The Beginning of After (18 page)

Chapter Twenty-three

A
n hour later, Nana was laying out some Pepperidge Farm cookies for us on the kitchen table, apologizing that she didn’t have anything homemade.

“It’s fine, Nana,” I said. “Can you chill?”

“I’m just kicking myself because we had that pumpkin bread but I brought it all down to the Dills’, and I should have kept some for us.”

She smiled down at David, who was sitting with Masher’s head on his lap, inhaling defrosted mulligan stew as if he hadn’t eaten in days. I had to give Nana credit; when she got home about ten minutes after we did, she was unfazed by his presence at the house. She didn’t even seem to mind that I was blowing off the dance. She just went straight to the freezer to see what kind of food she could offer.

When David finally took a break from the stew and reached for a cookie, Nana made her move.

“So, David, what brings you home?”

He flinched for just a second but continued his cookie grab. “Oh, didn’t you hear?” he said lightly—too lightly. “My grandparents sold the house, and I have to go through my stuff to decide what to keep.”

We were silent. I had driven or walked by the
FOR SALE
sign every day since it first went up, but still the thought of someone else living in that house never entered my mind. It didn’t seem possible. I’d grown to see it as an empty, perfectly preserved memorial of my family’s last night alive.

“Who did they sell it to?” asked Nana.

“Some married couple with a baby,” said David, practically spitting out each word.

We were quiet again. There was really nothing to say to him that would be appropriate. It only felt right to stay in the small, here-and-now details.

“Do your grandparents know you’re here?” Nana asked.

“No, not yet.”

“I’m sure they’ll be happy to have you home again.”

David shook his head. “I’m not staying there. I . . . I can’t. Stay there.” He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and squinted at the display. “I’m trying to hook up with Kevin to crash at his place, but he’s not calling me back.”

Nana glanced at me, and I just raised my eyebrows at her to let her know,
Go ahead
.

“Well, you can stay here if you want,” said Nana. “There’s a nice sofa in the den that I can make up for you.”

“Really?” David’s face lit up. “That would be great. I could bunk with Mash here.”

He had a look I’d never seen before. Sincerity maybe, mixed with a little self-pity. I didn’t know him well enough to pin it down.

I kept wanting to say something to him, but after my little closet episode, I found myself speechless.

“How’s your father?” Nana asked casually. I’d been hoping she wouldn’t ask that. I didn’t want to know.

And it made David’s face fall again. “He’s the same.”

“I’m sorry,” said Nana.

“I’m going to go see him while I’m here.”

“I’m sure he’d like that.” Nana paused, then put her coffee cup down. “I’ll go get the couch ready. You must be exhausted.”

She left the room and I almost followed her, but David turned to me.

“Masher seems great. Thank you for that.”

I looked down at the dog and couldn’t help but smile. “He’s a good boy. And he doesn’t even mind the new cat.”

“New cat?” David frowned.

I’d been hoping for a way to tell him what I was doing, what was going on in my life. Suddenly it seemed easiest just to show him.

“Come check it out,” I said, then simply stood and jerked my head toward the hallway.

The next morning, I woke up late. I’d gotten used to Masher waking me up at a certain time to be let out, but there’d been no wet nose on my neck at seven. Then I remembered why.

The couch in the den was neatly made up, and David’s army duffel bag lay on the floor next to it, its contents creeping out.

“Where is he?” I asked Nana, who was doing dishes in the kitchen.

“Well, look who slept in today! Good morning, lazybones.”

“He’s gone already?”

“Just to his house. Masher, too. He wanted to get an early start.” She paused and shook her head. “I don’t envy him that job. It’s one of the reasons why I keep putting off my trip home.”

I thought of David sitting in his room, with his dog beside him, surrounded by all the things he ever owned in his life. Trying to decide what was important enough to keep.

Then I remembered Suzie asking about what we were going to do with my parents’ and Toby’s things.

“Are we going to do that here? With
their
stuff?”

I regretted it almost instantly, as soon as I saw the anguish on Nana’s face.

“I’m not ready to talk about that,” she said sharply. It was so easy for me to forget that where I’d lost a father, she’d lost her only son; where I’d lost a brother, she’d lost a grandson (“My darling boy,” she called Toby, which always made him cringe).

