The Truth About Alice(42)

I thought back to that party. To Alice sitting on Brandon’s lap and going upstairs with him and having sex with him. And do you know what I did? I reached over and grabbed Brandon’s phone right out of his hands.

“What the hell?” Brandon said, turning to look at me. And if I’m honest, the very last thing I remember before the crash is the expression on Brandon’s face when I took his phone away. I knew he was pissed off at me, which he never was. I never made him mad. But right then, I did.

I was sitting there, holding his phone in my hands, and it was like Brandon suddenly remembered he was supposed to be driving. He turned back to the road, and then the next thing I heard was the screech of the brakes.




When Mrs. Fitzsimmons came over to see me after Brandon’s funeral, I never thought what I said about Alice would explode like it did. But when Brandon’s mom pushed me and pushed me to tell her every detail about the accident, the idea of blaming Alice popped into my head. It felt like the easiest way to get her off my back. And the truth is, it sort of helped ease the guilt a little at that moment. I mean, Brandon was drunk, and maybe that really is why he crashed the truck. When I’m having an okay day I think to myself, yeah, that’s probably it. It had nothing to do with me. But when I’m having a not-so-okay day, which, honestly, is a lot of the time … well then I think Brandon’s dying was all my fault. If I hadn’t grabbed that phone, maybe he would still be alive. Maybe we’d be sitting around drinking beers on his roof and talking about being state champs our senior year. I don’t know for sure, and what sucks so bad is I’ll never know.

But something I do know for sure is that Alice Franklin never texted Brandon Fitzsimmons. Not even once.




Back in the fall Alice started hanging around with the skinny, smart dude who lives next door to Brandon’s family, Kurt Morelli. Brandon always liked messing with him, but Kurt always took it real good and everything, like he didn’t mind. He was always just kind of his own guy, and I always sort of admired the fact that he didn’t really care if he had friends or not. Like he was all he needed. The funny thing is we all hung out together back in elementary school before we figured out who was popular and who wasn’t. I remember Kurt coming over to Brandon’s house when we were in second or third grade and we all threw water balloons off the roof in front of Brandon’s bedroom window and Brandon’s mom finding out and having a heart attack over it. And Kurt, that dude was so smart, he actually tried to explain to Mrs. Fitzsimmons that the roof was safe by explaining some crap about its structure. Some physics crap, I don’t know.

Anyway, it’s weird to think about that. About the three of us being together. We called it playing back then. Like, do you want to come over and play? Sounds so corny. And then it all stopped. And now Brandon is dead and Kurt is hanging out with Alice Franklin and I don’t talk to either of them. It’s weird. But maybe they’ll be friends. I don’t know. I guess I kind of hope so.

Speaking of friends, I guess Brandon really was my best one because since the accident, I basically feel empty inside. I mean, the guys on the team are okay and everything, and I still go to parties and girls still try to get all over me and everything, and I still get drunk and hang out in the Healy High parking lot most weekends. But it’s just not the same. Nothing is the same without Brandon. I still use his locker. It’s closer to all of my classes, and I knew the combination and the school didn’t assign anyone else to it or anything after he died, so I use it pretty much every day. His mom and dad cleaned it out after the accident, but I remembered to get there beforehand and rip out all the pictures of girls in bikinis and some other crap they maybe wouldn’t want to see. So it’s not like there’s anything of him in there anymore. But I guess I still just like using it. I don’t know. Sometimes I think I can hear him walking up behind me, giving me shit for using his locker. Once I even turned around because I was so sure I was going to see him. Maybe I’m losing it.

But mostly I just go through every day and I do what people expect of me. I go to class. I get Cs. I eat in the cafeteria. I laugh at the stupid gross jokes the other guys make. I go home. I talk to my parents about basic stuff. I go to church. I ask God to forgive me and take care of things and keep everybody safe.

But life just isn’t the same without Brandon. It’s not as much fun. I mean, look, I’m not crazy smart, but I’m not so dumb that I don’t realize that Brandon could be kind of a dick sometimes. He could be. He pretty much could afford to be a dick and nobody questioned him or anything. So he could make fun of kids like Kurt Morelli and teachers didn’t call him on it. He could screw Alice Franklin and then get Tommy Cray to screw her, too, on the very same night, and nobody would say anything bad about him. They’d only talk bad about Alice. Don’t think that I thought that crap was cool. I know it wasn’t.

But Brandon Fitzsimmons could be really funny. He could be really great. He really was my friend. He was always really nice to my brother whenever he hung out at my house, like playing video games with him and letting my brother beat him just because. He never made me feel bad about anything. Not even about not sleeping with lots of girls, and not about not being that quick to get things. He didn’t even give me a hard time sophomore year when I missed his pass and I lost us the game against Clayton.

It was our first year on varsity and the older guys had been pissed that two tenth graders were quarterback and wide receiver—even if we had been good enough to deserve it and they knew it. I still think about that game. We were down by three and there were ten seconds on the clock. Brandon had to throw long and he looked me right in the eyes in the huddle. It was our one chance. He knew I knew what he was thinking.