Before I Fall

FIVE

You see, I was still looking for answers then. I still wanted to know why. As though somebody was going to answer that for me, as though any answer would be satisfying.
Not then, but afterward, I started to think about time, and how it keeps moving and draining and flowing forever forward, seconds into minutes into days into years, all of it leading to the same place, a current running forever in one direction. And we’re all going and swimming as fast as we can, helping it along.
My point is: maybe you can afford to wait. Maybe for you there’s a tomorrow. Maybe for you there’s one thousand tomorrows, or three thousand, or ten, so much time you can bathe in it, roll around in it, let it slide like coins through your fingers. So much time you can waste it.
But for some of us there’s only today. And the truth is, you never really know.


I wake up gasping, the alarm bringing me out of darkness, as if it has brought me up from the depths of a lake. It is the fifth time I’ve woken up on February 12, but today I’m relieved. I switch off the alarm and lie in bed, watching the milky white light steal slowly over the walls, waiting for my heartbeat to go back to normal. A swath of sunlight ticks upward over the collage Lindsay made for me. In the bottom she’s written in pink glittery ink, Love you 4ever. Today Lindsay and I are friends again. Today no one’s angry at me. Today I didn’t kiss Mr. Daimler or sit bawling my eyes out alone at a party.
Well, not totally alone. I imagine the sun filling Kent’s house slowly, frothing upward like champagne.
As I lie there I start making a mental list of all the things I’d like to do in my life, as though they’re still possible. Most of them are just plain crazy, but I don’t think about that, just go on listing and listing like it’s as easy as writing up what you need from the grocery store. Fly in a private jet. Eat a fresh-baked croissant from a bakery in Paris. Ride a horse all the way from Connecticut to California but stay in only the best hotel rooms along the way. Some of them are simpler: take Izzy to Goose Point, a place I discovered the first and only time I’d ever tried to run away. Order the Fat Feast at the diner—a bacon cheese-burger, a milk shake, and an entire plate of cheese fries—and eat it without stressing, like I used to do on my birthday every single year. Run around in the rain. Have scrambled eggs in bed.
By the time Izzy slinks into my room and hops up into bed with me, I’m actually feeling calm.
“Mommy says you have to go to school,” Izzy says, head-butting my shoulder.
“I’m not going to school.”


That’s it: that’s how it starts. One of the best—and worst—days of my life starts with those five words.


I grab Izzy’s stomach and tickle her. She still insists on wearing her old Dora the Explorer T-shirt, but it’s so small it leaves the big pink stripe of her belly—the only fat on her body—exposed. She squeals with laughter, rolling away from me.
“Stop it, Sam. I said, Stop it!”
Izzy is shrieking and laughing and thrashing around when my mom comes to the door.
“It’s six forty-five.” She stands in the doorway, keeping both of her feet neatly aligned just behind the flaking red line from all those years ago. “Lindsay will be here any minute.”
Izzy slaps my hands away and sits up, her eyes shining. I’ve never noticed it before, but she really does look like my mom. It makes me sad for a minute. I wish she looked more like me. “Sam was tickling.”
“Sam’s going to be late. You too, Izzy.”
“Sam’s not going to school. And I’m not either.” Izzy puffs out her chest like she’s prepared to do battle over it. Maybe she’ll look like me when she’s older. Maybe when time starts marching forward again—even if I get swept out with it, like litter on a tide—her cheekbones will get high and she’ll have a growth spurt and her hair will turn darker. I like to think it’s true. I like to think that later on people will say, Izzy looks just like her sister, Sam.
They’ll say, You remember Sam? She was pretty. I’m not really sure what else they could say: She was nice. People liked her. She was missed. Maybe none of those things.
I push the thought out of my mind and return to my mental list. A kiss that makes my whole head feel like it’s exploding. A slow dance in the middle of an empty room to really great music. A swim in the ocean at midnight, with no clothes on.
My mom rubs her forehead. “Izzy, go get your breakfast. I’m sure it’s ready by now.”
Izzy scrambles over me. I squeeze the chub of her stomach and get one last squeal out of her before she jumps off the bed and dashes out the door. The one thing that can get Izzy moving that quickly is a toasted cinnamon raisin bagel with peanut butter, and I imagine being able to give her a cinnamon raisin bagel with peanut butter every single day for the rest of her life, filling a whole house with them.
When Izzy’s gone my mom looks at me, hard. “What’s this about, Sam? You feel sick?”
“Not exactly.” One thing that is not on my wish list is to spend even one second in a doctor’s office.