“I’m sorry . . .” I mumbled.

“Meg called,” said Nana, turning back to the dishes. “She said she also sent you a message.”

I found my phone and read Meg’s text, which was the expected check-in to see if I was all right. I sent her a response that yes, I was fine, and I hoped she had fun. I knew I was supposed to call her and get a full report on what had happened at the dance, and I was supposed to tell her everything David said and did all night. But I didn’t feel like it, and didn’t think about why.

So I grabbed my journal and tried to brainstorm ideas for my Yale essay.

David didn’t come back until dinnertime, although Nana acted like that was too early.

“Oh, you’re not having dinner with your grandparents?” she said, pleasantly surprised, as soon as she opened the front door for him.

He looked tired and defeated, his eyes red. He just shook his head no and moved slowly over the threshold of our house, Masher behind him quiet but with tail wagging.

I was sitting in the living room doing English homework but not making much progress. I’d given up on my essay for the day, and had just read the same paragraph in
The Scarlet Letter
three times, listening for footsteps up the driveway. Now I put the book down and followed him.

David sat down at the kitchen table, and I wondered if he expected Nana to produce some food, but he just folded his head into his hands and took one, two, three deep breaths. Nana gestured that we should give him time alone, and we moved to leave.

“Don’t go,” said David behind us.

We turned and froze. Why had I been waiting all day for him to come back? Things were just weird when he was here.

“I had no idea how much crap I owned,” he joked. “I don’t want to get rid of any of it, but my grandmother says there’s only so much room in the storage space they’re renting.”

“Oh, a storage space! What a smart idea!” offered Nana, like it was the most brilliant thing she’d ever heard.

“I thought so too, at first, but now the idea of all my stuff, my parents’ stuff, locked away in some concrete block somewhere depresses the hell out of me. My mom always thought those things were so ugly. She wouldn’t have wanted . . .”

David stopped himself, his voice cracking. He ran a hand—dirty fingernails, callused knuckles—through his hair and sniffled quickly. Several seconds passed, and although he didn’t look at me, I felt that somehow he expected me to speak.

“We can keep it here at our house,” I said, the words taking the express route from my brain to my mouth, with no thought stops along the way. “We have a huge attic, and it’s mostly empty.”

Nana gave me a startled look, and I just shrugged back at her. Then she smiled.

“Really?” David asked, his eyes meeting mine for the first time that night.

“Sure,” I said, staring back at him.

“Thank you.” This came out sounding stiff and polite, and he put his head back in his hands. I took that as my cue to go back to
The Scarlet Letter
, which I grabbed off the couch and took with me into Toby’s room, where Lucky waited with her deep purr and yellow, contented eyes.

Later that night, there was a knock on Toby’s door.

“What?” I asked, cranky, sure it was Nana. I’d finished my reading chapters and was now working on calculus at Toby’s desk. It was creepy, I knew, but I loved how Lucky sat next to my arm, with one paw across my wrist, as I tried to write.

“Can I come in?” It was David. I turned quickly in the chair and Lucky, startled, shot across the room. Her toenails left a thick white scratch on my arm.

“Ow!” I yelled.

David now opened the door. “You all right?”

“Fine,” I said, holding my arm. “Just got nailed by the cat.”

David came in, although I hadn’t told him it was okay, and closed the door quickly behind him so Masher couldn’t follow. A couple of tortured protest barks came from the hallway.

David sat on the floor, and Lucky came out from under the bed to check him out. We were quiet for a few moments as David petted Lucky, and kitten mews drifted faintly from the dog crate.

When I’d brought him into the room the night before to show him what I’d been up to, he’d just smiled, satisfied and not surprised. Like he expected there to be homeless cats, like there couldn’t possibly be anything else that made sense. Unlike Nana and Meg, he’d had no questions. He just liked it.

It felt fair now. I’d learned so much from his postcards about what he was doing on his way across the country, and now it was my turn to fill him in. The balance seemed about right. It made our silence more about comfort and less about itchy strangeness.

Finally, David reached into his back pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. “I found this today,” he said, opening the paper and holding it up.

