The Last Time We Say Goodbye
By Cynthia Hand
4/5
()
About this ebook
In the tradition of Thirteen Reasons Why and All the Bright Places, The Last Time We Say Goodbye is a deeply affecting novel that will change the way you look at life and death.
From New York Times bestselling author Cynthia Hand comes a stunning, heart-wrenching novel of love and loss, which ALA Booklist called "both shatteringly painful and bright with life and hope" in a starred review.
Since her brother, Tyler, committed suicide, Lex has been trying to keep her grief locked away, and to forget about what happened that night. But as she starts putting her life, her family, and her friendships back together, Lex is haunted by a secret she hasn't told anyone—a text Tyler sent, that could have changed everything.
Cynthia Hand
The Lady Janies are made up of New York Times bestselling authors Brodi Ashton, Cynthia Hand, and Jodi Meadows. They first met in 2012, when their publishers sent them on a book tour together, and they hit it off so well they decided to write My Lady Jane so they could go on book tours together all the time. Between the three of them they’ve written more than twenty published novels, a bunch of novellas, a handful of short stories, and a couple of really bad poems. They’re friends. They’re writers. They’re fixing history by rewriting one sad story at a time. Learn more at ladyjanies.com.
Read more from Cynthia Hand
My Lady Jane Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My Calamity Jane Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Radiant Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5With You All the Way Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
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Reviews for The Last Time We Say Goodbye
93 ratings17 reviews
What our readers think
Readers find this title to be a good book that explores themes of loss and acceptance. Although some readers felt that the plot lacked twists and dragged on, the writing was excellent and evoked strong emotions. The book addresses important topics like suicide and mental health, although some readers wished for more specific details. Overall, readers found this to be a beautiful and heartbreaking story that is recommended for those who enjoy sad and romantic ghost stories.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5For more reviews, gifs, Cover Snark and more, visit A Reader of Fictions.Despite the sad title, part of me was hoping for the romance of Cynthia Hand’s unearthly. Whatever the circumstances, I’ll always be hoping for swoons. As soon as I hit the dedication, which I usually skip, I knew that The Last Time We Say Goodbye would be an incredibly sad book. It reads, “For Jeff. Because this is the only way I know to reach for you.” In just those lines, I feel pain and heartbreak. The Last Time We Say Goodbye seems to me almost a character study of dealing with the loss of a loved one to suicide.Since I wasn’t in the mood for a darker contemporary, I wasn’t sure if I was actually going to read The Last Time We Say Goodbye. It wasn’t so much that I didn’t want to read it eventually, but I figured I’d give the egalley a couple of pages, and I’d DNF it with every intention to come back to it if it didn’t grab me. There’s a reason, though, that Hand’s Unearthly, despite not being my thing plot-wise grabbed me years ago. She excels at characters and narration. This means that the book grabbed me on the first page; the first paragraph told me that I’d be reading the whole novel now. Here’s the first paragraph, so you can see why:First I’d like to state for the record that the whole notion of writing this down was not my idea. It was Dave’s. My therapist’s. He thinks I’m having trouble expressing my feelings, which is why he suggested I write in a journal—to get it out, he said, like in the old days when physicians used to bleed their patients in order to drain the mysterious poisons. Which almost always ended up killing them in spite of the doctors’ good intentions, I might point out.It’s that joke there at the end that told me this would be the sort of sad book that I could handle. I despise sentiment, and sometimes that’s what the so-called issue books are. Lots of sad, sad sentiment. I like my emotion cloaked in sarcasm or hidden beneath an inability to parse emotions. These things are present in The Last Time We Say Goodbye. I think these things make the book lighter in some ways, easier to digest, but also darker.Lex hardly feels sad when The Last Time We Say Goodbye begins. Not feeling sad would ordinarily be a good thing, but in this case she’s not happy either. She’s not remotely herself, but she can’t cry anymore and she’s numb, except for the times where she feels like her insides are a hollow pit. Those times of abject pain are the best times, because at least she knows she can still feel something after her brother’s suicide. Something about that hits me so much harder than anything else.As she should be, Lex attends therapy. There is, by the way, zero stigma attached to this, which again is as it should be. The therapy runs throughout the background of the novel, informing everything that Lex does. Her breakthroughs seem to come from talking with people in her life and not from therapy, but would not have come were she not in therapy. Writing in the journal helps open her up and get her memory going, helps her to remember Ty.The Last Time We Say Goodbye verges on magical realism. Both Lex and her mother see ghosts. What I like is that it still feels like a contemporary and not a paranormal. Whether ghosts are real or it was some part of the grieving process, it was what they needed to go on living and find joy again. Lex finds it difficult to forgive herself and everyone else, because any one of them could maybe have prevented Ty from committing suicide. The whole book is about Lex coming to terms with that. It’s at no point a happy book, but it’s as hopeful as it can be, given the tragic circumstances.There are two more things I want to mention. 1) I love that Lex is into mathematics. She actually thinks her way through the Fibonacci sequence to fall asleep. She worries about English class and loves calculus. She dreams of attending MIT and becoming a mathemetician. 2) The romance, which is minimal, delights me. I can’t say it was incredibly shippy, but I liked that it followed a non-traditional YA novel pattern, since they were an established couple before the novel began.Pick The Last Time We Say Goodbye up when you’re ready for a good cry. No, for the record, I didn’t cry, but I did feel pain.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Things I love in books:
1. Strong, flawed protagonists that develop throughout the text
2. Sweet relationships between the protagonist and their friends
3. Conflict with parents
4. Endings that make me cry
So, naturally, I loved this book.
