Before I Fall (43 page)

“You’re a bitch,” she whispers, so quietly I’m not sure I even
hear the words or am just remembering them, imagining them in her voice. She says it like she is reciting the lines to an old play, some long-neglected script she can’t manage to forget.

I nod. “I know,” I say. “I know I am. I know I have been—we all have been. And I’m sorry.”

She takes a quick step back, but there’s nowhere to go, so she ends up bumping up against the wall. She flattens herself, hands braced against the plaster, breathing hard, like I’m some kind of a wild animal that might attack her at any second. She’s shaking her head quickly from side to side. I don’t even think she knows she’s doing it.

“Juliet.” I reach out, but she shrinks an extra half inch into the wall, and I drop my hand. “I’m serious. I’m trying to tell you how sorry I am.”

“I have to go.”

She seems to break away from the wall with effort, like she’s not sure she’ll be able to stand without it. She tries to squeeze past me, but I shuffle around so we’re face-to-face again.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“You said that.” Now she’s getting angry. I’m glad. I think it’s a good sign.

“No, I mean…” I take a deep breath, willing her to understand.
This is how it’s supposed to be.
“I have to come with you.”

“Please,” she says. “Just leave me alone.”

“That’s what I’m telling you. I
can’t
.” As we’re standing there
I realize we’re almost exactly the same height. We must look like the dark and light sides of an Oreo cookie, and I think how just as easily it could have been the other way around. She could be blocking my path; I could be trying to slip around her into the dark.

“You don’t—” she starts, but I don’t ever hear what she’s about to say. At that second someone yells, “Sam!” from the stairs, and as I turn around to look up at Kent, Juliet darts past me.

“Juliet!” I whip around but not quickly enough. She’s swallowed by the crowd, the gap that allowed her to break for the door closing just as quickly as it opened, a shifting Tetris pattern of bodies, and now I’m running up against backs and hands and enormous leather bags.

“Sam!”

Not now, Kent.
I’m fighting my way toward the door, every few steps being carried backward as people drive relentlessly toward the kitchen, holding up cups that need to be refilled. When I’m almost at the door, the crowd thins and I surge forward. But then I feel a warm hand on my back, and Kent’s spinning me around to face him, and despite the fact that I need to catch Juliet and the fact that we’re standing in the middle of a billion people, I think about how good it would feel to dance with him. Really dance, not just grind up on each other like people do at homecoming—dance the way people used to, with my hands on his shoulders and his arms around my waist.

“I’ve been looking for you.” He’s out of breath and his hair is messier than usual. “Why did you run away from me before?”

He looks so confused and concerned I feel my heart somersault in my chest.

“I don’t really have time to talk about this right now,” I say as gently as possible. “I’ll catch up with you later, okay?” It’s the easiest way. It’s the
only
way.

“No.” He sounds so emphatic I’m momentarily thrown off guard.

“Excuse me?”

“I said,
no
.” He stands in front of me, blocking my path to the door. “I want to talk to you. I want to talk now.”

“I can’t—” I start to say, but he cuts me off.

“You can’t run away again.” He reaches out and places his hands gently on my shoulders, but his touch makes a current of warmth and energy zip through me. “Do you understand? You can’t keep doing this.”

The way he’s looking at me makes me feel weak. The tears threaten to come again. “I never meant to hurt you,” I croak out.

He releases my shoulders, pushing his hands through his hair. He looks like he wants to scream. “You act like I’m invisible for years, then you send me this adorable little note, then I pick you up, and you kiss me—”

“I think
you
kissed
me
, actually.”

He doesn’t miss a beat. “—And you completely blow me away and rip my world up and everything else, and then you go back to ignoring me.”

“I blew you away?” I squeak out before I can stop myself.

He stares at me steadily. “You blew
everything
away.”

“Listen, Kent.” I look down at my palms, which are actually itching to reach out and touch him, to smooth his hair back and tuck it behind his ear. “I meant everything that happened in the car. I meant to kiss you, I mean.”

“I thought I kissed you.” Kent’s voice is even and I can’t tell if he’s joking or not.

“Yeah, well, I meant to kiss you back.” I try to swallow the lump in my throat. “That’s all I can tell you right now. I meant it. More than I’ve ever meant anything else in my life.”

