The Edge of Falling (6 page)

I slide my book bag over my shoulder and make my way toward the door. I only stop when I feel a hand on my back. “Caggie?”

I turn around to see Kristen, students knocking past her, Trevor included. He half waves as he leaves, but I’m so distracted by contact with Kristen that I don’t respond.

“Hi.” I swallow.

She smiles. Relief floods my body like warm water. “Could I talk to you for a minute?” she asks.

“Sure.” I shift my backpack from one shoulder to the other. I peel a hangnail off. Up close, Kristen looks good. Tiny, but well. Her skin is even a little darker, like she spent time in the sun this summer. I hope that’s true.

She waits until the students have barreled out. A few turn back to look at us, but there are only five minutes between classes at Kensington, so no one can really afford to wait. When the last student has left, she turns to me. My heart beats frantically, like it’s trying to run away from this conversation.

“How was your summer?” I ask. I try to keep my voice casual, but I can feel my pulse in my neck.

“It was good,” she says. “Calm.” My mind jumps—calm like . . .
medicated
? She smiles, and her warm, brown eyes seem to slow my racing blood. “Don’t worry,” she says. “I just went home to Minnesota. I saw my old friends, stayed with my grandparents. It was exactly what I needed.”

I exhale. “Right,” I say. “Good. I didn’t really think . . .” I trail off, look at my shoes.

“How about you?” she asks.

I screw my face up into what I hope is a smile. “Good! You know, busy. Well, mellow, I guess. I didn’t really . . . I mean . . .” I sigh. “It was fine.”

She shakes her head. “I meant to call you, but I wasn’t sure . . .”

I look up and meet her gaze. “Same,” I say.

“You know, it’s all right. I’m not . . .” Her brown eyes are fierce. “I’m not going to say anything.”

I look away and shuffle my feet a few times back and forth in lieu of words. This kindness isn’t what I expected from her. I should say thank you, but I can’t bring myself to get the words out. I also don’t know if she means it. She may know my darkest secret, but I barely know her.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” I say instead.

She takes it and nods. “So I’ll see you around, then?”

Kristen looks up at me, her eyes wide, and for a moment I see her on Abigail’s rooftop, hanging from my fingers, her face wild with terror. “Definitely,” I say.

And then I duck past her, just as the chimes start to go off again. Class is beginning.

*    *    *

Lunch at Kensington is an interesting affair. No one really eats in the cafeteria. For one, most girls in my class have been on a diet since they were about ten, so lunch either consists of gossip or celery. For another, one of the perks of Kensington is that you’re allowed off campus at lunch. It’s always been this way. It’s meant to foster “community appreciation,” which means Kensington is somehow under the delusion that its students use the freedom of their lunch hour to check out the new Imperial Age exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Mostly what happens is that they go to the park and make out. Claire and I used to do that, minus the making out part, no matter what Tripp says. Trevor always had some school-related project to attend to at lunch—an extra AP class, prep for a debate, etc.—so at lunch it was just me and Claire.

We’d pick up sandwiches from Caffe Grazie on Eighty-Fourth and go eat them on a bench in the park. Even in the winter. If it was really raining, we’d duck into Island on Ninety-Second and sit with coffee. Besides mornings with
Trevor, it was my favorite part of the day, and now, staring at our school’s sandwich stand, I miss Claire more than I have in a year and a half.

“Come with us!” I turn around to find Abigail and her girl squad a few paces over, handbags on their shoulders, primed for escape.

“Oh,” I say, “I don’t know, I . . .” I gesture toward the sandwich stand, which never has a line. Today is no exception. With New York at your fingertips, who would go for a turkey and rye at Kensington?

Abigail marches toward me, hooks her arm through mine, and starts dragging me to the double doors that lead into the courtyard and out of school. “We know you and Trevor have broken up and Claire hasn’t been here in a year.” Abigail looks at me pointedly. “And we think you should start spending more time with us this year.”

Constance Dunlop and Samantha Bennett nod emphatically.

“Thanks,” I say. “That’s sweet of you.”

They bookend me so there is no way to get out as we head straight into the park. Sure enough, we don’t stop to pick up food. It’s hot out, but not as sweltering as yesterday. Even with Abigail’s arm linked through mine, it’s nice to be in here. A slight breeze curls around a bend and picks up my hair, cooling the back of my neck.

