14 We watched them come. A lone police cruiser at first. The officer's shirt straining against the bulge around his waist. When he came out he wasn't wearing his cap anymore. We stood together. Unseen behind the curtains in the front room of Ben's house, his mother out on a grocery run. When the paramedics and bearded man in a suit who must have been the coroner finally emerged with the black bags laid out on gurneys—one, and then the smaller other—we held our breaths. We remember all this, though still not everything. And some of the things we remember may not have happened at all. The letter, amazingly, was Randy's idea. We were sitting in the Ford before school, no more than twenty minutes after Carl and I had witnessed the coach blow the side of his head off. I suppose the two of us must have been exhibiting some symptoms of shock, but I can't recall any tears or stony stares into space. Maybe this was because everything, as they say, was happening so fast.