So much so, that I don't really have anything more to say. - Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Another book that failed to hold my attention as Lex went through the grieving process after her younger brother committed suicide.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5As Lex deals with her grief and guilt in the months after her brother’s suicide, Cynthia Hand delivers a heartwrenching story, but it’s not without hope.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Review courtesy of Dark Faerie Tales Quick & Dirty: Emotional and often thought provoking, but a very depressing read.Opening Sentence: First I’d like to state for the record that the whole notion of writing this down was not my idea.The Review:I really wanted to enjoy this book but there seems to be a plethora of books about teenage deaths / suicides of late and it’s beginning to get rather repetitive. Recently, I read Playlist For the Dead, which was also about a teenage suicide and the effect the death had on friends and family. Perhaps, I would have enjoyed this more if it was a suspense or mystery, but it just seemed like a very sad, depressing read. Emotional and often thought provoking, but very depressing.Of course, being angry is pointless. Unproductive. They don’t understand yet. That they are still waiting for that one phone call that will change everything. That every one of them will feel like me eventually. Because someone they love will die. It’s one of life’s cruel certainties.The story is told from Lex’s perspective and how she deals with her brother Ty’s death. Initially, Lex is very closed off and has distanced herself from her friends and family, wallowing in her grief. However, the growth in her character is evident as the story progresses and as Lex tries to make sense of what happened. It’s clear that Lex feels guilty because she wasn’t able to prevent her brother’s suicide, but the more she opens up, the better she deals with it. Lex not only helps herself in overcoming her grief, but manages to lure her mother out of her sadness too, as well as begin to mend the bonds with her father. This is all very good for Lex and her family, but I just could not see anything that stood out to mark this book as exceptional.“…If anyone’s going to live to be a hundred, Mom, it’s you. So stop saying your life is over. It’s not even halfway over. And yes, your son died, and that’s awful, and that hurts, but it’s not your fault. And you know what? Everybody dies, and everybody loses people they love-everybody-and that is not an excuse for you to fucking die. I love you, and I need you to be my mother, and I need you to have a life. So get over yourself.”Ty was clearly very depressed and, as Lex notes, suicide is a very common occurrence, it’s just that we don’t notice it until it affects us personally. His death was explained in graphic detail and I wonder whether there should be an age limit since this is YA!There’s death all around us. Everywhere we look. 1.8 people kill themselves every second.We just don’t pay attention. Until we do.The message I took from this read is that if you know someone suffering with depression try to help them as much as you can by being there to listen and actively showing that you care. But in the end, the only person that can help you is yourself. The second, and more important message is to appreciate life and the people around you because you never know what will happen next.Notable Scene:“I know things have been hard since Tyler…”And she pauses.God, I hate that pause, while the person speaking searches for the most watered-down way to say died, like calling it by another name is going to make it any less awful: terms like laid to rest, like death’s some kind of nap; passed or departed, like it’s a vacation; expired, which is supposed to be more technical but really sounds like the deceased is a carton of milk, a date stamped on them, after which they become-well, sour milk.“Killed himself,” I fill in for Miss Mahoney.FTC Advisory: HarperTeen provided me with a copy of The Last Time We Say Goodbye. No goody bags, sponsorships, “material connections,” or bribes were exchanged for my review.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5So, honestly, if this book weren't written by one of my favorite authors, it's not one I probably would have picked to be so high on my "to-read" list. Suicide isn't a feel-good subject, or one that I'd usually choose to read about. But it's a Cynthia Hand stand-alone novel. I had to read it.
This was a poignant, well-written book on a difficult topic. It deals with all the emotions of the "aftermath" of a suicide tragedy. Not the immediate aftermath, but of all the months after. The "moving on" time. The guilt that comes from wondering "what if". The trying to figure it out. The effect it has on all your existing relationships. All. the. feels. It was so good. I devoted an entire afternoon to reading it and couldn't stop until I was done.
The only complaint I had was that it did use some strong language in places. It wasn't excessive, and it was true-to-life, so as an adult reader, I could accept it, but as you know if you've read any of my reviews in the past, I'm just not a fan. I still loved the book, though.
Would I recommend this to fellow book lovers? Absolutely
Would I recommend this to my teen daughter? On the fence. It deals with really hard subject matter.
