Before I Fall

The situation is beyond awkward, so I blurt out, “Sesame chicken?” I point at the meat congealing in a grayish sauce in a bowl on the table, next to two fortune cookies and a sad-looking orange.

“Orange beef,” Alex says. He seems relieved by the change of topic.

Lindsay gives me a look, annoyed, but I keep rattling on. “You should be careful about eating here. The chicken once poisoned Elody. She threw up for, like, two days straight. If it was chicken. She swears she found a fur ball in it.”

As soon as I say this Anna picks up her chopsticks and takes an enormous bite, looking up and smiling at me as she chews so I can see the food in her mouth. I’m not sure whether she’s doing it deliberately to gross me out, but it seems like it.

“That’s nasty, Kingston,” Alex says, but he’s smiling now.

Lindsay rolls her eyes, like Alex and Anna are both a total waste of our time. “Come on, Sam.”

She pockets a fortune cookie and breaks it open when we get outside. “Happiness is found when one is not looking,” she reads, and I crack up when she makes a face. She balls up the little slip of paper and lets it flutter to the ground. “Useless.”

I take a deep breath. “The smell in there always makes me sick.” It does, too: that smell of old meat and cheap oil and garlic. The clouds on the horizon are slowly taking over the sky, turning everything gray and blurry.

“Tell me about it.” Lindsay puts a hand on her stomach. “You know what I need?”

“A jumbo cup of The Country’s Best Yogurt!” I say, smiling. TCBY is another thing we can’t bring ourselves to abbreviate.

“Definitely a jumbo cup of The Country’s Best Yogurt,” Lindsay echoes.

Even though we’re both freezing, we order double-chocolate soft-serve with sprinkles and crushed peanut butter cups on top, which we eat on our way back to school, blowing on our fingers to keep them warm. Alex and Anna are gone from Hunan Kitchen when we pass, but we run into them again at the Smokers’ Lounge. We have exactly seven minutes left until the bell for eighth period, and Lindsay pulls me behind the tennis courts so she can have a cigarette without listening to Alex and Anna argue. That’s what it looks like they’re doing, anyway. Anna’s head is bent and Alex is grabbing her shoulders, whispering to her. The cigarette in his hand burns so close to her dull brown hair I’m positive it’s going to catch fire, and I picture her whole head just going up like that, like a match.

Lindsay finishes her smoke and we dump our yogurt cups right there, on top of the frozen black leaves and trampled cigarette packs and plastic bags half filled with rainwater. I’m feeling anxious about tonight—half dread and half excitement—like when you hear thunder and know that any second you’ll see lightning tearing across the sky, nipping at the clouds with its teeth. I shouldn’t have skipped out on English. It has given me too much time to think. And thinking never did anybody any good, no matter what your teachers and parents and the science-club freaks tell you.

We skirt the perimeter of the tennis courts and go up along Senior Alley. Alex and Anna are still standing half concealed behind the gym. Alex is on his second cigarette at least. Definitely an argument. I feel a momentary rush of satisfaction: Rob and I hardly ever fight, at least not about anything serious. That must mean something.

“Trouble in paradise,” I say.

“More like trouble in the trailer park,” Lindsay says.

We start cutting across the teachers’ lot when we see Ms. Winters, the vice principal, threading between cars, trying to rout out the smokers who don’t have time or are too lazy to walk all the way down to the Lounge and instead try to hide out between the teachers’ old Volvos and Chevrolets. Ms. Winters has some crazy vendetta against people who smoke. I heard that her mom died of lung cancer or emphysema or something. If you get caught smoking by Ms. Winters you get three Friday detentions, no questions asked.

Lindsay frantically rifles in her bag for her Trident and pops two pieces in her mouth. “Shit, shit.”

“You can’t get busted just for smelling like smoke,” I say, even though Lindsay knows this. She likes the drama, though. Funny how you can know your friends so well, but you still end up playing the same games with them.

She ignores me. “How’s my breath?” She breathes on me.

“Like a friggin’ menthol factory.”

Ms. Winters hasn’t spotted us yet. She’s making her way down the rows, sometimes stooping to peer underneath the cars as though someone might be sandwiched against the ground, trying to light up. There’s a reason everyone calls her the Nicotine Nazi behind her back.