by Blake Nelson
Nobody knows for sure what happened next. People in the driveway watched the car swerve wildly from side to side. They watched it run the stop sign at Highway 211, and rip a tire-burning right turn, and accelerate. Probably, by that point, Jayna was afraid to do anything. They were going too fast to grab the wheel. They were now at the mercy of Ashley.
Rachel, for her part, was most likely unafraid. In her mind, nothing bad could happen to Ashley Brantley. She was too perfect, too beautiful, too charmed. It was like the high school gods had blessed her with every imaginable advantage. She was indestructible.
But in fact, she was not. Neither were the D’Augustinos, an elderly couple, who were driving home from a small gathering at their son’s house. They were driving slowly, cautiously. They knew what night it was.
Ashley hit the D’Augustinos head-on at seventy-three miles an hour, killing herself and the defenseless D’Augustinos instantly. In that way, maybe Ashley was blessed. She never had to think about what she had done.
Jayna, in the backseat, was not so lucky. Though crushed and mangled, she did manage to gasp for air for almost a half hour before the arriving paramedics lost her pulse amid the wreckage of the destroyed Toyota Highlander.
Rachel fared the worst. She was crushed too, pinned, her young face sliced in half by a piece of jagged plastic. She lived, though, and made it to the hospital, surviving four emergency surgeries before she too slipped away despite the best efforts of the doctors, who couldn’t repair her hemorrhaging organs or splintered limbs quickly enough. You had to wonder what her last thoughts were, if she had a chance to reflect on her parents’ warning two weeks before, that they had heard bad things about “that Brantley girl.”
13
The three funerals occur on three successive days. The turnout for all three is overwelming. Hundreds of people come. People from school. People from the area. Mr. Brown is at every one. I see him in the back, setting up extra folding chairs.
There are articles in the newspaper all week and hours of coverage on TV. “The New Year’s Tragedy,” it’s called. Because the girls were young and pretty, there are pictures of them everywhere: the three sparkling teenagers, their hopes, their dreams, their perfect suburban lives, all of it tragically cut short.
There are also articles about teenage drinking, teenage alcoholism, should we make teenagers wait until they’re eighteen to drive? Which is funny, considering Ashley was fifteen and didn’t even have a learner’s permit.
I go early to Ashley’s service to see if Emily needs anything, but she sticks close to her family. Even when I circle through the crowd to talk to her, she shies away. She doesn’t seem to want any help.
So I stand with Martin and Grace and Doug Gerrard. Grace keeps saying, “It’s so awful.” When Martin and I are alone for a moment, he looks at me and jokes, “Wasn’t our first date a funeral?”
It’s not very funny, but I smile, so he won’t feel bad.
It’s a hard three days. Nobody knows how to act. Nobody knows what to say.
Grace won’t shut up with her “It’s so awful.”
After the last service, for Jayna, everyone goes to a huge reception at our school’s gymnasium. More than two thousand people show up. The community needs this final ritual. The school needs it. The parents need it.
But not me. I go home. I’ve had enough.
part six
1
On February 1, Stewart moves into his new apartment in Portland. He calls to tell me. He wants me to come down and see it and help him unpack. I don’t know if that’s the best idea, but in the end I can’t say no.
I show up at noon on a Saturday. The building is not so nice. And it’s in a bad part of town. I park and hike up the stairs. I knock on the door of apartment 305. The door is ajar and I slowly push it open.
The apartment is tiny, for starters. It’s also dirty and falling apart. Paint is peeling from one of the walls. One of the windows is cracked.
“Hey!” says Stewart, appearing from behind a closet door. “What do you think?”
“Wow. I…uh…it’s very…”
“I know, I know, but it’s dirt cheap,” he tells me, putting a box on the floor.
I take a few tentative steps inside. “The floor is uneven,” I say. “You’re going to get splinters.”
“I like to think it has personality.”
“There’s air blowing through. I can feel it.”
“It’s February. It’ll warm up in a couple months.”
I look out the window. “Is it safe here?”
“Probably not,” he says. “But it’s not like I have anything to steal.”
There’s no furniture, no place to sit. I help Stewart scoot some of his boxes around.
“You don’t have much stuff,” I say.
“I don’t believe in material possessions,” he jokes.
“It’s a good thing.”
“You want a cup of tea?”
I do. Stewart finds a pot in one of the boxes and fills it with water. I watch him do this. He looks different: older, healthier. And then I realize the biggest difference. His hair is short and it’s not dyed. It’s a very ordinary brown.
We drink our tea. I sit on one of the boxes with my cup. “So where’s Kirsten?” I ask. Kirsten, it turns out, is moving in immediately.
“She’s getting us a bed. From her mom’s house.”
I nod.
Stewart nods too.
“How’s it going with her?” I ask.
“Good,” he says. “She’s psyched to move in.”
“Was it her idea…to move in?”
“We kinda had to. She had to sign the lease.”
“Oh.”
“I think it’ll be okay.” He bends over a box and pulls out some cruddy dishes. “I know it’s weird, you and her. But I think you’re gonna like her. She has a good heart.”
