It’s Sunday, and we’re going home early and I’m writing this in the car. I don’t even want to write it down, but I’m afraid I’ll remember it wrong later if I don’t. I know I’ll remember it forever. I just might remember it wrong.
Sammy came with me to check out the campsites last night. We took our new flashlights because it was nearly dark. People were playing their radios so loud, the noise traveled over the whole campground. We swung our lights in time to the music. A song came on with a lonely drumbeat. Someone screamed like it was her favorite song in the world, and she turned the radio up even louder. That sad drum followed me and Sammy past dozens of campsites where couples drank beer, and friends talked around fires, and mothers sat at tables wiping their kids’ faces. We walked by all of them to that lonely beat, swinging our lights.
We saw Karen and her mom with another woman and a boy I didn’t recognize. They were sitting around a campfire drinking Coke from cans. I stopped walking when I saw them. I felt really sad. I hadn’t noticed I was sad before, because it had been such a great day. But when I saw Karen, I knew that somewhere deep down I’d been sad all day, ever since I saw her mom on the beach and the girl in the water who wouldn’t wave back.
Karen didn’t run away this time. Maybe her mom told her to get a grip. Or maybe she didn’t want to spaz out in front of the boy—who turned out to be her cousin. She stood up and came for a walk with me and Sammy. That stupid drum song was still going on, drifting over the trees down the road all the way to the beach.
The beach was bright, even though the sun had just set and it was only a half moon. We turned off our flashlights and took off our shoes and walked in the wet sand. It was cold and slimy, and it creeped me out.
I did all the talking, because Karen didn’t have anything to say. Sammy talked to Mom off to the side with his toy. I told Karen about the Darwin Awards and how funny some of them are, and how I was waiting to find out if Mom was going to get one.
I told her about Dad building a time machine like he was smarter than Albert Einstein. Sammy said, “Daddy’s smarter than everyone.” He told Karen that Dad went to his soccer game and his team was going to win the tournament.
Karen didn’t say anything. She looked at Sammy like he was the saddest thing in the world, when really he was happy as can be at that moment, thumping down the beach with his Power Ranger. She whispered to me, “Is he okay?” I said, “I don’t know.”
I told her about the mourning practices of different faiths, and how I wish we were Jewish because it’s such an organized religion. I told her about the Hindu belief that too much mourning is bad for the dead person’s reincarnation. I told her that Japanese Buddhists say their forty-nine days are not over if they don’t understand how the person they loved died. I said we were doing okay, me and Sammy and Dad, but our forty-nine days are not over.
Karen started to cry, and she told me she’d put the snake in Mom’s car. I thought she must be joking. But she wasn’t. She said she was sorry, she never knew Mom was afraid of snakes. She cried so hard I could barely understand her. She said she’d been coming over to my house to show me a snake she’d caught— probably to throw it at me, but she didn’t say that— and she’d seen me leaving the house with Mom. Mom had her keys in her hand, so Karen thought she was about to drive me to soccer practice. She dumped the snake on the passenger seat of Mom’s car to scare me when I sat down. But I didn’t get in the car. I always skipped Saturday practice. I biked over to the Dungeon to play cards instead.
So the snake wasn’t hiding under Mom’s seat for days. It was only there for ten seconds before Mom got in the car, and then ten minutes until she hit the highway and saw it.
I didn’t have anything to say to Karen when she told me that. She was crying and saying she was sorry. She was really crying her guts out. But when she tried to hug me, I didn’t want to touch her. I wanted her to get away from me. Mostly I was confused, like I couldn’t understand what she was saying. For one thing, I didn’t remember leaving the house at the same time as Mom. I thought I was home with Sammy all day. But no, I biked to the Dungeon. On the way back I met Simpson on the bike path, and he came over to my place. When we rode in, Dad asked Simpson if he would please go home because he had something important to tell me. I’d forgotten all that. That whole morning had disappeared from my head.
That’s why I want to write about Karen’s “prank” before we get home and I forget what happened last night. I don’t want to remember it wrong, like I remembered the morning Mom died. I was sure I remembered sitting in the living room, watching Mom walk out the door—just the way Sammy described her—in her red sundress, her purse falling to her elbow, her hair bouncing off her shoulder, with only a smidgeon of her cheek showing as she walked away from us. But I didn’t see her like that. I left the house with her. I saw her face. She looked happy. I remember it clearly now, how she smiled at me and squeezed my hand before she walked to her car.
I even remember biking up the street and waving hello to Karen as I rode past her. She waved back and shouted, “Aren’t you getting a ride to practice?” I just blew her a kiss.
