This is What Goodbye Looks Like (5 page)

“Shut up, you two,” Brie mutters, but there’s a smile at the corner of her mouth. She finishes up the braid astonishingly fast, then snatches the elastic band out of Maddie’s hands and ties it off. Brie nods approvingly at her work. “There. That should stay.”

“Cluck,” Hannah says.

Brie sticks her tongue out at Hannah, but Maddie ignores them both and says to me, “Look, you must be tired, so we won’t bother you long. But we were wondering if you want to come into town with us tomorrow. There’s this little boutique that opened up over break, and a couple of us were going to check it out.”

I want to say no. Shopping has always been something I’ve avoided, just like any other activity that involves crowds or too much socializing. Besides, I came here to learn how to fix my family, not to spend my days browsing through boutiques.

But all three girls stare at me expectantly, looking honestly hopeful as they wait for my answer. I swallow hard, and before I can stop myself, I say, “Yeah, I’d love to go. Thanks.”

“Great!” Brie says. “We were going to leave after breakfast, so sometime around ten. And a couple of our other friends were going to join us, so you can meet them, too.”

“Sounds good,” I say, and I’m suddenly glad for the slight rasp in my voice. It makes it hard to hear the hesitancy in my tone.

The three of them exchange a glance, and then Hannah says, “Then we’ll see you tomorrow, I guess. Get some rest, okay?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Thanks.”

Maddie and Hannah say quick goodbyes and then leave for their own dorm room, although they only make it about halfway out before they start bickering about who’s going to drive tomorrow. As the door shuts behind them, Brie strides over to the closet in the corner of the room and starts shuffling through her clothes.

“I’m going to get ready for bed,” she says. “Did you want to borrow some PJs? I know most of your stuff is still packed away.” She nods to the opposite corner of the room, where a bunch of moving boxes are piled in a small stack.

“I packed some in my carry-on,” I say, pointing to the bag that’s still sitting at the foot of my bed. “But thanks.”

I grab the bag, figuring I’ll join Brie in heading to sleep. I might have just woken up, but I’m still tired, and I might as well sleep off my jet lag while I have the chance.

As I open my bag, I take out my broken camera and rest it carefully on my nightstand. It makes for a strange contrast to Brie’s nightstand, which is covered in her nail polish collection and a few photos of her family. The largest one is in a cute white frame, and it shows Brie’s family at the San Diego Boardwalk, a place I used to visit all the time during the summer. Brie’s mom and dad each have an arm around her shoulders, and Brie is holding a young toddler boy who looks just like her. All of them are beaming toward the camera with genuine smiles.

“That’s my parents and my little brother, Bailey,” Brie says, noticing me staring at the picture.

“You guys look perfect,” I say, the words slipping out before I can stop them. But I can’t help my slightly dismayed tone. If Brie has that sort of family waiting for her back in San Diego, how can she possibly bear to go to school so far away?

Brie just laughs a little, letting my slightly awkward comment slide. “Yeah, they’re pretty great. Especially Bailey.”

“He’s adorable,” I say with a nod. Then I notice her staring at my camera, and I say, “It was a gift from my sister.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Looks like it’s broken.”

“Yeah. I haven’t had time to get it fixed yet.”

Another lie. I’ve had eight months since the accident to get it fixed, but it just wouldn’t be right. All it would take is a few new wires and pieces of glass, and it doesn’t seem fair, not when all the modern medicine in the world still hasn’t managed to fix Camille.

But it will. Soon. It
has
to. Camille has always been a fighter, even when she was just a baby. She was born nearly two months early and spent weeks in intensive care, but she managed to not only survive, but absolutely thrive. She’s always been a little smaller than other girls her age, but she makes up for it with her stubbornness and fiery nature.

If something gets in Camille’s way, she fights until she overcomes it. Period. And there’s just no way this coma can be an exception.

“Lea?”

