breath and then blurts out, “This isn’t my job. I can’t do this. Just...I love you, Lea, okay? Always.” And then the line clicks off.

  My hands are shaking so hard, it takes me three tries to dial Dad. He picks up before even the second ring. “Lea? I was just about to call you.”

  “Dad.” I swallow hard. “I just talked to Jeremy.”

  There’s a long pause. “You told me the two of you haven’t been talking.”

  “We weren’t. Now we are.”

  I go quiet, my silence an accusation. Dad manages to withstand it for almost a full ten seconds, the silence growing so thick, I think it might smother us both. But then I hear him take a shuddering breath.

  “We made the decision,” he says. “We’re taking her off life support.”

  Every cell in my body freezes and then shatters.

  “Your mom and I decided on it a couple days ago,” Dad continues. “I wanted to tell you earlier, but you’ve been doing so good the last few times I talked to you, and I didn’t want to ruin that. I’ve just been trying to figure out how I could tell you in the least painful way possible.”

  Something sticks in my throat, although I’m not sure if it’s a scream or vomit. I swallow hard and gasp out, “Why the hell would you think this could ever not be painful?”

  “Lea,” he says, his voice infuriatingly patient, as if he’s speaking to a toddler. “We got that evaluation back from Doctor Desman, and she agrees with everyone else who’s examined the latest reports. That makes three specialists telling us she has no chance of ever waking up.”

  I choke back a pained cry. “Camille?”

  He can’t mean Camille. Not my Camille, not my sister.

  “Yes, of course I’m talking about Camille,” he says with a heavy sigh.

  “They’re wrong,” I growl. “They might be specialists, but they don’t know Camille. They don’t know she’s the most stubborn girl in the world. She’s going to fight this. She’s going to wake up.”

  “Lea, you’re the only one who thinks keeping her on life support is right,” Dad says. “Do you really think I’d be doing this is everyone didn’t agree it was best for her?”

  “No,” I want to say. “No, of course you’d never do this for the wrong reasons.” But the words stick in my throat as I think of all the lies that so easily slipped from my dad’s tongue after the accident. One after another after another, his twisted version of the truth always sounding sure and confident, never seeming to give him pause.

  “This isn’t just about the doctors’ opinions, is it?” I spit out. “It’s about the insurance money. It cuts out at ten months, right? Unless her doctors fight to get it renewed? So don’t you dare pretend it’s just a coincidence that you want to take her off life support right when insurance stops paying for it.”

  Dad lets out a long breath. “Sweetheart, I’d be lying if I said that didn’t play into the decision. It has to. Keeping her in the hospital would cost forty thousand dollars a month without insurance, and how would we ever get that sort of money?”

  “I don’t know,” I snap. “Sell the house, sell the cars, do something. But you and mom got her into this shitty situation, so you’d better figure out a way to get her out.”

  “Lea, you’re not listening. There is no way out. That’s really what this boils down to. It’s not about money, it’s about doing what’s best for Camille and putting her out of her misery as peacefully as possible.”

  “She’s not a dog,” I say. I mean to scream it, but it just comes out as a choked whisper. “She’s not just some animal you can put down. She’s my sister.”

  “And she’s my daughter,” Dad replies, his voice nearly as quiet as mine. “You have to believe me, this is not a decision we’ve taken lightly. Your mom and I are only doing this because we know it’s the right thing for Camille.”

  “I can’t do that,” I whisper. “I can’t believe you anymore.”

  I wait for him to argue, to defend himself. But all he does is let out another haggard sigh.

  My mind spins with questions, and I manage to choke out the most important one. “When?”

  “We still have a few weeks left of insurance, and once it runs out, the paperwork is complicated. But her doctors are estimating about five weeks or so.”

  I swallow hard, trying to wrap my head around the timeline. Five weeks. Thirty-five days. A couple thousand hours, and my little sister will be dead.

  “I need to come home,” I say. “I need to see her.”

  “Of course. As soon as we figure out the exact date, you can come say goodbye to her. But I’m not letting you spend the next month by her bed, Lea. All of your doctors agree that sort of behavior isn’t healthy for you. You need to let her go.”

  “Camille always fought. Always. If something got in her way, she never just gave up.”

  “This isn’t her giving up,” Dad says quietly. “She just never got a chance to fight in the first place.”

  “She doesn’t deserve this.”

  He clears his throat, and his voice cracks a little as he says, “I know that.”

  I grit my teeth and force myself to choke out the next words. “Mom should have paid for what she did.”

  “Stop it, Lea. We’re not going there. We’re just not.”

  No, of course not. Because this is the end. These past nine months, my family has worked so hard to protect ourselves, to bury our dirty little secrets. And now we’ll finish by burying my little sister.

  “Lea?” Dad says. “Are you still there?”

  “I don’t think so,” I murmur.

