“Close the door,” Sadie says, blinking at me through her hangover. “You’re letting the light in.”

She is huddled into the shadows of the corner of her bed. I am wearing her clothes, standing in front of her, telling her I’m leaving.

“I have to go home,” I say. “My mom’s sick.”

“God, I feel like shit,” she says, like she didn’t even hear me. She pulls the blankets up to her chin. “What happened last night?”

“You don’t remember?”

“Not really,” she says. “Something bad happened, didn’t it?”

I say nothing. There is nothing to say. She has no idea she kissed me. She has no idea I drowned.

“Wait a minute,” she says, as if she just registered what I said, as if the words took that long to travel to her brain. “You can’t leave! The summer’s not over yet. You can’t leave me here alone.” She is crying now. She is a child wrapped up in her blanket, as if it could protect her from the world, as if she could be soothed by it’s softness always. I sit down on the side of what had been my bed for only a short time.

“Sadie, I have to go. My mom’s in the hospital.”

She sniffles. Even she knows she can’t argue with that. “What happened? Her back again?”

“Yes,” I lie. I am not ready to have that conversation with her. I’m not sure I want to, ever. I’m not sure Sadie’s the person I want to confide in anymore.

“Oh no, Max. I’m so sorry,” she says, and hugs me. This close, I can smell the whiskey still on her breath, the faint scent of vomit. I hold my breath until she lets go.

“I’m leaving tomorrow,” I tell her. “I changed my ticket. Doff’s giving me a ride to the airport in Omaha first thing in the morning.”

“No!” she cries. “That’s too soon.”

“Sadie, stop being such a drama queen,” I say, even though I know I shouldn’t. She hates it when I call her that, hates it when anyone discounts her feelings. But I’m so tired, I don’t care anymore.

“I’m not a drama queen,” she pouts, pulling away deeper into the corner. “I’m sad. Don’t you think I have a right to be sad? You’re leaving me, Max. You’re leaving me here all alone, and you don’t even care how I feel about it.”

“Sadie,” I say. “This isn’t about you.”

She is quiet. She looks at me like I am some mysterious new thing.

“Is this about last night?” she says carefully. “Is this about something that happened last night?”

When she drinks so much she forgets, Sadie sometimes still feels a tiny echo of the truth—not details of events, but more like their shadows, the aftershocks of their destruction. Her brain may be blank, but her heart and her body hold on to vague memories. They are full of them, full of these indecipherable regrets. I have always been the one to help Sadie make sense of them, to match images to the feelings. But I will not do that this time.

I will let her go. I will give her the freedom to put the pieces together herself.

“Sadie, I think you drink too much,” I say.

“What?”

I’ve never said it, not once, even though I’ve wanted to all these years. “You scare me, Sadie. It’s scary when you get that drunk. You should be able to remember what happened last night.”

“Fuck you,” she says, her face red with anger.

“What are you going to do when I’m not around anymore? What are you going to do if I’m not there?”

“I don’t need you to take care of me.” She pushes the blankets off of her. “What makes you think you’re so fucking important?”

I say nothing. I don’t have an answer for that. I wish I did.

“You’re so self-righteous, Max,” she says. “You always have been. You’ve always thought you were so much better than me. Like I couldn’t survive without you. Like I’m some useless piece of shit who can’t even take care of myself.”

“Sadie,” I say. “That’s not what I meant.” But maybe I’m lying. Maybe that is what I meant. Maybe I played a part in her becoming this person who needs me. Maybe I’ve wanted her to be helpless all this time. Maybe I needed it. Maybe I’m as much to blame as Sadie.

We sit there in silence on the two beds, facing each other but looking in opposite directions. So this is our goodbye. After all these years of friendship. Right now, Sadie thinks it’s just for the rest of the summer, but I already know she’ll stay here. I’m the only thing she’d have to come back to in Seattle. And we both know that’s no longer enough.

“Doff and I are leaving around five tomorrow morning for the airport,” I say. “Do you want to come?”

“I don’t think so.” We’re still not looking at each other.

“I’m going to go get my stuff ready,” I lie. I have nothing to get ready.

I stand up, wanting out of here, suddenly suffocating.

“You look weird in my clothes,” Sadie says, looking up but not at me.

I look down at what I’m wearing—the low-cut tank top, the short shorts that are a little too tight. “I know,” I say. “I am nothing like you.”

“That’s not it,” she says. “That’s not it at all.”

I back out the door, still looking at her, waiting for her to look me in the eye, but she never does. “Bye,” I finally say.

“Bye,” she says. “See you later.” And I don’t have the heart or energy to tell her that maybe she won’t. At least not for a while. Not for a long time. Maybe not until we are different people and this summer is just a memory. Maybe we will compare notes; maybe we will laugh about how different our stories are. Maybe then I will tell her I forgive her. Maybe then she will have learned that there is so much more to love than that.

I walk back up to the house, grateful for the storm’s destruction creating enough new chores to keep me busy until tomorrow morning. I can focus on those instead of the dull ache inside my chest. I almost wish the pain were sharper, more in focus, so I could at least define it, so I could give it a name and make it something ordinary. But this isn’t a feeling that fits cleanly into any category. It’s messier than that. It’s a feeling that will linger. It will morph into different things. It will ebb and flow, rise and fall like tides. It will evaporate with the sun, then fall back down as rain.

I will stop by the barn to say goodbye to the animals. I will say goodbye to Lark. I’ll say goodbye to Maria and Joseph and little Bean. I’ll probably even say goodbye to Skyler. I’ll have the whole car ride to Omaha to say goodbye to Doff, though I’m pretty sure he’s not a fan of the mushy stuff, which I’m sure I’ll be grateful for. That’s all. A handful of people, and a barnful of farm animals.

Nobody’s going to throw me a going-away party. I’ll slip away at dawn, erasing all traces of myself. People may have a vague feeling that something’s missing for a while, but they’ll get over it quickly. And all that is fine with me. I don’t need to leave a wake, don’t need to disrupt people’s lives with my comings and goings.

Maybe I won’t get the closure I want. But who ever does, anyway? Closure is just some word someone came up with, but I don’t think anyone really knows what it is. You leave or are left, and that is the end of the story. It is rarely clean or tidy. Maybe it could last forever if you let it; it could taper off into infinite half-lives, haunting you forever with its slow disintegration.

Or you could decide it’s over, leave those loose strings loose, accept that the end is going to be frayed. Maybe that’s really what closure is—knowing when it’s time to give up on something that’s lost its hope. Knowing when it’s time to move on to the next thing that shines. Maybe sometimes you have to leave before you’re ready to let go; sometimes you have to leave before someone is ready to let go of you. That’s the rub of it—if you wait until you’re ready to do everything, you’ll never get anything done.