Before I Fall

It feels good to laugh, and the knot in my shoulders relaxes. Still, my fingers start up their involuntary drumming again, moving all on their own. I’m scanning every single person who enters the cafeteria, looking alternately for Kent—it’s like, what, he doesn’t eat now?—and Juliet’s shock of white blond hair. So far, nada.

“…to Juliet?”

I’ve been totally zoning out, thinking about Juliet, that for a second when I hear her name I think I’ve only imagined it—or worse, said it aloud myself. But then I see that Lindsay’s looking at Ally, a strange smile curling on her lips, and I know she must have just asked about whether Juliet got our rose. I totally forgot that Ally and Juliet have biology together, and I’m suddenly breathless. The room seems to tilt as I wait for Ally to respond. Oh my God, you guys, it was the weirdest thing…she got the biggest bouquet of flowers…she actually smiled.

Ally claps a hand over her mouth, her eyes bugging out. “Oh my God, you guys. I totally forgot to tell you—” Hands clamp down over my eyes and I’m so wound up I let out a little squeal. The hands smell like grease and—of course—lemon balm. Lindsay, Ally, and Elody crack up as Rob pulls his hands off my eyes. When I look up at him he’s smiling, but there’s a tightness around his eyes and I can tell he’s unhappy.

“You avoiding me now?” he says, snapping the strap of my tank top like he’s five.

“Not exactly,” I say, trying to sound pleasant. “What do you mean?”

He jerks his head back toward the soda machine. “I’ve been standing over there for, like, fifteen minutes.” His voice is low; he’s clearly not happy to be having this conversation in front of my friends. “You haven’t looked over or come over or anything.”

You made me wait longer than that, I want to say, but obviously he wouldn’t get it. Besides, as I watch him shuffling his scuffed-up New Balance sneakers, I realize he’s not really so horrible. Yeah, he’s selfish and not-so-smart and drinks too much and flirts with other girls and can’t take off a bra for the life of him, not to mention what comes afterward, but someday he’ll grow up a little and make a girl really happy.

“I’m not ignoring you, Rob, it’s just…” I blow air out of my cheeks, stalling. I’ve never broken up with anybody before, and all the clichés keep running through my head. It’s not you, it’s me. (No—it is him. And me.) We’re better off friends. (We were never friends.) “Things between us have been…”

He squints at me like he’s trying to read in a different language. “You got my rose, right? Fifth period? You read the note?”

Like this will make it better. “Actually,” I say, trying to keep the impatience out of my voice, “I didn’t get your rose. I cut fifth.”

“Miss Kingston.” Across the table, Elody puts her hand to her chest and pretends to be shocked. “I am very disappointed in you.” More giggling.

I shoot her a look and turn back to Rob. “But that’s not the point. The point is—”

“I didn’t get a rose from you,” Rob says, and I can see him very slowly starting to put it together: something is wrong. When Rob thinks, you can almost see gears shifting together in his brain.

This morning I made one other change in the Rose Room. I stopped by the C’s and carefully rifled through Rob’s roses—skipping over the rose from Gabby Haynes, his ex-girlfriend, which said, When are we going to hang out like you promised, sexy?—and removed the one from me, with the little note I spent hours agonizing over.

Lindsay slaps at Rob’s arm, still thinking this is all a joke. “Be patient, Rob,” she says, winking at him. “Your rose is coming.”

“Patient?” Rob scowls as though the word tastes bad in his mouth. He crosses his arms and stares at me. “I get it. There is no rose, right? Did you forget or something?”

Something in his voice makes my friends finally get it. They go silent, staring back and forth from Rob to me, me to Rob.

Let me rephrase: someday he’ll make a sorority girl really happy, a blonde named Becky with D boobs who doesn’t mind getting man-handled like meat in a marinade.

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

His voice is calm, very low, but I can hear the anger running underneath it—hard and cold and cutting. “You make such a huge deal about Cupid Day. And then you don’t keep up your end of the bargain. Typical.”

Inside, my stomach is working like it’s trying to digest a whole cow, but I lift my chin, staring at him. “Typical? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I think you know.” Rob passes a hand over his eyes and looks suddenly mean, reminding me of this trick my dad used to do where he would bring his hand down over his face, changing all of his features from happy to sad, then from sad back to happy, in an instant. “You don’t exactly have a perfect history of keeping your promises—”