The Best of Friends

Waking Paul in the middle of the night, Kendra steels herself to tell him the truth about Reese’s Adderall. Since she rarely enters their bedroom anymore, Paul thinks she has come for something else. The amorous glint in his eye is, for her, a guilty reminder that they had planned a sex date for the night Sawyer was killed. Hesitantly, she confesses to Paul how she has been secretly dosing Reese with prescribed Adderall, hoping to improve his grades. In a rage, Paul throws on his clothes and goes out for a “run.” When Kendra protests that it’s three o’clock in the morning, he angrily replies, “I can do whatever I want. […] You do” (212).

Lindsey and Andrew made a place for Jacob in their living room since his hospital bed cannot be carried upstairs. Their other children have not taken well to their decision: Wyatt doesn’t want to live in a house where his brother will die, and five-year-old Sutton finds his lingering presence confusing, asking bluntly why he doesn’t “hurry up” and go to heaven. After drifting off in her chair, Lindsey wakes to the shocking sight of Sutton kneeling on Jacob’s chest, slapping his cheeks repeatedly, as if playing patty-cake. As she pulls her daughter off, Sutton shouts to her that Jacob “woke up”—and Lindsey sees that Jacob’s eyes are wide open. Giddy with disbelief, Lindsey screams up the stairs to Wyatt, “Your brother isn’t dying!” (216).

Ever since seeing Jacob on TV the day before, Caleb has been deeply distraught, with frequent crying fits. Dani finds this mystifying, since Caleb saw Jacob in the hospital weeks earlier and didn’t react like this. Luckily, Luna has finally answered her mother’s call and has come to her grandmother’s to help calm her brother. Meanwhile, she tells her mother what she wrote in the note she left, which Dani still has not read: She said she’s proud of her mother for standing up to Bryan to defend her. She also tells Dani why she came home in the first place, after Caleb was released from the psychiatric ward: Though it was partly to help her brother, Luna was also feeling enormous guilt for having left the three boys alone in the house that night. Though her mother insists that none of it was her fault, Luna is still convinced that if she’d stayed, everyone would have gone to bed without incident.

Lindsey watches as Dr. Gervais examines Jacob by shining a light in his eyes. Impressed, the doctor says that, though there’s no “visual tracking,” Jacob’s eyes do react to light. She seems far more interested in his case now than when Jacob was in the hospital. All they can do now, she says, is “wait.” However, she discounts the significance of Sutton’s slaps: If it were that easy to rouse coma patients, she says, doctors would do it all the time. But Andrew, whose hope has been renewed by this turn of events, looks as happy as “a little kid on Christmas morning” (222).

Paul, who did not come back from his “run” until late the next morning, returns from work in the middle of the day to have a talk with Kendra. His voice cold with anger, he orders her to immediately stop giving Reese Adderall, which he thinks could damage their son’s brain “irrevocably.” When Kendra says the drug must be tapered off, he shrieks that that just proves that Adderall is hardly different from hard drugs like crystal meth: “You messed up his brain,” he shouts, “to get him into some yuppie private school” (225). Kendra has never seen him so angry, and when she nervously counters that Reese, an admitted drug dealer, was hardly perfect to begin with, he suggests that it was the Adderall that “made” him sell drugs. Finally, Paul bitterly suggests that Kendra continue sleeping in Sawyer’s room, since she likes it “so much.”

Dani tries to console a devastated Kendra, who showed up at her door frowsy and drunk, too discombobulated by her fight with Paul to even wonder why Dani is living at her mother’s. Kendra’s “self-absorption,” which Dani usually finds annoying, seems a “blessing” to her today, because she’s not in the mood to answer a lot of painful questions. Kendra weeps that many couples who lose a child soon get a divorce, and Dani tries to reassure her that Paul “adores” her. With a twinge of irony, Dani remembers how she used to try to make trouble between Kendra and Paul by advising her to do things she knew Paul would hate. Trembling with guilt, Kendra tells Dani about the Adderall, and how Paul’s cousin died by suicide years ago after being treated with Prozac; ever since, Paul has feared psychotropic drugs. Dani conceals her shock at Kendra’s deception and ponders whether Kendra is truly sorry for drugging Reese or just for getting caught. She also reflects that Kendra has “always been good at keeping secrets” (229).

Lindsey’s home care of Jacob has lost much of its miraculous appeal: Her living room has begun to smell of “sickness,” and, with the massive bed taking up most of its space, seems even more claustrophobic than Jacob’s hospital room. Most distressingly, Jacob’s eyes, though now open, roll about “like marbles,” not looking at anything. And when she gazes into his eyes, she sees nothing: Her son is “nowhere to be found” (231). Moreover, whenever Andrew touches her, however gently, she cringes, remembering his love for that woman online.

