The Beginning of After

by Jennifer Castle

  “Thanks.”

  “Do you want me to run up an estimate of the costs?”

  The costs.

  Before I knew it I was crying again.

  “Oh God, please don’t cry . . . ,” said the girl. “It’s going to be okay. There are ways we can help if it’s a financial burden.”

  I sniffled and shook my head. “No, it’s not that. I mean, it is a little. But mostly I just feel so awful. This isn’t even my dog, but it’s my fault he got sick, so of course I should—”

  “This isn’t your dog?” Eve asked, a new concern drawn on her face. She had long blond bangs that half-covered her eyes.

  “Not officially. I . . . He lives with me, but he’s not . . .” I looked at Eve, who was listening, confused and interested. She did not know me or David or what had happened. This was why I’d come here. I realized it was the first time since losing my family that I was with people who didn’t know about the accident, which felt frustrating and freeing all at once.

  “His owner can’t take care of him at the moment . . . ,” I finally continued, steadying myself. “So I took him in for a while.”

  Eve’s wariness turned into a big smile, like now I was speaking her language. “Good for you,” she said approvingly. She stared at me for another few seconds and then said, “Hey, I don’t know if you’re looking for a job or anything, but we need someone to help out in the office for the summer. We have a current student, but she’s leaving next week.”

  I stood frozen for a moment. A job?

  “Or maybe you know someone. I was going to post something at the high school today. It’s just a few hours a week. I’m not sure how much time you have.”

  I thought of Nana in the car and Meg at school and the wide, unstructured expanse of my bed. Then I asked, “Can you tell me more about what it involves?”

  i want to c u! can i come dwn?

  I texted Meg as soon as Nana and I got home. The sky had gone white and the air was hanging heavy in preparation for something. But after my morning, the punch of seeing Masher suffering and having to leave him at the vet’s, and then arranging to come in on Monday to start training as a summer office assistant, I didn’t feel like staying in the house.

  r u kidding? get here asap! came the text back from Meg.

  “Is it okay if I go over to Meg’s?” I asked Nana. Her eyes brightened. They had already sparkled a little when I’d asked her permission to start working at the vet’s. Anything that got me out into the world again, doing stuff, apparently caused some kind of power surge inside her.

  “Of course. Just call me if you think you’ll be awhile.”

  I nodded and headed down the hill to her house.

  It was the first time since the accident that I’d walked the distance between our house and the Dills’, instead of driving, and it hit me: It’s summer. It had still been spring when my family died, the trees just starting to swell again, the grass patchy. Now, just seven weeks later, a thick fabric of green draped the houses in my neighborhood and fell in clumps along both sides of the road I’d walked so many times in my life. The wind blew everything this way and that, the buzz of cicadas rising and falling with the same rhythm. I was used to noticing scenery and landscapes because of my Drama Club painting. This time, it was like the landscape was noticing me.

  I thought of Masher. Part of me wondered if he had done it on purpose, eaten the rat poison—probably at a neighbor’s house on one of his late-night outings—just to spite me into snapping out of it. It was as if he was saying, Therapy’s great and all that, but at some point you’re going to have to start paying attention to stuff.

  Like my best friend.

  When I got to Meg’s, I opened the back door and called for her, then walked in through the kitchen and past the cozy breakfast nook under which loopy embroidered letters spelled out “Bless This House” inside a frame. Although our homes were built the same year by the same company, and had almost the same layout except for a few small differences—in Meg’s house, the L of the kitchen swung left, while at mine it swung right—inside they were worlds apart. Mrs. Dill decorated her rooms with complete furniture and fabric sets from Pottery Barn so everything matched. They weren’t littered with fifteen different things from eight different trips abroad, the way ours were. Meg’s house always looked so much more like the houses we saw on sitcoms and in movies, and sometimes I envied her for that.

  “Hello?” I called from the stairs.

  I heard the door to Meg’s room open, then close, and Meg came bounding down the hall.

  “Hi, you,” I said.

  She didn’t stop but instead, hugged me tight and fast. “I can’t tell you how glad I am that you called. Come,” she said, grabbing my elbow and tugging me back toward the door. “Let’s go for a walk.”

  Just before I swiveled to follow her, I heard voices coming from Meg’s parents’ room and loud music from Mary’s.

  Outside, Meg jerked her head toward the woods behind her house and I went along, still unable to get a look at her face. But something in the way her shoulders squared off at right angles told me all was not well. Once we stepped through the wall of trees that lined the Dills’ yard, I tugged at the back of her tank top.

  “What’s up?” I asked softly.

  She turned to me, looking a bit guilty. “I needed someone to talk to, but I was afraid to call,” she said, like an apology.

  “Well, I’m here.”

  Meg looked down at the dirt and rocks surrounding our feet, then back up at me. “My dad was out all night last night. He came home this morning and . . .” She stopped, and her eyes swept across my face. “You seem different. Are you okay?”

  “Something happened today. But I’ll tell you later. Your dad was out all night and he came home and . . .”

  Meg paused, then shook her head. “No, it’ll be fine. It’s no big deal. He and my mom just had a wicked fight, and it kind of freaked me out. I want to hear about the thing that happened to you.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked. It was strange to be the one putting a hand on my friend’s elbow and sounding concerned.

