After Read online

  LACEYLOO321: i don’t want to talk about that.

  JENNICAJENNICA: u never do.

  JENNICAJENNICA: is that what you talked about at ur group? that group for kelsi?

  LACEYLOO321: not really. we just kinda hung out.

  JENNICAJENNICA: why? they’re not even ur friends.

  LACEYLOO321: i dunno. it’s just nice. to have people who understand you.

  JENNICAJENNICA: i understand u.

  LACEYLOO321: i know.

  JENNICAJENNICA: but u don’t talk to me.

  LACEYLOO321: it’s different w/ people who have lost a parent 2.

  JENNICAJENNICA: but i try to understand.

  LACEYLOO321: i know.

  LACEYLOO321: …

  LACEYLOO321: maybe i don’t give you enough credit for that.

  JENNICAJENNICA: so anyway.

  JENNICAJENNICA: my dad’s stupid wedding is in 2 months.

  LACEYLOO321: what????!!!! 2 MONTHS???? but he just got engaged!!!!!!!!!!!!

  JENNICAJENNICA: ya

  LACEYLOO321: that’s CRAZY.

  JENNICAJENNICA: ya

  JENNICAJENNICA: i hate his stupid girlfriend.

  LACEYLOO321: she’s like our age.

  JENNICAJENNICA: almost. she’s like 23 or something.

  LACEYLOO321: what does brian think?

  There was a long pause. I thought maybe Jennica had signed off without seeing my last question. I was just about to close the IM window when she wrote back.

  JENNICAJENNICA: he thinks i’m being dumb

  LACEYLOO321: what????

  JENNICAJENNICA: i dunno

  LACEYLOO321: are u 2 fighting?

  JENNICAJENNICA: not exactly. kinda.

  LACEYLOO321: about what???

  JENNICAJENNICA: he doesn’t get it

  JENNICAJENNICA: his dad is on wife #3. and his mom just got married last year

  LACEYLOO321: so?

  JENNICAJENNICA: he just doesn’t think it’s a big deal. doesn’t get why i’m upset

  LACEYLOO321: that’s crazy

  JENNICAJENNICA: yeah. well.

  LACEYLOO321: i’m sorry.

  JENNICAJENNICA: ya. thanx.

  JENNICAJENNICA: gotta go. my mom’s yelling at me.

  LACEYLOO321: hey, i’ve got something to tell you.

  JENNICAJENNICA: can we talk tmrow? seriously, mom’s pissed.

  LACEYLOO321: yeah. u ok?

  JENNICAJENNICA: ya. see ya. can u come over tmrw? like lunchtime? we can go to the mall.

  LACEYLOO321: yeah. c u at noon?

  JENNICAJENNICA: c u. bye!

  • • •

  “We’re not invited to the wedding,” Jennica told me as she opened her door the next day.

  “What?” I asked, my heart aching for her. “You’re not?” Jennica nodded. “My dad’s fiancée”—she spat the word out like it tasted terrible—“is apparently afraid Anne and I will make a scene.”

  As much as Jennica disliked her dad’s bride-to-be, a spandex-wearing, yoga-practicing blond waif who was the polar opposite of Jennica’s dark-haired, pleasantly plump Cuban American mom, she and Anne had been raised to be polite in every situation. I knew as well as her father did that Jennica would never, in a million years, make a scene at someone’s wedding—even if she hated the person.

  “But what about your dad?” I asked. “Isn’t he insisting you come? I mean, he’s your dad!”

  Jennica’s eyes filled with tears, which she wiped away angrily, as if furious that they were even there in the first place. “No.” The word sliced out of her mouth.

  “No?”

  “No,” she repeated. “He says it’s Leanne’s day. And he wants it to be perfect for her.”

  “But it’s his day too,” I protested. “And you’re his kids.”

  “Yeah, well.” Jennica shrugged. “I guess that doesn’t matter.”

  “He still loves you, Jennica,” I said. I knew the words were weak. I didn’t know what else to say.

  “Well, it doesn’t feel like it.”

  I thought about my family and about how far apart we’d all drifted. I thought about my dad, and how he wasn’t here for us when we needed him most. And weird as it was, I thought about Sam and the fact that in just a few minutes of talking to him, he’d made me feel more understood than I’d felt in the last ten months.

