Afterward Read Online Free PDF Page B

I’m going to mess around on the drum kit. I know she’s going to watch me through the kitchen window, checking on me every five seconds. She can’t help herself. She has a real hard time letting me out of her sight even though I’m sixteen now. Even though I figure the odds of anything awful happening to me again are a million to one.
    Then again, the odds of the first awful thing happening to me—of Marty taking me—were a million to one, too. And it happened anyway.
    Maybe my mother doesn’t believe in luck or chance anymore. She just needs to be sure.
    I’m biting my lip so hard I can taste blood. I wince and shake my head a little, and then without thinking about it too much I grab the sticks and sit down at the Ludwig and adjust the stool so I’m at the right height.
    Like I said, I messed around on the Pearl kit a little when I first got back, but I haven’t really played the drums in over four years.
    Four years.
    A quarter of my life. Twenty-five percent of it lost.
    I rub my thumbs up and down the wooden drumsticks. I nurse my bit lip a little with my tongue. I close my eyes …
    And suddenly I’m drumming. I can’t tell if I’m any good even though I’m pretty sure my fills are for shit, and I wonder what my old band teacher, Mr. Case, would say if he were listening to me play right now. But all that really matters is I’m drumming. I’m drumming and I’m a drummer and I’m drumming. I hear Green Day songs in my head and I’m pretending I’m Tré Cool, and I give the kick drum a couple of smacks and whomps and wallops. I keep at it until I feel sweat starting to bead up under my hairline and my shoulders start to ache. And for the first time since I’ve been home, my mind blanks out but it’s not a bad thing. Not like the blanks from before, from when I was gone. These blanks feel good, actually. Almost peaceful. And, yeah, I probably need to build up my stamina, and maybe I’m good, and maybe I’m not.
    But that Ludwig, man. I’m telling you, it sounded fucking awesome.

 
    CAROLINE—140 DAYS AFTERWARD
    One of the good things about being the normal one is that I can get away with my room being an absolute shit show, and no one seems to bother me about it too much. Like right now I have what most geologists would define as a mountain of dirty laundry in the corner of my room, and my bookshelf is covered in empty cans of Coke Zero and stacks of old BUST magazines my cousin in Chicago mailed me, and my floor is decorated in spiral notebooks full of homework I might or might not do, depending.
    My closet is a train wreck, too. The other day in some pathetic attempt to make room for the dirty clothes I might someday get around to washing, I tried to empty it out. I still had my sixth grade All School Spelling Bee trophy in there, which shows you how long it’s been since I cleaned out my closet. It also goes to show you how much I’ve changed since the sixth grade.
    I shoved the trophy back on the shelf along with my favorite black Converse high tops and the teeniest, tiniest little bag of weed I bought from Jason McGinty, and then I covered it all up with some random T-shirt and a bunch of junk.
    I really didn’t have to cover the weed because no one goes in my closet but me. Like I said, there are perks to being the normal one. The one who met her milestones and didn’t have meltdowns in public places. The one who didn’t have to be carted around to a million doctors from birth only to have them all give the same diagnosis. Autism. Low functioning. Cause unknown. Therapy available but sorry, your insurance doesn’t cover it. And anyway, the closest therapist is over a hundred miles away.
    I remember when my parents told me I was going to have a little brother. I was five and in Ms. Sweeny’s kindergarten class at Dove Lake Primary, and when my parents sat me down in the kitchen