What Happened to Goodbye(50)
Author: Sarah Dessen

“Wait,” he said, moving over to the next cabinet and opening it. Empty. “Is this . . . What’s going on here? Are you, like, survivalists or something?”

“No,” I said, embarrassed, although I wasn’t sure why. I actually prided myself on keeping it minimal: it made moving easy. “We just don’t spread out much.”

He opened another cabinet, revealing the bare wall behind it. “Mclean,” he said, “you have a basically empty kitchen.”

“We have everything we need,” I countered. He just looked at me. “Except thyme. Look, my dad works at a restaurant. We don’t cook much.”

“You don’t even have baking pans,” he said, still opening things and exposing empty spaces. “What if you need to roast or broil something?”

“I buy a foil pan,” I told him. He just looked at me. “What? Do you know what a pain it is to pack glass pans? They always chip, if not break altogether.”

He came back to the table, taking his seat. Behind him, a few of the cabinets were still open, like gaping mouths. “No offense,” he said, “but that’s just plain sad.”

“Why?” I asked. “It’s organized.”

“It’s paltry,” he replied. “And totally temporary. Like you’re only here for a week or something.”

I ate another spoonful of soup. “Come on.”

“Seriously.” He looked at the cabinets again. “Is it like this all over the house? Like, if I open the drawers in your bedroom, I’ll see you have only two pairs of pants?”

“You’re not opening my drawers,” I told him. “And no. But if you really care, we used to have more stuff. Each time we moved, though, I realized how little we were using of it. So I scaled back. And then I scaled back a little more.”

He just looked at me as I stirred my bowl, moving the carrots around. “How many times have you moved?”

“Not that many,” I said. He did not look convinced, so I added, “I’ve been living with Dad for almost two years . . . and I guess this is the fourth place. Or something.”

“Four towns in two years?” he said.

“Well, of course it sounds bad when you say it like that,” I said.

For a moment, neither of us said anything. The only sound was our spoons clinking. I really wanted to get up and shut the open cabinets, but for some reason I felt like it would be admitting something. I stayed where I was.

“What I mean is, it must be hard,” he said finally, glancing up at me. “Always being the new kid.”

“Not necessarily.” I tucked one leg up underneath me. “There’s something kind of freeing about it, actually.”

“Really.”

“Sure,” I said. “When you move a lot, you don’t have a lot of entanglements. There’s not really time to get all caught up in things. It’s simpler.”

He thought about this for a second. “True. But if you never really make friends, you probably don’t have anyone to be your two a.m. Which would kind of suck.”

I just looked at him as he stirred his soup, carrots spinning in the liquid. “Your what?”

“Two a.m.” He swallowed, then said, “You know. The person you can call at two a.m. and, no matter what, you can count on them. Even if they’re asleep or it’s cold or you need to be bailed out jail . . . they’ll come for you. It’s, like, the highest level of friendship.”

“Oh. Right.” I looked down at the table. “Well, I guess I can see the value in that.”

We were quiet for a moment. Then Dave said, “At the same time, though, I can understand the whole blank-page thing. You don’t have to constantly be explaining yourself.”

“Exactly,” I said. “Nobody knows you were ever friends with Gerv the Perv. Or part of a vicious, girl-fight-inducing love triangle.”

“Or that your parents had an awful divorce.” I looked at him. “Sorry. But that’s kind of where you were going, right?”

It hadn’t been. At least not on purpose. “My point is that all the moving has been just what me and my dad needed. It’s been a good thing for both of us.”

“Being temporary,” he said.

“Getting a fresh start,” I countered. “Or four.”

Another silence fell. I could hear the fridge humming behind me. Weird how some things you’re never aware of until there’s nothing else to notice.

“So you think you’ll move from here again, soon? ” he asked finally. “When six months is up?”

“Don’t know,” I replied. “Sometimes we stay longer or shorter than that. It’s really up to the company my dad works for. And next year . . .”

I trailed off, realizing only once I’d started this sentence that I didn’t really want to get into it. But I could feel Dave watching me, waiting.

“There’s college, and all that,” I finished. “So this one already kind of has an end date, regardless. At least for me.”

We looked at each other for a moment. He was a smart guy, probably the smartest I’d ever met. So it didn’t take long, only a beat or so, for him to get what I was saying.

“Right.” He put his spoon down in his now-empty bowl. “Well, at least you’ll be ready for the dorm. You’ve got living simply down.”

I smiled, looking at the cabinets. “I do, don’t I?”

“Yeah. Maybe I should take some lessons. Might come in handy when I’m packing for our road trip this summer.”

“The road trip?” I asked. “Does that mean it’s back on? Your parents gave the okay?”

“Not exactly. But they’re warming up to the idea a bit.” He pushed his bowl to the side. “Mostly because I said I’d spend the second half of the summer at Brain Camp, which is what they want me to do. It’s all about compromise. But if it means I get to go to Texas with Ellis and Riley, it’s all good.”

“So Heather wasn’t invited?”

He smiled. “Good assumption, but actually she was in until recently. She, uh, kind of wrecked her car and got her license pulled for points. Her dad’s making her pay back all the debt and for a new policy before she can drive again, so all her money went to that.”

“Was this the guardhouse incident?” I asked.

“It was.” He sighed. “I swear, she is the worst driver. She doesn’t look when she merges.”