The Beginning of After

by Jennifer Castle

  But if he was deflating, I was doing the opposite. Something in me was filling with air.

  “You’re an orphan too,” I said, as matter-of-factly as I could. This made David stand up, his confusion giving way to defensiveness.

  “No, my dad is still alive. He’ll be fine.”

  “If that’s what you want to believe. Personally, I think he’s going to be a veg forever.”

  I blamed that one on the alcohol, making me brave for one or two seconds at a time.

  “Shut up,” he snapped.

  So I’d struck a nerve.

  “Which is what he deserves,” I said, “considering he killed four people.”

  David paused, his hand squeezing the plastic bottle so tight I heard it pop a bit. “My dad wasn’t drunk.”

  “He didn’t have to be drunk,” I said. “He just had to be careless. Either way, he’s a murderer.”

  David wanted to hit me. I could tell. He wanted to hit me so bad that his heels came up out of his shoes. I had put my beer cup on the ground, and now he kicked it into the pool, where it landed without making noise.

  Even though he was standing and I was sitting, I could feel things shift. I had found a box of ammunition somewhere, tucked into the back of my mind. What else was in it?

  “What about Masher?” I asked, as if we were a married couple breaking up, figuring out custody of our joint life.

  “What about him?”

  “I don’t have to take care of him. I can give him back to your grandparents.”

  David shook his head, looked away. “You can’t do that. They don’t want him.”

  “Then you want me to take care of him?”

  David’s face had caved in a bit, the shadows carving deeper across his cheeks and chin. He didn’t seem that different from Toby after one of our arguments, after I’d beaten him on every front. This was when Toby would have jumped on me for the wrestling portion of the program, but I was pretty sure David wasn’t about to do that.

  “Yes,” he said, and placed his kamikaze bottle carefully on the ground.

  “Yes, what?” That’s what this ammunition box was. Big-sister power. The only power I had in the world, at least when Toby was still in it.

  “Take care of my dog, please,” whispered David. He turned around and walked back toward the house, then around it in the direction of the driveway. I watched him cross paths with Joe, who looked at David, registered where he was coming from, and searched me out in the half-light. In seconds he was running over to me.

  “What was David Kaufman doing here?” asked Joe, breathless. “Did he talk to you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What did he say?”

  I opened my mouth to recap it, to report it to Joe in order to make it all real, but instead a noise came out like a sob. Loud, a short barking burst.

  “Oh my God,” said Joe, and he scrambled onto the lounge chair with me, his hand on my back. “What happened? What’s the matter?”

  I turned my head to answer him and wow, his face was so much closer than I thought. There wasn’t enough room between us for words.

  So I kissed him. I had practiced on my pillow dozens of times, and I was so used to that pillow that I didn’t even expect Joe to kiss back. But he did, his lips warm and larger than I imagined they’d be. Hesitant at first, a little confused, but then confident and well-trained. He put his hand on the side of my head, his palm moist against my ear, his fingers crunching against hairspray. I stepped out of us for a second, in my head, to get a wide-angle shot of how it looked from a few feet away, wondering if it matched what I’d seen in movies and on TV.

  Joe pulled back after a little while, glancing around to see who might be watching.

  “Why are you stopping?” I asked, also looking around.

  Joe turned back to me and smiled. “I have no idea.” Now he put both hands on my face, one on either side, and drew me closer. His turn at kiss initiation was softer than mine, gentle, as if we had all the time in the world.

  Fooling around with Joe lasted minutes, but I couldn’t tell you how many. I had crawled into a place inside myself, hearing only my own thoughts and what Meg called “mixing tuna” noises. Do I open my eyes? What if I open them and his are open too? I should open my eyes.

  Happy, nervous, angry, excited. Neurons exploding in fireworks.

  I was laughing and then, I was crying. It started when I was still lip-locked with Joe, and it took him a few moments to pull away and see why my shoulders were heaving up and down.

  “Laurel?” he asked.