  “Positive,” Meg said, and she motioned for me to keep walking. So we shuffled our usual way through the woods, past the neighbors’ houses, up the hill to a flat rock that was always just big enough for the two of us. I told Meg about Masher and the vet and Eve and the job.

  “That is awful but good about the job,” said Meg. “So I’m guessing you’re not coming back to school this year?” She said this with a forced casualness, especially the “back to school” part, throwing her glance at the treetops.

  “I’m not ready. There’s only two weeks left, anyway, right?”

  Meg nodded but kept staring up. I wasn’t sure if my not being at school made things harder or easier for her.

  “You should email Joe,” she said finally.

  “That ship has sailed,” I replied flatly. “Gone.”

  “Oh, I think that ship might just be circling the harbor. He asked about you a couple times.”

  “If he wanted to know how I was, he could have emailed me.”

  Meg shrugged. “He’s a guy. What do you expect?”

  I had no answer to that. We were silent for a few moments.

  “Hey, do you want to see my pictures from Six Flags?” she said suddenly. “Some of them are hilarious.”

  “Maybe some other time.” Or never. I had no desire to see the rest of my classmates having a totally fun, normal, end-of-school trip to the amusement park.

  We paused again. This time, I was the one who felt the need to fill the void.

  “So do they still talk about me? About prom night?”

  Meg paused. “No, I think they stopped. Lucky for you, someone smashed up four of the front windows in the science wing, and that’s the hot topic right now.”

  “When they find out who did it,” I said, “remind me to thank them.”

  Meg smiled and then turned serious. She reached out and touche
d me on the shoulder.

  “It’s going to be a good summer, Laurel. We’ll make it a good summer.”

  She was right, and I hugged her, and while we had our arms around each other I made a mental note to find out, someday soon, the full story of her dad not coming home and why she had so desperately needed to talk. Someday soon, for sure.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Masher was going to be okay. After two days in the hospital, he was ready to be released, and Eve called me from Ashland to share the good news.

  Nana had received some more of her stuff from home via UPS that morning, sent by one of her friends. I stood in the doorway of the guest room, watching her unpack clothes into the old garage-sale dresser my mom and I had once covered with painted flowers.

  Mom had said to me, “Honey, look, your roses have dimension!” and I wasn’t even sure how I’d done it. It was one of the first times we both realized that maybe I had some talent in this area. Over the course of a few months, we found and decorated a dozen more pieces of furniture: a rocking chair with vines traveling up the spokes, a toy chest with wooden alphabet blocks.

  When we ran out of room for new pieces in the house, Mom wanted us to paint a mural down the hallway wall, but my father nixed the idea, saying, “It’ll look like graffiti, and the neighbors will freak when they come over.”

  Now I watched Nana hold up a silk paisley scarf and gaze at it affectionately before laying it into one of the rose-covered drawers. She looked up and startled when she saw me.

  “Oh! I didn’t see you there.”

  “Masher can come home.”

  She looked at me like, Oh, joy.

  “I’m going to go get him.”

  “Do you want me to take you?”

  “Thanks, but . . . no. I can do it myself. I have to get used to driving back and forth to work, right?”

  “Start with little things,” Suzie had said during our second session the day before. “Just jump into them and see how it feels to you.” I was going to be seeing her twice a week for a while.

  So I turned and walked downstairs, jingling the car keys to show that yeah, I was really going to do this.

  The Volvo’s driver’s seat always used to smell like my mom, a strange combination of berries and coffee. Now that was gone and Nana’s essence of perfume-lipstick- hairspray had taken over. I rested my hands on the steering wheel and it felt okay. I glanced over to my dad’s car, the green, sporty Volkswagen he’d been so excited to get because it reminded him of the Rabbit he’d had in high school.

  Hi, Dad’s car, I thought. I’d take you for a spin, but he never taught me to drive stick.

  Five minutes later I was steering the Volvo to the animal hospital, going slowly at first and then eventually hitting the speed limit.

  I wasn’t scared or nervous, and that surprised me a little.

  By the time I was heading back home, with Masher in the passenger seat next to me, driving felt downright good. He was hanging his head out the window, letting his tongue flap in the breeze with that “Is he really smiling?” dog look on his face, and I thought, Here’s a moment when everything’s okay.

  Masher didn’t have the same zip when I let him out of the car, but he went gladly into the house, with commitment. It was that commitment that pulled at my heart and reminded me that regardless of who he belonged to or what other things I did or did not feel capable of doing, I was his guardian now.

  Inside, Nana was vacuuming the living room.

  “Are we expecting someone?” I kidded.

  Nana turned off the vacuum cleaner and regarded Masher.

  “He looks good,” she said, then after a pause: “David’s coming to see him. He’ll be here in an hour.”

  She pulled her glance quickly from me and turned the vacuum back on.

  Heat flushed through my body, starting with my face and speeding downward. Making me feel suddenly ill.

  “Why . . . did you do that?”

  Nana kept her eyes on the carpet although I knew she heard me, which was so unlike her. It was clear how guilty she must have felt about it.

