The Last Time We Say Goodbye Part 19

I just head down to room 121B.

I wait outside the door for the students to trickle in.

"Hey, Lex," Damian says, slinking up to me. He gives his head a little shake to get his hair out of his eyes. Smiles. Fidgets. "Fancy meeting you here."

"Yeah."

"Did you finish Heart of Darkness?"

I nod distractedly. "Oh, the horror."

He laughs. "The horror. So what are you doing here? Not that I'm complaining. But aren't you a little old for this cla.s.s?"

"An errand," I say. "I'm running an errand. Hey, uh, it's good to see you, Damian, but you should probably . . ." I gesture toward the cla.s.sroom. "I don't want to be responsible for you getting marked tardy."

"It's good to see you, too," he says, smiling his painful-looking smile again, and then he goes to take his seat.

Ashley shows up just as the bell rings. This time she doesn't bowl me over when she appears from around the corner. She slows down when she sees me, suddenly unsure of herself. Then she stops.

"Hi," she says.

"Hi," I say back. "Sorry about before. Sometimes I get overwhelmed by . . . everything."

She bites her lip. For some reason she looks frightened. Maybe she can sense what's coming.

"I was wrong, earlier," I say quickly, and before I can lose my nerve, I pull the letter from the inside pocket of my coat and hold it out. It trembles between us. "This is for you. From Ty."

If it's possible for her face to get any whiter, it does. Even her lips drain of color. She doesn't reach for the letter.

"Take it," I say, thrusting it at her. "He wants-he wanted you to have it."

She takes it.

I feel lighter the second the envelope leaves my hand.

Ashley stares down at it, her eyes tracing Ty's sloppy letters spelling her name.

"I didn't read it," I feel compelled to tell her. "I don't know what it says, but it's for you." I can't think of what else to say, and we're both late to cla.s.s, so I whisper, "I'm sorry," although I don't know what I'm apologizing for, for Ty or for me, and then I walk away.

I hope it's the right thing. It feels like the right thing. Probably. Maybe.

But at least it's all over with now. It's done.

9 March My parents used to tell this story, over and over, year after year, about the first time I ever saw Ty.

According to family legend, I was playing at the park by my house when it happened. I was on the swings being pushed by my grandmother, who'd been looking after me while my mother was at the hospital. When my parents came into view, walking slowly across the gra.s.s toward us, Grandma lifted me out of the bucket swing, set me on the ground, gave me a little push, and said, "Go. Meet your brother."

I ran to my parents.

They'd prepped me about this, of course, with months of talking about a new baby brother and what a good big sister I'd be, feeling Mom's distended belly, singing to it, reading books about how we have to be quiet when the baby's sleeping and we have to sit down to hold the baby and never poke the baby in the eye. They'd shown me the new baby's freshly painted room and moved me into a "big girl bed" so he could have my crib. They'd even bought me a T-shirt that had the words BIG SISTER in silvery sparkly letters across the chest. I was wearing it, that day. Or so they tell me.

It was a lot of hype. Too much hype, probably.

When I reached them, my dad knelt and showed me the blue-wrapped bundle in his arms: a tiny disgruntled person with a round, purplish face, eyelids that were so swollen it was hard to tell what color the eyes were, and a head that bore only a small thin tuft of brown hair.

He wasn't the best-looking baby, my brother.

I looked at him.

He looked at me.

Then he went cross-eyed.

"He's not cute" is what I famously said, clearly disappointed. "I thought he was going to be cute."

Apparently I've always had a problem with calling it like I see it.

But then I laid my hand on the top of the baby's nearly hairless head. "h.e.l.lo, brother," I said, by way of introduction.

"Tyler," Mom provided. "His name is Tyler."

"Ty," I confirmed. "Can I hold him?"

I sat down cross-legged right there in the gra.s.s, and Dad laid Ty carefully in my lap. I looked up at Mom and smiled. "He's mine," I announced. "My baby. Mine."

Yep, that's how the story goes. 2 minutes into meeting my baby brother, I claimed him as my own personal property. He may not have been cute, but he was my brother. Mine.

I realize that almost everybody has a story like this. It's not unique. I read somewhere that approximately 80% of Americans have at least one brother or sister. There's a predictable formula to these stories: Older sibling meets younger. Older sibling says something cute (or rude, or funny, but always cute) and everyone laughs, and the older sibling eventually gets used to the idea that he/she isn't the center of the world anymore. There's a reason we tell these stories again and again-because they define us.

The first time I was a sister.

The first time we were all together as a family.

Now I try to remember that day as more than a story I've heard. I try to call up the wind on my face as I ran across the field. My heart thumping. My dad smiling as he crouched down. The smooth heat of Ty's head under my fingers. The smell of baby powder and garden roses. The gra.s.s p.r.i.c.kly against my knees.

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.

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 gla.s.s 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 a.s.s-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.

"Ma.s.sachusetts Inst.i.tute 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.

"G.o.d," 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, Ma.s.sachusetts," 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."

She sits back, surprised and pleased, and stares out the window for a while.

"I'm not smart like you are," she says.