At home, The Goodbye Girl watches her mother rearrange the burgundy, satin curtains, and move the mahogany table three inches to the left, centering perfectly it beneath the chandelier. She notices the new magnolias, the others had wilted, and her mother couldn’t stand keeping wilting flowers. She wants to go up to her room, and water the peonies before they begin to wilt (peonies are her favorite) and listen to her music. Her father is in her brother’s room, clearing it of toys, again. Her father believes in taking away rewards, in this case, the toys, when her brother, Johnathan, misbehaves. And he misbehaves a lot. Her brother was diagnosed with so many problems, she can’t even remember all of them. The Goodbye Girl knows one thing for certain though: her brother is aggressive and cruel. He may be younger than her, but she knows it to be true. Age doesn’t matter to her when he gets into a fit. However, age matters to everyone else, even her parents, which she thinks is stupid when you consider they experience the same damage she does. Everyone tells her “it’s not his fault” or “he can’t help it” or how she “isn’t helping the situation by thinking like this.” The Goodbye Girl wishes she could be like the girls in movies who can just walk to their best friend’s house and wait out the troubles of their lives. But she can’t.

Whenever she went places that involved having to give anyone a ride, her mother insisted that they clean their car. It had to be perfect. All the empty fast food bags, broken colored pencils, and bits of plastic from the toys Johnathan breaks had to be trashed. If she was ever on Snapchat, The Goodbye Girl’s mother reminded her to make sure she didn’t get the hole in the wall from where Father had slammed the door too hard, or the paint that was missing on the walls, or broken vases or windows that had been shattered during one of Johnathan’s fits, in the picture. In her room, which was painted like a sunset, The Goodbye Girl liked to get pictures around her peonies, which were perfectly blooming.

Some people hate school, and The Goodbye Girl would never admit it, but she secretly liked school; she liked that it was a chance to get away, and a place where her dark humor would be appreciated. At first, school, besides the work, was great. She made friends, lots of friends, and hung out with them a lot. She bonded with one girl in particular, Lilly. Lilly had fair skin and straight hair, and they bonded over their love for music. Lilly was a hopeless romantic; she wanted the Hollywood love and had her eyes set on a boy, Luke. Luke was the dark-eyed boy who sat in the back of class, like in a Hollywood movie. The Goodbye Girl was enchanted by Lilly and her love of things, which drove The Goodbye Girl to set Lilly up with Luke, who she was friends with. Admittedly, she also liked Luke, but to The Goodbye Girl, Lilly and Luke seemed to click, so she set up her two best friends. She remembered the day he asked Lilly out, and remembered her jokingly asking them not to forget her. That made them laugh, and while she laughed with them, a small part of her knew her words weren’t meant to be laughed at; she was serious, she didn’t want to be forgotten. Maybe it was that fear of being forgotten, of being left behind, that started the fractures in it all.

If you were watching The Goodbye Girl’s life like a movie, you could flash forward to the holiday season. Her home town hardly ever got snow, instead they got ice, which wasn’t nearly as fun, but it did get them out of school for days on end. But still, the holidays had come, and decorations were in every other yard, street lights and public parks had Christmas lights glowing, and schools were doing poinsettia fundraisers. Of course, all of the stores were doing holiday sales and were filled to the brim with people. The Goodbye Girl and her mother were a part of that crowd. Her mother pointed at various items and asked if her friends would like any of them. She wanted The Goodbye Girl to get something nice for all her friends and teachers. The Goodbye Girl had a list in her mind on what she was going to get people, but Lilly and Luke were iffy on that list. Ever since they had begun to go out, and she had asked them not to forget her, they had begun to fade. The three of them weren’t hanging out anymore, or talking, really. Actually, that wasn’t true, Lilly and Luke hung out and talked all the time, just not with her. She expected it, since they were a couple and all, but she didn’t quite think it would be to this extent. Lilly only talked to her if Luke upset her, and Luke talked to her when Lilly wasn’t around. It hurt. A lot. But she wasn’t going to say that, she was just glad they were happy. Instead, she pressed her nails harshly into her arm, and jerked at the pain. Maybe she could just find new friends, and move on after Christmas, but for now, The Goodbye Girl put the chosen gifts for Luke and Lilly into the shopping cart.

