During the flip you are for a moment suspended upside down. Rich bounces around the interior of the car and falls to the roof, sprawled on his back. He is looking at you, into your eyes, his face less than a foot away, inches away. The car flips with sudden violence, Rich disappears from your vision, and as you plow into the tree he appears to leap at the front windshield from somewhere behind you. He launches through the glass and flies the short distance to where the oak catches him brutally.

Lots of people show up at the funeral and cry and hug you. You have a bruised sternum and a cut on your cheek, and you look no one in the eye. Afterward your parents take you home.

In the spring you graduate and in the fall go to college in Northern California. You think about being a physical therapist or an EMT. You think about teaching like your mom. You won’t go to work in your dad’s garage. You don’t want to work on cars anymore. You don’t even drive.

You never graduate. You go to college for six years and study a bit of everything and do well at all of it, but you never graduate. You’re not sure what to do and then you meet a girl. She’s an actress.

You show up in New York with your girl and the two of you stay on the couch at her friend’s place. Two weeks after you get to the city, she gets a job on the road and leaves. The friend tells you that you have to move out.

New York has great public transportation. You never have to drive. You decide to stay. You find an apartment the size of your folks’ kitchen. You get a job tending bar. For the first time in your life you start drinking. You’re good at it.

You live in New York, but you always act like a guy from a small town in California. You help winos out of the gutter, you call an ambulance when you see someone hurt, you loan money to friends who need it and don’t ask for it back, you let folks flop at your pad and you help the blind across the street. One night you go to break up a fight in the bar and get knocked around pretty good, so the next day you start taking boxing classes. You drink too much, but your parents don’t know that.