Before I Fall

FOUR

Even before I’m awake, the alarm clock is in my hand, and I break from sleep completely at the same moment I hurl the clock against the wall. It lets out a final wail before shattering.
“Whoa,” Lindsay says, when I slide into the car fifteen minutes later. “Is there a job opening in the red-light district I don’t know about?”
“Just drive.” I can barely look at her. Anger is seething through me like liquid. She’s a fraud: the whole world is a fraud, one bright, shiny scam. And somehow I’m the one paying for it. I’m the one who died. I’m the one who’s trapped.
Here’s the thing: it shouldn’t be me. Lindsay’s the one who drives like she’s in the real-life version of Grand Theft Auto. Lindsay’s the one who’s always thinking of ways to punk people or humiliate them, who’s always criticizing everybody. Lindsay’s the one who lied about being friends with Juliet Sykes and then tortured her all those years. I didn’t do anything; I just followed along.
“You’re gonna freeze, you know.” Lindsay chucks her cigarette and rolls up the window.
“Thanks, Mom.” I flip down the mirror to make sure that my lipstick hasn’t smeared. I’ve folded my skirt over a couple of times so it barely covers my ass when I sit down, and I’m wearing five-inch platforms that I bought with Ally as a joke at a store that we’re pretty sure only caters to strippers. I’ve kept the fur-trimmed tank top, but I’ve added a rhinestone necklace, again purchased as a joke one Halloween when we all dressed up as Naughty Nurses. It says SLUT in big, sparkly script.
I don’t care. I’m in the mood to get looked at. I feel like I could do anything right now: punch somebody in the face, rob a bank, get drunk and do something stupid. That’s the only benefit to being dead. No consequences.
Lindsay misses my sarcasm, or ignores it. “I’m surprised your parents even let you out of the house like that.”
“They didn’t.” Another thing making my mood foul is the ten-minute screaming match I had with my mother before storming out of the house. Even when Izzy went to hide in her room and my father threatened to ground me for life (Ha!), the words kept coming. It felt so good to scream, like when you pick a scab and the blood starts flowing again.
You are not walking out that door unless you go upstairs and put on some more clothing. That’s what my mom said. You’ll catch pneumonia. More important, I don’t want people in school getting the wrong impression about you.
And suddenly it had all snapped inside of me, broken and snapped. “You care now?” She jerked back at the sound of my voice like I’d reached out and slapped her. “You want to help now? You want to protect me now?”
What I really wanted to say was, Where were you four days ago? Where were you when my car was spinning off the edge of a road in the middle of the night? Why weren’t you thinking of me? Why weren’t you there? I hate both of my parents right now: for sitting quietly in our house, while out in the darkness my heart was beating away all of the seconds of my life, ticking them off one by one until my time was up; for letting the thread between us stretch so far and so thin that the moment it was severed for good they didn’t even feel it.
At the same time I know that it’s not really their fault, at least not completely. I did my part too. I did it on a hundred different days and in a thousand different ways, and I know it. But this makes the anger worse, not better.
Your parents are supposed to keep you safe.
“Jesus, what’s your problem?” Lindsay looks at me hard for a second. “You wake up on the wrong side of the bed or something?”
“For a few days now, yeah.”
I’m getting really sick of this low half-light, the sky a pale and sickly blue—not even a real blue—and the sun a wet mess on the horizon. I read once that starving people start fantasizing about food, just lying there dreaming for hours about hot mashed potatoes and creamy blobs of butter and steak running red blood over their plates. Now I get it. I’m starved for different light, a different sun, different sky. I’ve never really thought about it before, but it’s a miracle how many kinds of light there are in the world, how many skies: the pale brightness of spring, when it feels like the whole world is blushing; the lush, bright boldness of a July noon; purple storm skies and a green queasiness just before lightning strikes and crazy multicolored sunsets that look like someone’s acid trip.
I should have enjoyed them more, should have memorized them all. I should have died on a day with a beautiful sunset. I should have died on summer vacation or winter break. I should have died on any other day. Leaning my forehead against the window, I fantasize about sending my fist up through the glass, all the way into the sky, and watching it shatter like a mirror.
I think about what I’ll do to survive all of the millions and millions of days that will be exactly like this one, two face-to-face mirrors multiplying a reflection into infinity. I start formulating a plan: I’ll stop coming to school, and I’ll jack somebody’s car and drive as far as I can in a different direction every day. East, west, north, south. I allow myself to fantasize about going so far and so fast that I lift off like an airplane, zooming straight up and out to a place where time falls away like sand being blown off a surface by the wind.


Remember what I said about hope?


“Happy Cupid Day!” Elody singsongs when she gets into the Tank.
Lindsay stares from Elody back to me. “What is this? Some kind of competition for Least Dressed?”
“If you got it, flaunt it.” Elody eyes my skirt as she leans forward to grab her coffee. “Forget your pants, Sam?”
Lindsay snickers. I say, “Jealous much?” without turning away from the window.
“What’s wrong with her?” Elody leans back.
“Someone forgot to take her happy pills this morning.”
Out of the corner of my eye I see Lindsay look back at Elody and make a face like, Leave it. Like I’m a kid who needs to be handled. I think of those old photos where she’s standing pressed arm-to-arm with Juliet Sykes, and then I think of Juliet’s head blown open and splattered on some basement wall. Again the fury returns, and it’s all I can do to keep from turning to her and screaming that she’s a fake, a liar, that I can see right through her.
I see right through you…. My heart flips when I remember Kent’s words.
“I know something that’ll cheer you up.” Elody starts rummaging around in her bag, looking pleased with herself.
“I swear to God, Elody, if you’re about to give me a condom right now…” I press my fingers to my temples.
Elody freezes and frowns, holding up a condom between two fingers. “But…it’s your present.” She looks at Lindsay for support.
Lindsay shrugs. “Up to you,” she says. She’s not looking at me, but I can tell my attitude is really starting to piss her off, and to be honest, I’m happy about it. “If you want to be a walking STD farm.”
“You would know all about that.” I don’t even mean for it to slip out; it just does.
Lindsay whips around to face me. “What did you say?”
“Nothing.”
“Did you say—”
“I didn’t say anything.” I lean my head against the glass.
Elody’s still sitting there with the condom dangling between her fingers. “C’mon, Sam. No glove, no love, right?”
Losing my virginity seems absurd to me now, the plot point of a different movie, a different character, a different lifetime. I try to reach back and remember what I love about Rob—what I loved about him—but all I get is a random collection of images in no particular order: Rob passing out on Kent’s couch, grabbing my arm and accusing me of cheating; Rob laying his head on my shoulder in his basement, whispering that he wants to fall asleep next to me; Rob turning his back on me in sixth grade; Rob holding up his hand and saying, Five minutes; Rob taking my hand for the first time ever when we were walking through the hall, a feeling of pride and strength going through me. They seem like the memories of somebody else.
That’s when it really hits me: none of it matters anymore. Nothing matters anymore.
I twist around in my seat, reaching back to grab the condom from Elody.
“No glove, no love,” I say, giving her a tight smile.
Elody cheers. “That’s my girl.”
I’m turning around again when Lindsay slams on the brakes at a red light. I jet forward and have to reach out one hand to keep from hitting the dash and then, as the car stops moving, slam back against the headrest. The coffee in the cup holder jumps its lip and splashes my thigh.
“Oops.” Lindsay giggles. “So sorry.”
“You really are a hazard.” Elody laughs and reaches around to buckle her seat belt.
The anger I’ve felt all morning pours out in a rush. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
Lindsay’s smile freezes on her face. “Excuse me?”
“I said, What the hell is wrong with you?” I grab some napkins from inside the glove compartment and start wiping off my leg. The coffee’s not even that hot—Lindsay had the lid off to cool it—but it leaves a splotchy red mark on my thigh, and I feel like crying. “It’s not that hard. Red light: stop. Green light: go. I know that yellow might be a little harder for you to grasp, but you’d think with a little practice you could come to terms with it.”
Lindsay and Elody are both staring at me in stunned silence, but I don’t stop, I can’t stop, this is all Lindsay’s fault, Lindsay and her stupid driving. “They could train monkeys to drive better than you. So what? What is it? You need to prove you don’t give a shit? That you don’t care about anything? You don’t care about anybody? Tap a fender here, swipe a mirror there, oops, thank God we have our airbags, that’s what bumpers are for, just keep going, keep driving, no one will ever know. Guess what, Lindsay? You don’t have to prove anything. We already know you don’t give a shit about anybody but yourself. We’ve always known.”
I run out of air then, and for a second after I stop speaking, there’s total silence. Lindsay’s not even looking at me. She’s staring straight ahead, both hands on the wheel, knuckles white from clutching it so tightly. The light turns green and she presses her foot on the accelerator, hard. The engine roars, sounding like distant thunder.
It takes Lindsay a while to speak and when she does her voice is low and strangled-sounding. “Where the hell do you get off…?”
“Guys.” Elody pipes up nervously from the back. “Don’t fight, okay? Just drop it.”
The anger is still running through me, an electrical current. It makes me feel sharper and more alert than I have in years. I whirl around to face Elody.
“How come you never stand up for yourself?” I say. She shrinks back a little, her eyes darting between Lindsay and me. “You know it’s true. She’s a bitch. Go ahead, say it.”
“Leave her out of it,” Lindsay hisses.
Elody opens her mouth and then gives a minute shake of her head.
“I knew it,” I say, feeling triumphant and sick at the same time. “You’re scared of her. I knew it.”
“I told you to leave her alone.” Lindsay finally raises her voice.
“I’m supposed to leave her alone?” The sharpness, the sense of clarity is disappearing. Instead everything feels like it’s spinning out of my control. “You’re the one who treats her like shit all the time. It’s you. Elody’s so pathetic. Look at Elody climbing all over Steve—he doesn’t even like her. Look, Elody’s trashed again. Hope she doesn’t puke in my car, don’t want the leather to smell like alcoholic.”
Elody draws in a sharp breath on the last word. I know I’ve gone too far. The second I say it I want to take it back. My mirror is still flipped down, and I can see Elody staring out the window, mouth quivering like she’s trying not to cry. Number one rule of best friends: there are certain things that you never, ever say.
All of a sudden Lindsay slams on the brakes. We’re in the middle of Route 120, about a half mile from school, but there’s a line of traffic behind us. A car has to swerve into the other lane to avoid hitting us. Thankfully there’s no oncoming traffic. Even Elody cries out.
“Jesus.” My heart is racing. The car passes us, honking furiously. The passenger rolls down his window and yells something, but I can’t hear it; I just see the flash of a baseball hat and angry eyes. “What are you doing?”
The people in the cars in line behind us start leaning on their horns too, but Lindsay throws the car in park and doesn’t move.
“Lindsay,” Elody says anxiously, “Sam’s right. It’s not funny.”
Lindsay lunges for me, and I think she’s going to hit me. Instead she leans over and shoves open the door.
“Out,” she says quietly, her voice full of rage.
“What?” The cold air rushes into the car like a punch to the stomach, leaving me deflated. The last of my anger and fearlessness goes with it, and I just feel tired.
“Lindz.” Elody tries to laugh, but the sound comes out high-pitched and hysterical. “You can’t make her walk. It’s freezing.”
“Out,” Lindsay repeats. Cars are starting to pull around us now, everyone honking and rolling down their windows to yell at us. All of their words get lost in the roar of the engines and the bleating of the horns, but it’s still humiliating. The idea of getting out now, of being forced to walk in the gutter while all of those dozens of cars roll by me, with all those people watching, makes me shrink back against my seat. I look to Elody for more support, but she looks away.
Lindsay leans over. “I. Said. Get. Out,” she whispers, and her mouth is so close to my ear if you couldn’t hear her you’d think she was telling me a secret.
I grab my bag and step into the cold. The freezing air on my legs almost paralyzes me. The second I’m out of the car Lindsay guns it, peeling away with the door still swinging open.
I start walking in the leaf-and-trash-filled ditch that runs next to the road. My fingers and toes go numb almost instantly, and I stomp my feet on the frost-covered leaves to keep the blood flowing. It takes a minute for the long line of traffic to begin to unwind, and horns are still honking away, the sound like the fading wail of a passing train.
A blue Toyota pulls up next to me. A woman leans out—gray-haired, probably in her sixties—and shakes her head.
“Crazy girl,” she says, frowning at me.
For a moment I just stand there, but as the car starts to pull away, I remember that it doesn’t matter, none of it matters, so I throw up my middle finger, hoping she sees.
All the way to school I repeat it again—it doesn’t matter, none of it matters—until the words themselves lose meaning.


