Goodbyes were something at which I was never really that gifted. Actually, I was pretty much terrible at them. My family wasn’t the “musical houses” type; I’d never moved in my life and rarely did the people around me. Aberdeen was a town than once you were there as an adult, you just never left, so therefore my parents’ roots were deeply rooted here. I wasn’t very experienced at this stuff. It never felt like saying goodbye and stealing a hug was ever enough. It would lead me to useless rambling and not wanting to let go of them, in every sense of the word. Where was the "good" in goodbye anyway? It was a terrible lie.
We both watched as she walked towards the door, our arms still remembering the farewell embrace with which she had just left us both. She was crying. I remember it exactly because it was something she never did. Actually, she’d rather die than be caught crying; the weak girlish act that it was. She turned abruptly in the doorway, as if she was about to make a run for it in the direction opposite of the way she was headed, but instead of sprinting back towards the two of us, she simply offered a final wave and a weak smile, her words apparently malfunctioning at that moment. The horn beeped again, her parents with their car packed impatient with our never ending goodbyes.
Part of it didn’t feel quite real to me, like when she finally closed the door it would open right up again and she would be standing on the other side, like it had been just some little joke of hers, the worst fake-out imaginable. But when the door closed and remained closed, I knew that was it. She was actually leaving.
“She will be back, you know.” Finn offered in soft words, a hint of laughter stringing them together. He moved towards me. I couldn’t see, but I could hear him, his light footsteps on the hardwood of the living room floor. Though my feet were frozen in their last steps taken, toes pointing toward the door, he couldn’t surprise me. That was the thing about old farm houses, they were sneak-proof, the floor boards protesting their years of use with every step. But I still didn’t move to acknowledge him. I couldn’t.
Too many thoughts were scattering in all directions of my mind, like a rubber ball dropped down a flight of stairs. I didn’t think that what I had just done, in theory, was going to be as difficult as it proved to be. I knew I would in fact see her again. She hadn’t died for heaven’s sake, but I acted as if she had. And the hardest thing was, that wasn’t the last time I would ever have to do that. The hardest was yet to come. It wasn’t that Sadie wasn’t important to me, but in comparison to Finn, there was far less history binding us together.
“O’Malley…” He whispered in my ear, and I jumped out of my skin. I had been too preoccupied with my outburst of anxiety to remember that he was still there with me. He hadn’t left, though I had been thinking so much about it that it felt like he already had.
I scurried to return my face to its normal appearance. Damn tears, stupid girly tears. I wasn’t supposed to do stuff like that. I was better than that, stronger that. But it was pointless to try because he already knew. It was nothing he hadn’t seen before, but it had become such a force of habit with everyone else.
“You still haven’t finished packing, have you?” He knew too well of myself to think anything else and, therefore, didn’t feel the need me to say anything in response to assume it true. Instead, his arm around my shoulder worked its hardest to unglue my feet and direct me towards the stairs, or in any direction for that matter. Though once he did, I scurried up the stairs on my own accord, leaving him to follow up the old creaking steps.
My room was a complete mess, its appearance to anyone else looking reminiscent to that of a tornado’s aftermath, but to me it was just organized chaos. All of my clothing, instead of folded neatly in my dresser drawers, were tossed in large mounds of fabric; one for certain yeses, one for those I would most definitely be leaving behind, and a series of piles that would depend on how much room I would have left, or what would be left home until the seasons decided to change. Nothing much was in boxes; they lay empty in in one corner of the room. It gave me a sudden headache as soon as I stepped through the doorway. Considering that, I couldn’t help but to make a b-line for my bed, landing right in the middle of it, though trying my best not to disturb the box of photographs I left there, the only box of which I knew I was not leaving behind any of its contents when I left.
“It’s worse than I thought!” That happened to be his response upon stepping through the doorway. Whereas he probably sprinted down the hallway, sliding in his socks for part of it as he usually did, he found himself suddenly slowed once he saw the mess through which he was sure he would find himself sifting whether he wished to or not. His eyes finally landed upon me and the disgusted look on my face and he cracked a smile. “It won’t take too long. Just throw it all in the boxes and you’ll be done. Nothing to worry about.” He shuffled his feet across the floor making a pathway in my direction, rather than step on my things as I had done.
“Alas, no. That is not in fact the case.” I scooted myself over, giving him room to sit down if he wished, but instead, he still stood, arms folded across his chest. “I will have even more about which to worry, because once I’m packed, that means I actually have to leave here.” Whenever I wanted to exceptionally persuasive I had to arrange my words like an English teacher, as grammatically correct as I could find possible. Finn always hated that, which made me do it all the more often.
“You still have to leave whether you have stuff to bring with you or not. So you’re really accomplishing nothing there.” He leaned forward, a hand extended for me. I took it willingly, but instead pulled swiftly and he easily fell over, his form landing with a clumsy bounce at my side. “Come on, just do it…for me?”
Persuasion was something for which the two of us had quite a knack. If only everyone else we ever encountered was just like ourselves we could have in our possession all we ever wanted pretty much. The kid’s pout and batting eyelashes were something he knew I was incapable of ignoring. I would avoid looking at him like he was Medusa himself, but he knew that regardless of how much effort I would give it, it would never go as planned. I would give in after a few minute fight and he would get me to do whatever he wanted. It was a good thing he never found reason enough to hate me. After a sigh of worthless protest, I laughed. That was perhaps the last time that would happen for quite some time, and for once, I actually I felt like I was going to miss it.
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