  I wanted to look up and smile, wipe away my tears, then wink at him for some damage control. But I couldn’t. I was just staring at his hand on my knee, and I was wailing.

  “Oh my God . . . ,” said Joe, standing up. Backing away.

  I put my face in my hands and let the top half of me fall toward the lounge chair, a violent crumple. Noises were coming out of me that I didn’t think I was capable of. Noises like I was being physically attacked, afraid for my life, a girl in an alley at midnight.

  The pressure of my hands against my eyelids was making me see starbursts, yellow and red, but I was seeing David’s face too.

  A freaking corsage. You’re an orphan.

  I heard Joe’s feet move away, scuffling against the patio. “Hang on, I’m going to get Meg,” he said.

  I looked up to watch him go, running. Running from me, because I’d totally freaked him out. Three minutes ago we were playing Tongue Twister, and now he was fleeing for his life. I should have been wearing a label on the back of my dress that said CONTENTS UNDER PRESSURE. OPEN WITH CARE.

  “No!” I yelled, an answer to nothing. “No!”

  I stood up, grabbed the lounge chair, and flung it across the patio. It was lighter than I thought it would be.

  Now I had an audience. Whoever had been standing around, sneaking peeks at Joe and me, was signed on for the full performance.

  I picked up the other lounge chair and threw it into the pool. It landed with a big splash and slowly started to sink. Things got very quiet, and I think someone even turned off the music inside the house. With no place to sit anymore, I moved to the lawn and lay down on my side, my right arm over my face, my left hand pulling chunks of grass out of the ground. The wailing came back, rushing out of my body.

  Before too long, Meg was kneeling in front of me. “Laurel? It’s me. I’m here.”

  I couldn’t even pull my arm away from my face. Didn’t want to look at her. “I’m sorry. God! I’m so sorry.”

  “Laurel, please just get up. Sit up. . . . Gavin, can you go get some Kleenex or something?”

  I heard Gavin rush away, his feet on the patio like Joe’s a few minutes earlier.

  For Meg I sat up, even as another wave overtook me and I sobbed again. She held me and I felt her wrist corsage poke the back of my neck. We began to rock.

  “Shhhh . . . shhhh . . . it’s okay,” she said.

  “I—”

  She cut me off. “Don’t talk. Just breathe.”

  Gavin was back. Joe was with him. They stood there, their legs forming a sparse, silent forest around me and Meg. Joe held out the box of tissues, letting it hover over our heads, but neither of us took it from him.

  Chapter Eleven

  I woke up to the sound of thunder and heavy rain pinging against my window.

  It wasn’t really “waking up,” exactly. It was more like opening my eyes away from the half sleep that had been pulling my mind along a string of strange thoughts and images.

  At one point I was thinking about what my brother looked like when they buried him, whether they’d combed his hair back with gel or left a careful forelock to frame his face. Which made me think of the six months in middle school when I used styling mousse because I thought it made me look more like a character on my favorite TV show. That led me to my seventh-grade art teacher, Ms. Weber, who married our English teacher Mr. Weber and everyone thought it was so incredible that they alread
y had the same name. Then this got me thinking about whether or not I would keep Meisner when I got married or become a Mrs. Somebody.

  I jumped back to that first thought of Toby in his casket, feeling horrified and ashamed. How could this have landed me in the “fantasize about your future husband” place?

  It had been three days since the prom. Three days since Manny drove Meg and me and Joe and Gavin to my house in total silence, me hugging Meg tight with my eyes closed, and Nana giving me a pill and putting me to bed for the night. In those three days I had not gotten out of bed, and since the moment that pill wore off I hadn’t gotten any real sleep, either. I wouldn’t let Nana dose me again. It felt like cheating.

  Meg called the day after.

  “I don’t know what to say, Laurel. I really just don’t have a clue.” She sounded nervous, unsure of herself.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I’ll be okay.” I tried to sound like I believed it.

  “Call me if you need anything,” said Meg, more casually now, as if a quick trip to the drugstore for shampoo and Tylenol would solve all my problems.

