Goodbye Days

Carver is trying to write his college admissions essay but can’t concentrate. He thinks about the night of the accident. He was at his summer job at a bookshop, waiting for his friends to pick him up. That’s the only reason he wasn’t in the car with them. He texts Jesmyn and reveals that he’s been texting her casually over the past weeks.

He's interrupted by his mother calling him into the living room. Judge Edwards is on television. Carver watches with his family as Judge Edwards tells reporters that he wants the district attorney to open an investigation into the accident and consider weighing criminal charges.

The entire family is stunned. To be safe, his parents call a family member who is a business lawyer to see if he can recommend a criminal lawyer in Nashville. In shock, Carver goes to a park to take a walk. He’s already envisioning a bleak future, where he’ll be walking in a prison yard instead of a park. He has another flashback, thinking of a happy memory—playing video games and laughing with the Sauce Crew. It was nothing special, he notes, adding, “I don’t know why this moment burns like a torch in my memory, but it does” (55). When Carver returns home, he’s disappointed to find that Jesmyn hasn’t responded to his text. Worse, Darren Coughlin has left a message on his phone, asking if he has a comment about Judge Edwards’s statement.

Carver is lying in bed falling asleep when Jesmyn texts. He calls her and gives her the news about Judge Edwards. They stay up late talking on the phone. He finds their conversation comforting: “Something lifts from my chest as we talk. As if I were lying under a pile of stones, and someone is removing them one by one” (59).

The next morning, Carver goes to Nana Betsy’s to do some yardwork for her. The two talk about Blake. Nana Betsy says she regrets never having a last day with him. She introduces the concept of the goodbye day (although she doesn’t use this term), explaining it thusly:

What if we were to have one last day with Blake? You and I […] we get together and have the last day that Blake and I never got to have; the one that you and Blake never got to have. We put our pieces of Blake together and let him live another day with us (68).

Carver tells her he will think about it.

That evening, Carver sees Jesmyn. Picking her up at her home, he meets her dad, Jack Holder. He acknowledges the strangeness of the moment—it seems like the start of a romance, like he’s picking her up for a date, but in fact the two of them are bonding over a shared grief. Chapter 9 also features a Sauce Crew flashback. Carver thinks back to a tradition the boys had of playing “squirrel rodeo” in a local park.

Jesmyn and Carver sit in her car and talk about various topics. She talks about the fact that she’s adopted, which Carver didn’t know. He tells her about playing squirrel rodeo; he nearly has a panic attack as he shares the memory. He then tells her about the panic attack he had after Blake’s funeral. When she asks him what it was like, he responds: “Being buried alive. Falling through ice” (83). He also tells her about Nana Betsy’s request to have a last day for Blake.

Jesmyn confesses that she’s nervous about starting school. Carver is, too, now that he’s alone without the Sauce Crew. Jesmyn is also alone, as she’s just starting at Nashville Arts Academy as a new student. Jesmyn asks if he will go to school with her on the first day. He agrees.