The Beginning of After

by Jennifer Castle

  I knew I didn’t need Eve’s permission or even encouragement, but in that moment I was glad to have it. I looked at Joe now, at those eyes that had searched me over in Adam LaGrange’s backyard. He had been there for me, once. He had made me feel propped up for a few lovely hours.

  So I said, “Sure.”

  After we said good-bye to Eve, I followed Joe to his table. It was in the back corner and the place was packed, so of course we had to scrunch in and bang our knees together to make it work. I placed my ice-blended chai next to Joe’s black coffee, the wimpy chick drink alongside the grown-up guy one like they were already in a relationship, and tried to look him in the eye.

  “I didn’t know you worked at the movie theater,” I said.

  “Yeah, I take the tickets, and then when the movie’s over, I get to clean up the garbage the audience leaves behind. In between, I like to pop over here.”

  “You don’t stay and watch?”

  “Well, yeah, when we first start showing something. But after twenty or thirty times, it gets old. Especially if it’s, like, French.”

  “Too bad you take Spanish,” I said, then wished I hadn’t. I wasn’t supposed to know which classes he took, was I? Joe laughed nervously and shifted in his chair. He had a messenger bag hanging over the back, and now I noticed a big sketch pad sticking out of it. To change the subject, I asked, pointing at the pad, “Did you get that at Walden Art Supply?”

  He turned to look at it, then nodded. “You know it?”

  “My mom used to buy her paint there.” Joe looked instantly uncomfortable, so I added, “I’ve seen those pads at the store, that’s all.”

  Now Joe reached for the pad and pulled it out. He opened to a page and turned it toward me to show what he’d drawn: a middle-aged man in a cape and a helmet with two bugles sticking out of it like antennae, a big B inside a hot air balloon on his chest.

  “I call this one BlowHard. Yesterday I was sitting here next to some dude with his girlfriend, and he was just going on and on about stuff like he knew everything there was to know, and every time she tried to correct him, he’d shoot her down.”

  “Do you turn everyone into some kind of superhero?”

  “If they seem like they deserve it, yes.” He stared at the sketch protectively, like a new parent. “I mean, isn’t everyone a superhero, in their own mind?”

  I smiled. “On certain days, yeah.”

  We were quiet again, and I tried to fill the silence by sipping loudly on my drink. Why did things have to be so weird? We had kissed. We had kissed a lot, and from what I could tell it had been pretty good, until everything imploded. Before, I’d believed that once you’d done that with someone, you’d broken a barrier, like maybe you could always kiss them again whenever you wanted and it would be completely okay. But now there was some kind of force field between Joe Lasky and me, stronger than if we’d never kissed to begin with. He felt further away than a complete stranger.

  A quick flash of David and me, sitting together on the bench outside Ashland. We’d had a history between us too, but a different kind. It was confusing to think about these differences or about David at all. I pulled my focus back to Joe and suddenly felt mad.

  We would have been a couple by now. But no, I didn’t get to have that, just like I didn’t get to have a prom memory that didn’t make me want to puke from embarrassment. The wave of anger at myself came so fast and lethal, I could have slapped my own face.

  Finally, Joe planted his elbows on the table and leaned in. “So. Been to any good proms lately?”

  I just broke out laughing, and the rage flushed away.

  “Nice,” was all I could say.

  “I’m sorry, I had to do it.” He smiled now.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Please,” he said, holding up his hand. “You have nothing to be sorry about. I should have tried harder to reach you.” He took a deep breath and wrapped both hands around his coffee cup, like the heat was giving him the guts to keep talking. “I could say that I wanted you to have some space, some time alone to work through your stuff, but that would be bull. I was scared. It’s not the kind of thing I know how to deal with.”

  I nodded. “I know. I would have done the same thing.” As long as we were being honest, I wanted to ask him whether he’d been set up by someone to take me to the prom. But I didn’t want this sweet, sudden normalness to end just yet.

