This is What Goodbye Looks Like

by Olivia Rivers

  “Is there any chance your parents will change their mind?” he asks quietly. “That they won’t take her off life support?”

  I want to tell him “yes,” that there’s still time, that I can stop this, that it won’t actually happen. But instead my tongue turns traitor on me, and I hear myself murmur, “No.”

  His lips pinch together, like he’s trying to hold in a cry of pain, and somehow I know it’s real. This isn’t an act to make me feel better or try to impress me. He’s honestly hurting at the thought of Camille being hurt.

  “Are you going home?” he asks. “To be with her when they...?”

  “No, not for another month. My parents don’t think I should be there. Not until the very end.”

  Seth shakes his head. “That’s not right.”

  “None of this is.”

  He runs a hand through my hair, tucking it gently behind my ear. “I’m sorry,” he whispers again, his breath warm against my cheek.

  I press closer against him. “Aren’t you the one always saying you shouldn’t apologize for things that aren’t your fault?” My attempt to sound light-hearted fails miserably, and I don’t even bother fixing it.

  Seth sighs. “Is there anything I can do to make you feel better?”

  “Keep my sister alive.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Let me stay here for a bit?”

  It sounds more like a question than a request, but he doesn’t seem to notice my hesitation, and he just wraps his arms around me tighter. The rapid thudding of his heart is a welcome sensation against my cheek, which is raw from me angrily wiping away tears.

  “Thanks,” I murmur.

  “You’ve got to stop thanking me every time I do the smallest thing for you.”

  “This isn’t small,” I say, closing my eyes.

  He doesn’t argue, and instead just lets me sit there in his arms. I stay there for a long minute, neither of us moving. His steadiness is more comforting than I thought possible, but after a long stretch of stillness, he reaches out and winds a few strands of my hair around his index finger, absently playing with it.

  “I hate it when you’re sad,” he murmurs. “How about we talk about something other than your sister for a bit.”

  I scowl up at him. “My sister’s dying. We can’t just change the subject like that.”

  “You’re not going home to her?”

  “No. Like I said, my parents aren’t letting me come home for a few weeks.”

  “Okay. And are you going to do anything to help her from here?”

  “What do you mean?” I demand. Some inner part of me perks up, and I hold my breath, half-expecting him to tell me the secret to healing her. If anyone would know, it’d be Seth, right? It’d be the boy who held his family together during impossible times.

  Except he didn’t actually hold them together. Except they fell apart just like mine did, even if they hid it better. Except I was an idiot to ever think he had a solution to my problems, and I’m an idiot to even consider it now.

  “I mean are you going to figure out a cure for her?” Seth asks. “Deliver a miracle?”

  I give his chest a push, distancing myself from him a little. “Of course not. What are you talking about? I can’t do any of that.”

  “Then let’s change the subject for a while. You can’t do anything to help, and I can’t, either. There’s no sense torturing yourself by lingering on that.”

  “But...”

  “Besides,” Seth says softly, “if your sister is anything like my brother, she would hate to know you’re crying. And I hate it, too. So let’s just change the subject for now, at least until you’re feeling a bit better.”

  He’s right—I’m still shaking a little, and I’m probably going to completely break down again if I don’t start talking about something else. I glance around the room as I search for a topic that’s happier than our current one.

  “You have sand on your walls,” I finally say, peering at the paper tacked on the wall next to his door. It looks like a page from a book of poetry, and it’s covered in little grains of white sand that glimmer in the light of the lamp.

  “Yep.”

  “Does that count as something happy we could change the topic to?”

  “Of course. Why would I keep sad sand on my walls?”

  “Why would you keep sand on your walls at all?”

  “Because it’s pretty, and isn’t that what you’re supposed to do with walls? Hang them with pretty things? Posters, paintings, drawings...”

  “And sand, apparently.”