  “I know you’re mad at him,” she called over the sound of the vacuum. She said it so casually, it set something off in me.

  “Aren’t you mad at him too?”

  Now Nana turned off the vacuum and looked at me, unsurprised by my question. “I’m a little mad. He shouldn’t have said whatever he said to make you so upset. But we should try not to judge people based on one instance.”

  “I don’t think I can do that, with him.”

  “It is difficult. But I’ve been around a lot longer, and I’ve learned things the tough way.” She looked wistful, her face full of stories I had yet to hear.

  Instead of asking her to elaborate, I blurted out, “Aren’t you mad at Mr. Kaufman, at least?”

  Nana pursed her lips reflectively for a second, like it had never occurred to her that I would be thinking about these things. She took a deep breath and held it, which I knew was her way of preparing something important to say.

  “Yes. I break my own rule on that.” She paused. “But if I can’t change something, I don’t waste energy on it. Your grandfather went to an early grave because he spent most of his energy on things he had no control over.”

  These stories I had heard. My grandfather was a classic type A and when he had his heart attack at age sixty-five, he was just two weeks from retiring as a family lawyer.

  “I had to tell David about his dog. That was the right thing to do and you know it,” added Nana. “You can be here or not. It’s your choice.”

  My choice. I wasn’t sure I believed that, but I knew I should run while I had the chance.

  I still had the car keys in my hand, and tracing my finger over the grooves in the ignition key flashed me onto that one okay-moment.

  Without saying good-bye, I did a U-turn back out the door, closing it before Masher could follow me out.

  I drove for more than an hour, taking a random route up and down the roads of our town. Some were familiar to the point of knowing who lived in each house. Some I knew only from a memory. This is the way we used to go to the Birchwood Shopping Center. This is the good trick-or-treating street. I’d get to an intersection not knowing whether to go left or right, then turn the wheel at the last second in whichever direction popped into my mind.

  Eventually I went past the junior high and then down the long road that dead-ended into my old elementary school. It was a square, sprawling building, all brick and glass, and I spotted the windows of what had been my third-grade classroom.

  I sat parked for a while in the parent pickup lot, watching a bunch of little kids run relays up and down the field. To be nine years old. To have life be simply about family and friends and who was mad at who and which games you wanted to play at recess, and getting gold stars on spelling tests, and feeling that first crush.

  Laurel, you had everything back then, and you didn’t even know it.

  Rather than risk someone calling the cops on this weird girl crying in her car, I eventually started driving again.

  According to the clock in the car, I’d been gone an hour and a half. I decided to do a stealth drive-by past the house and see if David was gone yet. Eventually I would have to see him, but not today. I’d just started feeling like my days were worth getting out of bed for.

  But when I turned onto Meg’s street, there they were.

  David and Masher, ambling along the side of the road. I had to slow down to avoid them, and there was no way he wouldn’t see me. I could have kept driving. We could have ignored each other.

  But then he waved, and like an idiot I instinctively waved back. So I really had no choice but to stop the car.

  “Hi, Laurel,” he said into the open window, tossing a cigarette to the ground and stepping on it.

  He looked even more tired, more haggard than he had just a week earlier at the prom. Dark circles visible under the edge of his sunglasses, his hair like he hadn’t combed
it in days. His jeans, covered in patches, sagged on his hips, and I realized that he must have lost weight too.

  I was stuck for words so I glanced at Masher, who was beaming with an incongruous but understandable look of pure joy.

  “He’s doing okay,” I said finally, not looking at David.

  “Yeah. Thanks to you.” His voice was light and almost pleasant.

  “Uh . . . he almost died, thanks to me.” I was staring at a tree now. Really examining it like there was a reason to.

  “Hey, Laurel, don’t do that to yourself.”

  Now I turned to David, a little surprised by the kindness in his tone. I turned off the car but didn’t get out. I liked having this barrier of the door between us.

  David touched the frame of his sunglasses, and for a moment I thought he’d take them off, but he didn’t. I guess he liked his barrier too.

  “I can’t really give you a hard time about caring for him, can I?” said David. “I’m the one who bailed on him in the first place.”

  Now he did take his sunglasses off. His eyes, usually so large and bright, looked thin and dull.

  “Plus, I heard you had kind of a freak-out after I left that after-prom party. That was thanks to me, right?”

  I didn’t answer or even move.

  “I’m sure I ruined things with your boyfriend,” he said.

  “He wasn’t my boyfriend,” I countered quickly, then added, “but yes, things got kind of ruined.”

  “Not to offer excuses or anything, but I was wasted and totally sleep-deprived.”

  The word excuses sounded trivial and stupid, hanging in the air between us. It didn’t seem to fit in either of our lives anymore.

  Now I got out of the car, leaning against the side for support. I didn’t think I expected or even wanted a full apology from David about the prom. But as long as he was offering, it did make a difference.

  If I can’t change something, I don’t waste energy on it, Nana had said.

  Being angry at David for the prom, for what his father might or might not have done, took more energy than I had in the first place.

  “So we’re both sorry,” I said. “Can we leave it at that?”