Page 26 of Twice
“And you think that was because of what you did?”
“Not because of it. Despite it.”
“Come on. It was a coincidence. The guy was ten thousand miles from Cambodia.”
Alfie shook his head. “It’s not where, it’swhen. Wesley died when he was fated to die. I dug around until I found the exact time of his accident, then researched when the Marines got attacked.”
“Don’t tell me. They were the same.”
Alfie nodded.
“I don’t buy it,” LaPorta scoffed. “Stuff just happens. Especially in the military.”
“You served?”
“Army. Late ’90s. Got out just before Iraq. I was lucky.”
“Luck had nothing to do with it.”
“Says the guy who cheated a casino.”
Alfie paused.
“Suspicion and belief—”
“Can’t share the same bed. Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s a load of crap. Read.”
The Composition Book
My high school graduation was a few weeks later. It was a hot day and half the kids didn’t wear pants under their gowns. They’d asked me to say a few words about Wesley, who was being given a diploma in absentia, but I didn’t want to be out there in front of everybody and maybe tearing up, so I declined. Instead, the school’s vice principal read a statement. It was really short, and he mispronounced Wesley’s last name. I glanced at Wesley’s parents, who had come at the school’s invitation, and saw his mom look at her feet. It made me so furious that I tapped out in the middle of the ceremony and went back two weeks to the moment they asked me. This time I said yes. The trip backward meant I had to take all my final exams again, which was a pain. But I couldn’t live with the idea that my best friend’s final high school mention was a botched pronunciation.
“Wesley was a really great guy,” I said at graduation. “He was super smart and super nice and sometimes he seemed a lot older than he was. He took time before he said stuff, but when he finally spoke, you were like, ‘Wow, I never thought of that.’ He was brave to go into the Marines, braver than most of us. Braver than me. Not everybody here in school knew him, but if you had, you would have really liked him... You would have loved him...”
I choked up on the wordlovedand wobbled through my last few lines. But afterward, Wesley’s mother found me and,holding a tissue to her eyes, whispered, “He would have clapped for what you said.” That made me feel better. Even Jo Ann Donnigan came up and told me she was sorry I had lost my friend. Then she kissed me hard on the lips. It was one of those moments that, if you’d offered me a million dollars, I still wouldn’t know what to say. People are so unpredictable.
?
A year later my father announced we were taking a trip to Florida, to see the new Disney World they had opened up down there. He could tell I wasn’t enjoying life after high school. He had wanted me to go to college, but I was in a funk after Wesley died and never finished the applications, so I took a job with a plumbing company and buried myself in it. I wasn’t very good, but they paired me with a kindly old plumber named Bernie Schneider who’d show me everything I’d done wrong. Then I’d tap back an hour earlier and do it correctly.
“How come you were so good with sink pipes, but you can’t figure out a toilet?” Bernie would say. Didn’t matter. I’d get the toilet right the second time.
During this stretch, I often used my second-chance power to break up my boredom. Sometimes, on the way to work, I would turn the car around, drive to the airport, and use my father’s credit card for a ticket to somewhere cool—California, Montana, Texas. Once there, I’d search for something dangerous to try. Diving off a cliff. Galloping on a horse. In Austin, I took a skydiving lesson with threeother people. While the instructor was checking everyone’s parachutes, I raced past him and jumped out the plane’s open door. I remember the crazy noise of the wind, the floating sensation, and how surprisingly cold it was. I closed my eyes and thought,How many seconds before I die?And then–whumpf!The instructor (who had jumped out in pursuit) had his arms around me and his helmet pressing into my neck and I heard him screaming “What the hell are you doing?” and I yelled “Twice!” and was back on the highway the day before, driving to my plumbing job. No flight to Texas. No charge on my dad’s credit card. No angry jump instructor. And no one to share the story with.
Looking back, I suppose I was depressed. I had lost Wesley as I had lost my mother. Both too young. Both too soon. Perhaps dallying with death was a way of feeling closer to where they’d gone. I don’t know. It doesn’t always make sense, the way you miss somebody. Sometimes, hurt seeks hurt.
?
Anyhow, my dad and I were in the car heading to Florida, and somewhere around North Carolina, he started pushing college again.
“You need a degree to get a good job.”
“Yeah.”
“You don’t want to be a plumber the rest of your life, do you?”
“No.”
“It’s been a year, Alfie. What do you want to do?”
