sure, he partied with his friends and all, but I don’t know, he just never got too crazy. Just a typical kid, trying to get by.”
I tell him how Daniel went to the House of Blues in Chicago that night with Matt and Joey. How they crashed into a stupid snowbank and damaged the undercarriage of the car without even knowing it. How he and Rosie plowed into that intersection and couldn’t stop. A big gray truck was coming, too fast.
Blood. Pink shoe.
A wave of dizziness breaks over me and without any warning, I barf right into the bushes next to the park bench. This is as far as the beast will let me go. Everything that happened up to the accident is clear, but I can’t remember the actual accident or the days after, except for a few sickening flashes. My memory goes straight from a gray truck bearing down on Mom’s Toyota, to me sitting on the floor at Penn Station in New York City with Frankie staring into my face, saying, “You gonna eat that?”
Wiping my mouth miserably with the back of my hand, I choke out, “I don’t even know if Rosie is alive or dead.”
I’m afraid to see Thomas’s response, expecting to see anger maybe or disgust. And I would deserve it. But instead, I see something that looks a whole lot like sadness. And even more amazing, sympathy.
“Hank,” he says in a gentle voice. “You need to call your parents. No matter what happened that day, you have to call them and let them know you’re okay.”
“But I’m not okay!” I shout at Thomas.
“Of course you’re not,” he says quietly.
“God, Thomas. Why would they want anything to do with me ever again?”
Call your mother, Sophie said. I guarantee she would sacrifice her own life just to have you home.
How can I believe Thomas or Sophie? If I had one kid who killed or hurt another, I could never forgive that. There is not enough love and forgiveness in this world to make up for such a thing. Especially not after all my family has been through in the past five years. But I definitely can’t talk about that.
“They’re your parents. They love you.”
“They love Rosie too,” I argue back.
“Hank, they need to know where you are,” Thomas says softly. “Facing up to this is better than running away.”
No. Can’t face it, not yet. What if I call and they tell me Rosie is dead? I almost puke into the bushes again, empty stomach seizing, and I just want to die. The beast still lives inside me, razor teeth and claws, resolute in protecting me from these final truths. I’m not ready yet. Threatening to swallow me into permanent forgetfulness, the beast insists that I run from this last horrible thing. For now.
I hide my face in my hands for a long time, smelling dead leaves and black dirt on my skin. Finally, I manage to say what Thomas wants to hear. “I’ll call them,” I say. “But after the weekend.”
“No, Hank. My God. This must be torture for them. They need to know you’re safe. And you need to know… about Rosie.”
I fight the urge to curl up in a ball with my hands over my ears like some little kid in a nightmare. I just want to scream at Thomas to leave me alone, to understand that the bad stuff belongs to Danny, and I need to be Hank for just a little longer. “Thomas, three more days is not going to change anything,” I say as evenly as possible through my clenched jaw. “I need to play for Hailey at the competition on Saturday. I can’t let her down.” Not one more person. Not Hailey.
Slowly, reluctantly, Thomas nods. “Okay, Hank. Three days,” he says, holding up three fingers just in case I need the clarification. “And listen to me. You’re not a bad kid. What happened back in Illinois, that was an accident.”
“Thanks,” I say, but I can see through the bullshit and platitudes. I’ve screwed up, and there’s no way I can make it better. “Can you give me a ride back to your place, Thomas?” I ask. “I just need to lie down for a while.”
In the parking lot, I climb on the back of Thomas’s motorcycle, and as we ride to his house, I watch the horizon turn purple in the western sky. The end of another day in Concord, Massachusetts. And I know my days here are numbered.
That