Andrew volunteers to watch Jacob so she can shower and get some much-needed sleep. When she wakes at three o’clock in the morning, she slips downstairs to find Andrew asleep beside Jacob’s bed, and she gazes into Jacob’s empty eyes, which stay open all the time, aside from reflective blinks. After chatting a little, and kissing his “waxy” skin, she suddenly slaps him again, hard on his face. She stares at her hands in disbelief, trying to stifle a scream.

Trying to get cash from an ATM to buy groceries, Dani discovers that Bryan has frozen her out of their bank accounts. Calling the bank doesn’t help: Each time, she’s told that she can only resolve the issue by talking with her husband. Bryan has also taken her off their credit cards, and she can’t challenge this legally because she has no funds for a lawyer. Remembering the threats Bryan used to hurl at her if she ever left him, Dani thinks that this is only the “beginning.”

Sitting home with Caleb later that day, Dani is surprised by a visit from Kendra, who rushes inside before she can stop her. Acting oddly cheerful, almost “manic,” Kendra says she’s going to drop in on Lindsey and wants Dani and Caleb to come along. Dani hesitates, knowing that Lindsey has been turning away all visitors, but Kendra says, “She didn’t mean us, goofball” (238). Overwhelmed by Kendra’s sheer energy, Dani and Caleb passively follow her out the door.

As Kendra drives just ahead of Dani on the way to Lindsey’s, she goes over her plan in her mind: She needs to know, once and for all, what happened to her son, and bringing Caleb along, she thinks, will make it impossible for Lindsey to turn her away. She feels no guilt for what she’s about to do, because she believes Jacob almost certainly killed her son. Lindsey, when she answers the door, tries politely to turn them away, but Kendra dodges around her, motioning for Dani and Caleb to follow.

Lindsey tries to conceal her anger at Kendra for barging into her living room like she’s “the owner.” She feels terrible for Caleb, who has obviously been forced to come and seems panicked by the sight of Jacob. In a way that strikes Lindsey as “manipulative,” Kendra asks her why she took Jacob out of the hospital. Lindsey struggles to explain her spur-of-the-moment decision, which she has begun to regret, finally claiming that it was Andrew’s idea. When Kendra tries to get her to watch the video of Sawyer and Jacob at the party, Lindsey refuses, sick of seeing images of her son from when he was happy and healthy. When Kendra keeps insisting, Lindsey realizes that this is the real reason she has come and becomes furious. Accusing Kendra of never thinking of anyone but herself, Lindsey alludes to something Kendra did to her the night of their junior prom. This horrifies Dani, who says they never talk about that night. At this, Lindsey turns on Dani, saying Dani “knows” she’s right but won’t admit it in front of Kendra. Lindsey accuses Dani of secretly being glad that Kendra “backed off of Caleb and started pointing the finger at Jacob” (246). Caleb, she shouts, had a “vicious temper” and was getting increasingly angry at the other two boys for excluding him. Hearing Lindsey accuse her son of shooting his two best friends, Dani runs to hug Caleb and cover his ears. Lindsey knows she’s “crossed every line” (246), but hesitates to apologize. Her friends, she thinks, should never have forced their way into her house.

Enraged at Lindsey, Kendra goes home and ransacks Sawyer’s bedroom, searching for evidence of Sawyer and Jacob’s affair that she can “throw” in Lindsey’s face. As Paul tries to calm her, Kendra argues that she has to find out what happened to Sawyer, if only to prove that he didn’t die in a stupid, drunken accident. The only scenario that makes sense, she says, is that Jacob shot Sawyer and then himself. Lindsey, she thinks, will never accept this without evidence, because Jacob was so “perfect.”

Then, in the closet, Kendra finds a secret “burner” phone that her son used only to communicate with Jacob. The password, she discovers, is Jacob’s birthdate, and the texts, which go back nine months, catalog Sawyer and Jacob’s sexual affair, which they concealed from everyone, including Caleb. Their passionate exchanges show a constant theme: Jacob wants to love Sawyer openly, as a “couple,” and Sawyer pushes back, denying he’s “gay.” Finally, Sawyer questions whether the two of them are really in “love,” leading to a two-week silence. Scrolling through the texts, Kendra feels herself “rooting” more for the sensitive, heartbroken Jacob than for her own son, who strikes her as a tease. Kendra gasps when she reads Jacob’s last text, written the day before the shooting: “I wanted to kill you when I saw you flirting with those girls at lunch” (252).

