I could see the reflection of the stoplights and the headlights and the red and blue from the sirens on the wet asphalt.

“Yes,” I say. “How did you—”

Aimee looks at me, and I see that she realizes too that it’s the truth. “I don’t know. I just … know.”

“I’m so sorry,” I say with a shake of my head. “I wish I’d been quiet. I wish I’d shut up for once in my life. It was none of my business what happened with you and Leo,” I say, remembering not to say Theo in the nick of time.

She stares at a spot on the ground, and asks, “What was the music?”

“What?”

“The music. That you blasted. What was it?”

“Oh. Actually it was … Revolver. The Beatles. ‘She Said She Said.’”

She laughs once, then sniffs. “The lyrics.”

I nod. She said I know what it’s like to be dead. The foretelling of that song had made me sick with irony. I never told anyone that detail. They didn’t need to know.

“I haven’t been able to listen to that album since. Which sucks,” I say, trying to lighten the mood, “because it’s good.”

She laughs too. She sits down at the table and says, “I think you got it wrong, though.”

“What?”

“The accident—I don’t think you remember it right.”

“I—what do you mean? It was my fault. We would have heard the other car coming if—”

“It wasn’t. Remember? It wasn’t your fault.”

She stares at me. I can see a frightened honesty in her eyes and I feel weak. The audience is tense.

“No,” I say. For the very first time, the real images of what happened that night start to flash in my mind. “No!” I scream now.

“You have to face it,” says Aimee. “You have to. You never did, did you? You never think about it. You said so.”

The images are rolling in now, unstoppable. The memories driving toward me at a hundred miles an hour, Ringo’s crashing cymbals scoring them. The music had kept playing even once I climbed out of the car. It was “Good Day Sunshine,” blasting relentlessly as I stepped over broken glass. I had called her name and she hadn’t moved. Over and over and then I had gotten back in, my knees on the seat. When I shook her, she moved like she was made of rubber. I was cold all over as I stepped back out of the car, and that’s when I’d noticed all the silly things. The socks. The gas station.

“I was a terrible driver. Especially in the rain. Remember that time I backed out of your parents’ driveway and hit the neighbor’s car? That wasn’t even a thunderstorm. That was light rain.”

“I’d—I’d forgotten—”

“Or the time I rear-ended the guy at Steak n’ Shake?”