  And then I hang up.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  My plan was simple: Leave my room, get away from the phone call, find Brie, and bawl my eyes out. Instead, I end up in front of the senior boys’ dorm, shaking as the wind crawls through my thin sweater and coats my skin in shivers.

  If I get caught in the boys’ dorm, I’ll be facing detention at the very least. But detention seems like a pretty mild threat right now, and besides, the dorm supervisor is an old professor who’s clueless about what goes on here. I fumble with the dorm’s heavy glass door, but my trembling grip keeps slipping, and it just flops shut in my face. A group of guys passes by on the other side, and I knock, drawing their attention. One of them I recognize from my Chemistry class. Greg, I think. Or maybe it’s Michael.

&
nbsp; I don’t know, and I don’t bother trying to properly remember his name as he opens the door for me. I just limp straight inside, passing by the supervising professor, who’s snoring in one of the cushioned chairs placed around the entrance. Somehow, I manage to stammer out enough words to make it clear I want to see Seth, and Greg/Michael/Whatever-His-Name-Is gives me whispered directions.

  Room C3 is easy enough to find—just a couple turns down the hallway leads me right to Seth’s door. It opens before I even get the chance to knock. Seth steps out of his room and nearly runs into me, but he stumbles to a halt when he hears my panting breaths.

  “It’s me,” I blurt out. “Lea.”

  He takes a step back. “Hey. I was just heading to grab something from the vending machines.” He leans against the doorframe. “Weren’t we meeting in the parking lot? What are you doing here?”

  I swallow hard. “Yeah. Sorry. I just... I...”

  Really, what the hell am I doing here? He’s the last person I should be running to for comfort. But all I can think of is the tone of his voice whenever he talks about going home, how hollow it sounds, and how his eyes look just the opposite—filled to the brim with sadness.

  Seth takes a couple more steps back. “Girls aren’t allowed in the guys’ dorm.”

  “Sorry,” I repeat. I move to leave, but he just waves for me to come inside his room.

  “So get out of the hallway,” he says. “I don’t want you getting caught.”

  I mumble a hesitant thank you and step inside. The curtains are pulled and all the lights are off, which seems strange at first, until I realize Seth isn’t wearing his sunglasses like usual. The darkness must be more comfortable for his eyes.

  “There’s a lamp in the corner,” he says as he closes the door behind me. “You can turn it on, if you want.”

  I fumble in the darkness toward the lamp and flick it on, allowing its dim light to illuminate the room. It has the same basic layout as my own dorm, but that’s where the similarities end. I’m assuming the far side of the room belongs to Landon, because it’s covered by a minefield of dirty clothes, empty energy drink bottles, and bent notebooks. The other side is clearly Seth’s—sparse and tidy, with a fluffy dog bed right next to the human one. Koda lays there, one eye cracked open and her tail giving a sleepy wag.

  The wall right above Seth’s bed is covered in photographs, and there’s a strange collage of book pages tacked to the wall closest to the door, each one covered in random bits of nature. Autumn leaves glued to one, sand on another, gravel and soil on the page closest to me. If I was capable of any sort of coherent speech, I might ask what they were. But I’m barely thinking straight, so that sort of conversation is going to have to wait.

  Seth strides over to the small dresser in the corner, yanks open the top drawer, and fishes around. “You’re freezing.”

  I stumble over to his bed and sit on the edge of it. “How do you know?” I mumble as I rub my numbed cheeks with my hands. But damn. He’s right—my skin is like ice. I was a total idiot to rush across the entire campus without a coat on. And I also forgot my cane, which I’m regretting more and more every second as jolts of pain race through my leg in time with my pounding heartbeat.

  “Because I can hear your teeth chattering.” Seth pulls a thick hoodie from the drawer and shoves it toward me. As I grab it, my hand brushes against his. He grabs at my fingers, lacing them between his own for a long second and then rubbing at my palm with his thumb.

  “Why aren’t you wearing gloves?” he demands.

  I struggle for a response as I stare down at his warm skin pressed against the pale coldness of my hand. But then he abruptly jerks away and points to the hoodie.

  “Put that on, and stick your hands in the pockets. God, Lea, what were you doing out there? It’s freezing. You shouldn’t be outside without like twenty layers on.”

  “I wasn’t thinking,” I admit as I shakily throw on the hoodie. “I just sort of ran out, and I forgot to grab my coat and everything, and...yeah. Sorry. I-I don’t know why I came here.”

  He sighs and shakes his head, and for a moment, I think he might ask me to leave. But instead he yanks the quilt off Landon’s bed and dumps it on my lap, tucking it around me so I’m cocooned between the quilt and the blankets of Seth’s bed.

  “What are you doing?” I demand.

  “Getting you warm. I’m not going to be responsible for letting a pretty girl lose her toes.”

  My mind is a jumbled mess of emotions, and I end up mumbling the first thing that comes into it. “You don’t know I’m pretty.”

