This is What Goodbye Looks Like (25 page)

“You do realize I’m basically the worst person you could come to for family issues, right? My family is a total mess right now. Not exactly the best role model.”

I look away, desperately trying to sort out my thoughts. He’s right, of course. He’s the last person I should have gone to, and if I wasn’t shaking so damn hard, I’d probably go right back outside and leave.

“It’s just, Brie’s pretty much the only other person I talk to here,” I say, forcing the words to slip out between my chattering teeth. “And her family just seems so...”

“Perfect,” Seth supplies. “Yeah. They’re real close knit.”

There’s no judgment in his tone, but I still cringe. “I probably sound like a total brat. I know Brie cares, and it’s not like I’m jealous of her, it’s just...” I clear my throat. “I thought you might be better to talk to.”

He smiles wryly. “Because my family is screwed up beyond belief?”

“Yeah. And because you still never hesitate to call them your family.”

He nods slowly. Then he quietly says, “So your sister. She’s the issue?”

It’s not a question, just a statement filled with sad understanding. A lump presses at my throat, and I wait for tears to follow, but instead there’s just a choking, hollow feeling.

“She’s not the issue,” I murmur. “She’s never been the issue. She never did anything wrong.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Seth says, reaching toward me like he wants to comfort me, but can’t quite decide how.

I swallow hard. “She’s sick. Really, really sick. And my parents are taking her off life support.”

I haven’t even finished the sentence before Seth finds my hand and gently tugs it away from the edge of the quilt, which I’ve been clutching in a death grip.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, twining his fingers with mine. His touch is warm and comforting and everything I don’t deserve. “I’m just... Shit, I’m so sorry. I don’t even know what else to say.”

“But you always know the right thing to say,” I whisper numbly, although I’m not sure if it’s a compliment or a protest.

He rubs his thumb against the back of my hand. “I don’t think there’s anything right about this. Nothing at all.”

We stay frozen for a moment, even Koda, whose constantly wagging tail is still for once. Then I reach toward Seth and wrap my arms around his neck. He presses me close against him, and I lean against his chest, letting its solidness hold me up. It’s like his warmth finally manages to thaw the walls I’ve encased my emotions in, because for the first time since I came to Harting, I start crying.

I’m not sure how long I stay tangled up with him like that. Time passes in painful increments of choked sobs and hot tears, and Seth just holds me, not daring to say anything, but also not daring to let me go. I feel like I’m drowning, falling deeper and deeper into an icy well. The only heat in the world seems to belong to Seth, so I cling to him tighter and let myself cry, trying to purge the coldness biting at my insides.

I keep waiting for him to say something, to tell me it’s all going to be okay, but he stays completely silent. He knows any reassurance would be useless. He knows it’d be a lie. So he just sits there and clutches me close to his chest, his ragged breathing a soft, tortured lullaby in my ear.

Finally, after what feels like an eternity, my tears stop. I’m not sure if I manage to pull it together, or if I simply run out. A wet splotch marks the front of Seth’s shirt, but he doesn’t seem to mind. He just slowly pulls away from me and holds me at arm’s length, and I notice that his eyes are red and watery, too.

“Is there any chance your parents will change their mind?” he asks quietly. “That they won’t take her off life support?”

I want to tell him “yes,” that there’s still time, that I can stop this, that it won’t actually happen. But instead my tongue turns traitor on me, and I hear myself murmur, “No.”

His lips pinch together, like he’s trying to hold in a cry of pain, and somehow I know it’s real. This isn’t an act to make me feel better or try to impress me. He’s honestly hurting at the thought of Camille being hurt.

“Are you going home?” he asks. “To be with her when they...?”

“No, not for another month. My parents don’t think I should be there. Not until the very end.”

Seth shakes his head. “That’s not right.”

“None of this is.”

He runs a hand through my hair, tucking it gently behind my ear. “I’m sorry,” he whispers again, his breath warm against my cheek.

I press closer against him. “Aren’t you the one always saying you shouldn’t apologize for things that aren’t your fault?” My attempt to sound light-hearted fails miserably, and I don’t even bother fixing it.

Seth sighs. “Is there anything I can do to make you feel better?”

“Keep my sister alive.”

“Anything else?”

“Let me stay here for a bit?”

It sounds more like a question than a request, but he doesn’t seem to notice my hesitation, and he just wraps his arms around me tighter. The rapid thudding of his heart is a welcome sensation against my cheek, which is raw from me angrily wiping away tears.

“Thanks,” I murmur.

“You’ve got to stop thanking me every time I do the smallest thing for you.”

“This isn’t small,” I say, closing my eyes.

He doesn’t argue, and instead just lets me sit there in his arms. I stay there for a long minute, neither of us moving. His steadiness is more comforting than I thought possible, but after a long stretch of stillness, he reaches out and winds a few strands of my hair around his index finger, absently playing with it.

“I hate it when you’re sad,” he murmurs. “How about we talk about something other than your sister for a bit.”

I scowl up at him. “My sister’s dying. We can’t just change the subject like that.”

“You’re not going home to her?”

“No. Like I said, my parents aren’t letting me come home for a few weeks.”

“Okay. And are you going to do anything to help her from here?”

“What do you mean?” I demand. Some inner part of me perks up, and I hold my breath, half-expecting him to tell me the secret to healing her. If anyone would know, it’d be Seth, right? It’d be the boy who held his family together during impossible times.

Except he didn’t actually hold them together. Except they fell apart just like mine did, even if they hid it better. Except I was an idiot to ever think he had a solution to my problems, and I’m an idiot to even consider it now.

“I mean are you going to figure out a cure for her?” Seth asks. “Deliver a miracle?”

I give his chest a push, distancing myself from him a little. “Of course not. What are you talking about? I can’t do any of that.”