“Yeah…” I say, my voice trailing off. I look around at the cold, dirty, crappy apartment. “I wish you luck. Living with someone.”
Stewart frowns. “You say that like you and I will never hang out. We totally will.”
“And Kirsten will be cool with that?”
Stewart shrugs. “Why wouldn’t she be?”
“Because we had sex? Because we were together?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“She does know about that, doesn’t she?”
“Yeah, of course. But I also told her, you know, that you and I…”
“You and I what?”
“That we’re important to each other in other ways. Beyond that. We went through rehab together. We have that bond.…”
I drink my tea.
“I hope we have that bond,” he continues. “I hope we’ll still be friends.”
“I hate that phrase, being friends.”
“Well, yeah, but our situation is sort of different. Right? We’re like comrades. We’ve been through the wars together.”
I don’t answer. But he’s right. I don’t want to admit it. But he’s right.
2
Meanwhile, back at school, I have a new friendship problem: Emily Brantley. Of course, I’m super nice, once we’re back in school. Also, I give her space, to let her decide when she wants to start hanging out, or doing normal things or whatever. I don’t freak out when she seems to avoid me the first couple days back at school. But then I notice she’s hanging out with other people. She’s going back to her old friends. And she’s still avoiding me.
A week later, I hear that she visited UCLA, which is her first choice for colleges. But when I go to her locker after school one day, she can’t look me in the eye.
“So how was UCLA?” I ask her.
“It was okay. You know. Fun in the sun.” She’s still not looking at me.
“Do you still want to go there?” I ask.
“I dunno, maybe.”
I watch her yank a book out from the bottom of her locker. “What’s up, Emily?” I ask.
“Nothing,” she say
s.
“It seems like you don’t want to talk to me.”
She shakes her head. “It’s not that. It’s just that I always think of Ashley when I see you.”
“Yeah. It’s weird.”
“I don’t blame you or anything. It’s not like that.”
“I know.”
“Your name always comes up, though. At the grief counselor’s. She says I feel guilty because I wanted you to help her, instead of doing it myself.”
“You can’t think about stuff like that,” I say calmly. “Whose fault it was…or who could have stopped it. Nobody could have stopped it.”
“That’s what everybody says.”
“That night I talked to her. She was barely listening.”
Emily looks at the ground. “Maybe you didn’t say it right.”
I’m a little surprised by this statement. “What?” I say.
“I just mean, maybe you could have explained it better,” Emily says. “She looked up to you. You were the one person who could have influenced her.”
“But I couldn’t. That’s what I’m saying. Nobody could have.”
“I know,” says Emily. “I’m sorry. I just have to let it go.”
“You do. You really do.”
“Well,” she says. “Hopefully I’ll be in California next year. And everything will be better then.”
“I hope we can be friends again, Emily,” I say.
“Yeah,” she says. “Some things just aren’t possible, I guess.”
She shuts her locker as she says this. I stand there, speechless, while she turns and walks away.
3
That’s how it goes during February. The weather sucks. People are on edge. Everyone feels awful. The whole school seems to be under a dark cloud.
It gets so bad, Mr. Brown has another assembly where a grief specialist addresses the school. He says nice things about Ashley Jayna, and Rachel, but what he really wants is for us to get on with our lives, enjoy the rest of the school year, let go.
People do their best.
Then Emily stops coming to school, and there are rumors that she’s in the hospital after a prescription drug overdose, though when she returns to school, the story changes to she had the flu.
I have my own moments of dark thoughts. I wonder if Emily was right. Maybe I could have talked to Ashley differently, been more serious with her. I want to talk to Stewart about it but when I call him, he’s eating dinner with Kirsten, and it’s totally awkward and I quickly hang up.
One interesting thing that happens: My obsession to go to college back east suddenly disappears. I wake up one morning and I couldn’t care less. I want to stay in Portland. I want to get a job. I want to do something simple and obvious, become a dog walker or work at an arts supply store.
The last thing I want is more school, more pressure, more stress.
It’s too late, though. My applications are in, and a month later I get accepted to the University of Massachusetts. It’s not even that great of a school. And my parents will have to pay out-of-state tuition, which means it’s gonna cost a small fortune.
When I get the acceptance letter, I can’t remember why I even applied there. It doesn’t make any sense.
Fortunately, my parents understand my mood swings. They tell me not to worry about it. “Just go,” says my dad, who knows about such things. “Just see what it’s like. If you hate it, come back.”
So I fill out the forms and send in the packet. My dad sends a check.
Then it’s done. Mad Dog Maddie is officially going to college.
4
It’s early April when I finally meet Kirsten.
Everyone involved is anxious about this moment, but it happens naturally enough, when Stewart has his seven-month anniversary.
We meet at that same Young People’s AA meeting, which Stewart goes to now that he lives in Portland. I walk in and see Stewart and Kirsten sitting in the middle row of folding chairs. Kirsten looks nervous, but Stewart is his usual happy, goofy self — until he sees me coming over to say hi.
Kirsten stands up when she realizes who I am.
