How Many Letters Are In Goodbye? (47 page)

“I'm sorry you had to go through all that, Rhea,” she goes, “but at least you know the truth now. Truth is where healing begins.”

That makes sense, when she says it, and I feel better, happy even, especially when she tells me she's coming back next week, when the second group of kids arrive. She asks if I'll mind sharing a room with her again and that's kind of a joke, because I have no choice, and anyway, I think she knows I miss her.

I'm excited after the phone call and that's why I start to tidy the room up, get it nice and neat again for Winnie. And I know, when I take my backpack off her bed, that I shouldn't take your letters out, that I shouldn't read them again, that I don't even need to because each fucking word is carved into my brain with a scalpel already, but my hands don't listen to my head and I open them and read them anyway.

Reading your letters, it's as if everything else goes away—chasing Matt on the beach, what Winnie said, all of it—and I know sleep won't ever come. So even though it's raining, even though the clock says 3:57 a.m., even though Jean would freak out and fire me on the spot, I decide to go to the beach. And that's what makes the third thing happen. I notice the line of light under the kitchen door and I nearly don't go in except I think it must be David making banana walnut muffins or brownies, only it's not David who's in there—it's Amanda.

She's at the cooker, stirring something, and she has her back to me. She's wearing sweat pants cut off into shorts and her hair is down. I've never seen her hair down before and it's way longer and way curlier than I'd thought it would be, almost as far as her waist. The air conditioner is on and she doesn't hear me and I wonder if I can go, step back into the hall and close the door without her hearing, but something makes her turn around.

She jerks a little against the cooker, so she nearly knocks over the pot.

“Holy shit, Rhea!” She has her hand clasped flat to her chest.

“Hey,” I go.

“You scared the living crap out of me! How long were you standing there?”

“Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you. I'm on my way out, I'm just getting a jacket.”

I hadn't thought of the jacket until just then, but I see them lined up on hooks by the table.

“You're going out in that? It's pouring.”

“I'm Irish, we're waterproof.”

Erin's jacket is nice but it would probably be too small for me so I grab the navy one behind it, Zac's or Matt's.

“I'm making hot chocolate, why don't you have some?”

“No, thanks, I just feel like a walk.” That's not true, not exactly. The jacket is down to my knees and slips off my shoulders. I feel my breath, different, short as if I've been running up the stairs. Jean's obsessed with breath, she says it's a clue to your feelings. If she was here she'd say that breath like this might mean I'm scared, which doesn't make sense because even though I know it's okay to be scared sometimes, I'm definitely not scared of Amanda.

“Have some hot chocolate before you go then, I've made too much.” She's already reaching up to take the mugs out. “My dad freaks out when I do this at home—put the A/C on to cool me down enough to enjoy hot chocolate, but it always helps me sleep.”

The chocolate looks really thick and she fills up half the pink mug first, then half the green one, stirring it between each pour, then she goes back and tops each one up, so it stops about an inch below the rim.

“Perfect,” she goes, putting the pot in the sink. “Which cup?”

“Either, I don't care.”

The jacket slopes off my right shoulder. I want to roll up the sleeve over my stump but it's going to be too awkward with Amanda watching, so I let it hang down.

“Here.” She puts the pink one down in front of me and the green one opposite. She slides onto the bench by the wall and I shrug the jacket off, onto the back of the chair, before sitting down across from her.

“Pink to make the boys wink,” I go.

She looks out from under her curls.

“And the girls,” she says, smiling.

The chocolate burns my mouth so I need to slow down, blow on it. Underneath her hoody she's wearing her necklace with her name on it.

“I've never seen you out of that necklace,” I go. “You even wear it in bed?”

It comes out meaner than I think it will. She stirs her chocolate, drinks a little more.

“My grandma gave it to me.” She fingers it. “I know it's kind of childish, but I like it. It makes me feel close to her.”

“Oh,” I go. “That's nice.”

I think about Nana Davis, lying in her bed. If she'd given me something like that, maybe I'd wear it too, even if it was lame.

“It was good to see you enjoying being around the kids today,” she goes.

She has a rim of brown over her top lip and I don't tell her but maybe she sees me looking because she licks it away and I look back down at my cup.

“Yeah,” I go. “It was good.”

That weird breath thing is there again and it's only then that I figure out what it means. That maybe it's there because of what I'd told her in the car, because we're both pretending that I never told her at all. And I know I have to be like Winnie, like Marco even, to just figure out a way to just say it, but it's her who speaks next. “Hey, you want to play Scrabble?”

My brain makes a picture in less than a nano-second, the box of Scrabble on the top shelf of the wardrobe in Dad's room, me standing on a chair to reach it, dust as thick as a carpet on the lid.

“I've never played,” I go.

“You've never played Scrabble?” Her eyes are wide, saucers, not blue tonight but not grey either, a mixture, maybe, of both.

“Nope.” I shake my head.

“I don't know if I've ever met anyone who never played. Dad used to make me and my brother play with him every night, before any TV.”

“You must be brilliant, then.”

She shakes her head. “No, that stopped by the time I was nine or ten, by then Dad was barely home.”

The rain is getting heavier outside. There's still some hot chocolate left. I think of a way to say something about the other night, without having to say it. “I found this Scrabble game in my dad's room once and I was convinced it was my mum's. I left it out for him on the kitchen table but when I came down for my breakfast the next morning he'd thrown it in the bin.”

She makes a face. “Why did he do that?”

I shrug. “I don't know.”

“And you really never played, you're not kidding?”

“No.”

“So, tonight will be your first time. Let me go find it.”

