The Beginning of After

more anxious for Christmas to be over with. Nana seemed to feel the same way, and it occurred to me that this was possibly the first Christmas she’d ever celebrated.
    The only thing I was looking forward to was Nana opening her gift from me. Meg and I had gone to the Bead-iful Boutique, where we could make our own jewelry, and I’d sat for three hours carefully stringing a necklace of pearls and onyx. I tried to fake Nana out by putting it in a big, sweater-sized box. She frowned, puzzled, as she opened it and sifted through the tissue paper. And then she found the little box inside and said, “You sneaky girl!” with a sideways smile.
    The necklace made her tear up and she asked me to put it on her, and I had to admit it looked pretty nice. So I did one thing right for my grandmother. A tiny superficial thing, but hopefully it counted.
    “What can you give your parents and Toby for Christmas?” Suzie had asked me a few weeks earlier.
    “ Give them?”
    “I don’t mean a traditional present. More like, some way to honor them. Or honor the gifts they’ve passed on to you, as a person.”
    I’d thought long and hard. It was the toughest shopping list anyone could hand me, but I wanted to do this.
    For Toby, I emailed Emily Heinz to tell her I wanted to come back to help her run the Tutoring Club, and asked her to look for a student to match me up with.
    For Dad, I bought an intermediate crossword book and started on the first one, with the goal of eventually completing every puzzle without looking at the answers.
    For Mom, I began work on my first-ever portrait of someone I didn’t mind mangling in the process: myself. So far it was just a sketch of the shape of my face and my hair, done while leaning over a mirror on my bedroom floor. Don’t erase too much as you go , Mom said in my head. Let your hand channel your impressions of what you see.
    Joy to the world, a little.
    We had several invitations from neighbors who didn’t want us to be alone on Christmas, and Nana accepted them all. Meg had gone with her mom and sister to her aunt’s in Philadelphia, so I couldn’t even drag her along for backup.
    “We need to keep busy today,” Nana said, straightening a stickpin in the shape of a rhinestone star on her red cashmere sweater. She had already been busy. She’d made about four thousand cookies and brownies in the last week, then divided them up onto paper plates covered in red or green plastic wrap and a bow. I helped her load them into a gigantic shopping bag, and we each took a handle as we stepped carefully around patches of ice on the driveway on our way to our first stop, the Mitas’ house.
    I wasn’t looking forward to it, but I wasn’t looking forward to anything that day. Sitting on the neighbors’ couches with eggnog and a smile didn’t seem any better or worse than lying in bed at home or getting my eyes poked out with hot needles. I had planned on checking out, on being there but not being there, but as I walked into the Mitas’ living room I found myself making mental notes to share with David.
    Later, back at home, I wrote this email to him:
Hi David—
I had a Blew Christmas. How about you?
Here’s what I learned from the three different dinners I just attended in our neighborhood:
Mrs. Mita is tiny, sure, but she can eat her weight in shrimp cocktail. She put it out for her guests, then wouldn’t let anyone get near it!
Alex Jeffrey spends most of his time in college completely high.
There’s a whole third floor of the Girardis’ house that I had no idea existed.
Nobody’s sure if that old guy Mr. Hirsch actually still lives in his house anymore. He hasn’t been seen in months.
It’s been an educational holiday over here.
Laurel

    When I woke up the next morning, David had already sent me a reply:
ate chicken and waffles for christmas, then saw two movies. it was the best day i’ve had in a long time.
david
p.s. it’s “your” neighborhood, not mine anymore.

    I read the last line over and over again, as it went from sounding pissy and then arrogant to just plain sad. The sad version of it was still glowing on the computer screen when the phone call came from Etta, David’s grandmother.

Chapter Thirty-five

    H e’s awake,” said Etta. “Just this morning.” Her voice was tight but breathy, and for two seconds I had no idea what she was talking about. She took my silence as an okay to keep talking. “He’s been showing signs for several days, but they said