The Beginning of After

by Jennifer Castle

  The Beginning of After

  Jennifer Castle

  Dedication

  For Sadie and Clea

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty - one

  Chapter Twenty - two

  Chapter Twenty - three

  Chapter Twenty - four

  Chapter Twenty - five

  Chapter Twenty - six

  Chapter Twenty - seven

  Chapter Twenty - eight

  Chapter Twenty - nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty - one

  Chapter Thirty - two

  Chapter Thirty - three

  Chapter Thirty - four

  Chapter Thirty - five

  Chapter Thirty - six

  Chapter Thirty - seven

  Chapter Thirty - eight

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter One

  Anyone who’s had something truly crappy happen to them will tell you: It’s all about Before and After. What I’m talking about here is the ka-pow, shake-you-to-your-core-and-turn-your-bones-to-plastic kind of crappy. One part of your life unyokes from the other.

  I use this word, unyoke, because I spent my last few hours of Before studying the Us on an SAT vocabulary list. It was April of my junior year in high school. I was sixteen, and I had the test date, less than two weeks away, marked with three purple exclamation points on my wall calendar.

  Unyoke: to separate. Mr. Lee from my SAT prep course taught us to create a mental image that would help us remember what a word meant. I pictured myself making cake frosting in our chipped blue china bowl, pulling the snot of an egg away from its yolk. I moved on to upbraid.

  My mom yelled down the hallway from her bedroom. “Laurel, tell your brother to get dressed! We have to leave in twenty minutes!”

  Otherwise known as twenty minutes until my Chinese water torture. I would have been happy hanging with the Us all night, but instead I just drew an arrow next to upbraid to mark where I’d left off, and headed toward the sweet, slightly indecent smell of my mother’s pot roast to do what I was told.

  Thanks to all my Mr. Lee–inspired visualizing, I remember my family that night, as they got ready to leave our house and never come back, in moving snapshots. My mother fluttering between her laptop and closet, answering emails while trying on her blue dress, then her green dress, then the blue one again. My dad trudging up the driveway, fresh from the neighborhood carpool out of Manhattan, sliding his tie free of his collar. My brother, Toby, playing Xbox in the den, sunk so low into his tricked-out gaming chair it was hard to remember that he actually had a spine and could walk erect.

  “Mom says you have to put on your khaki pants and the brown shoes,” I said to him from the doorway.

  “You mean my geek clothes? Uh, no way.” He didn’t look up.

  “It’s Passover. She’s making me wear a dress.”

  “I don’t get why we have to do this.”

  “Mrs. Kaufman was worried we’d be lonely because Nana isn’t coming down for seder this year.” We were in the New York suburbs, just an hour north of the city, but Nana lived upstate. The Kaufmans were our neighbors three houses away.

  “I was hoping we could just order pizza.”

  “Tell me about it,” I said.

  “What, you don’t want to hang with your best buddy over there?” Toby actually lifted his eyes from the TV to toss me a little-brother sneer.

  “Shut up,” I said lamely, heat surging to a spot on the back of my neck.

  “Guys!” my dad said, suddenly in the room. “None of that tonight, okay? Especially you, Mr. Attitude.” He playfully poked Toby’s shoulder. “Be a grown-up. You did just get bar mitzvahed, after all.”

  “And he’s got thirteen hundred dollars in checks from the relatives to prove it,” I said. At that, my father smiled at me, one of those dad-smiles that make you feel like the only daughter in the world.

  Soon we were all changed and heading out the door, my parents each carrying a foil-covered dish. Toby tugged quickly at the crotch of his good pants, thinking nobody saw.

  Mrs. Kaufman was tiny. So tiny, people were always asking her if she was okay. Dad said he worried about her on windy days. The sharp jut of her collarbone made me wonder if it would hurt to touch it.

  Now she sat at the head of her big oak dining table, drumming two manicured fingers on her good china. My parents and Toby and I shifted in our chairs, while Mr. Kaufman stood in the corner of the room with a glass of scotch, saying “You betcha, you betcha” again and again to someone on the other end of his cell phone.

  “I’m sorry,” Mrs. Kaufman said to us. “David said he’d be right down.”

  We waited another few minutes. I was nervous and hated it, trying to ignore Toby kicking my ankle under the table. Finally, Mr. Kaufman hung up the phone, stomped to the stairway, and pounded his fist on the banister. “David!” he bellowed in a voice that shook the Kaufmans’ crystal water glasses.

  A pause. I heard footsteps, a door closing, stairs thumping. The sound of David Kaufman joining us for seder.

  Then there he was, all stoopy and scruffy-looking in the doorway. His wavy black hair hung in uneven chops around his face—it was the kind of haircut he could have either done himself or gotten at a pricey salon, you could never tell. Everything about David was so familiar to me but so unsettling, like spotting someone in person after you’ve seen his picture a million times.

  When he got to the table, he swept a chunk of that hair behind one ear and glanced at me, at Toby, then at my parents, with big, bright eyes that never matched the rest of him. Especially now. He seemed confused, like he’d forgotten why our family was here, in his house, interrupting his nightly listening-to-my-iPod-and-surfing-online-porn session.

