Afterward (29 page)

I've seen the other side of things back in Flint, and I am here to tell you that being popular is awesome.

But I was so sick the night of Elaine's party, I didn't even pretend there was a chance I could show up. I just clutched the rim of the toilet bowl and cursed to myself as I thought about Elaine and Alice and Josh and Brandon and everybody sitting around together, and me not being a part of everything.

I hated not being a part of things. I hated missing things.

As it turns out, I did miss something. I missed The Thing that everyone would talk about all year long, and I knew I'd missed it the next morning as I ate dry toast and sipped ginger ale and listened to my best friend Alice Franklin on the other end of the phone.

“Tell me the truth, has anyone texted you about it?” Alice said, her voice low and serious. If it had been me, I would have been crying. But Alice wasn't crying. Not yet.

“I just got, like, one text about it.” In reality I had gotten three texts, but I didn't see the point in telling this to Alice. The first text had been from this crazy sophomore who prides herself on spreading gossip, and it said:

 

Alice did Tommy Cray AND Brandon F. at Elaine's party. OMG.

 

My stomach sort of gurgled a little when I read the text, and it wasn't from the stomach flu. It was mostly because of what it said about Alice, but it was also because it mentioned Tommy Cray, who I hadn't even realized was going to be at the party. I guess it was one last hurrah for him before going back to college for his sophomore year, but any mention of Tommy Cray and I'm forced to think about The Really Awful Stuff that happened to me last summer. No one knows about it. Not even Alice.

“Kelsie, it isn't true. You know it isn't true. I don't know why the hell Brandon is telling people this shit. Nothing happened! We were hanging out at the party and he tried to mess around, and I was sort of buzzed and told him I didn't want to, and then I left. Nothing happened! You believe me, don't you?”

“Of course I believe you,” I said.

And I did.

But I also didn't.

Honestly, I didn't know what to believe.

Which I guess should sort of tell you something about Alice Franklin. I mean, there was that time she lied to me about what she did with the lifeguard at Healy Pool North. And everyone still talks about what happened between her and Brandon and Elaine back in eighth grade. She had to know everyone was going to remember that. Maybe that was why I could sort of hear panic in her voice even if she was trying really hard to play it cool.

And to be honest, maybe I started to panic, too. I think right then I started to wonder if being Alice Franklin's best friend might spell trouble for me. I mean, if people didn't think what she'd done was a big deal, it would be okay. Probably. But what if it upped the slut factor so much that people started thinking I was a slut by association? I mean, it was one thing to be a girl who'd had sex. But it was something else entirely to be a girl who'd had sex with two guys in one night.

But I had to at least pretend to believe Alice. She'd been my first friend in Healy and my ticket into the world of social acceptance, and at first I wasn't sure how the party rumor would be received. It's true. If you haven't realized it, I'm aiming for truth here. Total honesty. And if the party rumor hadn't turned Alice into this kind of weird pariah from the first day of school on, it would have been easy to decide what to do. Even if the rumors did involve Tommy Cray, it would have been simple to choose to stay friends with her. I would have just gone along with what everybody wanted. But honestly, if what Alice did (or maybe didn't) do had been held up as some great achievement by everyone at Healy High, I would have still hung out with her. If everyone still liked her, I would have still liked her, too.

I know I sound like the worst person on Earth. I'm totally owning that.

It's like when we read
The Diary of Anne Frank
in seventh grade, and I had the sneaking suspicion that I would have been a Nazi back then because I wouldn't have had the guts to be anything else. Because I would have been too scared to not go along with the majority. Like, I would have been a passive sort of Nazi, but I still would have been a Nazi. I never said anything out loud, of course, but I remember reading that book in Ms. Peterson's class and everyone was all, “Oh, I would've helped Anne. I would have rebelled. I don't understand how people could have allowed this to happen, blah blah blah.” I mean, I know that everyone wants to believe
they
would have been the brave one, and
they
would have been the one to hide Anne in their attic, and
they
would have killed Hitler with their own bare hands. But clearly if
everybody
thinks that way and in reality only a
few
people actually did it way back then, doesn't that just make me the honest one?

