What Happens to Goodbye (14 page)

Read What Happens to Goodbye Online

Authors: Sarah Dessen

“There she is,” my dad said. He smiled at me, which was about the most reassuring thing I’d seen, well, ever. “How’s it going?”
“Forget about me,” I replied, walking over to him. “How are you?”
“Completely fine,” he said easily, patting the bed beside him. I sat down, and as he slid his good arm over my shoulders, I felt a lump rise in my throat. Which was ridiculous, as it was obvious this was true, he was okay. “It’s just a flesh wound.”
I smiled, swallowing, and glanced at Opal. She was watching me, her face kind, so kind I had to look away. “This is Deb,” I said, nodding to where she stood at the curtain’s opening, purse over her shoulder. “She gave me . . . She’s my friend.”
Hearing this, Deb smiled, clearly pleased. Then she took a step forward, sticking out her hand. “Hi,” she said. “It’s so nice to meet you! I’m very sorry about your accident. Mclean was so worried!”
My dad raised his eyebrows, glancing at me, and I felt myself flush.
“That’s probably because it was me that called,” Opal said. “I’m not exactly known for my poise in emergencies.”
“This was not an emergency,” my dad said, squeezing my shoulder again. I let myself lean into him, breathing in his familiar smell—aftershave, laundry detergent, a hint of grill smoke. “If it had been up to me, I would have just wrapped it and kept cutting.”
“Oh, no!” Deb said, aghast. “You have to get medical attention when you cut yourself. I mean, what about staph infections?”
“See?” Opal pointed at Deb, vindicated. “Staph infections!”
“Knock knock,” came a voice from outside the curtain. A moment later, a plump nurse with red hair, wearing a smock decorated with hearts, came in. She looked at my dad, then down at the chart in her hand. “Well, Mr. Sweet. Just need your card and a little paperwork and you’ll be rid of us.”
“Wonderful,” my dad said, taking the clipboard as she offered it to him.
“Oh, now, don’t say that! You’ll hurt my feelings!” the nurse said, her voice too loud as she smiled widely at him. Across the room, Opal raised her eyebrows. I, however, was not surprised in the least. I had long ago grown used to the effect my father had on females. Maybe it was his longish hair, or those blue eyes, or the way he dressed or carried himself, but it seemed like wherever we went, women were drawn to him like magnets. And the less he reciprocated, the more they did it. It was so weird.
I handed the nurse my dad’s card, then steadied the clipboard as he uncapped a pen with his good hand, scanning the papers in front of him. As he signed, I glanced at the nurse, who beamed at me. “Aren’t you sweet, taking care of your daddy. Is your mom out of town?”
She’d clearly already noticed no ring, but was just doublechecking: this was also a trick I’d seen before, performed by waitresses and hotel clerks, even one of my teachers. So obvious.
“Excuse me,” Opal said suddenly, before I could come up with a response, “but we’ll need to be sure that these charges are sent to our company. Can you help me with that, or do I need to talk to someone else?”
The nurse glanced at her, as if just now noticing she was there, even though Opal—in faded jeans, red cowboy boots, and a bright orange sweater—was hard to miss. “I can direct you to the proper department for handling that,” she said coolly.
“Thanks so much,” Opal replied, equally polite.
Deb, just inside the curtain, looked at Opal, then the nurse, then back at Opal again. But my dad was oblivious as always as he handed back the clipboard, hopping down off the bed. “All right,” he said. “Let’s blow this taco stand.”
“Mr. Sweet!” the nurse said. “We still have a few more forms to fill out. You’ll need to—”
“What I need,” my dad replied, grabbing his coat from where it was lying across the pillow, “is to get back to my kitchen before the whole place collapses. Like Opal said, forward the bill to EAT INC. You’ve got the info, right?”
Opal nodded, pulling a card out of the bag at her feet. “Sure do.”
“Perfect. Then pass it on, and let’s go.” Opal handed the card to the nurse, who looked less than enthused to be taking it. Again, my dad didn’t notice as he shrugged on his coat, then looked at me. “You need to go back to school, correct?”
I glanced at my watch. “By the time I get there, it’ll practically be time for final bell.”
He sighed, clearly not happy about this. “Home, then. We’ll drop you on the way back to the restaurant.”
“Oh, I can drive her,” Deb offered. When my dad glanced at her, she smiled, as if she might need his approval to actually do this. “I mean, it’s no problem at all.”
“Great. Let’s go,” he said, pushing the curtain aside. He was out and down the hallway before any of us even got close to following.
Everyone looked at me, but I just shrugged. This was my dad as dictator, the side of his personality that came out during the busiest rushes and whenever we were moving. He wasn’t always a bossy person, but under certain circumstances he behaved like a general on the battlefield, whether he had willing troops or not.
The nurse tort c a couple of sheets of paper, handing one to Opal, who took it and headed out the way my dad had gone. The other she handed to me, along with my dad’s card, seeming to take quite a while to complete the exchange.
“If your dad has any problems with that wound,” she said as she finally let go of it, “my direct line is on the release notes. I’m Sandy.”
“Right,” I said. I could feel Deb’s shock from behind me, like heat coming off of her. Sure enough, when I turned she was staring, openmouthed. “Thanks.”
I walked out into the hallway, and she rushed out behind me, still aghast. “Oh my God!” she hissed as we passed by the man in the undershirt, who was now sitting up, a doctor leaning over him. “That was so inappropriate!”
“It happens,” I replied, spotting my dad and Opal just outside the front entrance. “Mclean? ” he called out, impatient. “Let’s go.”