  Joe had called too. Twice. I’d had Nana tell him I was sleeping. It was nice to know he was concerned—Tell Laurel I hope she’s feeling better was the message—but I couldn’t bring myself to talk to him. Even though I could still feel his lips on my lips, his hand on my neck, when I tried to picture his face all I could see was how he’d looked at me when I started to sob. It was just too mortifying.

  Then there was the thought of David, smirking and frowning and collapsing, and retreating. David cruel and bullying, then David quivery and scared like the little boy I still remembered despite my best efforts not to. All that morphing left me baffled and intrigued and ultimately filled with sorrow; then I reminded myself of what he’d taken from me—a lovely night, a sweet first kiss, a memory to hold on to—and that brought back a swell of fury. If the swell started to go down, I added in the image of Mr. Kaufman driving his SUV, squinting and slurring and swerving, and it grew again.

  Sometimes I imagined what I’d do if I had a time machine and could go back to a single minute, any minute, of my life. In this time machine I’d travel to the minute of the accident night where, instead of asking permission to go home and work, I’d decide to go to Freezy’s with everyone else. My parents and Toby and I would walk back to our house and get into our own car, planning to meet the Kaufmans there. Mr. Kaufman would even be kind of bummed that we won’t get to check out his sweet new car, and my dad would be glad about it. We’d have dessert, and it would be totally boring, and then we’d come home to more boringness. But my parents would be downstairs now, arguing with Toby about leaving his socks on the couch.

  The no-sleep thing made it all worse, of course, but I didn’t seem to have any say in the matter. I’d gotten used to the headache and the pain behind my eyes, the sensation of pressure on my every muscle. This kind of exhaustion made me feel somehow more awake.

  And my family’s bodies kept me company.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about what they looked like. Nana had insisted on closed caskets. It was Jewish tradition, she said, but I knew it was also because of the burns and because of my mother. She’d been an organ donor, and somewhere out there, there were people alive with parts of her in them. I knew I’d be able to get that information someday. I might even want it, someday. But for now, all I could do was think of Mom as Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas, with stitchwork seams holding her together.

  What did their skin look like? How bad were the burns? Did their faces look peaceful, or anguished?

  I wished I’d had the presence of mind at the funeral to really look at those three caskets, one shorter than the other two. To tell myself that this was the last time my parents and Toby would physically be in the world together, and hold that moment close enough to feel like a good-bye.

  Now the rain tapped harder against the glass, as if trying to shake those images loose. I had to get my family out of those caskets and talking, breathing. Doing stuff.

  What a shame not to be outside today, Mom said in my head. My mother hated any day that didn’t involve sunshine. She’d seek it out wherever she went, moving her plastic lounge chair around the backyard as the bright spot traveled. She sucked up sunlight like a plant in photosynthesis, and never saw the beauty in bad weather.

  Dad did, though. His voice now: Whoa, look at how the wind blows the rain sideways. Watch the sky. We might just see some lightning. Hey Laurel, there’s a word on your SAT list that fits here. Can you guess it?

  Yes, Dad. Fulminate: “to cause to explode.”

  Toby. What was Toby saying?

  I’m going outside anyway! I pictured him by the door, putting on his rubber boots, grabbing an empty jelly jar in case he found something worth keeping. He liked to bring back slugs and pour salt on them to watch them shrivel up, and I’d yell at him for being so cruel.

  My body shook down into sobs again, and I grabbed the towel Nana had left folded on my nightstand. We’d given up on Kleenex that first post-prom day.

  Now Nana must have heard I was officially awake and knocked on the door once before coming in. She didn’t creep into the room slowly anymore but rather stepped briskly all the way inside.

  “Will you get out of bed today, sweetie?”

  “Probably not.”

  Nana’s mouth fell into a flat line, and I turned to gaze at the ceiling.

  “I think you should. I talked to Suzie Sirico. She can make time to see you today.”

