The Beginning of After

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