Read What Happens to Goodbye Online

Authors: Sarah Dessen

What Happens to Goodbye (43 page)

Twenty-five minutes later, I was unlocking the door of room 811 of the Poseidon, feeling around for a light switch. When I found it, the décor, achingly familiar, jumped into place. Faded bedspread, shell painting over the headboard, slight tinge of mildew in the air.
The entire drive, I’d been leaning forward over the wheel, peering at the road, worrying that somehow everything I remembered would just be gone, wiped clean. I had a scare when I saw that Shrimpboats restaurant was boarded up, but then, over the next slight hill, I saw Gert’s, their OPEN 24 HRS sign visible. The Poseidon, same as I remembered it, was just beyond.
I thought the manager might ask questions, considering my age and the time of night, but she barely looked at me as she took my cash, sliding the room key across to me in return. “Ice machine’s at the end of the building,” she informed me, before turning back to her book of crossword puzzles. “Drink machine only takes bills, no change.”
I thanked her, then drove down, parking in front of my room. It took only a few minutes to pull the boxes to the door, another to get inside. Now, here I was. I sat down on the bed for a few minutes, looking around me, the surf pounding loudly just outside. Then I started to cry.
It was all just such a mess. Moving, running, changing: I couldn’t keep it all straight anymore, and didn’t want to. I felt so, so tired, tired enough to crawl under that old bedspread and sleep for days. No one knew where I was, not a soul, and while I thought this was what I wanted, I realized, in the quiet of that room, that it was the scariest thing of all.
I reached up, wiping my eyes and taking a shuddering breath. I knew I should go back to my mom’s, that she would be worried, that this would all look better tomorrow. But th at wasn’t home, and neither was Tyler, or Petree, or Westcott, or Montford Falls, or even Lakeview. I had no place, no one.
I picked up my phone, shoulders shaking, and looked at the keypad, glowing beneath my fingers. A blur of faces passed across my mind: my friends in Tyler, the girls from my cheer team in Montford Falls, the tech guys I’d hung with backstage in Petree. Then Michael, my surfer, all the way up to Riley and Deb. I’d known enough people for every minute of the day, and yet still didn’t have anyone as my two a.m. The one person I would have considered I wasn’t even sure wanted to talk to me anymore.
But what about warts and all?
I thought, thinking of that black ring on Dave’s wrist. I looked down at my own wrist, the old Gert I’d tied there as I drove away from my mom’s. We each had circles now on our wrists, totally different and yet equally important. I knew my faults were many, my secrets even more. But I didn’t want to be alone. Not at 2:00 a.m., and not now.
I dialed the number slowly, wanting to get it right. Two rings, and he picked up.
“Yes,” I said after his hello.
“Mclean?” he asked. “Is that you?”
“Yeah,” I said, swallowing and looking out my open door, at the ocean. “The answer’s yes.”
“The answer ...” he said slowly.
“You asked me to go out with you. I know you probably changed your mind. But you should know, the answer was yes. It’s always been yes when it comes to you.59
He was very quiet for a moment. “Where are you?”
I started crying again, my voice ragged. He told me to calm down. He told me it was going to be all right. And then, he told me he’d be there soon.
After we hung up, I went into the bathroom and washed my face, then used a nubby hand towel to dry off. I was so tired, and yet I knew I needed to stay awake, so I could be ready to explain when he showed up, whenever that might be. I sat down on the bed, kicking off my shoes, and reached for the remote. But then I looked at my boxes instead, and left it where it was.
I dragged the heavy box over, taking off the lid, and started stacking things around me on the bed. The books, the photos both framed and in albums, the yearbooks, all my notebooks and old journals, all in a circle, like numbers on a clock, with me in the middle.
I picked up a loose picture of me and my mom when I was in grade school, posing at a holiday parade. Beside it was a framed one from her and Peter’s wedding, she in white and him in a dark tux, me standing in front of them, the maid of honor. A third: the twins as infants, sleeping through a professional photo shoot, their tiny fingers entwined. Pictures in brass frames and wooden ones, frames backed with magnets and decorated with seashells. I’d had no idea how many I’d once had until now, and as I laid them out on my bed, beside the quilt, I searched for my own face in each one, recognizing my different incarnations.
At the parade, it was me when things were okay: parents still together, life intact. At the wedding, I was sleepwalking, with a fake smile and tired eyes. In the early ones with the twins, taken on holidays after the move, it was hair color and makeup, the clothes I was wearing that let me know who I was as the shutter clicked. I recognized Eliza’s ponytail and T-shirt with the school mascot, Lizbet’s thick dark eyeliner and black turtleneck, Beth’s crisp button-down shirt and plaid skirt. I looked at myself in the mirror across the room, all those things surrounding me. My hair was longer than it had been in a while, falling over my shoulders, and I had on jeans and a white T-shirt, a black sweater pulled over it. Tiny gold hoops in my ears, that single Gert on my wrist. No makeup, no persona, no costume. Just me, at least for now.
