The Last Time We Say Goodbye Read Online Free PDF Page A

other.
    â€œWhat now?” Steven asked me.
    â€œNow we drink the lame punch,” I quipped, and away we went.
    I don’t remember the rest of the dance. It’s lost along with all the other insignificant passing seconds of my life. Me. Steven. Ty. Ticking away. I didn’t know to savor that moment on the dance floor, to understand how beautiful and rare it was, how fragile, how ephemeral, when Ty was happy. When we were all happy, and we were together, and we were safe.
    I didn’t know.
    I didn’t know.

4.
    DAVE’S OFFICE IS LOCATED in one of those nondescript commercial centers downtown—you know the type of place I mean, where you walk the halls reading the names of lawyers and accountants and realtors on the identical plaques outside their identical doors, until you reach the nameplate that reads DAVID HARRINGTON, MFT, NEW HOPE FAMILY COUNSELING .
    That first time I went, about a month ago, I trudged into Dave’s office expecting the same gray walls and berber carpet from the hall, but then the door opened to this funky waiting area cluttered with fish tanks, an assortment of lava lamps, a coffee table collection of those wiggly dashboard hula dancers, a wall displaying Dave’s impressive collection of vintage Tabasco sauce bottles, and, best of all, the most massive accumulation of comics (like the kind printed in the funnies section of the newspaper) I’ve ever come across. I sat for ten minutes flipping through anold collection of classic Peanuts . Charlie Brown trying to kick the football. Lucy yanking it out from under him. Charlie’s rage. And I laughed at poor Charlie, and it felt weird to laugh, because Ty had been dead for two weeks then.
    That’s when Dave came out of his office. I expected, after the waiting area, for him to be a hippie or some kind of eccentric weirdo, but there he was in his plaid shirt and wrinkle-free khakis, his perfectly groomed beard and graying blond hair cut short and combed carefully into position using a little too much gel. He stuck out his hand to me.
    â€œLexie, I assume,” he said. “I’m Dave.”
    I must have looked surprised, because then he said, “Sorry. Do you prefer to be called Alexis? When I met with your mother she called you Lexie.”
    â€œYou talked to my mom? In person?”
    â€œYes, briefly,” he answered. “She wanted to fill me in on the situation.”
    I couldn’t imagine my mom in this place, sitting there with her legs crossed next to the hula dancers and the wall of hot sauce, waiting to go in and tell this man about her dead son and her sad daughter.
    â€œWell,” Dave said, gesturing inside his office where the big plaid couch and the box of tissues waited. “Come on in.”
    I hesitated. “Look, maybe this isn’t such a good—”
    â€œI’m basically here to listen, Alexis,” he said then. “If you want to talk. Give it a try.”
    Dave’s a nice enough guy. I haven’t figured out yet what he’sreally good for, aside from being a misguided way for my mom to feel like she’s doing something for me during this time of need. Like life is not going to absolutely suck right now no matter what. But whatever. My brother’s dead. I’m not talking much, and not hanging out with my friends, and not being the normal chipper Lex they all expect.
    So clearly I should go to therapy.
    This afternoon I sit in Dave’s office for a full thirty minutes before I can think of anything productive to say. So far he’s been okay with that—letting me talk when I’m ready—but today I can tell that there’s something on his mind, some little walnut of my psyche he is eager to crack.
    There’s something on my mind, too, but I don’t tell him.
    I want to. The past few days have been pretty hard-core inside my head. I keep thinking that I must be crazy. Something inside this fragile brain of mine