Before I Fall (30 page)

“Shit. Shit, shit, shit.” Cursing out loud makes me feel better.

I take a few hesitant steps in the direction of the flashlight, keeping my arms out in front of me so I don’t collide
with anything. After a few shuffling steps I drop to my knees, instantly destroying my house pants as wetness seeps through the fabric. I rake my hands in the sludge in front of me, trying hard not to think too much about what I’m touching. Rain is driving into my eyes. My fleece is clinging to my skin, and it smells like wet dog. I’m shivering uncontrollably. This is what happens when you try to help people. You get screwed. I feel a lump building in my throat.

In order to keep from a total meltdown, I think about what Lindsay would say if she were stuck with me in the middle of the night in the middle of woods that extend who knows how many miles in the middle of a monsoon, if she saw me tearing at the ground like a deranged mole, completely covered in mud.

“Samantha Kingston,” she would say, smiling, “I always knew deep down you were a very dirty girl.”

The thought only cheers me up for a second. Lindsay’s not here with me. Lindsay’s probably making out with Patrick in a toasty warm and very dry room right now, or passing a joint back and forth and wondering out loud to Ally why I’ve been acting so freak-tastic. I’m completely lost, completely miserable, and completely alone. The ache in my throat intensifies until I feel like there’s an animal trying to claw its way out of my throat.

And I’m suddenly angry at Juliet—so angry I could punch her. I don’t see how she can be so selfish. No matter what—no
matter how bad things are—she has a
choice
. Not all of us are so lucky.

That’s when I hear the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard in the entirety of my seventeen years of life (plus five days of life-after-death).

I hear honking.

The sound is far away, and it fades almost as soon as it begins—a low wail through the night as someone speeding by leans on the horn. I’m closer to the road than I thought.

I scramble to my feet and go as quickly as I can toward the source of the sound, keeping my arms outstretched like a mummy, slapping away branches and the slick touch of the evergreens. My heart is pounding with excitement, and I strain for a noise—any other noise—to guide me. After a minute or so I hear another honk, this one closer. I could sob with relief. Another minute and I hear the thudding bass of a stereo system, tuning in and then out again as a car speeds away. Another minute and I can see, faintly through the trees, the glimmer of the light from the streetlamps. I’ve found the road.

As the lights get closer and the trees thin, I can see a little better, and I start booking it. I’m so busy fantasizing about piles and piles of blankets—I’ll take every single one I can find in the house—and hot chocolate and warm slippers and
showers
that I don’t see Juliet Sykes until the last minute, when I nearly trip over her.

She’s huddled seven or eight feet from the road, her arms wrapped around her knees. Water has turned her white top totally transparent, and I can see her bra—striped—and all the bones of her spine. I’m so surprised to come across her like that, I forget, momentarily, that she’s the whole reason I’m out here in the first place.

“What are you doing?” I say, loudly over the rain.

She looks up at me. The streetlamps light up her face. Her eyes are dull. “What are you doing?” she parrots back at me.

“I’m, um, looking for you actually.” Her face doesn’t register any emotion—no surprise, no shock, no anger, nothing. It throws me. “Aren’t you cold?”

She shakes her head, just barely, and keeps staring at me with those dull, tired eyes. This isn’t nearly how I pictured it would be. I thought she would be happy that I’ve come to look for her—grateful, even. Or maybe she would be mad. In any case, I thought she would be
something
.

“Listen, Juliet—” I can hardly talk, my teeth are chattering so badly. “It’s, like, almost one o’clock in the morning, and it’s freezing out here. Do you maybe want to come over to my house for a bit? And talk? I know what happened in there”—I nod back in the direction of Kent’s house—“and I feel really bad about it.” I just want her to get in the damn car, but it’s true; I
do
feel bad.

Juliet stares at me for a long, hard second, the rain blurring the few feet between us. She starts to stand, and I feel
sure that’s done it, but instead she turns away and takes several steps toward the road.

“Sorry,” she says. Her voice isn’t apologetic, though. It’s flat.

I reach out and grab her wrist. It feels impossibly tiny in my hand, like this one time I found a baby bird near Goose Point, and I picked it up and it died there, taking its final, gasping, fluttering breaths in my palm. Juliet doesn’t pull away, but she stares at my hand like it’s a snake about to bite her.