I wish so badly that I’d gotten a ride to soccer practice. Or that Karen had run back to Mom’s car and taken out the snake. Or I wish she’d never put the snake in the car in the first place. How could she not have known about Mom’s phobia? We were friends since grade two! But even if she didn’t know, what kind of person puts a snake in someone’s car? I could see a fake snake—and maybe even a fake one would have scared Mom to death—but a real snake? That’s a terrible prank to pull. You’d have to be an idiot not to know that was dangerous.
What’s funny about putting a snake in someone’s car? It’s not very funny now. That’s what I said to Karen on the beach. She said, “I thought it would be funny.” I said, “It’s not very funny now.”
Then she ran away, probably back to her campfire.
I don’t know how long Sammy and I stayed on the beach after that. It was like another freakish time warp. I smashed all the garbage cans with a piece of driftwood. Then I threw the barbecue grates as far as I could into the lake. I picked up every stupid cigarette butt I could find in the sand and ripped them into tiny bits of fluff I wanted to cram down Karen’s throat. Sammy grabbed me and said, “Don’t cry, Josh, don’t cry,” until I didn’t know what to do. We started to build a sand castle, and eventually Dad came and found us.
Then I yelled at Dad, even though he hadn’t done anything wrong. I was just so mad. I yelled that traveling backward in time is impossible and he was an idiot for not knowing that. “Why would you want to time travel anyway?” I yelled. “Wherever you are, you’ll always hide from me and Sammy. You’ve never joined in with us ever in your life! You just waited for Mom to raise us.” That was really mean and not actually true, because he’d just let us bury him in the sand and he’d cooked us burgers.
Dad said I was wrong. He said he’d do anything we wanted. Sammy said, “You won’t make the Mommy Book.” Then Dad said, “Making scrapbooks about your mother is just another way of trying to go back in time.” I called him an asshole if he couldn’t see the difference between hiding in your basement and sharing stories about someone you love. And I don’t usually swear, at least not at home.
I smashed the castle and accidentally kicked sand in Dad’s eye. He screamed and swore. I thought we might actually have to go to the hospital, but he had some eyewash in the car. Which is weird, since he forgot the flashlights. I guess he keeps a first-aid kit in his glove compartment.
He didn’t have a chance to wash his eye out for almost an hour because I caused another disaster and nearly destroyed Sammy.
Somehow I lost the girl Power Ranger. It was standing on top of the castle when I kicked it down. I must have kicked the Ranger with the sand, way out near the water. Oh my god, Sammy had a fit. I thought it would break my heart, the way he was crying. I buried the toy trying to find it, sweeping away the sand and throwing it on top of the Ranger without knowing it. I couldn’t see it anywhere, even with my flashlight. I looked a hundred feet in every direction, and it wasn’t there. We all got on our knees, digging and panicking—Dad was searching with just one eye open—until we combed the sand for what felt like forever, scooping right down to where it was dripping wet. But the Ranger was gone.
Sammy made such a creepy frightened wail, screaming, “Where is she? Where is she?” I was afraid that he’d go insane for good, that his mind would just burst from fear and he’d never be okay again. I hugged him and told him, “Everything will be okay,” just like all the stupid grown-ups say when it’s not actually true, they just want it so badly. I told him we’d never leave that beach until we found it.
Then all of a sudden Dad found it. He stood up and walked away from us to look at the moon and cry, and he stepped right on it. We cheered like he’d found the cure for cancer or stopped a nuclear war or traveled back in time and saved Mom.
It was crazy. We jumped up and down and laughed and hugged. It was the hysterical kind of laughter that can turn into crying at any second. I think sometimes that’s the only way I’ll ever laugh again. Every time I laugh, I can feel deep down at the bottom of the laugh there’s crying, and I could go there at any moment.
Sammy was so happy when Dad passed him the Ranger. He kept repeating, “Daddy found her, Daddy found her,” and wiping his eyes and smiling, with his face all wet and blotchy. Then he asked out of the blue, “Can I go to soccer tomorrow?” Dad started giggling. He said, “Okay. Yeah. We’ll leave early.”
We packed up the tent this morning, and now we’re on our way home.
It’s weird, but I slept well last night even though I was so sad and angry about Karen. At least I know what happened. It’s even stupider than all the things I thought might have happened, but at least I know. I don’t want to see Karen again. Not ever. I know she didn’t mean for Mom to die, but I just don’t like her anymore.
I can’t see us even talking again with that horrible thing between us. Even if I didn’t blame her—but I do, because it’s obviously her fault—my liking her has disappeared. It disappeared the second she told me she’d put the snake in Mom’s car. She was crying so hard, and I could see that she was really sorry, but I didn’t care. I just didn’t care about her anymore. A switch flipped inside my heart. On. Off.
That’s sad, because I really liked liking her. But I just don’t like her anymore.