Anyway, the party was at the very end of the summer, and we'd only been back at school for a little while when Brandon died. The accident happened just a few weeks ago, right after Homecoming. And that was when stuff started getting really nuts because Brandon's best friend Josh Waverly, who had been in the car with Brandon when the accident happened, told Brandon's mom that the crash had been Alice's fault. Things were bad for Alice before the accident, but then it became like this whole other epic level of bad.

Alice called me crying about the car accident rumor, and I told her I was so sorry, and I was sure it wasn't true. When she called me after that I just didn't answer. She didn't call me all last week, and maybe she never will again. A few times she called and I answered and then acted like my mom wanted me to help make dinner or something. Once, back at the very beginning of the year before things got really bad and before Brandon died, she asked me to hang out with her and watch corny musicals at her house like we did back in ninth grade, and then when the weekend came I told her I was sick, but it was actually because Elaine O'Dea had invited me and some other girls over to her house. Like I'm going to turn down Elaine O'Dea to hang out with (allegedly) the biggest slut in the school?

The truth is, in the last few weeks, I've started “forgetting” to meet her at her locker before lunch and I've just gone straight to the cafeteria, and by the time she shows up, there's only one empty seat way at the end of the table in no-man's land. Sometimes no chair at all. I've just sort of shrugged my shoulders and done some halfhearted wave at her. Because I've been so chicken—because I
am
so chicken—that I didn't want Alice to be mad at me. How stupid is that? I wanted her to leave me alone, but I didn't want to deal with the uncomfortableness of having her upset with me for ignoring her. Totally hypocritical, I know.

We haven't had some blowup or some drama-filled fight or anything. Nothing like that. Just little by little, Alice Franklin was my best friend and then she was my friend and then she was sort of my friend and now I guess she isn't my friend at all.

The hard truth is I think I knew we weren't going to be friends anymore the day after Elaine's party when I read that text about her and Brandon and Tommy Cray. It sounds terrible and shallow and not at all like something the Kelsie Sanders I knew in Flint would have said, but I've spent too many years sitting alone in the cafeteria, and I just can't handle doing it again.

And I won't.

 

JOSH

I don't remember too much about the accident. I woke up in the hospital not knowing what was going on, and then my dad came in and told me what had happened and that Brandon was dead. I remember feeling like I sort of left my body. I'd heard about stuff like that on TV shows, and for a second I thought maybe I was dying, too. Even though my dad had already told me the doctors had said I was out of danger, mostly because I'd been wearing my seat belt.

After I'd been awake for an hour or so, Officer Daniels of the Healy Police came in to ask me some questions. I'd seen him through the doorway of my hospital room, talking things over with my parents. When he came in my mom followed, and she sat down next to me on a green vinyl chair.

“You and Brandon had a few beers before you took off?” Officer Daniels said real casually, thumbing through his little notepad and not looking at me. He didn't even sit down.

I didn't answer him right away. The room smelled like pee and bleach, and it made me kind of queasy.

“Son, we have your blood alcohol content and Brandon's, too,” he said, “and both were above the legal limit. So there's no need to play coy.” I guess I felt a little relieved when he told me that. So I said that yeah, me and Brandon had downed a couple of beers before Brandon's mom had asked us to head to Seller Brothers to get some diapers for his little sister.

Officer Daniels scratched his notepad with his pencil a couple of times.

“Any other reason Brandon might have been distracted?” he asked.

I wasn't expecting that follow-up question. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to clear my mind. I remembered the screech of the brakes before we ran off the road. I remembered how I'd bit down hard on my tongue when we crashed, and my mouth had filled up with blood. Like it was full of nickels and dimes.

I guess a while passed because my mom spoke up. “Josh? Is there anything else Officer Daniels needs to know about what happened?”