“Here,” Abigail directs.

She lets go of me, and Constance produces a blanket, which she and Samantha sit down on. Abigail follows and so do I, so we’re all making a little circle. I half expect them to pull out a Ouija board.

“I heard you talked to Kristen after class today,” Samantha blurts out. She leans way forward, sticks her chin in her hands. “Tell us everything.”

They’re getting filled up on gossip. Obviously. I brought lunch.

“There’s nothing to tell,” I say. “She just wanted to know how my summer went.”

Constance and Abigail exchange a look. “Did she say how that mental place was?” Samantha giggles. “I heard they had to strap her down so she wouldn’t run away.”

“She wasn’t in a hospital,” I say. My voice gets quiet, and the three of them lean in closer. Abigail’s eyebrows travel up her forehead like they’re trying to reach her hairline.

“Yes she was. Constance saw her forwarding address,” Samantha says.

Constance has busied herself with rummaging through her Chanel purse.

“Well, she wasn’t,” I say. “She was just with her grandparents.” I lean back on my hands.

“Yeah, but come on,” Samantha presses. “You don’t just try to kill yourself and then give it up the next minute. That’s not how it works.”

“Really? How
does
it work?” Constance says. Samantha clocks her in the side, and both girls tumble over, laughing. Only Abigail stays upright.

“Did she say anything else?” she asks me.

I close my eyes into a spotlight of sun. “Not really.”

“Okay.” Abigail is silent for a moment. “It’s just, she tried to
kill herself
. ”

I open my eyes and find her looking at me. Constance and Samantha are lost in another conversation. Something about the way Abigail is leaning forward, squinting, like she’s trying to read something off my face, makes my heartbeat quicken.

“That was a rumor,” I say.

“She was on the ledge of our roof terrace,” Abigail says. “What do you think she was trying to do up there? Enjoy the view?”

I thread some grass through my fingers and pull. “It’s over. It’s a new year. I think we should just move on. Leave her alone.”

“Can you imagine if you didn’t get to her in time?” Abigail says, shaking her head. “I can’t even think about it.” She shudders, like she’s suddenly freezing. In reality the cloud
cover has lifted and the sun is beating down, full force. “I guess you know what you’re going to write your college essay on,” she says, winking at me.

That’s the thing that’s always really stunned me about these girls. Their ability to go from dead serious to ridiculous in no more than a second. How can you switch gears that quickly?

“So you were at the beach this summer?” I ask, trying to steer the conversation away from Kristen.

“Yep,” she says, suddenly animated. “You know Tripp came out for a full week? He didn’t even stay with his parents, just with us.” At this Samantha and Constance jump back in, exclaiming how Tripp showed up with flowers and insisted on making Abigail breakfast in bed, even though they had a full-time summer chef out there. Abigail leans back on her hands. “I think he’s the one,” she says after a moment.

I gawk. “The one?”

She smiles her patronizing smile. It says,
Someday, dear, you’ll know what I’m talking about
. “I think we’ll get engaged,” she says.

Constance and Samantha start squealing. They sound like tiny animals in the wild.

“You’re seventeen,” I say, slowly, like maybe she’s forgotten.

“Oh, not
now
,” she says, waving her hand around. “I just mean
someday
. He’ll start working for his father, you know,
and it would just
make sense
 . . .” She starts rambling about Park Avenue real estate and summers in Bridgehampton and I feel that pang again, the pang of missing Claire and Trevor. The only two people in my life who ever validated my suspicion that this world is a total and complete farce.

I remember when I could have said the same things about Trevor. Not the marriage part, not beach houses in Bridgehampton, but things that made sense. Things like going to the University of Iowa for their writing program, starting our own literary journal. We’d always argue about whether or not we wanted to end up back in New York. He did. He said he wanted to live on the Upper West Side, where he was from. I couldn’t imagine living here, having just the park to separate me from Kensington and everything that comes along with life here, but Trevor said that the park might as well be the Atlantic Ocean and that Kensington wouldn’t matter once we left. “That’s the thing about New York,” Trevor used to tell me. “You can make it whatever you want it to be.”

