The Beginning of After

“Whoa.”
    Then he smiled. So maybe these lips would stick around.
    “I’ll see you soon,” I just said, then walked as fast as I could into work.

Chapter Twenty-eight

    T wo weeks went by. Fortunately, I had midterms to study for and my other college applications to start, and didn’t have time to be obsessed with much else. For instance, Joe sending me a text message every afternoon with a proposed superhero identity for one of the teachers.
    margulis = algeBrawn!
    (Mr. Margulis in the math department was huge and a former bodybuilder.)
    It seemed like his way of keeping the status quo, of reserving his spot for something.
    At Ashland, Eve set out a straw cornucopia filled with turkey-shaped chocolates on the front desk, and I strung up a HAPPY THANKS GIVING banner on the wall. I used the wrong kind of tape and the next day it fell down and got chewed up by a dog. Eve didn’t say a thing about it; she just went out and bought another. So it was, now that she knew about my family. She had become less bossy but less friendly, too; we never went to lunch or even talked about ourselves anymore.
    “The first holiday season since the accident will be a tough one, Laurel,” said Suzie. We were down to once-weekly visits. “Let’s talk about strategies.”
    So we talked, about trying yoga and me possibly going to some weekend camp for grieving teens. She asked me to start a list in my journal titled “Thanksgiving: Things I’m Thankful For,” and encouraged me to write anything that came to mind over the next few weeks.
    I hadn’t told her about my visit to Mr. Kaufman or about smack-kissing Joe. The truth was, I was getting tired of talking about myself. Suzie knew it too. Our sessions were starting to end early, because we’d reach the point of me just shrugging and giving her one-word answers, and she’d say, “That’s enough for today.”
laurel
wilmington, nc now. 2 gigs but I think everyone’s going to stick around for a couple of weeks bcuz of the holiday. they have to bunk down at friends’ houses but fortunately i can swing the comfort inn for myself. swanky, i know. i found that if you open a minibar beer bottle the right way, without bending the cap, you can fill it back up with water and you won’t get charged for it.
david

    The email caught me unexpectedly on a Saturday, when I was just doing a quick check before heading out to meet Joe at the library.
    I started pulling together some phrases in my head to answer him with. Something witty and cute. A joke about minibars? Or beer bottles filled with cloudy hotel water?
    But when I read it again, and then again, I realized the email was not asking for an answer. It was just there. A record of where he’d been, like dropped bread crumbs along a trail. So I just let it be, thinking that maybe there would come a time when I’d need to follow those bread crumbs to find him.
    And I had Joe to think about today.
    The library had scheduled our art show—I felt okay calling it ours now—for the second week in December. It was going to be eight pieces hanging downstairs in the community room, where they held story hour and Pilates for Seniors and the book club my mom used to go to.
    Joe and I planned to meet there, during a one-hour gap when nothing was going on, to go over sketches once more before committing to ink and paint. “This way, we can see how they might work in the space,” he’d said. But really, it was just a square underground room with white walls and fluorescent lighting. I knew he’d suggested the location because it was neutral territory. Private enough so that nobody would be watching us, and public enough so that certain touching-type things were just not an option.
    “Howdy,” Joe said as I came down the stairs to the community room with my sketch pad under one arm. I’d finally gotten a large one like his.
    I flashed on how David always began his emails with simply “laurel,” without even a comma or proper capitalization. There was no “howdy” in David’s universe.
    Joe was standing with Ms. Folsom, the head librarian, who’d invited Joe to show his artwork. Now, suddenly, I realized that she was his neighbor. It was one of those useless, small-town facts I’d always known but stored away until now, when it explained why Joe was doing all this.
    “Hi, Laurel,” she said, smiling sweetly. “I was so happy to hear that you guys are collaborating on this project. We can’t wait to see the