Lindsey is full of remorse for her accusations against Caleb, who cried for over an hour; luckily, Lindsey’s son, Wyatt, was able to quiet him by coaxing him into the TV room to watch an action movie. Dani tells her that Kendra strongarmed her into coming over, though they both knew that Lindsey didn’t want any visitors. Lindsey marvels that Kendra is still able to boss them around, just as when they were kids. Lindsey tries to apologize for blaming the shooting on Caleb, but Dani shrugs that she has long been used to her and Kendra’s gossip about her son’s rough behavior. In response, Lindsey reminds Dani that, more recently, Dani and Kendra have done the same to her, judging her for “spoiling” her daughter Sutton. Dani falls silent, then blurts out that she has left Bryan and tells Lindsey the whole story. As Lindsey rushes to embrace her, Dani says she’s terrified “every second” that he’ll hurt her or the kids. Suddenly, a “sharp knock” on the door interrupts her.

Dani tries to block Kendra from entering Lindsey’s house, but she shoves right past her, demanding that her two friends look at Sawyer’s burner phone. Lindsey refuses and orders Kendra to leave, but Kendra insists that the boys’ secret texts prove that Jacob was madly in love with Sawyer, leading him to murder him. Seething with anger, Lindsey comes within inches of Kendra’s face, as if about to fight her, and icily denies that the shooting was anything but an “accident.” At that moment, Caleb shouts at them to “stop,” breaking his weeks-long silence. Speaking for the first time since the incident, Caleb confesses to shooting Sawyer. Jacob, he claims, shot himself.

As the three women and Wyatt reel with astonishment, Caleb tells how, on that fatal night, he realized that Sawyer and Jacob were wildly angry about something that they refused to share with him. Incensed at being lied to and excluded yet again, he got into a fight with Sawyer, who accused Caleb and Jacob of treating him like a “faggot.” Vowing to prove his masculinity by doing “disgusting” things to Caleb’s sister Luna, including raping her, Sawyer relentlessly taunted Caleb, who finally ran to fetch his father’s gun. Meanwhile, Sawyer continued to scream insults at Jacob, who sobbed as if heartbroken. When Caleb returned with the gun, Sawyer scoffed that he was too much of a “pussy” to use it. Without meaning to, Caleb pulled the trigger, fatally wounding Sawyer. As Caleb tried frantically to stanch the blood with a pillow, Jacob picked up the gun and shot himself in the head.

As Dani drives Caleb to the police station so he can turn himself in, Lindsey stands “awkwardly” beside Kendra on her doorstep, thinking numbly of all the anguish that resulted from Caleb’s impulsive act. To lighten the mood, she tells Kendra that Dani has left Bryan, and perhaps that is the tragedy’s one silver lining. Shocked, Kendra says that she never thought to ask Dani why she was staying at her mother’s; tearfully, she apologizes for being so self-absorbed. Lindsey comforts her, lovingly recalling Kendra’s loyalty to her since childhood, when she used to defend Lindsey from bullies. Now she longs to tell Kendra that Andrew is in love with another woman but cannot bring herself to do it.

Once she’s alone, Lindsey searches Jacob’s room and finds the burner phone her son used to conduct his secret romance with Sawyer. She also discovers a hidden cache of mementos of their relationship: notes, dried flowers, movie stubs, and Sawyer’s childhood blanket, which he gave to Jacob so he could “hold” him when they’re not together. She realizes that Sawyer loved Jacob too but wasn’t ready for a public relationship. It comforts her to know that the only reason Jacob didn’t confide in her was because Sawyer swore him to secrecy. Now, taking Jacob’s “wrinkled” hand and gazing into his empty eyes, she sees at last what she failed to grasp for so long: Her son is gone. She remembers what Andew told her once, that the dying often wait “until all the people closest to them have had a chance to say goodbye and make their peace” (267). Brushing Sawyer’s blanket gently against his cheek, she tells Jacob that Sawyer is waiting for him. As the first rays of the sun enter the windows, Jacob exhales for the last time. Imagining him walking off with Sawyer by his side, Lindsey reaches down and closes his eyes.

Two weeks later, Dani still lives at her mother’s, and Bryan has temporary custody of Caleb. Bryan has hired a “cutthroat lawyer” who will try to keep Caleb out of prison entirely, but Dani, though heartbroken for her son, thinks this may be too lenient. Caleb himself longs for the death penalty, and Dani has been trying to get him therapy to deal with his tremendous guilt and self-hatred. Kendra, to process her own heartbreak, has been trying to contact Sawyer on the “other side” with the help of spiritualist support groups, which Dani finds sad and creepy. Kendra and Paul have partly healed their differences over the Adderall by bonding against a common enemy: Bryan, whose lawyer has been trying to blame them for the shooting through Reese’s Adderall dealing and the access to liquor in their house.

Dani reveals that she has been communicating for several years with another man, through a website intended for married people looking for friendship. They have not told each other their real names, but their tender, semi-frequent exchanges have allowed Dani to reclaim a sense of “independence” and self-worth. But now, with her separation from Bryan, she no longer feels she needs this escape, and so prepares to end their correspondence: “L— I’ve missed you too and I hope you’re well. Can we chat soon? There’s something I need to tell you. Love, May” (272).