It Started with Goodbye

by Christina June

  Before he could say anything else—and I’m guessing he wanted to, since his jaw unhinged like he was getting ready to speak—I turned on my heels and fled the hall, then went out the front door and to the car. As I leaned against the rear passenger door and waited for Belén and Tilly to come back, I pulled out my phone and settled my weight on one foot, flipping through my contact list for someone to text with. When I scrolled past Ashlyn’s name, I clicked the power button and slid the phone back into my purse, then closed my eyes, wishing for something I knew wasn’t coming.

  Chapter 5

  I didn’t leave the house again until Monday morning. The rest of my weekend was spent obsessively checking my email, telling myself that a potential client might reach out, but really, I knew I was waiting to see if Ashlyn would reply. She didn’t.

  The first day of community service with the Arlington Parks Authority brought ninety-degree sunshine with it. I’d finally chosen to spend my summer days removing invasive plants from the city’s numerous parks because, let’s be honest, it was the activity I thought would invite the least amount of conversation from Belén. I also thought—very maturely, I might add, and maybe masochistically—that a little manual labor might be good for me. Builds character, as adults like to say when they really just want kids to do their dirty work. And, I also didn’t think it would hurt my college applications to say I’d “interned” with the park service on a “botany project.” I was nothing if not forward thinking.

  I was the first one down to breakfast that day, since I had to be up at the crack of dawn, and was just finishing up my bowl of apples and cinnamon oatmeal when Tilly came down the stairs, practically skipping, brand-new toe shoes in hand. When she saw me sitting at the table, the tranquil smile that had graced her face slipped into a half frown. I could see her warring with herself over whether or not to be pleasant or frigid.

  “Good morning,” I said loudly. She paused on her way to the cabinet and offered me a faint smile, but it didn’t make it to her eyes.

  Tilly was tall and willowy, just like her mother. She had the same warm, glowing skin and the same thick black hair, though Tilly’s was shot through with red when the light hit just right. She seemed slight, but I knew that her frame packed a lot more muscle than was obvious to the casual observer. Though I’d never tell her out loud, I admired her for her grit. Dancing was not a sport for the weak. I’d seen her feet bruised, cracked, and bleeding on a regular basis, and yet she kept on going. Just as regularly, I was glad graphic design was an indoor, sedentary activity. As Tilly sat down at the table and began the grueling process of cutting and stretching her toe shoes to make them conform to her feet better, I wondered if I’d made a mistake by choosing to spend a whole one hundred hours hunched over, pulling plants out of the ground. Was I punishing myself even further?

  “So,” I began, making an awkward attempt at conversation.

  Tilly didn’t look up from her task or respond. I didn’t bother trying again.

  Belén came clacking down the stairs in her three-inch heels and tailored skirt and blazer. White pearls, black hair, white blouse, black suit. She was a study in monochromatics. When she reached the table, she wordlessly handed me my car key, which looked naked without its usual partner. I instinctively stuck my hand in my shorts pocket—utilitarian khaki had seemed appropriate for cutting down vines in the jungle, which is how I pictured my day going—and came up empty. I patted my hips, but only felt skin and muscle beneath. My heart rate picked up as I glanced frantically around the kitchen. Where was my keychain?

  Like a mind reader, Belén raised an eyebrow and put a hand on her hip, her pointy elbow ready to impale. “You lost your key?”

  “I’m sure it’s here somewhere,” I said, rising to go search my room.

  “You’ll have to look for it later, Tatum. You can’t add being late on top of everything else on your first day on the job.” The disappointment in her voice had turned to judgment, as she’d slowly extended the “everything else.”

  I couldn’t look at her, and my ears started burning with shame.

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence.” I grabbed my shoulder bag and slid my feet into my weathered sneakers. Belén fished a color-coded and labeled house key out of the spare key drawer (because why wouldn’t you have a drawer specifically for spare keys), handed it over, and nodded toward the garage door.

  “Go.”

  Tilly never once looked up from her toe shoes during the entire embarrassing exchange. And why would she? We weren’t the type of siblings to defend each other.