The Goodbye Girl stuck to her plan of distancing herself from Luke and Lilly, but it didn’t work: they noticed her not trying to talk to them, which surprised her, and they noticed her talking to other people more than them. Both of them promised to do better, once they managed to convince her to tell them why she was upset. The Goodbye Girl went home, relieved that these issues were going to be better, and watered her peonies, which she remembered she hadn’t done in a few days. She listened to her upbeat music, singing off key and dancing like a fool around her room. But by the next month, her happiness faded, just like the edges of the petals of her peonies. She still listened to her “happy beats” playlist, and tried to smile around Luke and Lilly, but that fluttering joy of being back in the group was gone. Luke and Lilly hadn’t changed. They had simply said empty words. They hadn’t meant what they had said, it was just something to make the problem go away for a little while. She got angry, really angry. She felt lied to, but that anger faded to hurt. And that hurt faded to emptiness. These friends were supposed to be the good part in her mind, now what was supposed to be that good part? She tightened her hand around her arm until her nails had drawn blood. School wasn’t exciting anymore, it was just a place where The Goodbye Girl would receive more pain and rejection.

Her parents said that she could talk to them any time, but could she? When The Goodbye Girl came home on the verge of tears, unable to bury that sadness anymore, her mother said she couldn’t deal with it tonight. And when Johnathan trashed her room and tore up all of her school notes, her anger was thrown back in her face by her father who said she needed to leave the room before she made the situation worse. She couldn’t talk to Lilly, who was at the center of all of her problems, and the rest of her friend group would just tell Lilly what she was saying. So, she didn’t tell anyone, and her tears turned to anger yet again. It all swelled up inside her, and she found herself typing a passive aggressive message about Lilly, and posting it on Snapchat. Lilly knew it was about her, and the argument began. Words were said, and so two girls decided to part ways. The Goodbye Girl, while looking at her peonies, which she didn’t notice had more wilting petals, said her goodbye to Lilly.

The Goodbye Girl got into a heated argument with the rest of her friend group soon after, and they had all sided with Lilly, of course. She moved seats at lunch, and didn’t sit with any of her old friends in class. She kept to herself, and she hated it. She had this pressure inside her chest. It all felt so empty. Then the rumors started. People were asking what happened, and with that she found that many people didn’t like her. They thought she was rich, or mean, or a liar, or ugly. The Goodbye Girl cried. She wasn’t rich, her family just didn’t want people to know their lack of money, and they went out of their way to give her the things she wanted. She didn’t try to be mean, and she didn’t talk about people behind their backs or anything. She wasn’t a liar. She, if anything, told the truth no matter what. Ugly? Maybe they were right on that one. She wasn’t pretty like the other girls. The Goodbye Girl sobbed. She felt the pain as she sunk her nails into her arm. It felt good. She picked up a pair of scissors and drew a line across her thigh. It stung, and she watched with wonderful fascination as a thin streak of blood surfaced. Her peonies were wilting, dying, but she didn’t have the strength to get up and do something about it.

School, now, was different. She sat with a new group of people who didn’t ask much about her, Luke, and Lilly’s history. This new group of people made The Goodbye Girl laugh, and for the first time in a long time, she felt good about herself. Actually, Lilly broke up with Luke, so he was sitting with The Goodbye Girl and this new group of people. Luke, for some reason, had turned his attention towards her, and Lilly didn’t like this. So, the drama began. The very thing The Goodbye Girl had been trying to avoid came knocking on her doorstep. She hated this drama, she despised it. Despite her and Lilly’s ending, she didn’t want to see Lilly hurt. She wanted Luke and Lilly to get back together, so people would stop talking about her, and so Luke would stop leaving all of his friends for her. Going to school hurt again. It made her physically sick. She didn’t want to be there, yet she pretended like everything was fine. Every day, when she left the school building, she thought that she might feel unburdened by some of this sorrow, but she was wrong, because seeing her parent’s car made all of it double.

