The Beginning of After

then!” And I hung up, trying not to think of David in the woods, but of Joe. Joe at the dance, dressed like a glorious freak as two different superheroes. In pieces of whatever costumes he could put together at the last minute because he’d decided to come looking for me.
    I arrived at the coffee place before Joe and got my chai, then picked a sunny table in the front corner. My sketch pad was tiny compared to his; I preferred to draw out my scenery small first, so I could decide what the important elements were, then let it grow in my head to the point where I had to move to the large canvas.
    When Joe walked in, we smiled easily at each other, and I just thought, Yes .
    Here was someone who was talented and smart, sweet and sensitive. Undamaged. Normal.
    I showed him a few of the sketches I’d done over the weekend, and he held up his caricatures next to them to see how well they fit. Two of them looked pretty cool. One was a little off, so I made some notes about how to fix that.
    Joe glanced at the clock, so I said, “Do you need to get some homework done? I can take off.”
    “I’ll do it on my break,” he answered quickly, shaking his head. “Here, I’ll walk you over to the vet’s.”
    On our way down the sidewalk that would lead us to Ashland, Joe was quiet, and the comfortable feeling between us was gone. When we reached the hospital parking lot, he stopped and turned to me.
    “Listen, Meg told me that you left the Halloween dance with David Kaufman. She seemed pretty upset about that.”
    Well, yes. Clearly. So upset that she felt the need to tell Joe out of spite.
    “Was that okay?” Joe continued. “I mean, it’s none of my business. But the last time he showed up at a party, things did not—”
    “Go well?” I interrupted him, raising one eyebrow. “No, they didn’t.”
    Joe laughed nervously.
    “Things are fine now,” I said, and shrugged. “We’re taking care of his dog, some of his stuff. As a favor.” Using the word we made it seem more neighborly, less complicated.
    I knew what Joe was asking. Was there anything going on between David Kaufman and me? There was no way I could answer that question.
    The way Joe smiled now, relieved and protective, made me realize how much he really did like me. And how being with him made me feel the most like myself that I had in months.
    But I had a question of my own. “Speaking of prom night . . .” I paused to take a deep breath, not looking at him. “When you invited me to the prom. Was that . . . was that something somebody set you up to do?”
    Joe frowned, confused. “Like who?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe Meg . . .” When I said it out loud it sounded so small and stupid, and I wished I hadn’t said it. “You have to understand that I would think about that. At the time, I didn’t want to know the answer. But now I do.”
    Joe looked at me for just a second and had to flick his eyes away to some far corner of the sky. “No, nobody set me up to do that. But I will tell you that if what happened . . . your parents . . . if that hadn’t happened, I probably never would have gotten the nerve.” He paused, then looked at me briefly again. “I know that’s messed up. But I wanted to. I’d wanted to for a while.”
    But inside, I started to feel so mad. If he’d just had the guts to ask me out when he first wanted to, maybe this part would have been long over by the time the accident happened. And maybe we could have been strong enough together—why wouldn’t we have been?—to survive those first hellish months afterward.
    “You should have gotten up the nerve,” I finally said, trying to spin it with a smile.
    “I know. I just kept telling myself I had time.”
    “Life is short, Joe.”
    A painful look crossed his face. After a few long seconds, he simply said, “You’ll be late for work, and I should get going.”
    He bent toward me and tilted his head a bit to glance at me sideways, almost in admiration. Again, that halfway moment when something could happen. That now familiar feeling of More! More!
    Suddenly, I was just so sick of it.
    When Joe started to wrap his loose, lazy hug around me to say good-bye, I turned my face up and kissed him square on the mouth. Too quickly, like I’d smacked him. His lips weren’t ready and felt stiff, formal. They weren’t the lips I remembered, but then again, there had been other lips since. Was it that hard to keep track?
    Joe turned red and sputtered,