  I opened the garage door and got into the car, shoving the key into the ignition. I racked my brain trying to think of where my missing keychain might be, retraced my steps to the last time I’d had it. I realized I hadn’t actually left my room, let alone the house, except for the bathroom and meals, since Friday night when we went to the showcase at McIntosh. I smacked my forehead in frustration, a little too hard. The keychain must have fallen out of my pocket when I was walking around the school. I closed my eyes and sat there, letting the car idle, willing myself not to cry.

  That keychain was long gone now, probably picked up by a janitor after the event. I didn’t care about the house key, as it could be replaced easily, but that solid, unassuming strip of silver, stamped with its calming message, was breaking my heart. Salty tears pricked the corners of my eyes, and I rubbed them away furiously. No. I would not let this beat me. I told myself that it didn’t matter, it was just keychain that meant nothing, and backed out of the garage, my chest heaving and my lungs gasping for air.

  The ten-minute drive to the park service headquarters did nothing to calm me. My heart raced and thoughts of crashing—accidentally—into trees and guardrails invaded my mind as I drove, fearing that without my little bit of luck on a chain, horrible things would happen. As I pulled into a place in front of the plain, brick building, I laughed. Why did I think a car accident was worse than alienating my friend, getting a criminal record, being on house arrest, and losing my father’s trust? The keychain hadn’t stopped those things from happening. My luck had already run out.

  I focused on the green letters on the building, Arlington Parks Authority, wishing with all my might that this might be a chance to prove myself. To myself and no one else.

  I followed the signs that said “Orientation” down a short hallway and into a large conference room, taking one of the twelve seats around an oval table. The only other person there was a guy I recognized from school. Hunter Hansen was in my grade at school, and was best known for being in a band. I’d had a class or two with him over the years, but we weren’t friends. He always seemed a little aloof in that “I’m a musician” way that’s both annoying and alluring. Hunter’s dark blond hair was on the long side, grazing the tops of his ears in a manner I knew Belén would never approve of, and he wore a Ramones T-shirt and black jeans. It was the stereotypical “boy in a band” uniform. I wondered why he was electing to pull plants on his summer vacation.

  “Hey, Hunter,” I said, with a small wave. Might as well be friendly if we were going to be working together.

  “Tatum.” He just nodded.

  “So what’re you in for?” I laughed at my own joke, quite sure he hadn’t been court ordered to this.

  “Um, college applications. I like plants, did really well in bio class. My counselor thought I needed some service on my résumé, so here I am. You?”

  No use in lying about it. He probably already knew anyway and was just being polite. “The commonwealth attorney thought I needed some service on my criminal résumé.”

  “No kidding? Huh. I heard something about Ashlyn Zanotti getting in trouble, but never would’ve thought you were involved.”

  I sighed. “Thanks for thinking that, because I wasn’t actually involved. I happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time with the very wrong people.” I sat down in my chair, feeling somewhat vindicated that Hunter had thought the best of me.

 
; “It happens,” he said, and shrugged like it was no big deal. Amazing. My impression of Hunter went up a few notches for his lack of judgment.

  A couple more kids filed in, and we all stared at the ceiling silently, waiting for whoever was in charge to hurry up and get this party started. Just when the awkward silence was building to a frenzy, for me anyway, a tall, earthy-crunchy woman in a parks authority T-shirt and hiking boots appeared in the doorway. She seemed to be counting us.

  “Hi, everyone, my name is Alicia Tilner. I’ll be your supervisor this summer on the Invasive Plant Removal Team. Looks like we’re waiting for just one more. Is everyone in the right place?”

  “I definitely am,” I said loudly. Hunter snorted. The other kids looked up, surprised at my faux enthusiasm. One or two laughed.

  “Oh, excuse me, I think I’m supposed to be in here,” came a voice from behind Alicia. My one and only client, Abby Gold herself, stood there, waiting to be let through the door.

  “You’re late.” Alicia eyed her warily. I made a mental note to heed Belén’s advice and always be on time for this shindig. Abby gave Alicia an apologetic smile and pushed into the room. She saw me and her smile widened, her eyes crinkling. I returned it, happy to have an ally.