I knew he was right, but there was always something so alluring about the idea of moving somewhere where it would be just the two of us, where no one knew us. We could read and write and have a tiny cottage and a vegetable garden. It all sounds so ridiculous now, but at one time it was the only thing I wanted—to have him in my life forever.

“We should get back,” Constance says.

Samantha yanks the blanket out from under and the four of us march back down Fifth Avenue toward Kensington. I’m starving, but there’s no time to get anything now. I think I have an old granola bar stashed somewhere in my locker. Do they go bad? Probably not.

As we’re passing through the gates, back inside, I spot Trevor. He’s seated on a bench in the courtyard, his arms crossed, looking toward the sidewalk like he’s waiting for someone. When he sees me, he straightens up. He lifts his hand and waves, but I don’t mirror him. I can’t bring myself to wave back. He smiles with just the corners of his mouth. His smile seems to say,
This is pretty sad, huh? Where we’ve ended up?
I want to agree, to shake my head, run to him, laugh at how out of hand everything has gotten, but he ended things. When you’re the dumpee, you don’t have those kinds of privileges. He keeps holding my gaze until I look away.

“Ex stalking much?” It’s Abigail, in my ear like a mosquito.

“What?” I say.

“Trevor obviously still has a thing for you. He’s like a pining puppy.”

“No he’s not,” I say, trying to swat her away.

“Yes he is!” Abigail squeals out.

“Trust me,” I say. “If Trevor still has feelings for me, they’re just pity. We’re done.” And then I walk off toward history, making a mental note that, no matter how lonely I get this year, I will not, under any circumstances, submit myself to another lunch with Abigail Adams & Co. Some things are just not worth it.

“Hey, wait up.” I turn around to see Trevor jogging behind me.

It’s three o’clock, and this year I’m determined not to stay at school a moment more than necessary. I used to run track and the school paper—I was the first junior to ever make editor—but I gave that up in January. It just seemed so trivial. Everything did. And the stories we ran were pointless. Taste tests on Diet Coke vs. Coke Zero? I couldn’t take it.

“Trevor,” I start.

He holds up his hand. “Wait, I just want to talk to you.” He sticks his hands on his knees, panting. Despite his tall frame, Trevor has never been very athletic. He used to come watch my track practices and tell me he was tired just being there.

“And say what?” I’m trying hard to remain composed.

His face slackens, smooths out, and I can’t help but run my eyes over his cheeks, his ears, the freckle on his face. I think about how many times I’ve kissed that exact spot. When someone breaks up with you they should take their memories with them. It shouldn’t be possible to remember someone when they’re no longer there.

“I heard you and Kristen today,” he says.

My breath catches. “Heard us what?”

He looks at me. That look he has that I know means
stop bullshitting
. “What isn’t she going to tell?”

I take a deep breath but don’t automatically say anything. I hate lying to him; that was part of the problem. He could sense it, I know he could. But I also can’t tell him. Just like I can’t tell Claire. It wouldn’t be fair. To them or anyone else. I just pray Kristen meant what she said. It would be so easy for Trevor to ask her . . . and she has no reason to protect me.

“I thought you left,” I say lamely.

Trevor shakes his head. “Come on, Caggs. I heard her. What was she talking about?”

“Nothing,” I say, turning around and walking. “Just forget about it.”

Trevor follows. “I know something happened. Why won’t you tell me?”

“It isn’t important,” I say.

“Like hell it isn’t.” Trevor grabs my arm. It’s hard, and I’m surprised. Trevor never gets annoyed or raises his voice. “Stop shutting me out,” he says.

“I didn’t shut you out,” I say. I’m still moving forward, fast, trying to get away, but Trevor won’t let me.

“Yes you did,” he says. “After January you wouldn’t even look at me.” His fingers are still on my bicep. “Come on, Caggs, it’s
me
. You can talk to me.”

I’m suddenly filled with anger. The force of it sends me whirling around to look at him, and I shake his hand off. “Why are you doing this?” I ask. “Are you forgetting that
you
broke up with
me
?”

He shakes his head. “You think that’s what I wanted?”

“Pretty sure, yes,” I say. “Because it’s what you did.”