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 seatbelt.
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 with. 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 was 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 think 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. They 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.
And I felt my mouth moving and words just coming out, and all of a sudden I was telling her about Alice’s texts.
“Alice Franklin?” Mrs. Fitzsimmons asked, her forehead wrinkling up.
I nodded. I mean, it was kind of embarrassing because she was Brandon’s mom, but I’m sure even Mrs. Fitzsimmons had heard the rumors about Alice and Brandon and what had happened at Elaine’s party at the end of the summer. Everyone had been talking about Alice since then. Even the grownups.
So I told her how when we’d been on the road, Alice had been sending Brandon all these texts and she wouldn’t stop.
“Texts? What do you mean texts?” Mrs. Fitzsimmons said. “What would she be texting him about?” I looked at the television screen and I looked at the glass of sweet tea on the coffee table. But I couldn’t look at Mrs. Fitzsimmons.
“Uh, I’m sorry, but this is sort of awkward,” I said.
“No, it’s okay, Josh. The texts, were they, like, harassing?”
“They were, like, uh, sexual stuff,” I said. “Like stuff about that party and, uh, stuff she wanted to do to Brandon or whatever.”
“How many times did she text him while he was trying to drive?” Mrs. Fitzsimmons asked. “Lots. I mean, I lost count. They were popping up every second or so.”
Mrs. Fitzsimmons nodded and I guess you could say she looked upset, but her face relaxed a little, like maybe there was a part of her that was also relieved. She finally took a sip of her tea.
“So you could say she was distracting him with her texts?” Mrs. Fitzsimmons asked.
“Yeah,” I answered. “You could say he was distracted.”
“Thank you, Josh. Thank you for telling me that. I know it wasn’t easy.”
I nodded, and I was glad when she switched the topic to Brandon’s funeral and how touched she was that so many people came out for it and how happy Brandon would have been about that. We sat there for a little bit longer, just talking about Brandon and how much we both missed him, and Mrs. Fitzsimmons had to dab at her eyes a little with her napkin and stop every so often so she didn’t start crying really hard. When she decided to leave, she hugged me, but not too tight on account of my shoulder.
“Josh, sweetie, I just want you to know you’re welcome at our house anytime,” she said. “Anytime, honey. I don’t want to lose touch with you. I hope you know that.”
I nodded again, wishing she would just go home. I felt bad about feeling that way, but I just wanted to be by myself.
On her way out, she stopped in the kitchen to talk to my mom, and I could catch little bits and pieces of what they were saying over all of the yelling on ESPN. Now I love my mom and everything, but she doesn’t exactly have the best habit of keeping stuff to herself. And in a town like Healy, information like the kind I’d just shared with Mrs. Fitzsimmons travels pretty fast. I guess my mom must have told someone else’s mom, and that mom told another mom, and maybe that mom told her kid. You get the idea. Anyway, the bottom line is that by the time I started back at school, Alice Franklin wasn’t just that slut who’d slept with Tommy Cray and Brandon Fitzsimmons at some party.
She was the slut who got Brandon Fitzsimmons killed.