“Then let’s change the subject for a while. You can’t do anything to help, and I can’t, either. There’s no sense torturing yourself by lingering on that.”

“But...”

“Besides,” Seth says softly, “if your sister is anything like my brother, she would hate to know you’re crying. And I hate it, too. So let’s just change the subject for now, at least until you’re feeling a bit better.”

He’s right—I’m still shaking a little, and I’m probably going to completely break down again if I don’t start talking about something else. I glance around the room as I search for a topic that’s happier than our current one.

“You have sand on your walls,” I finally say, peering at the paper tacked on the wall next to his door. It looks like a page from a book of poetry, and it’s covered in little grains of white sand that glimmer in the light of the lamp.

“Yep.”

“Does that count as something happy we could change the topic to?”

“Of course. Why would I keep sad sand on my walls?”

“Why would you keep sand on your walls at all?”

“Because it’s pretty, and isn’t that what you’re supposed to do with walls? Hang them with pretty things? Posters, paintings, drawings...”

“And sand, apparently.”

“Yeah. Sand, too.” He makes a vague gesture to the pages pinned to his wall. “Every time I go on vacation, I bring back a souvenir that I can decorate my walls with. And then I find a poem that seems fitting for wherever the trip was, and I use that as a sort of frame.”

He swallows hard, and his grip on my hand tightens a little. “It started off as a sort of joke between Parker and me. He was always hanging photos of our vacation spots, so I started hanging my own souvenirs. Then we’d have memories he could see and ones I could feel.”

I glance up, examining the photos above his bed. Some of them are of people, some of landscapes, some abstract. But they all have a sort of dreamy quality to them, the backgrounds soft, but the subjects so sharp and focused, it’s like reality has started to seep straight out of the images.

“Those are Parker’s,” I murmur, and I don’t explain what I’m talking about, because I know Seth will understand.

He gives a slow nod. “Yeah.”

“Why do you keep them up?” I ask quietly. “I mean, if you can’t see them...”

He lets his head fall back and shrugs a shoulder. “Parker always said the best photos show the photographer as much as the subject. So that’s why I keep them up, I guess. I don’t need to see their details to know that I love them.”

I open my mouth, but I can’t figure out any sort of reply. Pictures might be worth a thousand words, and maybe Parker’s are worth even more. But some things are just beyond words, and I think the tender agony in Seth’s voice is one of them.

I shift my gaze back to the poetry pages on the other wall, blinking my eyes to clear them of the tears threatening to return. “You’ve traveled a lot of places,” I murmur.

Seth nods. “Yeah. My dad used to travel a lot for his job, and he’d always bring my family along whenever he could.” He makes a vague gesture to the pages. “It kind of became a tradition to take a souvenir from every trip. And then Parker had the idea of keeping souvenirs from any big event in our lives, whether it was local or not. He was like that, always wanting to keep mementos from every chapter of our lives. So our collection just kept growing.”

“So where’s the sand from?” I ask.

“Hawaii,” he says as he begins tracing a mindless pattern over my palm with his index finger. I shiver and hope he just thinks it’s from the cold, although it’s probably a useless wish.

“My parents took me there for my sixteenth birthday,” he continues. “They said I could pick anywhere in the States to go.”

“And you picked Hawaii?”

“You sound so surprised.”

“It’s just, everyone goes to Hawaii for the scenery.”

“You really underestimate me, don’t you?” he says, but he sounds merely amused. “Yeah, Hawaii’s beautiful, and yeah, that’s why I picked there.” He gestures toward the sand on the wall. “But the scenery isn’t the only pretty part. The sand is so soft, it’s almost like you’re walking on nothing. And it’s warm there, but it’s also humid, so it’s like the ocean follows you everywhere. Then there’s the food. I swear it tastes better there than it does anywhere else.”

He pauses in his rambling and tilts his head. “But don’t tell any of the locals around here I said that. I’d probably be burned at the stake.”

I want to smile, but my cheeks feel tight from the tears dried on them, and I can’t get them to lift right. So, instead, I just say, “Okay, point taken. Blind dudes get to enjoy Hawaii, too.”

“Told you,” he says, sounding almost smug. Then his voice lowers just a little, like he’s sharing a secret. “I’ve always thought of Hawaii as being red. Parker said that’s crazy, since everything is green and blue over there. But it reminds me of a sunrise, because everything’s always beginning. Plants popping up everywhere, lava making new islands, the water coming in with the tides. That’s the prettiest part of it. The newness of everything.”

“Explain it to me,” I say. “How you can think in colors, I mean. How do you even know if red is pretty?”

He drops his hand away from mine, and I clench my fingers into a fist, resisting the urge to snatch him back. I start leaning away to escape the temptation, but then he reaches up and gently twines a few strands of my hair around his index finger, making a little curl.

“I read poetry,” Seth says, giving a shrug. “So I can’t tell you what a rainbow looks like, but Dickinson and Wordsworth and Silverstein can. And their words tell me enough about colors to understand them.”

He tilts his head in that way he always does when he’s thinking too hard. “Sometimes I think I understand them more than most people, actually.”

“Why?” I ask, partially because I’m curious, but also because I just want him to keep talking, no matter what he says. His voice is a warm comfort, slightly husky, but still smooth enough to be soothing.

“I guess because if I’m going to actually picture a color, I have to hear multiple people describe it.” His voice drops a little. “Did you know that red is the color of purity in India? You read an English poet like Maya Arrington, and she describes red as this terrible thing, like it’s all blood and gore and hardly even belongs in a book. But then Adarsh Gupta describes it, and he gives it a whole new meaning. Purity, spirituality, loyalty. Good things.”

“So how do you know who’s right?” I ask.