When The Goodbye Girl saw the solemn look on her father’s face as they pulled out of the school parking lot, she knew that Johnathan had once again done something. She knew she was right when they stepped into the house, and her possessions were strewn across the living room and kitchen. She couldn’t say anything. She just felt defeated, and empty, and sad. She walked away without saying a single word, she couldn’t even cry. She dug her nails into her arm and picked up some of the pieces of her scattered calligraphy set. The Goodbye Girl sat on the textured sofa and held a calligraphy tip in her hand. It was a gold one, sharp and pointy, the other end of the pen, the actual pen part, was missing. She pressed it into her thighs, over and over, in different spots, until little bits of blood were popping up everywhere. Maybe the world would be better off without her. No one cared in the end, so it wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Pain coursed through her head. This, this, is what she wanted to do. It’s what she needed to do.

The Goodbye Girl replayed her thoughts over and over: How would she do it? When? Should she leave letters? Who would she write to? Her mother’s voice drifted into her mind, reminding her of the need for perfection and planning. The thoughts began to dwindle down as she smeared crimson blood across her legs. She answered each question one by one. How? Eat the food she was allergic to. When? At school in two days because no one would recognize the allergic reaction that would be happening, and it would be much easier to go somewhere alone. Besides, nobody would notice her absent. Letters? Yes, and to the people who she sat with at lunch, they deserved to know that they made her life a little better for a time. Also to her parents, because she knew they would blame themselves, and they shouldn’t. She should tell them they shouldn’t. Finally, to Johnathan. Despite everything, there’s a chance they could fix whatever was wrong with him, and that would probably only happen without her around. Across the room, as The Goodbye Girl picked up her pen to write her letters of apologies and goodbyes, her peonies were heavily browning.

With everything planned, all she had to do was wait another day. She sat in the school cafeteria, posting a picture of her lunch group, with the caption saying something about how school was made better by them. The lies. She prided herself on being honest, if not brutally honest, but now…now, she felt dirty. She was a liar. It made her hate herself even more. The Goodbye Girl told herself that these lies wouldn’t matter soon, that this would all be over. She just had to keep up this one lie for a little while longer. So she did. She kept it up at school, and at home. She snuck one of Johnathan’s candies, which she was allergic to, up to her room. She placed it in the same backpack pocket as the letters, and zipped the pocket.

The next morning, as The Goodbye Girl got ready for school, she bumped into her vanity. She glanced back at it to make sure nothing had fallen, nothing had, but some of the fragile petals of her peonies crumbled from the impact. She looked away quickly, a heavy feeling in her chest, and said her goodbyes to the only room she had ever lived in. As the car pulled out of the driveway, she said a silent goodbye to the only house she had ever resided in. As the car stopped in front of the school, she told her family she loved them, and said her goodbyes. She went throughout the day wearing nothing but smiles until the time came. She was sitting in a classroom with her friends, and she looked at her bag. The Goodbye Girl reached into her bag and pulled out the candy. Its aluminum wrapper shined brightly under the fluorescent school light, and the loud crinkle it made as she unwrapped it was deafening. She placed the candy in her mouth, and chewed. The burst of flavor, and the odd taste of something she had never been allowed to eat before, something practically forbidden. She playfully said goodbye to her friends, knowing they would think nothing of it, and with a flick of her hair and a laugh, she asked to go to the restroom. Another lie. Instead she went out the doors into the cold and walked to the school field. It was clear of people, as she knew it would be for at least another hour. She laid down on the grass, which made her skin itch, and stared up at the sky. She counted the clouds, there were fourteen, and decided that the blue sky was perfect. The Goodbye Girl stared up at the world until her breathing got shallower, until her throat began to close up, until spots of black filled her vision as her limbs grew heavy with lack of oxygen, until she hoarsely whispered goodbye.

Days later, the sky was a perfect shade of blue with thirteen clouds in the sky, people, some who The Goodbye Girl had never met, surrounded her. They had brought her favorite dress, and she was wearing it. She was perfectly done up: blue dress with softly curled hair and a pretty pair of silver heels. They cried over her actions, as if all of them actually care, but The Goodbye Girl didn’t feel a thing. As these people left, they told The Goodbye Girl goodbye, but she had the ultimate goodbye. Vases of fully-bloomed peonies encircled her. They were freshly picked bouquets with silk ribbons tied around them, and each flower was carefully checked to ensure nothing was dying, her mother’s perfection was shining through, even now. No one thought of the peonies in The Goodbye Girl’s room, but it was too late now. They could have been saved, or nurtured back to health, but not anymore. They were dead. Just like The Goodbye Girl.