I glance over to Brie, but she just keeps shuffling through her closet, and her back remains turned to me as she says, “Boarding school sucks for all of us sometimes. It’s totally okay if you’re missing home, you know.”

I suddenly wish I could tell her everything. That it’s not home I miss, not really. That it’s my sister’s bubbly laugh, and her babbling about boys, and the dreamy look she got whenever she talked about trying out for the junior varsity cheerleading team. That it’s my brother talking to me, and coming home during his college breaks, and the hugs he’d sweep me into whenever I got stressed over school. That it’s my mom’s quiet encouragement of my photography, and my dad’s loud pride about the awards I’ve won, and the easy conversations I could always have with both of them about anything.

I want to tell her I can’t miss home, because I don’t have one anymore. Instead, I just swallow hard and say, “Thanks, Brie. But I’m fine.”

Chapter Four

“So tell me, Miss Alessio, when did the accident happen?”

The prosecutor assigned to Mom’s case was an aging man named Darius Whittaker. While most people in the courtroom spoke in curt tones, his questions were strangely patient and kind, and sometimes he even smiled as he peered through his bifocals at me. He had a neatly trimmed white beard and a pudgy stomach, and as soon as I saw him, I disliked him. Somehow, it made it even worse that the man trying to lock my mom in prison reminded me of Santa Claus.

“You already know when it happened,” I replied, my whispery voice crackling in the microphone in front of me.

He nodded slowly and offered a strained smile. “But not all the facts have been presented to the jury, dear,” he said in his gentle monotone.

I glanced over to the jury box, which was stuffed in the corner of the room that was already too full of people. Eight women and four men made up the jury, most of them in their forties and fifties. Dad had said it was a good jury for the case—women are more likely to be lenient. But his business partner who was presenting the case in court was quick to point out that women are also more likely to be defensive of a child. And, at twenty-one-years-old, Parker Ashbury had pretty much just been a kid.

“They already know when the accident happened,” I said, turning back to Whittaker. “I heard one of the highway patrol officers say those facts earlier.”

“But we didn’t hear them from
you
,” Whittaker said. “That’s the entire point of witness testimonies, Miss Alessio. We need to hear the facts from everyone involved.”

He said it as if multiple witnesses would be discussing the accident, but everyone in the courtroom knew it wasn’t true. Parker was dead, Camille was in a coma, and Mom certainly didn’t count as an unbiased witness, since she was the one on trial. It left my testimony as a key factor of the case. The prosecutor had a strong case against Mom, but my dad was certain that if I said the right thing, it could keep her out of prison.

I take a deep breath. “It happened on the evening of May fourth of this year.”

“And where were you when the accident occurred?”

“I was coming home from my uncle’s house with my mom and my sister. We’d been at a family reunion, but we left early.”

Whittaker raises his bushy eyebrows. “And why did you decide to leave early?”

In the audience of the courtroom, Dad gave the slightest shake of his head, sending a silent message: Don’t say it. Don’t do it. Don’t ruin this.

My heart pounded frantically against my ribcage, and I looked down so I couldn’t see the person standing beside Dad. My mom. If I looked at her, she’d be sure to give me that soft, reassuring smile she gave me every time I got anxious. It would be the same thin lips, the same slight dimple on her left cheek, the same concerned grey eyes that crinkled just a little in the corners.

Our eyes were nearly identical. Everyone always said so.

Whittaker’s voice sounded fuzzy the next time he spoke. “Miss Alessio? Can you please answer me?”

I didn’t. I couldn’t.

“Prosecutor Whittaker, I think that’s enough for now.” It was the judge’s voice that poked through the haze clouding my mind. “Let’s take a ten minute recess. Bailiff, can you please get the girl some water? She looks faint.”

I managed to shakily reach out for the cup before I completely passed out.

Chapter Five

Morning comes, and it’s sickeningly bright. I groan and clasp a pillow against my face to block out the sun seeping through the window. The heater purrs above me, and soft voices murmur a few doors down, but it’s surprisingly quiet aside from that. Three days still remain until the official start of the semester, and it seems most of Harting’s students don’t plan on returning to campus until they absolutely have to.