She gets up and goes into the hall, where the games closet is, and I'm thinking about the bin in the kitchen in Rush, by the back door, the lid lifted half off because the Scrabble box didn't fit. He didn't just put the box in, otherwise I'd have taken it out—he emptied the bag of letters and when I look in a
Z
is inside half an egg shell, an
A
and a
U
on top of the mush of tea bags. Listening to Amanda rummaging through the games, I'm feeling angry, as angry as I was that morning in Rush, not just because he threw it away but because of the way he messed up all the letters, and that's when it hits me, eight or seven or nine years after that morning, that Dad throwing out the Scrabble must have had something to do with you.

“Found it,” Amanda goes. “It was all the way in the back.”

She's all business, unfolding the board, writing our names on a score sheet and for a second I want to get up, run out into the rain, and the next second I want to stay and it's driving me crazy, how my head is like a pinball machine and I'm hoping this isn't part of what Jean calls feeling your feelings.

Amanda shakes the bag of letters, holds it out towards me. “We each get seven letters but before we do, we'll each choose one letter. Closest to
A
starts.”

I take a letter, it feels nice in my hand. Smooth. It's a
J
.

Amanda picks out an
N
. She smiles. “You go first—you can run your word any direction so long as it's over this square—it means you get double points.”

I take my seven tiles and put them in the little holder. I like it already—the game—the feel of the letters, how everything has a number, the uniformity of the board. It's different now that we have something to focus on—easier—and my breath is normal again.

I lay my first word down. H-I-T-C-H.

“Great,” she goes, “that's twenty-six points. Good start.”

“Beginner's luck.”

I pick five new letters from the bag. She takes ages on her first word, tucks her curls behind her ears as she concentrates and moves her tiles around. After a few seconds, a curl escapes. By the time she makes her move I've worked out four different words that I might be able to use, depending on what she does.

“H-U-R-L. Hurl.” She lays it down. “It's a gross word, but didn't you say there's a sport called that in Ireland?”

“Yeah—the game is hurling. Well remembered!”

She smiles. “Who could forget a game called hurling? My letters suck tonight. I had three of the same vowel. Some people say you can swap them but I don't play like that, I like to play using the official rules.”

She has two other
U
s, I know that, but I don't say it. I'm glad she likes the proper rules.

I lay down my word: F-A-S-T-E-R. “Nine points.”

“Holy shit, Rhea. I haven't even had a chance to get my new letters yet!”

She's laughing and I am too and it's fun, this game. She takes her new letters and I take mine, only I don't turn them over, not yet. The clock over her head says it's 4:35. Only two hours and twenty-five minutes until wake-up call.

“Hey,” I go. “How come you're up so late anyway? Won't you be going running in an hour or something?”

She looks up, her hands on either side of her hair, holding it back. “I haven't been going the last few mornings.”

“Why not?”

She looks back at her letters. “I've been finding it hard to sleep, I don't know why. I've been lying awake until five most nights.”

Her eyes go back to her letters. “P-R-U-N-E,” she says, putting the letters down. “And I get the points for ‘I-N' too. And N is on a double letter score. So that's
…
eleven.”

She adds up the points.

“What's the score?”

“Thirty-five to you, twenty to me. Your beginner's luck is holding.”

I'm about to turn over my letters but I want to say something about what she said, about not sleeping. I think about how Jean might ask her.

“You want to talk about it?”

My fingers flick the edge of my overturned tiles. I look from the tiles to Amanda and back to the tiles.

“I don't know. I mean I guess it's not such a big deal. I'm just feeling a bit bummed about the kids leaving on Saturday. I mean I know we have a whole second group coming, but it feels like it won't be the same.”

“I know, it won't.”

“And it reminds me we're halfway through the summer, more than halfway through. That in a another month or so, this will all be over.”

She's fiddling with her necklace then, flicking it over and back against her skin. She lifts it up and puts it against her lip. I want to turn my tiles over but I don't.

“Can I ask you something, Rhea?”

The breath thing is happening again and I hold it for a second before I answer her. “Sure, what?”

“Would you be straight? You know, if you could choose?”

I don't know what I thought she was going to ask me, but something about the question is disappointing. I flick the tiles over, line them in the holder in order of value. “I don't think it's a choice—I don't think people choose to be gay or straight.”

“I know, that's not what I mean.” She's shaking her head. “I don't think people can choose either, but just say for some weird reason you could. Would you choose to be straight?”

She's looking at me differently now, like the answer really matters. It's ages since her last move and it's still my go but I don't know if we're playing anymore.

“No.” My answer is definite. “I wouldn't. No way.” She tucks a curl behind her ear and for once it stays. “Why, would you?”

She pushes her letters around, and if I looked I'd probably be able to see them. “I used to think I would. I used to pray to like boys, to be like everyone else. One night I remember I even got down on my knees and prayed that when I woke up I'd like Hank Zikorski.”

After she says his name, she dips her head and laughs her breathy laugh. I wait for the squeak and when it comes, I laugh too.

“Hank Zikorski?”

“This guy in my class. He was really cute and we went to the movies a few times and all my friends were so jealous. We'd sit in the back row and hold hands and kiss, but I didn't feel anything at all, I just wanted to watch the movie. It was like my body was made of wood or something. You know what I mean?”

I nod. “I know what you mean.”

“And when I kissed Ellen, that first time, even though it was only spin the bottle, it was so different, like my body came back or something. Like my head could lie to me and pretend I was straight but my body couldn't, my body told the truth.”

I realise then that I don't want to talk about Amanda kissing Hank Zikorski or Ellen or anyone else, that what I want, more than anything, is for her to answer the question—her own question. “And now?”

“And now I think if I wasn't gay, I wouldn't be me. And I want to be me. I like me, being me.”

My heart does a little swoopy lift then, and I let out my breath. “I like you being you too.”