It showed a drawing of a rocky hillside with the opening of a cave smack in the middle, shaped perfectly into an upside-down U. The cave was black, except for two sets of wide eyes in the Magic Marker darkness. One set of eyes had long eyelashes. Purple letters along the bottom announced, “LAUREL AND DAVID EXPLORE THE CAAAAAAVE!”

“Oh my God,” I said, then laughed.

“So you remember?”

I remembered just two moments from a day a long time ago. One was David leading me through the woods toward the cave in the woods behind our houses, a place where most kids in the neighborhood were afraid to go, as he held a big walking stick and I held a plastic bucket full of snacks like I was Little Red Riding Hood. The other was us in the darkness of the cave, me feeling proud that I had actually walked a few feet in until the top of my head brushed its roof. We were eight, maybe nine years old. So long ago and so improbable that at times, when I thought about it, I wondered if it had really just been something I’d seen in a movie.

To David, I just nodded and then smiled.

He folded the drawing and put it back in his pocket. “I was thinking of going there tomorrow morning. It’s been awhile since I took Masher, and he loves it. Do you want to come?”

He made the invitation with his eyes fixed on the cat, but I could tell it was a serious one.

“Sure,” I said, then to cut the tension I added, “Should I take my basket of snacks?”

Now David chuckled a bit and stood up. “Only if you think we’re going to get lost and need bread crumbs to find our way back.”

Then he left the room without saying good night.

Chapter Twenty-four

B
y eight o’clock the next morning, David and Masher and I were heading out the back door dressed in jackets and boots, since the forecast was for rain and the sky was already deepening into a dark gray. The wind blew dead leaves around our ankles as we walked across my backyard, silently, our hands in our pockets because it was just way too nerdy—even for me—to wear gloves in October no matter how chilly it got.

After we crossed Watch Hill Road and continued farther into the woods, David cleared his throat and said stiffly, “I know I said it last night, but I really do want to thank you for offering to store my stuff.”

“It’s fine, David,” I said. “We have the room. Those storage places are yucky.”

He paused, and I could hear him swallow hard even though our feet crunched loud along the ground. “Can I ask you something?”

“Maybe,” I said, trying to sound funny.

“Why are you being so nice to me?”

“Am I?”

“My dog. My stuff. Honestly, Laurel, you’d think that I hadn’t been such an asshole at that party that night. And you’d think that . . .” David stopped walking. It seemed like his throat was closing around something, and he took a quick little breath. “You’d think that my dad hadn’t been the one everyone blames.”

It seemed so fitting, suddenly, that David would be the one to say this out loud, this thing that so many people up and down our street and through the neighborhood and across town had thought to themselves, or maybe whispered to the one or two friends they trusted most. The thing I’d jammed into a place deep within me, because I couldn’t figure out what to do with it. Not even Suzie had been able to pull it out, and she sure had tried.

“I mean, I don’t give a crap what
they
think,” he continued, waving his hand. “They can go stick it up their gossip-loving, SUV-driving, Bob-and-Pam-are-meeting-us-at-the-golf-club butts.”

He reached out and actually touched my shoulder with two of his fingers. “But you, Laurel . . . You have the right to think the worst, and I have a feeling I know how bad that really is, because I think it too.”

I thought back to prom night, and David’s reaction when I told him his father was a murderer.

“Yeah, David. I do think the worst. But you told me your dad wasn’t drunk. Now you’ve changed your mind?”

He looked down. “No, I still don’t think he was drunk. I . . . I know he wasn’t. But even if it was another car that drove him off the road, he was the one driving. He
made
this whole mess.”

Now he glanced up at the trees, gave a tired sigh. He had no idea how it felt like he’d read my mind.

I asked, “When are you going to visit him?”

“Not sure. When I’m done at the house, I guess.”

“Can I come with you?”

David reacted with surprise. My question had surprised me, too.

“Why?”

Yeah, Laurel. WHY?

“I don’t know. I just thought . . .” I wasn’t sure what I thought. Now that David was saying the things I’d been thinking, it seemed like something we both needed to do.

“No,” he cut me off. “Not yet, at least. Okay?”

His expression was so pained, and I suddenly got how David struggled, feeling protective of his father while also hating his guts.

“We’ll have to find some way for me to pay you back,” said David.

“You don’t need to pay me back,” I said. “You don’t owe me anything.”