Here’s one of the things I learned that morning: if you cross a line and nothing happens, the line loses meaning. It’s like that old riddle about a tree falling in a forest, and whether it makes a sound if there’s no one around to hear it.
You keep drawing a line farther and farther away, crossing it every time. That’s how people end up stepping off the edge of the earth. You’d be surprised at how easy it is to bust out of orbit, to spin out to a place where no one can touch you. To lose yourself—to get lost.
Or maybe you wouldn’t be surprised. Maybe some of you already know.
To those people I can only say: I’m sorry.


I skip my first four periods just because I can, and spend a couple of hours walking the halls with no real goal or destination. I almost hope someone will stop me—a teacher or Ms. Winters or a teacher’s aide or someone—and ask what I’m doing, even accuse me point-blank of cutting and send me to the principal’s office. Fighting with Lindsay left me unsatisfied, and I still feel a vague but pressing desire to do something.
Most of the teachers just nod or smile, though, or give me a half wave. They have no way of knowing my schedule, no way of knowing whether I have a free period or whether class was canceled, and I’m disappointed by how easy it is to break the rules.
When I walk into Mr. Daimler’s class I deliberately don’t look at him, but I can feel his eyes on me, and after I slide into my desk, he comes straight over.
“It’s a little early in the season for beach clothes, don’t you think?” He grins.
Normally whenever he looks at me for longer than a few seconds, I get nervous, but today I force myself to keep my eyes on his. Warmth spreads over my whole body; it reminds me of standing under the heat lamps in my grandmother’s house when I was no older than five. It’s amazing that eyes can do that, that they can transform light into heat. I’ve never felt that way with Rob.
“If you got it, flaunt it,” I say, making my voice soft and steady. I see something flicker in his eyes. I’ve surprised him.
“I guess so,” he murmurs, so quietly I’m sure I’m the only one who hears. Then he blushes bright red like he can’t believe himself. He nods at my desk, which is empty except for a pen and the small square notebook Lindsay and I use to pass back and forth between classes, writing notes to each other. “No roses today? Or did your bouquet get too heavy to carry around?”
I haven’t been to any of my classes so I haven’t collected any Valograms. I don’t even care. In the past I would rather have died than be seen in the halls of Thomas Jefferson on Cupid Day without a single rose. In the past I would have considered it a fate worse than death.
Of course, that was before I actually knew.
I toss my head, shrugging. “I’m kind of over it.” It’s as though confidence is flowing into me from someone else, someone older and beautiful, like I’m only playing a part.
He smiles at me, and again I see something moving in his eyes. Then he goes back to his desk and claps his hands, gesturing for everybody to take their seats. As always the dirty hemp necklace is peeking out from under his collar, and I let myself think about looping my fingers through it, pulling him toward me, and kissing him. His lips are thick—but not too thick—and shaped exactly how a guy’s mouth should be shaped, like if he just parted his lips at all, your mouth would fit directly on top of it. I think of the picture from his high school yearbook, when he’s standing with his arm around his prom date. She was thin, long brown hair, even smile. Like me.
“All right, everyone,” he’s saying as people shuffle and scrape into their desks, giggling and ruffling their bouquets. “I know it’s Cupid Day and love is in the air, but guess what? So are derivatives.”
A couple of people groan. Kent bangs in the door, almost late, his bag flapping open and papers literally scattering behind him, like he’s Hansel or Gretel and he has to make sure someone can follow his trail of half-completed sketches and notes to math class. His black-and-white checkered sneakers peek out under his oversized khakis.
“Sorry,” he mutters breathlessly to Mr. Daimler. “Emergency at the Tribulation. Printer problems. Malignant paper tumor in tray two. Had to operate immediately or risk losing it.” As soon as he makes it halfway up the aisle to his seat, his math textbook—which was riding higher and higher on a wave of crumpled paper inside his open bag—pops out and slams to the floor, and everybody laughs. I feel a surge of irritation. Why is he always such a mess? How hard is it to zip up a bag?
He catches me looking at him, and I guess he mistakes my facial expression for concern, because he grins at me and mouths, Walking disaster. As though he’s proud of it.
I turn my attention back to Mr. Daimler. He’s standing at the front of the room with his arms crossed, his expression fake-serious. That’s another thing I like about him: he’s never really mad.
“Glad the printer pulled through,” he says, raising his eyebrows. His sleeves are rolled up and his arms are tan. Or maybe that’s just the color of his skin: like burnt honey. “As I was saying, I know there’s a lot of excitement on Cupid Day, but that doesn’t mean we can just ignore the regular—”
“Cupids!” someone squeals, and the class dissolves into giggles. Sure enough, there they are: the devil, the cat, and the pale white angel with her big eyes.
Mr. Daimler throws up his hands and leans against his desk. “I give up,” he says. Then he turns his smile to me for just a second—just a second, but long enough for my whole body to light up like a Christmas display.
The angel delivers three of my roses—the ones from Rob, Tara Flute, and Elody—and then keeps sorting methodically through her bouquet, flipping each card over and checking for my name. There’s something careful and sincere about her movements, like she’s super focused on doing everything correctly. As she reads off the addressee she mouths the name quietly to herself, wonderingly, as though she can’t believe there are so many people in the school, so many roses to deliver, so many friends. It’s painful to watch and I stand up abruptly, grabbing the cream-and-pink rose from her hands. She jumps back, startled.
“It’s mine,” I say. “I recognize it.”
She nods at me, wide-eyed. I doubt a senior has ever spoken to her in her life. She begins to open her mouth.
I lean in so that no one else can hear me. “Don’t say it,” I say, and her eyes go even wider. I can’t stand to hear her say it’s beautiful. I can’t stand it when the rose—and everything else—is all garbage now, meaningless. “It’s just going in the trash.”
I mean it too. As soon as Mr. Daimler ushers the Cupids out the door—everyone in class still giggling and showing off the notes their friends have written them and trying to predict how many roses they can expect by the end of the day—I scoop up my roses and sail to the front of the classroom, dumping them in the big trash can right next to Mr. Daimler’s desk.
Instantly, the giggling stops. Two people gasp and Chrissy Walker actually makes the sign of the cross, like I’ve just crapped on a Bible or something. That’s how big of a deal the roses are. Becca Roth half rises from her seat, like she wants to dive in after the roses and rescue them from the fate of being crushed under paper and pencil shavings, failed quizzes, and empty soda cans. I don’t even look in Kent’s direction. I don’t want to see his face.
Becca blurts, “You can’t just throw out your roses, Sam. Someone sent those to you.”
“Yeah,” Chrissy pipes up. “It’s so not done.”
I shrug. “You can have them if you want.” I gesture to the trash can, and Becca casts a wistful look in that direction. She’s probably trying to decide whether the social boost she would get from having four extra roses is worth the ego hit she would take for Dumpster-diving to get them.
Mr. Daimler smiles, winks at me. “You sure you want to do that, Sam?” He raises upturned hands. “You’re breaking people’s hearts right and left.”
“Oh, yeah?” All of this will be gone, vanished, erased tomorrow, and tomorrow will be erased the next day, and the next day will be erased after that, all of it wiped clean and spotless. “What about yours?”
It goes dead silent in the room; somebody coughs. I can tell Mr. Daimler doesn’t know whether I’m deliberately baiting him or not.
He licks his lips nervously and runs a hand through his hair. “What?”
“Your heart.” I pull myself up so I’m sitting on the corner of his desk, my skirt riding up almost to my underwear. My heart is beating so fast it’s a hum. I feel like I’m skimming above the air. “Am I breaking it?”
“Okay.” He looks down, fiddles with one of his sleeves. “Take a seat, Sam. It’s time to get started.”
“I thought you were enjoying the view.” I lean back a little and stretch my arms above my head. There’s a kind of electricity in the air, a zipping, singing tension running in all directions; it feels like the moment right before a thunderstorm, like every particle of air is extracharged and vibrating. A student in the back of the class laughs and another one mutters, “Jesus.” Maybe it’s my imagination, but I think I recognize Kent’s voice.
Mr. Daimler looks at me, his face dark. “Sit.”
“If you insist.” I swivel off the edge of the desk and move around to his chair, then sit down and cross my legs slowly, folding my hands in my lap. Little giggles and gasps erupt around the classroom, bursts of sound. I don’t know where this is coming from, this feeling of complete and total control. Up until a few months ago, I still turned to Jell-O whenever a guy talked to me, including Rob. But this feels easy, natural, like I’ve slipped into the skin that belongs to me for the first time in my life.
“In your own chair.” Mr. Daimler’s practically growling and his face is dark red, almost purple. I’ve made him lose it—probably a first in Thomas Jefferson history. I know that in whatever game we’re playing I’ve just won a point. The idea makes my stomach drop a little—not in a bad way, more like at the moment right before you reach the highest part of the roller coaster, when you know that at any second you’ll be at the very top of the park, looking down over everything, pausing there for a fraction of a second, about to have the ride of your life. It’s the dip in your stomach right before everything goes flying apart in a blast of wind, and screaming, right before you let go completely. The laughter in the room grows to a roar. If you were standing outside, you might mistake it for applause.
For the rest of the class I keep quiet, even though people keep whispering and breaking out into giggles, and I get three notes sent my way. One of them is from Becca and says, You are awesome; one of them is from Hanna Gordon and says, He’s soooo hot. Another one lands in my lap, all balled up like trash, before I can see who threw it in my direction. It says, Whore. For a moment I feel a hot flush of embarrassment, like nausea or vertigo. But it passes quickly. None of this is real anymore. I’m not even real anymore.
A fourth note arrives just before class ends. It’s in the form of a miniature airplane, and it literally sails to me, landing with a whisper on my desk just as Mr. Daimler turns back from writing an equation on the board. It’s so perfect I hate to touch it, but I unfold its wings, and there’s a message written in neat block letters.
You are too good for that.
Even though there’s no signature, I know it’s from Kent, and for a second something sharp and deep goes through me, something I can’t understand or describe, a blade running up under my ribs and making me almost gasp for breath. I shouldn’t be dead. It shouldn’t be me.
I take the note very carefully and tear it in half, then I tear it in half again.
We’ve been restless all class and Mr. Daimler gives up two minutes before the bell rings.
“Don’t forget: test on Monday. Limits and asymptotes.” He goes to his desk and leans on it, looking tired. There’s a mass exhalation, a collective sigh of coats rustling and chairs scraping against the linoleum. “Samantha Kingston, please see me after class.”
He’s not even looking at me, but the tone of his voice makes me nervous. For the first time it occurs to me that I could really be in trouble. Not that it matters, but if Mr. Daimler makes me sit through a lecture about responsibility I’ll die of embarrassment. I’ll die again.
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.
“What are you thinking about?” I finally ask, but instead of answering he just walks straight to me and puts his arms on my shoulders, pushing me backward so I tip over onto Becca’s desk. Then he’s bending over me, kissing me and licking my neck and ear and making little grunting noises that remind me of Pickle when he has to pee. Pressed against him I feel tiny; his arms are strong, groping all over my shoulders and arms. He slides one hand up my shirt and squeezes my boobs one after the other, so hard I almost cry out. His tongue is big and fat. I think, I’m kissing Mr. Daimler, I’m kissing Mr. Daimler, Lindsay will never believe it, but it doesn’t feel anything like I’ve imagined. His five o’clock shadow is rough on my skin, and I have this horrible thought that this is what my mom feels when she kisses my dad.
When I open my eyes I see the plain speckled ceiling tiles of the classroom—the ceiling tiles I’ve spent hours and hours staring at this semester—and my mind starts circling around them, counting, like I’m a fly buzzing somewhere outside my body. I think, How can the same ceiling still be here while this is happening? Why isn’t the ceiling coming down? All of a sudden it’s not fun anymore: all those sharp glittery things drop out of the air at once, and at the same time something drops deep inside of me. I feel like I’m sobering up after drinking all night.
I put my hands on his chest and try to push him off, but he’s too heavy, too strong. I can feel his muscles under my fingertips—he used to play lacrosse in high school, Lindsay and I found out—and above that, a fine layer of fat. He’s leaning on me with his full weight and I can’t breathe. I’m crushed underneath him, my legs split apart on either side of his hips, his stomach warm and fat and heavy on mine. I wrestle my mouth away from his. “We—we can’t do this here.”
The words just pop out without my meaning them to. What I wanted to say was, We can’t do this. Not here. Not anywhere.
What I wanted to say was, Stop.
He’s breathing hard, still staring at my mouth. There’s a tiny bead of sweat at his hairline, and I watch it trace its way across his forehead and down to the tip of his nose. Finally he pulls away from me, rubs his hand over his jaw, and nods.
The moment he’s off me I scrabble up to my feet and tug down my skirt, not wanting him to see that my hands are shaking.
“You’re right,” he says slowly. He gives a quick shake of his head, as though trying to rouse himself from sleep. “You’re right.”
He takes a few steps backward and turns his back to me. For a second we just stand there, not speaking. My brain is all static. He’s only a few feet away from me, but he looks hopelessly, impossibly far, like someone you can just make out distantly, a silhouette in the middle of a blizzard.
“Samantha?” Finally he turns back to me, rubbing both eyes and sighing, like I’ve exhausted him. “Listen, what happened here…I don’t think I need to tell you that this has to stay strictly between you and me.”
He’s smiling at me, but it’s not his normal, easy smile. There’s no humor in it. “This is important, Samantha. Do you understand?” He sighs again. “Everyone makes mistakes….” He trails off, watching me.
“Mistakes,” I repeat, the word pinging around in my head. I’m not sure whether he thinks he made a mistake, or I did. Mistake, mistake, mistake. A strange word: stinging, somehow.
Mr. Daimler’s mouth, eyes, nose—his whole face seems to be rearranging itself into unfamiliar patterns, like a Picasso painting. “I need to know that I can count on you.”
“Of course you can,” I hear myself say, and he looks at me, relieved, like if he could, he would pat me on the head and say, Good girl.
After that I just stand there for a bit. I’m not sure if he’s going to come around and kiss me or give me a hug—it seems insane just to leave, to pick up my stuff and go as though nothing’s happened. But after he blinks at me for a bit, he finally says, “You’re late for lunch,” and now I know I really am being dismissed. So I grab my bag and go.
As soon as I’m out in the hall I lean up against a wall, grateful for the feeling of the stone against my back. Something bubbles up inside me, and I don’t know whether I should jump up and down or laugh or scream. Fortunately the halls are empty. Everybody’s already at lunch.
I take out my phone to text Lindsay, but then I remember that we’re in a fight. There’s no text from her asking if I want to go to Kent’s party. She must still be mad. I’m not sure whether I’m fighting with Elody, too. Remembering what I said in the car makes me feel horrible.
I think about texting Ally—I’m pretty sure she’s not mad at me, at least—and I spend a long time trying to figure out how to word it. It feels weird to write I kissed Mr. Daimler, but if I write Evan she won’t know who I’m talking about. Evan Daimler feels wrong too, and besides, we did more than just kiss. He was on top of me.
In the end I drop my phone back into my bag without writing anything. I figure I’ll just wait until I’ve made up with Lindsay and Elody and tell them in person. It’ll be easier that way, easier to make it sound better than it was, and I’ll get to see their faces. The thought of how jealous Lindsay will be makes the whole thing more than worth it. I put some concealer on my chin to cover the red spots where Mr. Daimler’s face gave me an exfoliation I didn’t need, and then I head to lunch.
YOU CAN’T JUDGE A BOOK BY ITS STEEL-TOED COMBAT BOOTS

