That thought grabbed hold of me and held on tight.
Mr. Churchwell paused, then said, “Okay, Laurel. I’ll see you on Saturday. If you have anything else you want to talk about, don’t hesitate to call.”
“Thank you,” I squeaked out, then hung up.
Wiggle out of it. Focus.
I grabbed my SAT prep book and stared at it again, and it was like a hole I could climb through to escape this tight little box of guilt. I headed to my favorite study spot: the three-foot alley behind the white couch and a wall of windows in the living room. I was just getting settled in when I looked out the window and saw our neighbor Mr. Mita out on the street, walking Masher, the Kaufmans’ dog. Masher was straining at his leash, desperate for a little speed and freedom, but Mr. Mita was having trouble keeping up. Masher was a good dog, a black-and-white Border collie with a T-shaped blaze down his forehead. He was always getting out of his yard and roaming the neighborhood, checking up on our houses like they were his flock of sheep.
I thought of Masher in the Kaufmans’ house, not understanding why everyone was gone but sensing something big had happened. Whining at the windows. Scratching at the front door. Confused and devastated, sort of like me.
Fifteen minutes later, I found myself on the Mitas’ porch, knocking.
“What?” said Nana when I told her.
“I feel it’s the right thing to do,” I offered in my defense.
“Can I at least think about it overnight?”
“Mr. Mita’s bringing him over in half an hour. He’s just getting the bowls and food and stuff from the Kaufmans’.”
“Laurel . . . ,” Nana said, dropping her head so she could rub her forehead with two fingers. “You know how I feel about dogs.”
But then she looked up at me and I met her eyes, and I could see her giving in.
Wow, I thought. She can’t say no to me.
I’d always wanted a dog, for as long as I could remember. “We travel too much,” my dad would say when I mentioned it. “I’m not a dog person,” my mother would whine.
So I chose to picture only Toby’s reaction—laughing, rolling on the floor with glee—when Masher burst into our living room that night, all hyper and poking his nose everywhere he could fit it. He smelled musty and his coat was dusty, and he kept shaking it out like he was trying to brush off the lonely, dark, sad place his home had become, and I vowed to give him a bath in the morning. In minutes he was curled on top of me, panting and licking my elbows, and getting dirty looks from the cats.
I started studying like crazy. It seemed my fingertips were always on the edge of the SAT book, feeling the frayed softness or running across the glossy surface of its cover. When Meg came over so we could quiz each other, we didn’t ever talk about school, but one night she said casually, “Julia La Paz came over today and talked to me. She asked me how you were.”
“Ew.”
Julia was David’s girlfriend and had neon-pink hair down past her shoulders. Sometimes people called her “My Little Pony” to be mean.
“No, she was like, kinda nice. Depressed, actually. She hasn’t heard from David in a week.”
I tried to picture Meg and Julia chatting together by a locker, their heads close, but couldn’t do it. It was like trying to imagine the earth flat.
“Did she go to the hospital? She knows he’s there, right?”
Meg nodded. “She knows. She’s just scared.”
And then I shut up, because yeah, I would be scared too.
On SAT Saturday I awoke from the deepest sleep I’d had since the accident. I didn’t have any dreams, and my sheets weren’t even soaked with sweat. Right away, words started marching through my head. Assiduous: “hard-working.” Ostentatious: “displaying wealth.” Vindicate: “to clear from blame.” Rancorous: “hateful.” They came in an order that made no sense to me but seemed prearranged by something.
Dad? Is it you, doing that?
Then I shook the notion loose, out of my head. There was no room for that today.
An hour later, the Dills’ minivan pulled up the driveway where I was pacing back and forth, and I was surprised to see Mrs. Dill behind the wheel with that wide, rigid smile she’d always had for me, even before the accident. Meg was slumped in the backseat. As I climbed in next to her, she rolled her eyes.
“Mom insisted on driving us. She says she wants me to relax.”
“Are you nervous?” I asked.
“I stopped studying at eight o’clock and watched TV all night. I figure, if I don’t know it by now, I never will.”
We rode in silence toward the high school, and it hit me. I was going to see people. They were going to see me.
As we stepped inside the lobby of the main entrance, I locked my eyes onto a spot on the floor, not knowing where to look. But within seconds I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned around to see Mr. Churchwell.
“Laurel!” he said with a plastered-on grin. “It’s so good to see you.” Then, his voice got lower and the grin vanished. “You’re okay? You still want to do this?”
I nodded, and then he pulled me aside.
“Well, we’ve arranged something a little special for you. The College Board gave us permission to let you take the test in a room by yourself. I will be there too, of course, but no other students. Would you like that?”
I looked at his bright eyes, that earnest wrinkle in the middle of his forehead, and wondered if anyone in the adult world thought he was cute.
“Thank you,” I said. “That would be great.”
“I’ll take you to the classroom we’ve set up for you.” He started to lead me away, and I turned back to Meg, who had been watching us and was now shooting me a puzzled glance. I just shrugged at her before turning to follow Mr. Churchwell away from the crowd.
I hadn’t even gotten the chance to wish my best friend good luck.
