The day after the condolence call, Monday, Mom and Dad go to work. Normally I would be due at the Dankers’ at eleven fifteen. Now my schedule is wide open. I’m not sure what to do with myself.
We live in a chummy neighborhood called Franklin Grove. It’s in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. When we say “downtown,” we mean downtown D.C. But when we say “our town,” we mean Franklin Grove. It’s not technically a town. There’s no mayor. Local government is mostly taken care of by the county—Meigs County—which passes laws and has police and courts and all that. But Franklin Grove is very much a community, more than some of the other suburbs. People here tend to know their neighbors, and they also tend to know what’s going on around the neighborhood. There’s the community hall building, which is like a community center, only more official. There are meetings held at the community hall by the Franklin Grove Board, which also gets to make such earth-shattering decisions as how often streets get plowed in the winter and whether you can cut a tree down in your front yard.
Kids in Franklin Grove run in packs during the summer, the center of their social universe being the community swimming pool. If you’re in high school, and good-looking and buff, you might climb the pinnacle of the summer social order and get a job as a lifeguard. If not—maybe, like me, you do babysitting, maybe you work at the mall, maybe you cut lawns, maybe you go to summer school—you show up at the pool whenever you can. You join the swim team. The kids order pizza, play water polo, swim their practices, and otherwise hang out.
Sometimes I had to take Humphrey for swimming lessons. The lessons were in between the prime times for middle and high school kids—after the morning team practices and before the late-afternoon social hours. So it was pretty much me, a bunch of little kids, a few mothers, and the full-time nannies.
I’ve never been a big fan of the pool. I don’t like the way my knees look—to call them knobby would be paying a compliment. The rest of my body would be utterly forgettable, except for the fact that it is so ridiculously long, which of course makes it noticeable, and not in a good way. My dark hair, when it’s wet, forms more of a chin-length helmet than a slinky mane. It could be worse. But not a great look.
Anyway. I will not be filling up what remains of this summer with long afternoons at the Franklin Grove Swim Club. Not that I have anything else planned, other than going to some kind of counselor or therapist once a week. My parents “suggested” this yesterday, and by “suggested” I mean they told me I would be going.
“You understand it’s not because we think there’s anything wrong with you,” Mom said. “It’s just—after what you’ve been through—”
“I get it, Mom,” I said.
“And I don’t want you to think there’s any pressure on you to deal with your—to deal with any other issue right now. This is about the trauma of the accident for you.”
“I get it, Mom,” I repeated.
I take a cup of coffee out to the porch. It doesn’t seem possible that Humphrey is gone. I think about him lying in the street. Holding him, so quiet, not like Humphrey at all. That makes it real. Where did he go? I mean, he was laughing and being his usual self, and then—gone? To where? I’ve never been big on thinking about souls. And we Jews don’t tend to spend a lot of time stressing about the afterlife or heaven or whatever. But this line between alive and dead, this on/off switch that was tripped on Friday night—was that it? Live boy. Dead boy. Would anybody else ever have the exact same laugh as he did?
“Humphrey, are you out there? Humphrey T. Danker?” It’s quiet. There is no answer, and then the telephone rings.
“Hi, I’m calling for Danielle Snyder?” She makes her statement in the form of a question, as if she’s a contestant on Jeopardy!—or a girl in high school.
“This is Danielle.”
“Hi. This is Diana Tang from the Observer?” The Observer is the weekly suburban newspaper, which covers a bunch of neighborhoods, not just Franklin Grove. Everyone gets it, since it’s delivered for free.
“I wanted to talk to you about the accident last Friday involving you and little Humphrey Danker.”
Little Humphrey Danker. Little Humphrey and big, bad me.
Stop it. That is not what she said.
Should I talk to a reporter?
“I have just a few questions to start with,” Diana Tang presses on in the absence of any response from me. “We want to get your side of the story.”
There are sides to the story?
“Um—hello?” she says.
“Yeah, no, I’m here,” I say. “I don’t think I should be talking to a reporter.”
“We don’t have to use your name. I mean, we generally don’t name minors who are involved in—incidents.”
In incidents? I thought they didn’t name minors who were accused of crimes. When some girls from our school were arrested for breaking into the Halloween store that opened temporarily in the shopping center near school, the story was in the Observer, but their names were not. Only—the girls told everyone at school what happened. So much for not naming names. But another time, when a boy was arrested for robbing a frozen yogurt shop, the Observer did publish his name. It turned out he hit the guy in the store with a bat, and he had done something like this before at a smoothie shop, so he was charged as an adult. And, apparently, when kids are charged as adults, the Observer no longer treats them as kids, and their names are fair game.
I’m not entirely sure I have the ins and outs of the Observer’s rules down. And I’m not sure what they have to do with me. I’m not accused of a crime. And when kids aren’t accused of crimes, the Observer throws their names around right and left—for winning science fairs, scoring goals, earning swimming medals, raising money to fight multiple sclerosis. They don’t just print the kids’ names; they boldface them.
Meanwhile, Diana Tang is waiting on the other end of the line.
“Well … what are some of the questions?” I ask.
“So,” Diana Tang begins, “were you able to see the cars clearly when you were walking with Humphrey, and do you think the drivers could see you?”
“Um—sure,” I say. “There was still some daylight.”
“Quarry Road has a lot of trees,” Diana Tang says. “So was it still light enough to see at eight o’clock at night?”
“It was closer to seven thirty,” I say. “And yes. It was light enough.”
“Some people have said streetlights would increase safety on Quarry Road,” Diana Tang says. “Would streetlights have improved your ability to see the oncoming cars, or the drivers’ ability to see you and Humphrey?”
“I don’t know,” I say.
“If Quarry Road had a sidewalk, do you think that could have made the accident less likely?”
What? Does she think we were walking in the middle of the street? Quarry doesn’t have a real sidewalk, but people walk on the side of the street. There’s a line painted there; you walk on the outside of the line, or in the weedy strip next to that.
“I don’t think so,” I say. “We were way over on the side, where everyone walks.”
“Have you ever felt in danger walking on the side of Quarry Road?”
“No.”
“Danielle, did you ever take those babysitting classes offered by the Red Cross?”
“No.”
“Hmm. Do you know any kids who have taken the classes?”
“I don’t know.”
I really shouldn’t have answered the phone. I thought maybe it was Adrian or Becca, but they would call my cell, not the house number.
“I have to go,” I say to Diana Tang, interrupting her next question.
“I have only a few more questions,” she says.
“Sorry.” I hang up.