The Beginning of After

over my heart.
    “What’s that?” Meg asked from the doorway, startling me. She was peering over my shoulder to the photo of the van on the computer screen.
    I could have made up a lie right there, and I could have made it sound convincing. Instead, I just opened my mouth and told her, easily, calmly, the truth. About David, about the kiss in the woods, about his emails, about Thanksgiving morning, and now, about the picture of the van.
    Meg didn’t get mad that I’d kept these things from her, or even seem confused. She just took it all in, shook her head slowly, and said, “Whoa.”
    An hour later, Meg I were stringing lights around the dwarf tree when we got a call from her mom.
    “Okay,” said Meg, expressionless, into the phone. “Good.” She hung up and looked at me. “Dad’s at the Holiday Inn, so . . . I guess I should go back. She sounds lonely.”
    “I’ll walk you home,” I said.
    We were silent as we made our way down the hill in the near dark, Meg with her backpack and me carrying her school bag. It was close enough to Christmas now that everyone on our street had put their decorations up, and the leftover snow sat so delicately, it looked painted onto the doorsteps and windowsills.
    We live in a nice place , I thought as we walked. You’d never know by looking at it that behind any one of these doors there was depression and drinking and parents who don’t love each other anymore. And surely there were other houses that held a roof over death and grief and tragedy. It was just that mine got all the headlines.
    When we got within sight of the Dill house, Meg asked, “Do you think we’ll be okay?”
    I thought about it, and how David might answer that question, and then said, “We will if we choose to be.”
    Mrs. Dill opened the back door for us and wrapped Meg in a big hug. They didn’t move for a full minute.
    The next day was the last day of school before Christmas break. For the past week, all anybody had cared about was who had gotten in where on their early college application. Everyone else who applied had received their decisions, so they knew I had to have mine. But I wasn’t talking, and it was hilarious to watch them be too scared to come right out and ask me. In the end, it was Mr. Churchwell who spoiled the fun.
    He pulled me aside as I was walking past the main office at the end of lunch period. “Did you hear from Yale yet?” he asked me, trying to sound professional.
    I couldn’t bring myself to lie to him. “Yeah. I got in,” I said casually.
    “That’s fantastic! I’m so proud of you!”
    “I’m still working on my other applications, though.”
    “You’ll have lots of options, I’m sure.” And then he patted me on the shoulder, the kind of pat that wanted to be a hug but knew better.
    Later, on the way out of seventh period, Joe touched me on the shoulder and I turned around.
    “Congrats!” he said. “I heard about Yale!”
    News traveled fast.
    “Thanks!” I said, trying to match his enthusiasm.
    Joe looked at me nervously, then said, “Listen, I’m sure the holidays for you are . . . well, they’re not . . .”
    “They’re going to suck.”
    “Yes, they’re going to suck,” he said, smiling in relief, and I couldn’t help but smile a little too. “Do you want to get together over break? We could catch a movie. Or go into the city and see some of the decorations.”
    I pictured myself standing with Joe underneath the big tree at Rockefeller Center, eating roasted chestnuts from a street vendor, holding hands. Why did that kind of moment have to exist only in movies, or lucky people’s lives? It couldn’t be that hard to get.
    “I’d like that,” I said. “Just call me. I’ll be around.”
    “Good. So . . .”
    “Merry Christmas, Joe.”
    “You too.”
    Then I watched him walk down the hall in that bouncy way that was both awkward and graceful, thinking about how he was more than just a little bit mine now.
    Christmas morning, Nana woke me up early and marched me to the tree so I could open what seemed like five hundred gifts. Clothes, jewelry, gift cards, socks, underwear, skin lotion, magazines. Nana had even gone to Victoria’s Secret and bought me three satiny bras. It was more than I ever would have gotten from my parents, and nicer stuff, too. I could picture Nana at the mall with a list, asking herself over and over again, “What would Deborah do? And how can I do it better?”
    Each box I opened made me