Before I Fall (35 page)

“Oh, yeah?” I’m struggling to control my temper, but I can’t keep the edge out of my voice. Fortunately, Rob’s too drunk to notice. “I’d like that. To make it up to you, I mean.”

“Yeah?” Rob’s face lights up and he takes a step closer to me, wraps his arms around my waist. I shudder inwardly but force myself to stay put.

“Hmmm.”
I dance my fingers up his chest, sneaking a glance at Kent, who’s still talking to Phoebe. I’m momentarily distracted—Phoebe has the personality of a freaking noodle, for God’s sake—but I snap my eyes back to Rob’s face and force
myself to flirt. “I think we need a little one-on-one time, don’t you?”

“Definitely.” Rob lurches a little to one side. “What were you thinking?”

I reach up on my tiptoes so I’m whispering in his ear. “There’s a bedroom on this floor. Bumper stickers all over the door. Go inside and wait for me. Wait for me
naked
.” I pull away, giving him my sexiest smile. “And I promise to give you the best apology ever.”

Rob’s eyes are nearly bugging out of his head. “Now?”

“Now.”

He detaches himself from me and takes a stumbling step in the direction of the hallway, then something occurs to him and he spins around. “You’ll be there soon, right?”

This time there’s nothing forced about my smile. “Five minutes,” I say, holding up my right hand with my fingers splayed. “I promise.”

When I turn away from Rob it’s a struggle to keep from bursting out laughing, and all the nervousness I feel about talking to Kent dissipates. I’m ready to march right up to him and shove my tongue down his throat if I have to.

Except that he’s gone.

“Shit,” I mutter.

“That’s no way for a lady to talk.” Ally comes up behind me, raising her eyebrows as she takes a swig from the bottle. “What’s wrong with you? Attack of the Cokran Crisis?”

“Something like that.” I rub my forehead. “Have you, um, seen Kent McFuller?”

Ally squints at me. “Who?”

“Kent. McFuller,” I say a little louder, and two sophomores whip around and stare at me. I stare right back until they look away.

“The host with the most.” Ally raises her bottle. “Why, did you break something already? It’s a pretty good party, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, good party.” I try not to roll my eyes. She’s too tipsy to be useful. I gesture toward the back of the house. Lindsay and Elody should be in the back room, and Kent must be close. “Let’s circulate.”

Ally takes my arm. “Yes, ma’am.”

I spot Amy Weiss—probably the biggest gossip in the entire school—making out with Oren Talmadge in the doorway like she’s starving and his mouth is stuffed with Cheetos. I drag Ally toward them.

“You want to circulate with
Amy Weiss
?” Ally hisses in my ear. Freshman year Amy spread the rumor that Ally let Fred Dannon and two other boys touch her boobs behind the gym in exchange for a month’s worth of math homework. I’ve never been sure whether the story was true or not—Ally swears it wasn’t, Fred swears it was, and Lindsay guesses that Ally only let them look, not touch—but in any case Ally and Amy have been unofficial archnemeses since then.

“Pit stop.” I tap Amy’s shoulder and she extricates herself from Oren’s mouth.

“Hey, Sam.” Her face lights up. She glances quickly at Ally, then back to me, snaking her arms around Oren’s neck. Oren looks extremely confused, probably wondering what happened to the suckfish on his face. “Sorry. Am I blocking the hallway?”

“Just your butt is,” Ally says cheerfully. I squeeze her arm and she yelps. The last thing I need is for Amy and Ally to get into it.

“You know there’s a much better spot,” I say, “if you and Oren want…you know, more
privacy
.”

“We want privacy,” Oren pipes up.

I smile at him. “Open bedroom. Bumper stickers on the door.
Extra
-soft bed.” I raise my fingers to my lips, blow a kiss to Amy. “Have fun.”

“What was that about?” Ally explodes as soon as we’re out of earshot. “Since when are you and Amy BFF?”

“Long story.” I’m feeling good, powerful, and in control. Things are turning out the way they should. I put my hand on the door to Kent’s room as I pass it.
Sorry, Rob.

Ally and I weave through the hallway. I’m scanning the crowd for Kent, ducking into various side rooms, getting more and more frustrated when I don’t see him.

We hear someone scream and then there’s an explosion of laughter. For a moment my heart stops and I think,
It can’t be,
not tonight, not again, not Juliet,
but then I hear Oren yell, “Dude, pull your
pants
up, for God’s sake.” Ally pokes her head out of the doorway of the room we’re in and looks back in the direction of Kent’s room. Her eyes get so big and round she looks like a cartoon character.

“Um, Sam? You might want to see this.”