  “Right, so again, this is the IPRT. I’ll be your supervisor and will be showing you what you’re going to be doing. It’s fairly simple—you just need to know what you’re looking for.” Alicia flicked on a projector that lit up a large screen on the far wall, and clicked through photographs of the invasive plants we’d need to be on the lookout for. “The biggest perpetrators”—I flinched at the term—“are sometimes the prettiest. This summer we’re looking to take out English ivy and honeysuckle.”

  Abby raised her hand, but didn’t wait to be called on. “Honeysuckle? Really? But it smells so good.”

  Hunter laughed and chimed in. “And tastes good too. How can it be bad? Eating honeysuckle in the summertime is like a rite of passage around here.”

  I shuddered, recalling a time when I’d stuck my tongue on the tiny drop of liquid from a honeysuckle blossom, one of the few things my mother had taught me to do. Belén had brushed it out of my hand so forcefully, you’d have thought it was poison, saying it wasn’t good for me to eat it. Terrified of ending up in the hospital with some scary honeysuckle disease, I’d never done it again.

  “Right!” Abby offered Hunter her fist to bump across the table, and he knocked his with hers. Alicia’s face stiffened.

  “Let’s take this seriously, okay? Invasive plants suck up the resources needed by native plants to survive and maintain our local ecosystem.” She went back to her slides, and when she was done, she turned to face us once again. “You’ll be in teams of two; we rely on the buddy system.” She quickly divided us up, and I found myself, thankfully, paired with Abby. Hunter got stuck with a tiny boy, probably a middle schooler, who kept sneezing. Alicia led us out of the building and out into the “backyard,” which was one of the city’s larger parks. I squinted at the vast field bordered by patches of forest, and spotted a huge swath of honeysuckle along the tree line right away.

  Alicia rolled a large wheelbarrow behind her, stacked with handheld pruning tools, gloves, and a gigantic box of plastic garbage bags. When I saw how small some of the tools were in comparison to the enormous plants I knew I’d be working on, my heart sank. Why couldn’t I have picked the animal shelter?

  Abby nudged me. “At least we’ll be getting a tan, right?” I looked at her pale skin dotted with freckles and held my arms up to hers. I was at least three shades darker. Abby chuckled. “Or maybe not.”

  Alicia cleared her throat, and we stopped talking. “Grab a tool, some gloves, and a bag and get going. Make sure you’re clipping the branches as close to the root as you can get. Try not to remove anything other than what we discussed. Ivy and honeysuckle. If you’re not sure, come find me, and I’ll identify it for you. Questions?” No one raised a hand. We were all too intimidated to say anything. “Okay, go for it. Have fun!”

  I scoffed. “Right.” Abby and I took off in the direction of the honeysuckle I’d spotted, the sweat already forming in my elbow creases and on the back of my neck. “So, why exactly are you here?”

  “Because it looks good on my college applications.” She didn’t sound convinced.

  “Really? You’re a columnist in our award-winning school newspaper, you’re in, like, a million AP classes, and you’re about to launch your own website. I don’t think you need this.”

  She gave me a guilty look and then leaned in close, not that any of the other pairs were near enough to hear us. “Truth? You know Hunter Hansen?”

  I looked over to where Hunter and his partner had landed, in front of a large tree covered in ivy. “Yeah, I know Hunter.” Abby’s cheeks flamed, and I connected the dots. “Oooooh, you like him?”

  “It’s so embarrassing, but I couldn’t stop myself. We were in AP Bio together, and I may have been carrying on about saving the environment, and he told me about this project, and before I knew what I was doing, I’d put my name on the list.” She covered her face with her gloved hands. “Totally mortifying, right?”

  I laughed. “It’s not any worse than being ordered by the courts.”

  Hands still on her face, Abby’s blue eyes peeked out through spread fingers. “Right. I forgot. You didn’t have a choice, though. I did. That’s way worse.” I wasn’t going to argue with her that I had, in fact, chosen this particular activity. “So. Since we have all this time and you have my undivided attention, do you want to talk about it?”

