Before I Fall (32 page)

“Remember the time in second grade right after my grandfather died?” he says finally, speaking in a low, quiet voice. “I burst into tears in the lunchroom and Phil Howell called me a faggot. That only made me cry harder, even though I didn’t know what a faggot was.” He laughs softly.

I keep my eyes squeezed shut, coasting on his voice. Last year Phil Howell was found half naked with Sean Trebor in the back of his dad’s BMW. It’s funny how things turn out.

“Anyway, when I told him to leave me alone he smacked
my tray, and food went flying everywhere. I’ll never forget: we were having mashed potatoes and turkey burgers. And you went up and scooped the potatoes off the floor with your hands and shoved them straight into Phil’s face. And then you picked up the turkey burger and crumbled it down Phil’s T-shirt. You said,
You’re worse than the hot lunch
.” He laughs again. “That was a big insult in second grade. And Sean was so surprised, and he looked so ridiculous standing there with mashed potato and chives smeared all over him, that I just started laughing and laughing, and it was the first time I’d laughed since I’d heard the news about—about my grandfather.” He pauses. “Do you remember what I said to you that day?”

The memory is there, a balloon swelling from somewhere so far inside me I thought it was lost, the whole scene clear and perfect now.

“You’re my hero,” we both say at the same time. I don’t hear Kent move, but all of a sudden his voice is closer, and he’s found my hands in the dark, and he’s cupping them in his.

“I vowed after that day that I would be your hero too, no matter how long it took,” he whispers.

We stay like that for what feels like hours, and all the time sleep is dragging at me, pulling me away from him, but my heart is fluttering like a moth, beating back the dreams and the darkness and the fog crowding my brain. Once I sleep, I lose him. I lose this moment forever.

“Kent?” I say, and my voice seems to have to rise from inside the fog, taking forever to get from my brain to my mouth.

“Yeah?”

“Promise you’ll stay here with me?” I say.

“I promise,” he whispers.

And then, just at that moment, when I’m no longer sure if I’m dreaming or awake or walking some valley in between where everything you wish for comes true, I feel the flutter of his lips on mine, but it’s too late, I’m slipping, I’m gone, he’s gone, and the moment curls away and back on itself like a flower folding up for the night.

This time, when I dream, there is sound. As I fall through the darkness there’s a tinkly, jangly song playing, like the kind of music you hear in doctors’ offices and elevators, and without knowing how I know, I realize that the music is piping all the way from the guidance counselor’s office at Thomas Jefferson.

As soon as I realize this, little bright spots start exploding through the darkness, a zooming gallery of all the annoying inspirational posters my guidance counselor, Mrs. Gardner, keeps on her walls, except in my dream they’re all blown up by about a hundred times, each the size of a house. In one, Einstein is pictured over the words
GRAVITY IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR FALLING IN LOVE
. There’s a poster with Thomas Edison’s quote:
GENIUS IS
1
PERCENT INSPIRATION AND
99
PERCENT PERSPIRATION
. I’m thinking of trying to grab one of them and worrying about whether it will hold my weight when I spin past a picture of a striped cat hanging off the branch of a tree by its nails. It says
HANG IN THERE
.

And it’s the funniest thing: as soon as I see it, the whistling
in my ears stops and the feeling of terror drains away, and I realize this whole time I haven’t been falling at all. I’ve been floating.

The alarm that wakes me is the sweetest sound I’ve ever heard. I sit up, a bubble of laughter rising inside me. I have the urge to touch everything in my room—the walls, the window, the collage, the photos cluttering my desk, the Tahari jeans strewn across my floor and my bio textbook and even the dull light just creeping over the windowsill. If I could cup it in my hands and kiss it, I would.

“Someone’s in a good mood,” my mom says when I come downstairs. Izzy’s at the table in front of her peanut butter bagel, taking slow, careful bites, as usual.

“Happy Cupid Day,” my father says. He’s standing at the stove burning eggs for my mom’s breakfast.

“My favorite,” I say, scooting in to steal a bite from Izzy’s bagel. Izzy squeals and slaps at my hand. I plant a big, sloppy kiss on her forehead.

“Stop slobbering on me,” she says.

“See you later, Fizzy Lizard,” I say.

“Don’t call me Lizard.” Izzy sticks a peanut butter–coated tongue out at me.

“You look like a lizard when you do that.”

“Do you want any breakfast, Sam?” my mom asks. I never eat breakfast at home, but my mom still asks me every
day—when she catches me before I duck out, anyway—and in that moment I realize how much I love the little everyday routines of my life: the fact that she always asks, the fact that I always say no because there’s a sesame bagel waiting for me in Lindsay’s car, the fact that we always listen to “No More Drama” as we pull into the parking lot. The fact that my mom always cooks spaghetti and meatballs on Sunday, and the fact that once a month my dad takes over the kitchen and makes his “special stew,” which is just hot-dog pieces and baked beans and lots of extra ketchup and molasses, and I would never admit to liking it, but it’s actually one of my favorite meals. The details that are my life’s special pattern, like how in handwoven rugs what really makes them unique are the tiny flaws in the stitching, little gaps and jumps and stutters that can never be reproduced.