4.5 of 5 stars - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Usually when I write a review I start off with a short synopsis, a preview as to what you might expect to see from the book. For instance there might be a little once upon a time, something about a princess, a prince, a happily ever after, yada, yada, yada. I can't make myself write an over view of this book. I can barley write a sentence about it because I can't put into words how spectacular it is. Lex's brother Ty committed suicide. This book is about the after, the before and how the two collide. That's it. That's all you get. Now please take my advice, even if it's the only advice you ever take from me and go buy this book. Hell buy two copies. I'm not going to lie, when I first picked up this book I had no idea what it was about, it was my first Cynthia Hand book and I went in blind. Within the first couple of pages I was kicking myself for picking this book. I had just finished Playlist For The Dead and I did not want another book about teenage suicide. Let me just say that this book is so much more than a 'suicide book'. It's such a beautifully written story about love and loss and the moments we take for granted. You never know when a goodbye will be your last and Cynthia does an amazing job of teaching us all this life lesson. I am not an overly emotional person, I don't cry in public, I don't get weepy in the movie theater (save it for TFIOS) and when I know how a book is going to end I tend not to get too emotional about the outcome. Well Cynthia Hand, you took my heart out of my chest and wrung it out like a wet paper towel. I finished this book at work thank God I wasn't wearing any eye makeup that day because it was like someone turned on a faucet and there was no stopping the waterfall of tears streaming down my face. Even writing this now, thinking back on the last couple of chapters I'm getting teary eyed. Cynthia Hand broke me in the best possible way. From the dedication on the first page to the last sentence Cynthia weaves a heart wrenching tale, one that I'm sure will stay with me, and other readers, for years to come. Go get this book, a box of tissues and some waterproof mascara. You will not be disappointed. Until next time, GingerIn compliance with FTC guidelines I am disclosing that this book was given to me for free to review. My review is my honest opinion.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I got a copy of this book to review through the Amazon Vine series. I was a huge fan of Hand’s Unearthly series, so I was eager to see what Hand would write for her first contemporary young adult fiction novel. This was a very tough read but incredibly well written. This book is about a girl, Lex, whose brother kills himself. She is dealing with the aftermath and trying to understand why he did this. She and her mother are also struggling to figure out how to get on with their lives when everything has suddenly changed so drastically.I really haven’t read any contemporary fiction about teen suicide before, so keep that in mind (I don’t have a lot to compare this book to). This is a very emotional read; there were parts of the book where I laughed out loud and parts where I cried. The book is very sad, but also ends on a very hopeful note.The story alternates between what Lex is dealing with on a day to day basis and what she writes in a journal she is keeping at the request of her therapist. The whole story is driving towards Lex’s admission about the events that happened the night of her brother’s suicide. This book was absolutely impossible to put down, I read the full 400 pages in one night (when I should have been doing things like exercising and sleeping). I just had to know what actually happened to her brother, what led him to commit suicide, and how Lex and her mom were going to move on with their lives.I loved Lex as a character. She is something of a mathematical genius and she looks at the world a bit differently than most other teens. However, that being said she is dealing with a lot of the same issues. She has a wonderfully geeky and sweet boyfriend that she is struggling to maintain a relationship with because of her brother’s death. She is trying to keep her grades up despite her depression because she wants to go to MIT. Mostly she is struggling with how different everyone treats her because of this one selfish act her brother committed.Overall this is highly recommended if you like young adult contemporary fiction. The book is just incredibly well written and impossible to put down. You get very involved with the characters and their lives very quickly. Just read it somewhere where you don’t mind crying.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5It is five days before Christmas when Alex’s younger brother, Ty, TheLastTimeWeSayGoodbyecommits suicide: a shotgun blast to his chest. He had stayed home from school, ran certain errands and, it seems, carefully planned the day. Her mother is coping by going to work, coming home, having a glass or three of wine and crying. Her parents divorced several years ago and, while Alex sees her father weekly for dinner, the time is taken up with idle conversation, so his emotions barely play a role in this book. Alex is barely coping herself.Alex’s therapist has suggested antidepressants to which Alex is vehemently opposed. So, instead he recommends that she keep a journal as an outlet for her emotions. Possibly direct the entries to someone in particular, and describe firsts and lasts.Both Alex and her mother often seem to find themselves in Ty’s basement bedroom. On one such visit Alex thinks she smells his cologne and sees him leaning against the wall. On another visit she finds a letter in a desk drawer addressed to Ashley, his former girlfriend. She and her neighbor (and former best friend), Sadie, debate the merits of giving the letter to Ashley. Sadie is addicted to shows about mediums and thinks Ty’s appearances are due to unfinished business which Alex must complete.For some reason I feel like I’ve read a similar book recently but I can’t remember the title. In it as well as The Last Time We Say Goodbye there is a letter to a former girlfriend left by the suicide. (If you have any ideas, let me know.) Of course the letter has a cathartic impact on the recipient.As I imagine is the case in most suicides several people feel they could have prevented Ty’s actions, when truth be known, most of the time those last actions would have been too late. That is a hard lesson to learn and accept. Additionally, everyone reacts differently to loss of a loved one, which is evident in The Last Time We Say Goodbye. As the book jumps back and forth between Alex’s journal, present day and recollection, it concentrates on the survivors, and less so on why Ty did what he did. There are vague hints, but nothing that over time would suggest suicide as being inevitable. This might have put everything in a better perspective for the reader.Having said all of this, I found The Last Time We Say Goodbye a good read. I liked the characters, although, as I said, you don’t get much of a feel for Ty. The emotions seemed real. The interaction between Alex and her friends and family is understandable. And hey, it has as happy an ending as a book about suicide can have.I must be in my ‘reading suicide’ phase because I just started AllTheBrightPlacesAll the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven, which starts off with a teen thinking of suicide. So, I think after this, I’ll move on to a happy book. Any suggestions?