  “Hey,” he said, looking not at me but at a point two feet to my left.

  “Hi,” I said, and this time, when Toby kicked me, I kicked back hard.

  David was a year older than me and once, so long ago it could have been a dream, we were little-kid friends. Now he was a member of what everyone in our town called the Railroad Crowd, which meant he spent most of his time hanging out in the train station parking lot, smoking and drinking and carving words into the wooden benches that were supposed to be for normal people to sit on. We hadn’t spoken to each other in years except for the rare, painfully unavoidable “hi” at neighborhood parties or when we passed each other at school. But I knew what I was to him: a girl whose name was always in our local paper’s High Honors listings, the one member of the drama club who never actually appeared onstage. Despite our past as children playing together, despite our families’ friendship, David and I were in different orbits.

  I survived dinner by forgetting he was there, which was surprisingly easy to do because he just ate quietly, staring blankly at his bitter herb. When it was his turn to read, David shook his head no and passed the Haggadah to my brother. If he looked
at me at all, it was when I was glancing the other way.

  After dinner, I was helping my mother do dishes as Mrs. Kaufman put away the leftovers, and I saw a window of escape.

  “Hey, Mom?” I asked. “After we’re done, can I skip dessert and just go home? I was working on my SAT words and haven’t even gotten to my homework yet.”

  She just paused. “I think Mrs. Kaufman has spent a lot of time making a flourless apple tart.”

  “Me?” squeaked Mrs. Kaufman, surprised. “Deborah, I thought you were making it!”

  They looked at each other for a very tense moment, and I actually thought some kind of fistfight might break out. But then they were laughing.

  Mrs. Kaufman led us back into the dining room, clearing her throat to interrupt the men, who were deep in discussion about money-market funds. Toby was standing by the window, fogging it with his breath and drawing shapes. David stood nearby and watched him with a slight, begrudging amusement.

  “Hey, guys?” said Mrs. Kaufman. “We had a little dessert mix-up and, well, there isn’t any. I do think we have some Easter chocolate from Gabe’s office, but that doesn’t seem right.”

  Mr. Kaufman stood up. “I’d say that’s a perfect excuse to go get ice cream. How about it?”

  “Freezy’s?” Toby asked, his finger paused in the middle of making a big O on the window.

  “Heck, yeah,” said Mr. Kaufman. “We’ve done our job here. Let’s go out and have some milk shakes.”

  I tugged at the back of Mom’s dress, and she took the cue. “Oh, Laurel’s going to head home. She’s got some homework to finish up.”

  “We’ll bring you something back,” said my dad, winking.

  Now David, who was still by the window, sprang to life.

  “I can’t go either. I have to go down to Kevin’s. . . .” He was thinking quickly. “He promised to help me with calculus.”

  Mrs. Kaufman looked at her son, and I got the sense that she had never even heard him say the word calculus before.

  “Fine,” she said defeatedly. “But I want you back here as soon as we come home. I’ll call if I have to.”

  “Yeah, yeah, whatever,” David was saying, already on his way to the hall closet.

  “It’s drizzling. Take an umbrella,” said Mrs. Kaufman.

  He looked at her, rolled his eyes, and grabbed his leather jacket. He waved at us, murmured something that passed for good-bye, and was out the door.

  The dads were talking about transportation now. Mr. Kaufman had a new hybrid SUV and was anxious to show how roomy it was. I walked with everyone down to the garage, where the car sat all shiny and eager to please.

  Mrs. Kaufman handed me an umbrella out of nowhere. “Here. I know you don’t have far to go, but why get wet?” she said. Her look seemed to say, I wish I had a daughter just like you, who preferred homework over that bad egg Kevin McNaughton.

  Toby climbed into the backseat of the car, humming something. My mom opened the other back door and leaned to kiss me on the cheek. “You have your key, right?”

  I nodded, patting my purse. As the garage door opened and Mr. Kaufman started the engine, I walked toward the driveway and waved at my dad in the front passenger seat.

  Then I opened the umbrella as they drove past me, so Mrs. Kaufman could see, but once they turned the corner, away from the house and down the hill, I closed it again. The rain was light and dainty, and I loved the feel of it on my skin as I headed toward home.

  Chapter Two

  My cell phone rang an hour later, just as I was finishing my French homework at the kitchen table.

  “Can you talk?” whispered my best friend, Megan Dill, who lived one street over.

  “Yeah, I came back early and nobody’s here. Sweet freedom.”

  “How was it?” she asked.

  “Awkward but survivable. David barely talked to anyone during the whole dinner.”

  “He’s such a freak.”

  I heard meowing and turned around to see our cats, Elliot and Selina, sitting anxiously at the back door, waiting to go outside.

  “I know,” I said, getting up. “It’s like, once he decided to be friends with the Railroads, they gave him an instruction manual. Rule one, be grumpy and brooding at all times.”

