Dean Powell, fourth grade. He smelled like his mom’s cigarettes. He wore a Silver Bullet Band T-shirt. I remember the picture of a girl straddling a giant bullet, how the boys would gather and stare at the shadow between her legs. We called Dean a perv, called them all pervs, even though we also stared at the shadow, wondering what was in there. Once, in dodge ball, he slammed the ball into my side and then said, “Are you all right, Jenny?” and I said, “Your mom will get lung cancer and die,” which she did.

* 

Dean Harris in middle school. He did break dances in the gym when we were supposed to be playing badminton. Dean’s sister murdered her husband, and Dean’s family moved away. Years later, there was a movie about the murder, starring an actress who was famous at the time for marrying someone more famous than her. The only thing he ever said to me was, “Nanu nanu,” pointing to my Mork suspenders. I never wore them again.  

* 

Dean Winston, ninth grade, ceramics class. It wasn’t even really a class, just a few kids after school in a lady’s basement.  Our mother made me go because I had no friends and no hobbies. Boys were already inviting you to movies; you were already my big-sister-with-boobs. Dean Winston punched kids littler than him, but he was always nice to me. I remember he made an ashtray and painted it gold. He complimented my gnome, the blue shimmer of the little coat.  

* 

I was surprised how many Deans there were when I looked for them. There was Dean James junior year, who swore his parents had never heard of the actor when they named him. He got an eighth-grade girl pregnant, and they had a daughter named Deana.  

* 

Dean Ellis was the therapist our father punched in the nose. I remember his burnt orange corduroys, his vests, his yellow mustache.  

* 

Of course there were Johns, Kevins, Glens, Eddies, Davids, Todds, Rickys, Timmys, Jimmys, Philips, Kens, Bens and Bobbys. 

* 

There was a Dean in high school, I can’t remember his last name. He’d been held back a grade. His parents came from Vietnam or Cambodia—back then, I didn’t care enough to find out. He worked at the McDonald’s on Route 1, scooping French fries. We pretended not to recognize each other. He gave me extra ketchup packets. 

* 

Dean Powell was driving a 1989 Plymouth Sundance when you drifted into his lane in your 1998 Toyota Corolla. He slammed the brakes and you swerved into a tree. You were never a good driver, not when you had the radio on.  

* 

Sometimes, instead of Deans, I’ll comb through our lives for Plymouth Sundances, a model that’s been discontinued.  

* 

It was late afternoon, summer, the sun bright in the sky. Were you blinded, distracted? You were coming home from a dental cleaning. Dean Powell was driving home from visiting his father, who was still distraught about losing his wife to lung cancer. Was he thinking, perhaps, about me, the stupid mean girl who told him many years earlier that his mother would die of lung cancer? Which she did? Wondering why the world was full of such shitty people?  

* 

He was twenty-four and I was twenty-four and you were twenty-seven. Your husband, not-named-Dean, was mowing the lawn of the rental house next door to the elementary school we all attended: you and me and Dean Powell and your husband, who did not drive a Plymouth Sundance. 

* 

But you know who did? Our piano teacher, Ms. Grim. What a name. She enjoyed making kids cry. She drove a blue Plymouth Sundance. The one you almost hit, driven by Dean Powell, was red.  

* 

Last year, someone named Dean Adams was planning a gender reveal party for his wife in Amarillo, Texas. Blue fireworks for a boy, pink for a girl. The brush fire destroyed a thousand acres. “I just wanted to do something special,” he said, tearfully. 

* 

Or trees. Sometimes I scroll through our lives searching for oak trees, big enough to crumple a new Toyota. There was an oak tree in our yard when we were little. Our father made a tire swing with yellow rope. I drove past that house recently and the tree is gone but the house is still there. I knocked on the door and an old woman answered. I said, “I grew up here. Do you know what happened to the oak tree?” She said, “What oak tree?” She let me come inside. My room was still pink. Your room was still purple. I said, “My sister picked out that color.” Then she started telling me about the people in her life who died or moved away and then she started to cry. I hugged her and got out of there fast. On my drive back to my house I saw one Plymouth Sundance with a rusted-out roof and passed more oak trees than I could count. 

* 

The amount of time you lived and the amount of time you’ve been dead are exactly the same. I thought of this the other day, and then I started thinking about Deans and Sundances and oak trees, because there could be some kind of pattern. Something that made it inevitable.  

* 

Or at least something that will keep my mind occupied long enough for me to fall asleep. 

* 

The name Dean comes from an old English word meaning valley.  

The first Plymouth Sundance rolled off the assembly line in 1986, the year you got braces.  

The oak is from the beech family, and there are over five hundred species. Some can live for six hundred years.