The only other thing I knew about Cornell was that it was cold, but I needed more names on my list.
“I’ve heard good things about Cornell,” I told Mr. Churchwell. Then I rattled off the packets I remembered showing to my dad, and Smith for my mom, and Columbia and NYU because I could commute there. When I was done, Mr. Churchwell looked at the page he’d created in my folder.
“Have you visited any of these schools?” he asked.
“Just Yale, and the ones in the city. My father and I were going to do a bunch of weekend college visits last spring.”
Dad had already arranged for the Fridays off from work and started booking hotel rooms.
“Ah yes, of course,” said Mr. Churchwell sadly.
“Did I miss the boat on that?”
“No, not necessarily. Most schools offer interviews with local alumni, and you can always visit a campus after you get in to help you decide.” He paused, making another note. “So with Yale, I recommend you take advantage of their Early Action application program,” he said. “It means if you get your application in by November first, you could be in by mid-December, but it’s nonbinding. You can still apply to other schools to keep your options open.”
I acted like this was news but the truth was, I knew all about the Early Action thing. Dad had really wanted me to apply early. He loved the level of commitment it implied, and the whole ordeal being over as quickly as possible.
“Early Action sounds like a good idea,” I said to Mr. Churchwell.
“You should download the materials and get cracking, especially with Yale, since that deadline is right around the corner,” he said. “I think you’ll have a strong application.”
“Really?” I asked.
“Well, in addition to having great grades and SAT scores, your work with the Tutoring Club and your painting. You’ll want to send them pictures of some of your sets. Your job at the vet’s office goes a long way. And you’re back in your school routine, working hard. In light of what’s happened to you, that says a lot about character. It matters.”
I thought about this for a moment, wrapping my head around what he meant. “So we should tell colleges about the accident?”
“I think your teachers should mention it in their recommendation letters, of course. But whether or not you write about it yourself, in your essay . . . that’s your choice.”
“So they might accept me out of pity.”
“No. I didn’t say that. They might accept you because among many other things, you’ve shown amazing strength and commitment in the face of adversity.”
I considered what was being laid in front of me: The chance to really use my situation to an advantage that others didn’t have.
“Think about it,” he said, “and let me know.”
Chapter Twenty
Are you sure you don’t want to come watch?” asked Meg one day after last period. She and Gavin were going to try out for My Fair Lady, the Drama Club’s fall musical.
Meg and Gavin were now a well-established couple. Her first real boyfriend, and he was a good one to have. He wasn’t in Andie’s crowd but everyone liked him; plus, he had his own car. They had this habit of leaning together against a wall with their hands in each other’s back pockets, which I thought was just sickening. Sometimes I pictured myself and Joe standing there with them, doing the same thing, and that made it even harder.
Fortunately, I was scheduled to be at Ashland that day. Meg’s face fell when I reminded her, as if she really wanted me to watch her French-kiss in the back row of the school auditorium. I knew she was trying to pull me back into my old activities ever since I’d reduced my hours at the hospital to just two afternoons a week. I needed the time to keep up with class work, but I missed the daily rhythm of the hospital, and being surrounded by people who didn’t know anything about me. Now when I went, after a day of school and people staring sideways at me, it was almost more of a break than being at home.
Sometimes, when it was slow, I’d take a few minutes to sit on the rabbit bench out front and think of that day with David. Wondering where he was and when I’d hear from him next.
When I got to Ashland, all was chaos. A family had brought in their dog after he’d gotten into a fight. He was pretty beat up and bleeding, and Dr. B had been working on him for an hour. Which meant that the regularly scheduled appointments got delayed, and people were pissed. “He just pooped in his own carrier!” said a woman with a cat who was howling low and constantly.
“The doctor is handling an emergency at the moment,” said Eve calmly. “You’re welcome to reschedule, and we’ll give you a discount on the office visit fee.”
This placated the woman and Eve turned to me, made a face. “He’s got to get another doctor in here full-time,” she whispered. “There are just too many days like this.”
I made myself as useful as I could. Dr. B and Robert got the injured dog stabilized, and we were able to start getting appointments in. After an hour, a man in a paint-covered jumpsuit walked in holding a dirty duffel bag with both hands. I saw Eve stiffen and found myself doing the same thing.
“Can I help you?” she said politely as he stepped up to the desk.
“I hope so. My crew was painting an empty apartment and we found this kitty in a closet. She seems sick or something.”
Eve stood up and opened the duffel, peering inside. After a few moments she turned to me. “Get Robert ASAP.”
I did what I was told, and Robert swooped in and took the bag as Eve whispered something to him. After he disappeared with it, Eve composed her face again and turned back to the man.
“You don’t know where she came from?”
“I called the owner and he said the tenants who just moved out had a cat. Maybe it was theirs?”
Eve bit her lip. “We’ll take care of her.”
“Will she be okay?” he asked. “I’d . . . I’d take her, but my wife’s allergic. . . .”
