Before I Fall (29 page)

I shake my head. I’ve never been this sober around people this wasted, and I say a brief prayer that I’m not half as annoying as they are when I’m drunk. I continue up the stairs as Tara yells, “Lindsay’s in the back.”

Before I’m totally out of earshot I hear Courtney shriek, “Did you see what she’s wearing?”

I take a deep breath and tell myself it doesn’t matter. What
matters is finding Juliet. I can at least do that one thing.

But with every step I’m losing hope. The upstairs hallway is totally packed, and unless she hasn’t come to the party at all—which seems like too much to hope—it seems unlikely that she hasn’t already left.

Still, I push on, finally making it to the very back room. Lindsay catapults on me as soon as I get into the room—she actually leaps over five people—and for a second I’m so grateful to see her, happy and drunk and my best friend, and to get treated to one of her famous super-squish hugs, that I forget why I’m here.

“Bad girl.” She slaps my hand as she pulls away. “You cut school but come out to party? Naughty, naughty.”

“I’m looking for someone,” I say. I scan the room: Juliet’s not here. Not that I expected her to be, I don’t know, sitting on the couch and chatting it up with Jake Somers, but it’s instinct—and wishful thinking—to look.

“Rob’s downstairs.” Lindsay steps back and holds up her hand, framing me in the angle between her thumb and forefinger. “You look like the homeless man who stole Wal-Mart. Are you trying
not
to get laid or something?”

Irritation flares up again. Lindsay, who always has something to say.

“Have you seen Juliet Sykes?” I ask.

Lindsay stares at me for a split second and then bursts out laughing. “Are you serious?”

A feeling of enormous relief washes over me. Maybe she never showed. Maybe she had car trouble, or lost her nerve, or—

“She called me a bitch.” In that moment Lindsay shatters me. She did come. “Can you believe it?” Lindsay’s still cracking up. She loops one arm around my shoulder and calls out, “Elody! Ally! Sammy’s here! And she’s looking for her best friend, Juliet!”

Elody doesn’t even turn around; she’s too busy with Steve Dough. But Ally swings in my direction, smiles, yells, “Hi, sweetie!” and then holds up the empty bottle of vodka.

“If you see Juliet,” she calls out, “ask her what she did with the rest of my drink!” She and Lindsay think this is hilarious, and Lindsay calls back, “Psychotini!”

I
am
too late. The realization makes me feel sick, and my anger at Lindsay comes rushing back.

“My best friend?” I repeat. “That’s funny. I thought
you
were the one who was buddy-buddy with Juliet.”

“What are you talking about?” Lindsay’s face gets serious.

“Childhood friends. Best friends. Rug rats. Sand bunnies.” Lindsay looks like she’s about to say something again, but I cut her off. “I saw the pictures. So what happened? Did she catch you farting or something? See you blow a snot rocket? Discover that the famous Lindsay Edgecombe isn’t perfect after all? What did she do that was so bad?”

Lindsay opens her mouth and then closes it. “She’s a freak,” she whispers fiercely, but I see something in her eyes I’ve never
seen before, an expression I can’t quite identify.

“Whatever.” I
have
to find Juliet Sykes.

I fight my way back downstairs, ignoring the people calling my name, tapping my shoulder, and whispering about the fact that I’ve shown up in public looking like I’m about to go to sleep—which is, of course, exactly what happened. I figure if I’m quick enough I can catch Juliet on the way out. She must have parked somewhere. She’s probably blocked in. It will take an hour to get people to move their cars (if she can even convince anybody to help at all, which is doubtful) and even longer if she decides to hoof it home.

Thankfully I make it downstairs without a run-in with Rob. The last thing I need is to explain myself to him. There’s a group of sophomores standing near the entryway, looking terrified and more or less sober, so I take my shot with them.

“Have you seen Juliet Sykes?”

They stare at me blankly.

I sigh, swallowing my frustration. “Blond hair, blue eyes, tall.” They’re still looking at me vacantly, and I realize I’m not exactly sure how to describe her.
Loser
, I almost say—I would have said three days ago. But now I can’t get it out. “Pretty,” I say, testing the word. When that doesn’t work I squeeze my fists into my palms. “Probably soaking wet.”