So many things become beautiful when you really look.

“No breakfast. Thanks, though.” I go to my mom and wrap my arms around her. She yelps, surprised. I guess it has been a couple of years since we’ve hugged, except the mandatory two-second squeeze on birthdays. “Love you.”

When I pull away she stares at me as though I’ve just announced I’m quitting school to become a contortionist in the circus.

“What?” my dad says, dumping a pan in the sink and wiping
his hands on the dishtowel. “No love for your old man?”

I roll my eyes. I hate it when my dad tries to “teen-speak,” as he calls it, but I don’t call him out on it. Nothing can get me down today.

“Bye, Dad.” I let him wrap me in one of his infamous bear hugs. I’m filled with love from the top of my head to the bottom of my toes, a bubbly feeling like someone’s shaken my insides up like a Coke bottle. Everything—the dishes in the sink, Izzy’s bagel, my mom’s smile—looks sharp, like it’s made out of glass or like I’m seeing it for the first time. It’s dazzling, and again I have the desire to go around and touch it all, make sure that it’s real. If I had time I would, too. I would put my hands around the half-eaten grapefruit on the counter and smell it. I would run my fingers through Izzy’s hair.

But I don’t have time. It’s Cupid Day, and Lindsay’s outside, and I have business to take care of. Today I’m going to save two lives: Juliet Sykes’s, and mine.

LET THERE BE LIGHT

“Beep, beep!” Lindsay shouts out her window as I scurry down the icy walkway, sucking the cold air into my lungs, loving the way it burns, loving even the bitter stink of Lindsay’s cigarette and the exhaust that’s clotting the air. “Hot mama! How much?”

“If you have to ask,” I say, sliding into the passenger seat, “you can’t afford it.”

She grins and hands me my coffee before I can reach for it. “Happy Cupid Day.”

“Happy Cupid Day,” I say, and we clink Styrofoam cups.

She too looks clearer to me than ever before. Lindsay, with her angel’s face and messy, dirty blond hair and chipped black nail polish and battered leather Dooney & Bourke bag that always has a film of tobacco and half-unwrapped Trident Original at the bottom. Lindsay, who hates being bored, always moving, always running. Lindsay, who once said—“It’s the world against us, babes”—drunk and looping her arms around our shoulders when we were out in the arboretum and really meaning it. Lindsay, mean and funny and ferocious and loyal and mine.

I lean over impulsively and kiss her cheek.

“Whoa, lesboing out much?” Lindsay shrugs a shoulder up to her cheek and wipes off my lip gloss. “Or just practicing for tonight?”

“Maybe both,” I say, and she laughs long and loud.

I take a sip of my coffee. It’s scalding and has to be the best coffee in all of Ridgeview, in all the world. God bless Dunkin’ Donuts.

Lindsay chatters about how many roses she expects to get and whether Marcy Posner will, as usual, break down and cry in the bathroom during fifth period because Justin Streamer dumped her three years ago on Cupid Day, thus permanently sealing her fate as only medium-popular, and I look out the window and watch Ridgeview go by in a blur of gray. I try to
imagine how, in only a few months, the trees will shoot their tiny stems into the sky, the barest spray of flowers and green breathed over everything like a mist. And then, a few months after that, the whole town will be an explosion of green: so many trees and so much grass it will look like a painting still dripping wet. I can imagine it waiting under the surface of the world, like the slides just have to be flipped in the projector and summer will be here.

And there’s Elody, teetering down the lawn in her shoes with no jacket on and her arms wrapped around her chest. When I see her, radiant and alive, the relief is so huge I let out a tremendous shriek of laughter. Lindsay raises her eyebrows at me.

“She’ll freeze,” I gasp, by way of explanation.

Lindsay twirls her finger by her ear. “She’s totally cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.”

“Did someone say Cocoa Puffs?” Elody says, getting into the car. “I’m starving.”

I twist around to look at her. It’s all I can do to keep from climbing into the backseat and jumping on her. I feel an overwhelming urge to touch her, make sure she’s really real and here and
alive
. In some ways she’s the bravest and most delicate of all of us. I wish I could somehow tell her this.

“What?” Elody scrunches up her nose at me, and I realize I’m staring. “What’s wrong? Do I have toothpaste on my face or something?”

“No,” I say, and again the laughter bubbles out of me, a surge of happiness and relief. I think; I could stay forever in this one moment. “You look beautiful.”

Lindsay giggles, checks Elody out in the rearview. “There are some bagels under your butt,
beautiful
.”

“
Mmm
, butt bagels.” Elody reaches into the bag and pulls out a bagel, half squashed, then makes a big deal of taking an enormous bite out of it. “Tastes like Victoria’s Secret.”

“Tastes like thong floss,” I say.

“Tastes like crack,” Lindsay says.