When I march into the cafeteria ten minutes late, our usual table is empty, and I know that I have been officially and deliberately ditched.
For a fraction of a second I can feel everyone’s eyes lift in my direction, staring. I bring my hand up to my face without meaning to, suddenly terrified that everyone will see the rawness on my chin and know what I’ve been doing.
I duck out into the hall again. I need to be alone, need to pull it together. I head for the bathrooms, but as I get close, two sophomores (Lindsay calls them s’mores because they’re always stuck together and more than two will get you sick) come bursting out of the door, giggling, arm-in-arm. Lunch is prime bathroom traffic time—everyone needs to reapply lip gloss, complain about feeling fat, threaten to upchuck in one of the stalls—and the last thing I need right now is a steady stream of stupid.
I head to the old bathroom at the far end of the science wing. Hardly anyone uses it since a newer bathroom—with toilets that don’t clog 24/7—was installed last year between the labs. The farther I get from the cafeteria, the more the roar of voices drops away, until they sound just like the ocean from far away. I get calmer with every step. My heels beat a steady rhythm on the tile floor.
The science wing is empty, as expected, and smells, as always, like chemical cleaners and sulfur. Today there’s something else, though: the smell of smoke and something earthier, more pungent. I push against the bathroom door and for a second nothing happens. I push harder and there’s a grating sound; I jam my shoulder against the door, and finally it swings open, carrying me inside with it. Instantly I hit my knee on a chair that has been propped up against the doorknob and pain shoots up my leg. The smell in the bathroom is much stronger.
I drop my bag and lean over, clutching my knee. “Shit.”
“What the hell?”
The voice makes me jump. I didn’t realize there was anyone else in the bathroom. I look up and Anna Cartullo’s standing there, holding a cigarette in one hand.
“Jesus,” I say. “You scared me.”
“I scared you?” She leans up against the counter and taps her ashes in the sink. “You, like, forced your way in. Don’t you know how to knock?” Like I’ve just broken into her house.
“Sorry I ruined your party.” I make a halfhearted move for the door.
“Wait.” She holds up a hand, looking nervous. “Are you going to tell?”
“Tell what?”
“About this.” She inhales and blows a cloud of smoke. The cigarette she’s smoking is extra thin and it looks like she rolled it herself. Then it hits me: it’s a joint. The weed must be mixed with a lot of tobacco because I didn’t recognize the smell immediately, and I come home with my clothes reeking of it after every party. Elody once said it was lucky my mom never came into my room, or she would think I was dealing pot out of my dirty laundry hamper.
“So what? You just come in here and smoke your lunch?” I’m not saying it to be mean, but it comes out that way. Her eyes dart to the floor for a second, and then I notice an empty sandwich bag and a half-eaten bag of chips sitting on the tiles. It occurs to me I’ve never once seen her in the cafeteria. She must eat her lunch here every day.
“Yeah. I like the décor.” She sees me looking at the sandwich bag, stubs out the joint, and crosses her arms. “What are you doing here, anyway? Don’t you have…?” She stops herself, but I know what she’s about to say. Don’t you have friends?
“I had to pee,” I say. This is obviously a lie since I’ve made zero effort to use the toilet, but I’m too tired to come up with a different excuse, and she doesn’t ask me for one.
We stand there in awkward silence for a bit. I’ve never spoken a word to Anna Cartullo in my life, at least in the life I had before the car crash—beyond one time when I said, “Don’t call her an evil wench,” after she called Lindsay an evil wench. But I’d rather stay here with her than go out into the hall. Finally I think, Screw it, and I sit down in the chair and prop my leg up on one of the sinks. Anna’s eyes are slightly unfocused now, and she’s more relaxed, slouching up against one of the walls. She nods at my knee. “Looks swollen.”
“Yeah, well, somebody stuck a chair right inside the door.”
She starts giggling. She’s definitely stoned. “Nice shoes.” She raises her eyebrows at my feet, which are dangling over one of the circular sinks. I can’t tell if she’s being sarcastic. “Hard to walk in, huh?”
“I can walk,” I say, too quickly. Then I shrug. “Short distances, anyway.”
She snorts and then covers her mouth.
“I bought them as a joke.” I don’t know why I feel the need to defend myself to Anna Cartullo, but I guess nothing is the way it’s supposed to be today. All the rules have pretty much gone out the window. Anna’s relaxing, too. She acts like it’s not weird that we’re hanging out in a bathroom the size of a prison cell when we should be at lunch.
She hops up on the counter and wiggles her feet in my direction. Unsurprisingly, she’s not wearing anything Cupid Day–related. She has on a couple of layered black tank tops and an open hoodie. Her jeans are fraying at the hem and have a safety pin through the fly where they’re missing a button. She’s wearing enormous wedge round-toe boots that kind of look like Doc Martens on crack.
“You need a pair of these.” She clicks her heels together, a punked-out Dorothy trying to get home from Oz. “Most comfortable shoes I ever owned.”
I look at her like, Yeah, right. She shrugs. “Don’t knock ’em till you try ’em.”
“Okay, then, pass them over.”
Anna looks at me for a long second, like she’s not sure if I’m serious.
“Look.” I kick my shoes off. They hit the ground with a clatter. “We’ll trade.”
Anna bends over wordlessly, unzips her boots, and wiggles out of them. Her socks are rainbow-striped, which surprises me. I would have expected skulls or something. She peels these off next and balls them up in one hand, starting to pass them to me.
“Ew.” I wrinkle my nose. “No, thank you. I’d rather go commando.”
She shrugs, laughing. “Whatever.”
When I zip into her boots I realize she’s right. They are super comfortable, even without socks. The leather is cool and very soft. I admire them on my feet.
“I feel like I should be terrorizing children.” I knock the bulging steel-tipped toes together, which make a satisfying clicking sound.
“I feel like I should be turning tricks.” Anna has maneuvered her way into my heels and is now teetering experimentally around the bathroom, arms out like she’s on a tightrope.
“Same size feet,” I point out, though it’s obvious.
“Eight and a half. Pretty common.” She glances over her shoulder at me, like she’s considering saying something else, then reaches under the sink and pulls out her bag, a beat-up patchwork hobo thing that looks like she made it herself. She extracts a small Altoids tin. Inside there’s a dime bag of weed—I guess Alex Liment is good for something—rolling papers, and a few cigarettes.
She starts rolling another spliff, carefully balancing her life studies packet on her lap to use as a tray. (Side note: so far I’ve seen the life studies packet used as (1) an umbrella, (2) a makeshift towel, (3) a pillow, and now this. I have never actually seen anyone study with it, which either means that everyone who graduates from Thomas Jefferson will be totally unprepared for life or that certain things can’t be learned in bullet-point format.) Her fingers are thin and move quickly.
She’s obviously had practice. I wonder if that’s what she and Alex do together after they’ve had sex, just lie there side by side, smoking. I wonder if she ever thinks about Bridget when they’re doing it. I’m tempted to ask.
“Stop staring at me,” she says without looking up.
“I’m not.” I tilt my head back and stare at the vomit-colored ceiling, am reminded of Mr. Daimler, and look back at her. “There aren’t too many other options.”
“No one asked you to come in here.” Some of the edge returns to her voice.
“Public property.” There’s a split second when her face goes dark and I’m sure she’s going to freak out and this will be the end of our shiny, happy time together. I rush on, “It’s seriously not that bad in here. For a bathroom, you know.”
She looks at me suspiciously, like she’s sure I’m only baiting her so I can make fun of her afterward.
“You could get some pillows for the floor.” I look around. “Decorate a bit or something.”
She ducks her head, concentrating on her fingers. “There’s this artist I’ve always liked—the guy who does all the stairs going up and down at the same time—”
“M. C. Escher?”
She glances up, obviously surprised I know who she’s talking about. “Yeah, him.” A smile flits across her face. “I was thinking of, I don’t know, hanging one of his prints in here. Just taping it up, you know, for something to look at.”
“I have, like, ten of his books in my house,” I blurt out, glad she’s not going to stay mad and kick me out of the bathroom. “My dad’s an architect. He’s into that stuff.”
Anna rolls up the joint, licks the seam, and finishes it off with a few twists of her fingers. She nods at the chair. “If you’re going to sit in that you can at least block the door. That way it’s private property.”
The chair grates against the tile floor as I scoot backward against the door, and both of us wince, catch ourselves wincing, and laugh. Anna pulls out a purple lighter with flowers on it—not the lighter I expected of her—and tries to spark the joint. The lighter sputters a few times and she throws it down, cursing. The next time she rummages through her bag she pulls out a lighter in the shape of a naked female torso. She presses on the head and little blue flames come shooting out the nipples. Now that is the kind of lighter I would expect Anna Cartullo to have.
Anna’s face gets serious, and she takes a long pull of the joint, then stares at me through the cloud of blue smoke.
“So,” she says, “why do you guys hate me?”
Of all the things I expect her to say, it’s not this. Even more unexpected, she holds the spliff out in my direction, offering me some.
I hesitate for only a second. Hey, just because I’m dead doesn’t mean I’m a saint.
“We don’t hate you.” It doesn’t come out convincingly. The truth is I’m not sure. I don’t hate Anna, really; Lindsay’s always said she does, but it’s hard to know what Lindsay’s reasons are for anything. I take a hit off the joint. I’ve only smoked weed once before, but I’ve seen it done a hundred times. I inhale and my lungs are full of smoke: a heavy taste like chewing on moss. I try to hold my breath, the way you’re supposed to, but the smoke tickles the back of my throat. I start coughing and hand the joint back.
“Then what’s the reason?” She doesn’t say, For all the shitty things you’ve done. For the bathroom graffiti. For the fake email blast sophomore year: Anna Cartullo has chlamydia. She doesn’t have to. She passes the joint back to me.
I take another hit. Already things are warping, certain objects blurring and others sharpening, like someone’s messing with the focus on a camera. No wonder people still talk to Alex, even though he’s a douche. He deals good stuff. “I don’t know.” Because it’s easy. “I guess you need to take things out on somebody.”
The words are out of my mouth before I realize they’re true. I take another hit and pass the joint back to Anna. I feel like everything’s been amplified, like I can feel the heaviness of my arms and legs and hear my heart pumping and blood tumbling through my veins. And at the end of the day it will all be silenced, at least until time skips back on its wheel and starts again.
The bell rings. Lunch is over. Anna says, “Shit, shit, I have to be somewhere,” and begins trying to gather up her stuff. She accidentally knocks over the Altoids tin. The bag of weed goes flying under the sink, and the papers flit and flutter everywhere. “Shit.”
“I’ll help,” I say. We both get down on our hands and knees. My fingers feel numb and bloated, and I’m having trouble peeling the papers off the ground. This strikes me as hilarious, and Anna and I both start laughing, leaning on each other, gasping for breath. She keeps saying “Shit” at intervals.
“Better hurry,” I say. All of the anger and pain from the past few days is lifting, leaving me feeling free and careless and happy. “Alex will be pissed.”
She freezes. Our foreheads are so close we’re almost touching.
“How did you know I was meeting Alex?” she says. Her voice is clear and low.
I realize too late that I’ve screwed up. “Seen you sneaking back through Smokers’ Lounge after seventh once or twice,” I say vaguely, and she relaxes.
“You’re not going to tell anyone, are you?” she asks, biting her lower lip. “I wouldn’t want—” She stops herself and I wonder if she’s going to say something about Bridget. But she just shakes her head and continues gathering up the papers, working quickly now.
The idea of telling on Anna Cartullo for sleeping with Alex after what I’ve just done—after Mr. Daimler—is hilarious. I’ve got no right to say anything to anybody. I’m smoking weed in a bathroom, I have no friends, my math teacher stuck his tongue down my throat, my boyfriend hates me because I won’t sleep with him. I’m dead, but I can’t stop living. The absurdity of everything really hits me in that second and I start laughing again. Anna’s gotten serious. Her eyes are big bright marbles.
“What?” she says. “Are you laughing at me?”
I shake my head, but I can’t respond right away. I’m laughing too hard to breathe. I’ve been kind of squatting next to her, but I’m shaking so hard, the laughter heaving through me, that I tumble backward, landing on my butt with a loud thump. Anna cracks a smile again.
“You’re crazy,” she says, giggling.
I take a few gasping breaths. “Least I don’t barricade myself in bathrooms.”
“Least I don’t get stoned off half a joint.”
“Least I don’t sleep with Alex Liment.”
“Least I don’t have bitchy friends.”
“Least I have friends.”
We’re going back and forth, laughing harder and harder. Anna cracks up so hard she bends to the side and supports herself on one elbow. Then she rolls over all the way so she’s just lying there on the bathroom floor making these hilarious yelping noises that remind me of a poodle. Every so often she snorts, which just makes me go off again.
“Let me tell you something,” I say, as soon as I can get the words out.
“Hear, hear.” Anna pretends to pound a gavel and then snorts into her palm.
I love the feeling of thickness around me. I’m swimming in murk. The green walls are water. “I kissed Mr. Daimler.” As soon as I say it I die laughing again. Those must be the four most ridiculous words in the English language.
Anna heaves herself up on one elbow. “You did what?”
“Shhhh.” I bob my head up and down. “We kissed. He put his hand up my shirt. He put his hand…” I gesture between my legs.
She shakes her head from side to side. Her hair whips around her face, reminding me of a tornado. “No way. No way. No way.”
“I swear to God.”
She leans forward, so close I can smell her breath on my face. She’s been sucking on an Altoid. “That is sick. You know that, right?”
“I know.”
“Sick, sick, sick. He went to high school here, like, ten years ago.”
“Eight. We checked.”
She lets out a loud howl of laughter, and for a second she lays her head down on my shoulder. “They’re all perverts,” she says, the words quiet and directed straight into my ear. Then she pulls away and says, “Shit! I’m so dead.”
She stands up, steadying herself with one hand on the wall. She teeters for a moment as she stands in front of the mirror, smoothing down her hair. She takes a small bottle from her back pocket and squeezes a couple of drops into each eye. I’m still on the floor, staring up at her from below. She seems to be miles and miles away.
I blurt out, “You’re too good for Alex.”
She’s already stepped over me on her way to the door. I see her back stiffen and I think she’s going to be angry. She pauses, one hand resting on the chair.
But when she turns around she’s smiling. “You’re too good for Mr. Daimler,” she says, and we both crack up again. Then she shoves the chair out of the way and tugs the door open, slipping into the hall.
After she’s gone I sit with my head back, enjoying the way the room feels like it’s doing loops. This is what it’s like to be the sun, I think, and then I think how stoned I am, and then I think how funny it is to know that you’re stoned but not be able to stop thinking stoned thoughts.
I see something white peeking out from underneath the sink: a cigarette. I lean down and find another one. Anna forgot to pick them up. Just then there’s a sharp knock on the door, and I snatch both cigarettes up and get to my feet. As soon as I stand the circling and the feeling of being underwater gets worse. It seems to take me forever to push the chair out of the way. Everything is so heavy.
“You forgot these,” I say, holding the cigarettes up between two fingers as I open the door.
It’s not Anna, though. It’s Ms. Winters, standing in the hallway with her arms crossed and her face pinched up so tightly it looks like her nose is a black hole and the rest of her face is getting slowly sucked into it.
“Smoking on school property is forbidden,” she says, pronouncing each word carefully. Then she smiles, showing all of her teeth.
THE PUGS

