The Goodbye Girls Read online

  “Let’s get down to business,” Willa says, flipping back the cover of a binder.

  But I don’t hear her because I’m still watching Garret. He looks up and our eyes meet. He smiles. I smile back. The same thing happened yesterday, except in reverse. He’d been looking at me. It’s like we can feel each other’s gaze….

  “Lizzie!” Willa says sharply.

  I jerk my head around. “Sorry.”

  She looks all stern and says, “So. Seems as we get closer to Christmas, things are ramping up.”

  I think about that. “Guess people don’t want to get trapped into buying gifts for someone they’re planning on breaking up with.”

  “Especially if they’re going to be forking over dough for our services on top of that too.” She runs her finger down the page. Her lips move as she counts, then she scrunches her eyebrows together. “It’s gonna be tight.”

  My turn to scrunch my eyebrows together. “How tight?”

  She makes a growling sound in her throat. “Dad’s picking me up tomorrow. We’re having dinner and then I get to stay overnight at his new apartment. Yippee,” she adds sarcastic ally. “I’ve hardly seen him lately. He’s feeling guilty and trying to suck up.”

  “Who knows, though? You might have fun.”

  “Doubt it. Like, what are we going to talk about? How he’s too busy living like a teenager and reinventing himself to spend any time with his kids?”

  I tilt my head. “That sounds like something your mom might say.”

  She looks at me for a second. “You’re right. She did.” Her eyes get a bit watery. “I’m just so mad at him. He’s making it really hard to stay on his side.”

  “Do you have to pick sides?”

  She doesn’t say anything.

  “Well…try and keep an open mind. He probably needs time to adjust to all this. Just like you do.”

  “Yeah, maybe.” She doesn’t sound convinced. “I think I’m a little terrified he’s going to sit me down and say he wants to start dating or something,” she confesses.

  At that moment a group of shrieking puck bunnies runs past us chasing a hockey player.

  We watch them until they disappear down the hall.

  “Because the last thing I need in my life is another brainless ditz,” Willa says.

  I pat her shoulder sympathetically. “Brainless ditzes are the worst.”

  She smirks and shuts the binder. “Anyhow, long story short, we have to go shopping today after school since the weekend’s a writeoff. We have a bunch of baskets due next week.”

  “Oh no. I didn’t bring any of our cash.”

  “No worries.” Willa gets out her phone and starts texting. “I’ll get Sean to pick us up. We can whip over to your place and get some on the way to the store.”

  * * *

  Sean is waiting for us across the street from the school. We crawl in the back seat and Willa immediately starts barking orders.

  “Yeah, yeah. First things first,” he says. “I saw kids out selling Girl Guide cookies. Instead of food, I’ll take a box of those.”

  “Cookies are still food, Sean,” Willa says dryly.

  He slams on the brakes, jolting us both forward. “Wanna walk?”

  “God. Relax, would ya? I’ll friggin’ get you some!”

  As we turn onto my street there’s a crowd of young girls on the sidewalk lugging cardboard cartons.

  “Remember when we used to do that?” Willa says.

  I laugh. “It always seemed to be raining. Why did we do it in the rain?”

  “We were kids. We didn’t care. And it was a pretty easy gig. No one says no to Girl Guide cookies.”

  We slow down beside the girls and roll down the window. They back away from the car. I don’t blame them. Sean’s car is a 1999 Honda Civic, half black, half rust, with a trio of zombie bobbleheads suctioned to the front dashboard. There’s a good chance they think we’re drug dealers.

  Willa waves a five dollar bill at them. The bravest one, probably the keener who wants high sales, edges toward the car, the carton of cookies banging against her knees.

  An exchange of cookies for cash is made and we carry on our way.

  I run inside my house. There’s a box of Girl Guide cookies on our hall table. No one says no to Girl Guide cookies.