  Joe took a deep, relieved breath and then a sip of his coffee, staring at his drawing of BlowHard. Then he raised an eyebrow and said, “Hey, you paint scenery, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you think you could give BlowHard something in the background? I suck at backgrounds, but I feel like he needs something behind him.”

  “For context,” I said.

  “Exactly!” said Joe, lighting up now.

  “I have an idea.”

  Joe dug into his bag and pulled out a pencil, then handed it to me. As I started to draw in the beginnings of BlowHard’s context, Joe said, “While you’re doing that, why don’t you tell me about the furry stuff?”

  Meg was smug. “I told you!” she said with a grin that evening. We were sitting on our rock, feeling the air cool off. Breathing the relief of it, in and out.

  Meg and Gavin had gone out nine times since prom night. He’d gotten to see that new bra eventually, and now they were a couple. At least I hadn’t totally screwed that up for my best friend.

  “It doesn’t mean anything,” I said, hoping that wasn’t true.

  “You deserve someone like him,” said Meg, and I had nothing to counter that with.

  “Do you think I should go say hi to him the next time we’re at that mall?”

  Meg looked at me. “We?”

  “Eve and me.” The way it came out, and the way Meg flinched, made me want to un-say it.

  Just then, Meg’s cell phone chirped with a text message, clicking us away from that awkward pause. Meg read the message, then started typing back.

  “Gavin?” I asked.

  “No, it’s my boss from camp, reminding me to come early tomorrow. There’s a big rehearsal.” She looked up at me. “You should come to the performance. The kids are doing an Andrew Lloyd Webber revue.”

  Meg said this sincerely, but how could I go? It would only remind me of the summer I was supposed to be having, and force me to make comparisons to my job at Ashland that I didn’t want to make.

  “Yeah, maybe,” I replied, and then we were just silent, listening to the cicadas and the distant squeal of kids’ voices down the street, where someone was having a barbecue and probably lots more fun than we were.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The hot and humid July turned into an even hotter, more humid August. Spending most of my time inside, however, I barely noticed. Between the house, Ashland, and Suzie’s office, my only jaunts into the real world were the dog walking and my quickie lunches with Eve. The sounds of this summer were the hum of air conditioners and the huh, huh, huh of panting dogs.

  At night, sometimes Meg would come over to watch a movie. She never invited me to her house. It felt like she needed a break from something, although I didn’t ask her what.

  Mr. Churchwell had arranged for me to take the Regents exams at a nearby high school, because our school district was too small to have their own summer testing. I’d taken a bunch of practice tests during the previous few weeks; they were a great way to make me drowsy late at night when I couldn’t sleep. So for two mornings in mid-August, I sat in a gym filled with students I didn’t know and lost myself in questions, answers, and essays.

  When I was done and driving home, I thought of the phone call I would have made to my father.

  Hey, Dad, I think I did well. I had to write a presentation on the benefits of weight-bearing exercise, so instead of celebrating with ice cream, let’s go for a nice long walk. Just kidding!

  The day after the exams, I’d just barely woken up when I heard the phone ring, then Nana call out that
it was for me. She’d stopped coming into my room to deliver anything weeks ago.

  “It’s Eve,” said Eve sort of breathlessly, with no “Hi” or anything.

  “What’s up?” I asked, confused. I wasn’t supposed to be at work until ten, although the hospital opened at nine.

  “Your friend is here, with his dog.” She was practically whispering.

  “David?”

  “He wants to leave him here. Board him, I guess.”

  I was so shocked that I couldn’t say anything.

  “I thought you’d want to know ASAP. I’m stalling him, saying I have to do some paperwork. So he’s here . . . if you want to . . . see him.”

  Now I could hear the restrained anger in Eve’s voice. She’d been around enough people dumping their pets; she knew the signs.

  “Give me fifteen minutes.”

  I jumped out of bed and threw on the previous day’s clothes, which were still lying in a heap on my floor, and rushed downstairs, pausing just long enough to tell Nana there was an emergency at work.