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5‘Time passes. That’s the rule. No matter what happens, no matter how much it might feel like everything in your life has frozen around one particular moment, time marches on.’ Lexie is an unexceptionally smart student with big dreams of going to MIT. She has a boyfriend who loves her and a group of friends she can depend on. But that was life seven weeks ago. Now? Her grades are slipping, she’s broke up with her boyfriend and she won’t talk to any of her friends. Seven weeks ago her brother killed himself. But now she’s starting to his ghost. A series of journal entries reveals the facts behind Lexie’s grief (and guilt) and the heartbreak begins anew when we are exposed to the truth of her pain.‘I didn’t know to savor that moment on the dance floor, to understand how beautiful and rare it was, how fragile, how ephemeral, when Ty was happy. When we were all happy, and we were together, and we were safe.I didn’t know.I didn’t know.’ Grief comes in many forms as we all handle it in different ways. Lexie’s path of grief led her to shut everyone out and while this storyline has certainly been done before, it still managed to resonate honestly and leave a strong impression. These days, death and grief have become most common in YA novels and while it can certainly come off as a morbid fascination, the existence of these types of novels can be vital for those who don’t quite know how to handle their grief. It can serve as proof to those who have also experienced grief that they are far from alone and that there are people that can help. It’s a sad fact of life that we must all learn how to cope, heal and continue living. The Last Time We Said Goodbye is more of a cautionary tale seeing as the story is told from the surviving sister and inevitably shows the repercussions of suicide and the effects of grief but manages to still leave the reader with a facet of hope to cling to. While this is a work of fiction, the author states that she had a younger brother that killed himself which only made this all the more poignant and truly from the heart.The Last Time We Said Goodbye is a raw and brutally honest depiction of the various sides of grief. It’s an insightful and admirable story about acceptance and forgiveness that will no doubt leave you heartsick but is an incredibly worthy read.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I wanted to read The Last Time We Say Goodbye because the subject of mental illness and the fall out of suicide is personal to me. I could relate with Lex because I feel the guilt of a family member who's lost their life and questioning everything. Could I have done something differently? What if this and what if that. The romance in the flash backs was sweet. Lex is a smart girl and self professed nerd. We know from the beginning in present that her and Steven didn't work out but I still enjoyed looking at their history and seeing the awkward interactions and the sweet exploration. The family dynamic in this book was dysfunctional even before the suicide. After even more so. Their parents went through a divorce and their time with their dad is stilted. Her mom after is obviously depressed and not living in the present for lex. She sleeps all the time and doesn't really talk to lex about what happened. I totally get what lex was going through emotionally. She didn't cry, and that is something that I struggle with feeling almost robotic in that way because even though mourning, the tears Digby back up on the outside what I feel inside. She also deals with anxiety and panic and it can be so debilitating and hard to understand and deal with. Lex's struggles and working towards goals to make things even a little better is realistic. None of the revelations. realizations, or healing came over night. She had to work for it. She used journals and counceling, and talking with friends trying to heal. She also has her mom who feels that her life is over having lost Tyler, and she wants to be a support for her and as she learns that it will hurt, there are other people that want to help. The ending was hopeful, but still shows that only time will heal (cliches are cliches for a reason). It shows the importance of family (no matter how dysfunctional), friends (even when you feel like you have nothing in common anymore.) That everyone has issues and knows pain and loss on some level, and that they really don't care how hurt, they just want you to let you in. It wrapped things up well and left me feeling emotionally beaten and then a slow heal for me too. Bottom Line: Realistic journey of Lex trying to make sense of and heal from the suicide of her brother.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I cried so much while reading this !! I highly recommend of you liked 13 reasons why
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I cried, I laughed and I finished this way too soon for my liking. Beautiful ride!
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Oh my heart! The feels!!! If you're someone who has lost someone this book will hit you hard. Its an amazing read, which follows a typical trajectory but is still amazing. I would definitely recommend this to anyone looking for a sad/romantic/ghost story.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Had me in tears until the end! Completely heartbreaking but an important topic.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This book wasn't really unique. There weren't any twists (not that I was expecting any), and it felt a little dragged out as I read it. But, I knew I wanted to finish the book nonetheless.
The writing was excellent. It really made me think about my 'Firsts and Lasts' with people whom I cared about. Although I wish more was specified or written about suicide and mental health, it was a good book to say the least. Did it keep me on the edge of my seat? No. Did I bawl my eyes out? Yes.
In the last 2 chapters of the book, all I could do was cry... because I was able to place my self in the shoes of Lex. I'm glad how the book ended. I'm glad that it finished with closure and acceptance.
3.999999/5 - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Last Time We Say Goodbye is like Euler's Equation.
"Nerd translation: Euler’s equation is said to be the most perfect formula ever written. Simple but elegant. Beautiful."
