Wrecked by E. R. Frank Page A

a boyfriend, and I’m sort of old not to have ever had a boyfriend, and it’s embarrassing and the idea of dealing with it all just makes me shake, only I’ve been shaking for weeks anyway, so maybe it’s hard to know exactly what the shaking is about.
    “Lean down,” he says, keeping gentle hold of my curl.
    “You never said what your next big thing is,” I tell him.
    “Lean down,” he says.
    “I’d really like to know.”
    “Lean down,” he says again.
    “I didn’t say you could kiss me,” I tell him. He keeps hold of my hair.
    “Lean down.” He’s like a broken record. “I’m going to kiss your other eye.”
    I lean down. He lifts himself through the space of the window and very gently raises my sunglasses.
    “Hmm,” he goes. And then he very, very gently kisses my left eye.
    “See ya,” he says, and he’s out of here. I’m shaking and shaking and shaking.
    I get to the end of my block. That’s how long it takes before I lose it. Chest leaping, body shuddering, sweating like I’m running a marathon. Something happened to me in the accident, I think as my slick palm slides all over the steering wheel. I got injured somehow that nobody realized. My heart got hurt, and now I’m having a heart attack . I manage to weave the Audi over to the side of the road and pull out my cell phone. I call 911. I stumble out of the car and think I’m going to vomit on the street, only I don’t. I collapse onto the pavement, but by the time the ambulance gets here six minutes later, I’m almost fine, and Mrs. Caldwell is sitting with me in that navy blue sweatsuit with the white stripes up the sides.
    “She was in a car accident about a month ago,” Mrs. Caldwell explains to the EMTs. So even though they don’t seeanything obviously wrong, they decide to take me to the hospital. Mrs. Caldwell picks up my parents at the Honda dealership and drives them home. And Jack is at the house by then, and my whole family drives to the hospital in the Audi to get me, and I’m fine.
    On the way home again, Jack and I sit in the back, with my parents up front, and it’s like a trip to the beach, because when else are we all in the car together these days? My father’s humming. Jack’s got his earphones in and turned way up. I can hear that squawking sitting next to him. My mother keeps twisting around with this concerned expression.
    “Okay, look,” my father says finally. I tap Jack and nod at the back of my father’s head, at his mass of gray hair. Jack pulls out his earphones. But then my dad doesn’t say anything else.

13
    SETH AND JASON AND LISA BRING TWO MOVIES OVER TO ELLEN’S. Her mom has to go into her room to wake her up about three times before Ellen finally wheels out with her hair messed up and the same sweatshirt she wore yesterday.
    “We got them both off Rosebud Is a Sled,” Jason tells her. “They’re in Jack’s top fifty list.” I flop onto Ellen’s couch next to Seth. He puts his arm across my shoulders while we look.
    “ My Life as a Dog ?” I say, looking at one of the DVDs. “What is that? My brother is so weird.”
    “ Big, ’ Seth says, crunching into his Toffee Crisp and reading the title of the other movie. “Which one should we watch first?”
    “ My Life as a Dog will make you cry,” Ellen’s mother informs us, walking through the family room to get to the stairs.
    “Out, Mom,” Ellen tells her, loud, and then she winces. Her ribs and the spot where her bra strap meets the cup must still really hurt. It creeps me out to think a tube poked right into her body there. I’ve seen the aftermath, once, when Ellen changed her shirt in front of me. It’s all this gauze and white tape and a wettish spot in the middle. She has to change it twice a day. Ugh. Poor Ellen. I saw her laugh at something Jason said at school earlier, and then immediately grit her face and almost cry.
    “I never weep at movies, Mrs. Gerson,” Seth is saying now.
    “Weep?” Lisa goes.
    “Am I