Finally the girls’ faces light up with recognition. “Bathroom,” one of them says, pointing to a little alcove just before the kitchen. There’s a line of people gathered in front of a closed
door. One of them is crossing her legs and hopping up and down. One of them keeps rapping on the door. One of them points to her watch and says something I can’t hear, but she looks pissed.

“She’s been in there for, like, twenty minutes,” a sophomore says. My stomach drops to my feet and I almost get sick right there.

Bathrooms have pills. Bathrooms have razors. People lock themselves in bathrooms when they want to do bad things, like have sex or throw up. Or kill themselves.

It’s not supposed to go this way. I’m supposed to save you.
I elbow over to the bathroom, shoving through the line of people crowded there.

“Move,” I say to Joanne Polerno, and she drops her hand immediately and steps aside.

I press my ear to the door, listening for sounds of crying or retching or anything. Nothing. My stomach does another dip. Then again, it’s almost impossible to hear, with the music pounding so loudly.

I knock softly and call out, “Juliet? Are you okay?”

“Maybe she’s sleeping,” Chrissy Walker says. I shoot her a look that I hope will communicate how stupidly unhelpful that comment is.

I knock again, mashing my face against the door. It’s hard to tell whether I hear a faint moan from inside—at that second the music shrieks even louder, drowning out everything
else. But I can imagine her there, fading, just beyond the door, wrists hacked up and blood everywhere….

“Get Kent,” I say, sucking in a long breath.

“Who?” Joanne says.

“I have to pee,” Rachel says, hopping up and down.

“Kent McFuller. Now. Do it,” I bark at Joanne, and she looks startled but scurries off into the hallway. Every second feels like an eternity. It’s the first time I really understand what Einstein said about relativity, how time bends around and stretches out like a gummy bear.

“What do you care, anyway?” Rachel says, grumbling just loud enough so I can hear.

I don’t answer. The truth is I have no answer, really. I have to save Juliet—I feel that. It’s my good thing. I have to save
myself
.

I’m suddenly not sure if that makes me better or worse than someone who does nothing, so I push the thought out of my mind.

Joanne comes back with Kent in tow. He looks worried, his forehead crinkly underneath the shaggy brown hair that’s falling down over his eyes. My stomach does a flip. Yesterday we were in a dark room no more than two inches apart, so close I could feel the amazing heat of his skin.

“Sam,” he says, and leans forward to grab my wrist, staring deep in my eyes. “Are you okay?”

I’m so surprised by the sudden touch I pull away just a
fraction, and Kent takes back his hand. I don’t know how to explain the way this makes my insides go hollow.

“I’m fine,” I say, totally aware in that moment of how ridiculous I must look to him: the messed up hair, the sweatpants. He, by comparison, looks actually kind of put together. There’s something scruffy-cute about his checkered sneakers and loose, low-belted khakis, and the sleeves of his oxford are rolled up, showing off a tan he got God-knows-where. Certainly not in Ridgeview in the past six months.

He looks confused. “Joanne said you needed me.”

“I do need you.” It comes out weird and intense-sounding, and I feel a furious fit of blushing coming on. “I mean, I don’t need you. I just need—” I take a deep breath. I think I see a momentary spark in Kent’s eyes and it distracts me. “I’m worried Juliet Sykes is locked in the bathroom.” Just after I say it, I wince. I sound ridiculous. He’ll probably tell me I’m being insane. After all, he doesn’t know what I know.

The spark dies and his face gets serious. He steps beyond me and tries the door, then he pauses for a second, thinking. He doesn’t tell me I’m crazy or paranoid or anything. He simply says, “There’s no key. I could try to pick the lock. We can always break it open if we have to.”

“I’m going to pee upstairs,” Rachel announces, then turns on her heel and wobbles off.

Kent reaches in his back pocket and pulls out a handful of safety pins. “Don’t ask,” he says when I raise my eyebrows. I
hold up my hands and don’t push the issue. I’m grateful he’s taking charge without asking questions.

He squats down, bends the safety pin backward, and uses it to jimmy the lock. He’s keeping his ear pressed to the door like he’s listening for a click. Finally my curiosity gets the better of me.

“Do you have an after-school job robbing banks or something?”

