Before I Fall

“Hey,” he says, catching up with me. “Did you get my note?”

I almost say to him, It’s really good, but something stops me. “‘Don’t drink and love?’ Is that some kind of a catchphrase I don’t know about?”

“I consider it my civic duty to spread the word.” Kent puts his hand over his heart.

A thought flashes—you wouldn’t be talking to me if you could remember—but I push it aside. This is Kent McFuller. He’s lucky I’m talking to him at all. Besides, I don’t plan on being at the party tonight: no party, no Juliet Sykes, no reason for Kent to wig out on me. Most important, no accident.

“More like spread the weirdness,” I say.

“I take that as a compliment.” Kent suddenly looks serious. He scrunches up his face so that all the light freckles on his nose come together like a constellation. “Why do you flirt with Mr. Daimler? He’s a perv, you know.”

I’m so surprised by the question it takes me a second to answer. “Mr. Daimler is not a perv.”

“Trust me, he is.”

“Jealous?”

“Hardly.”

“I don’t flirt with him, anyway.”

Kent rolls his eyes. “Sure.”

I shrug my shoulders. “Why so interested?”

Kent goes red and drops his eyes to the floor. “No reason,” he mumbles.

My stomach dips a little bit, and I realize a part of me was hoping his answer would be different—more personal. Of course, if Kent did confess his undying love for me right there, in the hallway, it would be disastrous. Despite his weirdness I have no desire to publicly humiliate him—he’s nice and we were childhood friends and all that—but I could never, ever, ever date him, not in a million lifetimes. Not in my lifetime, anyway: the one I want back, where yesterdays are followed by todays and then tomorrows. The bowler hat alone makes it impossible.

“Listen.” Kent shoots me a look out of the corner of his eye. “My parents are going away this weekend, and I’m having some people over tonight….”

“Uh-huh.” Up ahead I see Rob loping toward the cafeteria. At any second he’ll spot me. I can’t handle seeing him right now. My stomach clenches and I leap in front of Kent, turning my back to the cafeteria. “Um…where’s your house again?”

Kent looks at me strangely. I did basically just set myself up like a human barricade. “Off Route Nine. You don’t remember?” I don’t respond and he looks away, shrugging. “I guess you wouldn’t, really. You were only there a few times. We moved just before middle school. From Terrace Place. You remember my old house on Terrace Place, right?” The smile is back. It’s true: his eyes are exactly the color of grass. “You used to hang out in the kitchen and steal all the good cookies. And I chased you around these huge maple trees in the front yard. Remember?”

As soon as he mentions the maple trees a memory rises up, expanding, like something breaking the surface of water and rippling outward. We were sitting in this little space in between two enormous roots that curved out of the ground like animal spines. I remember that he split two maple-wing seeds and stuck one on his nose and one on mine, telling me that this way everyone would know we were in love. I was probably only five or six.

“I—I…” The last thing I need is for him to remind me of the good old days, when I was all knees and nose and glasses, and he was the only boy who would come near me. “Maybe. Trees kinda all look the same to me, you know?”

He laughs even though I wasn’t trying to be funny. “So you think you’ll come tonight? To my party?”

This brings me back to reality. The party. I shake my head and start backing away. “No. I don’t think so.”

His smile falters a little. “It’ll be fun. Big. Senior memories. Best time of our lives and all that crap.”

“Right,” I say sarcastically. “High school heaven.”

I turn around and start walking away from him. The cafeteria is packed, and as I approach the double doors—one of which is propped open with an old tennis shoe—the noise of the students greets me with a roar.

“You’ll come,” he calls after me. “I know you will.”

“Don’t hold your breath,” I call back, and I almost add, It’s better this way.

THE RULES OF SURVIVAL

“What do you mean you can’t go out?”

Ally’s looking at me like I just said I wanted to go to prom with Ben Farsky (or Fart-sky, as we’ve been calling him since fourth grade).

I sigh. “I just don’t feel like it, okay?” I switch tactics and try again. “We go out every weekend. I just—I don’t know. I want to stay in, like we used to.”

“We used to stay in because we couldn’t get into any senior parties,” Ally says.

“Speak for yourself,” Lindsay says.

This is harder than I thought it would be.

I flash on my mom asking if I’d had a fight with Rob and before I can think too much about it I blurt out, “It’s Rob, okay? We…we’re having issues.”