“Oh, come on, Laurel,” he said, his voice rising. “Stop being so nice. Give it to me. Give it to me like you did that night after the prom.”

Masher started barking. He didn’t like people yelling at each other.

“I was drunk,” I said softly, “and it was so soon after.”

“So now you’re not angry anymore?”

“Of course I’m angry,” I shot back, but as the words came out of my mouth I wondered if I’d ever said them before. Was there anything I could add that would make me stop sounding like an idiot? “I’m furious, but I don’t feel the need to take it out on you.”

“Still trying to be the good girl,” said David, shaking his head. “Going for that extra credit. You get a certain number of points for the dog, and a certain number for hanging on to his stuff. God, you still want to be their sweetheart no matter what!”

Now I
was
angry, but it suddenly occurred to me that he wanted this. He wanted me to get in his face, mean and honest like a tough, loving coach in an old football movie. Maybe this was the whole reason he was here.

I took a deep breath. “I did those things because I wanted to. Because I thought of them and they made sense and they made me feel good. If that makes me somebody’s good-girl sweetheart, then okay, that’s who I am. I can live with that.”

He looked up at me again and blinked away a glassy layer of tears.

“How can you be so normal?” he asked, a twangy whine in his voice. “I can’t—I can’t be like that, and you got it worse than me.”

“I’m not normal, David. Believe me. People stare at me wherever I go, watching what I’m doing, listening to what I’m saying. They treat me like I’m made of glass.”

David’s face softened, and he shook his head. “We’re both screwed.”

He was silent then, like the subject was closed. I wanted so badly to hear more, to talk more. For the first time in months, I felt like I had had a real conversation with someone. Like someone had cracked me open and everything that was plain and honest had spilled out onto the dry autumn earth.

What else do you know, David? And how do you know it?

I fought back the nervousness I still felt around him and was about to give voice to these things. But just then, Masher started barking again, and we looked up to see him about a hundred yards away, running circles in front of a rocky slope.

“Good boy, Mash!” called David. “I would have walked right by it!”

We walked toward the cave, which was much more overgrown now. No way would I have gone into it back then, if it looked like this. You could barely see the opening because there were so many weeds in front of it, and one tree had filled in so much that its branches hung down like bars.

Masher was already digging his way inside. David called for him to wait up but he disappeared into the cave, so David went after him, swiping at anything that got in his way.

I stood there, knowing I was supposed to follow, but not sure I wanted to. It pissed me off that David thought he knew so much about me. I would have turned around and headed home right then, but (a) I wasn’t sure how to get there and (b) I wanted to stay.

“Laurel? You coming?” called David, and I headed toward his voice.

It took me a few minutes and several scrapes from strange, itchy plants, but I made it to where David crouched in the darkness with his hand outstretched to grab mine. I took it, and it felt cool and hot at the same time. I could feel the creases of his palm, which made my heart race a bit, which then surprised me so much that I nearly fell over.

“Here,” was all he said, and I took one last step into the cave. We both had to crouch while my eyes adjusted to the lack of light.

“This is smaller than I remember,” I said.

“Well, we’re bigger, Einstein.”

“Oh, right. Duh.”

“There’s a rock right in front of you that you can sit on.”

I felt with my hands until I found the rock, and lowered myself onto it. I could now see David sitting across from me on a little shelf inside the cave, and Masher’s tail at the far wall, wagging. I couldn’t see his head but I could hear him clawing and sniffing at something.

“Don’t you think this is peaceful?” asked David.

“Sure, if your idea of a vacation is being locked in a closet somewhere.”

“I was wondering if maybe this is what it’s like to be in a coma,” he said, and I could see him close his eyes. “Like, do you dream, or is everything just dark and empty inside your head?”

I had no answer for him. He wasn’t asking me, anyway.

We were quiet for what seemed like several minutes but was probably just a few seconds. Finally, Masher decided he was done digging and started making his way out of the cave.

“After you,” said David, tilting his head toward the light. I got up and took a big step onto the wobbly rock, but he didn’t offer his hand.

Once we were out, David suggested we walk a bit farther, and I just shrugged okay.

“Do you really think we’re screwed?” I asked him after we’d gone a few dozen yards in silence.