Deb immediately picked up her pace, following orders like a good soldier. As I fell in behind her, I glanced down at the discharge papers, with Sandy’s loopy script spelling out her name and number in red pen. It seemed like a correction, something marked right that was wrong, and I folded it over, stuffing it deep in my pocket as I stepped through the doors to leave this place, too, behind me.
Five
The noise was oddly familiar, but at first I couldn’t place it.
Thump. Thump. Thump. Clank.
I opened my eyes, blinked, and then looked at the slope in the ceiling, following it to the edge of the molding where it hit the window. Beyond that, there was only clear glass, some sky, and the dilapidated roof of the house where Dave had taken over the cellar. It was so big, though, that I wasn’t sure it was a residence at all. More likely, I’d decided, it was a business, long shuttered: the windows were boarded up, weeds growing up all around it. I’d seen a FOR SALE sign that looked equally ancient on its other side when I was walking to the bus stop. Now, though, from this weird angle, I noticed something else: a few letters painted on the roof, once red, now faded to the lightest of pinks. I couldn’t make them all out, but the first looked like it might be an
S
.
Thump. Thump. Swish.
I sat up, glancing out the window beside me. My dad’s truck was already gone. It was only 9:00 a.m. after a blistering Friday rush he’d worked pretty much one-handed, but the farmers’ market was on Saturday mornings, and he always liked to get there early to have the best pickings of what was on offer.
Thump. Thump.
Laughter. And then a crash.
I felt the house shake slightly, and then everything was still again. I sat there for a moment, waiting for what, I had no idea, before finally sliding my feet onto the floor and grabbing my jeans from the nearby chair, where I’d tossed them late the night before. Outside, it was quiet now, my footsteps all I could hear as I made my way down the hallway.
As I first stepped into the kitchen, I thought I was still asleep and dreaming when I saw the basketball rolling toward me. Behind it, the door to the deck was open,uld air blowing in, and I just stood there and watched as the ball came closer, then closer still, slowing with each turn.
So weird,
I thought. I was sure I’d been awake, seen the truck gone, but—
“Whoops! Sorry about that.”
I jumped, startled, then looked up to see a guy standing on the porch, just past the open doorway. He was about my age, with short, tight dreads springing up from his head in all directions, wearing jeans and a red long-sleeved T-shirt. His face was familiar, but I was still too asleep to figure out why.
I looked at the ball, then back at him. “What—”
“My comrade has a bit of an overenthusiastic throw,” he said as he stepped inside, grabbing it from my feet. As he looked up at me, smiling apologetically, my memory sputtered up a flash of him on a TV screen, holding some papers. That was it: he was from the morning announcements at school. “Which wouldn’t be so bad, except his aim kind of sucks.”
“Oh,” I said. “Right. I just . . . I didn’t know what was going on.”
“Won’t happen again,” he assured me. Then he turned, lifting the ball with both hands over his head, and pitching it toward the driveway. “Incoming!”
There was a
thunk
, followed by a series of bounces, each one sounding more distant. A moment later, someone said, “What kind of a throw was that?”
“Dude, you didn’t even try to catch it.”
“Because it wasn’t anywhere near me,” his friend replied. “Were you
aiming
for the street?”
The guy glanced at me, then laughed, like I was in on this joke. “Sorry again,” he said, and then he was jogging across the deck, out of sight.
I was standing there, still trying to process all this in my half-awake state, when I felt my phone buzz in my back pocket.
So that’s where it was,
I thought, remembering how I’d been searching my room for it just before bed the night before. I pulled it out, glancing at the screen. As soon as I saw my mother’s number, I realized that in the chaos of the previous day, I’d never called her back. Whoops.
I took a breath, then hit the TALK button. “Hi, Mom,” I said. “I—”
“Mclean!” Bad sign: she was already shrieking. “I have been worried sick about you! You were supposed to call me back twenty-four hours ago. You
promised
! Now, I understand that we are currently having some issues—”
“Mom,” I said.
“—but we’re never going to be able to work through them if you don’t respect me enough to—”
“Mom,”
I repeated. “I’m sorry.”
These two words, like a brick wall, stopped her. In my mind, I could just see all the other things that had been poised on her tongue, piling up like cars on the freeway.
Crash. Crash. Crash.
“Well,” she said finally. “Okay. I mean, I’m still upset. But thank you for saying that.”
I glanced outside, the phone still at my ear, just in time to see the guy who’d chased down the ball take a shot at the goal. It wnt up and wide, banging off a nearby tree before bouncing back to the driveway, where Dave Wade, in jeans and an unzipped blue rain jacket, scooped it up in his arms. He shook his head at something his friend was saying, then took a jump shot. I was watching his face, not the backboard, as it clanged off the rim. He didn’t look surprised.
“I do have to tell you, though,” my mother said now, over the still-tentative silence between us, “I was very hurt you never called me. I don’t think you realize, Mclean, how hard it is to always be reaching out to you, and to continually be rebuffed.”
Dave’s friend went up for a layup, stumbled, and sent the ball into the backyard. “I didn’t mean to not call,” I told my mom, watching as he jogged after it. “But Dad got hurt, and I had leave school to go to the hospital.”
“What?”
she gasped. “Oh my God! What happened? Is he all right? Are you all right?”
I sighed, holding the phone away from my ear. “He’s fine,” I told her. “Just needed some stitches.”
“Then why did you have to go to the hospital?”

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