The Beginning of After

expression. Then I got into bed with Elliot and Selina and tried to read Persuasion for AP English like we were supposed to over break.
    When in doubt, Laurel, do what you’re supposed to.
    And somewhere in there I managed to fall asleep.
    The first thing I felt was a hand on my cheek. Not really a full hand, just a good part of four fingers, pressing lightly.
    “What?” I said, startled out of a dream where Joe and Meg and I were fishing off a boat on a river.
    “Shhh. It’s me. Sorry, I didn’t mean to freak you out.”
    I felt something settle on my bed, and I propped myself up to see David’s silhouette, growing more and more 3-D as my eyes adjusted to the dark.
    “David. Where have you been?”
    “At the park. And then, driving around.”
    I smelled something weird on his breath. “Have you been drinking?”
    “Uh, yeah . . . coffee?”
    “Oh.”
    “I’m about as sober as I’ve ever been right now.”
    “Okay.” I was still trying to shake the sleep from my head, to be sure that this wasn’t a dream.
    “I talked to my grandmother. She said my dad’s fine.” His voice sounded gentle, airy, but I still felt overcome with shame as he mentioned his father.
    “I’m so sorry, David. I really messed up there.”
    “It’s okay. I’m sure I would have done the same thing, if it were me. Plus, you kind of did us a favor, because I think me and Etta were both too chicken to tell him.”
    We were silent, but I could feel something different in the shadows between us, the tension gone.
    “I needed to see what it might be like, to be back here,” said David after a few seconds. “Every inch of every road has some kind of memory for me.” He paused. “Not all of them are good. . . . Although it’s the good ones that hurt the most now. You probably know that too.”
    I had to be able to see his face as he said these things, so I reached out and turned on my bedside lamp. We both flinched from the light, and then David scanned my nightshirt. It was a new one for Christmas, with frogs and candy canes all over it. Extremely dorky.
    “Nice outfit,” he said.
    “Thanks.” I smiled, and then he smiled. I sat up and then, as an invitation, offered one of my pillows to him. He propped it against the wall and took off his shoes and scooted back to lean on it, sitting cross-legged on my bed. His getting all comfy made me a little brave. “What if you got a place near your dad?” I asked.
    David nodded thoughtfully. “I’ve considered that. I’m not sure a strange town where I don’t know anyone would help. For months I’ve been in nothing but strange towns where I don’t know anyone, and it’s not making me feel better.” He looked at me. “You would stay. You would do the right thing.”
    I started to protest, but knew it was true. “Yeah, I probably would. What I’m confused about is who decides what the right thing is.”
    “I think it’s a panel of hundred-year-old white guys in a room in a tall building somewhere.”
    “Eating pork rinds and smoking cigars.”
    “And getting lap dances, because that would be the perfect kind of hypocritical.”
    I chuckled, and then stopped, and blurted out, “I still haven’t decided whether or not I want to go to Yale.”
    “Why not?” he asked flatly. There was no reaction there, no judgment. He was the only person in the world who could do it like that.
    “I feel like I need to be here. For them . This was their life, and now I’m the only one living it anymore. If I’m not, then am I betraying them?”
    “And anyone else would tell you, oh, but your parents would want you to move on and get an education and fulfill all the dreams they had for you.”
    “Yeah,” I said.
    “I don’t know, Laurel,” said David, and I loved how he said my name, like he enjoyed it. He looked up at the ceiling. “Maybe instead, your folks would have wanted you to dedicate your days to remembering them. Maybe it makes them feel better, wherever they are, to see you give up your life so you can be closer to them, since they don’t have one anymore.”
    “I wouldn’t be giving up my life,” I whispered.
    “Of course you would be. What the hell else are you going to do here?”
    “A lot. My work at the animal hospital, for instance.”
    He tilted his head into a Come on! slant. “There are animal hospitals in New Haven, if it’s that important to you.”
    “Nana wants me to go. She wants to spend the winters in Hilton Head. So I feel like