In the Thomas Jefferson High School R & R (Rules and Regulations Handbook), it says that any student caught smoking on school property is subject to three days’ suspension. (I know this by heart because all the smokers like to tear this page out of the handbook and burn it at the Lounge, sometimes crouching and sticking their cigarettes in the flames to catch a light, as the words on the page curl and blacken and smoke into nothing.)
But I get off with only a warning. I guess the administration makes exceptions for students who have dirt on a certain vice principal and a certain gym teacher/soccer coach/mustache fan. Ms. Winters looked like she was going to have a massive coronary when I’d started going off about role models and my poor impressionable mind—I love that expression, as though everyone under the age of twenty-one has all the brain power of dental plaster—and the administration’s responsibility to set an example, especially when I’d reminded her about page sixty-nine in the R & R: it is forbidden to engage in lewd or sexually inappropriate acts in or around school property. (That one I know because the page has been torn out and hung up about a thousand times in various bathrooms on campus, the margins decorated with drawings of a decidedly lewd and sexually inappropriate nature. The administration was totally asking for it, though. Who puts a rule like that on page sixty-nine?)
At least the hour and a half I spent with Ms. Winters has sobered me up. The last bell has just rung, and all around me students are sweeping out of classrooms, making way more noise than is necessary—shrieking, laughing, slamming lockers, dropping binders, shoving one another—a jittery, mindless, restless noise unique to Friday afternoons. I’m feeling good, and powerful, and I’m thinking, I have to find Lindsay. She won’t believe it. She’ll die laughing. Then she’ll put her arm around my shoulder and say, “You’re a rock star, Samantha Kingston,” and everything will be fine. I’m keeping an eye out for Anna Cartullo, too—while I was sitting in Ms. Winters’s office it occurred to me that we never switched shoes again. I’m still wearing her monster black boots.
I swing out of Main. The cold makes my eyes sting, and a sharp pain shoots up my chest. February really is the worst month. A half dozen buses are idling in a line next to the cafeteria, engines choking and coughing, letting up a thick black wall of exhaust. Through the dirt-filmed windows the pale faces of a handful of underclassmen—all slouched in their seats, hoping not to be seen—are featureless and interchangeable. I start cutting across the faculty lot toward Senior Alley, but I’m only halfway there when I see a big-ass silver Range Rover—its walls thudding with the bass of “No More Drama”—tear out of the alley and start gunning it toward Upper Lot. I stop, all of the good buzzy feeling draining out of me quickly and at once. Of course, I didn’t really expect Lindsay to be waiting for me, but deep down I guess I was hoping for it. Then it hits me: I have no ride, nowhere to go. The last place I want to be is at home. Even though I’m freezing, I feel prickles of heat rising up from my fingers, crawling up my spine.
It’s the weirdest thing. I’m popular—really popular—but I don’t have that many friends. What’s even weirder is that it’s the first time I’ve noticed.
“Sam!”
I turn around and see Tara Flute, Bethany Harps, and Courtney Walker coming toward me. They always travel in a pack, and even though we’re kinda-friends with all of them, Lindsay calls them the Pugs: pretty from far away, ugly up close.
“What are you doing?” Tara always has a perma-smile, like she’s constantly auditioning for an ad for Crest toothpaste, and she turns it on me now. “It’s, like, a thousand degrees below zero.”
I toss my hair over one shoulder, trying to look nonchalant. The last thing I need is for the Pugs to know I’ve been ditched. “I had to tell Lindsay something.” I gesture vaguely in the direction of Senior Alley. “She and the girls had to jet out without me—some community-service thing they do once a month. Lame.”
“So lame,” Bethany says, nodding vigorously. As far as I can tell, her only role in life is to agree with whatever has just been said.
“Come with us.” Tara slips her arm in mine and squeezes. “We’re headed to La Villa to shop. Then we thought we’d hit up Kent’s party. Sound good?”
I briefly run through my other options: home is obviously out. I won’t be welcome at Ally’s. Lindsay has made that clear. Then there’s Rob’s…sitting on the couch while he plays Guitar Hero, making out a little bit, pretending not to notice when he tears another bra because he can’t figure out the clasp. Making conversation and waving while his parents pack up the car for the weekend. Pizza and lukewarm beer from the garage stash as soon as they’re gone. Then more making out. No, thank you.
I scan the parking lot once more, looking for Anna. I feel kind of bad about taking off with her boots—but then again, it’s not exactly like she’s made an effort to find me. Besides, Lindsay always said a new pair of shoes could change your life. And if I was ever in need of a serious life change—or afterlife change, whatever—it’s now.
“Sounds perfect,” I say, and if possible Tara’s smile gets a little wider, teeth so white they look like bone.