  Obviously I knew what it was, but I wondered exactly how much Abby knew, what she thought it was. I subconsciously stuck a hand in my pocket to stroke my keychain and came up empty. I gulped. The anger and frustration from the day at Mason’s was still fresh in my mind, Ashlyn’s silence heavy in my chest, and I didn’t want to waste this time out of my prison cell talking about what got me there. “Maybe later. I’d rather talk about Hunter.” I grinned wickedly at her, and she covered her face again and moaned.

  “I’m pathetic! But, Tatum, he’s so great. The bad part is, I don’t think he thinks of me as more than a friend. We met working on the paper together.”

  “I thought he was in a band.”

  “He is. He writes music reviews for us. So, me with my movie reviews and him with his concerts and albums, we end up working late nights together on our layouts, and, honest to goodness, I would sit there and move copy around with him until the sun rises.”

  I chuckled and snapped a particularly long branch, shoving it into my black garbage bag. “You’ve got it bad, girl.”

  Abby gathered up the small pile of branches she’d been collecting at her feet. “I know. It’s a sickness.”

  “So how do you know he doesn’t feel the same? Have you ever asked him?”

  She shook her head. “I think I prefer to just fantasize about him fantasizing about me, perhaps on a stage or in a botanical garden, instead of thinking about possible rejection.” She shook her head again and looked down at her feet. “I’m tragic.”

  I put a hand on her shoulder, her bare skin warm under the pink canvas of my gloves. “No, you definitely are not. Do you want to hear tragic?”

  “Yes, please.”

  I took a deep breath. “I went to my stepsister’s school the other night, for this showcase thing, and I bumped into a guy. Literally, actually, which hurt because his pecs were like granite. And he was amazing, though probably not as amazing as Hunter.” I looked at her pointedly, and she laughed. “But amazing nonetheless. Smart, thoughtful, funny. We talked for a long time about art and color and emotions, and—are you ready for this—I didn’t even tell him my name.”

  Abby’s eyes went wide. “Seriously? Did he tell you his?”

  “No! I think he wanted to, but I freaked and left before he could. The only thing I know about him is that he’s a student at McIntosh. And he’s hot.”

  It was Abby’s turn to gra
sp my shoulder in solidarity. “We should start a club.”

  “The loser club?”

  “How about the Missed Opportunities Club?”

  My heart stopped for a second when she spoke the words. Abby didn’t know how ridiculously perfect that name was, so I just nodded in agreement. That is my life, I thought. A series of missed opportunities.

  I sucked in a breath and tried to play it off without Abby noticing my discomfort. “Exactly. Except, you have a golden opportunity right now, this very minute, which you set up yourself, so it’ll only be missed if you don’t get your scaredy-cat self together and do something.”

  Abby jammed the pile of branches at her feet into the garbage bag and stood up, squaring her shoulders and puffing her chest up confidently. “You’re right. I will definitely do something. What, I’m not sure, but it’ll be something.” She looked across the field to where Hunter and his partner, sneezing away, were carting two completely full garbage bags back toward Alicia’s wheelbarrow. “Tomorrow.”

  “What? Why not after our shift is over?”

  Abby’s shoulders tipped forward, a little defeated. “I’m not ready today. Just, uh, yeah, tomorrow,” she said, looking at Hunter longingly.

  “Yep, tragic.”

  Abby suddenly brightened. “All right, Tatum, I’ll make you a deal. By the end of the summer, you and I will have taken control of our missed opportunities with an abundance of intestinal fortitude.”

  If I’d had a drink in my mouth, I would have spit it out all over her. I cocked my head to the side and clipped another branch. “Easier for you, remember? You know your crush’s name.”

  She waved her hands in the air, brushing me off. “I didn’t mean the guy you met. I was talking about Ashlyn.”

  I glanced down at my feet, planted on the brittle, dead grass that had been overwhelmed by the horrid heat. “I didn’t say anything about a missed opportunity with Ashlyn.”

  I lifted my gaze, and Abby looked me square in the eyes, which was both intimidating and heartwarming. I felt like she could see right through me, through my fake bravery act, my pretending I didn’t care, that I wasn’t hurt. “You didn’t have to.”