The Beginning of After

anyway!
    “Did you know that for a while, the police were looking for another car? They thought maybe there was someone else involved.”
    Now I could grab hold of my anger again, more sure of my strength.
    “Too bad you can’t tell them. Because they couldn’t find anything, and now they officially blame you. You were drinking that night; we all saw it.”
    We did all see it, but nobody thought to mention that perhaps he shouldn’t get behind the wheel. God, how many drunk-driving videos had I seen? And where were my parents in all this? Didn’t they have the guts to say something to big-shot Mr. Kaufman, the guy my dad would never admit he admired?
    It had been so easy to think about blame when I wasn’t sitting across from the very fingers that had been curled around the steering wheel when the car went off the road. The foot that had been on the gas pedal and the brake. Those eyes that had seen the world spinning past the windshield, and the ears that had heard the shouts and cries my family might have made as they died.
    But it was like looking at a frog laid out for dissection in biology class. Everything I knew about what was in front of me was just truth and facts, with nothing behind them. All my fury didn’t make a difference. We were both still in the same place, unchanged.
    Except that now I felt a little lighter, unburdened, by having said these things to him. I got up and pulled my chair a little closer to Mr. Kaufman’s bed, then folded myself back into it, cross-legged and ready to stay for a while.
    “David kissed me,” I said to him. Hearing the words out loud, feeling the breath it took to form them, made it official now; it had happened.
    Mr. Kaufman’s machine whirred and dinged, like a Hmmm, tell me more , so I did. I told him about Nana wanting to go home but not letting herself, and the secrets Meg and I were keeping from each other now, and the Andie Stokes crowd. I told him about Joe and the way I sometimes caught him looking at me, like it stung. I talked about my job at Ashland and how it made me feel like I was not wasting the lucky draw of being alive, like I was finding something in myself that I wouldn’t have found otherwise. And then I told him about how Dad always envied him a little for his fancy car and his well-kept yard and expensive cigars.
    Then that reminded me of Mom and the cigarettes she kept hidden in two different spots in the house, so I told Mr. Kaufman about how I’d caught her once, and instead of giving me a lecture about “Do as I say, not as I do,” she just said, “Laurel, I hope you find something like this, a little self-destructive habit you can turn to every once in a while, when you’re tired of being good. It will keep you sane.”
    I told him about the band Toby wanted to start someday. It was going to be called the Dangling Participles, and they were only going to play songs about grammar and spelling.
    It wasn’t until I noticed the light turning a different shade that I realized how much time had passed. I turned to the window and saw that the sun was setting behind the hills, and took out my cell phone to call Nana.
    “Did you get the job done?” she asked.
    “I think so,” I replied.
    “Then I’m waiting downstairs to take you home.”

Chapter Twenty-seven

    W e live in troubled times, to be sure.
    What the hell was that? It had just come out, and now that it was on my computer screen it only made me want to slap myself.
    I’d come home straight from school on Wednesday to work on my essay, the clock counting down the final thirty-six hours until I had to submit my application to Yale. Really, I had backed myself further into a corner by deciding I wouldn’t mention my family in any way.
    The weekend with David, the afternoon with Mr. Kaufman. I couldn’t process any of it into something I could write about.
    Nana kept coming into the den with a can of Pledge and a rag, pretending to dust, but I knew she was checking up on me. She’d already found out that straight-up asking “How’s it going?” did not get a good response.
    The blank computer screen was taunting me, the blinking cursor daring me to think up something meaningful and honest.
    Suddenly, there was a noise from upstairs.
    Bump. Clang.
    A low screech, and then a loud bark.
    In about two seconds I ran from the den, my heart pounding, afraid of what I’d find.
    Sure enough, Toby’s door was open. Masher crouched on the floor with his tail thumping, only his