Wrecked

WRECKED

Also by E. R. Frank

Friction · America · Life Is Funny

Atheneum Books for Young Readers

An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division

1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2005 by E. R. Frank

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

Book design by Kristin Smith

The text for this book is set in Aldine 401.

Manufactured in the United States of America

First Edition

4 6 8 10 9 7 5

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Frank, E. R.

Wrecked / E.R. Frank.—1st ed.

p. cm.

“A Richard Jackson Book.”

Summary: After a car accident seriously injures her best friend and kills her brother’s girlfriend, sixteen-year-old Anna tries to cope with her guilt and grief, while learning some truths about her family and herself.

ISBN-10: 0-689-87383-2 (ISBN-13: 978-0-689-87383-6)

eISBN-13: 978-1-4391-0805-5

[http://www.SimonandSchuster.com] www.SimonandSchuster.com

[http://www.simsonspeakers.com] www.simsonspeakers.com

[1. Traffic accidents—Fiction. 2. Death—Fiction. 3. Grief—Fiction. 4. Guilt—Fiction. 5. Brothers and sisters—Fiction. 6. Self-acceptance—Fiction. 7. Family problems—Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.F84913Wav 2005

[Fic]—dc22 2004018448

BEFORE

THE DAY I KILLED MY BROTHER’S GIRLFRIEND STARTED WITH ME
handpicking leaves off our front lawn.

“Did you lose an earring, Anna?” Mrs. Caldwell called. She was wearing navy blue sweats with white racing stripes up the sides.

“Um,” I called back. “Yeah.” She stepped onto our brick pathway, probably to help me look.

“Oh,” I said, loud, before Mrs. Caldwell could get too close. “Got it.” I held my hand high in the air, as if I was showing her something I’d found. She nodded and then turned around right as my brother, Jack, backed the Honda out of our garage, music blasting.

“You want to help?” I called. I mean, he could have helped.

“Nope.” He let the car roll slowly backward. “Sorry.” He didn’t sound sorry. But still. I guess I wouldn’t have
helped either. He cranked the music up even louder.

“What is that?” I shouted. He’s always listening to bands nobody’s heard of.

“Barking Duck!” Which is what it sounded like.

“Do you like it?” he asked, turning the volume down.

“Very funny,” I said. “And don’t forget, I have the Honda tonight.”

“You won’t need it if you don’t finish the lawn.”

And then he left me there, picking up crunchy brown leaves the size of hair clips. Picking them up, one by one, and dropping them into a plastic grocery store bag. Exactly the way my father had insisted. Not raking, because that might damage the grass. Not leaf blowing, because the noise was too loud and the gas smelled. Not watching some crew, because why should my father hire other people to do his lawn work when he had two perfectly able-bodied teenagers?

My mom poked her head out our front door, holding my cell. Damn. I thought I had it clipped to my back pocket. “It just rang.” She had the top flipped up. “I think it was Ellen.”

I blew out a big breath of air and straightened.

“Do you want company?” She has a bad back, so it went without saying that she wasn’t going to help.

“No, I don’t want company,” I snapped. “I want not to do this.”

“Is it such a big deal?” My mom handed me the cell.

“It’s ridiculous, Mom.” I put a lot of emphasis on the
dic
of
ridiculous
.

“Well,” she said. Then she went back into the house.

I picked up two more leaves and dropped them with the others. And then something weird happened. I didn’t plan it. I hadn’t even been thinking about it. But all of a sudden I opened the plastic grocery bag, turned it upside down, and dragged it through the air. I watched the leaves scatter sideways and then spiral downward toward the wispy blades peeking up from where my father had made Jack sprinkle seed last weekend. How do they say it?
In one fell swoop
. Well, in one fell swoop I dumped out all those leaves I’d been so stupidly gathering up. Just dumped them right out.

I remember that moment as clear as the accident. Sometimes clearer. Who knows why.

WE’RE AT ELLEN’S. SHE’S FLATTENING HER BROWN HAIR, SLICKING
it back into one long ponytail.

“It’s too early to leave,” she’s saying. “Things won’t get going until at least twelve.”

“Well, it’s twelve now,” I tell her. “And we’re still not ready.”

“You want to call Lisa and them, and see where they are?”

I dial, and some guy answers. “What’s up?” There’s giggling in the background.

“Seth!” the giggler goes. I think it might be Lisa. “Give it back!”

“Is Lisa there?” I ask.

Ellen and I are sort of between groups right now. Last year we hung out a lot with this other Anna, and Katy and Slater and Kevin and Trace. But the other Anna switched schools, and Katy and Slater started wearing black lipstick and shaving their
heads and telling us we were conformists, and Kevin and Trace started dating each other and never hanging out with anybody else, and things just sort of dissolved from there.

“Give it!” I hear Lisa shouting over her own giggles.

“What’s going on?” Ellen asks.

“I think it’s Seth. That guy who wears the sleeve,” I say. A sleeve is this thing that looks sort of like a combination of a glove with no finger coverage and a sock that fits all the way up to your elbow. Other than the sleeve, Seth’s pretty cute.

“Oh,” Ellen goes. “Sleev-eth.”

“Listen,” I tell the phone. “Could you put Lisa on?” I try to sound sarcastic and bossy, but I’m not so good at that. Ellen is slightly better at it than I am. Neither of us is nearly as masterful as the Ashleys. Which is fine, because we have no desire to be complete bitches. Just to know how when necessary.

