The Beginning of After - By Jennifer Castle Page 0,6

you?”

“I’m not having this conversation.”

She and my mom were experts at this tactic: Bring up serious stuff when driving in the car, so the child you are mortifying with your particular conversation has nowhere to go, no bedroom to retreat into; they were stuck.

I didn’t want to tell her the truth, something that sat red-hot in the pit of my stomach and weighed me down, heavier each day. If I’d gone with them, if I had maybe finished my homework earlier or just blown it off to do in the morning, it would have been one more person to try to squeeze into the Kaufmans’ SUV. Maybe my dad would have insisted on taking separate cars. Maybe I’d be driving with my parents and Toby right now, to bury Mrs. Kaufman. One funeral, one person, the way everyone’s used to doing it.

I couldn’t talk about it, I couldn’t think about it. If I did, I felt that fireball again, dragging me that much farther into the ground. It seemed like the only way to keep breathing was to focus on the here and now, moment by moment, keeping my mind frozen cold to anything else.

Mrs. Kaufman didn’t have quite the same turnout my family had, and those who went both days were looking a little more haggard at having to do the whole thing over again. I found myself glad that they’d done my family first, while people were still fresh to their grief. Even the rabbi seemed weary. It made me happy, for a second, and not ashamed about it. Our funeral was better.

David wore the emo-goth outfit I’d seen the day before, and this time I noticed his black army boots. He was surrounded by relatives. His grandparents were staying at the house, I heard from one whisper. They were encouraging him to come back from the hospital and sleep in his own bed, but David wouldn’t do it.

I watched him as the rabbi gave the cue, and David stood up to throw the first bit of dirt on his mother’s grave. As he did this, someone in the crowd burst out with a sharp sob. David looked up for a moment, the shovel in his hands, to see where it had come from. It was the first time that day I’d seen his face full-on, unshrouded by his shaggy hair now combed back, his bright eyes moving. He kept scanning the guests as the rabbi started talking again and an uncle put an arm around his shoulders.

Those eyes landed on me, flickering with some kind of new energy and purpose. David raised his head a little more now, really registering me with an acknowledgment. I looked back, held his gaze for a few moments, but that was all.

It felt like enough.

Chapter Four

Nana was letting me sleep in the mornings, but not too late. She’d wake me by sitting on the edge of the bed.

“Laurel, sweetie, it’s already ten o’clock,” she said on the Monday after the accident. It had not yet been a week.

Nana and I didn’t talk about how long she’d be staying; we both knew it was for good. I’d listened to her on the phone with lawyers and bank people, dealing with the wills and becoming my legal guardian and other things that had to matter now. She did it without complaining. After all, she was the only one left who could. Her husband, my grandfather, had had a heart attack when I was still a baby, and my mother’s parents died before I was five. Both my mom and dad were only children, so there were no aunts, uncles, or first cousins. But Nana had always been there for as long as I could remember, and now, of course, she was here in our guest room.

If it was ten, that meant third period at school, which meant Meg was in journalism class. I would have been in history. They were giving me an indefinite amount of time off, and nobody had even said anything about bringing me homework assignments.

That was the expected thing, the thing the school automatically had to do. I knew that. But the thought of my classmates having a normal day without me just made me feel deeply, despairingly lonely.

“What do you want me to do?” I asked Nana, who was now flicking cat hair off my comforter. I needed her to tell me what came next, because staying in bed wasn’t cutting it. All I could do in bed,