The Last Time We Say Goodbye by Cynthia Hand Read Free Book Online Page A

some big-sisterly advice thatwould draw him back from the edge. But I was 16 then—what did I know? I had my own problems, my own private miseries, and if I’d been honest I would have admitted that the idea of checking out had crossed my mind a few times in the past gruesome year, between my dad leaving us for the cliché he’d met at the office, who was exactly half his age, and my mom going back to school, the house suddenly empty of adults in a way that felt implicitly wrong.
    But I never had a real plan to end my life. I was too afraid of dying. Of the blackness. Of ceasing to exist.
    â€œIt was stupid,” he ended up saying to me that day when the silence grew thick between us.
    I was relieved to hear him say it.
    â€œYes, it was. Totally moronic,” I agreed, and then we went back to watching World’s Wildest Police Videos on the TV that perched near the ceiling. The nurses came and went. My mother came and went. And we both wondered (but not out loud) whether our father was going to show up at all.
    In the end, he did. He was wearing a golf shirt, I remember. He’d come to take us home, since the hospital had decided to release Ty, and Mom still had 3 more hours of her clinicals. Dad also didn’t seem to know what to say as he drove us back to the house. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, checked the rearview mirror, met my eyes, looked away, then cleared his throat.
    â€œTyler—” he said as we pulled into the driveway.
    â€œCome home,” Ty interrupted. “Please, Dad. Come home. Please.”
    My breath lodged itself in my chest. Ty never said things like that. He was angry with Dad; that was how he dealt. He’d alwaysmaintained that he hated Dad, that he was glad Dad was gone, that he didn’t miss him.
    â€œPlease,” he said again.
    And what about me? I thought. Did I want Dad to come home? Could we pretend that this past humiliating year had never happened, that he wasn’t a liar and a cheater and an all-around pathetic excuse for a human being, that everything hadn’t been turned upside down? Could we go back to the way things were before? Did I want to go back?
    Dad cleared his throat again.
    I waited for him to say, I can’t. Or I’m sorry, son. Or something about how life is hard, but that doesn’t mean we give up.
    But he didn’t say anything.
    And he didn’t stay. Even though the doctor had said that Ty needed to be under strict surveillance for the next 24 hours, Dad didn’t even get out of the car. He just looked at me and said, “Call me if you need anything,” and I kind of nodded, and my eyes burned with furious tears that I didn’t let fall, and I turned away and walked Ty up the steps into the house.
    Later, when Ty was sleeping, I went from room to room gathering anything that might be dangerous. Razor blades. Pills, although we’d already established that this wasn’t an effective method of offing yourself. Rope. Then I unlocked the closet in the back of Dad’s office and stared at the line of 3 hunting rifles in their cases. I checked to make sure none of them was loaded, and then I went to the shelf and swept every single bullet into a box with the rest of the stuff. I sealed the box with duct tape, labeled it ROMANCE NOVELS, and hid it in the backcorner of my closet under a pile of half-naked Barbie dolls I still had lying around. After that was done I went to check on Ty, listened to him breathe, and tried to convince myself that he was going to be all right. Then I tiptoed back upstairs and sat at the kitchen table and finally allowed myself to cry.
    I could cry back then.
    I loved Ty. I loved him and I had almost lost him. So I cried. Tears were still a part of my anatomy.
    They called him lucky, that time. His body was able to metabolize the Advil. His liver was damaged, but would probably heal. Lucky, they kept saying at the hospital as they took his