Book preview
The Last Time We Say Goodbye - Cynthia Hand
5 February
First I’d like to state for the record that the whole notion of writing this down was not my idea. It was Dave’s. My therapist’s. He thinks I’m having trouble expressing my feelings, which is why he suggested I write in a journal—to get it out, he said, like in the old days when physicians used to bleed their patients in order to drain the mysterious poisons. Which almost always ended up killing them in spite of the doctors’ good intentions, I might point out.
Our conversation went something like this:
He wanted me to start taking antidepressants.
I told him to stick it where the sun don’t shine.
So we were at a bit of an impasse.
Let’s take a new approach,
he said finally, and reached behind him and produced a small black book. He held it out to me. I took it, thumbed it open, then looked up at him, confused.
The book was blank.
I thought you might try writing, as an alternative,
he said.
That’s a moleskin notebook,
he elaborated when all I did was stare at him. Hemingway used to write in those.
An alternative to what?
I asked. To Xanax?
I want you to try it for a week,
he said. Writing, I mean.
I tried to hand the journal back to him. I’m not a writer.
I’ve found that you can be quite eloquent, Alexis, when you choose to be.
Why? What’s the point?
You need an outlet,
he said. You’re keeping everything inside, and it’s not good for you.
Nice, I thought. Next he’d be telling me to eat my vegetables and take my vitamins and be sure to get 8 uninterrupted hours of sleep every night.
Right. And you would be reading it?
I asked, because there’s not even a remote possibility that I’m going to be doing that. Talking about my unexpectedly tragic life for an hour every week is bad enough. No way I’m going to pour my thoughts out into a book so that he can take it home and scrutinize my grammar.
No,
Dave answered. But hopefully you might feel comfortable enough someday to talk with me about what you’ve written.
Not likely, I thought, but what I said was, Okay. But don’t expect Hemingway.
I don’t know why I agreed to it. I try to be a good little patient, I guess.
Dave looked supremely pleased with himself. I don’t want you to be Hemingway. Hemingway was an ass. I want you to write whatever strikes you. Your daily life. Your thoughts. Your feelings.
I don’t have feelings, I wanted to tell him, but instead I nodded, because he seemed so expectant, like the status of my mental health entirely depended on my cooperation with writing in the stupid journal.
But then he said, And I think for this to be truly effective, you should also write about Tyler.
Which made all the muscles in my jaw involuntarily tighten.
I can’t,
I managed to get out from between my teeth.
Don’t write about the end,
Dave said. Try to write about a time when he was happy. When you were happy, together.
I shook my head. I can’t remember.
And this is true. Even after almost 7 weeks, a mere 47 days of not interacting with my brother every day, not hurling peas at him across the kitchen table, not seeing him in the halls at school and acting, as any dutiful older sister would, for the sake of appearances, like he bugged me, Ty’s image has grown hazy in my mind. I can’t visualize the Ty that isn’t dead. My brain gravitates toward the end. The body. The coffin. The grave.
I can’t even begin to pull up happy.
Focus on the firsts and the lasts,
Dave instructed. It will help you remember. For example: About twenty years ago I owned an ’83 Mustang. I put a lot of work into that car, and I loved it more than I should probably admit, but now, all these years later, I can’t fully picture it. But if I think about the firsts and the lasts with the Mustang, I could tell you about the first time I drove it, or the last time I took it on a long road trip, or the first time I spent an hour in the backseat with the woman who would become my wife, and then I see it so clearly.
He cleared his throat. It’s those key moments that burn bright in our minds.
This is not a car, I thought. This is my brother.
Plus I thought Dave might have just been telling me about having sex with his wife. Which was the last thing I wanted to picture.
So that’s your official assignment,
he said, sitting back as if that settled it. Write about the last time you remember Tyler being happy.
Which brings me to now.
Writing in a journal about how I don’t want to be writing in a journal.
I’m aware of the irony.
Seriously, though, I’m not a writer. I got a 720 on the writing section of the SAT, which is decent enough, but nobody ever pays any attention to that score next to my perfect 800 in math. I’ve never kept a diary. Dad got me one for my 13th birthday, a pink one with a horse on it. It ended up on the back of my bookshelf with a copy of the NIV Teen Study Bible and the Seventeen Ultimate Guide to Beauty and all the other stuff that was supposed to prepare me for life from ages 13 to 19—as if I could ever be prepared for that. Which is all still there, 5 years later, gathering dust.
That’s not me. I was born with numbers on the brain. I think in equations. What I would do, if I could really put this pen to paper and produce something useful, is take my memories, these fleeting, painful moments of my life, and find some way to add and subtract and divide them, insert variables and move them, try to isolate them, to discover their elusive meanings, to translate them from possibilities to certainties.
I would try to solve myself. Find out where it all went wrong. How I got here, from A to B, A being the Alexis Riggs who was so sure of herself, who was smart and solid and laughed a lot and cried occasionally and didn’t fail at the most important things.
To this.
But instead, the blank page yawns at me. The pen feels unnatural in my hand. It’s so much weightier than pencil. Permanent. There are no erasers, in life.
I would cross out everything and start again.
1.
MOM IS CRYING AGAIN THIS MORNING. She does this thing lately where it’s like a faucet gets turned on inside her at random times. We’ll be grocery shopping or driving or watching TV, and I’ll glance over and she’ll be silently weeping, like she’s not even aware she’s doing it—no sobbing or wailing or sniffling, just a river of tears flowing down her face.
