Before I Fall

“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.

Floating images, moving in and out: bright green eyes and a field of sun-warmed grass, a mouth saying, Sam, Sam, Sam, making it sound like a song. Three faces blooming together like flowers on a single stem, names ebbing away from me, a single word: love. Red and white flashes, tree branches lit up like the vaulted ceiling of a church.

And a face above mine, white and beautiful, eyes as large as the moon. You saved me. A hand on my cheek, cool and dry. Why did you save me? Words welling up on a tide: No. The opposite. Eyes the color of a dawn sky, a crown of blond hair, so bright and white and blinding I could swear it was a halo.

EPILOGUE

They say that just before you die your whole life flashes before your eyes, but that’s not how it happens for me.

I see only my greatest hits. The things I want to remember, and be remembered for. The time in Cape Cod when Izzy and I snuck down to the bay at midnight and tried to catch crabs with leftover hamburger meat, and the moon was so fat and round it looked like something you could sit on. When Ally tried to make a soufflé and came marching into the kitchen with a roll of toilet paper on her head like a chef’s hat, and Elody laughed so hard she peed a little bit and swore us all to secrecy. Lindsay throwing her arms around us and saying, “Love you to death,” and all of us echoing, “And even then.” Lying on the deck on hot August afternoons with the smell of grass shavings and flowers so heavy in the air, it’s like you’re tasting them. The time it snowed on Christmas, and my dad split up one of the old TV tables in the basement to use as firewood, and my mom made apple cider, and we tried to remember the words to “Silent Night” but ended up singing all our favorite show tunes.