The Beginning of After - By Jennifer Castle Page 0,68
at the movie theater, and I had nobody hoping to see me.
“Meg, just go in,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“Just go. To the dance. I’ll . . .” I glanced at David. “I’ll go home with him.”
“But you’ll miss the fun,” she said weakly.
“Not really,” I said. “And you’ll have more of it without me there.”
Meg tilted her head as if she was about to shake it in denial, but stopped. She knew I was right.
“What do I tell the girls?”
“Tell them I realized I wasn’t ready for a big social event yet. It’s kind of the truth anyway.”
“Let me go with you,” she said hesitantly.
“No, I want you to stay.”
“I promised Nana . . .”
“She’ll be okay with this, I swear.”
Meg narrowed her eyes. “There’s something you’re not telling me.”
“Please just go. I’ll fill you in later.” I wasn’t sure if that was true.
Meg gave me a confused, dirty look before walking back to school without saying good-bye. I watched her rectangle of white Styrofoam grow smaller on her way across the grass, then turned back to David.
“Thank you,” he said. “I really can’t wait to see Masher.”
“He can’t wait to see you,” I replied, and started following David to his father’s Jaguar, which was parked in the faculty lot and definitely not shiny anymore.
We drove to my house in silence. My costume was wedged in the Jaguar’s backseat, and I fought the urge to climb back there with it. Anything to not be sitting silently next to David, dressed head to toe in white like a gigantic neon sign of dorkiness.
When we passed the Kaufmans’ house on the way to mine, David craned his neck to look up at it, not bothering to hide the pain in his eyes.
We pulled into my driveway, the Volvo still absent, but he didn’t turn off the car. He just stared straight ahead at our garage door.
“Sometimes I play that night over in my head, with things going differently,” he said. It came out sounding distracted, dreamy.
I didn’t answer.
“You know, like, instead of going to Kevin’s to piss off my parents, I do the decent thing and go with them to Freezy’s. We would have had to go in two cars.”
He looked at me, and I tried to hide the shock on my face.
“It might have changed everything,” he said.
I thought of my Wondering Well. It had been Suzie’s suggestion. Every time I felt myself drowning in what-ifs, I wrote them down on a piece of paper, folded it up, threw it in an old mayonnaise jar, and screwed the lid back on tight. It was a way of getting them out, letting them go.
My Wondering Well was getting full, and I’d need to find another jar soon.
Swallowing hard, I finally said, “It might have. But it didn’t.”
David sighed and nodded, then turned the car off and sat there, his hands still on the wheel.
“I’ve been driving for so long,” he said softly, “it still feels weird to stop.”
Silence again. It felt like David needed me to take the lead here. We’re on my turf now. So I just said, “Thanks for the letters.”
He turned to look at me, expressionless.
“I mean, Masher thanks you. I think they smelled familiar or something.”
David smiled wistfully. “I’m glad he liked them.”
“Let’s go see him,” I said, opening the car door. We climbed out of the Jaguar, and now he was following me to the house.
As soon as I took out my keys and they jingled, we could hear Masher barking and panting inside, which made David laugh. In seconds the door was open, and Masher leapt through the doorway straight at David, a frantic blur, and had his paws on David’s chest and his tongue on David’s face. He’d known David was there, even though we hadn’t said a word. Somehow, he was sure of it.
I stepped around them into the house, toward my room, so I could change out of all that white. When I got there, I walked into my closet and closed the door behind me, thinking of David’s eyes laser-beaming at the place he’d always called home.
Sometimes I play that night over in my head.
It had never occurred to me that David was haunted by the wondering too. It was so simple, and so obvious.
I cried hard but quietly with relief in the dark.
Chapter Twenty-three
An hour later, Nana was laying out some Pepperidge Farm cookies for us on the kitchen table, apologizing that she didn’t have anything homemade.