“Who’s this?” Seth asks.

“Who is it?” I hear Lisa say.

“Give her the phone, man,” some other guy complains.

“This is Anna,” I say. “Ask Lisa if she’s going to the party at Wayne’s.”

“Yeah.” It’s still Seth. “We’re going. Is this Anna Lawson?”

I cover the phone with my hand. “Ellen,” I whisper. “Sleev-eth knows who I am.”

“Good,” she goes.

“How do you know who I am?” I ask into the cell.

“It’s me,” Lisa says. I guess Sleev-eth gave hers back. “We’re leaving in fifteen minutes.”

“Us too,” I say. “Ellen’s taking forever to do her hair.”

“I am not,” Ellen goes. “Ask if they have beer.” Ellen’s developed
a taste for alcohol lately. I haven’t. I don’t like beer, for one thing. For another, I do like knowing what’s going on.

“Do you guys have beer?” I ask.

“Yeah, plus Jack Daniel’s.”

“They’ve got Jack Daniel’s,” I tell Ellen.

“Where did they get that?”

“Anna?” It’s Sleev-eth again.

“Seth!” I hear Lisa scream. Then the signal goes dead.

I flip down my phone. Ellen tugs at her pony tail and then turns from her mirror to look at me.

“You don’t want to go, do you,” she says.

“Yeah I do.”

“You wanted to bitch some more about your father and then see
Rocky Horror
.”

“Maybe. But it’s too late.”
Rocky Horror
always starts at midnight.

“I kind of like parties now,” Ellen tells me. Neither of us used to. Last year we would go to the mall instead. Or to Top Hats, our favorite diner. We thought parties were stupid up until about a month ago.

“I like parties too,” I lie.

“No you don’t. You always nurse a beer and stay in one place the whole time.”

I don’t know what to say to that. Ellen’s been my best friend since we were nine. She knows me better than anybody. Really, anybody.

“You don’t like me anymore,” I sulk. “You’re going to get in with the Ashleys and break them up and be one of their best friends and dump me.” I’m only half kidding.

“Don’t be stupid,” she goes. “I just want to have some fun.”

“Well, I do too,” I say.

“Since when?”

“Since today.”

“Oh, yeah?” she asks. “Do I have your dad to thank for that?”

“Whoever you want to thank,” I tell her. “But I?m going to have fun flirting with Sleev-eth. And I’m going to have fun drinking.”

She’s always said I’m more of a stoner than a drinker, if I ever had the guts to do either. I’ve always said it’s not about guts. It’s just that I don’t want to do drugs because if I got caught or something bad happened, my father would kill me. That’s where Ellen usually rolls her eyes, and I wonder if she actually knows me better than I know me, and then I get nervous if I don’t switch the subject in my head.

“Well, don’t have too much fun,” Ellen’s warning me now, “because one of us has to be able to drive.”

“Okay,” I say. “Then, I’ll just flirt.”

“Good,” Ellen goes. “Let’s leaf now.”

“Ha,” I tell her.

Wayne’s house is sort of like mine. Old and big with a huge front and back lawn. Which makes me think about my father and the fight we had before I left.

“You will not leave this house until that grass is taken care of,” my dad said. He isn’t used to me not doing what he asks. I’m not used to it either. But whatever it was that made me dump out those leaves earlier wouldn’t let me give in.

“No,” I argued. I was already late. I’d told Ellen I’d be there ten minutes ago. I was working hard to keep my head from going fuzzy, the way it gets when my father has me trapped
somehow. Because even though I’m usually sure that it’s something the matter with him that starts it all, I always end up feeling like there’s something worse the matter with me for not seeing things his way.

So I tried to sound reasonable. My dad likes reasonable. “I’m sorry I didn’t do it already,” I said, as calm as I could. “But it’s dark out now. Plus, it doesn’t make sense to hand pick up leaves. I’ll rake tomorrow, but tonight I’m going to Ellen’s.” Then I held my breath and started walking through the kitchen. Jack was at the table, waiting for his girlfriend to come over and typing some new movie review, probably, onto his Web site. Or maybe checking his UCLA admissions status.

“Stop,” my father ordered. I didn’t stop. “You stop right there.” The fuzz went black while he moved in front of me to block the mudroom door. Jack didn’t even look up. He can get so absorbed in whatever he’s doing that he wouldn’t notice if a hurricane hit.

“Dad!” I said.

I heard my mother’s hard-soled shoes clack on the stairs. My father was standing so close I could feel the heat of him on me. “Give me the keys,” he ordered.

“No. You’re being totally unfair!” The black was getting worse, the way it does when he won’t back off, which is all the time, and you can’t do anything, you’re just stuck, and everything turns into a massive knot of confusion. Jack glanced up at both of us right then, but only for a second.

“Harvey,” my mother said, clacking into the kitchen. “What’s going on?”

“She didn’t pick up the leaves.” The vein over his left eye was popped out. His face was shiny.

“I saw her pick up the leaves,” my mother told him in that ultrapatient tone of voice she gets when he’s like this. His jaw muscles started jumping.

“So did I.” Jack snapped closed his laptop, scraped back his chair, and walked out.

I tried to clear the messiness in my head. It works better if you stay calm. Even though my father never does. His face was turning purple. I looked at my mom. “I told him already,” I said evenly. “I’ll rake tomorrow.”