Twenty Boy Summer Read Free Page A

the wheel, the other tapping the dashboard, then his thigh, then back to the dashboard -- a wild imaginary drum solo. I stopped singing long enough to shove in another spoonful of my mint chocolate-chip sundae, a pothole causing me to miss, the ice cream toppling down my shirt to my lap. I was in the front seat, right next to him, and I didn't care. In just three weeks, my best friends would be back home, helping Matt get ready for college, enjoying the sunsets of summer, and looking forward to the rest of our days -- the rest of our forever.
    The chorus started again through the speakers and I sang louder, "Ca-sey Jones you bett-er... watch your speed..." Frankie laughing from the backseat, Matt smiling at me sideways, fingers secretly brushing my knee, the noon sun laid out and happy on the dusty road ahead.
    Together. Happy. Whole.
    The three of hearts.
    The possibilities endless.
    And then... my sundae flying out of my hands into the dashboard.
    Veering.
    Screaming.
    Slamming.
    Broken glass.
    A wheel spinning.
    Casey Jones skipping, over and over. "Watch your -- watch your -- watch your speeeeeed."
    Someone squeezing my hand, hushing, asking for my parents' names and phone number. Helen and Carl Reiley. But don't tell them, I think.
    An ambulance. Paramedics. Stretchers. "I've got him," someone shouts. "Get the girls out!"
    "Can you hear me? Can you move your legs?"
    "Jesus, you girls are lucky to be alive."
    In the hospital lobby, I curled myself against Dad's chest, letting him stroke my hair and hum Beatles songs like he did when I was little to chase away the monsters. My head hurt, my knee was bandaged up, and my wrist was immobilized and wrapped in white tape. Frankie, sitting across from me with her knees pulled to her chest, had a fat lip and eight stitches sticking out like angry black spider legs through her left eyebrow. She was still -- all but her fingers rubbing the red glass of her Matt-bracelet. I closed my eyes under the fluorescent lights and tried to make another birthday wish, a onetime do-over, a rebate, a trade-in on the kitchen sink kiss that started everything, offered up for just one last miracle.
    I thought about Matt's clove-and-marzipan-frosting mouth and his favorite books stacked up on every flat surface of his bedroom as the doctor told us what happened. Matt wasn't a careless driver; he just had a hole between the chambers of his heart, a tiny imperfection that had lain dormant for seventeen years until that moment on the way home from Custard's when it decided to make itself known. They used a more medically appropriate term when they explained it to Red, handing him a plastic bag full of Matt's things. Watch. Wallet. The Syracuse Orangemen T-shirt he'd worn that day. But I knew what it meant. I knew as soon as Red started shouting, as soon as Aunt Jayne collapsed in Mom's arms, as soon as the hospital chaplain arrived with his downturned mouth and compassionately trained eyes.
    Matt -- Red and Jayne's Matt, Frankie's Matt, my Matt -- died of a broken heart.
    And everything else that ever mattered in my entire existence just... stopped. I was underwater again, seeing things in a slow-motion fuzz without sound or context, without feeling, without care. The world could have ended and I wouldn't have noticed.
    In a way, it did end.
    They must have let Red and Jayne and Frankie say goodbye to him, but I don't remember.
    Mom and Dad must have called relatives and friends and funeral directors, but I don't remember.
    There were probably nurses and apologies and organ donor papers and Styrofoam cups of cold coffee, but I don't remember any of it. Not in a way that makes sense.
    I don't even remember how I got home. One minute I was underwater in the hard plastic hospital chair, and then I was back in my own bed with the door closed against my parents' muffled conversations downstairs and the endlessly ringing phone.
    I must have fallen asleep, because I dreamed about him. In the dream, he gave me