The Beginning of After - By Jennifer Castle Page 0,31
I’m here.”
I couldn’t even pull my arm away from my face. Didn’t want to look at her. “I’m sorry. God! I’m so sorry.”
“Laurel, please just get up. Sit up. . . . Gavin, can you go get some Kleenex or something?”
I heard Gavin rush away, his feet on the patio like Joe’s a few minutes earlier.
For Meg I sat up, even as another wave overtook me and I sobbed again. She held me and I felt her wrist corsage poke the back of my neck. We began to rock.
“Shhhh . . . shhhh . . . it’s okay,” she said.
“I—”
She cut me off. “Don’t talk. Just breathe.”
Gavin was back. Joe was with him. They stood there, their legs forming a sparse, silent forest around me and Meg. Joe held out the box of tissues, letting it hover over our heads, but neither of us took it from him.
Chapter Eleven
I woke up to the sound of thunder and heavy rain pinging against my window.
It wasn’t really “waking up,” exactly. It was more like opening my eyes away from the half sleep that had been pulling my mind along a string of strange thoughts and images.
At one point I was thinking about what my brother looked like when they buried him, whether they’d combed his hair back with gel or left a careful forelock to frame his face. Which made me think of the six months in middle school when I used styling mousse because I thought it made me look more like a character on my favorite TV show. That led me to my seventh-grade art teacher, Ms. Weber, who married our English teacher Mr. Weber and everyone thought it was so incredible that they already had the same name. Then this got me thinking about whether or not I would keep Meisner when I got married or become a Mrs. Somebody.
I jumped back to that first thought of Toby in his casket, feeling horrified and ashamed. How could this have landed me in the “fantasize about your future husband” place?
It had been three days since the prom. Three days since Manny drove Meg and me and Joe and Gavin to my house in total silence, me hugging Meg tight with my eyes closed, and Nana giving me a pill and putting me to bed for the night. In those three days I had not gotten out of bed, and since the moment that pill wore off I hadn’t gotten any real sleep, either. I wouldn’t let Nana dose me again. It felt like cheating.
Meg called the day after.
“I don’t know what to say, Laurel. I really just don’t have a clue.” She sounded nervous, unsure of herself.
“It’s okay,” I said. “I’ll be okay.” I tried to sound like I believed it.
“Call me if you need anything,” said Meg, more casually now, as if a quick trip to the drugstore for shampoo and Tylenol would solve all my problems.
Joe had called too. Twice. I’d had Nana tell him I was sleeping. It was nice to know he was concerned—Tell Laurel I hope she’s feeling better was the message—but I couldn’t bring myself to talk to him. Even though I could still feel his lips on my lips, his hand on my neck, when I tried to picture his face all I could see was how he’d looked at me when I started to sob. It was just too mortifying.
Then there was the thought of David, smirking and frowning and collapsing, and retreating. David cruel and bullying, then David quivery and scared like the little boy I still remembered despite my best efforts not to. All that morphing left me baffled and intrigued and ultimately filled with sorrow; then I reminded myself of what he’d taken from me—a lovely night, a sweet first kiss, a memory to hold on to—and that brought back a swell of fury. If the swell started to go down, I added in the image of Mr. Kaufman driving his SUV, squinting and slurring and swerving, and it grew again.
Sometimes I imagined what I’d do if I had a time machine and could go back to a single minute, any minute, of my life. In this time machine I’d travel to the minute of the accident night where, instead of asking permission to go home and work, I’d decide to go to Freezy’s with everyone else. My parents and Toby and I would walk back to our house and get into our own car, planning to meet the