Before I Fall

Good luck, Becca mouths to me on her way out. We’re not even friends—Lindsay calls her the TurkeyJerk, because she eats turkey sandwiches every single day—but the fact that she says it makes the knot ease up in my stomach.

Mr. Daimler waits until the last student files out of the classroom—I see Kent hovering at the doorway out of the corner of my eye—and then walks slowly to the door and closes it. Something about the way the door clicks—so final, so quick—makes my heart skip a beat. I close my eyes for a second, feeling like I’m back in the car with Lindsay on Fallow Ridge Road with the misty headlights of a second car bearing down on us in the darkness, an accusation. They always swerve first, she’d said, but at that second I understand with total and perfect clarity that that’s not why she did it—why she does it. She does it for that one thrilling moment when you don’t know, when you come up against someone who doesn’t swerve and instead find yourself plummeting off the road into the darkness.

When I open my eyes Mr. Daimler has his hands on his hips. He’s staring at me.

“What the hell were you thinking?”

The harshness in his voice startles me. I’ve never been cursed at by a teacher.

“I…I don’t know what you’re talking about.” My voice comes out sounding thinner, younger, than I wanted it to.

“The shit back there—right there, in front of everybody. What were you thinking?”

I stand up so I’m not just sitting there looking up at him like a little kid. My legs are wobbly, and I have to steady myself with one hand against the desk. I take a deep breath, trying to pull it together. It doesn’t matter: all of it will be erased, cleaned away.

“I’m sorry,” I say, feeling a little bit stronger. “I really don’t know what you’re talking about. Did I do something wrong?”

He looks toward the door and a muscle twitches in his jaw. Just that, that little twitch, returns all my confidence. I want to reach out and touch him, put my fingers in his hair.

“You could get in a lot of trouble, you know,” he says, not looking at me. “You could get me in a lot of trouble.”

The first bell rings: class is officially over now. The singing feeling returns to my blood, to the air. I step carefully around my desk and walk straight to the front of the classroom. I stop when we’re only a few feet away from each other. He doesn’t back away. Instead he finally looks at me. His eyes are so deep and full of something it almost frightens me off. But it doesn’t.

I lean casually against Becca’s desk, tipping backward and resting on my elbows so I’m totally laid out in front of him, chest, legs, everything. My head feels like it has floated away from my body; my body feels like it has floated away from my blood, like I’m just dissolving into energy and vibration.

“I don’t mind trouble,” I say in my sexiest voice.

Mr. Daimler is staring into my eyes, not looking at the rest of me, but somehow I know that it’s an effort. “What are you doing?”

My skirt is riding so high I know my underwear is showing. It’s a pink lace thong, one of the first I’ve ever owned. Thongs always make me feel like there is a rubber band up my butt, but last year Lindsay and I bought the same pair at Victoria’s Secret and swore to wear them.

The words come to me from a script, from a movie: “I can stop if you want.” My voice comes out breathy but not because I’m trying. I am no longer breathing—everything, the whole world, freezes in that moment while I wait for his response.

But when he speaks he sounds tired, annoyed—not at all what I was expecting. “What do you want, Samantha?”

The tone of his voice startles me, and for a second my mind spins blankly. He’s staring at me with a look of impatience now, as if I’ve just asked him to change my grade. The second bell rings. I feel like at any moment he’ll dismiss me, remind me about the quiz on Monday. I’ve somehow lost control of the situation and I don’t know how to fix it. The vibration in the air is still there, but now it feels ominous, like the air is full of sharp things getting ready to drop.

“I…I want you.” I don’t mean for it to come out so uncertain. This is what I want. This is what I’ve been wanting: Mr. Daimler. My mind keeps spinning in a blind panic, and I can’t remember his first name, and I feel like laughing hysterically; I’m stretched out half naked in front of my math teacher and I don’t know his name. Then it comes to me. Evan. “I want you, Evan,” I say, a little more boldly. It’s the first time I’ve ever used his first name.

He stares at me for a long time. I start to get nervous. I want to look away or pull down my skirt or cross my arms, but I force myself to stay still.