As we leave school I tell the Pugs—I can’t help but think of them that way—about my trip to the office, and how Ms. Winters has been getting her freak on with Mr. Otto, and how I got off without a detention, because I promised her I would destroy a camera-phone pic of one of her love sessions in Otto’s office (fabricated, obviously—there’s no way I’d ever hang on to evidence of their coupling, much less in high-digital format). Tara is gasping she’s laughing so hard, and Courtney’s looking at me like I’ve just cured cancer or developed a pill that makes you grow a cup size, and Bethany covers her mouth and says, “Holy mother of Lord Cocoa Puffs.” I’m not exactly sure what that means, but it’s definitely the most original thing I’ve ever heard her say. It all makes me feel good and confident again, and I remind myself that this is my day: I can do whatever I want.
“Tara?” I squinch forward. Tara’s car is a tiny two-door Civic, and Bethany and I are crushed in the backseat. “Can we stop at my house for a second before we hit the mall?”
“Sure.” There’s her smile again, reflected in the rearview like a piece of sky. “Need to drop something?”
“Need to get something,” I correct her, shooting her my biggest smile back.
It’s almost three o’clock, so I figure my mom should be back from yoga, and sure enough her car is in the driveway when we pull up to the house. Tara starts to pull in behind the Accord, but I tap her shoulder and gesture for her to keep going. She inches her car along the road until we’re hidden behind a cluster of evergreens my mom had the landscaper plant years ago, after she discovered that our then-neighbor, Mr. Horferly, liked to take midnight strolls on his property totally in the buff. This is pretty much the answer to every problem you encounter in suburbia: plant a tree, and hope you don’t see anyone’s privates.
I hop out of the car and loop around the side of the house, praying my mom isn’t looking out one of the windows in the den or my dad’s study. I’m banking on the fact that she’s in the bathroom, taking one of her infamously long showers before going to pick up Izzy at gymnastics. Sure enough, when I slide my key in the back door and slip into the kitchen, I hear the patter of water upstairs and a few high, warbling notes: my mom is singing. I hesitate for a split second, long enough to place the tune—Frank Sinatra, “New York, New York”—and say a prayer of thanks that the Pugs aren’t witness to my mom’s impromptu performance. Then I tiptoe into the mudroom, where, as usual, my mom has deposited her enormous purse. It is sagging on its side. Several coins and a roll of breath mints have spilled out onto the washing machine, and a corner of her green Ralph Lauren wallet is just peeking out from under the thick leather loop of a shoulder strap. I remove the wallet carefully, listening, all the while, to the rhythm of the water upstairs, ready to cut and run if it stops flowing. My mom’s wallet is a mess, too, crammed with photos—Izzy, me, me and Izzy, Pickle wearing a Santa’s costume—receipts, business cards. And credit cards.
Especially credit cards.
I fish out the Amex carefully. My parents only use it for major purchases so there’s no way my mom will notice it’s missing. My palms are prickly with sweat and my heart is beating so hard it’s painful. I carefully close up the wallet and slip it back into the purse, making sure it’s in the exact same position as before.
Above me, there’s a final rush of water, a screeching sound as the pipes shudder dry, and then silence. My mom’s Sinatra rendition drops off. Shower over. For a second I’m so terrified I can’t get my feet to move. She’ll hear me. She’ll catch me. She’ll see me with the Amex in hand. Then the phone starts ringing, and I hear her footsteps heading out of the bathroom, crossing the hallway, hear her singsonging, “Coming, coming.”
In that second I’m gone, slipping out of the mudroom, crossing the kitchen, out the back door—and running, running, running around the side of the house, the frost-coated grass biting my calves, trying to keep from laughing, clutching the cold plastic Amex so hard that when I open my palm later, I see it’s left a mark.


Normally at the mall I have a very strict spending limit: twice a year my parents give me five hundred dollars for new clothes, and on top of that I can spend whatever I make babysitting for Izzy or doing other servant-type things my parents ask me to do, like wrap presents for our neighbors at Christmastime or rake the leaves in November or help my dad unclog the storm drains. I know five hundred dollars sounds like a lot, but you have to keep in mind that Ally’s Burberry galoshes cost almost that—and she wears those in the rain. On her feet. So I’ve never been that big into shopping. It’s just not that fun, particularly when you’re best friends with Ally Endless-Limit-Credit-Card Harris and Lindsay My-Stepdad-Tries-to-Buy-My-Affection Edgecombe.
Today, that problem is solved.
First stop is Bebe, where I pick up a gorgeous spaghetti-strap dress that’s so tight I have to suck all the way in just to squeeze into it. Even then Tara has to duck into the dressing room and help me zip up the last half inch. I kind of like how Anna’s boots look with the dress, actually, sexy and tough, like I’m a video-game assassin or an action hero. I make Charlie’s Angels poses at the mirror for a bit, shaping my fingers into a gun, pointing at my reflection, and mouthing, Sorry. Pulling the trigger, and imagining an explosion.
Courtney nearly loses it when I hand over my credit card without even looking at the total. Not that I don’t catch a glimpse. It’s pretty hard to miss the big green $302.10 flashing on the register, blinking up at me like it’s accusing me of something. My stomach gives a little hula performance as the saleswoman slides over the receipt for me to sign, but I guess all those years of forging my own doctor’s notes and tardy excuses pays off because I give a perfect, looping imitation of my mom’s script, and the saleswoman smiles and says, “Thank you, Ms. Kingston,” like I’ve just done her a favor. And just like that I walk out with the world’s most perfect black dress nestled in tissue paper at the bottom of a crisp white shopping bag. Now I understand why Ally and Lindsay love shopping. It’s much better when you can have whatever you want.
“You are so lucky your parents give you a credit card,” Courtney says, trotting after me as we leave the store. “I’ve been begging mine for years. They say I have to wait until I’m in college.”
“They didn’t exactly give it to me,” I say, raising one eyebrow at her. Her mouth falls open.
“No way.” Courtney shakes her head so fast her brown hair whips back and forth in a blur. “No way. You did not—are you saying you stole—?”
“Shhhh.” La Villa Mall is supposed to be Italian-themed, all big, marble fountains and flagstone walkways. The sound gets bounced and zipped and mixed around so it’s impossible to make out what people are saying unless they’re standing right next to you, but still. No point in pushing it now that I’m on a roll. “I prefer to think of it as borrowing, anyway.”
“My parents would strangle me.” Courtney’s eyes are so wide I’m worried her eyeballs will pop out. “They would kill me until I was dead.”
“Totally,” Bethany says.
We hit the MAC store next, and I get a full-on makeover from a guy named Stanley who’s skinnier than I am, while the Pugs try on different shades of eyeliner and get yelled at for breaking into the unopened lip glosses. I buy everything Stanley uses on me: foundation, concealer, bronzing powder, eye shadow prep, three shades of eye shadow, two shades of eyeliner (one white for under the eye), mascara, lip liner, lip gloss, four different brushes, one eyelash curler. It’s so worth it. I leave looking like I’m a famous model, and I can feel people staring at me as we walk through La Villa. We pass a group of guys who must be in college at least, and one of them mutters, “Hot.” Tara and Courtney are flanking me and Bethany trails behind. I think: This is how Lindsay must feel all the time.
Next is Neiman Marcus: a store I never go into unless Ally drags me, since everything costs a billion dollars. Courtney tries on weird old-lady hats, and Bethany takes pictures of her and threatens to post them online. I pick up this amazing forest green faux-fur shrug that makes me look like I should be partying on a private jet somewhere, and a pair of silver-and-garnet chandelier earrings.
The only snag comes when the woman at the cashier—Irma, according to her name tag—asks to see my ID.
“ID?” I blink at her innocently. “I so never keep it on me. Last year my identity was stolen.”
She stares at me for a long time like she’s thinking about letting it slide, then pops her gum and gives me a tight smile. She pushes the shrug and the earrings back across the counter. “Sorry, Ellen. ID required for all purchases over two hundred and fifty dollars.”
“I prefer Ms. Kingston, actually.” I give her a tight smile right back. Bitch. That gum-popping trick? Lindsay invented it.
Then again, I’d be a bitch too if my parents had named me Irma.
Suddenly inspired, I root around in my purse until I fish out my membership card to Hilldebridge Swim and Tennis, my mom’s gym. I swear, security there is tighter than an airport—like obesity in America is somehow a terrorist plot, and the next big thing to go will be the nation’s elliptical machines—and the card features a tiny picture of me, a membership ID number, and my last name and initials: KINGSTON, S. E.
Irma screws up her face. “What does the S stand for?”
My mind does that thing where it hiccups and then goes totally blank. “Um—Severus.”
She stares at me. “Like in Harry Potter?”
“It’s German, actually.” I should never have offered to read those stupid books to Izzy. “You can see why I go by my middle name.”
Irma’s still hesitating, biting the corner of her lip. Tara’s standing right next to me, running her fingers over my Amex like some of the credit line will rub off on her. She leans forward and giggles.
“I’m sure you understand.” Tara squints a little, like she’s trying hard to make out the name tag from a distance of six inches. “It’s Irma, isn’t it?”
Courtney comes up behind us, wearing a wide-brimmed hat with a gigantic feathered robin sprouting out of its side. “Did people ever call you Worma when you were little? Or Squirma?”
Irma folds her mouth into a thin white line, reaches for my card, and swipes.
“Guten Tag,” I say as we leave: the only German I know.


Tara and Co. are still laughing about Irma as we pull out of the parking lot of La Villa. “I can’t believe it,” Courtney keeps repeating, leaning forward to look at me, like I’m suddenly going to disappear. This time they’ve given me shotgun automatically. I didn’t even have to call it. “I can’t freaking believe it.”
I allow myself a small smile as I turn to the window, and am momentarily startled by the reflection I see there: huge dark eyes, smoke and shadow, full red lips. Then I remember the makeup. For a second I didn’t recognize myself.
“You’re so awesome,” Tara says, then palms the steering wheel and curses as we just miss the light.
“Please.” I wave the air vaguely. I’m feeling pretty good. I’m almost glad Lindsay and I got into a fight this morning.
“Oh, shit, no way.” Courtney beats on my shoulder as a huge Chevy Tahoe, vibrating with bass, pulls up next to us. Even though it’s freezing, all the windows are down: it’s the college guys from La Villa, the ones who checked us out earlier. Who checked me out. They’re laughing and fighting over something in the car—one of them yells, “Mike, you’re a p-ssy”—pretending not to see us, the way guys do when they’re just dying to look.
“They are so hot,” Tara says, leaning over me to get a clearer view, then ducking quickly back to the wheel.
“You should get their number.”
“Hello? There are four of them.”
“Their numbers, then.”
“Totally.”
“I’m gonna flash them,” I say, and am suddenly thrilled with the perfect, pure simplicity of it: I’m going to do it. So much easier and cleaner than Maybe I should or Won’t we get in trouble? or Oh my God, I could never. Yes. Three letters. I twist around to Courtney. “Do you dare me?”
Her eyes are doing that bug thing again. Tara and Bethany stare at me like I’ve sprouted tentacles.
“You wouldn’t,” Courtney says.
“You can’t,” Tara says.
“I can, I would, and I’m going to.” I roll down the window, and the cold slams me, blots out everything, numbs my whole body so I just feel myself in bits and pieces, an elbow bobbing here, a thigh cramping, fingers tingling. The music pumping from the boys’ car is so loud it makes my ears hurt, but I can’t hear any words or melody, just the rhythm, throbbing, throbbing—so loud it’s not even sound anymore, just vibration, feeling.
“Hey.” At first I can only croak the word out, so I clear my throat and try again. “Hey. Guys.”
The driver swivels his head in my direction. I can hardly focus I’m so keyed up, but in that second I see he’s not that cute, actually—he has kind of crooked teeth and a rhinestone stud in one ear, like he’s a rapper or something—but then he says, “Hey, cutie,” and I see his three friends lean over toward the window to look, one, two, three heads popping up like jacks-in-the-box, like the Whack-a-Mole game at Dave & Buster’s, one, two, three, and I’m lifting my shirt, and there’s a roar and a rushing, singing sound in my ears—laughter? screaming?—and Courtney’s yelling, “Go, go, go.” Then our tires screech, and the car lurches forward, sliding a bit, the wind biting my face, and the smell of scorched rubber and gasoline stinking up the air. My heart sinks slowly back from my throat to my chest, and the warmth and feeling comes back to my body. I roll up the window. I can’t explain the feelings going through me, a rush like you get from laughing too hard or spinning too long in a circle. It’s not exactly happiness, but I’ll take it.
“Priceless! Legendary!” Courtney’s thumping the back of my seat, and Bethany’s just shaking her head and reaching forward to touch me, eyes wide, amazed, like I’m a saint and she’s trying to cure herself of a disease. Tara’s screaming with laughter. She can barely watch the road, her eyes are tearing up so badly. She chokes out, “Did you see their faces? Did you see?” and I realize I didn’t see. I couldn’t see anything, couldn’t feel anything but the roaring around me, heavy and loud, and it occurs to me that I’m not sure whether this is what it’s like to be really, truly alive or this is what it’s like to be dead, and it strikes me as hilarious. Courtney thumps me one more time, and I see her face rising behind me in the rearview mirror, red as a sun, and I start laughing too, and the four of us laugh all the way back to Ridgeview—over eighteen miles—while the world streaks past us in a smear of blacks and grays, like a bad painting of itself.


