The Beginning of After

thank you for offering to store my stuff.”
    “It’s fine, David,” I said. “We have the room. Those storage places are yucky.”
    He paused, and I could hear him swallow hard even though our feet crunched loud along the ground. “Can I ask you something?”
    “Maybe,” I said, trying to sound funny.
    “Why are you being so nice to me?”
    “Am I?”
    “My dog. My stuff. Honestly, Laurel, you’d think that I hadn’t been such an asshole at that party that night. And you’d think that . . .” David stopped walking. It seemed like his throat was closing around something, and he took a quick little breath. “You’d think that my dad hadn’t been the one everyone blames.”
    It seemed so fitting, suddenly, that David would be the one to say this out loud, this thing that so many people up and down our street and through the neighborhood and across town had thought to themselves, or maybe whispered to the one or two friends they trusted most. The thing I’d jammed into a place deep within me, because I couldn’t figure out what to do with it. Not even Suzie had been able to pull it out, and she sure had tried.
    “I mean, I don’t give a crap what they think,” he continued, waving his hand. “They can go stick it up their gossip-loving, SUV-driving, Bob-and-Pam-are-meeting-us-at-the-golf-club butts.”
    He reached out and actually touched my shoulder with two of his fingers. “But you, Laurel . . . You have the right to think the worst, and I have a feeling I know how bad that really is, because I think it too.”
    I thought back to prom night, and David’s reaction when I told him his father was a murderer.
    “Yeah, David. I do think the worst. But you told me your dad wasn’t drunk. Now you’ve changed your mind?”
    He looked down. “No, I still don’t think he was drunk. I . . . I know he wasn’t. But even if it was another car that drove him off the road, he was the one driving. He made this whole mess.”
    Now he glanced up at the trees, gave a tired sigh. He had no idea how it felt like he’d read my mind.
    I asked, “When are you going to visit him?”
    “Not sure. When I’m done at the house, I guess.”
    “Can I come with you?”
    David reacted with surprise. My question had surprised me, too.
    “Why?”
    Yeah, Laurel. WHY?
    “I don’t know. I just thought . . .” I wasn’t sure what I thought. Now that David was saying the things I’d been thinking, it seemed like something we both needed to do.
    “No,” he cut me off. “Not yet, at least. Okay?”
    His expression was so pained, and I suddenly got how David struggled, feeling protective of his father while also hating his guts.
    “We’ll have to find some way for me to pay you back,” said David.
    “You don’t need to pay me back,” I said. “You don’t owe me anything.”
    “Oh, come on, Laurel,” he said, his voice rising. “Stop being so nice. Give it to me. Give it to me like you did that night after the prom.”
    Masher started barking. He didn’t like people yelling at each other.
    “I was drunk,” I said softly, “and it was so soon after.”
    “So now you’re not angry anymore?”
    “Of course I’m angry,” I shot back, but as the words came out of my mouth I wondered if I’d ever said them before. Was there anything I could add that would make me stop sounding like an idiot? “I’m furious, but I don’t feel the need to take it out on you.”
    “Still trying to be the good girl,” said David, shaking his head. “Going for that extra credit. You get a certain number of points for the dog, and a certain number for hanging on to his stuff. God, you still want to be their sweetheart no matter what!”
    Now I was angry, but it suddenly occurred to me that he wanted this. He wanted me to get in his face, mean and honest like a tough, loving coach in an old football movie. Maybe this was the whole reason he was here.
    I took a deep breath. “I did those things because I wanted to. Because I thought of them and they made sense and they made me feel good. If that makes me somebody’s good-girl sweetheart, then okay, that’s who I am. I can live with that.”
    He looked up at me again and blinked away a glassy layer of tears.
    “How can you be so normal?” he asked, a twangy whine in his voice. “I can’t—I can’t be like that, and you got it worse than me.”
    “I’m not normal, David. Believe me. People stare at me wherever I go, watching what I’m doing,