Before I Fall

The girls at the table are getting more confident now. Smiles are sprouting up, and they’re all looking at me in awe, like they can’t believe how nice I’m being, like I’ve given them a present. I hate it. They should hate me. If they knew what kind of person I was, they would hate me, I’m sure of it.

I don’t know why Kent pops into my head right then, but he does. He would hate me too if he knew everything. The realization makes me strangely upset.

“Tell Juliet not to do it,” I blurt out, and then can’t believe I’ve said it.

Marian wrinkles her forehead. “Do what?”

“Science-project thing,” I say quickly, and then add, “she’ll know what I’m talking about.”

“Okay.” Marian’s beaming at me. I start to turn away, but she calls me back. “Sam!”

I turn around, and she claps her hand over her mouth and giggles, like she can’t believe she had the courage to say my name.

“I’ll have to tell her tomorrow,” she says. “Juliet’s going out tonight.” She says it like she’s saying, Juliet’s going to be valedictorian. I can just picture the scene. Mom and dad and sister downstairs, Juliet locked in her bedroom as usual, blasting music, alone. And then—miracle of miracles—she descends, hair swept back, confident, cool, announcing she is headed to a party. They must have been so happy, so proud. Their lonely little girl making good at the end of senior year.

To Kent’s party. To find Lindsay—to find me. To be pushed and tripped and soaked with beer.

The sushi’s not sitting so well with me all of a sudden. If they had any idea…

“I’ll definitely tell her tomorrow, though.” Marian beams at me, a headlight bearing down at me through the dark.

All the way home I’m trying to forget Marian Sykes. When my dad wishes me good night—he’s always ready to pass out after a beer, and tonight he had (gasp!) two—I’m trying to forget Marian Sykes. When Izzy comes in half an hour later, showered and clean-smelling in her ratty Dora pj’s, and plants a sloppy wet kiss on my cheek, I’m trying to forget her; and an hour after that, when my mother stands at my door and says, “I’m proud of you, Sam,” I’m still thinking of her.

My mother goes to bed. Silence fills the house. Somewhere in the deep darkness a clock is ticking, and when I close my eyes I picture Juliet Sykes coming toward me calmly, her shoes tapping against a wood floor, blood flowing from her eyes….

I sit up in bed, heart pounding. Then I get up, find my North Face in the dark.

This morning I swore that there was nothing in the world that could make me go back to Kent’s party, but here I am, tiptoeing down the stairs, edging along in the dark hallways, sneaking my mom’s keys off the shelf in the mudroom. She’s been amazingly human today, but the last thing I need to deal with is some big conversation of the what-makes-me-think-I-can-cut-school-and-then-go-out variety.

I try to tell myself that Juliet Sykes isn’t really my problem, but I keep imagining how horrible it would be if this were her day. If she had to live it over and over again. I think pretty much everybody—even Juliet Sykes—deserves to die on a better day than that.

The hinges on the back and front door squawk so loudly they might as well be alarm clocks (sometimes I think my parents have engineered this deliberately). In the kitchen I carefully spill some olive oil on a paper towel, and I rub this onto the hinges on the back door. Lindsay taught me this trick. She’s always developing new, better ways to sneak out, even though she has no curfew, and it doesn’t matter one way or the other when she leaves and when she comes home. I think she misses that, actually. I think that’s why she’s always meticulous about the details—she likes to pretend that she has to be.

The door with its Italian-seasoned hinges swings open with barely a whisper, and I’m out.

I haven’t really thought through why I’m heading to Kent’s, or what I’m going to do once I’m there, and instead of driving there directly, I find myself turning on random streets and dead-end cul-de-sacs, circling up and down. The houses are mostly set back from the street, and lit windows appear magically in the dark like hanging lanterns. It’s amazing how different everything looks at night—almost unrecognizable, especially in the rain. Houses sit hulking back on their lawns, brooding and alive. It looks so different from the Ridgeview of the day, when everything is clean and polished and trimmed neatly, when everything unfolds in an orderly way, husbands heading to their cars with coffee mugs, wives following soon after, dressed in pilates gear, tiny girls in Baby Gap dresses and car seats and Lexus SUVs and Starbucks cups and normalcy. I wonder which one is the true version.