  The traffic lights were with me and I made it at the fourteen-minute mark. Mr. Kaufman’s Jaguar was still in the parking lot, and I pulled up next to it, even though I was supposed to park in the back with the other employees.

  I grabbed the front door handle and paused for a moment, trying to slow down my heartbeat. Things had happened so fast, I wasn’t even sure what I felt. I just knew I needed to talk to David but didn’t want to seem like a maniac.

  Once in the door, I scanned the waiting room. Empty.

  Then I saw him, behind the tall round rack of greeting cards in the corner, which the hospital sold as a fund-raiser for the ASPCA. He had dropped a card and was picking it up, dusting it off.

  He raised his eyes to look at me and then stood all the way up.

  “Fantastic,” he said dryly.

  I took a step forward, then held out both hands as if hoping to catch some answers.

  “What the hell, David?” I tried to keep my voice even.

  He shot a dirty look at Eve, who had sunk so low behind the front desk you could only see the top of her head, and gingerly put the greeting card back in its rightful spot on the rack.

  “What the hell is that I’m leaving. I can’t take Mash with me.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  David glanced at Eve again. “Can we talk outside?”

  I examined his face now. He seemed calm and resolved, in the saddest of ways. I motioned for him to follow me and led him out the front door, then around a corner of the building where there was some shade.

  David took a deep breath, and although there were some steps behind us going up to the side entrance, he remained standing, and so did I.

  “He’s not going to wake up,” said David. “My dad. That’s what the doctors are saying.”

  I folded my arms across my chest in a Go on type of gesture.

  “I can’t stay by that bed anymore. I’ll puke or something. And things are messed up with my cousins.”

  “Where are you going to go?” I asked, trying to make it sound challenging rather than curious.

  “My buddy Stefan . . . he used to live here but moved to California. Maybe you remember him?”

  I shrugged, even though I knew exactly who he was talking about.

  “Anyway, I’m going to go check things out with him.” He looked up at the brick wall of the hospital, and I could see him start to break down. Fighting it. “I have to be gone.”

  I wanted to sit or lean against the building or do something else besides stand there face-to-face with David with nothing holding me up. To make things worse, I had a split-second urge to reach out and touch him. I wanted to hang on to my fury, but it was already shrinking away.

  To be gone.

  I’d thought about it too. Sometimes my life here felt like a cage where I could never escape the pain. At other times, it felt like the only firm ground on earth. How could I fault David for tipping one way while I was tipping another?

  “Why didn’t you call me?” I said softly. “Why wouldn’t you leave Masher with us?”

  “That medication is a lot of work,” he said, almost whining, but then pulled his face straight. “You have enough on your plate. I figured, if I boarded him here, he could still see you.” David paused, looked at the wall again, and then added, “Plus, I didn’t want you to know I was leaving until I’d already done it.”

  Now he forced a smile, adding, “Because, you know, we wouldn’t want to have a scene or anything.”

  The thought of David being across the country, where there was no hope of seeing him occasionally, felt like one more thing to miss. I didn’t expect this feeling. And I didn’t like it.

  “Please let me take him,” I said, trying to focus on Masher so that sensation would go away. “You know he won’t be happy in a kennel.”

  David bit his lip and nodded. Grateful, like he’d been hoping for this from the beginning.

  “Can you go in and tell Eve? She has to hear it from you.”

  He nodded again, then headed into the building. Which left me standing by myself, not sure what to do next.

  Since David was going to disappear without a trace, maybe I should beat him to the punch.

  I checked my cell phone and saw that I didn’t officially have to be at work for another half hour. It would be just enough time for me to drive home and change clothes before coming back, at which point I knew David would be already on the road.

  And we would not have said good-bye, just like he’d wanted.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The night before school started, I laid out my first-day outfit—jeans and an embroidered blue T-shirt—and Nana came in to see it.