  Willa put me in charge of holding the money. She says Sean seems to spend a lot of time prowling through the house looking for cash to “borrow.” So all ours is in an envelope I keep stashed at the back of my sock drawer. I just have to hope Trish finds my neatly rolled and organized-by-colour socks as boring as she finds me. Taking out a wad of twenties, I grab my wallet off my desk, tuck in the bills, and race back down the stairs. Trish is lying on the sofa reading Cosmo. She doesn’t say hi or bye. She doesn’t even look up. All’s normal here.

  In the car I say to Willa, “Let me pay for the cookies, it’s my turn.”

  “It’s fine, I don’t care,” she dismisses.

  “No, no. I have a five right here…” I poke through my wallet and find two tens folded up against all the twenties. “Or I thought I did.” I hand her a ten. “This’ll cover the cookies and a gas contribution.”

  She shrugs and jams the money into her coat pocket.

  We make our usual stops and collect all the items on the list for the next set of baskets. At the last store there’s so much stuff we can barely get it all to the car. I have about a dozen plastic bags hanging from my wrists. I can’t feel my hands.

  “We should have used a cart,” Willa winces. “I think my back is broken.”

  “Carts are for rookies.”

  Sean sits in the front seat, earphones on, playing air guitar, as we unload everything into the trunk.

  “Thanks for your help!” Willa says, smacking him in the back of the head as we get in.

  “Hey!” he shouts, yanking out his headphones and spinning around. “I’m doing you a favour! If I helped you, it would be sexist. Like I was implying you weren’t strong enough to do it yourself!”

  “Ohhhh,” Willa drawls. “Thank you so much. I didn’t realize you were so into women’s equality.” They glare at each other in the rear-view mirror while exchanging obscenities.

  I stay out of it and massage my wrists, trying to restore circulation to my hands.

  Chapter 14

  Willa pokes her head up over the recycling bin then ducks back down beside me. “Are you sure the bell works?” she whispers.

  “Pretty sure,” I say.

  We’re hiding out in the side yard of our latest drop-off. It’s freezing and I can feel the snow soaking through the knees of my jeans.

  “Someone should have answered by now. It’s taking too long.” Willa sticks her head up again. “Shit. There’s someone walking a dog. Once they pass, I’ll run up and ring it again.”

  We lean against the recycling bin and wait it out.

  “You never said anything about your visit with your dad,” I say. “I kept waiting for you to bring it up but it’s been a while, and I didn’t want you to think I didn’t care.”

  “Yeah. I’ve been trying not to think about it.”

  I expect her to elaborate, but she doesn’t. “That bad?” I prod.

  “Pretty much.”

  “Like how?”

  “I dunno. Textbook guilt. Let me pick the restaurant, the movie, offered to take me shopping…I was actually sort of having a good time until he suggested we have a serious convo.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “Yeah. I had the same reaction.” She cups her mittened hands to her mouth and puffs. “He wanted to make sure I had no illusions about he and Mom getting back together. That divorce papers had been filed, and it’s all for the best, but that it didn’t change how he felt about me and Sean, blah, blah, blah….”

  “Sorry, Willa.”
r />   “I mean, does he really want this? Like, how bad could it have been at home? It couldn’t be worse than starting all over.” She shakes her head. “Maybe he has to realize that himself.”

  “And maybe he will.”

  “Icing on the cake,” she continues, “there was a ladies’ scarf on the floor in his front hall closet.”

  “Ohhh.” Her greatest fear.

  “Yup,” she nods. “And that’s not all. I have the same one in a different colour.”

  “Okay. So?”

  “It’s from Forever 21!” she hisses.

  I think about it for a second. Then I get it. “That doesn’t mean she’s young,” I say. “She could be any age.”

  “Yeah, I know.” She puts her face close to mine until we’re nose to nose. “We shop there and we’re only sixteen!”

  I pull back. “Oh my god, Willa. Your dad is not going out with someone our age!”

  She holds up a hand. “Yeah, well, I didn’t ask. I don’t want to know.” Then she shifts onto her knees, leans sideways, and peeks around the edge of the bin. “Okay. They’re tying up a poop bag. They should be out of here any minute.”

