Free The Wally Lamb Fiction Collection: The Hour I First Believed, I Know This Much is True, We Are Water, and Wishin' and Hopin' by Wally Lamb Page B

to fly back and be with Lolly herself. I sighed. Drummed my fingers against the counter. “Who’s Kay?” I said. “One of her bridge buddies?”
    “Kay?”
    “They said she keeps asking for Kay.”
    Mo’s eyes met mine. Her smile was sympathetic. “She’s saying ‘Caelum.’ Lolly wants you.”
----
    I SKETCHED OUT A WEEK’S worth of lesson plans for the sub. Mo went online and found me a beggars-can’t-be-choosers flight out of Denver: a 5:45 a.m. takeoff, a three-hour layover at O’Hare. I’d land in Hartford by late afternoon, rent a car, drive to Three Rivers. Maybe I’d go out to the farm first—get her medications, see if anything else needed doing. Barring complications, I’d be with her at the hospital by six or so.
    Mo tried to talk me out of chaperoning the post-prom.
    “I’ll be fine,” I said. “Drink a lot of coffee, drive right from school to the airport. I can crash once I get on the plane.” She frowned. “Okay, let me rephrase that. I can
sleep
once I get on the plane.”
    I opened my closet door and stared. Should I pack my good suit and black loafers? Uh-uh. Travel light. Think positive. Go there, get done whatever there was to do, and get back. I loved Lolly, but Icouldn’t let her stroke hijack my life. How many guys would do
this much
for their aunt? … I saw the two of us out there, stranded on that rural road between Boston and home with that flat tire. It was pitch-black except for her flashlight beam. She was aiming it at the lug nut, at my hands on the wrench.
    “Come on, kiddo,” she’d coaxed. “Just a little more elbow grease. You can do it.”
    “I can’t!” I’d insisted. I was Caelum Quirk, the kid who sucked at sports and walked around by himself during recess. The kid whose father was a drunk.
    “Sure you can. I know you can.” And so I’d strained. Grunted. And the nut had given way.
----
    POST-PROMS ARE BRIBES, REALLY: PARENTS and teachers induce their kids to party the night away at the school gym so that they won’t drink and drive. Kill themselves, their friends, their futures. The enticements that night included raffles, a deejay, a hypnotist, and nonstop food: burgers, pizzas, six-foot subs. I was put to work as a roving patroller in search of alcohol and, later, as an ice cream scooper at the make-your-own-sundae station.
    They were together in the sundae line, I remember. I served them both. “One scoop? Two scoops?” Dylan had requested three, but Eric wanted just one, vanilla. I asked him if he thought they’d have a sundae line like this at boot camp. He shook his head. Half-smiled.
    “When do you leave?” I said.
    “July one.” In another sixty hours, he’d be lying dead in the midst of the chaos, half of his head blown away. And he knew it, too. It was in the videotape they left to be discovered. Their suicides were part of the plan.
    There was one other thing that night. It happened during one of the raffles. The winner got free passes to Bandimere Speedway or Rock’n’Bowl or some such, and Dylan’s number got called. I wasstanding on the periphery. Saw the whole thing. Instead of saying, “That’s me,” or just walking up to get his prize, he showed Eric his ticket and the two of them high-fived.
“Sieg Heil!”
they shouted. A few of the other kids laughed; most just looked. “Assholes,” someone near me muttered. I considered taking the two of them aside, saying something about the inappropriateness of it. But it was late at night, late in the school year. I was a few hours away from my flight. I let it go.
    God, that’s
always
the thing you have to decide with high school kids: what to make an issue of, what to let go. In the aftermath, in the middle of all those sleepless nights, I did plenty of soul-searching about that. We all did, I guess. Had it been preventable? Could those kids have been spared? …
    I left the school a little after four a.m. Got my overnight bag out of the trunk and threw it onto the passenger