  “You’ll look very pretty,” she said, rubbing cream into her hands. This was a bedtime ritual for her, the spreading of lotion on all limbs and digits, and especially on the webby skin between her fingers. She had this idea that your skin got dried out while you slept, making you look older faster.

  “I just want to seem, you know, okay.”

  “You will. Because you are.”

  Earlier that day, I’d had a session with Suzie.

  “How do you feel about seeing everyone again?” she’d asked. “Especially the ones who were there that night, after the prom?”

  I hadn’t been able to answer her then, so she helped me create a “comfort zone” that I could go to in my head if I needed it at school. (I settled on the space at home, between the white couch and the window, wrapped tightly in a quilt from my bed.)

  After Nana disappeared into her room, I opened my journal, waiting for something to kick in. The window was open and a breeze swam in, almost chilly enough to raise the hairs on my arm. Fall was starting, right on cue. The starting part of that made me uneasy.

  As a family, we got collectively bummed out by the end of summer. Toby and I would lie around and watch a lot of television, relishing the feeling of not having any homework we should be doing. My dad would work late to avoid the quiet sadness in the house, and my mother would spend extra hours at the studio to catch up on wedding season portraits.

  I began forming words with my pen, but they felt clunky and stupid:

  I’m going back to school tomorrow. They will look and stare and whisper again.

  I stopped writing and started drawing. Big round eyes, sharp and jagged eyes, eyes narrowed to mysterious, sneaky slits. Soon, I was fast asleep, the notebook balancing on my chest, the cats on either side of my legs. Dreams came fast and short, flickers of scenes that ran into one another like a silent movie.

  When Megan’s car reached the bottom of the school’s driveway, she turned to me and smiled. “Here we are at last,” she said, and I couldn’t figure out why she was so excited to be done with a three-minute drive. But now she was turning left into the senior parking lot, and I got it. What she meant was, At last, we’re seniors! We’re going to rule the school!

  Meg was no longer driving her mom’s minivan
. Her sister, Mary, had left for NYU the week before, and had bequeathed to Meg her very tiny but very cute red Toyota. She was so amped about it that you’d think it was a Mustang convertible.

  We had timed our arrival to be early, but not too early. Other seniors were already there, leaning against their cars in groups, chatting. Meg drove over to them and pulled into the first open space. All heads turned, scanning the front seats to register first Meg, then me.

  “Ready whenever you are,” she said, pulling up the parking brake until it made a grurt noise. I gathered my stuff and got out quickly, wanting to appear ready, even eager. Still, it was an effort for me to raise my head from the pavement to see who was there.

  Andie Stokes and Hannah Lindstrom were coming toward me. Andie wrapped me in a hug.

  “Hey,” she said.

  Hannah did, too. Now, suddenly, Caitlin Fish. They were practically lining up.

  I was getting an air kiss from Lily Janek when I noticed three guys hanging out across the parking lot, hands in their pockets. One of them was Joe. He looked up at exactly the wrong moment and our eyes met. He just nodded. Not even a nod. Just a swoop up of the chin, then down. Our time at the coffee place had been nice, but I still wasn’t sure where it left us, and clearly he wasn’t either.

  I took a second to check out the rest of the lot. Was I hoping to see David? Even though I knew he was surely in California by now, the familiar school setting caused a knee-jerk hope that maybe he’d be there. I’d have to get over that.

  Now I smiled quickly at Joe, then someone touched my shoulder and I turned to see Meg ready to usher me inside like a bodyguard. As I walked toward the school entrance, feeling Joe’s eyes on my back, maybe even on my swinging shoulder bag or my new shoes, I wondered how soon I’d get to see him again.

  One car was missing from the driveway when Meg and I pulled up to my house that afternoon.

  “Nana must be getting her hair done,” I said.

  “You sure you don’t want to go with us to Vinny’s?” asked Meg. She was meeting Andie and Hannah and their crowd to celebrate the first day of senior year with pizza.