I looked over at the stack of notebooks, their covers decorated with my loopy handwriting, silly signatures, pictures I’d scribbled during boring classes. I took one out, opening it to a fresh page, taking in again the circle of pictures and history around me. Then I reached over to the bedside table, picking up the complimentary hotel pen, and started to write.
In Montford Falls, the first place I moved when I left, I called myself Eliza. The neighborhood we lived in was all these happy families, like something from an old TV show.
I stopped, read back over what I’d written, then looked outside. A single car passed by slowly, its lights brightening the empty street ahead. I turned another page.
In the next place, Petree, everyone was rich. I was Lizbet, and we lived in this high-rise apartment complex, all dark wood and metal appliances. It was like something out of a magazine: even the elevator was silent.
I yawned, then stretched my fingers. It was now 1:30.
When we moved to Westcott, we had a house right on the beach, so sunny and warm, and I could wear flip-flops all year-round. The first day, I introduced myself as Beth.
I could feel the tiredness, the heaviness of this long, long day bearing down on me.
Stay awake,
I thought.
Stay here.
In Lakeview, the house had a basketball goal. I was going to be Liz Sweet.
The last time I remembered looking at the clock, it was 2:15. The next thing I knew, I was waking up, the room was barely light, and someone was knocking at my door.
I sat up, startled, and waited that moment until I remembered where I was. Then I pushed some pictures aside, sliding off the bed, and walked over to the door, pulling it open, so ready to see Dave’s face.
But it wasn’t him. It was my mom, and my dad was right beside her. They looked at me, then at the room behind me, their faces as tired as my own. “Oh, Mclean,” my mom said, putting a hand to her mouth. “Thank God. There you are.”
There you are.
Like I’d been lost and now found. She opened her mouth to say something else, and my dad was suddenly talking, too, but for me it was just too much, in that moment, to even hear what came next. I just stepped forward, and then their arms were around me.
I was crying as my mom held me and my dad led us into the room and to the bed, easing the door shut behind us. My mom pushed aside those pictures, my dad the notebooks, as I lay down, curling myself into her lap and closing my eyes. I was so, so tired, and as she stroked my hair, I could hear them still talking, voices low. A moment later, there was another sound, too, distant but as recognizable as the waves outside. That of pages turning, one after another, a story finally being told.
Sixteen
“Wow,” I said. “You weren’t kidding. You didn’t need me.”
Deb turned around. When she saw me, her face broke into a wide smile. “Mclean! Hi! You’re back!”
I nodded, biting back a laugh as she ran toward me, her sock-feet padding across the floor. Partially, this was for her exuberant reaction, but also for the words, newly posted in my absence, on a poster on the wall behind her. NO SHOES! it read. NO SWEARING! NO, REALLY.
“I like your sign,” I told her as she gave me a hug.
“Honestly, I tried to do without the visual,” she said, glancing at it. “But there were scuff marks all over the streets! And the closer we get to the deadline, the more tempers are flaring. I mean, this is a civic activity. We need to keep it clean, both literally and figuratively.”
“It looks great.” It was true. There were still a few blank spots along the edge of the model, and I could tell the landscaping and smaller details hadn’t been put on yet, but for the first time, it looked complete, with buildings spread across the entire surface and no huge gaps left unfilled. “You guys must have been here every day, all day.”
“Pretty much.” She put her hands on her hips, surveying it along with me. “We kind of had to be, sinces, surveyideadline changed and everything.”
“Changed?” I said.
“Well, because of the restaurant closing,” she replied, bending down to flick a piece of dust off a rooftop. A second later, she glanced up at me. “Oh, God, you did know, right? About the restaurant? Because I totally thought, because of your dad—”
“I knew,” I told her. “It’s okay.”
She exhaled, clearly relieved, and bent back down, adjusting a building a bit. “I mean, May first was always ambitious, if I’m to be totally honest. I tried to act all positive, but secretly, I had my doubts. And then Opal comes up here last weekend and says we have to be all done and out, somehow, by the second week of
April
, because the building’s being sold. I about passed out I was so unnerved. I had to go count.”
I blinked, not sure I’d heard her right as she moved down the model, carefully wiping her finger along an intersection. “Count? ”
“To ten,” she explained, standing back up. “It’s what I do instead of panicking. Ideally. Although sometimes I have to go to twenty or even fifty to really get calmed down.”
“Oh. Right.”
“And
then
,” she said, taking another step before crouching to adjust a church steeple, “we lost Dave, which was a huge deal, especially since you were already gone. I had to go count
and
breathe for that one.”
“What?” I said.
“Breathe,” she explained. “You know, big inhales, big exhales, visualizing stress going with it—”
“No,” I said, cutting her off. “Dave. What do you mean, you lost him?”
“Because of the whole grounding thing,” she said. When I just stood there, confused, she looked up at me. “With his parents. You knew about that, right?”
I shook my head. The truth was, I’d felt so embarrassed about calling him, especially since he never showed up, that I’d not ever tried to contact him, even though I knew I should. “What ... what happened?”

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