  I opened the door and the cats scrambled past my legs, apparently late for some appointment in the woods across the street. Elliot paused for a second to look back at me with half-closed “Don’t wait up” eyes, and then they were gone.

  “Rule two,” continued Meg, “you may only smoke Marlboro Reds, wear high-top sneakers, and carry all combs in your right back pocket. They’re such a joke. They want to be rebels, but they’re obsessed with fitting in with each other just like anyone else.”

  “You’re the one who had a crush him,” I said, noticing a pot roast glob on the kitchen counter. I wiped it with my thumb and sucked the sauce off, knowing how completely gross that was.

  “Like a hundred years ago, when he was still partially human.” He’s alterna-hot, Meg used to say. I preferred not to go there at all with David; I’d known him for too long, and it was weird to think some girls considered him good-looking.

  “Speaking of guys, how is Will these days?” I asked, ready to change the subject.

  “I think it’s safe to say he’s not going to ask me to the prom.”

  “Why not?”

  “Apparently he started going out with Georgia Marinese last week.”

  “Oh, Meg, I’m sorry.”

  “Eh, it’s kind of a relief that he doesn’t like me anymore. I would have gone to the prom with him just to go, you know.”

  “You can do better.”

  “We’ll both do better.”

  The prom was more than a month away but the frenzy was already building, and I wasn’t sure I wanted any part of it. As juniors we were eligible to go, but there was nobody I liked enough. There had never been anybody I liked enough. Meg was the one who clicked with every boy she ever met, with her easy wit and striking black Irish beauty. I was the runner-up version of her; the quieter brunette with straight, thin hair that could only sometimes inspire a ponytail or braid.

  As a pair, we were not popular but not outcasts. Not gorgeous but not ugly, not fat but not thin. I was best known for getting As, starting the Tutoring Club, and painting scenery for the drama productions. Meg was in the show choir, and while she never got the lead in plays and musicals, she usually nabbed a juicy supporting role. Mostly people just didn’t think about us, which Mom always said was a good thing, but I never got why.

  “If we don’t do better,” Meg added, “we won’t go at all.”

  Good, I thought. That would make my life easier.

  Suddenly, I heard something near the front of the house.

  “Meg, hang on,” I said. “I think someone’s at the door.”

  We sat silent for a few seconds, and I could hear my breathing sync up with Meg’s on the other end of the line.

  There it was again, two short knocks. Insistent. But I wasn’t supposed to answer the door if I was the only one home.

  “I’m walking you into the living room,” I said to Meg, shifting the phone to my other ear. “If it’s an ax murderer, you’ll be able to hear the whole thing.”

  There was a big window adjacent to our front door, and I slowly drew aside the curtain, just a few inches, to see who it was.

  A police officer, holding his hat in his hands, looking down at his feet.

  That was it. The end of Before, and the beginning of After.

  Now I had a new mental image for unyoke.

  There weren’t many details about the accident for Lieutenant Roy Davis to explain to me. Things were said and things were asked, and suddenly I was sitting cross-legged on the living room floor, pushed down there by the weight of new information.

  My mother, father, and someone they assumed was my brother had been pronounced dead on arrival at Phillips Memorial Hospital.

  So had Mrs. Kaufman.

>   Mr. Kaufman was in the emergency room. Not dead on arrival. More like pretty seriously messed up on arrival.

  Somehow, the new SUV had gone off the road, tumbled into a steep ditch, and caught fire. They didn’t know how, and they didn’t know why.

  These were simply facts with nowhere to go. Leaves fallen on the water, floating in clumps, too light to break the surface.

  And now, things just stopped, hard. Like the air; I couldn’t feel it moving around me anymore. Or my ability to swallow; I was sure that if I tried it, my throat would freeze up and get stuck like that forever. It was as if I was suddenly sealed up in a bubble where everything was completely and totally wrong, wrong, wrong and I had to get out.

  How do I get out? Can I take one big step and be on the other side of it? Maybe if I say something, anything, the whole thing will just POP.

  So I blurted the first thing that came to mind: “What should I do now?”

  Lieutenant Davis started to answer but stopped himself, biting his lip. Then I realized the scale of my question.

  “I mean, do I need to go to a morgue or someplace?” I said. “Do I need to sign something?”

  His face softened into a real sadness. “We do need someone to identify the . . . them . . . but it doesn’t have to be you. Is there a relative you’d like us to contact?”

  Nana. I thought of her getting home from dinner at her friend Sylvia’s house. Combing the hairspray out of her hair, wiping the Clinique off her lips. There was no way I was making that phone call.

  I gave Lieutenant Davis my grandmother’s number and handed him the phone.

  An hour later, I lay on the white couch in the living room, the one we used only when guests came over, with my head in Meg’s lap. Mrs. Dill, Meg’s mom, sat on the floor holding one of my hands. Theirs was the second number I had given Lieutenant Davis. Mr. Dill and Megan’s sister, Mary, were on their way north, a three-hour drive, to get my grandmother.

  “Just close your eyes and breathe,” said Mrs. Dill. “Just breathe.”