She is thin and wispy and has an eyebrow ring that is too big for her face. She’s dressed in a kind of alternative-vegan-punk style. The main thought I have when I see her is: small town.
She is a very sincere person, I see that right away. I can also tell she’s afraid of me. I try to be nice. I hug her and find she is even thinner than she looks and she smells vaguely like a health food store. It’s hard to tell if she’s actually pretty, but she is definitely devoted to Stewart. Maybe that’s what he needed all along: less smart, more heart.
I sit next to them, which feels uncomfortable, but I do it anyway. The AA meeting begins and they make the announcements and then give out the coins. Stewart, as usual, is very popular among the other AA boys and girls. When it’s his turn to get his coin, the place erupts in cheers and hilarity. Someone hits him in the back of the head with a knit cap. Someone else yells out: “Aye, Stewaht, ya drunken bah-stad!”
He takes his coin, squeezes it in his fist, holds it over his head in victory as everyone claps and whistles.
I glance over at Kirsten, who seems a little unnerved. Maybe she’s never been to one of these. She probably wasn’t expecting it to be a basement full of skateboard hooligans.
After the meeting, a bunch of the guys take Stewart down the street to the local coffee place. Kirsten and I follow along and sit quietly while the boys tease and harass Stewart.
We drink our coffees and I finally ask Kirsten if she has a job in Portland yet. She says she’s selling flowers at a shop downtown. I know the place — there’s always willowy hippie chicks working there. It seems perfect.
She asks me if I have a job, and I say no, I’m a senior in high school.
She didn’t know this. She thought I was older. She looks at Stewart like, why didn’t he tell her?
That’s how it goes. Weird. Awkward. But Kirsten is nice. She means well. She isn’t going to hurt him in any way.
But I worry about Stewart. Still. I don’t know why exactly.
Even with his AA crew and his seven months sober and his loving girlfriend and his brand-new job cleaning carpets in office buildings.
Still, I worry.
5
I thought I might find you here,” says Martin one day, when he finds me in the library at lunch.
“What? I can still come here,” I say.
“You’re back in hide-out mode again,” he says.
“No, I’m not,” I say.
“That’s okay. I am too. At this point.”
“Where’s Grace?”
“She just found out Tara Peterson is also going to Mount Holyoke, so now the two of them are best friends.”
“Tara Peterson? Is going to Mount Holyoke? I’d kill to go to Mount Holyoke!”
“Yeah. I guess all those club activities paid off.”
“The world is so unfair,” I say. I go back to my crossword puzzle.
Martin takes a seat, and since he’s already accepted at Stanford and therefore does no homework — he doesn’t even have his backpack — he just sits there. “Being a senior is such a classic letdown,” he says, leaning back in his chair. “All this buildup and anticipation. And then you get here and it’s nothing. You’re just killing time.”
“Welcome to my world,” I say.
He stares at my crossword puzzle. “You wanna do something this weekend?” he asks me.
“What happened to Grace?”
“She’s going to Seattle.”
“Oh.”
“We could go ice-skating.”
“Okay. Whatever.”
He lets his chair fall back down with a thud. “I think Grace is going to dump me,” he says.
“Why do you think that?”
“She likes this other guy. Frank Perrone. He goes to Bradley Day School.”
“When did that happen?”
“Her mother’s been trying to
fix them up since seventh grade. Her mother’s not into me. She likes tall, handsome, athletic guys. Not computer geeks.”
“And Grace is going along with it?”
“It seems like she is. She keeps talking about how long-distance relationships don’t work. And how we’re going to be on different coasts.”
“That’s not good.”
“I know. She’s so logical. It creeps me out. Boys are supposed to be logical. Not girls.”
Martin and I go ice-skating that weekend and, on Monday, Grace breaks up with him, blaming it partially on me, telling everyone that Martin secretly liked me all along.
This pisses me off, and I consider going to her locker and punching her face in. But then I doubt that I would be able to summon up my Mad Dog Maddie persona long enough to pull it off. Probably she would stand up to me in her prissy way and I’d be the one humiliated.
So I do nothing, because who cares anyway?
Martin is so right about senior year. It is a study in irrelevancy. Unless you really love playing Frisbee, or finally getting to be president of Citizenship Club.
In the end, it’s all for the best, because without Grace around, Martin and I can hang out as much as we want, which is pretty much all we do during the last months of school. We hang out and walk around and lie in the grass above the baseball diamond. We chew on grass, look at the clouds. It’s fun, but also bittersweet. So much has happened to me in the last four years.
Who knew I would be sad to leave Evergreen High School?
6
At graduation, I get stuck standing next to Jake and Alex, of all people. I assume they’ve never forgiven me for breaking our stoner bond. But I’m wrong about that. They’re super nice, especially Alex, who suddenly wants to know what I’m doing over the summer and asks me out in a vague, noncommittal way.
Afterward, I hang out with Martin, whose whole family has shown up. Martin’s parents love me now. Then Grace comes over and freaks out when Martin won’t take a picture with her. “But you were my senior boyfriend!” she insists. Grace’s mother even comes over and gets involved.
