The Center of Everything - By Laura Moriarty Page 0,122

out of his chair and onto her lap, pecking him lightly on the top of his head. “Well,” she says, carefully. “I guess we’ll have to wait and see.”

Traci Carmichael is dead.

I am sitting in Mrs. Geldof’s bright room, looking at Mrs. Geldof’s watery eyes and the map of the world on the bulletin board behind her, the United States in the middle, Kansas in the middle of that. Traci’s desk is empty, and so is Libby’s.

There has been a car accident, Mrs. Geldof says. Yesterday, on the way home from school. Adele Peterson was driving, and she’s dead too. They were going too fast, not wearing seat belts. Libby is alive, but badly hurt.

“What?” Ray Watley asks. There is a ripple in his voice, and although I think it’s just because he doesn’t believe what Mrs. Geldof is saying, it comes out as a laugh. “Are you kidding?”

“No,” Mrs. Geldof says. She blinks, and there are tears. “No, honey, I’m not kidding.”

I can feel my arms turning cold, someone running a feather lightly across my skin. I saw them yesterday, all three of them. Adele honked twice when they pulled up alongside the bus in the next lane. Traci’s arm was hanging out the window, fingers snapping to the radio, three pink plastic bracelets around her wrist.

But I remember now. There were sirens only a few minutes later. Travis and I were still on the bus, laughing about something. Not about Traci. Something else. When we got to the street where the accident was, there was already a detour set up. We had to take another route, and it took longer. We got home late.

“They’re dead?” Ray Watley asks again. Mrs. Geldof nods.

No one says anything. The truth of it, what this really means, starts to settle in slowly, moving into us through our open mouths, seeping in through our eyes when we look at the empty desks.

Ray Watley is quiet, not laughing now, his hands still on his desk in front of him. Deena turns around to look at me. She is already crying. Other girls are crying too, and I understand that I should be crying, that this is the appropriate response. But I am still just sitting and blinking, doing nothing, like a cartoon character hit on the head with something large. Even when people start to get up and move toward one another, clasping hands, I just sit there, still and dumb.

Mrs. Geldof comes over to me and pushes her wet cheek against mine, her arms tight around my rigid back.

“I know, honey,” she says, still crying. “I know.”

There is a picture of Adele’s crumpled Honda in the newspaper. The front end is completely smashed in, the windows shattered. My mother moves around me quietly, making lunch for Sam. We’ve been given the rest of the week off from school.

“Evelyn, sweetie, don’t look at that anymore,” she says. “Put it away.” She tugs on a corner of the paper, but I hold tight. According to the article, Adele was making a left turn after the light had already turned red, and the Honda slammed into an oncoming car, head-on. Traci actually survived the wreck, and was airlifted by helicopter to a hospital in Kansas City. Adele died on impact. The driver of the other car broke her foot in two places, but that was all. Libby Masterson was, of course, in the backseat, and is still in the hospital, in stable condition.

Libby had not been wearing a seat belt either, and Mrs. Geldof told us that the only reason she was alive was physics, a question of who was sitting where. The rest of us should not count on such luck and should wear our seat belts. Libby, Mrs. Geldof said, again and again, was very lucky.

“Yeah right,” my mother says. “Tell that to the shrink she’s going to need.”

On Monday, we are supposed to go back to school, but I don’t want to. I tell my mother I’m not feeling well. She holds her hand against my forehead only for a moment, biting her bottom lip.

“Evelyn, I can see you’re upset.”

I roll my eyes. “I’m just sick. I wasn’t friends with any of them.”

“I know. I know. But still, honey. I can see you’re upset.”

I go back to my room and lie down, and she brings me a 7-UP, plugs her tape player in next to my bed. But I don’t play it. I know I am not really sick, but it is all