What to Say Next(38)

“Maybe,” I say, not able to share his sympathetic views. I don’t think my mother was lonely. She was just selfish. Or even worse: horny. Ew. I am seriously feeling ill.

“Is that why you were crying? Because of your mom and dad?” David asks. I haven’t quite gotten used to this about him. As if the only way to go is straight through.

And, of course, there’s the flip side to David’s directness. I don’t really want to talk about my crying.

“It’s just…a lot of things.”

“You look beautiful even when you cry. I mean, not that you don’t look beautiful when you’re happy. Of course you’re beautiful all the time. But out there in the snow, you were stunning.” My stomach tightens and I let out a little laugh. No, more like a gasp. What are you supposed to say when a guy says you are beautiful? This has never once come up. My body warms and buzzes with his words.

My mind is racing. McCormick’s is a good place. They sell milk shakes and have a little sign discouraging you from talking on your cell phone. I like sitting here with David, basking in his undeserved compliments.

“Thanks,” I say finally, after what feels like a long time in which I’ve been trying to think of what to say next. “Thanks for that.”

“You’re welcome.” He jumps up, reaches out for my hand, and I let him take it. “Now let’s go check out the place your dad died and close that loop.”

—

Over the course of the three-block walk, I think of and abandon at least five different excuses to turn around. I never really meant it seriously, I tell myself. I never had any intention of embarking on what David has named the Accident Project. For David, obviously, this is nothing more than some sort of equation, or a puzzle to be solved. Another one of his open loops to close. He can’t tell that I’m sweating, even though it’s freezing out, or that I feel dizzy with fear.

And then I see the intersection of Plum and First. This corner is on the way to the grocery store, to the ballet classes I took until third grade, to Violet’s house, to Star of Punjab, to a million other landmarks of my childhood. The playground where Kenny Kibelwitz kissed me on the lips as part of a dare when we were ten. The park where, on many Sunday mornings when I was little, my dad and I would set up a picnic blanket and have a tea party with my teddy bears while my mom slept in and caught up on her “beauty rest.” Here it is, this intersection, looking as innocuous as always. No shattered glass. No flowers to mark the spot.

My phone dings, a text message, and I assume it’s from my mother. I don’t want to think about her, because thinking about her leads me to this inescapable fact: My dad did not die peaceful or happy with his place in the world. My dad died betrayed. Minutes away from a freaking divorce filing.

Right over there, right over there, right over there.

X marks the spot with a circle and a dot.

I pull my phone out of my pocket with the hand not holding David’s. A text will buy me some time. Thinking about my mom having sex with Jack is preferable to thinking about the fact that my dad was mutilated by a navy-blue Ford Explorer. Pain, it turns out, has a hierarchy.

Not my mother after all. It’s a text from Violet instead, in all caps, three exclamation points. Weird. Annie’s the text screamer among us. The one who deploys excessive punctuation for no reason. I’M HUNGRY!!!! she’ll write. Or MY SHOES ARE KILLING ME!!!!!! AHHHHH! Violet prefers all lowercase, her texts as dainty as her clothes.

Violet: omg, kit!!! have you seen this?!?!

There’s a link to someone’s Tumblr: “The Retard’s Guide to Mapleview.” Whatever. I don’t need to read another one of my classmate’s dumb offensive blogs. Last year someone anonymously posted a “How to Get the Ladies to Sex You” guide, which was as disgusting as it sounds. I decide not to click. Whatever.

“The snow makes this more complicated,” David says, and drops my hand to reach into his backpack. He pulls out measuring tape. There’s something about the gesture—the fact that he brought measuring tape to school—that brings more tears to my eyes. I wonder what else is hiding in his bag. I picture a compass and maybe a scientific calculator. I imagine he’s fully prepared for the zombie apocalypse, just like my dad. “I don’t think it’s falling that fast, so we can just measure its density once, and take that into account.”

I have no idea what it is we’re actually doing. What are we measuring? I think about the word density and suddenly don’t remember what it means.

“The report said your dad died at six-fifty-two p.m. Do you know if he died on impact? Because if he did, that can be the time we work back from.” David’s voice is flat, dimensionless.

“I’m not sure this a good idea.” I say it out loud, that which has been repeating in my head. Not a good idea. Not a good idea. Not a good idea. And also this: Run, run. run. “Let’s not do this.”

David turns and looks me up and down. I’m trembling from head to toe.

“This is hard for you,” he says matter-of-factly. As if it is just occurring to him.

“Yes,” I say.

“It’s just a place. If you want, I can pull up our coordinates. That way it’s not even a place,” he says, and then he does it. He gives me our location based on latitudinal and longitudinal measurements. If my ears weren’t whooshing, if my stomach wasn’t pulled tight into my throat, I’d laugh. “If you don’t want to do this, we don’t have to. But I don’t like that you aren’t sleeping. We need sleep for our bodies to function efficiently.”