What Happened to Goodbye(75)
Author: Sarah Dessen

“Mclean. Wait up!”

I bit my lip at the sound of Dave’s voice, calling out from behind me. Between studying and some extra credit work I needed to do before the end of this, the last day of the grading period, I’d managed to avoid just about everyone for the entire school day. Until now.

“Hey,” I said as he jogged up, falling into place behind me.

“Where have you been all day?” he said. “I thought you cut or something.”

“I had tests,” I told him as we moved with the rest of the crowd through the main entrance. “And some other stuff.”

“Oh, right. Because you’re leaving.”

“What?”

“For the beach. Today. With your mom.” He looked at me, narrowing his eyes. “Right?”

“Oh. Yeah,” I said, shaking my head. “Sorry. I’m just, you know, distracted. About the trip, and everything.”

“Sure,” he said, but he kept his eyes on me, even as I focused my attention steadily forward. “So . . . are you leaving right away or are you coming to the restaurant for a while?”

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“Cool. Ride with me.”

Being alone, together, at right this moment, was exactly what I didn’t want to do. But lacking any way of getting out of it, I followed him to the parking lot, sliding into the passenger seat of the Volvo. After three false starts, he finally managed to coax it out of the space and toward the exit.

“So,” he said as we turned onto the main road, the muffler rattling, “I’ve been thinking.”

“Yeah?”

He nodded. “You really need to go out with me.”

I blinked. “I’m sorry?”

“You know. You, me. A restaurant or movie. Together.” He glanced over, shifting gears. “Maybe it’s a new concept for you? If so, I’ll be happy to walk you through it.”

“You want to take me to a movie?” I asked.

“Well, not really,” he said. “What I really want is for you to be my girlfriend. But I thought saying that might scare you off.”

I felt my heart jump in my chest. “Are you always so direct about this kind of thing?”

“No,” he said. We turned right, starting up the hill toward downtown, the tall buildings of the hospital and U bell tower visible at the top. “But I get the feeling you’re in a hurry, leaving and all, so I figured I should cut to the chase.”

“I’m only going to be gone a week,” I said softly.

“True,” he said as the engine strained, still climbing. “But I’ve been wanting to do it for a while and didn’t want to wait any longer.”

“Really?” I asked. He nodded. “Like, since when?”

He thought for a second. “The day you hit me with that basketball.”

“That was attractive to you?”

“Not exactly,” he replied. “More like embarrassing and humiliating. But there was something about it as a moment. . . . It was like a clean slate. No posturing or pretending. It was, you know, real.”

We were coming into town now, passing FrayBake, Luna Blu only a few blocks away. “Real,” I repeated.

“Yeah. I mean, it’s impossible to fake anything if you’ve already seen the other person in a way they’d never choose for you to. You can’t go back from that.”

“No,” I said. “I guess you can’t.”

He turned into the Luna Blu lot, parking beside a VW, and we got out and started walking toward the kitchen entrance. “So,” he said, “not to sound pushy or desperate, but you haven’t exactly answered—”

“Yo! Wait up! ” I heard a voice yell from behind us. I turned just in time to see Ellis’s van sliding into the spot beside the Volvo. A moment later, he was jogging toward us, his keys jingling in one hand. “Am I glad to see you g. I thought I was late.”

Dave glanced at his watch. “Actually, we’re all late.”

“By two minutes,” I told him. “I don’t think she’ll flog us or anything.”

“You don’t know that.” He pulled open the back door. As Ellis ducked in, and I followed, he said, “This is Deb we’re talking about.”

“Actually,” I said, stopping in front of my dad’s closed office, “I need to stop in here. I’ll catch up with you guys.”

“Uh-oh,” Ellis said. “She was our sympathy vote.”

“But now we can say it was her fault,” Dave said. To me he added, “Take your time!”

I made a face, and then they were gone, the door that led into the restaurant banging shut behind them. I leaned a little closer to my dad’s door: I could hear him inside talking, his voice low.

“Wouldn’t knock just now,” someone said, and I turned to see Jason standing down the hallway, clipboard in hand, in the narrow room where they kept all the canned and dried goods. “Your dad said no interruptions until further notice.”

“Really,” I said, looking at the door again. “Did he tell you what was going on?”

“I didn’t ask.” He nodded, checking something off his list. “But they’ve been in there for a while.”

I was about to ask him who was with my dad before deciding against it. Instead, I stepped back, thanking him, and headed upstairs.

The restaurant was empty and quiet. The only sounds were the beer cooler humming and the ticking of the fan over the hostess station, turned on too high a speed. I stopped at the end of the bar, looking down the row of tables, each neatly set and waiting for opening. Like a clean slate, I thought, remembering what Dave had said earlier. Even though each shift started the same way, on any given night, anything could happen from here.

It was surprisingly quiet as I climbed the stairs to the attic room, and I wondered if Dave and everyone else had left or something. When I got to the landing, I saw them all gathered around Deb, who was sitting with her back to me on one of the tables, her computer open in her lap. I couldn’t see what was on the screen, but everyone was studying it.