  “Yeah. Sand, too.” He makes a vague gesture to the pages pinned to his wall. “Every time I go on vacation, I bring back a souvenir that I can decorate my walls with. And then I find a poem that seems fitting for wherever the trip was, and I use that as a sort of frame.”

  He swallows hard, and his grip on my hand tightens a little. “It started off as a sort of joke between Parker and me. He was always hanging photos of our vacation spots, so I started hanging my own souvenirs. Then we’d have memories he could see and ones I could feel.”

  I glance up, examining the photos above his bed. Some of them are of people, some of landscapes, some abstract. But they all have a sort of dreamy quality to them, the backgrounds soft, but the subjects so sharp and focused, it’s like reality has started to seep straight out of the images.

  “Those are Parker’s,” I murmur, and I don’t explain what I’m talking about, because I know Seth will understand.

  He gives a slow nod. “Yeah.”

  “Why do you keep them up?” I ask quietly. “I mean, if you can’t see them...”

  He lets his head fall back and shrugs a shoulder. “Parker always said the best photos show the photographer as much as the subject. So that’s why I keep them up, I guess. I don’t need to see their details to know that I love them.”

  I open my mouth, but I can’t figure out any sort of reply. Pictures might be worth a thousand words, and maybe Parker’s are worth even more. But some things are just beyond words, and I think the tender agony in Seth’s voice is one of them.

  I shift my gaze back to the poetry pages on the other wall, blinking my eyes to clear them of the tears threatening to return. “You’ve traveled a lot of places,” I murmur.

  Seth nods. “Yeah. My dad used to travel a lot for his job, and he’d always bring my family along whenever he could.” He makes a vague gesture to the pages. “It kind of became a tradition to take a souvenir from every trip. And then Parker had the idea of keeping souvenirs from any big event in our lives, whether it was local or not. He was like that, always wanting to keep mementos from every chapter of our lives. So our collection just kept growing.”

  “So where’s the sand from?” I ask.

  “Hawaii,” he says as he begins tracing a mindless pattern over my palm with his index finger. I shiver and hope he just thinks it’s from the cold, although it’s probably a useless wish.

  “My parents took me there for my sixteenth birthday,” he continues. “They said I could pick anywhere in the States to go.”

  “And you picked Hawaii?”

  “You sound so surprised.”

  “It’s just, everyone goes to Hawaii for the scenery.”

  “You really underestimate me, don’t you?” he says, but he sounds merely amused. “Yeah, Hawaii’s beautiful, and yeah, that’s why I picked there.” He gestures toward the sand on the wall. “But the scenery isn’t the only pretty part. The sand is so soft, it’s almost like you’re walking on nothing. And it’s warm there, but it’s also humid, so it’s like the ocean follows you everywhere. Then there’s the food. I swear it tastes better there than it does anywhere else.”

  He pauses in his rambling and tilts his head. “But don’t tell any of the locals around here I said that. I’d probably be burned at the stake.”

  I want to smile, but my cheeks feel tight from the tears dried on them, and I can’t get them to lift right. So, instead, I just sa
y, “Okay, point taken. Blind dudes get to enjoy Hawaii, too.”

  “Told you,” he says, sounding almost smug. Then his voice lowers just a little, like he’s sharing a secret. “I’ve always thought of Hawaii as being red. Parker said that’s crazy, since everything is green and blue over there. But it reminds me of a sunrise, because everything’s always beginning. Plants popping up everywhere, lava making new islands, the water coming in with the tides. That’s the prettiest part of it. The newness of everything.”

  “Explain it to me,” I say. “How you can think in colors, I mean. How do you even know if red is pretty?”

  He drops his hand away from mine, and I clench my fingers into a fist, resisting the urge to snatch him back. I start leaning away to escape the temptation, but then he reaches up and gently twines a few strands of my hair around his index finger, making a little curl.

  “I read poetry,” Seth says, giving a shrug. “So I can’t tell you what a rainbow looks like, but Dickinson and Wordsworth and Silverstein can. And their words tell me enough about colors to understand them.”

