It’s like when we read The Diary of Anne Frank in seventh grade, and I had the sneaking suspicion that I would have been a Nazi back then because I wouldn’t have had the guts to be anything else. Because I would have been too scared to not go along with the majority. Like, I would have been a passive sort of Nazi, but I still would have been a Nazi. I never said anything out loud, of course, but I remember reading that book in Ms. Peterson’s class and everyone was all, “Oh, I would’ve helped Anne. I would have rebelled. I don’t understand how people could have allowed this to happen, blah blah blah.” I mean, I know that everyone wants to believe they would have been the brave one and they would have been the one to hide Anne in their attic and they would have killed Hitler with their own bare hands. But clearly if everybody thinks that way and in reality only a few people actually did it way back then, doesn’t that just make me the honest one?
Anyway, the party was at the very end of the summer, and we’d only been back at school for a little while when Brandon died. The accident happened just a few weeks ago, right after Homecoming. And that was when stuff started getting really nuts because Brandon’s best friend Josh Waverly, who had been in the car with Brandon when the accident happened, told Brandon’s mom that the crash had been Alice’s fault. Things were bad for Alice before the accident, but then it became like this whole other epic level of bad.
Alice called me crying about the car accident rumor, and I told her I was so sorry, and I was sure it wasn’t true. When she called me after that I just didn’t answer. She didn’t call me all last week, and maybe she never will again. A few times she called and I answered and then acted like my mom wanted me to help make dinner or something. Once, back at the very beginning of the year before things got really bad and before Brandon died, she asked me to hang out with her and watch corny musicals at her house like we did back in ninth grade, and then when the weekend came I told her I was sick, but it was actually because Elaine O’Dea had invited me and some other girls over to her house. Like I’m going to turn down Elaine O’Dea to hang out with (allegedly) the biggest slut in the school?
The truth is, in the last few weeks, I’ve started “forgetting” to meet her at her locker before lunch and I’ve just gone straight to the cafeteria, and by the time she shows up, there’s only one empty seat way at the end of the table in no-man’s land. Sometimes no chair at all. I’ve just sort of shrugged my shoulders and done some halfhearted wave at her. Because I’ve been so chicken—because I am so chicken—that I didn’t want Alice to be mad at me. How stupid is that? I wanted her to leave me alone, but I didn’t want to deal with the uncomfortableness of having her upset with me for ignoring her. Totally hypocritical, I know.
We haven’t had some blow up or some drama-filled fight or anything. Nothing like that. Just little by little, Alice Franklin was my best friend and then she was my friend and then she was sort of my friend and now I guess she isn’t my friend at all.
The hard truth is I think I knew we weren’t going to be friends anymore the day after Elaine’s party when I read that text about her and Brandon and Tommy Cray. It sounds terrible and shallow and not at all like something the Kelsie Sanders I knew in Flint would have said, but I’ve spent too many years sitting alone in the cafeteria, and I just can’t handle doing it again.
And I won’t.
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.