This is What Goodbye Looks Like (10 page)

Every instinct in me screams with the urge to refuse. But then I think of Camille in her hospital bed, pale and gaunt and brain damaged, stuck in a coma ward hundreds of miles away. Being around Seth might be hard, but surely it’s not as hard as what Camille is going through. I rub my temples as I make up my mind. I came here for my family’s sake, and if I’m going to get anything out of my trip, I guess it’s time for me to buck up and face Seth.

“I’ll tutor him in Chemistry,” I say. “And I can’t make any promises about helping him in other ways, but I will if I can.”

At least that’s one thing that’s not a lie—if I can make Seth’s life less miserable, I will. It’s the least I owe him.

“Wonderful,” Ms. Thorne says, smiling as she pats my hand again. “I’ll let Seth know.” She gestures toward the door. “You’re free to go, unless you have any other questions. I’ll let you know the details about the tutoring once I confirm everything with Seth.”

I nod and edge toward the door, but before I can escape, Ms. Thorne adds, “And I just want to say I’m so glad you came to Harting. I think you’ll make a great addition to our little academic family here.”

“Thank you,” I choke out. Then I hurry out of the room as quickly as possible, mumbling some excuse about homework. I don’t dare say what I’m actually thinking: The last thing I want right now is another family to take care of.

Chapter Eleven

The week passes in a blur of questions, answers, reading, speaking, note taking. By Friday, my hand is threatening to cramp from all my frenzied writing, although the pain is nothing compared to the throbbing in my knee. Harting’s landscape may be gorgeous, but the winding pathways freeze over every night, turning them into cobbled streams of ice. I may have managed to fly under the radar for the first few days here, but I’m pretty sure everyone at Harting has now witnessed the new girl with the cane slipping and sliding around campus.

Brie makes the treacherous journeys outside more bearable. Actually, she makes most things about Harting more bearable, and she keeps cheerfully offering me little tidbits of info about classmates and teachers as I get to know the place. She transferred here her sophomore year, so I guess she has more pity for my “new girl” plight than the average student. Although it’s not even possible to tell she hasn’t always belonged at Harting. Everyone seems to like her, and she seems to like everyone, and they all seem alright with liking me as long as I stay near Brie. I’m not entirely sure why she’s being so kind to me, but I’m sure as hell not going to protest.

She’s waiting for me outside my last class, chatting with a couple girls in broken French. Like most of the other students here, Brie already speaks one foreign language—Spanish—and is well on her way to learning a second. I’ve always felt talented for my above-average grades in Spanish, but after a week at Harting, I just feel like an idiot for not even being fluent in the language half my relatives speak.

Brie waves as she catches sight of me and quickly excuses herself from the other girls, turning her attention to me. “How’d the test go?” she asks, her voice echoing in the tile-floored hallway. She doesn’t bother with an actual greeting, as usual. Brie seems to have no time for anything she considers boring or non-productive, small talk included.

“I think I did good on the essay portion,” I say, giving my sore hand a shake. “And I’m pretty sure I’m still going to fail. Ms. Daniels hates me.”

Brie rolls her eyes and gives a dramatic huff. “She hates everyone. Seriously. Unless you started here freshman year, she’ll treat you like a trouble maker. Just don’t take it personally and don’t cause any
actual
trouble, and you’ll be fine.”

I nod, filing that info in the back of my head along with the dozens of other insider tidbits Brie’s provided. “Got it.”

She suddenly perks up, her steps lightening. “Hey, some of us are going to head into town and grab pizza tonight. You want to come?”

“You’re sure it’d be okay with your friends?” I ask, silently praying she says no and gives me an excuse to back out. I just want to spend this evening catching up on homework and bracing myself for next week, which is bound to get even more intense.

“Of course!” Brie says. “Everyone likes you, and I’m sure they’ll love you if you grab dinner with us and actually talk.” She nudges my shoulder lightly. “You’re always so quiet in the cafeteria.”