“What, then? There must be something. I thought Cupid Day was one of your favorites.”
“It is. Or, I mean, it was.” I sit up on my elbows. “I don’t know, it’s kind of stupid, if you think about it.”
She raises her eyebrows.
I start rattling on, not really thinking about what I want to say before I say it, but afterward I realize it’s true. “The whole point is just to show other people how many friends you have. But everybody knows how many friends everybody else has. And it’s not like you actually get more friends this way or, I don’t know, get closer to the friends you do have.”
My mom smiles a tiny bit, one side of her mouth cocking upward. “Well, you’re lucky to have very good friends, and to know it. I’m sure the roses are very meaningful to some people.”
“I’m just saying, the whole thing is kind of sleazy.”
“This doesn’t sound like the Samantha Kingston I know.”
“Yeah, well, maybe I’m changing.” I don’t mean those words either, until I hear them. Then I think that they might be true, and I feel a flicker of hope. Maybe there’s still a chance for me, after all. Maybe I have to change.
My mom stares at me with this expression on her face like I’m a recipe she can’t quite master. “Did something happen, Sam? Something with your friends?”
Today I’m not so annoyed at her for asking. Today it strikes me as kind of funny, actually. I so wish that the only thing bothering me was a fight with Lindsay, or something dumb Ally said.
“It’s not my friends.” I grasp for something that’ll make her cave. “It’s…it’s Rob.”
My mom wrinkles her brow. “Did you have a fight?”
I slump a little farther down into the bed, hoping it makes me look depressed. “He…he dumped me.” In some ways it’s not a lie. Not like he broke up with me, exactly, but like maybe we weren’t ever serious serious in the way I believed for so long. Is it even possible to go out with someone seriously who doesn’t really know you?
It works even better than I expected. My mom brings her hand up to her chest. “Oh, sweetie. What happened?”
“We just wanted different things, I guess.” I fiddle with the edge of my comforter, thinking of all those nights alone with him in the basement, bathed in blue light, feeling sheltered from the whole world. It’s not so much of a stretch to look upset when I think about that, and my bottom lip starts to tremble. “I don’t think he ever really liked me. Not really really.” This is the most honest thing I’ve said to my mother in years, and I suddenly feel very exposed. I have a flashback then of standing in front of her when I was five or six and having to strip naked while she checked me all over for deer ticks. I shove down farther into the covers, balling up my fists until my nails dig into my palms.
Then the craziest thing in the world happens. My mom steps straight over the flaking red line and strides over to the bed, like it’s no big deal. I’m so surprised I don’t even protest as she bends over me and plants a kiss on my forehead.
“I’m so sorry, Sam.” She smoothes my forehead with her thumb. “Of course you can stay home.”
I expected more of an argument and I’m left speechless.
“Do you want me to stay home with you?” she asks.
“No.” I try to give her a smile. “I’ll be fine. Really.”
“I want to stay home with Sam!” Izzy has come to the door again, this time halfway dressed for school. She’s in a yellow-and-pink phase—not a flattering combination, but it’s kind of hard to explain color palettes to an eight-year-old—and has pulled on a mustard yellow dress over a pair of pink tights. She’s also wearing big, scrunchie yellow socks. She looks like some kind of tropical flower. A part of me is tempted to freak out at my mom for letting Izzy wear whatever she wants. The other kids must make fun of her.
Then again, I guess Izzy doesn’t care. That’s another thing that strikes me as funny: that my eight-year-old sister is braver than I am. She’s probably braver than most of the people at Thomas Jefferson. I wonder if that will ever change, if it will get beaten out of her.
Izzy’s eyes are enormous and she clasps her hands together like she’s praying. “Please?”
My mom sighs, exasperated. “Absolutely not, Izzy. There’s nothing wrong with you.”
“I’m feeling sick,” Izzy says. This is made slightly unbelievable by the fact that she’s hopping and pirouetting from foot to foot as she says it, but Izzy’s never been a great liar.
“Did you eat your breakfast yet?” My mom crosses her arms and makes her “strict parent” face.
Izzy bobs her head. “I think I have food poisoning.” She doubles over, grabs her stomach, then immediately straightens up and begins hopping again. I can’t help it; a little giggle escapes.
“Come on, Mom,” I say. “Let her stay home.”
“Sam, please don’t encourage her.” My mom turns to me, shaking her head, but I can tell she’s wavering.
“She’s in third grade,” I say. “It’s not like they actually learn anything.”
