Before I Fall

Elody turns to me. “Sarah Grundel is going around saying Lindsay ruined her life.” I have to wait while Elody folds a fry expertly into her mouth. “She can’t swim in the quarter finals. And you know she lives for that shit. Remember when she forgot to take her goggles off after morning practice and she wore them until second period?”

“She probably keeps all of her blue ribbons on a wall in her room,” Ally says.

“Sam used to do that. Didn’t you, Sam? All those ribbons for playing with horsies.” Lindsay elbows me.

“Can we get back to the point?” I wave my hands, partly because I want to hear the story, partly to take the attention off me and the fact that I used to be a dork. When I was in fifth grade, I spent more time with horses than with members of my own species. “I still don’t get why Sarah’s pissed at Lindsay.”

Elody rolls her eyes at me like I belong at the special ed table. “Sarah got detention—she was late to homeroom for, like, the fifth time in two weeks.” I’m still not getting it and she heaves a sigh. “She was late to homeroom because she had to park in Upper Lot and haul ass—”

“.22 miles!”

We all bust it out at the same time and then start giggling like maniacs.

“Don’t worry, Lindz,” I say. “If you guys throw down I’m totally putting money on you.”

“Yeah, we’ve got your back,” Elody says.

“Isn’t it kind of weird how that stuff happens?” Ally says in this shy voice she gets when she’s trying to say something serious. “How everything spirals out from everything else? Like, if Lindsay hadn’t stolen that parking space…”

“I didn’t steal it. I got it fair and square,” Lindsay protests, bringing her hand down on the table for emphasis. Elody’s Diet Coke sloshes over the side of the can, soaking some fries. This makes us start laughing again.

“I’m serious!” Ally raises her voice to be heard over us. “It’s like a web, you know? Everything’s connected.”

“Have you been breaking into your dad’s stash again, Al?” Elody says.

This is all it takes to really get us going. This is a joke we’ve had with Ally for years because her dad works in the music industry. He’s a lawyer, not a producer or manager or musician or anything, and he wears a suit everywhere (even to the pool in the summer), but Lindsay claims he’s secretly a hippie stoner.

As we’re laughing, doubling over, Ally turns pink. “You guys never listen to me,” she says, but she’s fighting a smile. She takes a fry and throws it at Elody. “I read once that if a bunch of butterflies takes off from Thailand, it can cause a rainstorm in New York.”

“Yeah, well, one of your farts could cause a massive blackout in Portugal.” Elody giggles, throwing a fry back.

“Your morning breath could cause a stampede in Africa.” Ally leans forward. “And I do not fart.”

Lindsay and I are laughing, and Elody and Ally keep throwing fries back and forth. Lindsay tries to say they’re wasting perfectly good grease, but she’s snorting so hard she can barely get the words out.

Finally she sucks in a deep breath and chokes out, “You know what I heard? That if you sneeze enough you can cause a tornado in Iowa.”

Even Ally goes crazy at this, and suddenly we’re all trying it, laughing and sneezing and snorting at the same time. Everybody’s staring at us, but we don’t care.

After about a million sneezes, Lindsay leans back in her chair, clutching her stomach and gasping for breath.

“Thirty dead in Iowa tornadoes,” she gets out, “another fifty missing.”

This sets us off again.

Lindsay and I decide to cut seventh period and go to TCBY. Lindsay has French, which she can’t stand, and I have English. We cut seventh period a lot together. We’re second-semester seniors, so it’s like we’re expected not to go to class. Plus I hate my English teacher, Mrs. Harbor. She’s always going off on tangents. Sometimes I’ll zone out for a few minutes, and all of a sudden she’ll be talking about underwear in the eighteenth century or oppression in Africa or the way the sun looks rising over the Grand Canyon. Even though she’s probably only in her fifties, I’m pretty sure she’s losing it. That’s how it started with my grandmother: ideas swirling around and colliding with each other, causes coming after effects, and point A switched with point B. When my grandmother was still alive we would visit her, and even though I was no more than six, I remember thinking: I hope I die young.

There’s a definition of irony for you, Mrs. Harbor.

Or maybe foreshadowing?