We stop at Tara’s house so everyone can change. Tara helps get me into my dress again, and after I slip on the fur shrug and the earrings and let my hair down—which is all wavy from being twisted up in a half-knot all day—I turn to the mirror and my heart actually reindeer-prances in my chest. I look at least twenty-five. I look like somebody else. I close my eyes, remember standing in the bathroom when I was little as the steam from my shower retreated from the mirrors, praying for a transformation. I remember the sick taste of disappointment every time my face reemerged, as plain as it ever was. But this time when I open my eyes it works. There I am: different and gorgeous and not myself.
Dinner’s on me, of course. We go to Le Jardin du Roi, this super expensive French restaurant where all the waiters are hot and French. We pick the most expensive bottle of wine on the menu, and nobody asks to see our IDs, so we order a round of champagne. It’s so good, we ask for another round even before the appetizers come. Bethany gets drunk right away and starts flirting with the waiters in bad French, just because last year she spent the summer in Provence. We must order half the menu: tiny melt-in-your-mouth cheese puffs, thick slabs of paté that probably have more calories than you’re supposed to eat in a day, goat cheese salad and mussels in white wine and steak béarnaise and a whole sea bass with its head still attached and crème br?lée and mousse au chocolat. I think it’s the best food I’ve ever tasted, and I eat until I can hardly breathe, and if I take one more bite I really will bust my dress. Then, as I’m signing the check, one of the waiters (the cutest one) brings over four miniature glasses of sweet pink liquor for the digestion, except, of course, he says it for ze deejestee-on.
I don’t realize how much I’ve had to drink until I stand up and the world swings wildly for a second, like it’s struggling to find its balance, and I think maybe the world’s drunk, not me, and start to giggle. We step out into the freezing air and it helps sober me up a little.
I check my phone and see that I have a text from Rob. What’s up w u? We had a plan 4 2nite.
“Come on, Sam,” Courtney calls. She and Bethany have climbed into the backseat of the Civic. They’re waiting for me to take shotgun again. “Party time.”
I quickly write a text back to Rob. We’re on. C u soon.
Then I get in the car, and we head to the party.


The party’s just getting started when we arrive, and I beeline for the kitchen. Since it’s still early and pretty clear of people I notice a ton of details in the rooms I haven’t seen before. The place is so stocked with little carved wood statues and funky oil paintings and old books it could be a museum.
The kitchen is brightly lit and everything here looks sharp and separate. There are two kegs lined up directly inside the doorway, and most of the people are gathered here. It’s basically guys at this point, plus some sophomores. They’re huddled in clumps, gripping their plastic cups like they contain their whole life force, and their smiles are so forced I can tell their cheeks are hurting.
“Sam.” Rob sees me and does a double take as soon as I come in. He shoulders his way toward me, then backs me up against the wall, leaning a hand on either side of my head so I’m penned in. “I didn’t think you were gonna show.”
“I told you I was coming.” I put my hands on his chest, feeling his heartbeat skip under my fingers. It makes me sad for some reason. “Did you get my text?”
He shrugs. “You were acting weird all day. I thought maybe you didn’t like my rose.”
Luv ya. I’d forgotten about that; forgotten about how upset I was. None of that matters now. They’re just words, anyway. “The rose was fine.”
Rob smiles and puts one hand on my head, like I’m a pet. “You look hot, babe,” he says. “You want a beer?”
I nod. The wine I had at the restaurant is already wearing off. I feel way too sober, too aware of my whole body, my arms hanging there like dead weights. Rob has started to turn away when he suddenly stops, staring down at my shoes. He looks up at me, half amused, half puzzled. “What are those?” He points at Anna’s boots.
“Shoes.” I point one of my toes and the leather doesn’t even budge. This pleases me for some reason. “You like them?”
Rob makes a face. “They look like army boots or something.”
“Well, I like them.”
He shakes his head. “They don’t look like you, babe.”
I think of all the things I’ve done today that would shock Rob: cutting all my classes, kissing Mr. Daimler, smoking pot with Anna Cartullo, stealing my mom’s credit card. Things that aren’t like me. I’m not even sure what that means; I’m not sure how you know. I mentally try to add up all the things I’ve done in my life, but no clear picture emerges, nothing that will tell me what kind of person I am—just a lot of haziness and blurred edges, indistinct memories of laughing and driving around. I feel like I’m trying to take a picture into the sun: all of the people in my memories are coming back featureless and interchangeable.
“You don’t know everything about me,” I say.
He gives a half laugh. “I know you look cute when you’re mad.” He taps a finger between my eyes. “Don’t frown so much. You’ll get wrinkles.”
“How about that beer?” I say, grateful when Rob turns away. I was hoping that seeing him would relax me, but instead it’s making me jumpy.
When Rob comes back with my beer, I take my cup and go upstairs.
At the top of the stairs I almost collide with Kent. He takes a quick step backward when he sees me.
“Sorry,” we both say at the same time, and I can feel myself blushing.
“You came,” he says. His eyes look greener than ever. There’s a weird expression on his face—his mouth is all twisted like he’s chewing on something sour.
“Seems like it’s the place to be.” I look away, wishing he would stop staring at me. Somehow I know he’s going to say something awful. He’s going to say that he can see through me again. And I get this crazy urge to ask him what he sees—like he can help me figure out me. But I’m afraid of his answer.
He looks at his feet. “Sam, I wanted to say…”
“Don’t.” I hold up a hand. Then it hits me: he knows what happened with Mr. Daimler. He can tell. I know I’m being paranoid, but the certainty is so strong it makes my head spin, and I have to reach out and grab on to the banister. “If this is about what happened in math, I don’t want to hear it.”
He looks up at me again, his mouth set in a line. “What did happen?”
“Nothing.” Once again I feel Mr. Daimler’s weight pressing into me, the heat of his mouth clamped over mine. “It’s none of your business.”
“Daimler’s a dirtbag, you know. You should stay away from him.” He looks at me sideways. “You’re too good for that.”
I think of the note that sailed onto my desk earlier. I knew it was from him. The thought of Kent McFuller feeling sorry for me, looking down on me, makes something break inside.
My words come out in a rush. “I don’t have to explain anything to you. We’re not even friends. We’re—we’re nothing.”
Kent takes a step back, lets out a noise that’s halfway between a snort and a laugh. “You’re really unbelievable, you know that?” He shakes his head, looking disgusted or sad, or maybe both. “Maybe everyone’s right about you. Maybe you are just a shallow—” He stops.
“What? A shallow what?” I feel like slapping him to get him to look at me, but he keeps his eyes turned toward the wall. “A shallow bitch, right? Is that what you think?”
His eyes click back on mine, clear and dull and hard, like rock. Now I wish he hadn’t looked at me at all. “Maybe. Maybe it’s like you said. We’re not friends. We’re not anything.”
“Yeah? Well, at least I don’t walk around pretending to be better than everybody else.” It explodes out of me before I can stop it. “You’re not perfect, you know. I’m sure you’ve done bad things. I’m sure you do bad things.” As soon as I say it, though, I get the feeling it’s not true. I just know it somehow. Kent McFuller doesn’t do bad things. At least, he doesn’t do bad things to other people.
Now Kent does laugh. “I’m the one who pretends to be better than everybody?” He narrows his eyes. “That’s really funny, Sam. Anyone ever tell you how funny you are?”
“I’m not kidding.” I’m balling my fists up against my thighs. I don’t know why I’m so angry at him, but I could shake him, or cry. He knows about Mr. Daimler. He knows all about me, and he hates me for it. “You shouldn’t make people feel bad just because they’re not, like, perfect or whatever.”
His mouth falls open. “I never said—”
“It’s not my fault I can’t be like you, okay? I don’t get up in the morning thinking the world is one big shiny, happy place, okay? That’s just not how I work. I don’t think I can be fixed.” I mean to say, I don’t think “it” can be fixed, but it comes out wrong, and suddenly I’m on the verge of crying. I have to take big gulping breaths to try to keep the tears down. I turn away from Kent so he won’t see.
There’s a moment of silence that seems to last forever. Then Kent rests his hand on my elbow just for a second, his touch like the wings of something brushing me. Just that one little touch gives me the chills.
“I was going to tell you that you look beautiful with your hair down. That’s all I was going to say.” Kent’s voice is steady and low. He moves around me to the head of the stairs, pausing just at the top. When he turns back to me he looks sad, even though he’s smiling the tiniest bit.
“You don’t need to be fixed, Sam.” He says the words, but it’s like I don’t even hear them; it’s like they go through my whole body at the same time, like I’m absorbing them from the air. He must know it’s untrue. I open my mouth to tell him so, but he’s already disappearing down the stairs, melting into the crowd of people flowing into the house. I’m a nonperson, a shadow, a ghost. Even before the accident I’m not sure that I was a whole person—that’s what I’m realizing now. And I’m not sure where the damage begins.
I take a big swig of beer, wishing I could just go blotto. I want the world to drop away. I take another big gulp. The beer is cold, at least, but tastes like moldy water.
“Sam!” Tara’s coming up the stairs, her smile like the beam of a flashlight. “We’ve been looking for you.” When she gets to the top she pants a little, putting her right hand on her stomach and bending over. In her left hand she’s holding a cigarette, half smoked. “Courtney did recon. She found the good stuff.”
“Good stuff?”
“Whiskey, vodka, gin, cassis, the works. Booze. The good stuff.”
She grabs my hand and we go back down the stairs, which are slowly getting clogged with people. Everyone’s moving in the same direction: from the entrance to the beer and then up the stairs. In the kitchen we push through the clot of people gathered by the keg. On the opposite side of the kitchen there’s a door with a handwritten sign on it. I recognize Kent’s handwriting.
It says: PLEASE DO NOT ENTER.
There’s a footnote written in tiny letters along the bottom of the page: SERIOUSLY, GUYS. I’M HOSTING THE PARTY AND IT’S THE ONE THING I ASK. LOOK! THERE’S A KEG BEHIND YOU!
“Maybe we shouldn’t—” I start to say, but Tara has already slipped through the door so I follow her.
It’s dark on the other side of the door, and cold. The only light comes from two enormous bay windows that face out onto the backyard.
I hear giggling from somewhere deeper in the house, then the sound of someone bumping into something. “Careful,” someone hisses, and then I hear Courtney say, “You try to pour in the dark.”
“This way,” Tara whispers. It’s weird how people’s voices get softer in the dark, like they can’t help it.
We’re in the dining room. There’s a chandelier drooping from the ceiling like an exotic flower, and heavy curtains pooling at either side of the windows. Tara and I skirt around the dining room table—my mom would have a coronary from excitement, it must seat at least twelve—and out into a kind of alcove. This is where the bar is. Beyond the alcove is another dark room: from the sofas and bookshelves I can just make out, it looks like a library or a living room. I wonder how many rooms there are. The house seems to extend forever. It’s even darker here, but Courtney and Bethany are rooting around in some cabinets.
“There must be fifty bottles in here,” Courtney says. It’s too dark to read labels, so she opens each bottle and sniffs it, guessing at the contents. “This is rum, I think.”
“Freaky house, huh?” Bethany says.
“I don’t mind it,” I say quickly, not sure why I feel defensive. I bet it’s beautiful during the day: room after room of light. I bet Kent’s house is always quiet, or there’s always classical music playing or something.
Glass shatters next to me and something wet splatters on my leg. I jump as Courtney whispers, “What did you do?”
“It’s not me,” I say as Tara says, “I didn’t mean to.”
“Was that a vase?”
“Ew. Some of it got on my shoe.”
“Let’s just take the bottle and get out of here.”
We slip back into the kitchen just as RJ Ravner yells, “Fire in the hole!” Matt Dorfman takes a cup of beer and starts chugging it. Everyone laughs and Abby McGail claps when he’s drained the cup. Someone turns up the music, and Dujeous comes on and everyone starts singing along. All MCs in the house tonight, if your lyrics sound tight then rock the mic….
I hear high-pitched laughter. Then a voice from the front hallway: “God, I guess we came at the right time.”
My stomach jumps into my throat. Lindsay’s here.
THERE ARE CERTAIN THINGS YOU NEVER SAY