  He tilts his head in that way he always does when he’s thinking too hard. “Sometimes I think I understand them more than most people, actually.”

  “Why?” I ask, partially because I’m curious, but also because I just want him to keep talking, no matter what he says. His voice is a warm comfort, slightly husky, but still smooth enough to be soothing.

  “I guess because if I’m going to actually picture a color, I have to hear multiple people describe it.” His voice drops a little. “Did you know that red is the color of purity in India? You read an English poet like Maya Arrington, and she describes red as this terrible thing, like it’s all blood and gore and hardly even belongs in a book. But then Adarsh Gupta describes it, and he gives it a whole new meaning. Purity, spirituality, loyalty. Good things.”

  “So how do you know who’s right?” I ask.

  “I don’t, obviously. But that’s the thing—I can say that I think both definitions might work, and no one gets upset about it. No one ever expects me to know exactly how I feel about colors.”

  He reaches up to rub at the medal hanging from his neck. “I think it’d be a lot easier if everything was like that,” he murmurs. “If people didn’t expect you to have opinions on things you couldn’t possibly understand.”

  I shut my eyes, but I can’t keep away images from the accident. The red of Parker’s blood dripping down his forehead. The red of the lipstick my mom wore throughout the trial, always so stark against the sickly paleness of her skin. The red of Mrs. Ashbury’s teary eyes as I recited my carefully prepared lies to the courtroom, ripping away Parker’s chance at justice.

  “But some things are just bad, right?” I murmur. “Sometimes you can’t color it any other way.”

  “Sometimes,” Seth agrees, reaching his arm back around me to give a comforting hug. His voice lightens to a teasing tone as he adds, “But that’s when you need to go read more poetry that’s not by Bukowski. I still can’t believe he’s your favorite. Seriously, could you pick someone more depressing?”

  I nudge him gently in the side. “And what about you? Emerson? Could you have picked a more visual poet?”

  “Yes. Tennyson.”

  “Tennyson is nearly as bad as Emerson. Practically every word of his poems are describing how something looks.”

  “Exactly,” he says, poking me gently in the side. “Contrary to your delusional belief, the point of poetry isn’t to make people sad. The point is to give someone an image, and what they do with it is totally up to them.”

  I consider this for a moment. “I think I like that definition.”

  “Of course you do,” he says smugly.

  I look around at the rest of room, taking in the other pages on the wall. “Where are all your other souvenirs from?”

  “The fall leaves are from Connecticut. I have an aunt there my family visits every September, so I used a page from one of Victoria Grand’s books as the frame. She grew up in the same town my aunt lives in.” He gestures to the other end of the wall. “The gravel is from a nature trail behind our old house. Parker and I spent practically an entire summer hiking around there, and I ended up using a page from one of Emerson’s books for that frame. And the pine needles are from California, so the frame is a poem by Francesca Acosta. She’s pretty much the only West Coast poet I like.”

  “What about the page on the far wall, the one by the dresser?”

  “That one’s from Wisconsin.”

  I frown at the page, which is empty except for a small, type-set page number at the very bottom. “But there’s nothing there.”

  Seth smirks. “Exactly.”

  I can’t help it. I let out a small laugh, and my chest aches from it, but it hurts in a way that makes me feel stretched and not torn. Seth chuckles, too, and he sounds beautiful like this, his amusement full and deep and contagious.

  Before I can stop myself, I reach up and cup his face in my hands. He flinches at first, surprised by my touch, but then his cheeks lift in a smile under my palms. I tilt his head down just a little, so he’s looking right at me, even if he doesn’t know it.

  He raises his eyebrows and softly asks, “Can you do me a favor?”

  “You ask me to do a lot of favors.”

  “Just one more,” he says. “Please.”

  “Yeah. I’ll do it.” The real challenge would be not doing it. At this point, he could probably convince me to do anything.

  “Next time you’re in the library, check out some books by Emerson,” he says. “And stop reading Bukowski, at least for now.”

