How Many Letters Are In Goodbye? by Yvonne Cassidy

Author:Yvonne Cassidy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: how many letters in goodbye, irish, young adult, young adult fiction, ya fiction, young adult novel, ya novel, lgbt
Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide, LTD.
Published: 2016-01-20T05:00:00+00:00

Dear Mum,

This is going to be the shortest letter ever because there’s only another fifteen minutes until my clothes will be dry and then I’ve got to bring them home and collect the sandwiches Winnie made and our art stuff and meet her at the jewellery shop where she works. She’ll be finished with her shift then and we’re getting the subway to Brooklyn, the A train. I’m writing this from the coolest little garden in the world by the way, down the block from the Laundromat. You need a key to get in and Winnie has a key because she’s a volunteer and I’m going to volunteer too, that’s one of the things I’ve decided.

Today feels like a day for deciding things, it feels like the start of something. If I’d known it would feel like this, telling Winnie the truth, I wouldn’t have taken so long to get the whole story out, I wouldn’t have been so scared. Yesterday, sitting on her couch, it takes me ages to even get to the part about me and Laurie, and it’s nearly dark when I tell her about us kissing during Truth or Dare. Her face doesn’t change, even though she knows by then that Laurie is Cooper’s daughter, and it doesn’t even change when I tell her about us being in bed together. The only time in the whole story that her face changes is when I tell her about Cooper hitting me and the things he said. Her face gets really kind of hard then, like someone else’s face, and she shakes her head over and over and says she’s so sorry I’d had to go through that.

And the way she listens makes me want to tell her everything, Mum, and somehow we get onto this conversation about Dad, and I’m telling her about his music and how I’d read his mood by it, that usually Hendrix meant he was happy, unless he was listening to “Voodoo Child” because he only listened to “Voodoo Child” when he was angry about something. Lennon was his “loving music”—he always said that—and that could mean he was happy too, except for the times he was sad. She’s interested in the times he was sad, asks a lot about that and I end up telling her about the times he cried in my room when he got home from the pub, talking about you or Nana Farrell—and just then Winnie jumps up and puts on her shoes. I haven’t even gotten to the part where Dad found Nana Farrell on the floor and had to take her to the hospital but Winnie says she needs to run to the payphone because it’s after nine and she always calls Melissa at nine. And I never get to tell her about that part because when she comes back, she heats up some beef stew she’d brought home from the soup kitchen and she sends me to the Chinese on Tenth Avenue for a pint of brown rice to go with it.

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