It was a long morning taking the critical reading and then the writing parts of the test at a desk in the middle of the faculty lounge, Mr. Churchwell sitting at a nearby table with a copy of Rolling Stone, but the tests didn’t surprise me at all. I felt prepared—thank you, SAT prep course! During the breaks I got at the end of each hour, I used the teachers’ private bathroom and listened to the buzz of voices in the hallway.
I finished the math section early and signaled Mr. Churchwell.
“I’m done. What should I do?”
“You want to check your answers?”
“I did. I’m done.”
He glanced at his watch and came over to me. “Then I guess I’ll just take that,” he said, holding out his hand for the test, “and you can go early.” I handed him the answer sheet and he took it gently, like it was something precious. “How do you think you did?” he whispered.
The way he said that, as if he was begging for me to share a secret, sounded almost exactly like my mother.
Do you think Mrs. Dixon liked your project? Did everyone laugh at the right times during your mock newscast?
She never wanted to sound like a pushy, overbearing parent. She wanted to be like the encouraging friend, confident that I’d do well in whatever I tried. So she’d ask me with her voice at half volume to sound like she only half cared, which totally bugged me. Because she fully cared, and I knew it.
The sensation of missing Mom came at me fast and hard, right into my chest. I might have even stumbled backward from the impact.
Not here! Not now! And definitely not in front of Mr. Churchwell.
I quickly imagined that I could reach my hand into my chest, yank out that awful feeling, place it on an invisible cloud of air right in front of me, then push it away. Push it away.
And it worked. I could almost see it float past Mr. Churchwell’s head and out the door.
“I think I did okay,” I finally said, trying to pick up his question even though several long, terribly quiet moments had passed.
“You have a ride home?” he asked. If he sensed how close I’d just come to losing it, he
didn’t let on.
“Megan’s mom.”
“And so I’ll see you again . . .”
“On Monday.” That just came out. I hadn’t really decided when I was going back to school. But now that I was there, it seemed so totally possible. I could come back. I could pick right up where I’d left off and still finish the school year on time.
“Are you sure?” Mr. Churchwell asked.
“Absolutely,” I said, and stood up, moving toward the door. “Have a great weekend.”
I opened the door slowly and peeked my head into the hallway. It was empty, so I slid out, knowing exactly where I needed to go to wait for Meg. I made it outside quickly and flew down the steps of the school’s entrance, following a concrete path around the side of the building and to the oak tree. It was our oak tree, the only one on school grounds with a trunk wide enough for two people to disappear behind, now fully green with shade. This was where Meg and I liked to hang out at lunchtime.
Most kids coming out of the school would be headed straight for their cars in the opposite direction; they’d never think to come this way. I pulled out my cell phone and sent a text message to Meg that just said:
@ d tree
Then my thumb reached toward the 2 button that would speed-dial the house.
And I froze. I’d been about to call home. Holy crap, is it that easy to forget they’re not there?
No. You were just going to call Nana. Nana, who IS there.
It was simpler at that moment not to call at all.
I heard the front doors open and some voices, loud for a moment or two, then fading slowly. The front doors again, then fading voices. A third time I heard the doors open, and the voices, but they didn’t fade; they were getting stronger, along with footsteps.
I looked up, hoping to see Meg, but it was Andie Stokes and Hannah Lindstrom. Pretty and popular, not mean but unapproachable. Generally superhuman. And they were walking toward me.
“Hi, Laurel,” said Hannah.
“Megan Dill said you might be here,” said Andie.
I had to shield my eyes from the sun to look up at them, but didn’t stand. I was really just too nervous to move, and then I felt like an idiot for that. These were girls from my school who I’d known forever. Once, when we were little, I’d taken a bath with one of them, but I couldn’t remember which.
Now they came and sat down with me, on the ground made bumpy by the oak tree’s roots.
“We just wanted to say hi and let you know how sad we are for you,” said Andie, sweeping her famous chestnut brown hair away from her face. “You must be going through hell.”
“It’s so brave of you to do this today,” added Hannah, blond, touching my shoulder.
“Thank you.”
“We’re starting up a memorial fund, from our class to your family,” said Andie. She was known for her obsession with charities, always coordinating some kind of clean-up day, food drive, or group donation. Some kids did sports, Andie did Good.
“We’d like to do something, you know, permanent. Maybe plant a tree at the rec center park,” chimed in Hannah, who was wearing one of the craveable dresses she designed and sewed herself.
“Okay,” I said, still feeling like a moron. Why couldn’t I say something funny or smart? I was always looking for a chance to talk to these girls, and now here I was, mute.
The rec center park. That was a nice spot, near the town pool and tennis courts, where they had Family Fun Night every summer. The year before, Toby and I had almost won the egg toss, but he’d dropped it when there were just three pairs left. I was pissed, that evening in late August. I’d never won anything at Family Fun Night and was sick of Mom always packing a picnic from the Taco Bell drive-through instead of preparing sandwiches and salad and cookies like all the other moms did, and making us go home before the fireworks because they gave her a headache.
It wasn’t a great memory, but the thought of it still made my throat close up. Fortunately, just then Meg appeared around the corner with a mortified look on her face. She came toward us and said hi to Hannah and Andie, then reached down and helped me up without asking if I needed the hand.