He grimaces, tries the door, slips the safety pin back in his pocket, and selects a credit card from his wallet. “Hardly.” He wedges the credit card in the crevice between the frame and the door and wiggles. “My mom used to keep the junk food locked behind our pantry door.”

He straightens up and twists the handle. The door opens an inch, and my heart flies up into my throat. Part of me is hoping that Juliet’s face will appear, furious, or that the door will be slammed closed again from inside. That’s what I would do if someone tried to open the bathroom door when I was inside. That is, if I was still awake—alive—to close it.

But the door just sits there, open that little inch. Kent and I just look at each other at first. I think we’re both scared to open it any farther.

Then Kent nudges the door with his toe, calling “Juliet?” as the door swings open—again, time stretches; it seems to take forever—and in that second, or half second, I somehow have the time to conjure up every horrible possibility, to imagine
her body crumpled on the ground.

And then the door finishes swinging, and the bathroom is there: perfectly clean, perfectly normal, and perfectly empty. The lights are on, and there’s a damp hand towel draped over the sink. The only thing slightly out of the ordinary is the window. It’s wide open, and rain has been battering in onto the tiles below.

“She went out the window,” Kent says at the same time I’m thinking it. I can’t quite place his tone. It’s half sad, half admiring.

“Shit.” Of course. After a humiliation like that, she would have looked for the easiest escape possible, the one that would attract the least attention. The window looks out onto a sloping side lawn and, of course, the woods. She must have made a dash for it, planning to loop around back toward the driveway.

I hurtle out of the bathroom. Kent calls, “Wait!” but I’m already down the hall and out the door, pushing onto the porch.

I grab my flashlight and the sweatshirt from behind a planter where I’d left them and head out across the lawn. The rain isn’t so bad just at the moment, more of a freezing mist falling in solid layers from above, but it’s the kind of cold that goes right through you. I keep my flashlight trained on the ground as I sweep around to the side of the house. I’m not exactly a master tracker, but I’ve read enough old mysteries to know that you
should always look for footprints. Unfortunately, the mud is so gross and damp that everything looks churned up. Still, at the base of the bathroom I find a deep indent, where she must have landed, and a series of scuffly-looking marks going, as I suspected, straight to the woods.

I wrap my sweatshirt more tightly around me and plunge in after her. I can’t see anything but a few feet of light extending in a bouncing circle in front of me. I’ve never been scared of the dark exactly, but the endless scrapings and groanings of the trees and the constant patter of rain through the branches make it sound like the woods are alive and babbling away, like one of those crazy people you see in New York City who are always pushing grocery carts filled with empty bags.

There’s no point in trying to follow Juliet’s footprints. They’re totally invisible in the soggy paste of decaying leaves, mud, and rotting bark. Instead I strike out in what I hope is the general direction of the road, hoping to catch her on her walk home. I’m pretty sure this is what she intends to do. If you’re so desperate to ditch a party—and the people in it—that you climb out a window, it’s hardly likely that you’ll stroll back minutes later and ask people to move their Hondas.

The rain starts coming down harder, rattling through the icy branches, the sound of bone on bone. My chest aches from the cold, and even though I’m moving as fast as I can, my fingers feel numb and I’m having trouble holding on to the flashlight. I can’t wait to get to my car and turn the heat on full blast. Then
I’ll drive the streets looking for her. If worse comes to worse I’ll intercept her at her house. If only I make it out of these freaking woods.

I push myself forward even faster, half jogging now, trying to stay warm. Every few moments I call out “Juliet!” but I don’t expect to get an answer. The patter of the rain is getting heavier and more constant, big fat drops of it splashing on the back of my neck and making me gasp.

“Juliet! Juliet!”

The patter turns into a rush. Daggers of icy water slice into me. I keep up the jog, the flashlight like lead in my hand. I can’t feel my toes anymore; I don’t even know if I’m going in the right direction. I could be running around in circles, for all I know.

“Juliet!”

I start to get scared. I turn a full circle, sweeping my flashlight through the darkness: nothing but dense trees pressing in on either side of me. It didn’t take me this long to walk through the woods on the way to Kent’s, I’m sure of it. My fingers feel like they’re twice the size they should be, and as I’m spinning, the flashlight flies out of my hand. There’s a crash and the sound of splintering. The light sputters and dies, and I’m left totally in darkness.