  He gently touches my hair, letting his fingers trail through it. “Of course I know you’re pretty,” he murmurs, pressing the back of his hand to my cheek before he pulls away. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  I look down and grab the edge of the quilt, pulling its warmth closer. On the nightstand beside the bed, I spot Seth’s usual mug of Earl Grey tea, and I breathe in deeply, both loving and hating how comforting the herbal scent is.

  Seth makes a small circling gesture with his hand and says, “Koda, come here.” His dog immediately springs up from her bed and pads over to Seth, leaning against his leg. He points to me. “Go give Lea snuggles.” Koda cocks her head and stares at me. “Go on,” Seth insists.

  “No, I’m fi—”

  Koda leaps into my lap, cutting off my protest. She’s a lot lighter than I’d thought, most of her bulk just soft fluff, but I still wince as she knocks against my knee. But then she licks at my hand, and I just don’t have it in me to push her off my lap. I bury my aching fingers in her warm fur, just like I’ve seen Seth do, and press my face against her scruff. She nuzzles close, letting her head rest on my thigh.

  “Thanks,” I murmur into Koda’s fur. “I needed that.”

  “No problem,” Seth says, sitting next to me on the bed. “Now are you going to tell me why you’re so freaked out that you ran outside and nearly froze to death?”

  He stops there, but I can hear the rest of the unspoken question. “And why did you come here? Why to me?”

  I open my mouth, and the entire story almost slips out. It sits there perched on the tip of my tongue, but as it emerges, the truth slowly morphs into something more benign. “It’s... it’s my little sister.”

  He tilts his head. “You’ve never told me you have a little sister.”

  “No,” I admit. “I don’t talk about her much around here. My family is... complicated.”

  “You do realize I’m basically the worst person you could come to for family issues, right? My family is a total mess right now. Not exactly the best role model.”

  I look away, desperately trying to sort out my thoughts. He’s right, of course. He’s the last person I should have gone to, and if I wasn’t shaking so damn hard, I’d probably go right back outside and leave.

  “It’s just, Brie’s pretty much the only other person I talk to here,” I say, forcing the words to slip out between my chattering teeth. “And her family just seems so...”

  “Perfect,” Seth supplies. “Yeah. They’re real close knit.”

  There’s no judgment in his tone, but I still cringe. “I probably sound like a total brat. I know Brie cares, and it’s not like I’m jealous of her, it’s just...” I clear my throat. “I thought you might be better to talk to.”

  He smiles wryly. “Because my family is screwed up beyond belief?”

  “Yeah. And because you still never hesitate to call them your family.”

  He nods slowly. Then he quietly says, “So your sister. She’s the issue?”

  It’s not a question, just a statement filled with sad understanding. A lump presses at my throat, and I wait for tears to follow, but instead there’s just a choking, hollow feeling.

  “She’s not the issue,” I murmur. “She’s never been the issue. She never did anything wrong.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that,” Seth says, reaching toward me like he wants to comfort me, but can’t quite decide ho
w.

  I swallow hard. “She’s sick. Really, really sick. And my parents are taking her off life support.”

  I haven’t even finished the sentence before Seth finds my hand and gently tugs it away from the edge of the quilt, which I’ve been clutching in a death grip.

  “I’m sorry,” he murmurs, twining his fingers with mine. His touch is warm and comforting and everything I don’t deserve. “I’m just... Shit, I’m so sorry. I don’t even know what else to say.”

  “But you always know the right thing to say,” I whisper numbly, although I’m not sure if it’s a compliment or a protest.

  He rubs his thumb against the back of my hand. “I don’t think there’s anything right about this. Nothing at all.”

  We stay frozen for a moment, even Koda, whose constantly wagging tail is still for once. Then I reach toward Seth and wrap my arms around his neck. He presses me close against him, and I lean against his chest, letting its solidness hold me up. It’s like his warmth finally manages to thaw the walls I’ve encased my emotions in, because for the first time since I came to Harting, I start crying.

  I’m not sure how long I stay tangled up with him like that. Time passes in painful increments of choked sobs and hot tears, and Seth just holds me, not daring to say anything, but also not daring to let me go. I feel like I’m drowning, falling deeper and deeper into an icy well. The only heat in the world seems to belong to Seth, so I cling to him tighter and let myself cry, trying to purge the coldness biting at my insides.

  I keep waiting for him to say something, to tell me it’s all going to be okay, but he stays completely silent. He knows any reassurance would be useless. He knows it’d be a lie. So he just sits there and clutches me close to his chest, his ragged breathing a soft, tortured lullaby in my ear.

  Finally, after what feels like an eternity, my tears stop. I’m not sure if I manage to pull it together, or if I simply run out. A wet splotch marks the front of Seth’s shirt, but he doesn’t seem to mind. He just slowly pulls away from me and holds me at arm’s length, and I notice that his eyes are red and watery, too.