“Listen,” I try again. “Listen. I know this is going to sound crazy, but…” The wind rushes through the trees and releases a new volley of rain. “I have a feeling that we have something in common, you and me. If we could just go somewhere and talk about it…”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Juliet says. She stares out at the road, and I think I see a small, sad smile playing on her lips. Then it’s gone.

I’ve been outside too long. My mind is grinding to a halt. Nothing’s making sense anymore. Weird images keep flashing through my head, a bizarre fantasy reel of warm things. A pool filled with steaming hot chocolate. A stack of blankets piled all the way to the roof of my house. And part of me just thinks,
Screw it
. Let her do what she’s going to do. Tomorrow there will be a big rewind anyway.

But there’s a bigger part of me—my inner bull, my mom used to call it—that says she
owes
me this. I’m covered in mud;
I’m absolutely freezing; and half the population of Thomas Jefferson thinks I’m a pajama-wearing freak.

“How about we go to your house?” I figure she’ll have to go back there eventually. She gives me a strange look, and for a second I feel like she’s staring straight through me.

“Why are you doing this?” she says.

I have to yell even louder than before. Cars are starting to pull out of Kent’s driveway, zooming by us on the wet road. “I—I want to help you.”

She shakes her head, an infinitesimal gesture. “You hate me.”

She’s edging closer and closer to the road, and it’s making me extremely nervous. A car roars by us, bass pumping. It glitters when it passes under the streetlamp, and I can just make out the silhouette of someone laughing. Somewhere to my right I think I hear my name, but it’s hard to tell over the pounding rain.

“I don’t hate you. I don’t
know
you. But I’d like to change that. Start over.” I’m almost screaming now. I’m not sure if she can still hear me.

She says something I don’t hear. Another car goes flashing by, a silver bullet.

“What?”

Juliet turns her head a fraction of an inch and says, louder, “You’re right. You don’t know me.”

Another car. Laughter rings out as it passes. Someone
throws a beer bottle into the woods and it shatters. Then I’m sure I hear someone calling my name, though I can’t tell exactly which direction it comes from. The wind shrieks, and I suddenly realize that Juliet’s only a half inch from the road, teetering on the thin line where the pavement begins, like she’s balancing on a tightrope.

“Maybe you should come away from the road,” I say, but all the time in the back of my head, there’s an idea growing and swelling, a horrible, sickening realization, massing up and taking shape like clouds on the horizon. Someone calls my name again. And then, still in the distance, I hear the throaty wail of “Splinter” by Fallacy pumping from someone’s car.

“Sam! Sam!” I recognize it as Kent’s voice now.

Last night for the last time…you said you would be mine again…

Juliet turns to face me then. She’s smiling, but it’s the saddest smile I’ve ever seen.

“Maybe next time,” she says. “But probably not.”

“Juliet,” I try to say, but the name catches in my throat. I feel like fear has turned me to stone. I want to say something, to move, to reach out and grab her, but time goes so quickly, and then the realization bursts and explodes as the music from the speakers gets louder and a silver Range Rover rockets out of the darkness. Like a bird or an angel—like she’s throwing herself off a cliff—Juliet lifts her arms and hurtles onto the road, and there’s a scream piercing the air and a sickening crunch,
and it’s not until Juliet’s body flies sideways off the hood of Lindsay’s car and lands crumpled facedown in the road, and the Range Rover sails into the woods and crashes, splintering, crumpling against a tree, and long ribbons of smoke and flame begin licking the air, that I realize I’m the one screaming.

BEFORE I WAKE

Kent catches up to me then. “Sam,” he says breathlessly, eyes searching my face. “Are you okay?”

“Lindsay,” I whisper. It’s the only thing that I can think to say. “Lindsay and Elody and Ally are in that car.”

He turns to the road. Black pillars of smoke are rising out of the woods. From where we’re standing we can just see the battered metal bumper, rising like a finger over the dip of the earth.

“Wait here,” he says. It’s a miracle, but he sounds calm. He runs into the road, whipping his phone out, and I hear him yelling directions to someone on the other end.
There’s been an accident. Fire. Route nine, just past Devon Drive
. He kneels by Juliet’s body.
At least one person hurt.