When I finally work up the energy to pull the pillow away from my face, I immediately wish I hadn’t. The first thing I see are the glowing blue numbers of the digital clock on my nightstand: 10:04.

Shit. I’m supposed to already be up and ready to leave for our shopping excursion into town.

As I scrub the last of my sleep from my eyes, I notice the muffin and note sitting next to my clock. The muffin is a giant blueberry monstrosity that makes my stomach start growling, and the note is covered in chicken-scratch handwriting that makes me briefly wonder if some stranger broke into our dorm room. There’s no way someone as neat and precise as Brie could have handwriting this messy. But, low and behold, as I read the note, I realize it’s from her:

Lea,

Didn’t want to wake you, since I figure you still have jet lag. But we’re leaving at 10:15. Feel free to meet us down at the parking lot, if you still want to join. If not, I’ll see you later. And breakfast ends at 9:30 every day, so I grabbed you a muffin.

—Brie

My instincts scream at me to take the jet lag excuse she kindly offered and skip out on the trip into town. But as I break off a piece of the muffin and pop it in my mouth, I realize it doesn’t taste bland and flavorless, like most of the food I’ve eaten for months. It’s sweet, just like the gesture of Brie thinking to grab it for me, and it makes me want more. More flavor, more sweetness, more normal little gestures of kindness that haven’t been in my life since the accident.

It’s not what I came here for. Hell, it’s pretty much the
opposite
of what I came here for. But I still find myself throwing back my covers and stretching my legs, trying to work out the painful muscle cramps so I can get up and rush to meet Brie and her friends. I’m supposed to do physical therapy exercises every morning to help heal my knee, but I’ve been slacking on them for weeks, and I figure there’s no harm skipping one more day.

By the time I shower, change, and find a scarf that completely covers the scars on my neck, I’m running late. My phone keeps buzzing, and I find a few new messages from Dad asking me to call him. I shoot him a quick text saying I’m fine and will talk to him later, which definitely isn’t going to improve his mood, but I don’t have the time or patience for a phone call with him now.

I manage to bolt down half of the muffin before I rush to the parking lot as fast as my limp will allow. The air is clear and cold, and a soft wind whispers along the paved walkways. The rest of the campus is just as gorgeous as its entrance, the brick buildings perfectly maintained despite their age. I pass a few groups of students, and they shoot me curious glances, but everyone leaves me alone.

Brie’s group of friends is easy to spot, mostly because of the bright pink scarf Brie is wearing, but also because of the way they gather around in a comfortable huddle. There are three girls and two guys, all of them clustered together and unconsciously moving in sync, like a flock of birds born in the same nest. They’re talking to each other and over each other, and letting laughter drown out everything in between.

All my enthusiasm for this shopping trip drains out of me, and making a bee-line back to my dorm suddenly sounds ideal. I was always the shy one at my previous school, keeping only a few friends and avoiding strangers. Freshman year, I tried going to a few parties, mostly because everyone else did. But after the fourth evening spent alone in a corner, I resigned myself to the fact that I’d never be a social butterfly.

Since the accident, I just haven’t had the energy or opportunity to get nervous about little things like social situations. But now I feel familiar unease crawling across my skin, and I have to bite my lip to keep from groaning when Brie spots me and waves. There goes my chance at escape.

I return Brie’s wave and limp up to the group, doing my best not to glance down at my cane. I find if I don’t look at it, other people are also less likely to stare at it. Brie’s friends smile at me, and I know they’re just being nice, but I suddenly feel like I’m facing a pack of wolves all baring their teeth.

I recognize Hannah and Maddie right away, but I’ve never seen the two guys before. One has a muscular arm slung over Maddie’s shoulders, and his tall build makes her look like a doll. The other guy is short and thin, and his huge blue eyes give him a look of perpetual surprise.