Here’s Lindsay’s big secret: when she came back from visiting her stepbrother at NYU our junior year, she was awful for days—snapping at everybody, making fun of Ally for having weird food issues, making fun of Elody for being such a lush and a pushover, making fun of me for always being the last to do things, from picking up on trends to going to third base (which I didn’t do until late sophomore year). Elody, Ally, and I knew something must have happened in New York, but Lindsay wouldn’t tell us when we asked her, and we didn’t push it. You don’t push things with Lindsay.
Then one night toward the end of the school year, we were all at Rosalita’s, this crappy Mexican restaurant one town over where they don’t card, having margaritas and waiting for our dinners to come. Lindsay wasn’t really eating—hadn’t really been eating since returning from New York. She wouldn’t touch the free chips, saying she wasn’t hungry, and instead kept dipping a finger into the salt that was rimming her margarita glass and eating the crystals one by one.
I don’t remember what we were talking about, but all of a sudden Lindsay blurted out, “I had sex.” Just like that. We all stared at her in silence, and she leaned forward and told us in a breathless rush how she’d been drunk and how because her stepbrother wasn’t ready to leave the party the guy—the Unmentionable—offered to walk her back to the dorm where she was staying with her stepbrother. They’d had sex on her stepbrother’s twin long bed with Lindsay fading in and out, and the guy—the Unmentionable—was gone even before Lindsay’s brother got back from the party.
“It was only, like, three minutes,” she said at the end, and I knew then she was already filing it away under Things We’ll Never Talk About, tucking it back in some far corner of her mind and building other, alternate stories on top of it, better stories: I went to New York and had a great time. I’m totally going to move there one day. I kissed a guy, and he wanted to come home with me, but I wouldn’t let him.
Right after that our food came. Lindsay was hugely relieved after telling us—even though she swore us on pain of death to absolute secrecy—and her whole mood changed instantly. She sent back the salad she’d ordered (“Like I want to choke down that rabbit crap”) and ordered cheese-and-mushroom quesadillas, pork-stuffed burritos with extra sour cream and guacamole, an order of chimichangas for the table to split, and another round of margaritas. It was like a weight had been lifted, and we had the best dinner we’d had in years. All of us were stuffing our faces, even Ally, and drinking margarita after margarita in different flavors—mango, raspberry, orange—and laughing so loudly at least one table asked to be moved to a different part of the restaurant. I don’t remember what we were even talking about, but at one point Ally took a picture of Elody wearing a flour tortilla on her head and holding up a bottle of hot sauce. In the corner of the frame, you can see a third of Lindsay’s profile. She’s doubling over, cracking up, her face a bright purple. One hand is clutching her stomach.
After dinner Lindsay threw down her mom’s credit card to pay for the whole thing. She’s only supposed to use it for emergencies, but she leaned forward over the table and made us all grab hands like we were praying. “This, my friends, was an emergency,” she said, and we all laughed because she was being melodramatic as usual. The plan was to go off to a party in the arboretum: a tradition on the first warm weekend of the year. We had the whole night ahead of us. Everyone was in a good mood. Lindsay was being normal again.
Lindsay went to the bathroom to fix her makeup, and five seconds after she left the table, all those margaritas and all that laughing hit me at once: I’d never had to pee so bad in my life. I sprinted to the bathroom, still laughing, while Elody and Ally pegged me with half-eaten chips and crumpled napkins and yelled, “Send us a postcard from the Niagara Falls” and “If it’s yellow, keep it mellow!” so that yet another table asked to be moved.
The bathroom was single-person, and I leaned up against the door, calling for Lindsay to let me in, rattling the handle at the same time. I guess she’d been in a rush to get in there because she hadn’t locked the door correctly and it opened as I was leaning against it. I tumbled into the bathroom, still laughing, expecting to find Lindsay standing in front of the mirror with her lips puckered, applying two coats of MAC Vixen lip gloss.
Instead she was kneeling on the floor in front of the toilet, and the remains of the quesadillas and the pork-stuffed burrito were floating on the surface of the water. She flushed but not quickly enough. I saw two whole undigested tomato pieces swirl down the toilet bowl.
All the laughter left me instantly. “What are you doing?” I asked, even though it was obvious.
“Shut the door,” she hissed.
I closed it quickly, the noise of the restaurant vacuumed away, leaving silence.
Lindsay got up from her knees slowly. “Well?” she said, looking at me like she was already preparing her arguments—like she expected me to accuse her of something.
“I had to pee,” I said. It’s so lame, but I couldn’t think of anything else. There was a tiny piece of food clinging to a strand of hair and seeing it made me feel like bursting into tears. She was Lindsay Edgecombe: she was our armor.
“Pee then,” she said, looking relieved, though I thought I saw a flicker of something else—maybe sadness.
I did. I peed while Lindsay bent over the sink, cupping her hands and sipping water from them, rolling it around in her mouth and gargling. That’s a funny thing: you think, when awful things happen, everything else just stops, like you would forget to pee and eat and get thirsty, but it’s not really true. It’s like you and your body are two separate things, like your body is betraying you, chugging on, idiotic and animal, craving water and sandwiches and bathroom breaks while your world falls apart.
I watched Lindsay fish out a Listerine strip and place one in her mouth, grimacing slightly. Then she went to work with her makeup, touching up her mascara and reapplying her lip gloss. The bathroom was small, but she seemed very far away.
Finally she said, “It’s not a habit or anything. I think I just ate too quickly.”
“Okay,” I said, and forever afterward I didn’t know if she was telling the truth.
“Don’t tell Al or Elody, okay? I don’t want them freaking out over nothing.”
“Obviously,” I said.
She paused, pressed her lips together, puckered them at the mirror. Then she turned toward me. “You guys are my family. You know that, right?”
She said it casually, as though she were complimenting my jeans, but I knew that it was one of the most sincere things she’d ever said to me. I knew that she really meant it.
We went to the party in the arboretum as planned. Elody and Ally had a great time, but I got a stomachache and had to double up on the hood of Ally’s car. I’m not sure if it was the food or what, but it felt like something was trying to claw its way out of my stomach.
Lindsay had a great night: that night she kissed Patrick for the first time. Three months later, at the tail end of the summer, they had sex. When she told us about losing her virginity to her boyfriend—the candles, the blanket on the floor, the flowers, the whole nine yards—and how great it was that her first time was so romantic, none of us even batted an eyelash. We all rushed in and congratulated her, asked her for details, told her we were jealous. We did it for Lindsay, to make her happy. She would have done it for us.
That’s the thing about best friends. That’s what they do. They keep you from spinning off the edge.
WHERE IT BEGINS

Lindsay, Elody, and Ally must head upstairs as soon as they arrive—considering they’re packing their own vodka, it’s a safe bet—because I don’t see them again until an hour or so later. I’ve had three shots of rum and it all hits me at once: the room is a spinning, blurring world of color and sound. Courtney has just finished off the bottle of rum so I get a beer. I have to concentrate on every step, and when I get to the keg I stand there for a second, forgetting what I’ve come for.
“Beer?” Matt Dorfman fills a cup and holds it out to me.
“Beer,” I say, pleased the word comes out so clear, pleased that I remembered that this is what I wanted.
I make my way upstairs. Things register in short bursts, a movie reel that’s been chopped up: the feel of the rough wood banister; Emma McElroy leaning back against a wall, her mouth open and gasping—maybe laughing?—like a fish on a hook; Christmas lights winking, blurred light. I’m not sure where I’m going or who I’m looking for, but all of a sudden there’s Lindsay across the room and I realize I’ve made it all the way to the back of the house, the cigarette room. Lindsay and I look at each other for a second and I’m hoping she’ll smile at me, but she just looks away. Ally’s standing next to her. She bends forward and whispers something to Lindsay, then makes her way over to me.
“Hey, Sam.”
“Did you have to ask permission to talk to me?” These words don’t come out so clearly.
“Don’t be a bitch.” Ally rolls her eyes. “Lindsay’s really upset about what you said.”
“Is Elody mad?” Elody’s in the corner with Steve Dough, swaying against him while he talks to Liz Hummer like she’s not even there. I want to go over and hug her.
Ally hesitates, looks at me from under the fringe of her bangs. “She’s not mad. You know Elody.”
I can tell Ally’s lying, but I’m too drunk to pursue it.
“You didn’t call me today.” I hate that I’ve said it. It makes me feel like an outsider again, like someone trying to break into the group. It’s only been a day, but I miss them: my only real friends.
Ally takes a sip of the vodka she’s holding, then winces. “Lindsay was freaking out. I told you, she was really upset.”
“It’s true though, isn’t it? What I said.”
“It doesn’t matter if it’s true.” Ally shakes her head at me. “She’s Lindsay. She’s ours. We’re each other’s, you know?”
I’ve never really thought of Ally as smart, but this is probably the smartest thing I’ve heard in a long time.
“You should say you’re sorry,” Ally says.
“But I’m not sorry.” I’m definitely slurring now. My tongue is thick and weighty in my mouth. I can’t make it do what I want it to. I want to tell Ally everything—about Mr. Daimler and Anna Cartullo and Ms. Winters and the Pugs—but I can’t even think of the words.
“Just say it, Sam.” Ally’s eyes have started to roam around the party. Then suddenly she takes a quick step backward. Her mouth goes slack and she brings a hand to her mouth.
“Oh my God,” she says, staring over my shoulder. Her mouth’s curving up into a smile. “I don’t believe it.”
It feels like time freezes as I turn around. I read once that at the edge of a black hole, time stops completely, so if you ever sailed into it, you’d just be stuck there at the lip forever, forever being torn apart, forever dying. That’s what it feels like in that second. The crush of people circled around me, an endless lip, more and more people.
And there she is standing in the doorway. Juliet Sykes. Juliet Sykes—who yesterday blew her brains out with her parents’ handgun.
Her hair is tied up in a ponytail and I can’t help it; I picture it knotted and clotted with blood, a big gaping hole directly underneath her little flip of hair. I’m terrified of her: a ghost in the door, the kind of stuff you have nightmares about when you’re a kid, the kind of thing they make horror movies about.
A phrase comes back from a news show I had to watch about the convicts on death row for my ethics and issues elective: dead man walking. I thought it was awful when I first heard it, but now I really understand it. Juliet Sykes is a dead man walking. I guess I am too, in a way.
“No,” I say, without meaning to say it out loud. I take a step backward, and Harlowe Rosen squeals and says, “That’s my foot.”
“I don’t believe it,” Ally says again, but it sounds far away. She’s already turning away from me, calling out to Lindsay over the music. “Lindsay, did you see who it is?”
Juliet sways in the doorway. She looks calm, but her hands are balled into fists.
I throw myself forward, but everyone chooses that moment to press even closer around me. I can’t watch it again. I don’t want to see what happens next. I’m not very steady on my feet, and I keep getting knocked back and forth, rocketing between people like a pinball, trying desperately to get out of the room. I know I’m stepping on people and throwing elbows in their backs, but I don’t care. I need out.
Finally I break through the knot of people. Juliet is blocking the doorway. She’s not even looking at me. She’s standing as still as a statue, her eyes locked some distance over my shoulder. She’s looking at Lindsay. I understand then that it’s Lindsay she really wants—it’s Lindsay she hates the most—but it doesn’t make me feel any better.
Just as I’m about to push past her, a tremor runs through her body and she locks eyes with me.
“Wait,” she says to me, and puts a hand on my wrist. It’s as cold as ice.
“No.” I pull away from her and keep going, stumbling forward, nearly choking on my fear. Jumbled images of Juliet keep flashing in my mind: Juliet doubled over, hands outstretched, drenched in beer and stumbling; Juliet lying on a cold floor in a pool of blood. I’m not thinking clearly, and in my head the two images merge and I see her roving around the room while everyone laughs, her hair soaked, dripping, drenched in blood.
I’m so distracted I don’t see Rob in the hallway until I’ve run straight into him.
“Hey.” Rob is drunk now. He has an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips. “Hey, you.”
“Rob…” I press myself against him. The world is spinning. “Let’s get out of here, okay? We’ll go to your house. I’m ready now, just me and you.”
“Whoa, cowgirl.” One half of Rob’s mouth ticks slowly upward, but the other doesn’t quite manage to join it. “After the cigarette.” He starts moving toward the back of the house. “Then we’ll go.”
“No!” I nearly scream it.
He turns back to me, swaying, and before he can react, I’ve already plucked the cigarette out of his mouth and I’m kissing him, my hands cupped on either side of his face, shoving my body into his. It takes him a second to realize what’s happening, but then he starts pawing me over my dress, rolling his tongue around in circles, groaning a little bit.
We’re both staggering back and forth in the hallway, almost like we’re dancing. I feel the floor buckle and roll, and Rob accidentally pushes me hard against the wall and I gasp.
“Sorry, babe.” His eyes cross, uncross.
“We need a room.” From the back of the house I can just hear the chanting starting. Psycho, Psycho. “We need a room now.”
I take Rob’s hand and we stumble down the hall, forcing our way against the tide of people moving in the other direction. They’re all going to see what the noise is about.
“In here.” Rob slams as hard as he can against the first closed door he comes to, the one with all the bumper stickers. There’s a popping sound and we both tumble inside. I kiss him again and try to lose myself in the feeling of the closeness of our bodies and his warmth, try to block out the rising howls of laughter from the back room. I pretend I’m just a body with a mind as blank and fuzzy as a TV full of snow. I try to shrink myself down, center myself in my skin, like the only feeling that exists is in Rob’s fingers.
Once the door is shut it’s pitch-black. The darkness around us hasn’t let up at all—either there are no windows here or they’re curtained off. It’s so dark it’s almost heavy-looking, and I get a sudden hysterical fear that we’re stuck in a box. Rob’s lurching on his feet so much by this point, his arms locked around me, it makes me dizzy. I feel a wave of nausea, and I push him backward until we encounter something soft: a bed. He tips over and I climb on top of him.
“Wait,” he mumbles.
“Isn’t this what you wanted?” I whisper. Even now I can hear the sounds of laughter and the screaming—Psycho, Psycho—piping thinly over the music. I kiss Rob harder and he wrestles with the zipper of my dress. I hear fabric ripping but I don’t care. I slide the dress down to my waist, and Rob starts his attack on my bra.
“Are you shure about this?” Rob slurs in my ear.
“Just kiss me.” Psycho, Psycho. The voices are echoing down the hall. I slide my hands under Rob’s fleece and wrestle it over his head, then start kissing his neck and underneath the collar of his polo shirt. His skin tastes like sweat and salt and cigarettes, but I keep kissing while his hands move over my back and down toward my butt. An image of Mr. Daimler on top of me—and the speckled ceiling—rises out of the darkness, but I push it away.
I take Rob’s shirt off so now we’re pressed chest-to-chest. Our skin keeps making these weird, slurpy, suctiony sounds as our stomachs come together and then pop apart. At a certain point his hands fall away. I’m still kissing him, moving down his chest, feeling the fuzz of hair scattered there. Chest hair has always grossed me out; it’s another thing I don’t think about tonight.
Rob’s gotten quiet. He’s probably shocked. I’ve never even done this much with him before. Normally when we hook up he’s the one who takes charge. I’ve always been afraid I’ll do something wrong. It feels so awkward to act like you know what you’re doing. I’ve never even been totally naked with him.
“Rob?” I whisper, and he moans quietly. My arms are shaking from holding my weight up for so long so I stand up. “Do you want me to take my dress off?”
Silence. My heart is beating fast, and even though the room is cold, sweat is tickling my underarms. “Rob?” I repeat.
All of a sudden he lets out an enormous, honking snore and rolls over. The snores continue, long waves of them.
For a while I just stand there and listen to it. When Rob snores it’s always reminded me of when I was little and used to sit on the front porch and watch my dad make narrow circles on the back of his six-year-old Sears ride-on mower, which growled so badly I had to cover my ears. I never went inside, though. I loved to watch the neat little compact tracks of green my dad left in his wake, hundreds of tiny blades of grass spinning through the air like ballerinas.
It’s so dark in the room it takes me forever to find my bra and stupid fur thing; I have to grope on my hands and knees for them. I’m not upset. I’m not feeling much of anything, not really thinking, just ticking off things I have to do. Find the bra. Hitch up the dress. Get out the door.
I slip into the hallway. The music’s pumping at a normal volume, and people are flowing in and out of the back room. Juliet Sykes is gone.