“Sorry,” I mumble, unsure how to explain away my silence. Seth is always at our table, and every time I open my mouth, I worry I’m somehow going to say something that gives away who I really am.

Brie rolls her eyes and says, “You apologize way too much. And we’re going to head out in like two hours, so be ready to go then, okay?”

“Cool,” I say. “Um, I guess Seth can show me where you guys usually meet up.”

“Seth? Are you hanging out with him?”

“No. Well, yeah. Kind of. Um, I’m tutoring him this afternoon.”

My attempt to keep my tone casual fails, and my voice spikes into a high, wobbly mess. Brie shoots me a curious look, but I just stare at the ground. I’ve spent quite a bit of time around Seth this week—not only do I see him at meals, but we also share the same Chemistry and World Lit classes. But I haven’t ever encountered him one-on-one, and I’m worried this tutoring session is going to devolve into a repeat of the first time I saw him at Harting.

“I didn’t know you were his new tutor,” Brie says simply, and even though she sounds curious, she doesn’t press me with questions. She glances down the hall and adds, “You’re heading for the library, right? That’s where he usually goes for tutoring.”

“Yeah, Ms. Thorne told me to meet him there at three-fifteen.”

She nods and heads off down the hallway, gesturing for me to follow. I stay at her side, grateful for the slow pace she sets as we leave the warmth of the History wing and head outside, following the main path toward the library. It’s a smaller building next to the cafeteria, and while I’ve passed it several times, I haven’t had a chance to examine it from the inside.

Brie stays with me until we get to the entrance of the building. “I’ll see you later, okay?” she says. “And, seriously, you don’t have to be so shy around Seth. You’ll love him once you get to know him better, I promise.”

That’s exactly what I don’t want. It’s bad enough knowing I helped ruin someone’s life without also knowing they’re a genuinely good person.

But I just mumble some sort of agreement, and Brie gives a wave and a quick goodbye before hurrying off to the dorms, leaving me to enter the library alone. As soon as I set foot inside, I consider turning right around and ditching. But the unique scent of old books and older words drifts down from the shelves, settling around me, and it gives me the encouragement I need to head deeper into the building.

Harting’s library is about the size of four classrooms put together, but it lacks the graceful beauty of the rest of the campus. Instead, every spare inch is crammed full of books, rows and rows of shelves lined up to display an overflowing collection. Everything from glossy hardbacks to withered and well-loved paperbacks fill the room, each perfectly aligned on its proper shelf. I don’t know how long I stand there in the entrance just staring, but eventually I hear Seth say, “I don’t bite, you know. You can come over.”

I flinch at his voice and turn toward it, finding him sitting at a table in the corner. A few of the shelves have been turned and pushed to the side to create a small study nook, and although a couple tables fill the area, Seth is the only one sitting there. He already has his laptop out, and he absently traces a fingertip over his specialized Braille keyboard. He carries the laptop around to all his classes, and he also has a pair of earbuds he wears a lot, which makes me suspect he has audio versions of a lot of our texts. Aside from that, and the bulky Braille edition he has of our World Lit textbook, he seems to function pretty much like any other student at Harting. He even writes quite a bit for in-class responses, although his handwriting is spidery and barely legible to me.

“Hi,” I say as I head toward him. The slim sunglasses covering his eyes are a strange relief, since it’s a reminder that he can’t see my nervous expression as I approach his table.

Seth looks like he always does—relaxed and casual, with an edge of strength in his movements as he waves a greeting. He leans back in his chair, making his shirt stretch over his chest—it’s a plain green one today, and the silver chain with his brother’s medal is tucked safely beneath the collar.

The shirt looks good on him. I hate to admit it, because it’s probably sick to find any sort of beauty in him. But after seeing Seth on a daily basis for a week, it’s becoming harder to see him as a mirror image of his dead brother, and easier to see him as an easy-going guy with unfair good looks.