  “My mom’s out and Anne’s at her friend’s house,” Jennica said, changing the subject. “Is it cool with you if we just go to the mall now and eat there? I promised I’d have the car back by three.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  It wasn’t until we were walking into Macy’s that I blurted out, “So I’m going out with someone tonight.”

  Jennica stopped. “Who?” she practically shrieked.

  “Sam Stone.”

  “What? Since when? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I’m telling you now.” I quickly recounted the story of my jog yesterday and of running into him as he mowed his lawn.

  “He’s, like, completely gorgeous,” Jennica said. “I can’t believe you’re going out with him.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “Omigod,” Jennica said.

  “I know,” I repeated with a smile.

  “Well, we totally have to get you a new outfit, shoes, a top, earrings—”

  “It’s not really that big of a deal,” I protested. I felt silly. “I mean, it’s a Sunday night. We’re just going to dinner.”

  “And you need to look hot.”

  For the next hour, Jennica seemed to forget entirely about her dad’s upcoming remarriage as we raced around the mall. She was on a mission as she rifled through sale racks, throwing dresses, skirts, and cute tops at me. And she was chattering a mile a minute.

  “So you have to ask a lot of questions, but not too many, because you want to seem interested, but not annoying,” she rambled. “And you want to make eye contact, but you can’t, like, stare, because that comes off as creepy, you know? And you should order a real meal, not just a salad, because guys don’t like girls who don’t eat, but you shouldn’t finish it all, because you don’t want to look like a pig. And you should remember to cross your legs, bat your eyes, and sometimes lick your lips, because it’s been proven that guys find that attractive.”

  “Jennica,” I said after we got our lunch and found seats in the crowded food court, “I appreciate all the advice. But I think I’m just going to be myself.”

  “Be yourself?” Jennica repeated. She looked horrified.

  “I’m not a total loser or anything,” I said, taking a bite of my hot dog.

  “No … but you aren’t exactly used to going out with cute guys.”

  I gave her a look. “I think I can manage.”

  Jennica took a sip of her soda. “You are going to have so much fun. I’m actually kind of jealous.”

  “What, of me going out with Sam?” I asked, surprised.

  “No,” she said. “Of how excited you are.”

  “Don’t you feel like this with Brian?” I asked.

  Jennica paused. “No,” she said. “Not anymore.”

  chapter 15

  When the doorbell rang, I took one last look in the mirror, then raced downstairs. I’d bought a new black top with a deep pink rose stitched up the side, and I’d paired it with my favorite jeans, black boots, and gold hoop earrings. I looked good.

  “Hey,” Logan said, beating me to the door. He stared at Sam, who looked ridiculously hot in dark jeans, a white button-down shirt, and his leather jacket.

  Sam looked past Logan and saw me coming down the stairs. “Hey.” His smiled widened.

  “Tell Mom I’ll be home by ten,” I told my wide-eyed brother.

  • • •

  We ate at a place called Saltwinds, which looked out over Plymouth Bay. And luckily I didn’t need Jennica’s rules—I didn’t even feel nervous. It was like talking to a friend who happened to be super cute.

  “I want to show you something,” Sam told me af
ter dinner. “Do you have another couple of hours?”

  I doubted Mom would even notice if I was late.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  Sam turned east on Route 44, but I didn’t figure out where we were going until we were well outside the city limits.

  “Are we going to where you used to live?” I asked.

  “Near there,” Sam said mysteriously.

  Just after we passed a WELCOME TO TAUNTON sign, Sam took a left and then another left onto a dirt road. We drove until I could see a collapsed bridge across a river ahead of us.

  “You’re not going to try to cross that or something, are you?” I asked, realizing as I said it that I was being silly.

  “No,” Sam laughed. “Just trust me, okay?” He pulled off the dirt road and parked several yards from the water. He shut off the ignition and crossed around to the passenger side to help me out. “Come on,” he said. “It’s not muddy.”