A couple of people give me weird looks. I’m sure I’m a mess but don’t have the energy to care. It’s amazing how well I’m holding it together, actually, and even though my brain is foggy I think that very clearly: It’s amazing how well you’re holding it together. I think, Lindsay would be proud.
“Your dress isn’t zipped.” Carly Jablonski giggles at me.
Behind her someone says, “What were you doing in there?”
I ignore them. I just keep moving—floating, really, without really knowing where I’m headed—drifting down the stairs and out onto the wraparound porch and, when the cold hits me like a punch, back into the house and into the kitchen. Suddenly the idea of the dark, quiet house lying peacefully beyond the DO NOT ENTER sign, full of moonlit squares and the quiet tickings of old clocks, seems appealing. So I go that way, beyond the door, through the dining room, through the alcove where Tara spilled the vase, my boots crunching on the glass, into the living room.
One wall is almost all windows. It faces out onto the front lawn. Outside, the night looks silvery and frosted, all the trees wrapped in a shroud of ice, like they’ve been built out of plaster. I begin to wonder if everything in this world, the world I’m stuck in, is just a replica, a cheap imitation of the real thing. Then I sit down on the carpet—in the exact center of a perfect square of moonlight—and I begin to cry. The first sob is almost a scream.
I don’t know how long I’m there—at least fifteen minutes, since I manage to pretty much cry myself out. In the process I snot all over myself and completely ruin my fur shrug with mascara and face gunk. But at a certain point I become aware that there’s someone else in the room.
I get very still. Parts of the room are lost in shadow, but I can sense something moving at its periphery. A checkered sneaker flickers in and out of view.
“How long have you been standing there?” I ask, wiping my nose for the fortieth time on the back of my arm.
“Not long.” Kent’s voice is very quiet. I can tell he’s lying, but I don’t mind. It actually makes me feel better to know I wasn’t alone this whole time.
“Are you okay?” He takes a few steps into the room so the moonlight hits him and turns him silver. “I mean, you’re obviously not okay, but I just wanted to know if, you know, there’s anything I could do or something you want to talk about or—”
“Kent?” I interrupt him. He always did have a habit of launching into tangents, even when we were little.
He stops. “Yeah?”
“Do you—could I maybe have a glass of water?”
“Yeah. Give me a sec.” He sounds relieved to do something, and I hear the whisper of his sneakers on the carpet. He’s back in under a minute with a tall glass of water. It has just the right amount of ice cubes.
After I take a few long gulps I say, “Sorry for being back here. The sign and everything.”
“That’s okay.” Kent sits cross-legged on the carpet next to me, not so close that we’re touching but close enough that I can feel him sitting there. “I mean, the sign was pretty much for other people. You know, to keep people from breaking my parents’ shit or whatever. I’ve never really had a party before.”
“Why did you have one now?” I say, just to keep him talking.
He gives a half laugh. “I thought if I had a party, you would come.”
I feel a rush of embarrassment, heat spreading up from my toes. His comment is so unexpected I don’t know what to say. He doesn’t seem embarrassed though. He just sits there looking at me. So typical Kent. He never understood that you can’t just say something like that.
The silence has lasted a couple beats too long. I grasp for something to say. “This room must get a lot of light during the day.”
Kent laughs. “It’s like being in the middle of the sun.”
Silence again. We can still hear the music, but it’s muffled, like it has to travel miles before it reaches us. I like that.
“Listen.” Just trying to say what I want to say makes a lump swell up in my throat. “I’m sorry about earlier. I really—thanks for making me feel better. I’m sorry I’ve always been…” At the last second I can’t say it after all. I’m sorry I’ve always been awful. I’m sorry there’s something wrong with me.
“I meant what I said earlier,” Kent says quietly. “About your hair.”
He shifts slightly—a fraction of an inch, moving closer—and it hits me then that I’m sitting in the middle of a moonlit room with Kent McFuller.
“I should go.” I stand up. I’m still not very steady on my feet, and the room tilts with me.
“Whoa.” Kent gets up, reaching out a hand to steady me. “You sure you’re okay?”
“I—” It occurs to me I don’t know where to go and I have no body to get me there, anyway. I can’t stand the thought of Tara grinning at me, and Lindsay’s obviously out. At this point it’s so awful it’s funny, and I let out a short laugh. “I don’t want to go home.”
Kent doesn’t ask why. I’m grateful for that. He just shoves his hands in his pockets. The outlines of his face are touched with light, like he’s glowing.
“You could…” He swallows. “You could always stay here.”
I stare at him. Thank God it’s dark. I have no idea what my face looks like.
He quickly stutters, “Not, like, stay with me. Obviously not. I just meant—well, we have a couple guest rooms, with sheets already on the beds and stuff. Clean sheets, obviously, it’s not like we leave them on after people—”
“Okay.”
“—use them, that would be gross. We actually have a housekeeper who comes twice a week and—”
“Kent? I said okay. I mean, I’d like to stay. If you don’t mind.”
He stands there for a second with his mouth hanging open as though he’s sure he’s misheard me. Then he takes his hands out of his pockets, curls them and uncurls them, lifts them and drops them against his thighs. “Sure, yeah, no, that’s fine.”
But for another minute he doesn’t move. He just stares at me. The hotness returns, only this time it’s moving into my head, making everything seem cloudy and remote. My eyes are suddenly heavy.
“You’re tired,” he says, and his voice is soft again.
“It’s been a long day,” I say.
“Come on.” He reaches out his hand and without thinking I take it. It’s warm and dry, and as he leads me deeper into the house, away from the music, into the shadows, I close my eyes and remember how he used to slip his hand in mine and whisper, Don’t listen to them. Just keep walking. Keep your head up. It almost feels like no time has passed. It doesn’t feel crazy that I’m holding hands with Kent McFuller and I’m letting him lead me somewhere—it feels normal.
The music fades away altogether. Everything is so quiet. Our feet barely make a sound on the carpets, and each room is a web of shadow and moonlight. The house smells like polished wood and rain and just a little bit like chimney smoke, like someone’s recently had a fire. I think, This would be a perfect house to get snowed into.
“This way,” Kent says. He pushes open a door—it creaks on its hinges—and I hear him fumbling for a light switch on the wall.
“No,” I say.
He hesitates. “No light?”
“No light.”
Very slowly he guides me inside the room. Here it’s almost completely dark. I can barely make out the outline of his shoulders.
“The bed’s over here.”
I let him pull me over to him. We’re only inches away, and it’s like I can feel his impression in the darkness, like it’s taking on a form around him. We’re still holding hands, but now we’re face-to-face. I never realized how tall he was: at least four inches taller than I am. There’s the strangest amount of warmth coming off him. It’s everywhere, radiating outward, making my fingers tingle.
“Your skin,” I say, barely a whisper. “It’s hot.”
“It’s always this way,” he says. Something rustles in the dark and I know he has moved his arm. His fingers hover half an inch from my face, and it’s like I can see them, burning hot and white. He drops his arm, taking the warmth with him.
And it’s the weirdest thing, but standing there with Kent McFuller in a room so pitch-black it could be buried somewhere, I feel the tiniest of tiny things spark inside me, a little flame at the very bottom of my stomach that makes me unafraid.
“There are extra blankets in the closet,” he says. His lips are right by my cheek.
“Thank you,” I whisper back.
He stays until I’ve gotten into bed, and then he draws up the blankets around my shoulders like it’s normal, like he’s been putting me to bed every night of my whole life. Typical Kent McFuller.