I peek out into the hallway. Rob is booking it toward the stairs—or trying to, at least. It’s a little hard for him to move quickly since he’s (a) absolutely surrounded by people gaping at him and (b) more than a little unsteady on his feet—wearing nothing but his boxer shorts and his New Balance sneakers with mismatched socks. And his hat, of course. He’s clutching the rest of his clothes in front of his crotch and keeps barking at people, “What the hell are
you
looking at?”

I would feel bad for him if it weren’t for the sneakers. Like what, he couldn’t be bothered to take them off? He was too busy planning his method of attack on my bra or something? Plus, when he’s almost at the stairs, he lurches accidentally into a sophomore, but instead of pulling away he wraps her in a drunken hug. I can’t hear what he says, but when she untangles herself I can see she’s giggling, like getting mauled by a half-naked, sweaty senior who’s blitzed out of his mind is the best thing that’s happened to her all day.

“Yup,” I say to Ally. “We’re definitely broken up. It’s official.”

She’s looking at me strangely. “Kent.”

My heart flutters. “What?”

“It’s Kent.”

My brain taps out again. She knows. It’s obvious that I’ve been completely obsessing over him; maybe Lindsay said something after she found us together outside the cafeteria. “I—the Rob thing has nothing to do with—”

Ally shakes her head, jabs a finger over my shoulder. “Kent. Behind you. Weren’t you looking for him earlier?”

Relief washes over me. She doesn’t know. Then a tiny twinge of disappointment too. She doesn’t know because there’s nothing
to
know.
He
doesn’t even know. I spin around and search the hall for him.

“In there.” Ally points to a door ten feet down the hall. From our angle it’s impossible to see more than a few feet into the room, which, from the huge desk blocking over half of the doorway, looks to be a storage space or a study. People are flowing in and out.

“Come on.” I haul Ally off again, but she breaks free.

“I’m going to go find Lindsay.” She’s clearly tired of whatever mission I’m on. I nod and she scoots off toward the back room, using the vodka bottle like a cattle prod, poking people out of her way. A hand clamps down on my arm and I jump.

I turn around: Bridget McGuire and Alex Liment.

“You have Mrs. Harbor for English, right?” She doesn’t wait for me to answer before launching into her spiel. “Do you know if she handed out the essay assignments for
Macbeth
? Alex missed. Doctor’s appointment.”

Because I didn’t go with Lindsay for frozen yogurt after all—something was tugging at me, making me want to stay close to school, to the center of things—I’d almost forgotten about Bridget and Anna and Alex. And now the look on Alex’s face—the little, crooked smile that used to creep onto Rob’s face whenever he’d successfully gotten an extension from one of his teachers for some completely fabricated reason—makes me want to smack him. I think of Anna with her coal-black eye makeup and her improvised lunchroom on the floor of the abandoned bathroom. Even Bridget isn’t so bad. Annoying, yes, but pretty and nice and the type of person who probably spends her free time volunteering with sick children.

I can’t take it. I can’t let him get away with it.

Bridget’s still babbling about Alex’s mom being a health nut. I interrupt her. “Does anybody smell Chinese food?”

Bridget wrinkles her nose, clearly disappointed that I haven’t been listening. “
Chinese
food?”

I make a big show of sniffing. “Yeah. Like, like”—I stare directly at Alex—“like a big bowl of orange beef.”

His smile droops a little, but he shrugs and says, “I don’t smell anything.”

“Oh my God.” Bridget cups a hand in front of her mouth. “It’s not my breath, is it? I totally had Chinese food last night.”

I keep staring at Alex. “What’s wrong with you?” I ask, not even bothering to keep the edge out of my voice.

He blinks. “What?”

Bridget looks confused, and for a moment the three of us stand there, not saying anything. Alex and I have locked eyes, and Bridget is looking back and forth between us so rapidly I’m worried her neck’s going to snap off.

Then I smile. “You know,
health
-wise. Why did you have to go to the doctor?”

Alex relaxes visibly. “No big deal. My mom wanted me to get some weird shot. And you know, just a general checkup and stuff.”

“
Mmm-hmmm
. I hope they were thorough.” I shoot a pointed glance at his crotch. Fortunately Bridget is staring at him, watching him turn red, and doesn’t see.

“Um. Y-yeah. Pretty much.” He squints at me like he’s just noticed me for the first time.

“I’ve been looking for a doctor,” I breeze on. I feel bad for Bridget, but at the same time, she deserves to know what her lame excuse for a boyfriend is up to. “It’s
so
hard to find a good one, you know? Especially one that doubles as a restaurant with a $4.99 lunch special. That’s rare.”