He laughed, a little
humph
. “I don’t know. I guess that depends on how much good luck comes our way in life.”

“Don’t you think that we have something to do with it too? Like we can unscrew ourselves, if we do things a certain way?”

He laughed a little. “Unscrew ourselves. You mean I actually have to do some of the work? It’s so much easier to be a victim!”

David said that jokingly, but something about the way he said it struck me. I could almost hear it
ping
off my forehead. He was right. It was easier to be the victim, but it didn’t feel so great.

And I wanted more than that. I’d wanted so much before the accident—all the things most people do when they’re sixteen, I guess. Why couldn’t I want them now? Why couldn’t I have them, still?

“I have to come up with one more essay for my Yale application,” I said. “And I’m trying to decide whether or not I should write about the accident.”

David raised his eyebrows. “It’s probably something they don’t see very often.”

“I just don’t know who to tell, and who not to tell. Mr. Churchwell says that wherever I end up going, he could make sure my roommates and RAs are aware of my ‘situation.’”

He nodded. “More watching, more tiptoeing, more kid gloves.”

“What would you do?”

David stopped walking suddenly, so I stopped too. He stared off at something in the distance, squinting a bit, then shifted his gaze to me.

“What are you more afraid of? That people won’t treat you normally once you get there, or that they will?”

Another sudden truth, so clear. David was scary good at throwing these at me and having them stick.

Maybe I’d been kidding myself. I’d been thinking it would be heaven, a world of people not seeing me as a walking tragedy. But now that I saw that, it scared the crap out of me. I wouldn’t be special anymore. I would have no excuses.

David just smiled, knowing the answer. “You don’t need to be afraid of it. That’s why I left town, to be anonymous to everyone out there. And I wasn’t ready for it. I’m still not. But you, Laurel. You’re strong enough. You know who you are.”

“I do?” I wanted to add,
Then tell me! Who am I?

“I think so,” said David. He bent down to pick up a stick. It was a perfect fetching stick for Masher, just the right length and thickness. I was always looking for sticks like that, and I guess David was too. He yelled, “Hey, Mash! Fetch!” and tossed it as far as he could. Masher shot off after it.

When David turned back to me I put my hand on his elbow, and it didn’t take him or me by surprise. It just seemed the natural thing to do. “Thanks for the advice,” I said.

“Thanks for asking for it.”

We smiled at each other, and neither of us clicked our eyes away.

“Laurel,” he said, his smile disappearing. But it wasn’t the beginning of a sentence. It had no upturn at the end of it. He was just saying my name, and it reminded me that I was here, alive, with two feet connected to the ground and breath filling my lungs. I was me, and apparently I knew who I was.

Then David put one hand gently on the side of my head, his palm pressing lightly on my ear, his fingers pushing my hair back. The prickly feeling of his skin on mine shot through me and made me a little dizzy. I still wasn’t sure what he was doing.

Until he kissed me.

He just leaned in and did it before I knew it was happening—I was distracted by the hand-ear nuclear reaction—and before I could think anything, I was kissing him back.

His lips felt softer than I thought they would. Softer than Joe’s. And much more practiced, confident, even while I thought I felt him shaking. He tasted sweet, too, and I remembered he’d had Nana’s cookies for breakfast.

Then he pulled away and dropped his hand and stared at me, wide-eyed as if I’d been the one to kiss
him
. “Okay,” was all he said.

I looked at his lips and remembered a moment from last year when I’d seen him hanging out in the senior parking lot, smoking cigarettes with his friends. I’d watched him drag on one and then open his mouth to blow perfect Os of smoke, and I’d been impressed. Now I’d just kissed that mouth.

“Okay,” I echoed.

“We should probably get back. I have to go over to the house.”

“Right.”

We started walking again, and when our hands accidentally brushed, David moved a few steps farther away. It made me ache, but I didn’t do anything about it. Would I ever in a jillion years have the courage to tell him I wanted him closer, more touching, more kissing?

Thank God for Masher. It would have been the longest walk of our lives if he hadn’t made us laugh nervously as he nuzzled the leaves and barked at the branches and did a happy little dance every time he found a new tree or rock. His antics carried us back through the woods and away from the cave, and away from our kiss. Masher knew exactly where to go, and all we had to do was let him take us home.