Free The Good Goodbye by Carla Buckley Page B

deposit.” I’m desperate, snatching at anything.
    “They’ve agreed to apply it to next year’s tuition,” my dad says. “See? It’s not forever. It’s just this one year while we try and get ourselves back on our feet.”
    “What about Rory? Does she know?”

    “Her parents are going to tell her when she gets home from school.”
    Good luck with that. Rory’s out partying with her friends. She’d invited me to go with them, and now I wish I had. “What about this year? Do I just stay home?”
    My mom glances at my father. “There are a lot of schools nearby we can try. Your grandfather says he’ll talk to admissions at his college. He’s on the board there. Maybe he can pull some strings.”
    “EMU?” That big jock school somewhere out in Maryland. It’s a joke at Bishop. I’ve never been there. I don’t know anyone who has.
    “I know it’s not what you’ve been wanting, what you’ve been working for.”
    “Will Rory have to go there, too?” Panic flutters in my rib cage. I try to keep my voice normal.
    My mom looks down. I can see this thought hasn’t occurred to her. I can see it’s a thought she doesn’t like. “Maybe. I don’t know, honey. I don’t know what her parents are going to do.”
    It’s the merry-go-round at the playground. I run so fast my feet barely touch the ground and when I sit with a thud onto the metal middle, I tip back my head and fly. But when I open my eyes, I see the same world spinning past. I tug my hand from my mom’s hand and stand up. “I have a paper to write.”
    Upstairs in my room, I shake a pill into the palm of my hand. Does it really matter anymore? I could flunk all my classes, get 1’s on my APs and not even fill out the application, and still get into EMU. I pinch it between thumb and forefinger. Hello, little friend. What else are you good for? I reach under my bed and pull out the bottle of vodka. Rory thinks she’s the only one. I twist off the cap and swallow the pill in a rush of lukewarm alcohol. I wait for the happy tingling that tells me all the broken pieces are falling back in order. We know how much you wanted to go to USC, my mom had said, looking sad. I wanted to throw something. There are a million art schools. The only thing special about USC had been that it was three thousand miles away.

Rory
    “I HEARD THEM TALKING,” Arden whispers. It’s our last shift at Double before we leave for college, and we’re stuck scouring the prep table with prickly pads of steel wool—or at least Arden’s scouring; I’m examining my fingernails and wondering if anyone can tell I’d done my own nails. Aunt Nat stands at the back door talking to the meat guy and my dad’s at the bank.
    “That’s good.”
    “It was more like fighting.”
    “Alert the media.” I’m sick of it, sick of the whole thing. All summer, my friends had hung out at the pool and worked on their tans, while I ghosted sale racks and babysat my dad and my aunt, making sure they didn’t burn down the restaurant or cut off a finger by mistake. After those first few weeks where all they did was yell at each other, they’d gone silent, and now they were so focused on ignoring each other that they were missing everything else. Let them figure out there’s cabbage wilting in the fridge or a big party’s coming in that wants the front tables pushed together by the bay window. That Holly had had a monster fight with her boyfriend and will probably call in sick. That Gideon’s hitting the weed too hard and the kitchen ninjas are all on the verge of killing one another.

    “They’re worried about paying workers’ comp.”
    “Who gives a shit?”
    “I do,” Arden says. “You should, too.”
    What I care about, what I really care about, is the way things used to be: my dad high-fiving Aunt Nat over some soft-shell crabs he’d scored for cheap, my aunt turning from the huge kettle and holding out a spoon for him to taste the seafood stock. How they used to stand