“What are you talking about?” Bridget’s voice is a squeak. She whips back to Alex. “What is she talking about?”

A muscle is ticking in Alex’s jaw. I can tell he wants to curse me out but knows that would make it worse, so he just stands there glaring.

I put my hand on Bridget’s arm. “I’m sorry, Bridget. But your boyfriend is really a slimeball.”

“What is she talking about?”

Bridget’s voice shoots up another octave, and as I walk away I hear Alex start trying to calm her down, no doubt feeding her lies as quickly as he can come up with them. I should feel good about what I’ve done—he deserves it, after all, and in a weird way I’m only setting things right—but as soon as I walk away I feel strangely deflated. The feeling of control vanishes and in its place comes a tingly feeling of anxiety. I flip back through the day’s events like I’m scrolling down a computer screen, trying to find some lapse, something I’ve forgotten to do or say. Maybe I should have gone to Juliet’s house earlier, to check up on her. Then again, I’m not really sure what I would have said.
Hi. Can you verify for me that you’re not going to throw yourself in front of any cars tonight? That would be great. No explosives, either. This is
my
life you’re playing with.

The music’s so loud, the notes are hardly distinguishable from one another. I fantasize about taking Kent’s hand and pulling him away somewhere quiet and dark. The room downstairs, maybe, or the woods, or someplace farther. Maybe we’ll just get in the car and drive.

“Sam! Sam!”

I look up. In the back room Lindsay’s climbed onto one of the couches, waving at me over the tide of bobbing heads. Ally’s next to her, and several feet beyond them I see Elody whispering something to Steve Dough.

I hesitate, a sense of hopelessness washing over me. It’s ridiculous for me to talk to Kent. I have no words to describe how wrong I’ve been about him, about Rob, about everyone. I don’t think I can explain to him how I’ve been changing. And maybe it’s all a lie, anyway. Maybe it’s impossible to change.

In that moment, while I’m teetering between two doorways, the people around me get all quiet and hushed, faces growing slack. Up on the couch Lindsay falters, her hand flapping uselessly to her side. Next to her, Ally begins opening and shutting her mouth like a fish. The buzzing is all through my body now, like the hum of an electrical wire.

And there she is, marching down the hallway. After all that: Juliet Sykes on a mission.

In a second the despair, the hopelessness, the sense of forgetting things or missing the point somehow, all gets transformed into rage. When she sees Lindsay she stops and opens her mouth, going straight into her “you’re a bitch” routine, but I don’t even let the first word escape from her mouth before I’m charging forward, grabbing her arm, and half dragging her backward down the hallway. She’s too surprised to fight me.

I pull her into the nearest bathroom—“Out,” I order two girls who are primping in front of the mirror—and slam the door and lock it. When I turn around to face her she’s staring at me like
I’m
the psychopath.

“What are you doing?”

She must misunderstand my question. “It’s a party,” she says
with soft insistence. When she’s not busy freaking out and calling me a bitch she has a nice voice, musical like Elody’s. “I’m allowed to be here like everybody else.”

“No.” I shake my head, pressing fingers to my temples to keep them from pounding. “I mean, what are you
really
doing? Why are you here?”

Her eyes flutter to the doorknob behind me. I move over so it’s wedged into my lower back. If she wants to get out, she’ll have to move me out of the way.

Apparently she doesn’t like her chances, because she takes a long, slow breath. “I came to tell you something. You, and Lindsay, and Elody, and Ally.”

“Oh, yeah? What’s that?”

“You’re a bitch,” she says quietly, not like an accusation at all, more like something she’s sorry about.

At the same time she says it, I say it with her. “I’m a bitch.”

She stares at me.

“Listen, Juliet”—I rake my hands through my hair—“I know we haven’t always been nice to you or whatever. And I really feel bad about it—I do.” I try to gauge what she’s thinking, but it’s like something has shut down behind her eyes, a button switching off, and she just stands there staring at me dully. I rush on, “The thing is, we never really meant anything by it, you know? I don’t think I—we—really thought about it. It’s just the kind of thing that happens. People used to make fun of me all the time.” She’s making me nervous, just staring like that, and
I lick my lips. “
All
the time. And, like, I don’t think it’s really because people are mean or bad or whatever. I just think…I just think…” I’m fighting to find the words. Memories are colliding in my head: the sound of people singing as I walked down the hall, the smell of ice cream on Lindsay’s breath the day we threw Beth’s tampons out the window, riding a horse through a blur of trees. “I just think that people
don’t
think. They don’t know. We—
I
—didn’t know.”