Free How Many Letters Are In Goodbye? by Yvonne Cassidy Page A
Authors: Yvonne Cassidy
Mum,
These are the things I like about being in Grand Central Station:
You never have to queue too long for the toilet because there are loads of them.
It doesnât feel weird to have a backpack with me because everyone has backpacks and bags with them.
You can sleep and no one will bother you.
The ceiling.
The tables with the pretend tickets and maps on them.
The thing I donât like about Grand Central is that the only real place to sitâthe place where the cool tables with the pretend tickets and maps areâis in the food court, so you have to deal with all the smells of Chinese food and chips and walk past loads of glass counters with cookies and shiny cakes and giant sandwiches, and theyâre all too expensive to buy.
Iâm starving tonight. Iâm craving everything, all of it, only itâs my own fault for spending my dinner money on the stupid black and white cookie that didnât fill me up, just like I knew it wouldnât. Iâm not spending any more money tonight. The guy and girl next to me are eating this giant piece of cheesecake and Iâm watching them, each time they dig their forks in. Iâm watching them chew and swallow, even though I donât even like cheesecake.
These are the names on the fake tickets on the table Iâm sitting at:
South Norwalk
Harrison
Chappaqua
Hartsdale
Mount Vernon
The maps are of the Hudson Line and the Harlem Line. I want to go on both. I want to buy a ticket and get on a train and sit in a seat by the window and watch everything passing by outside until we leave the lights of New York behind and all Iâll be able to see in the glass is the reflection of my face in the dark.
They didnât finish the cheesecake. They left a lot of it behind on the paper plate and if they hadnât thrown it in the bin, I might have finished it. I might have cut the parts off that their forks had touched and eaten the rest. I hope you donât think thatâs gross, Mum. I mean, they looked clean, and itâs not any different really from eating from the plate of someone you know, is it? I donât think it is.
Laurie caught me one time, eating off one of the plates Iâd just bussed at Cooperâs restaurant and she was grossed out. Youâd swear Iâd been eating off the floor or something. It was only a mozzarella stick. It wasnât like theyâd taken a bite out of it or anything.
Iâm thinking a lot about Laurie tonight. Iâm trying not to, but I canât help it. Iâm wearing my baseball cap, the one that used to be hers, the Boston Red Sox one. The one I used to wear was a navy one with a white NY, a New York Yankees one, but Cooper took that away the night I sat down to dinner with it on. Iâd got my head shaved that day, only the underneath part, so at school it looked like I had long hair but when I put my hair up under the cap, it looked like my head was shaved. Aunt Ruth didnât like it either, but she was ignoring it, pretending she hadnât noticed. When Cooper made me give him my cap, I thought sheâd say something, but she didnât, she just kept on eating her salad. He said it was because it wasnât right to wear a hat at the dinner table but we all knew that wasnât the reason. Later when Laurie knocked on my bedroom door and handed me her Boston Red Sox one, she said she thought that Cooper was a control freak and that heâd had no right to tell me how to look or dress or anything else.
If Iâm going to write to you about Laurie, then I need to write about the times she was nasty, the times she was horrible, not when she was nice. And I need to keep it in order. That was probably six months or so after I got there, the cap thing, but loads had already happened by then. Like the soccer tryouts. I havenât told you about the soccer tryouts.
Laurie makes it pretty obvious that she didnât want me on the team, even to try out. She ignores me in
These are the things I like about being in Grand Central Station:
You never have to queue too long for the toilet because there are loads of them.
It doesnât feel weird to have a backpack with me because everyone has backpacks and bags with them.
You can sleep and no one will bother you.
The ceiling.
The tables with the pretend tickets and maps on them.
The thing I donât like about Grand Central is that the only real place to sitâthe place where the cool tables with the pretend tickets and maps areâis in the food court, so you have to deal with all the smells of Chinese food and chips and walk past loads of glass counters with cookies and shiny cakes and giant sandwiches, and theyâre all too expensive to buy.
Iâm starving tonight. Iâm craving everything, all of it, only itâs my own fault for spending my dinner money on the stupid black and white cookie that didnât fill me up, just like I knew it wouldnât. Iâm not spending any more money tonight. The guy and girl next to me are eating this giant piece of cheesecake and Iâm watching them, each time they dig their forks in. Iâm watching them chew and swallow, even though I donât even like cheesecake.
These are the names on the fake tickets on the table Iâm sitting at:
South Norwalk
Harrison
Chappaqua
Hartsdale
Mount Vernon
The maps are of the Hudson Line and the Harlem Line. I want to go on both. I want to buy a ticket and get on a train and sit in a seat by the window and watch everything passing by outside until we leave the lights of New York behind and all Iâll be able to see in the glass is the reflection of my face in the dark.
They didnât finish the cheesecake. They left a lot of it behind on the paper plate and if they hadnât thrown it in the bin, I might have finished it. I might have cut the parts off that their forks had touched and eaten the rest. I hope you donât think thatâs gross, Mum. I mean, they looked clean, and itâs not any different really from eating from the plate of someone you know, is it? I donât think it is.
Laurie caught me one time, eating off one of the plates Iâd just bussed at Cooperâs restaurant and she was grossed out. Youâd swear Iâd been eating off the floor or something. It was only a mozzarella stick. It wasnât like theyâd taken a bite out of it or anything.
Iâm thinking a lot about Laurie tonight. Iâm trying not to, but I canât help it. Iâm wearing my baseball cap, the one that used to be hers, the Boston Red Sox one. The one I used to wear was a navy one with a white NY, a New York Yankees one, but Cooper took that away the night I sat down to dinner with it on. Iâd got my head shaved that day, only the underneath part, so at school it looked like I had long hair but when I put my hair up under the cap, it looked like my head was shaved. Aunt Ruth didnât like it either, but she was ignoring it, pretending she hadnât noticed. When Cooper made me give him my cap, I thought sheâd say something, but she didnât, she just kept on eating her salad. He said it was because it wasnât right to wear a hat at the dinner table but we all knew that wasnât the reason. Later when Laurie knocked on my bedroom door and handed me her Boston Red Sox one, she said she thought that Cooper was a control freak and that heâd had no right to tell me how to look or dress or anything else.
If Iâm going to write to you about Laurie, then I need to write about the times she was nasty, the times she was horrible, not when she was nice. And I need to keep it in order. That was probably six months or so after I got there, the cap thing, but loads had already happened by then. Like the soccer tryouts. I havenât told you about the soccer tryouts.
Laurie makes it pretty obvious that she didnât want me on the team, even to try out. She ignores me in
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