“Tastes like fart,” Elody says, and Lindsay spits coffee on the dashboard, and I start laughing and can’t stop, and all the way to school we’re thinking of flavors for butt bagels, and I’m thinking that this—my life, my friends—might be weird or screwy or imperfect or damaged or whatever, but it’s never seemed better to me.

As we’re pulling into the school’s parking lot, I scream for Lindsay to brake. She slams to a stop and Elody curses as coffee slops all over her.

“What the hell?” Lindsay puts a hand on her chest. “You scared me to death.”

“Oh—um. Sorry. I thought I saw Rob.” Up ahead I’m watching Sarah Grundel’s Chevrolet turn into Senior Alley fifteen seconds ahead of us. The parking space is a small thing, a detail, but today I’m not going to do
anything
wrong. I don’t
want to take any chances. It’s like the game we used to play when we were little, where we had to avoid all the cracks in the sidewalk or else it meant we’d kill off our mothers. Even if you didn’t believe in it, you made sure you were stepping correctly, just in case. “Sorry. My bad.”

Lindsay rolls her eyes and steps on the gas again. “Please tell me you’re not going psycho stalker.”

“Leave her alone.” Elody leans forward and pats my shoulder. “She’s just nervous about tonight.”

I bite my lip to keep from giggling. If Lindsay and Elody had any clue at all about what was
actually
running through my head, they would probably have me committed. All morning, whenever I close my eyes, I keep imagining the feeling of Kent McFuller’s lips brushing against mine, as light as butterfly wings; of the crown of light surrounding his head and the way his arms felt when he was keeping me on my feet. I lean my head against the window. My smile is reflected back at me, growing wider and wider as Lindsay drives up and down Senior Alley, cursing because Sarah Grundel took the very last parking space.

Instead of following Elody and Lindsay into Main, I break off and head toward Building A, where the nurses’ office is, muttering an excuse about a headache. That’s where the roses are stored on Cupid Day, and I have some adjustments to make. Okay, so maybe lying isn’t 100 percent kosher on the Good Deeds Scale (especially lying to your best friends), but it’s for a very, very good cause.

The nurses’ office is long and narrow. Normally a double row of cots runs its length, but the cots have been cleared out and replaced by huge folding tables. The heavy curtains that usually keep the place movie theater–dark have all been drawn back, and the room is literally sparkling with light. Light bounces off the metal wall fixtures and zigzags crazily over the bright white walls. There are roses everywhere—overflowing their trays, stashed in corners, a few of them even scattered across the ground, petals trampled—and if you didn’t know that there was actually an organizing principle to all of it, and a purpose, you would just think that someone had set off some kind of a rose bomb.

Ms. Devane, who usually oversees Cupid Day, isn’t around, but there are three Cupids standing over one of the bins, giggling. They jump and scoot backward when I come in. They’ve been reading the notes, obviously. It’s strange to think about—those little scraps of paper, snippets of words, half compliments and backhanded compliments and broken promises and semi-wishes and almost expressions of what you really want to say: they never tell the full story, or even half of it. A room full of words that are nearly the truth but not quite, each note fluttering off the stem of its rose like a broken butterfly wing. None of the girls talks to me as I start walking the aisle, scanning the labels on the trays, looking for the
S
’s. I doubt that anybody else has ever barged in on the Rose Room, especially not a senior. Finally I find the tray labeled:
St–Ta
. There are five or
six roses for Tamara Stugen and another half dozen for Andrew Svork and three for a Burt Swortney, who has the most unfortunate name I’ve heard of in a long time. And there it is: the single rose for Juliet Sykes with a note looped delicately around its stem.
MAYBE NEXT YEAR, BUT PROBABLY NOT
.
Maybe next time, but probably not.

“Um…can I help you with something?” One of the girls inches forward a couple of feet. She’s twisting her hands together and looks absolutely petrified.

Juliet’s rose is thin and young, delicately tinged with pink. All of its petals are closed. It hasn’t bloomed yet.

“I need roses,” I say. “Lots of them.”

CORRECTIONS AND ADJUSTMENTS

I leave the Rose Room feeling keyed up and energetic, like I’ve just had three mocha lattes from Caffeine Rush in the mall. I replaced Juliet’s single rose with an enormous bouquet—I shelled out forty bucks for two dozen—and a note printed in block letters that says
FROM YOUR SECRET ADMIRER
. I only wish I could be around when she receives them. I’m positive it’s going to make her day. More than that: I’m positive it’s going to make things right. She’ll have even more roses than Lindsay Edgecombe. I start thinking about Lindsay’s eyes bugging out of her head when she sees that Juliet Sykes has beaten her for the title of Most Valograms this year, and I let out a huge snort of laughter right in the middle of AP American
History. Everyone whips around and stares at me, but I don’t care. This must be what it’s like to do drugs: the feeling of coasting over everything, of everything looking new and fresh and lit up from inside. Except without the next-day guilt and the hangover. And possible prison sentence.

When Mr. Tierney distributes his pop quiz, I spend the whole twenty minutes drawing hearts and balloons around the questions, and when he comes around to collect the papers I give him a smile so bright he actually winces, like he’s not used to people looking happy.