Free The Good Goodbye by Carla Buckley Page A

which they always save for last.
    They both climb on and Henry orders me to go, so I grab the rounded rusting bar of the merry-go-round and run, my shoes digging into the dusty mulch. Henry shrieks with joy, one arm lifting like he’s riding a bucking bronco. Oliver sits in the middle of the platform, grimly wrapping his arms around his bent legs. But if I stop to let him off, he’ll shake his head and refuse to move. Sometimes I wonder about my little brother, about why he pushes himself to do the things he’s afraid of. Then I think I should try to be more like him.

    My mom says I used to beg to go to the playground, and that I could spend hours there and never want to go home. I don’t know. An hour’s way more than I can stand of the same mindless repetitive action, so after I’ve run around in so many circles my head pounds, I grab Oliver’s hand and firmly say, “Time to go.”
    “One more time,” Henry pleads.
    But I’m already marching away, kicking up sodden piles of last year’s leaves that no one got around to raking away. I feel bad for my brothers. They’re the only kids who ever play in this lame park.
    I wouldn’t be here, either, except that my mom came out of the kitchen to ask me to take the boys to the park while she and Dad headed over to Uncle Vince and Aunt Gabrielle’s. That was the third surprise, because she’s never home this time of day and who’s running Double if she and Uncle Vince both aren’t there? I dropped my book bag on the floor, all ready to complain that I was beat and, besides, I hated that creepy playground, when the twins came charging down the hall, Percy running alongside them barking, his long ears flopping. The twins threw their arms around me, making me stumble. “Finally! We’ve been waiting FOREVER!” Henry was on my right side and Oliver was on my left, their two blond heads pressing against my waist. Percy was leaping to reach my face, trying to kiss me, and that was the second surprise. Because I said, “Fine.”
    The first surprise had come an hour and a half earlier, when I found out I had to take the bus home from school instead of getting a ride with Dad, something he didn’t even think to mention this morning on our way in, leaving it to his assistant headmaster to come out of her office and tell me, her eyebrows crawling up her big forehead—Tyra Banks would call it a fivehead —that my dad had already left for the day. Seriously? Was he pissed because I spent too long in the art studio? No. That’s not how my dad is. He doesn’t try to teach me life lessons. Dad’s whole thing is to let me figure things out for myself.

    My mom didn’t answer her cell phone. And neither did Dad. So I stood at the bus stop and waited with a bunch of strangers for the bus to appear over the rise of the hill. When it did, groaning to a stop a few feet away and making all of us shuffle to the door creaking open, I climbed up the steps and politely said hi to the driver as I dropped in my money, even though I knew she would pretend not to hear me. She always did. Why do you even bother? Rory hissed the one time she grabbed a ride home with me, before she got her license and her own car. You’re such a suck-up, Arden. I’d shrugged. Anyone could see the woman hated her job.
    Three surprises all in one afternoon, which was plenty if you ask me, but the fourth one was waiting for me when I got back from the playground with my brothers and found my mom and dad both home and wanting to talk to me.
    “We know how much you wanted to go to USC.” My mom reaches across the dining room table to slide her hand over mine. There are lines around her eyes. Tangles of hair have escaped her ponytail and hang loose around her face. She’s upset and trying not to show it. “Sweetheart, I’m so sorry. Your dad and I have been around and around this.”
    Snap! I’ve gone from thinking everything was going to be okay to knowing it isn’t. “But we already sent in the