“I’ve had two since he said that.”
I couldn’t blame Cal for seeing the glass as half-empty.
Everyone had left the hospital by then, Ricky for a rehabilitation center, Cal and the girls for home, and the driver of the other car, an older guy who hadn’t seen all the pre-prom anti-drunken-driving films we’d all sat through the Friday before, went off to jail. There was little solace in the fact he would definitely be prosecuted.
Cal made graduation in late June, but the rousing applause he received upon taking his diploma hardly made up for the uncertainty he faced concerning his future. He couldn’t swim—not right away. Possibly not ever. He shut himself off and wouldn’t talk to Caryn or me about any of it. He called himself helpless. We felt like we were too.
“What about the grants…the s
