Page 10 of A Thousand Little Goodbyes

And why, she realized, that sad, faraway look in her eyes seemed like it was here to stay.

“Oh, Chrissie.” Scarlett kept running her hand over Chrissie’s hair, the uneven ends now so much sharper than before. “You must miss him. I’m so sorry.”

Chrissie sniffled once—and only once. “Can I tell you an awful secret?”

Scarlett nodded. She didn’t trust herself to do anything else.

“I’m the reason he’s dead. I was supposed to be the one to save him, but I couldn’t.” Chrissie scooted forward until her knees bangedagainst Scarlett’s, her voice suddenly so quiet that Scarlett practically had to duck down low to hear the rest. “And even though I know I’m supposed to be sad, I’m really just glad he’s gone.”

Chapter FiveBurns, OR

Present Day

Chrissie sighed as she leaned back against the motel mattress, Scarlett’s fingernails raking over her scalp in a way thatalmostmade it possible for her to ignore the body-shaped stain on the ceiling of their room.

“Don’t tell anyone, but this is the most intimate I’ve been with another person since…” Chrissie scrunched her nose as she tried to remember the last time she’d touched someone who wasn’t one of her massage therapy clients. “Well, let’s just say that Leonardo DiCaprio was dating a woman in her early twenties and leave it at that.”

Scarlett’s laugh shook the whole bed. “That narrows it down a whole lot, thanks.” She switched from her fingernails to a brush that she ran down the length of Chrissie’s hair over and over again. Since it went all the way to the middle of her back, this took some time. “I’ll never understand how you get your hair to grow so fast. Do you just, like, suck collagen out of young virgins or something?”

“Yes. That’s exactly what I do in my vast amount of free time. Then I bathe in their blood to keep things interesting.” Chrissie twisted her neck to look up at her friend, but Scarlett only tskedand forced her head straight again. “It’s just hair, Scarlett, and not even a very pretty color. I’ll never understand why you’re so obsessed with it.”

“That’s because you forgot how much it bothered me when mine fell out. I’d already lost so much by that point. It seemed unnecessarily cruel to take that, too. In fact, the first time I ever saw you in the hospital, those long braids wrapped around your head like a halo, I thought I was being visited by an angel.”

Chrissie snorted. Only Scarlett could make the grim, fluorescent-tinged memory of those days seem like something out of a Hallmark Christmas movie. “I’m pretty sure my hair was down that day. Besides, I knew even then that I wasn’t going to keep it. I’m not going to keep this batch either, so don’t get emotionally attached. I have a donation appointment for when our road trip is over.”

All of a sudden, Chrissie felt her head being yanked back. It took her a short, stinging moment to realize that Scarlett had wrapped the long, hot-spring-dampened strands around her fist and was holding them like a horse’s reins until Chrissie was forced to look up.

“Absolutely not. I forbid you from going back to that chop shop and letting them loose with the scissors.”

“It’s not a chop shop,” Chrissie protested.

“Fine. A butcher, then. A hack with no sense of taste or style.”

Scarlett twisted her wrist to the right, pulling Chrissie’s scalp even tighter. Chrissie wasted no time in reaching over and pinching Scarlett’s calf. With a howl, her friend released her grip.

“Ouch, you beast! That hurt.”

“Then don’t call my hair stylist a butcher. I’ll admit that Monica tends to make everyone look like a medieval page boy, but that’s part of her charm.”

Scarlett snorted and swung her legs off the bed. Chrissie was about to ask where Scarlett was going when she unplugged her phone fromthe wall charger and started typing furiously on it.

“Okay, according to Google Maps, we should get to Boise by lunchtime tomorrow,” Scarlett said. She reached down and absentmindedly rubbed her calf, where a bruise was already starting to form. Chrissie hadn’tthoughtshe’d pinched her that hard, and was about to apologize for the excessive force when Scarlett continued. “It’s not Milan or my own beloved Jacques in San Francisco, but it’s the closest we’re going to be to a metropolis for the next week. I’m booking you an appointment at the most expensive place I can find.”

“Wait. What?” Chrissie scrambled off the bed and tried to snatch the phone away, but her friend had already anticipated her. Scarlett dashed around to the other side of the bed and kept typing.

“It’s my treat, so don’t pretend like you need the money for Kat’s braces or new volleyball shoes or cleaning supplies for that dratted cat you refuse to drown.” Scarlett pressed one last button and tossed her phone triumphantly to the bedside table. “There! It’s done. They have a twenty-four-hour cancellation policy, so there’s no backing out now.”

“But I don’t want to go to Boise,” Chrissie said. Then, feebly, “And Kat hasn’t worn braces since she was twelve.”

“Andyouhaven’t had a decent haircut since way before that,” Scarlett said. She pursed her lips and added, “You always look like you’re either getting ready to join Joan of Arc at the stake or popping out a dozen kids on a fundie compound. There is a happy medium, you know.”

Chrissie didn’t want to laugh, but she did. “It’s never that bad.”

“It’salwaysthat bad,” Scarlett countered. Her own expression was much more sober than Chrissie’s—a thing Chrissie didn’t understand until her friend spoke again. “You know you don’t owe anyone your hair just because it grows quickly, right? Not your hair, not your platelets, not your internal organs…”

“I’ve never given anyone an internal organ,” Chrissie protested. “And donating platelets is really easy. They take your blood out onearm, and then—”

Scarlett held up a hand to stop her. “I know how platelet donation works, thanks.”