I stared at the chew marks on Officer Daniels's pencil. It looked like a rat had been gnawing on it. I tried not to think about the throbbing pain in my shoulder. I tried not to think about anything, actually.

“Well, Brandon was sort of fooling around with his phone,” I said finally. “You know, like messing with it?”

Officer Daniels shook his head. “Too common these days,” he announced to my mother, like I wasn't even there. He wrote down a few more things in his notepad, told me that he had everything he needed, and said he hoped I'd get better real fast.

“By the way,” he said just before he turned around to leave, “great win at Homecoming, son.”

“Thank you, sir,” I said.

My mom and I just sat there for a little while in silence. Then she came over and kissed me on the forehead. She sniffed a little like maybe she was trying not to cry.

*   *   *

It's been almost a month since the accident and Brandon dying, and my body still isn't totally back to normal, but the doctor says I could probably be back on the football field with enough time to make the last few games of the season.

That's what he told me anyway, like that was what I was supposed to be the most concerned about. When I could play football again. Not my best friend dying or anything.

My mom and dad and younger brother keep looking at me like they think I'm going to disappear or something if they stop staring at me. Like maybe I was supposed to die in that accident or something, and it's just luck that I didn't, so they'd better keep looking just to be safe. Sometimes my mom cries when she looks at me. It's real uncomfortable.

Even with my broken collarbone and my sore muscles, I went to the funeral, of course. The funeral was crazy packed. I mean, even people who showed up on time had to stand in the back, and there were some people in the lobby area of the church just trying to hear even though they couldn't see. Even the mayor of Healy was there. Brandon's mom and dad and all his brothers and sisters were up front, and his mom was just sobbing all hysterical, which made all the moms and the girls sob even harder. The whole team and Coach Hendricks were up behind the family, and Coach Hendricks just kept shaking his head the whole time.

I think Alice is the only student at Healy High who didn't come to the funeral. Even Kurt Morelli was there with his grandma. I guess it makes sense since he lived next door to Brandon ever since we were all in kindergarten.

At the service, the pastor said all this stuff about Jesus and making sense of bad stuff, but I didn't really listen. I rubbed my hands on my knees, wiping the sweat off. I couldn't stop thinking about me being wide receiver and Brandon being the quarterback and how we'd practice together, just the two of us; it was like we never even had to talk to each other. We just always knew where the other guy was going to run, where the other guy was going to throw. I thought about how Brandon would throw these perfect spirals and they would just fall into my hands so easy. Swish, thump. Swish, thump. Swish, thump. We could do it over and over and over again.

We talked without talking.

*   *   *

I think about Brandon and I think about the funeral and I think about the hospital, and I think about that day a few days after they'd buried Brandon. The day his mom came over to our house to see me. My mom was still making me spend most of my days resting on the couch in the den, like she was afraid to let me out of her sight.

“God, Josh, if only I'd known Brandon had been drinking, I wouldn't have ever asked him to go to the store,” Mrs. Fitzsimmons said. “But honey, I'm not an idiot. Brandon wasn't a stranger to a couple of beers. The police said it was the drinking that probably caused the accident, but Officer Daniels said you mentioned something about Brandon's phone? What can you tell me, sweetheart? I feel like there's something you aren't saying. Please, Josh. I just want to know everything that happened that day.”

The television was on mute. I stared at ESPN for a minute. Mrs. Fitzsimmons was just sitting there on the edge of my dad's old recliner. My mom had given her a glass of sweet tea that she held in her lap but she didn't drink it. She just sort of clutched it with her hands.

“Well, I mean…” I started. My heart was pounding real hard.

“I know you don't want to make trouble, but I feel like there's got to be another explanation than he just had a few beers,” Mrs. Fitzsimmons said. She put the glass down on the coffee table and reached out for my hands. Her hands were cold and clammy. Maybe from holding the sweet tea. Maybe just because they were. And I thought about all the times I'd been over to Brandon's house since I'd been a kid. The millions of times. And how Mrs. Fitzsimmons was always so nice to me and everything, almost like another mom.