  I hopped out of the Jeep. He took my hand, lacing his fingers through mine the way he had at the party. We walked in silence under the bridge. I looked at the water, half expecting to see a boat or something down there. But when we reached the bank, Sam gently put his hands on my shoulders and turned me around so that I was facing the underside of the bridge.

  I stared without speaking. I didn’t know what to say; it was like nothing I’d ever seen.

  The entire underside of the bridge abutment was painted with a mural in all the colors of the rainbow. Every available inch of space was filled with individual scenes. Kids played together; families sat around the dinner table; stars sparkled in the sky.

  “Wow,” I said. “This is amazing.”

  “It’s where I used to come before we moved to Plymouth. You know, when I needed to get away,” Sam said.

  “How did you find this mural?” I asked.

  Sam laughed. “Find it? I painted it.”

  I looked at him in disbelief. “What?”

  He looked a little embarrassed. “I mean, it’s not that big of a deal. It’s just how I get stuff out, you know? Like this.” He walked over and pointed to a scene of three people standing together, their backs to us. The man in the middle was pointing upward. The boys to either side of him, one younger than the other, were looking in the direction of his finger. “This is the first thing I painted. It’s my dad and my brother and me when we were little. He used to take us to the air show in Chicopee. For some reason, after his stroke, this was the image I couldn’t get out of my head.”

  “It’s beautiful,” I said. I reached out and touched the paint, feeling its texture beneath my fingers.

  “And this”—he walked me a few feet to the right, where a man and a woman knelt laughing under a Christmas tree—“was the Christmas that my dad gave my mom a pair of socks and then surprised her by pulling a necklace out of his bathrobe pocket while she was trying to pretend she liked the socks.”

  He took me down the mural, pointing out scenes here and there. I couldn’t get over the level of skill; some of the figures looked real enough to reach out and touch. As Sam talked me through some of the pictures, I couldn’t help feeling like I was reading the CliffsNotes to his life. I liked it.

  After a while, he led me over to a cement block near the river, and we sat down.

  “So, you never told me what happened to your dad,” he said after a minute. He reached for my hand and squeezed. “You don’t have to talk about it. But if you want to, I’d like to hear.”

  I looked down at the water. “I’m sure you’ve heard the story,” I said. “Everyone at school talks about it.”

  “I don’t listen to rumors,” Sam said.

  I took a deep breath. “Okay.” I looked up and cleared my throat.

  “It happened last November,” I began. Slowly, I told him about that crisp, bright autumn morning eleven months ago, when everything in the world had seemed so perfect. The words poured out, as they’d never done before. No one had ever asked for my story; everyone assumed they already knew.

  “The worst part about it is …” I couldn’t finish the sentence. Sam put his hand on my shoulder, and I knew he was trying to comfort me. I couldn’t meet his eyes. “I think it was my fault,” I said, so softly that I wasn’t sure Sam could even hear me.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” he said right away.

  “Yeah, it was.” I still couldn’t look at him. “Sam, if I hadn’t spent that extra time in the bathroom, if I hadn’t been so stupid and shallow”—I took a deep breath—“my dad would still be here.”

  “Lacey,” Sam said firmly.

  I continued to look down. I swallowed the lump in my throat.

  “Lacey,” Sam repeated. “Look at me.” His face was inches from mine. I could feel his warm breath. He was looking at me intensely.

  “What?” I whispered

  “It wasn’t your fault,” he said.

  “But it was,” I said. “If I had just taken less time–”

  “No.”

  “But if I had screamed or something when I saw the other car–”

  “No, Lacey.”

  “If I hadn’t been dragging my feet to annoy Logan–”

  “No,” Sam cut me off, his voice leaving no room for argument. “It was not your fault. Just like it wasn’t my fault with my dad. I beat myself up about it for a while, Lacey. Even after the doctors said there wasn’t anything I could have done. But it wasn’t me. And it wasn’t you. And as unfair as this is, and as hard as it is to understand, it was just their time for something to happen.”

  I swallowed hard. I didn’t believe that. How could it have been my dad’s time? He was thirty-eight. Just the other day, we’d read in history class about a man in Puerto Rico who had lived to be 115. How was that possible? He had lived three of my father’s lifetimes.

