The Beginning of After

attic, and it’s mostly empty.”
    Nana gave me a startled look, and I just shrugged back at her. Then she smiled.
    “Really?” David asked, his eyes meeting mine for the first time that night.
    “Sure,” I said, staring back at him.
    “Thank you.” This came out sounding stiff and polite, and he put his head back in his hands. I took that as my cue to go back to The Scarlet Letter , which I grabbed off the couch and took with me into Toby’s room, where Lucky waited with her deep purr and yellow, contented eyes.
    Later that night, there was a knock on Toby’s door.
    “What?” I asked, cranky, sure it was Nana. I’d finished my reading chapters and was now working on calculus at Toby’s desk. It was creepy, I knew, but I loved how Lucky sat next to my arm, with one paw across my wrist, as I tried to write.
    “Can I come in?” It was David. I turned quickly in the chair and Lucky, startled, shot across the room. Her toenails left a thick white scratch on my arm.
    “Ow!” I yelled.
    David now opened the door. “You all right?”
    “Fine,” I said, holding my arm. “Just got nailed by the cat.”
    David came in, although I hadn’t told him it was okay, and closed the door quickly behind him so Masher couldn’t follow. A couple of tortured protest barks came from the hallway.
    David sat on the floor, and Lucky came out from under the bed to check him out. We were quiet for a few moments as David petted Lucky, and kitten mews drifted faintly from the dog crate.
    When I’d brought him into the room the night before to show him what I’d been up to, he’d just smiled, satisfied and not surprised. Like he expected there to be homeless cats, like there couldn’t possibly be anything else that made sense. Unlike Nana and Meg, he’d had no questions. He just liked it.
    It felt fair now. I’d learned so much from his postcards about what he was doing on his way across the country, and now it was my turn to fill him in. The balance seemed about right. It made our silence more about comfort and less about itchy strangeness.
    Finally, David reached into his back pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. “I found this today,” he said, opening the paper and holding it up.
    It showed a drawing of a rocky hillside with the opening of a cave smack in the middle, shaped perfectly into an upside-down U. The cave was black, except for two sets of wide eyes in the Magic Marker darkness. One set of eyes had long eyelashes. Purple letters along the bottom announced, “LAUREL AND DAVID EXPLORE THE CAAAAAAVE!”
    “Oh my God,” I said, then laughed.
    “So you remember?”
    I remembered just two moments from a day a long time ago. One was David leading me through the woods toward the cave in the woods behind our houses, a place where most kids in the neighborhood were afraid to go, as he held a big walking stick and I held a plastic bucket full of snacks like I was Little Red Riding Hood. The other was us in the darkness of the cave, me feeling proud that I had actually walked a few feet in until the top of my head brushed its roof. We were eight, maybe nine years old. So long ago and so improbable that at times, when I thought about it, I wondered if it had really just been something I’d seen in a movie.
    To David, I just nodded and then smiled.
    He folded the drawing and put it back in his pocket. “I was thinking of going there tomorrow morning. It’s been awhile since I took Masher, and he loves it. Do you want to come?”
    He made the invitation with his eyes fixed on the cat, but I could tell it was a serious one.
    “Sure,” I said, then to cut the tension I added, “Should I take my basket of snacks?”
    Now David chuckled a bit and stood up. “Only if you think we’re going to get lost and need bread crumbs to find our way back.”
    Then he left the room without saying good night.

Chapter Twenty-four

    B y eight o’clock the next morning, David and Masher and I were heading out the back door dressed in jackets and boots, since the forecast was for rain and the sky was already deepening into a dark gray. The wind blew dead leaves around our ankles as we walked across my backyard, silently, our hands in our pockets because it was just way too nerdy—even for me—to wear gloves in October no matter how chilly it got.
    After we crossed Watch Hill Road and continued farther into the woods, David cleared his throat and said stiffly, “I know I said it last night, but I really do want to