“I think she’s about to give birth, actually.” She leaned over and touched the man’s arm. “You brought her to the right place.” Then, when he didn’t move, Eve added, “Do you want your duffel back?”
He shook his head, then looked around the waiting room where three clients sat, having watched the whole exchange, staring at him. He bowed his head quickly to Eve and left.
After the remaining clients had been seen, Eve and I went in to check on the cat. Robert had set her up in a bottom cage and hung a towel over the front of it. Eve pulled the towel up gently and peeked in.
The cat looked up at us, a skinny, coal-black thing with haunting yellow eyes, still on her guard. She looked tired and spent as she nursed a mass of squirmy newborn kittens. Dr. B came in and Eve dropped the towel back into place. “So we have a new mom?” he asked wearily. “That’s what, six weeks of that cage being occupied, until the kittens are weaned and you can place them?”
“I’m out of foster homes,” said Eve with a pleading edge to her voice. “What am I supposed to do? Take her to the shelter?”
Dr. B just shrugged. “It’s an option.”
“She can’t go to the shelter. She’s already been dumped once, and if you bothered to look at her, you’d see how malnourished she is. They’d all get sick and die there.”
Dr. B sighed. “Then you take her.”
“My parents will kill me if I bring home any more.” Eve was tearing up. She pulled up the towel again, hoping to force something in Dr. B. “Look at how depressed she is. All she wants is her family back.”
As soon as Eve said that, I could feel my throat close up and a bolt of something hot and sharp behind my eyes. For the love of God, I thought, please don’t start crying here. And then I saw something in my head. A bright place with a window and a soft bed that sat empty as wasted space on the planet.
Toby’s bedroom.
“I can take her,” I said, before I could think of the many reasons not to.
Eve put both hands on my shoulders, smiling wider than I thought
her face had room for. “You CAN?”
I just nodded, looking at my palms. “I have room,” I said after a few seconds. “I have plenty of room.”
“Laurel, how can you do something like this without asking my permission first?” said Nana as we stood in the living room, a cardboard box full of cats at my feet. She was angry, her mouth pursed and her frown lines making cracks in her carefully applied makeup. I’d almost forgotten what that looked like.
“I didn’t think you’d mind,” I said, shrugging, not looking at her.
“Well, I do mind, but that’s beside the point. This is my house too now, and I’m in charge, and if you want to bring in some homeless animals to live in your brother’s . . .” She stopped as the word stuck in her throat, and turned away from me, finally spitting out, “Your brother’s room . . . we have to talk about it.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Why don’t you take your trip upstate, like you’ve been planning? That way you won’t have to deal with it.”
“I don’t feel like going right now. Don’t change the subject, Laurel.”
She looked at me, her anger giving way to what seemed like confusion, like she was wishing she had a handbook she could check to figure out what to do in this situation.
“It was just something I needed to do.” I thought of the cat’s expression, imagined her alone in the empty apartment she knew as her home, wondering what she’d done wrong.
Nana saw that I was about to break down, but held her mouth in a firm line. “I understand that, and I think I understand why. I just wish you’d remember that you’re not the only one trying to figure out how to get through.”
Now that firm line fell apart, and she reached out to me. “I lost them too, you know,” she said shakily.
I stepped into her and felt her arms grow tight around me, her crisp plaid blouse pressing against my chest. It was a place I didn’t realize I wanted so badly to be.
Neither of us said anything for a little while. I pictured the kitty in the box, listening to all this, thinking, I’m not sure this is going to be any better than the animal hospital.
Finally Nana took a deep breath, stood back, and said, “Okay, but you feed them, you clean up after them. And you find them homes as soon as you possibly can.”
I just nodded, and decided I would call my mama foster cat Lucky.
Chapter Twenty-one
One week before my birthday and two weeks before Halloween, the leaves hit their peak. I could stand on our front lawn and look south to see the quilt of browns and reds and yellows stretched across the hills. It was hard for me to drive because I’d always be staring up at the trees, which bent forward over the road like they were showing off their last bling of the season before going bare for the winter.
The memories hit me hard, squeezing my chest, every time I stepped outside and felt that snap in the air, the fall food smells drifting through our neighborhood. My dad and Toby and I raking the lawn, then jumping into the leaves. Mom and I shopping for sweaters and corduroys at the outlet mall. All four of us driving up north to go apple picking early on a Saturday morning. I’d always loved October because it moved things along, it kicked our butts into shifting gear. But now that things were moving along without them, it just made me cry a lot.
“Birthdays and holidays are very difficult when you’re grieving, especially the first year,” said Suzie during our latest session. “It’s going to be a tough few months that way.”
“I know,” was all I said, playing with a loose button on my sweater.
“How’s your college application coming along?” she asked. “You only have a couple weeks left to submit to Yale, right?”
“I’m almost done,” I replied, glad to change the subject. I thought my application was pretty good. Or at least, good enough for my dad. I even had photos of my best set paintings over the years. They were photos Mom had taken, which at the time had seemed too embarrassing for words. Now the fact that she had taken them made the photos precious, and I had copies of them in a frame on my bedroom wall.
