Before I Fall

Technically you need a special pass signed by your parents and the administration to leave campus during the school day. This wasn’t always true. For a long time one of the perks to being a senior was getting to leave campus whenever you wanted, as long as you had a free period. That was twenty years ago, though, a few years before Thomas Jefferson got the reputation for one of the highest teen suicide rates in the country. We looked up the article online once: the Connecticut Post called us Suicide High.

And then one day a bunch of kids left campus and drove off a bridge—a suicide pact, I guess. Anyway, after that the school forbade anyone from leaving school during the day without special permission. It’s kind of stupid if you think about it. That’s like finding out that kids are bringing vodka to school in water bottles and forbidding anyone to drink water.

Fortunately, there’s another way to get off campus: through a hole in the fence beyond the gym by the tennis court, which we call the Smokers’ Lounge, since that’s where all the smokers hang out. No one’s around, though, when Lindsay and I slip through the fence and get started across the woods. In a little while we’ll come on to Route 120. Everything is still and frozen. Twigs and black leaves crack under our shoes, and our breath rises in solid white puffs.

Thomas Jefferson is about three miles outside of downtown Ridgeview—or what you can call the downtown—but only about a half mile from a small strip of dingy stores we’ve named the Row. There’s a gas station, a TCBY, a Chinese restaurant that once made Elody sick for two days, and a random Hallmark store where you can buy pink glittery ballerina figurines and snow globes and crap like that. That’s where we head. I know we must look like total freaks, stomping along the road in our skirts and tights, our jackets flapping open to show off our fur-trimmed tank tops.

We pass Hunan Kitchen on our way to TCBY. Through the grime-coated windows we spot Alex Liment and Anna Cartullo bent over a bowl of something.

“Ooo, scandal,” Lindsay says, raising her eyebrows, although it’s really only a half scandal. Everyone knows that Alex has been cheating on Bridget McGuire with Anna for the past three months. Everyone except Bridget, obviously.

Bridget’s family is super-Catholic. She’s pretty and really clean-looking, like every time you see her she’s just scrubbed her face really hard. Apparently she’s saving herself for marriage. That’s what she says, anyway, although Elody thinks Bridget might be a closet lesbo. Anna Cartullo is only a junior, but if the rumors are true she’s already had sex with at least four people. She’s one of the few kids in Ridgeview who doesn’t come from any money. Her mom’s a hairdresser, and I don’t even know if she has a dad. She lives in one of the shitty rental condos right off the Row. I once heard Andrew Singer saying her bedroom always smelled like General Tso’s chicken.

“Let’s go in and say hi,” Lindsay says, reaching for my hand.

I hang back. “I’m going through sugar withdrawal.”

“Here. Take these.” She pulls a pack of SweeTarts from the waistband of her skirt. Lindsay always carries candy on her, 24/7, like she’s packing drugs. I guess she kind of is. “Just for a second, I promise.”

I let myself be dragged inside. A bell tinkles as we come through the door. There’s a woman flipping through Us Weekly behind the counter. She looks at us, then looks down again when she realizes we’re not going to order.

Lindsay slides right up to Alex and Anna’s booth, leaning against the table. She’s kinda, sorta friends with Alex. Alex is kinda, sorta friends with a lot of people, since he deals pot out of a shoe box in his bedroom. He and I have a head-nod friendship, since that’s pretty much the limit of our interaction. He’s actually in English with me, though he shows even less than I do. I guess the rest of the time he’s with Anna. Every so often he’ll say something like, “That essay assignment blows, huh?” but other than that we don’t talk.

“Hey, hey,” Lindsay says. “You going to Kent’s party tonight?”

Alex’s face is red and splotchy. At least he’s embarrassed to be caught out with Anna so blatantly. Or maybe he’s just having a reaction to the food. I wouldn’t be surprised.

“Um…I don’t know. Maybe. Gotta see….” He trails off.

“It’s gonna be super fun.” Lindsay makes her voice extra perky. “Are you going to bring Bridget? She’s such a sweetheart.”

Actually, we both think Bridget is annoying—she’s always really cheerful and she wears T-shirts with lame slogans like Unless You’re the Lead Dog the View Never Changes (no lie)—but Lindsay despises Anna and once wrote AC=WT all over the bathroom right across from the cafeteria—the one everyone uses. WT stands for white trash.