The Beginning of After

toward me. “Here,” she said. “I know how you like to keep up with the headlines.”
    It was the New York Times , not our local paper, the Herald Gazette . Because every day the Herald Gazette was publishing a new article about the accident and how the police were looking for someone, anyone, who might have seen what happened. Nana had stopped the Gazette delivery service two days earlier.
    Now she sat down across from me with her ginger ale and matzoh, but didn’t eat. “Laurel,” she said. “Suzie Sirico called this morning. She’s the grief counselor you met the other night, remember? She wanted to know how we were.”
    I looked up from the paper. “How did she get our number?”
    “I gave it to her.”
    “You told her I was fine, right? That we were both fine?”
    Nana broke off a piece of matzoh and nibbled. “She thinks the two of you should talk.”
    “You met her. She’s creepy.”
    “She’s a professional who can help you.”
    “Do I look like I need help?”
    Nana actually did look at me, up and down my face, across and back. She knew better than to answer.
    “Next time she calls,” I said, “please just tell her not to.”
    Nana stood up, put what was left of her matzoh back in the box, and quietly left the room.
    I turned back to the paper and started reading an article about trouble in Latin America, and there it was in the first paragraph: demagogue . It was one of my SAT words. It meant “rabble-rousing leader,” and my study trick image popped into my head. On the steps of our school, a straggly bearded guy wearing a T-shirt that said DEM on it was speaking to a crowd of students, working them into a frenzy.
    It had been more than a month since I was in the D s, but there was demagogue , crystal clear. The tests were in five days. I walked to my room and found my SAT vocabulary book on the desk where I’d left it, bookmarked, untouched since the night of the seder. I picked it up carefully; I’d had only two more pages to go on the list of a thousand words my dad had challenged me to memorize. He wanted me to go to an Ivy League school, preferably Yale, like he did. I wanted it too, because I’d visited Yale during one of his reunions and thought it was cool, but I didn’t tell him that. I needed him to think he was convincing me.
    “I’ll pay you a dollar for every point you score over seven hundred on Critical Reading,” he’d said. “It’s not a bribe; it’s motivation. Just a little something, because I know you can do it.”
    I put the book back down and went to find the phone.
    “Are you absolutely sure you want to do that?”
    Mr. Churchwell, my school guidance counselor, sounded happy to hear from me.
    “Yes, I’m sure. I’m ready. I don’t want you to take me off the list.”
    “I have no doubt that you’re ready, Laurel. But your frame of mind . . . well, we just want you to be able to perform at your ability. There’s another test date in June.”
    “I need to take it at the same time my friends are.” I tried to keep my voice from shaking. I need to take it because if it weren’t for all that time studying for this test, my parents and Toby might be alive right now. I would have gone with them that night and we would have taken our own car.
    That thought grabbed hold of me and held on tight.
    Mr. Churchwell paused, then said, “Okay, Laurel. I’ll see you on Saturday. If you have anything else you want to talk about, don’t hesitate to call.”
    “Thank you,” I squeaked out, then hung up.
    Wiggle out of it. Focus.
    I grabbed my SAT prep book and stared at it again, and it was like a hole I could climb through to escape this tight little box of guilt. I headed to my favorite study spot: the three-foot alley behind the white couch and a wall of windows in the living room. I was just getting settled in when I looked out the window and saw our neighbor Mr. Mita out on the street, walking Masher, the Kaufmans’ dog. Masher was straining at his leash, desperate for a little speed and freedom, but Mr. Mita was having trouble keeping up. Masher was a good dog, a black-and-white Border collie with a T-shaped blaze down his forehead. He was always getting out of his yard and roaming the neighborhood, checking up on our houses like they were his flock of sheep.
    I thought of Masher in the Kaufmans’ house, not understanding why everyone was gone but sensing something big had happened. Whining at the windows. Scratching at the front door.