“Yes we do!” Izzy crows, then claps her hand over her mouth when I give her a look. My little sister: apparently not a champion negotiator, either. She shakes her head and quickly stutters. “I mean, we don’t do that much.”
My mom lowers her voice. “You know she’ll be bugging you all day, right? Wouldn’t you rather be alone?”
I know she’s expecting me to say yes. For years that’s been the buzzword of the house: Sam just wants to be left alone. Want some dinner? I’ll bring it up to my room. Where you headed? Just want to be alone. Can I come in? Just leave me alone. Stay out of my room. Don’t talk to me when I’m on the phone. Don’t talk to me when I’m listening to music. Alone, alone, alone.
Things change after you die, though—I guess because dying is about the loneliest thing you can do.
“I don’t mind,” I say, and I mean it. My mom throws up her hands and says, “Whatever,” but even before it’s out of her mouth, Izzy’s charging through my room and has belly flopped on top of me, throwing her arms around my neck and screeching, “Can we watch TV? Can we make mac and cheese?” She smells like coconut as usual, and I remember when she was so small we could fit her in the sink to give her a bath, and she would sit there laughing and smiling and splashing like the best place in the world to be was in a 12" × 18" square of porcelain, like the sink was the biggest ocean in the world.
My mom gives me a look that says, You asked for it.
I smile over Izzy’s shoulder and shrug.
And it’s as easy as that.
INTO THE WOODS

It’s weird how much people change. For example, when I was a kid I loved all of these things—like horses and the Fat Feast and Goose Point—and over time all of them just fell away, one after another, replaced by friends and IMing and cell phones and boys and clothes. It’s kind of sad, if you think about it. Like there’s no continuity in people at all. Like something ruptures when you hit twelve, or thirteen, or whatever the age is when you’re no longer a kid but a “young adult,” and after that you’re a totally different person. Maybe even a less happy person. Maybe even a worse one.
Here’s how I first discovered Goose Point: one time before Izzy was born my parents refused to buy me this little purple bike with a pink flowered basket on it and a bell. I don’t remember why—maybe I already had a bike—but I flipped out and decided to run away. Here are the basic two rules of running away successfully:
Go somewhere you know.
Go somewhere nobody else knows.
I didn’t know these two rules then, obviously, and I think my goal was the opposite: to go somewhere I didn’t know and then be discovered by my parents, who would feel so bad they’d agree to buy me whatever I wanted, including the bike (and maybe a pony).
It was May, and warm. Every day the light lasted longer and longer. One afternoon I packed my favorite duffel bag and snuck out the back door. (I remember thinking I was smart for avoiding the front yard, where my father was doing yard work.) I also remember exactly what I packed: a flashlight; a sweatshirt; a bathing suit; an entire package of Oreos; a copy of my favorite book, Matilda; and an enormous fake pearl-and-gold necklace my mom had given me to wear on Halloween that year. I didn’t know where I was going, so I just went straight, over the deck and down the stairs and across the backyard, into the woods that separated our property from our neighbor’s. I followed the woods for a while, feeling really sorry for myself and half hoping that some hugely rich person would spot me and take pity on me and adopt me and buy me a whole garage full of purple bicycles.
But then after a while, I got kind of into it, the way kids do. The sun was hazy and gold. All the leaves looked like they were haloed in light, and there were tiny birds darting everywhere, and layers and layers of velvet-green moss under my feet. All of the houses dropped away. I was deep in the woods, and imagined I was the only person who’d ever come this far. I imagined I would live there forever, sleeping on a bed of moss, wearing flowers in my hair and living in harmony with the bears and foxes and unicorns. I came to a stream and had to cross it. I climbed an enormous, high hill, as big as a mountain.
At the top of the hill was the biggest rock I’d ever seen. It curved upward and out from the hillside like the potbellied hull of a ship, but it had a top as flat as a table. I don’t remember much about that first trip other than eating Oreos, one after another, and feeling like I owned that whole portion of the woods. I also remember that when I came home, my stomach cramping from all the cookies, I was disappointed my parents hadn’t been more worried about me. I was positive I’d stayed away for hours and hours and hours, but the clock showed I’d been gone less than forty minutes. I decided then that the rock was special: that time didn’t move there.
I went there a lot that summer, whenever I needed to escape, and the summer after that. One time I was lying stretched out on top of the rock, staring at the sky all pink and purple like the stretch taffy at carnivals, and I saw hundreds of geese migrating, a perfect V. A single feather floated down through the air and landed directly next to my hand. I christened the place Goose Point, and for years kept the feather in a small, decorative box wedged into one of the stone ridges running along its underbelly. Then one day the box was gone. I figured it had been blown away during a storm, and searched through the leaves and undergrowth for hours and, when I couldn’t find it, cried.
