Free The Goodbye Time by Celeste Conway

me. How could Katy know I’d always be her friend if I wasn’t all that sure myself? Why couldn’t she yell at Kendra or someone she didn’t like as well?
    “Katy’s very confused right now. Her emotions are all mixed up. When someone seems angry, Anna, it’s usually because underneath it all, she’s hurt. You have to let Katy feel what she feels. In a little while, she’ll come back.”
    “But what if she doesn’t?”
    “Oh, Anna, she will. I promise. And you have to be there waiting, even though she’s hurt you.”
    “It stinks,” I said. “Everything stinks.”
    “Things are difficult,” said my mom, “but the truth of it is they made the right decision. Things will be better for everyone. Sam will be safe and so will the girls. Katy’s mom will have more time to spend with them. You’ll see, Anna. It’ll be fine.”
    I wiped my face with my sleeve. “One good thing for sure is that now Bug Eye sleeps in another room with all her creepy fairy stuff. And Katy can have a room of her own.”
    “They’ll probably get along better now. Katy might even stop calling her sister Bug Eye.” My mom passed me a tissue so I wouldn’t keep using my sleeve.
    “Things will work out. I know they will. Just be patient. Give it time.” She smiled at me. “By the way, your brother isn’t going away from you. He’ll always be part of—”
    “Yeah, I know. He told me.”
    “He told you?”
    “Yeah. That I’m never getting rid of him. That he’ll always keep on bugging me, no matter where he lives.”
    “He told you that?” I nodded. And my mom’s whole face got funny. Now
she
was the one about to cry. She reached for a tissue and then got up. “Go wash your face. We’re having Chinese for dinner. I’m not in the mood to cook.”

Chapter Fourteen
    Well, things didn’t happen the way my mom had predicted. I mean, Katy didn’t come out of her mood. No matter how patient I tried to be, she still refused to talk to me. And I guess she went back to Macy’s with her mom, because she never came to pick up her dress, even when graduation was only two days off.
    Life without Katy wasn’t much fun. I started hanging around with Tyesha and Yolanda. They were nice enough, but all we ever did was watch TV and look at pictures in Yolanda’s sister’s
Seventeen
magazine. Oh, and talk about their periods. They didn’t seem to care that I hadn’t had one yet and felt a little left out. They just kept complaining about their cramps and their headaches and how they felt like crying all the time. That much, at least, I had in common with them: the part about wanting to cry all the time. The thing about their complaining was that it really seemed more like bragging. Like they were so big and mature now. They liked to talk about Kendra too and how she wasn’t so high and mighty now that the whole world knew she still played with Barbie dolls. Yolanda said she probably had a whole other bunch of shoe boxes in her closet filled with My Little Ponies.
    Even though I hadn’t gotten my period yet, they thought I was cool because Michael Trefaro had kissed me. I’m not all that proud about telling them, but I needed something to make me less of a little kid. And the kiss really worked. They kept asking me all about it. Like what it was like and if I had felt his teeth on my face or any drops of spit. I must have described it a hundred times.

    The weird part was that Katy didn’t start hanging around with other girls. She was friendly to people, but she didn’t do things after school. She just went home right away to hang out in her new and private room, I guess.
    In my own room I put my dress in the closet but left Katy’s red one hanging on the door. Sometimes at night while I was lying in bed, I’d look at it and pretend Katy was inside it, sort of floating in the air. I’d imagine her arms and legs dangling out. And then I’d picture her head sitting on top. And she’d be talking to me about Bug Eye or about