How to Save a Life by Sara Zarr Read Free Book Online

had the best night ever and totally got away with it. The year I had no idea how much of my lucky life I’d lose.
    “Jill?” R.J. asks again. “Seriously, it’s my first week. Please.”
    Realizing I have the power in this situation, I roll down the window just enough so he can hear me clearly. “Tough shit.”
    He stands there, holding his hand and watching me take a speed bump too fast. Then I turn toward the exit and he’s gone.
    Halfway home I pull over on a residential street, too amped to drive. My elbow hurts where it connected with R.J.’s face. Idiot .
    I start crying.
    Not because of fear or anger anymore. Because: When I get home, my dad won’t be there to get outraged on my behalf, to be impressed when I re-enact my elbow strike, to say I told you so about making me take that class, to tell me I did the right thing and the store stays open too late, anyway, for school nights. I won’t get to see him turn red. I won’t get to talk him out of calling the police or Margins headquarters. I won’t get to say, Dad, calm down. I lived. It’s fine .
    I’ll walk in the door and his chair will be empty.
    I beat on the steering wheel a few times, blow my nose on a napkin I find in the glove box, and head home. On the way I stop at a mini-mart and buy Mandy three magazines and a package of cupcakes.
    Why I do this, it’s hard to say, except I know that it’s exactly the kind of thing my dad would have done.

     
    Later, when I can’t sleep and I’ve tried all the usual tricks—listening to talk radio, counting backward, drinking warm tea—I pull out my sophomore yearbook so that I don’t wind up lying awake thinking about my dad all night.
    I find my class picture and stare and stare and stare, like Jill MacSweeney is someone from my long-ago past. A forgotten pen pal. An old summer-camp friend.
    Here’s something I remember: Laurel and I swapped shirts the morning of picture day. For no reason other than to make fun of the whole idea of school pictures and how everyone at school was trying so hard to look good. I can see us in the girls’ room, laughing and standing in our bras. In my picture I’ve got on her favorite retro English Beat T-shirt. In her picture, she’s wearing my signature green hoodie. It hurts to look at that too long. All I can remember is what I lost, not who I was.
    Desai, Desai. I flip pages until I find him. Ravi—not R.J.—Desai.
    His senior quote is beneath his picture:
    As we journey into the future,
    may we all encounter new adventures,
    and our true selves.
    Thanks Ma and Baba, Miti, Neil, Anand .
     
    He had glasses back then, big, bushy hair, a round face; he signed his picture. I feel kind of bad not remembering him. He was obviously a different person back then, though. And so was I. The pre-dead-father Jill. Who is as much a stranger to me now as Ravi is.

Mandy

     
    Today we have a doctor’s appointment, and it’s the one last thing I have to get through before I can unpack. Robin offered to help me last night. “Don’t you want to have everything in order before you go to bed?” she asked. “You’ll sleep better.” We were in the guest room, my room. Jill had gone to work. Robin made us turkey sandwiches and fruit salad for dinner. I’ve never had a fruit salad like that; it was just cut-up fruit, no Cool Whip or marshmallows or anything.
    I told her no, I’d wait and do it today, after I’d had a chance to think about where to put things. Robin left me alone after that, and I lay awake for hours listening to cars go by. Not that that’s what kept me up; I like that sound, and knowing there are people out there coming and going. Kent’s apartment was on the third floor of a building off I-29. He liked to be close to the casinos. “An apartment community,” my mother called it, reading from the website before we moved in with him. “It has a broad range of amenities.” It was quieter than you’d think, with carpets everywhere and neighbors not