Even after I quit horseback riding, I climbed up to Goose Point sometimes, though I went less and less. I went there one time in sixth grade after all the boys in gym class rated my butt as “too square.” I went there when I wasn’t invited to Lexa Hill’s sleepover birthday party, even though we’d been partners in science class and spent four months giggling over how cute Jon Lippincott was. Each time I came back home, less time had passed than I expected. Each time, I still told myself, though I knew it was stupid, that Goose Point was special.
Then one day Lindsay Edgecombe came into Tara Flute’s kitchen when I was standing there and put her face to mine and whispered, “Do you want to see something?” and in that moment my life changed forever. Since that day I’d never once been back.
Maybe that’s why I decide to take Izzy there, even though it’s absolutely freezing outside. I want to see if it’s still the same at all, or if I am. It’s important to me, for some reason. And besides, of all the things on my mental checklist, it’s the easiest. It’s not like a private jet’s just going to park itself outside my house. And skinny-dipping now will get me arrested or give me pneumonia or both.
So I guess this is the next best thing. And I guess that’s when it starts to hit me: the whole point is, you do what you can.


“Are you sure this is the right way?” Izzy’s bobbing next to me, wrapped in so many layers she looks like the abominable snowman. As usual she has insisted on accessorizing, and is wearing pink-and-black leopard-spotted earmuffs and two different scarves.
“This is the right way,” I say, even though at first I was positive we were in the wrong place. Everything is so small. The stream—a thin, frozen black trickle of water, and cobwebbed all over with ice—is no wider than a single step. The hill beyond it slopes gently upward, even though in my memory it’s always been a mountain.
But the worst part is the new construction. Someone bought the land back here, and there are two houses in different stages of completion. One of them is just a skeleton, rising out of the ground, all bleached wood and splinters and spikes, like a shipwreck washed up onto land. The other one is nearly finished. It’s enormous and blank-looking, like Ally’s house, and it squats there on the hill like it’s staring at us. It takes me a while to realize why: there are no blinds on any of the windows yet.
I feel heavy with disappointment. Coming here was obviously a bad idea, and I’m reminded of something my English teacher, Mrs. Harbor, once said during one of her random tangents. She said that the reason you can never go home again—we were studying a list of famous quotes and discussing their meaning, and that was one of them, by Thomas Wolfe, “You can’t go home again”—isn’t necessarily that places change, but that people do. So nothing ever looks the same.
I’m about to suggest we turn around, but Izzy has already leaped across the stream and is scampering up the hill.
“Come on!” she yells back over her shoulder. And then, when she’s only another fifty feet from the top, “I’ll race you!”
At least Goose Point is as big as I remember it. Izzy hoists herself up onto the flat top, and I climb up after her, my fingers already numb in my gloves. The surface of the rock is covered with brittle, frozen leaves and a layer of frost. There’s enough room for both of us to stretch out, but Izzy and I huddle close together so we’ll stay warm.
“So what do you think?” I say. “You think it’s a good hiding place?”
“The best.” Izzy tilts her head back to look at me. “You really think time goes slower here?”
I shrug. “I used to think that when I was little.” I look around. I hate how you can see houses from here now. It used to feel so remote, so secret. “It used to be a lot different. A lot better. There weren’t any houses, for one. So you really felt like you were in the middle of nowhere.”
“But this way if you have to pee, you can go and knock on someone’s door and just ask.” She lisps all of her s’s: thith, thomeone, jutht, athk.
I laugh. “Yeah, I guess so.” We sit for a second in silence. “Izzy?”
“Yeah?”
“Do—do the other kids ever make fun of you? For how you talk?”
I feel her stiffen underneath her layers and layers. “Sometimes.”
“So why don’t you do something about it?” I say. “You could learn to talk differently, you know.”
“But this is my voice.” She says it quietly but with insistence. “How would you be able to tell when I was talking?”
This is such a weird Izzy-answer I can’t think of a response to it, so I just reach forward and squeeze her. There are so many things I want to tell her, so many things she doesn’t know: like how I remember when she first came home from the hospital, a big pink blob with a perma-smile, and she used to fall asleep while grabbing on to my pointer finger; how I used to give her piggyback rides up and down the beach on Cape Cod, and she would tug on my ponytail to direct me one way or the other; how soft and furry her head was when she was first born; that the first time you kiss someone you’ll be nervous, and it will be weird, and it won’t be as good as you want it to be, and that’s okay; how you should only fall in love with people who will fall in love with you back. But before I can get any of it out, she’s scrambling away from me on her hands and knees, squealing.