I’m glad I’m staring down at my shoes because at that second the tears push out of my eyes and start running down my cheeks. I quickly wipe them away with the back of my hand, pretending to be rubbing my eyes.

“What about that other thing you said in the car?” Kent doesn’t sound angry, at least, though I’m too scared to look at him. His voice is softer now. “You said you didn’t have much time. What did you mean?”

Now that the tears have found a way out, there’s no stopping them, and I keep my head bowed. One of them splatters on my shoe, leaving a mark in the shape of a star. “There are things going on right now….”

He puts two fingers under my chin and tilts my face up toward his. And then I really do stumble. My legs just give out underneath me, and he scoops one arm behind my back to keep me upright.

“What’s happening, Sam?” He brushes a tear away from the corner of my eye with his thumb, his eyes searching my face, doing the thing where I feel like he’s turning me inside out and looking straight into my heart. “Are you in trouble?”

I shake my head, unable to speak, and he rushes on, “You can tell me. Whatever it is, you can trust me.”

For a moment I’m tempted to let myself stay this way, pressed against him; to kiss him over and over until it feels like I’m breathing
through
him. But then I think of Juliet in the woods. I see two blinding beams of light cutting through the darkness, and the low sound of roaring, like a faraway ocean, an engine jumping to life. The roaring and the lights fill my head, pushing everything else out—the fear, the regret, the sadness—and I can focus again.

“I’m not in trouble. It’s not about me. I—I have to help someone.” I break away from Kent gently, detaching his arm from my waist. “I can’t really explain.
You
have to trust
me
.”

I lean forward and give him a final kiss—just a peck, really, our lips hardly brushing together, but enough for me to feel that sense of soaring again, strength and power flowing through me. When I pull away I’m expecting more argument, but instead he just stares at me for a beat longer and then whirls around
and disappears toward the stairs. My stomach plummets and for one split second I ache for him so badly—I
miss
him—I feel like my whole chest has caved in. Then I think of the dark, and the lights, and the roaring, and Juliet, and before I can think of anything else, I fight the final few steps to the door and step out into the cold, where the rain is still coming down like shards of moonlight, or like steel.

A MIRACLE OF CHANCE AND COINCIDENCE, PART II

“Juliet! Juliet!” I know she’s gotten a fair start and won’t be able to hear me, but it makes me feel better to call her name, makes the darkness all around me not feel so close and heavy.

Of course I’ve forgotten the flashlight. I begin my combo shuffle-run down the icy driveway, wishing I’d decided to wear sneakers instead of my favorite olive leather wedge-heeled Dolce Vita boots. At the same time, these are shoes to die for—to die
in
.

The lights of the house have winked out behind me, swallowed by the curves of the road and the tall spikes of the trees, when I think I hear someone calling my name. For a second I’m sure I’ve imagined it, or it’s only the sound of the wind through the branches. I pause, hesitating, and then I hear it again.
“Sam!”
It sounds like Kent.

“Sam! Where are you?”

It
is
Kent.

This throws me. I was pretty sure when he stalked away from me at the party that that would be the end of it. I never expected he would actually follow me. I consider turning around and going back to him. But there’s no time. Besides, I’ve said everything I can. For a moment, standing there in the freezing cold with the air burning my lungs and the rain pouring into my collar and down my back, I close my eyes and remember being with him in the warm, dry car surrounded on all sides by pouring rain. I remember the kiss and a feeling of lifting, as though we were going to be swept away at any moment by a wave. When I hear him call my name again it sounds closer, and I imagine him cupping my face and whispering to me.
Sam.

Someone screams. I snap my eyes open, my heart surging in my chest, thinking of Juliet. But then I hear a few voices calling to one another—distant, still, a confusion of sounds—and I could swear that among them I hear Lindsay’s voice. But that’s ridiculous. I’m imagining things, and I’m wasting time.

I keep going toward the road. As I get closer I hear the roar of vehicles, the hiss of wheels against asphalt, both sounding like waves on a beach.

When I find Juliet she’s standing, drenched, her clothes clinging to her body, her arms floating loosely at her sides like the rain and the cold doesn’t bother her at all.

“Juliet!”