So. This morning. Mom cooks breakfast, just like she’s done nearly every single morning of my life. She scrapes the scrambled eggs onto my plate, butters the toast, pours me a glass of orange juice, and sets it all on the kitchen table.
Crying the entire time.
When she does the waterworks thing, I try to act like nothing is out of the ordinary, like it’s perfectly normal for your mother to be weeping over your breakfast. Like it doesn’t get to me. So I say something chipper like, This looks great, Mom. I’m starved,
and start pushing the burned food around my plate in a way that I hope will convince her I’m eating.
If this was before, if Ty were here, he’d make her laugh. He’d blow bubbles in his chocolate milk. He’d make a face out of his bacon and eggs, and pretend to talk with it, and scream like he was in the middle of a slasher film as he slowly ate one of the eyes.
Ty knew how to fix things. I don’t.
Mom sits down across from me, tears dripping off her chin, and folds her hands in her lap. I stop fake-eating and bow my head, because even though I quit believing in God awhile ago, I don’t want to complicate things by confessing my budding atheism to my mother. Not now. She has enough to deal with.
But instead of praying she wipes her wet face with her napkin and looks up at me with shining eyes, her eyelashes stuck damply together. She takes a deep breath, the kind of breath you take when you’re about to say something important. And she smiles.
I can’t remember the last time I saw her smile.
Mom?
I say. Are you okay?
And that’s when she says it. The crazy thing. The thing I don’t know how to handle.
She says:
I think your brother is still in the house.
She goes on to explain that last night she woke from a dead sleep for no reason. She got up for a glass of wine and a Valium. To help her get back to sleep, she says. She was standing at the kitchen sink when, out of the blue, she smelled my brother’s cologne. All around her, she says.
Like he was standing next to her, she says.
It’s distinctive, that cologne. Ty purchased it for himself two Christmases ago in like a half-gallon bottle from Walmart, this giant radioactive-sludge-green container of Brut—the essence of man,
the box had bragged. Whenever my brother wore that stuff, which was pretty often, that smell would fill the room. It was like a cloud floating six feet ahead of him as he walked down the hall at school. And it’s not that it smelled bad, exactly, but it forced you into this weird takeover of the senses. SMELL ME, it demanded. Don’t I smell manly? HERE I COME.
I swallow a bite of eggs and try to think of something helpful to say.
I’m pretty sure that bottle gives off some kind of spontaneous emissions,
I tell her finally. And the house is drafty.
There you go, Mom. Perfectly logical explanation.
No, Lexie,
she says, shaking her head, the remains of the strange smile still lingering at the corners of her mouth. He’s here. I can feel it.
The thing is, she doesn’t look crazy. She looks hopeful. Like the past seven weeks have all been a bad dream. Like she hasn’t lost him. Like he isn’t dead.
This is going to be a problem, I think.
2.
I RIDE THE BUS TO SCHOOL. I know it’s a bold statement to make as a senior, especially one who owns a car, but in the age-old paradox of choosing between time and money, I’ll choose money every time. I live in the sleepy little town of Raymond, Nebraska (population 179), but I attend school in the sprawling metropolis of Lincoln (population 258,379). The high school is 12.4 miles away from my house. That’s 24.8 miles round trip. My crappy old Kia Rio (which I not-so-affectionately refer to as the Lemon
) gets approximately 29 miles to the gallon, and gas in this neck of Nebraska costs an average of $3.59 per gallon. So driving to school would cost me $3.07 a day. There are 179 days of school this year, which adds up to a whopping $549.53, all so I can have an extra 58 minutes of my day.
It’s a no-brainer. I have college to pay for next year. I have serious savings, a plan. Part of that plan involves taking the school bus.
I actually liked the bus. Before, I mean. When I used to be able to put in my earbuds and crank up the Bach and watch the sun come up over the white, empty cornfields and the clichéd sun-beaten farmhouses tucked back from the road. The windmills outside turning. Cows huddling together for warmth. Birds—gray-slated junco and chickadees and the occasional bright flashes of cardinals—slipping effortlessly through the winter air. It was quiet and cozy and nice.
But since Ty died, I feel like everybody on the bus is watching me, some people out of sympathy, sure, ready to rush over with a tissue at a moment’s notice, but others like I’ve become something dangerous. Like I have the bad gene in my blood, like my sad life is something that could be transmitted through casual contact. Like a disease.
Yeah, well, screw them.
Of course, being angry is pointless. Unproductive. They don’t understand yet. That they are all waiting for that one phone call that will change everything. That every one of them will feel like me eventually. Because someone they love will die. It’s one of life’s cruel certainties.
So with that in mind I try to ignore them, turn up my music, and read. And I don’t look up until we’ve gone the twelve miles to school.
This week I’m rereading A Beautiful Mind, which is a biography of the mathematician John Nash. There was a movie, which had entirely too little math, in my opinion, but was otherwise okay. The book is great stuff. I like thinking about how Nash saw our behavior as mathematical. That was his genius, even if he did go crazy and start to see imaginary people: he understood the connections between numbers and the physical world, between our actions and the invisible equations that govern them.