“Look, Sam!” She slides up close to the edge and pries at something wedged in a fissure of rock. She turns around on her knees, holding it out triumphantly: a feather, pale white, edged with gray, damp with frost.
I feel like my heart is breaking in that second because I know I’ll never be able to tell her any of the things I need to. I don’t even know where to begin. Instead I take the feather from her and zip it into one of the pockets of my North Face jacket. “I’ll keep it safe,” I say. Then I lie back on the freezing stone and stare up at the sky, which is just beginning to darken as the storm moves in. “We should go home soon, Izzy. It’s going to rain.”
“Soon.” She lies down next to me, putting her head in the crook of my shoulder.
“Are you warm enough?”
“I’m okay.”
It’s actually not so cold once we’re huddled next to each other, and I unzip my jacket a little at the neck. Izzy rolls over on one elbow and reaches out, tugging on my gold bird necklace.
“How come Grandma didn’t give me anything?” she says. This is an old routine.
“You weren’t alive yet, birdbrain.”
Izzy keeps on tugging. “It’s pretty.”
“It’s mine.”
“Was Grandma nice?” This is also part of the routine.
“Yeah, she was nice.” I don’t remember much about her either, actually—she died when I was seven—except the motion of her hands through my hair when she brushed it, and the way she always sang show tunes, no matter what she was doing. She used to bake enormous orange-chocolate muffins, too, and she always made mine the biggest. “You would have liked her.”
Izzy blows air out between her lips. “I wish nobody ever died,” she says.
I feel an ache in my throat, but I manage to smile. Two conflicting desires go through me at the same time, each as sharp as a razorblade: I want to see you grow up and Don’t ever change. I put my hand on the top of her head. “It would get pretty crowded, Fizz,” I say.
“I’d move into the ocean,” Izzy says matter-of-factly.
“I used to lie here like this all summer long,” I tell her. “I’d come up here and just stare at the sky.”
She rolls over on her back so she’s staring up as well. “Bet this view hasn’t changed much, has it?”
What she says is so simple I almost laugh. She’s right, of course. “No. This looks exactly the same.”
I suppose that’s the secret, if you’re ever wishing for things to go back to the way they were. You just have to look up.
THROUGH THE DARK

I check my phone when I get home: three new text messages. Lindsay, Elody, and Ally have each texted me the exact same thing: Cupid Day <3 U. They were probably together when they sent it. That’s a thing we sometimes do, type up and send the exact same messages at exactly the same time. It’s stupid, but it makes me smile. I don’t reply, though. In the morning I sent Lindsay a text letting her know she should go to school without me, but even though we’re not fighting today, I felt weird tacking our usual “xxo” at the end. Somewhere—in some alternate time or place or life or something—I’m still mad at her and she’s mad at me.
It amazes me how easy it is for things to change, how easy it is to start off down the same road you always take and wind up somewhere new. Just one false step, one pause, one detour, and you end up with new friends or a bad reputation or a boyfriend or a breakup. It’s never occurred to me before; I’ve never been able to see it. And it makes me feel, weirdly, like maybe all of these different possibilities exist at the same time, like each moment we live has a thousand other moments layered underneath it that look different.
Maybe Lindsay and I are best friends and we hate each other, both. Maybe I’m only one math class away from being a slut like Anna Cartullo. Maybe I am like her, deep down. Maybe we all are: just one lunch period away from eating alone in the bathroom. I wonder if it’s ever really possible to know the truth about someone else, or if the best we can do is just stumble into each other, heads down, hoping to avoid collision. I think of Lindsay in the bathroom of Rosalita’s, and wonder how many people are clutching secrets like little fists, like rocks sitting in the pits of their stomachs. All of them, maybe.
The fourth text is from Rob and it just says, R u sick? I delete it and then shut off my phone.
Izzy and I spend the rest of the afternoon watching old DVDs, mostly old Disney and Pixar movies we both love, like The Little Mermaid and Finding Nemo. We make popcorn with extra butter and Tabasco sauce, the way my dad always makes it, and hunker down in the den with all the lights off while the sky outside grows darker and the trees start to whip around in the wind. When my mom comes home we petition her for a Formaggio Friday—we used to go to the same Italian restaurant every Friday night and that’s what we called it, because the restaurant (which had checked red-and-white plastic tablecloths and an accordion player and fake plastic roses on the tables) was so cheesy—and she says she’ll think about it, which means we’re going.