She hears me then. She swivels her head sharply, like she’s
being called back to earth from somewhere else. I start jogging toward her, hearing the low rumbling of an approaching truck—
going way too fast
—behind me. She takes a quick step backward as I pick up speed, pinwheeling my arms to keep from toppling over on the ice, her face coming alive when she sees me, full of anger and fear and that other thing. Wonder.

The engine is louder now, a steady growl, and the driver leans on his horn. The noise is huge: rolling, blasting around us, filling the air with sound. Still Juliet hasn’t moved. She’s just standing there, staring at me, shaking her head a little bit, like we’re long-lost friends in a random airport somewhere in Europe and have just bumped into each other.
It’s so weird to see you here…. Isn’t it funny how life works? Small world.

I close the last few feet between us as the truck surges past, still blasting its horn. I grab onto her shoulders, and she takes a few stumbling steps backward into the woods, my momentum nearly carrying her off her feet. The sound of the horn ebbs away from us, taillights disappearing into the dark.

“Thank God,” I say, breathing hard. My arms are shaking.

“What are you
doing
?” She seems to snap into herself, trying to wrench away from me. “Are you
following
me?”

“I thought you were going to…” I nod toward the road, and I suddenly have the urge to hug her. She’s alive and solid and real under my hands. “I thought I wouldn’t get to you in time.”

She stops struggling and looks at me for a long second. There
are no cars on the road, and in the pause I hear it sharply, definitively: “Samantha Emily Kingston!” It comes from the woods to my left, and there’s only one person in the world who calls me by my full name. Lindsay Edgecombe.

Just then, like a chorus of birds rising up from the ground at the same time, come the other voices, crowding one another: “Sam! Sam! Sam!” Kent, Ally, and Elody, all of them coming through the woods toward us.

“What’s going on?” Juliet looks really afraid now. I’m so confused I loosen my grip on her shoulders and she twists away. “Why did you follow me? Why can’t you leave me alone?”

“Juliet.” I hold up my hands, a gesture of peace. “I just want to talk to you.”

“I have nothing to say.” She turns away from me and stalks back up toward the road.

I follow her, feeling suddenly calm. The world around me sharpens and comes into clearer focus, and every time I hear my name bouncing through the woods it sounds closer and closer, and I think,
I’m sorry
. But this is right. This is how it has to happen.

How it was supposed to happen all along.

“You don’t have to do this, Juliet,” I say to her quietly. “You know it’s not the right way.”

“You don’t know what I have to do,” she whispers back fiercely. “You don’t
know
. You could never understand.” She’s staring at the road. Her shoulder blades are jutting out
underneath her soaked T-shirt, and again I have the fantasy of a pair of wings unfurling behind her, lifting her away, carrying her out of danger.

“Sam! Sam! Sam!” The voices are close now, and diagonal beams of light zigzag through the woods. I hear footsteps, too, and branches snapping underfoot. The road has been unusually clear of traffic, but now from both directions I make out the low growl of big engines. I close my eyes and think of flying.

“I want to help you,” I say to Juliet, though I know that I can’t make her understand, not like this.

“Don’t you get it?” She turns to me, and to my surprise I see she’s crying. “I can’t be fixed, do you understand?”

I think of standing on the stairs with Kent and saying exactly the same thing. I think of his beautiful light green eyes, and the way he said,
You don’t need to be fixed
and the warmth of his hands and the softness of his lips. I think of Juliet’s mask and how maybe we all feel patched and stitched together and not quite right.

I am not afraid.

Dimly, I have the sense of roaring in my ears and voices so close and faces, white and frightened, emerging from the darkness, but I can’t stop staring at Juliet as she’s crying, still so beautiful.

“It’s too late,” she says.

And I say, “It’s never too late.”

In that split second she’s launched herself into the road, but she looks back, startled, recognition lighting up her eyes. Then I’m hurtling out behind her. I slam into her back, and she goes shooting forward, rolling toward the opposite shoulder, just as two vans converge, about to pass each other. There’s a furious high whine and someone—more than one person?—screams my name and a feeling of heat all through my body and the sensation of being lifted, thrown, by a huge hand, a giant’s hand; the earth revolves, turns upside down and sideways, and then a fog of darkness eats up the edges of the earth, turning everything to dream.