“Teachers are practically lining up to write my recommendation letters. That’s pretty weird.”
Suzie smiled. “Weird, maybe, but I’m sure not undeserved.”
“I’m still stuck on what to write for the big essay.” In other words, do I write about my family or not tell them anything about what happened? I was totally stumped and just kept putting it off.
“You’ll think of the right topic, I’m sure.”
I nodded. This was what everyone else had told me, including Nana and Meg. We were silent for too long, I guess, because Suzie jumped in with a new item. “And your birthday’s coming up. Are you feeling like you want a big party, or just a small celebration?”
I just shrugged. Every time I thought about it, I got too sad.
“Because I think you need to empower yourself on this. You’re old enough. If people do things for you and it’s not what you want, it will really make you feel worse. What did you do in the past?”
“Usually Meg and I would go out to a movie and then have a sleepover.”
“Is that what you want to do this time?” asked Suzie, making a note on her pad. Sometimes I imagined Suzie drawing squiggles and hearts all this time she was pretending to take notes.
I tried to picture Andie Stokes and Hannah Lindstrom in sleeping bags on the floor of the den. Like that was going to happen.
“No,” I said. “I think it’s time for a change. Maybe dinner at some cool restaurant.”
Suzie nodded. “That sounds lovely.”
Then I pictured Meg and Nana and Eve and me and maybe Meg’s parents, eating at a corner table at the Magic Wok. It did sound lovely.
“What about Halloween?” asked Suzie, bringing me back to reality. “There’s a school dance, right?”
Man, she was in the loop.
“Yes,” I said. “There’s a dance and yes, I’m going. Andie and Hannah and a couple of their friends, and Meg and I, are going dressed as sushi. I think they said I’m yellowtail.”
“Now that I would like to see,” said Suzie, making another note (or another doodle). She looked at her notes again and, as if deciding I hadn’t given her enough to write about, asked, “Anything else you want to talk about today?”
I had a new postcard from David tucked into the last pages of my history textbook. He was in Mexico. Just for the weekend, he’d written. Just to see what it’s like to have authentic tequila.
I still hadn’t told Suzie about anything that had happened with David; I wasn’t about to start now. But I felt like I owed her some kind of new personal nugget.
“Joe Lasky wants us to do an art project together,” I said, thinking of his open smile that day by my locker.
She smiled, way too pleased, but I was glad for it. Maybe she could get excited for me, since I wasn’t allowing myself to.
“Tell me about that,” said Suzie, and so I did.
It was after school and I was waiting for Joe. The day before, he’d sent me a text while I was in English:
superhero powwow 2mrw? no villains allowd.
I’d laughed, then texted back:
k, jst tel me whr d scret headquarters r.
Now the door, which I’d closed so nobody would see me sitting alone in the art classroom, started rattling. Joe’s face appeared in the door’s little window, his eyes confused.
“It’s not locked!” I called.
Joe rattled a little more, pushed a bit harder, and suddenly fell into the room.
“I guess that’s why Mr. Ramirez never closes this door,” he said. His sketch pad was tucked under one arm and his bag slung diagonally across his chest. “Thanks for meeting me today.”
“No problem.” I shrugged, thinking, Don’t you know I’ve been looking forward to this?
And: You’d better not be doing this out of some obligation, to make up for prom night.
Joe grabbed a stool and pulled it next to mine, then slapped his sketch pad o
n the table in front of us. “So, how do we do this?”
It felt like a bigger question, one that you could only answer with action. So I opened his sketch pad to the first drawing, a preteen-aged girl in oversize red boots and a perky minidress, her hands on her hips. She was sticking out her tongue.
“Who’s this?” I asked him.
“My little sister. SuperBrat. I’ve been drawing her in various forms for years.”
“She’s that bad?”
“You have no idea,” said Joe, shaking his head. “When I was younger, I used to keep a list of ways she might die.” He sucked in his breath and his face turned instantly white. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. . . . You . . .”
“It’s okay,” I said. But he looked so angry with himself. At that moment I realized how hard he must have been trying not to say anything to upset me. “You should definitely use this one,” I added, coming to his rescue. “I could draw a room where everything is gigantic in relation to her. Tables and chairs and stuff. Like, she thinks she’s a big shot but really, she’s tiny in her world.”
“I like that!” said Joe, nodding. Our heads were bent close to each other, and when I smelled his hair, it brought me back to prom night and almost overwhelmed me.
Joe, and this back-and-forth conversation. Not one-way postcards I couldn’t answer, postcards that might as well have been messages dropped out of the sky and all I could do was try to catch them.
I grabbed my notebook and wrote something down about SuperBrat. “Okay, show me the next one.”
A half hour later, we’d gone through all his sketches and picked out eight that should be in the show, and for which I could draw some backgrounds. Ideas came speeding through me, fully formed. It was as if they were traveling a highway that had been clogged with traffic but was now unexpectedly clear.
The Beginning of After Page 15