I pull out the chair across the table from him, and Koda jumps up from beside Seth, wagging her tail in an exuberant hello. Seth murmurs a quiet command to her and reaches down to stroke her silky ears, and she lies back down, but her tail keeps wagging as I sit at the table.

“I’m glad you came,” Seth says.

“Um, thanks,” I say as I lean my cane against the side of my chair and set my backpack on the table. I start fishing out my textbook for Chem and ask, “How did you know it was me? When I came in?”

“Your cane clicks,” he says. “I used a cane all the time before I got Koda, and I still use it sometimes. Obviously mine’s a different kind than yours, but yeah, it’s close enough to still sound familiar.”

“Oh. I didn’t realize you used a cane.”

“Yeah, I use it whenever I’m going someplace it’s not convenient to bring Koda.” He skims his hand along the edge of the table until he finds my cane leaning there, and then he flicks it expertly into his hand and jabs it toward me slightly, as if it’s a fencing sword. “Next time I use it, I propose we have a duel.”

I sputter out a surprised laugh as he jabs at me again. “Challenge accepted,” I say. “But, for now, I propose you put that thing down before you poke my eye out and we both end up blind.”

He smirks and sets the cane back down, leaning it against the table.

“That’s really neat, though,” I say. “That you can figure things out just using sound.”

“Figuring stuff out like that is totally normal for me,” he says. “I was born with hardly any vision, and things just got worse from there. Sounds and touch are how I’ve always gotten around.”

“Do you remember how anything looks? I mean, colors and stuff?”

“Certain shapes and objects, yeah, I remember them. But colors? I’m not really sure. My doctors say I’ve never had color vision, but sometimes I swear I remember them.”

He gives a wry smile and points his finger in a circle, gesturing to the books around us. “But I can probably just blame that on reading too much. You read a poem enough times, and it paints a picture in your head, whether it’s real or not. You know?”

“Yeah, I know,” I say, and although the words are harmless, they feel more like a dangerous confession. As if I’m admitting that we actually have something similar between us, which shouldn’t be possible. He’s innocent, and I’m not. We should be opposites.

He reaches out to trace the rim of his travel mug sitting next to his laptop. The steam drifting out the hole in the top smells like Earl Grey tea, woodsy with a hint of citrus. Most of the students at Harting seem to depend on coffee for energy, but every time I see Seth, he has a mug of Earl Grey with him.

“You like poetry?” he says. “Really?”

“Well, not as much as prose, but I’ve been reading quite a bit lately.”

“It’s addicting, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” I say. “I take it you read it a lot?”

He nods. “My brother got me hooked on it a long time ago. When we were real little, my dad used to always read us bedtime stories, but I’d get frustrated since I couldn’t picture what was going on. So when my brother learned about poetry, he had my dad start reading it to us instead. It usually describes things in a lot more detail.”

My guilt rears its head at the mention of Parker, but I manage to say, “That’s really sweet that your brother cared so much.”

My voice goes hoarse, and for a split second, it sounds just like it did during the trial, when I was still recovering from the injury to my neck. But Seth doesn’t seem to notice. He just rubs his forehead, as if trying to clear old memories out of his mind, and then nods to me.

“So who’s your favorite poet?” he asks.

“Um… I like Bukowski.”

Seth makes that little noise stuck between a chuckle and a scoff, which is the closest he ever seems to get to actually laughing. “You’re a bit of a pessimist, huh? I wouldn’t have pegged you for it.”

“And who would you have pegged me as liking?” I ask, trying not to sound too interested. But, truth is, I’m more than a little curious. Sometimes, I find him just staring in my general direction during breakfast, his blind gaze seeming to burrow into me. I have no idea why I seem to intrigue him, but I’m starting to worry he might be piecing together who I really am.

“I thought you’d prefer someone like Blake, or maybe Keats,” he says. “Someone more orderly than Bukowski. Or maybe just less depressing.”

“I strike you as a happy person?”

“No, just the opposite. But you strike me as someone who believes in happiness.”