“My mom’s here,” said Megan, and we said quick good-byes before stumbling away.
“What the hell was that?” I asked her once we were out of earshot.
“I am so sorry. They cornered me after the test and asked if I knew where you were, and for some reason I told them because I’d just gotten your message, and before I could follow them out, stupid Mrs. Cox came over to talk to me about my English paper.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “They were just being nice.”
At least, I think that’s what it was. If Andie Stokes and Hannah Lindstrom being nice felt like being run over by a steamroller and thinking you should be grateful, then yeah, that was it for sure.
When Mrs. Dill dropped me home, Nana was on the phone with someone. She waved at me as I closed the front door, then turned away. Masher ran in from another room, and I knelt down to bury my fingers in the fur on his back.
“Yes, I understand,” she said in what I knew was her “I was raised to be pleasant to everyone” tone. “Well, we appreciate the update, Lieutenant. If there’s anything we can do to help, just let us know.” She hung up the phone quickly, then turned back around. “Oh! I was hoping to be able to give you a big congratulations hug the second you walked in!”
“Who was that?” I asked. I stood up, and Masher darted from the room, like he knew his job for now was done.
“It was Lieutenant Davis, just filling us in.”
“On what?”
“Can we talk about it later? I want to hear about the tests.”
“After you tell me what he said.”
Nana sighed and looked at the ceiling. “They’re trying to determine an official cause of the accident. They need to do that, you know, for their records.”
“I know about records.”
“Well, they said Mr. Kaufman may have had too much to drink; they tested his blood alcohol level in the hospital that night. It was right on the borderline. But Lieutenant Davis personally thinks there was another car involved. So they’re still hoping someone will step forward.”
I sat down, remembering what I’d overheard at the funeral, and felt almost glad that the blame on Mr. Kaufman was becoming more official. If I could blame him, I couldn’t blame myself. I could hate him, even, and nobody would fault me for it.
Not my dad. I knew he always disliked Mr. Kaufman a little, along with the two or three other dads in our neighborhood who made lots of money and bought lots of big, obvious things with it. My parents didn’t think I knew but they struggled to support us, and sometimes they didn’t quite make it and needed help from Nana.
“But I don’t want you to concern yourself with all this accident stuff,” said Nana now. “It doesn’t affect us.”
“Of course it affects us. How can it not affect us?” I asked, not ready to drop it yet.
Now Nana turned from sad to a little fierce, her eyes narrowing.
“We have our own job with grieving and getting on with our lives. I won’t let them keep you from being able to do that.”
I saw that she had tears in her eyes, and all I wanted was to take them out.
“I’m sorry, Nana,” I said. “You’re right.”
She nodded, then went into the kitchen and came out with a plate of brownies. “I made these to celebrate the SATs.”
And just like that, the conversation was over.
Chapter Five
It rained hard the next day. “Pissing,” as my dad liked to say. It was pissing out, drumming a steady, angry rhythm onto the roof of the Volvo and the slate stones of our front terrace. Nana let me stay in bed, watching TV, eating my special SAT brownies. Masher lay on my left, stretched out alongside my body with one front leg across my arm. Elliot and Selina took turns at the foot of the bed.
Once, toward late afternoon, I heard Nana approach my bedroom door.
I quickly dropped my head to the side, closed my eyes, and opened my mouth a bit in expert pretended zzz’s. I knew this made her happy; one more thing to check off on her mental daily list. Make sure Laurel gets enough sleep.
But then someone knocked on the front door.
I heard Nana open it, and a voice I couldn’t place. After a few minutes, curiosity got the better of me, and I wandered out of my room.
David Kaufman was sitting on the bench in our foyer, taking off his boots. He was drenched, and Nana was already in the kitchen making him coffee.
“Hi,” I said, and he looked up.
“Hi, Laurel,” he said, and it occurred to me that he probably hadn’t said my name out loud, to anybody, in years.
He looked bad. Dark circles pressed themselves against the skin under his eyes, which didn’t seem as round as they used to be, and he’d broken out. I couldn’t help staring at this one really big zit on his nose.
David took off his jacket and reached up to hang it on one of the wall hooks, then noticed that Toby’s jean jacket was already there. He paused; when I didn’t react, he carefully put his jacket on top of Toby’s.
I didn’t know what else to say to him. It seemed crazy yet perfectly sensible that he should be in my house at this moment. I could continue with “How are you?” but knew I hated the question myself.
Then I thought of Mr. Kaufman, and the anger rose in me. Keeping my voice steady, trying to make it sound more curious than vengeful, I asked, “What’s going on with your dad?”
“They’ve moved him out of ICU, but there’s still no change,” he said, rubbing one of his feet where the sock had soaked through. I had a quick flashback of David and me sitting on that bench when we were kids, pulling snow-encrusted mittens and hats away from our limbs and onto the floor.
“He could wake up any day, they say,” continued David. “They say my being there might help that happen, so that’s why I’m not coming home.” This came out all practiced and mechanical, like it was a line he’d been using a lot. He said it like there was no reason why I wouldn’t want his dad to be okay.
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