  “Please stop with the Suzie stuff. It’s not going to happen.”

  Nana sighed and left with the same forced-fast movement she’d arrived with. I got the feeling that to her, my bedridden, grief-soaked, deep-black funk had a forty-eight-hour time limit and had just expired.

  But time didn’t seem to matter anymore. It was something that could be stretched or twisted or thrown down to the floor as I saw fit. In the back of my fuzzy, buzzing mind, I knew it was now Tuesday. I imagined the rhythm of the school week, the air still electric with tales of Laurel’s Freak-Out. The people who’d actually witnessed it suddenly in demand and more important. And Joe, who’d actually been kissing me at the time. I couldn’t even think about it.

  I rolled toward the wall and covered my head with a pillow, then heard Masher come in, the slight jingle of his collar. Nana must have left the bedroom door ajar. Sniff, sniff, sniff, very businesslike at my shoulders and back. Thud as he planted his butt on the floor, thump, thump went his tail. Usually it took Masher just a few seconds of my not responding to leave, the jingling slower and fainter on the way out. But now the thump, thump kept thumping. I took the pillow off my face and turned to face him.

  “Sorry, buddy, not today. Ask Nana to let you out in the yard.”

  Masher was doing the big-eyed head tilt that dogs do when they’re trying to work you, but to me, right now, he belonged to the person who had caused the most embarrassing moment of my life. I rolled back and waited for the sound of him leaving, which took a few seconds. Then the sound down the hall of Masher whining, and Nana muttering something, and the back door opening and closing.

  It was the last thing I heard before drifting into a real, complete, dreamless sleep.

  “Laurel? You sound weird.”

  “I just woke up from a nap.”

  I’d been sleeping for eight hours when Meg called, and Nana brought the phone in and made me sit up. The light had traveled to the late-afternoon spot in my room, and although my body was still only half-awake, it felt full, like it had been starving and just stolen a huge meal.

  “How are you feeling today?” Meg asked, her voice insecure again. I hated to hear her like that, with me.

  “I slept. That’s good, I guess.” I wanted to ask her about school, about Gavin. I had a vague memory of Meg holding me the other night, her hair fallen out of its updo, the straps of her dress crooked on her shoulders from the interrupted make-out session in the limo. But the words di
dn’t come.

  “That’s definitely good,” she said, then drew in a quick breath and added, “I know it’s probably the last thing you want to think about right now, but I have to ask you a question.”

  “Okay.”

  “About PAP.”

  Ugh.

  PAP meant Performing Arts Program. It was a nearby day camp run by the county. A few months ago, Meg and I had both landed sought-after summer jobs as assistant counselors.

  “You forgot about it,” she teased gently.

  “No,” I lied, my throat suddenly dry.

  “Well, our paperwork is due this week.”

  “You said you had a question.”

  “Are you still going to do it? With me?”

  When I’d interviewed for the job, the director asked me why I wanted it, and I’d answered, “Because I love theater, especially everything that goes on behind the scenes, and I want to share that love with young kids. I think I have a lot to give your campers.”

  But now it seemed like years ago that I’d had anything to give anyone, especially a bunch of overdramatic middle schoolers.

  “I don’t think I can,” I said to Meg, struggling to keep my voice from collapsing.

  “That’s what I figured, but . . . I had to ask.” She paused. “Is it okay with you if I still do it?”

  We’d gone to interview together, and when we heard we’d been hired, our texts to each other contained a thousand exclamation points. A summer together! Working at this fun camp! With cute older college guys as counselors!

  “You should do it,” I said, then, brighter: “I want you to do it.”

  “Okay.” Meg paused. “I miss you.”

  “Talk later,” was all I could say back, before I hung up and crawled back under the covers to cry.

  The stairs in our house usually creaked, but I knew where to step on each one to avoid that. On some steps the creak was on the left, on others it was the right, and with one it was exactly in the middle.

  I put my foot on this step and gently moved my weight over it, remembering how long it had taken me to find the sweet spot. Years, really.