  “Hey. Who’s the basket for, anyway?” I’d had to work on a group project all last night, so Willa did up the baskets for this set of drops by herself. I hadn’t bothered to look at tonight’s list of who was breaking up with who. Sometimes it’s less depressing not knowing.

  “Claire McRae,” Willa answers.

  “Claire McRae,” I repeat slowly. “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  “From Bradley Parker?”

  “Yeah.”

  I start shaking my head. “Bradley’s locker is next to mine. He has his tongue stuck halfway down Claire’s throat on a daily basis. I have to manually move them out of the way so I can open my locker door. They don’t even notice.”

  “He could just be playing the role…like, up to the bitter end.”

  “No. No way.”

  Willa takes another peek up over the bin. “The coast is clear. I’ll try the bell again.”

  I grab her arm. “You’re not listening to me. They’ve been going out for two and a half years. Bradley is not breaking up with Claire.”

  She tugs her arm away. “Well, he placed the order,” she argues.

  “Trust me,” I say. “It’s got to be some kind of mistake. God. Just this afternoon he was telling Gary Nickelson how he’s making a promposal video for Claire.”

  She slumps down beside me. “Really? Are you absolutely sure?”

  “Yeah. They were standing at his locker. I heard the whole thing.”

  Willa bites her bottom lip. “Maybe I should have been more suspicious of the letter.”

  “The letter? Never mind.” There’s no time to wait for an answer. I take another quick look then make a break for Claire’s front door. I grab the basket, run back, and skid into the bins as if I’m sliding into home base. A moment later, a minivan turns onto the street, then pulls into Claire’s driveway. “We got lucky,” I pant.

  She helps me up. “Let’s get back to the car before we freeze to death.”

  We dart across the neighbour’s yard and tumble into Sean’s back seat.

  “Jesus. What took you guys so long?” he says. “Did you stay for dinner or something?”

  “Shut up, Sean!” Willa shouts. “You’ll survive five minutes without food.” She stretches her arm toward the front, reaching for the heat control.

  He swats her hand away. “Don’t touch the knobs!”

  “But we’re frozen!”

  They keep arguing back and forth until I interrupt. “Pleeease, Sean,” I say in my most syrupy-sweet voice.

  “See, Willa?” Sean says. “It’s called manners.” And he cranks on the heater.

  The warmth seeps into my skin, making my cheeks tingle. As I begin to thaw, my brain starts computing. “What were you saying about the letter?”

  “Bradley requested that we enclose a sealed letter from him in the basket, not like the ones everyone else emails and we print off.” She pulls the basket up onto her lap and starts rummaging. “He said that since they’d gone out for so long, he had some personal things he wanted to say, wanted to let her down easy, stuff like that. I didn’t see a problem with it.” She holds up the letter. “We should open it.”

  I shake my head. “No, not yet. What if I’m wrong—though there’s no way I am—and Bradley really does want to break up?”

  She sticks out her lower lip and stares down at the letter. “Yeah…I guess we should wait.”

  “Because theoretically, Bradley knows it’s going down tonight, and obviously it didn’t. If he actually ordered this basket, we should hear from him tomorrow wanting to know what the hell happened, right?”

  “That makes sense.” She reluctantly sticks the letter back in the basket. “Maybe by some miracle I didn’t empty my folders and I still have his email. We could see if something’s there—though I’m not sure what.”

  Back at Willa’s, we tear up to her room. She fires up her laptop before she even takes off her jacket.

  “It’s gone,” she says, and slams her laptop shut. “Damn me and my efficiency.”

  It was our strictest rule. Delete every email immediately, empty all sent and deleted folders, clear any browsing history, leave no trail. I can’t really get mad at her for following protocol.

  “Do you remember anything about his email?” I ask. “Anything that seemed weird, or maybe didn’t sound like him?”

  “Well, like what? I don’t know him. So I don’t know if it sounded like him or not.”