It’s been forever since I’ve been at home on a weekend night, and when my dad comes home and sees Izzy and me piled on the couch, he staggers through the door, clutching at his heart like he’s having a heart attack.
“Is it a hallucination?” he says, setting down his briefcase. “Could it be? Samantha Kingston? Home? On a Friday?”
I roll my eyes. “I don’t know. Did you do a lot of acid in the sixties? Could be a flashback.”
“I was two years old in 1960. I came too late for the party.” He leans down and pecks me on the head. I pull away out of habit. “And I’m not even going to ask how you know about acid flashbacks.”
“What’s an acid flashback?” Izzy crows.
“Nothing,” my dad and I say at the same time, and he smiles at me.
We do end up going to Formaggio’s (official name: Luigi’s Italian Home Kitchen), which actually isn’t Formaggio’s (or Luigi’s) anymore and hasn’t been for years. Five years ago a sushi restaurant moved in and replaced all of the fake art-deco tiles and glass lanterns with sleek metal tables and a long oak bar. It doesn’t matter, though. It will always be Formaggio’s to me.
The restaurant is super crowded, but we get one of the best tables, right next to the big tanks of exotic fish that sit next to the windows. As usual my dad makes a bad joke about how much he loves see-food restaurants, and my mother tells him to stick to architecture and leave comedy to the professionals. At dinner my mom’s extra nice to me because she thinks I’m going through breakup trauma, and Izzy and I order half the menu and wind up full on edamame and shrimp shumai and tempura and seaweed salad before the meal even comes. My dad has two beers and gets tipsy and entertains us with stories about crazy clients, and my mom keeps telling me to order whatever I want, and Izzy puts a napkin over her head and pretends to be a pilgrim tasting California rolls for the first time.
Up until then it’s a good day—one of the best. Close to perfect, really, even though nothing special happened at all. I guess I’ve probably had a lot of days like this, but somehow they’re never the ones you remember. That seems wrong to me now. I think of lying in Ally’s house in the dark and wondering whether I’ve ever had a day worth reliving. It seems to me like living this one again and again wouldn’t be so bad, and I imagine that’s what I’ll do—just go on like this, over and over, until time winds completely down, until the universe stops.
Just before we get our dessert, a big group of freshmen and sophomores I recognize from Jefferson come filing in. A few of them are still wearing JV swim jackets. They must have had a late meet. They seem so young, hair scraped away from their faces, ponytails, no makeup—totally different from the way they look when they show up to our parties, when it looks like they’ve just spent an hour and a half getting freebies at the MAC counter. A couple of them catch me staring and drop their eyes.
“Green tea and red bean ice cream.” The waitress sets down a big bowl and four spoons in front of us. Izzy goes to town on the red bean.
My dad groans and puts a hand on his stomach. “I don’t know how you can still be hungry.”
“Growing girl.” Izzy opens her mouth, showing off the ice cream mushed on her tongue.
“Gross, Izzy.” I pick up my spoon and scoop a little bit from the green-tea side.
“Sykes! Hey! Sykes!”
I whip around at the sound of her name. One of the swim-team girls is half standing out of her chair, waving. I scan the restaurant, looking for Juliet, but there’s only one person at the door. She’s thin and pale and very blond, and she’s standing and shaking her shoulders to get the rain off her jacket. It takes me a second to recognize her, but as she turns a complete circle, looking for her friends, I do: the Cupid from math class—the angel who delivered my roses.
When she sees the rest of her teammates, she raises her hand briefly and gives a quick flutter of her fingers. Then she starts threading her way over to them, and as she moves past our table, I catch a glimpse of her neon-blue-and-orange swim jacket and it’s like the whole room goes still and only those five letters remain, lit up like signs.
SYKES.
Juliet’s little sister.
“Earth to Sammy.” Izzy is poking me with the butt end of her spoon. “Your ice cream’s getting melty.”
“Not hungry anymore.” I put my spoon down and push away from the table.
“Where are you going?” Mom reaches out and puts her hand on my wrist, but I barely feel it.
“Five minutes.” And then I’m walking over to the swim-team table, the whole time staring at the pale girl and her heart-shaped face. I can’t believe I didn’t see the resemblance before. They’ve got the same wide-spaced blue eyes, the same translucent skin and pale lips. Then again, until recently I’ve never really looked at Juliet, even though I must have seen her ten thousand times.