Take my mother, for instance, and her announcement that my brother is still with us. She’s trying to restructure our universe so that Ty doesn’t disappear. Like the way a fish will thrash its body on the sand when it’s beached, an involuntary reaction, a survival mechanism, in hopes that it might rock its way back into the water.
Mom is trying to find her way back to the water. It makes sense, if I look at it from that angle.
Not that it’s healthy. Not that I know what to do about it.
I don’t for a second believe that Ty is still in our house. He’s gone. The minute the life left him, the minute the neurons in his brain quit firing, he stopped being my brother. He became a collection of dead cells. And is now, thanks to the miracles of the modern embalming process, well on his way to becoming a coffin full of green goo.
I will never see him again.
The thought brings back the hole in my chest. This keeps happening, every few days since the funeral. It feels like a giant gaping cavity opens up between my third and fourth ribs on the left side, an empty space that reveals the vinyl bus seat behind my shoulder blades. It hurts, and my whole body tightens with the pain, my jaw locking and my fists clenching and my breath freezing in my lungs. I always feel like I could die, when it happens. Like I am dying. Then, as suddenly as it comes on, the hole fills in again. I can breathe. I try to swallow, but my mouth has gone bone dry.
The hole is Ty, I think.
The hole is something like grief.
School is largely uneventful. I float through on autopilot, lost in thoughts of John Nash and beached fish and the logistics of how currents of air could have carried the scent of my brother’s cologne from where it sits all dusty by the sink in the basement bathroom through the den, up the stairs, to the kitchen to utterly confuse my mother.
Then I hit what used to be the best class of the day: sixth period, Honors Calculus Lab. I like to call it Nerd Central, the highest concentration of the smartest people in the school you’ll ever be likely to find in a given place.
My home sweet home.
The point of this class is to give the students time to study and do their calculus homework. But because we are nerds, we all finish our homework in the first ten minutes of class. Then we spend the rest of the hour playing cards: poker, war, hearts, rummy, whatever strikes our fancy.
Our teacher, the brilliant and mathtastic Miss Mahoney, sits at her desk at the front of the room and pretends that we’re doing serious scholarly work. Because it’s kind of her free period, too, since the school budget cutbacks eliminated her prep hour.
She has a thing for cat videos on YouTube.
We’ve all got our weaknesses.
So there we are, playing a rousing game of five-card draw. I’m killing it. I have three aces. Which is a lovely math problem all on its own—the probability of getting three aces in one hand is 94/54,145 or (if you want to talk odds) 575 to 1, which is pretty freaking unlikely, when you think about it.
Jill is sitting on my left, twirling a lock of her bright red hair around her finger. I think she means the hair twirling to look like some kind of tell, as if she has an amazing hand, but it probably means just the opposite. Eleanor is sitting on my right, and she has a lousy hand, which I know because she just comes out and says, I have a lousy hand,
and folds. That’s El—she says what she thinks, no filter.
Which brings us to Steven, who is sitting across from me with a very good hand. How do I know? He’s trying to be all stone-faced, which he fails at in every way. It’s one of the things I used to like so much about Steven—his inability to hide his feelings. You can reliably see what’s going on in his head through those big brown eyes of his. Which at the moment are definitely happy about the cards he’s been dealt.
So yeah, he has a good hand, but three aces good? Probably not.
I’ll see your bet, and raise you fifty Skittles.
I count and push the candy into the center of the table.
The players suck in a collective breath—that’s a lot of candy.
Steven looks at me dubiously.
Well?
I say, a challenge, and I think, Just because we broke up doesn’t mean I have to go easy on you. Just because something bad happened doesn’t mean you have to go easy on me.
But before he can respond, Miss Mahoney calls my name.
Alexis, can I talk to you for a minute?
Singling me out. That can’t be good.
I put my cards facedown on the table and make my reluctant way over to her desk. She’s chewing on her bottom lip, another ominous sign.
What’s up?
I chirp.
I wanted to talk to you about this.
She pushes a piece of paper across her desk toward me.
Last week’s midterm.
Worth 25 percent of my total grade.
Upon which, next to my name, is scrawled a big red 71%.
I push my glasses up on my nose and scan the innocuous piece of paper, aghast. Apparently I got the answers to three whole problems outright wrong, and she gave me only partial credit on a fourth problem. Out of ten.
71 percent.
Practically a D.
I swallow. I don’t know what to say.
I know this stuff,
I say hoarsely after a few excruciating seconds, looking it over yet again, seeing my own glaring errors so plainly it feels like some kind of cruel practical joke.
There goes my 4.0, I think. Boom.
I’m sorry,
Miss Mahoney says quietly, as if everybody in the room isn’t already straining to hear this conversation. I can let you retake it on Friday, if you think that would help.
It takes me a few seconds to understand. What she is sorry for. Why she’s offering me a do-over when she never gives do-overs. Your grade is a fact, she always says. You must learn to deal with the facts.
I straighten.
No. I’ll take it.
I grab the edge of the paper and pull it toward me, pick it up, fold it in half to hide the grade. I’ll do better on the final.