Other cars are squealing to a halt now. People climb out of their cars uncertainly, everyone suddenly sober, everyone speaking in whispers, staring at the tiny crumpled body in the road, at the smoke and fire licking up from the woods. Emma McElroy pulls over and gets out with her hands cupped over her mouth, eyes bugging out of her head, leaving the door
to her Mini hanging open and the radio blasting. Jay-Z’s “99 Problems” booms through the night, and the
normalcy
of it is the most horrible thing of all. Someone shrieks, “For God’s sake, Emma, shut that off.” Emma scrambles back to her car, and then there’s silence except for the pounding of the rain, and the sounds of someone sobbing loudly.

I feel like I’m in a dream. I keep trying to move, but I can’t. I don’t even feel the rain anymore. I don’t feel my body.

There’s only one thought revolving around and around and around in my head: the flash of white just before we pin-wheeled into the yawning mouth of the woods, Lindsay yelling something I couldn’t quite make out.

Not
sit
or
shit
or
sight
.

Sykes
.

Then a long, piercing wail comes from the other side of the woods, and Lindsay stumbles up to the road, her mouth open and tears streaming down her face. Kent is there, supporting Ally, who’s limping and coughing but looks okay.

Lindsay’s screaming, “Help! Help! Elody’s still in there! Somebody help her! Please!” She’s so hysterical her words swell together, transforming into an animal howl. She sinks down on the pavement and sobs, her head in her hands. Then another wailing joins in: sirens in the distance.

Nobody moves. Everything starts happening in short, choppy bursts—at least, that’s what it seems like to me—like I’m watching a movie while a strobe light goes on and off.
More and more students massing in the rain, standing as still and silent as statues. The police sirens turning, lighting the scene up red, then white, then red, then white. Figures in uniform—an ambulance—a stretcher—two stretchers. Juliet’s body laid out neatly, tiny and fragile, just like the bird all those years ago. Lindsay throwing up as the second stretcher bears a body up from the totaled car, and Kent rubbing her back. Ally sobbing with her mouth open, which is weird, because I don’t hear a sound. At some point I lift my eyes to the sky and see that the rain has transformed into snow—fat, white flakes swirling out of the darkness as if by magic. I have no idea how long I’ve been standing there. I’m surprised to see that when I look back at the road there’s hardly anyone left there at all, just a few stragglers and a solitary police car and Kent, jumping up and down to keep warm, talking to an officer. The ambulances are gone. Lindsay’s gone. Ally’s gone.

Then Kent’s standing in front of me though I didn’t see him move.
How did you do that?
I try to say, but nothing comes out.

“Sam.” Kent’s speaking to me, and I get the feeling he’s said my name more than once. I feel a squeezing sensation and it takes me a second to realize he has his hands on my arms. It takes me a second to realize I still
have
arms, and in that moment it’s like I slam back into my body, and the force of everything I’ve seen hits me and my legs buckle and I slump forward. Kent catches me, holds me up.

“What happened?” I whisper, dazed. “Is Elody…? Is Juliet…?”

“Shhh.”
His lips are close to my ear. “You’re freezing.”

“I have to go find Lindsay.”

“You’ve been out here for over an hour. Your hands are like ice.” He shrugs out of the heavy sweater he’s wearing and drapes it over me. There are white snowflakes caught in his lashes. He places his hands gently under my elbows and steers me back toward the driveway. “Come on. Let’s get you warm.”

I don’t have the strength to argue. I let him lead me to the house. His hands never leave me, and even though he’s barely grazing my back, I feel like without him I would fall.

It seems like we’re back at Kent’s house without even moving. Then we’re in the kitchen, and he’s pulling out a chair and putting me in it. His lips are moving and his tone is comforting, but I can’t understand what he’s saying. Then there’s a thick blanket over my shoulders and a shooting pain in my fingers and toes as the feeling comes back to them, as though someone’s sticking hot, sharp needles in me. Still, I can’t stop shivering. My teeth are clacking together with a noise like dice rattling in a cup.

The kegs are still in the corner, and there are half-empty cups everywhere, and cigarette butts swimming in them, but the music’s off and the house feels totally different without any
people in it. My mind is focusing on a bunch of tiny details, ricocheting from one to the other like a Ping-Pong ball: the embroidered sign above the sink that says
MARTHA STEWART DOES NOT LIVE HERE
; the snapshots posted on the refrigerator, of Kent and his family on the beach somewhere, of relatives I don’t know, of old postcards from Paris, Morocco, San Francisco; rows of mugs displayed behind the glass cabinets, with slogans on them like
CAFFEINE OR BUST
and
IT’S TEA TIME
.