“How’s Matt doing?” he asks. My brother and Jeremy are the same age and used to be friends at the public high school I would have gone to if I hadn’t gone to St. Theresa’s instead. I don’t blame Jeremy for not keeping in touch. It’s not like they were best friends, more just guys who ate lunch together and occasionally watched weird movies that nobody else liked. Friendship with Matt now is tolerable only for those that also enjoy trying to pet a cactus or a rabid porcupine.
“He’s…Matt,” I say, and Jeremy nods as if he knows exactly what I mean. Jeremy is twenty-two. Over the last few years, his recreational drug habit seems to have become less extracurricular and more of the main event.
Ms. Bryan slips her hand into a pair of green oven mitts. “How are you doing, Lake?” Ms. Bryan is one of those people whose whole identity screams mom, from her haircut to her jeans to her biweekly cookie bake and ostensibly no first name. And this despite the fact that she has a full-time job as a paralegal. “Have you been getting any sleep?”
I relax a little. I climb up onto one of the barstools like I’ve done so many times before and rest my elbows on the cool granite. It’s always been Ms. Bryan who’s been there to ask how my school day was. Sometimes with Tessa, Penny’s mom, while the two of them crowded into the kitchen sharing a wine spritzer and trying to get Penny and me interested in going to see the latest movie adaptation of their favorite sappy romance novel.
“Yeah, some,” I say. “I’m still taking some pain medication. It makes me sleepy. But my parents don’t want me staying in bed all day.”
“Smart.” She swirls a wooden spoon through a bubbling pot of meat sauce. I notice that the lines around Ms. Bryan’s eyelids are bright red, so I know she’s been crying. There’s no Mr. Bryan. Well, there is, but not one who Ms. Bryan can stand having in the same room for more than three minutes.
I glance over at the four place settings around the table. Everything in the house is uncomfortably normal and doesn’t seem to fit with the reality that her son’s abdomen was recently crushed by an SUV.
I can’t seem to stop thinking in such morbid terms. When I try to process the accident, I haven’t once been able to soothe myself with standard clichés such as My friends have passed away or My friends have gone to a better place. Instead, it’s the spreading pool of blood under Will’s back and the sickening angle of Penny’s leg that play over and over in my mind.
“Does your arm still hurt, then?” Ms. Bryan asks me, removing the oven mitts to fill glasses of water. She motions for Jeremy to carry them to the table, and as she does, nods at my cast. “I broke my wrist when I was a little girl, rollerblading. I had to get pins in it. But, to be honest, it hurt nearly as much when I found out it was broken as it did when I actually broke it.” She smiles, close-lipped. “Probably not you, though. Will’s always bragging about how tough you are.”
I force the corners of my mouth to curve upward. I don’t feel tough. It’s true, I’ve skateboarded down disastrously steep hills, surfed right up until the first bolt of lightning, and skated from behind the bumper of Penny’s Jeep. But I’ve never been as deeply afraid as I am now. Today, the fact that I nearly killed Ringo at the mere sight of a Lexus has confirmed the fear that I’ve felt slowly seeping in.
“It could have been a lot worse,” I say. Which is true. There’s a pause and I know I’m supposed to say something to fill it. I’ve said the wrong thing. Stupid. “I’m sorry….It’s hard….” I wring my hands together. “What I mean to say is that I’m sorry about what happened.” I stare down at my depressing shoes. I want to say more about how I can fix this, but when I start, something inside me twists like a lock.
“It’s only been a few days,” she says. “But it feels like so much more, you know? And also like nothing at all?” I follow her to the table as she carries a bowl full of spaghetti. She gestures to a chair, which I pull out while she goes back for the meat sauce and Parmesan. Jeremy is already plopped down with his elbows on the table. “Like today, I found a pair of his sneakers at the bottom of the stairs where he’d left them….” Her lips disappear into a thin line and she waves her hand as though the thought had been silly.
I feel a knot form at the base of my throat.
Jeremy reaches over the table and grabs himself a slice of garlic bread and the pronged ladle for the spaghetti. “Can we please, like, press pause on all the sad stuff until after we eat? Full-time mourning works up an appetite.” The whites of his eyes are red and glassy, and I suspect that smoking pot works up an appetite too.
“Is Tessa on her way?” I ask. “Is Simon coming too?” There are only four place settings, and apparently Jeremy’s joining us for dinner. The fact that Penny’s dad may be skipping out on dinner worries me. Is he too upset to leave the house? What could be so important that he can’t make it?
It feels good to be back in the Bryan household, where it smells like Will and feels like home. I can already tell my parents were wrong to keep me from the Bryans at the hospital. Ms. Bryan would have wanted me there.
She checks her watch, then looks down at her lap and takes extra care when neatly creasing her napkin there. When she looks up, her eyes are sparkling, but she’s put on a misshapen smile. “Actually, I’m not sure Tessa’s coming.” Her eyes flit to the door and then back to me. She seems nervous. “Please, help yourself.” She pushes the bowl toward me.
Confused about the shift in mood, I dollop out a heap of spaghetti that I’m not at all hungry for, right as the front door swings open. From my spot at the table, I can see Mr. Bryan’s head poke inside. He sees me and waves. My pulse quickens as in walks the fourth place setting, which is not Simon Hightower and is definitely not Tessa.
“Sorry I’m late,” he says. “Maddie’s going through this phase where she screams bloody murder any time Linda or I try to leave the house. The neighbors must think we’re ripping out her toenails.” He drops down into his seat at the table. “We’re even seeing a baby psychiatrist about it,” he says with a note of pride.
My mouth has gone dry. I wrap my fingers around the cool glass of ice water and imagine the expression on my face, the same as a deer caught in headlights. An ambush.
Mr. Bryan—Logan, as he likes us to call him—thumps Jeremy on the back as he takes a seat beside him and across from me. Will’s father is wearing a gray button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up haphazardly. I wonder if that’s because he’s only half in mourning, since Will is only half his family now. The other half, the one he made with his secretary, Linda, lives across town.
His chair screeches as he pulls it closer to the table. He then lifts his finger to point out my cast resting on the table next to my plate. “Ouch, that’s got to hurt.” Will hated comparisons to his dad, but it’s tough to deny the same campaign-trail smile pulled out whenever they want to flash that Bryan charm. “You going to get your friends to sign that or are you too old for that kind of thing now?”
My face feels tight, like the skin is pulling toward the center and the functioning of my lungs has reached a full stop.