  “Why?”

  He reaches up and places his own hand over mine. “Because you have so many colors in you, and it makes you beautiful. But I hate to think of even one of them making you sad.”

  I swallow hard and let my hands fall from his face. Concern draws his brows together, and I immediately feel bad. But how can I explain that I deserve every shade of sadness in me? How do I tell him that all my colors already bled together into a muddy brown, and nothing will ever change that?

  I can’t tell him, not without making everything worse. So I just say, “I should go. We’re going to get caught if I stay in here much longer.”

  A bewildered look flashes across his face. “Did I say something?”

  “You haven’t done anything wrong,” I tell him, and it might be the truest thing I’ve said all day.

  He gives a small, curt nod and pulls away from me a bit, giving me space. “Okay. But I’m not letting you leave until you put on some gloves and a coat. You can borrow mine.”

  “Thanks.” Then I clear my throat a little and add, “And thank you for letting me crash in here. And for talking to me. And...yeah.”

  He bites at his lip. “Did you feel any better?”

  “A little bit,” I admit. The pain isn’t drowning me anymore, although it still saturates my every breath, a dark, humid cloud filling my chest.

  “So, yeah, thanks,” I mumble, pushing the quilt off me and standing from the bed. “You’re too good to me.”

  “You’re the kind of person who deserves good things, Lea.”

  “No. I’m really not.”

  He shakes his head and sighs. “Then do me another favor and pick up a mirror when you get a chance. If you’re so interested in how things look, then you might as well start seeing yourself like everyone else does.”

  I get up to leave, but before I reach the door, he asks, “Tonight or tomorrow?”

  Despite the heaviness hanging over me, the familiarity of the either-or question makes me smile just a little. “How am I supposed to answer that?”

  “Do I get to see you again later tonight or sometime tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow, I think,” I say. “I need some time alone.”

  “I get that,” he says. “But I’m not going to let you stay alone for too long. I’ll come check on you tomorrow, okay?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Mor
e than okay.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The next morning is a blur of food that makes me nauseous, classrooms that are too loud, and teachers who won’t quit frowning at me. After I fail a pop-quiz in Chemistry, Mr. Bennet shoos me back to my dorm, insisting I’m sick and need rest.

  Class is miserable, but the dorm is even worse. Late last night, I had Brie there, so I could cry on her shoulder and fall asleep to the sound of her muttering angry things about my parents. I skimmed over a lot of the details, but giving Brie the basics of the situation was enough to trigger her big-sister instinct and send her into a full-on raging session, which was strangely soothing. It was nice to hear I’m not the only one in the world still concerned about Camille, even if Brie has no idea who Camille really is, or why she’s “sick.”

  Now Brie and everyone else is in class, and I’m not, and the silence of the dorm is suffocating. Every second is too long and too still, and the low exhale of the heater sounds eerily like a breathing machine.

  I bury myself under my quilt and pull out my Chemistry textbook, going over the latest section. I already know it by heart, but Seth is struggling with this part, and I think I need to figure out a new way to explain it for the next time I tutor him.

  I let the science soothe me, page after page, formula after formula, fact after fact. Even the most mind-boggling problems are always tidied up into neat little solutions on the “answers” page. It makes me desperate for a straightforward fix for my own problems, and before I realize what I’m doing, I find myself scribbling equations in the margins of my notebook.

  Camille + Waking Up = Good

  Mom + Dad + Lea + Jeremy + Camille + No One Dying = Better

  Family — The Past Nine Months = Ideal

  I tap my pen against the spine of the notebook, letting it dig into the little binder holes and mark up the edges. If only there was a way to apply these equations to real life, instead of just letting them clutter up my paper. I hesitate before scribbling down one more line:

  Lea + Seth =

  My pen hovers over the page, but no matter what angle I look at the problem from, I can’t figure out the answer. I finally give up and throw my notebook to the ground, and it lands with a dull thump that doesn’t seem nearly dramatic enough.