  “And the email address? You’re sure it was his?”

  “Yeah…it was his Halifax West account. I remember seeing the ‘ednet,’ but I don’t remember the actual address.” Willa taps her fingernails on the lid of her laptop. “Really. It was just a standard request.”

  “Except for the letter,” I add, and I mull this over for a minute. “So how’d you even get it?”

  “The letter? It was in an envelope inside the envelope with his payment.”

  “Hmmm.” I nod. “It’s actually a good idea. I’m surprised more people don’t do it. It’s way more private.”

  “People are too lazy. It’s an extra step. Plus, our email letters are private.” She looks at me sideways. “We don’t read them.”

  “No,” I say quickly. “Of course not.”

  I think about all the letters I’ve printed off. All the letters I glanced at, but truly didn’t read, Garret’s letter that I did read, part of, sort of. I wonder if Willa has read any. And is she right? Are people really that lazy, that they’d rather take the chance someone reads their emailed letter than print it off themselves and put it in an envelope?

  I sink down onto her bed. “Well, we can’t open the letter or do anything until we hear from Bradley.”

  “Or don’t hear,” Willa points out. “You know, now that I think about it, he did order the cheapest package. Kind of weird if they’ve been going out for over two years.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “That is totally weird.”

  Chapter 15

  Saturday goes by with no word from Bradley. I’m stuck home working on a PowerPoint presentation, but Willa has been texting me every hour to say, Still nothin. I tell her to hold off. I can’t help second-guessing myself. Like, I’m no relationship expert. Who knows what’s going on in Bradley’s head? But if Bradley didn’t order the basket, who did?

  Hot chocolate in hand, PJs and fuzzy slippers on, I hunker down for a super fun night of finishing my presentation, doing a Science lab, and getting a start on my English essay. I swear the teachers hold some kind of secret meeting where they decide to make everything due at the same time just to stick it to us.

  I’m home alone, so at least the house is quiet and I’ll ge
t stuff done. Trish is at some party—like she usually is on Saturday nights—and even Mom is out. She still won’t tell us anything. I guess I understand. It must be all kind of unfamiliar, kind of weird for her. I peel a giant flake of nail polish off my thumbnail. It’s sort of depressing when your forty-five-year-old mom’s social life is more exciting than your own.

  My phone chirps. Another text from Willa. Let’s open the letter we can reseal no one will know.

  I read her text over a couple times. It is tempting. No it won’t kill us to wait a bit longer.

  Easy for you to say.

  I try to concentrate on my homework, but I keep going back to wondering—if Bradley didn’t place the order, who did? So I try to think about it logically. Could be someone playing a joke on Claire, or Bradley, or…could someone be trying to break them up? Yeah. It could be any of those. I turn the sound off on my phone and shove it under the sofa cushion.

  My bazillion assignments are too overwhelming. I can’t decide where to start. I end up channel surfing instead. No wonder people go out on Saturday nights; there’s nothing on TV. Maybe I need some sustenance to get the ideas flowing. I make up a batch of chocolate chip cookie dough. Only about half makes it to a cookie sheet. The other half I eat raw out of the bowl.

  I’m on the couch licking the last remnants off the spatula when I feel a vibration under my butt. My phone. I reach between the cushions and pull it out, expecting to see another text from Willa. But it’s not Willa. It’s Garret. My heart starts banging against my rib cage. I read his text.

  Hey Lizzie at Simon Clarks party not far from your place you should come over.

  I stare at it for what seems like ages, to give myself a chance to process the words. The time on the top corner of my phone says 10:37. My curfew is midnight. There’s a brief moment when I actually consider it. There’s no one here to say I can’t. Then reality sinks in. It’ll take me an hour to decide what to wear…plus, it’s mostly grade twelves, and I’m 99 percent sure that’s the same party Trish is at. I’d show up and she’d be all like, what the hell are you doing here? And I’d be all like, Garret invited me, and yeah…things would not end well.