The Beginning of After

then looked away, as if I’d caught him doing something.
    “Then I’ll be in touch.”
    On Monday, as instructed, I walked to Mr. Churchwell’s office as slowly as I could. I hadn’t spoken to him since the night of the prom; I didn’t count the one-word answers I gave him when he asked me how I was doing, how the other kids were behaving toward me, and if he could help in any way (obviously, the answer to that last one was always No, thank you ).
    “Laurel!” he said, way too cheery, as he opened his door. I hadn’t even knocked yet. He must have seen me, standing in the guidance office waiting area, picking something really important out of my thumbnail.
    “Hi, Mr. Churchwell,” I said, and waved my note at him like a white flag of surrender.
    “Looks like you’re up! Come on in and take a seat.”
    I did, and while he fumbled with some folders on his desk, I looked around the room. There was a poster on the wall for some college in Connecticut. Students sitting on a grassy lawn, books in their laps, gesturing intelligently. A tall clock tower behind them framed by an oak tree.
    “So. College planning,” said Mr. Churchwell, like I was the one who brought it up.
    “Yup.”
    “Do you plan to go to college?”
    I looked at him, hearing that question for the first time. “Of course I plan to go,” I said curtly.
    “That’s great news, Laurel, because I hear you did very well on your SATs.”
    “I did.”
    “And you’ve been a strong student since the beginning. Ninety-eighth percentile, officially. Your grades haven’t suffered in the wake of the accident, which I find to be . . . amazing.” He gestured to a folder on his desk, a red-rimmed label on its tab. Clearly, my File.
    I shrugged it off. “I think the teachers are being easy on me.” But even if that were true, I was working hard. I didn’t know how not to.
    David’s last postcard, from just the day before, jumped into my head. It was a photo of Daytona Beach, all golden sand and empty sky. He’d drawn a stick figure lying on the beach and an arrow pointing to it next to the word “ME.” Nothing else was written on the card except my address.
    “I’m sure you started this process . . . previously,” he said gently.
    I remembered the pile of information packets I’d picked up at a college fair last winter. They’d sat on the coffee table in the den for weeks before my father dropped them in my lap one day while I was watching TV.
    “Whaddya think?” he’d said. My dad liked to ask vague questions, soft lobs that left the ball in my court to return however I wanted.
    “I like Brown and U Penn,” I’d answered. “And Yale, of course.”
    “Of course.”
    “And Smith,” I had added.
    My mother had gone to Smith. That’s where she’d met my dad, late one night at a party in her dorm. He’d tagged along with a roommate who was visiting his high school girlfriend there in order to break up with her in person. “If he hadn’t decided to dump her,” my dad liked to say with a wink when telling me this story, “you would have never been born!”
    “Are you looking for something with a good theater program?” asked Mr. Churchwell now, opening my folder and sliding a clean lined sheet of paper into it so he could make notes. “I know you’re very active in the Drama Club.”
    “I don’t act. I just do behind-the-scenes stuff. Painting the scenery.”
    “So . . . are you interested in art?”
    I shrugged, and he jotted something down.
    “It shouldn’t be hard to find a great art department. Have you thought about distance?”
    “Distance?”
    “Distance from home. Whether or not you want to go away to school, or commute.”
    Wow, I was just so completely unprepared for this meeting.
    “No, I hadn’t thought about it,” I said.
    “If you want to live at home, there are a lot of excellent schools within an hour of where we’re sitting right now, especially in the city. Columbia, for instance, or NYU. You do have a support system here.”
    Stay close. I thought of Nana, making me pancakes every morning. And then I thought of Eve, living at home, with a purpose. Maybe I could have the same kind of purpose.
    “But then again,” Mr. Churchwell continued, tapping his pencil on my file, “I also think you might consider a . . . change of scenery. A lot of kids who come through my office want a fresh start somewhere.”
    When I was with Eve, I got by with white lies and omissions, never talking