The swim-team girls have gotten their menus, and they’re laughing and swatting each other. I distinctly hear one of them say Rob’s name—probably saying how cute he looks in his lacrosse jersey (I should know; I used to say it all the time). I’ve never cared less about anything. When I’m about four feet away from the table one of them spots me and instantly the whole table goes silent. The girl who was talking about Rob goes the color of the menu she’s holding.
Little Sykes is squeezed in at the very end of the table. I walk directly up to her.
“Hey.” Now that I’m standing here I’m not exactly sure why I came over. The funniest part about it is that I’m the one who’s nervous. “What’s your name?”
“Um…did I do something?” Her voice is actually trembling. The rest of the girls aren’t helping. They’re looking at me like they expect at any second I’m going to lunge forward and swallow her head or something.
“No, no. I just…” I give her a small smile. Now that I see it, the resemblance between her and Juliet unnerves me. “You have an older sister, right?”
Her mouth tightens into a thin line, and her eyes go cloudy, like she’s putting up a wall. I don’t blame her. She probably thinks I’m going to pick on her for having a freak for a big sister. It must happen a lot.
But she tilts up her chin and stares at me straight in the eye. It kind of reminds me of something Izzy would do. Sam’s not going to school, and I’m not going either. “Yeah. Juliet Sykes.” Then she waits patiently, waits for me to start laughing.
Her eyes are so steady I look down. “Yeah. I, um, know Juliet.”
“You do?” She raises her eyebrows.
“Well, kind of.” All the girls are staring at me now. I have a feeling they’re having a hard time keeping their jaws from dropping open. “She’s—she’s kind of my lab partner.”
I figure this is a safe bet. Science is mandatory, and everybody gets assigned lab partners.
Juliet’s sister’s face relaxes a little bit. “Juliet’s really good at bio. I mean, she’s really good at school.” She lets herself smile. “I’m Marian.”
“Hey.” Marian is a good name for her: a pure name, somehow. My palms are sweating. I wipe them on my jeans. “I’m Sam.”
Marian drops her eyes and says shyly, “I know who you are.”
Two arms circle around my waist. Izzy has come up behind me. The point of her chin pokes me in the side.
“Ice cream’s almost gone,” she says. “You sure you don’t want any?”
Marian smiles at Izzy. “What’s your name?”
“Elizabeth,” Izzy says proudly, then sags a little. “But everybody calls me Izzy.”
“When I was little everybody called me Mary.” Marian makes a face. “But now everybody calls me Marian.”
“I don’t mind Izzy that much,” Izzy says, chewing on her lip like she’s just decided it.
Marian looks up at me. “You have a little sister too, huh?”
Suddenly I can’t stand to look at her. I can’t stand to think about what will happen later. I know: the stillness of the house, the gunshot.
And then…what? Will she be the first one down the stairs? Will that final image of her sister be the one that lasts, that wipes out whatever other memories she’s stored up over the years?
I go into a panic, trying to think what kind of memories Izzy has of me—will have of me.
“Come on, Izzy. Let’s let the girls eat.” My voice is trembling, but I don’t think anyone notices. I pat Izzy on the head and she gallops back toward our table.
The girls at the table are getting more confident now. Smiles are sprouting up, and they’re all looking at me in awe, like they can’t believe how nice I’m being, like I’ve given them a present. I hate it. They should hate me. If they knew what kind of person I was, they would hate me, I’m sure of it.
I don’t know why Kent pops into my head right then, but he does. He would hate me too if he knew everything. The realization makes me strangely upset.
“Tell Juliet not to do it,” I blurt out, and then can’t believe I’ve said it.
Marian wrinkles her forehead. “Do what?”
“Science-project thing,” I say quickly, and then add, “she’ll know what I’m talking about.”
“Okay.” Marian’s beaming at me. I start to turn away, but she calls me back. “Sam!”
I turn around, and she claps her hand over her mouth and giggles, like she can’t believe she had the courage to say my name.
“I’ll have to tell her tomorrow,” she says. “Juliet’s going out tonight.” She says it like she’s saying, Juliet’s going to be valedictorian. I can just picture the scene. Mom and dad and sister downstairs, Juliet locked in her bedroom as usual, blasting music, alone. And then—miracle of miracles—she descends, hair swept back, confident, cool, announcing she is headed to a party. They must have been so happy, so proud. Their lonely little girl making good at the end of senior year.
To Kent’s party. To find Lindsay—to find me. To be pushed and tripped and soaked with beer.
The sushi’s not sitting so well with me all of a sudden. If they had any idea…
“I’ll definitely tell her tomorrow, though.” Marian beams at me, a headlight bearing down at me through the dark.