  I stared out into the blackness for a while and tried to process what Sam had said. He had felt like it was his fault too when his dad died. But what could he have done to stop a stroke?

  It was different for me. There were a thousand things I could have done to change the outcome that day. I could have gotten up earlier that morning. I could have taken less time in the bathroom. I could have chosen not to deliberately annoy Logan. I could have looked up a second sooner in the car and seen the SUV barreling toward us. I could have warned my dad before it was too late.

  If I’d done any of those things, my dad would still be alive.

  But I knew Sam wouldn’t understand that or would try to talk me out of it, the way Dr. Schiff did whenever we touched on the topic. So instead, as I did with her, I changed the subject. “The anniversary is in three weeks,” I said. I looked out in the blackness of the night and tried to focus on one of the porch lights across the river. Sometimes, if I stared into the darkness long enough, I could see the shape of my dad’s face in the shadows, his familiar form coming out of the blackness. But not tonight.

  “The anniversary of the accident?” Sam asked.

  I nodded. “November fifteenth,” I said. “It’s weird thinking it’s been a whole year.”

  Sam slipped his arm around my shoulder and scooted a little closer so that the sides of our bodies were pressed together. I should have felt nervous, or at least that tingly, anticipatory feeling of being with someone I really liked. But instead, all I could think about was my dad.

  “You must miss him,” Sam said, his breath tickling my ear.

  I nodded and he gave my shoulder a long squeeze, pulling me closer. “So much has changed,” I said. “I miss him more than I could even say. But I miss us, too. I miss my family. I miss being normal. I miss the sound of my little brother’s voice. I miss seeing my mom smile. I miss being able to feel happy, even for an instant, without feeling guilty.”

  I paused, embarrassed, and looked at Sam. “I’m glad you’re here,” I said. “I’ve never been able to talk to someone who understands before. I mean, I know other people whose parents have been sick or have had cancer or who have gotten divorced. And that’s really sad. B
ut it’s not the same thing. Talking to you just makes me feel safe.”

  Sam shifted, and I thought he was going to say something, but he didn’t. I settled back against his shoulder and gazed out at the river.

  “Sometimes, I miss my dad so much it literally hurts,” I whispered. I wasn’t even sure I’d said the words aloud until I felt Sam’s arm tighten around me.

  “I know,” he said. “Can I show you something?”

  He led me back to the mural, to the far right side, and pointed up, above the heads of the paintings of himself and his mom and brother watching a baseball game. “See that rainbow?”

  Sam had painted a sunny sky with only a few wisps of clouds. But in the middle of it, so faint that you had to strain to see it, there was the lightest wash of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple, all in an arching ribbon of translucent color.

  “My uncle Joe died when I was ten. Cancer,” Sam continued. “We were all really close, so it was really tough on me.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  Sam shook his head. “No, it’s okay. But my point in telling you is that my dad used to say that anytime we could see a rainbow in the sky, that was Uncle Joe telling us he was all right.”

  “A rainbow?” I asked.

  Sam shrugged, embarrassed. “I know it sounds dumb.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” I said gently. “But do you believe that? I mean, really believe it?”

  “I didn’t at first. But you know, I started noticing that there were rainbows in the sky at the weirdest times. Like the afternoon my dad had his stroke. It wasn’t even rainy that day. But I swear, when we got to the hospital with the paramedics, I looked up, and there was this really faint rainbow in the sky.”

  “Really?”

  “Maybe it’s not as crazy as it sounds. I mean, if you believe in heaven and all.”

  “I do,” I said simply. You had to believe in heaven when your dad died. The alternative, that your father’s soul simply vanished, was too awful to even consider.

  “So what I meant was, I think maybe your dad’s been here all this time,” Sam said. “Maybe he does see you. You just haven’t known where to look for him.”

  I nodded quickly. I was trying to fight a strange feeling welling up inside me. It almost felt like I was going to cry, but I hadn’t done that in almost a year. Not since that day in the cafeteria with Tali and Tatiana. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to. But every time I felt like the tears should come, they didn’t. This was the closest I’d felt. My insides swam uncomfortably. I fought the feeling. I didn’t want to cry; I couldn’t afford to crack now, for so many reasons.