She nods. I’m so sorry, Lex,
she says again.
My chin lifts. For what?
I ask, like I don’t know. You didn’t bomb the test. I did.
I know things have been hard since Tyler . . .
And she pauses.
God, I hate that pause, while the person speaking searches for the most watered-down way to say died, like calling it by another name is going to make it any less awful: terms like laid to rest, like death’s some kind of nap; passed or departed, like it’s a vacation; expired, which is supposed to be more technical but really sounds like the deceased is a carton of milk, a date stamped on them, after which they become—well, sour milk.
Killed himself,
I fill in for Miss Mahoney.
At least I’m determined to be straight about it. My brother killed himself. In our garage. With a hunting rifle. This makes it sound like the most morbid game of Clue ever, but there it is.
The facts.
We must learn to deal with the facts.
I’m fine,
I tell her. Then, again: I’ll do better on the final.
She stares up at me, her eyes full of that terrible pity.
Is there anything else?
I ask.
No, that’s—that’s all, Alexis,
she says. Thank you.
I go back to the poker table. I can feel the stares of the other students on me, my friends, my classmates, most of whom I’ve known since at least sixth grade and have done Math Club or the Science Olympiad Team or Physics Bowl with over the past four years. All now thinking I must be so cold and clinical, to say it like that. Like I don’t care. Like I clearly didn’t love my brother if I can just rattle off the fact that he’s dead so easily.
I sit down, slip the offending test into my backpack, and try to face my friends. Which is turning out to be kind of impossible.
Jill’s eyes are shining with tears. I can’t look at her, or I know she’ll start full-out sobbing. Which could set off every girl in the room, except possibly El. Because hysterical girly crying, unlike suicide, is definitely contagious.
I could go, I think. I could simply walk out, down the hall, out of the school, into the frigid 21-degree afternoon and a twelve-mile walk home. Freezing to death might be preferable to this. Miss Mahoney would let me go. I wouldn’t get in trouble.
But it’s because I wouldn’t get in trouble that I can’t leave.
I can’t have special treatment, not for this.
So I pick up my cards and try and totally fail to smile and say, as casually as I can manage, Now, let’s see, where were we?
Ah, yes. Three aces.
Lex . . . ,
says El. What grade did you—
I point at Steven. I believe you were going to call.
He shakes his head. I fold.
This time what’s written all over his face is that he has more that he wants to say. A lot more. But he doesn’t know if that’s his job anymore, to try to comfort me. He doesn’t know how to comfort me. So he folds.
I glance at El. She doesn’t meet my eyes, but shrugs one shoulder and stares at her fingernails like she’s bored. I had the crap hand, remember?
Beaker?
I prompt.
Jill nods and takes a shaky breath and pushes most of her remaining Skittles to the center of the table. I’m in,
she says.
She has nothing. A pair of queens.
I put my cards down, aces up. So hooray, I win all the candy. But it feels like I’ve lost something so much more important.
3.
IT’S LATER THAT NIGHT WHEN IT HAPPENS.
It’s a typical night, post-Ty. I’m in the downstairs den in my pj’s, lounging in Dad’s abandoned recliner. Mom is upstairs on the living room sofa, still wearing her work scrubs, reading When Bad Things Happen to Good People. She’s highlighting every few lines, the way she does with these kinds of books that people keep giving us, like every single thing the author says is aimed directly at her. But at least she’s not crying. She’s not going on about ghosts. She’s functional.
So I’ve left her studying and have spent the better part of the past few hours crunching slightly burned microwaved kettle corn and fast-forwarding through commercials on the DVR, watching Bones. I plan to watch reruns of season two until I get too tired to follow the plot, thus too tired to run through today’s little calculus debacle over and over in my head.
The evening has pretty much been one gnarly corpse after another.
I’m trying to immunize myself to the sight of the dead. To think of us, of all the living creatures under the sun, as meat. Sour milk. Green goo. Whatever. Something that, inevitably, will rot. I don’t know why, but it helps me to see death as inescapable and unavoidable and certain.
Yeah, it’s messed up, I realize. But you do what you have to do.
And so it happens that at exactly 10:11, just as I am finishing up episode seventeen, I smell my brother’s cologne.
Strong.
SMELL ME, it says. HERE I COME.
I don’t have time to process this. If I could stop and process it, I would rationalize that the bottle of cologne is much closer to where I’m sitting (in the basement, only approximately fifteen feet from the basement bathroom) than it was to Mom when she smelled it upstairs last night. It would be easy to explain away.
But I don’t have time to process. Because right then I glance away from the television for a split second, to check the time on my phone, and when I look up . . .
There he is.
Standing by the door to his room in his favorite jeans and a white T-shirt.
Ty.
I don’t think.
I yelp and throw my phone at him.
He vanishes before it reaches him, like a bolt of lightning flashing across the sky, his image there and then gone. My phone strikes the wall hard with a sickening crunch.
Lexie?
calls my mother from upstairs, her voice muffled by the layers of wood and carpet between us. What was that?
I can’t catch my breath.
Ty.
Lex?
Mom calls again.
I’m fine,
I call. Everything’s fine. . . .
I make myself get up and go over and collect my phone.