All the way home I’m trying to forget Marian Sykes. When my dad wishes me good night—he’s always ready to pass out after a beer, and tonight he had (gasp!) two—I’m trying to forget Marian Sykes. When Izzy comes in half an hour later, showered and clean-smelling in her ratty Dora pj’s, and plants a sloppy wet kiss on my cheek, I’m trying to forget her; and an hour after that, when my mother stands at my door and says, “I’m proud of you, Sam,” I’m still thinking of her.
My mother goes to bed. Silence fills the house. Somewhere in the deep darkness a clock is ticking, and when I close my eyes I picture Juliet Sykes coming toward me calmly, her shoes tapping against a wood floor, blood flowing from her eyes….
I sit up in bed, heart pounding. Then I get up, find my North Face in the dark.
This morning I swore that there was nothing in the world that could make me go back to Kent’s party, but here I am, tiptoeing down the stairs, edging along in the dark hallways, sneaking my mom’s keys off the shelf in the mudroom. She’s been amazingly human today, but the last thing I need to deal with is some big conversation of the what-makes-me-think-I-can-cut-school-and-then-go-out variety.
I try to tell myself that Juliet Sykes isn’t really my problem, but I keep imagining how horrible it would be if this were her day. If she had to live it over and over again. I think pretty much everybody—even Juliet Sykes—deserves to die on a better day than that.
The hinges on the back and front door squawk so loudly they might as well be alarm clocks (sometimes I think my parents have engineered this deliberately). In the kitchen I carefully spill some olive oil on a paper towel, and I rub this onto the hinges on the back door. Lindsay taught me this trick. She’s always developing new, better ways to sneak out, even though she has no curfew, and it doesn’t matter one way or the other when she leaves and when she comes home. I think she misses that, actually. I think that’s why she’s always meticulous about the details—she likes to pretend that she has to be.
The door with its Italian-seasoned hinges swings open with barely a whisper, and I’m out.


I haven’t really thought through why I’m heading to Kent’s, or what I’m going to do once I’m there, and instead of driving there directly, I find myself turning on random streets and dead-end cul-de-sacs, circling up and down. The houses are mostly set back from the street, and lit windows appear magically in the dark like hanging lanterns. It’s amazing how different everything looks at night—almost unrecognizable, especially in the rain. Houses sit hulking back on their lawns, brooding and alive. It looks so different from the Ridgeview of the day, when everything is clean and polished and trimmed neatly, when everything unfolds in an orderly way, husbands heading to their cars with coffee mugs, wives following soon after, dressed in pilates gear, tiny girls in Baby Gap dresses and car seats and Lexus SUVs and Starbucks cups and normalcy. I wonder which one is the true version.
There are hardly any cars on the road. I keep crawling along at fifteen miles per hour. I’m looking for something, but I don’t know what. I pass Elody’s street and keep going. Each streetlamp casts a neat funnel of light downward, illuminating the inside of the car briefly, before I’m left again in darkness.
My headlights sweep over a crooked green street sign fifty feet ahead: Serenity Place. I suddenly remember sitting in Ally’s kitchen freshman year while her mom chattered on the phone endlessly, pacing back and forth on the deck in bare feet and yoga pants. “She’s getting her daily dose of gossip,” Ally had said, rolling her eyes. “Mindy Sachs is better than Us Weekly.” And Lindsay had put in how ironic it was that Mrs. Sachs lived on Serenity Place—like she doesn’t bring the noise with her—and it was the first time I really understood the meaning of the word ironic.
I yank my wheel at the last second and brake, rolling down Serenity Place. It’s not a long street—there are no more than two dozen houses on it—and like many streets in Ridgeview, ends in a cul-de-sac. My heart leaps when I see a silver Saab parked neatly in one of the driveways. The license plate reads: MOM OF4. That’s Mrs. Sachs’s car. I must be close.
The next house down is number fifty-nine. It is marked with a tin mailbox in the shape of a rooster, which stretches up from a flowerbed that is at this point in the year no more than a long patch of black dirt. SYKES is printed along the rooster’s wing, in letters so small you have to be looking before you can see them.
I can’t really explain it, but I feel like I would have known the house anyway. There’s nothing wrong with it—it’s no different from any other house, not the biggest, not the smallest, decently taken care of, white paint, dark shutters, a single light burning downstairs. But there’s something else, some quality I can’t really identify that makes it look like the house is too big for itself, like something inside is straining to get out, like the whole place is about to bust its seams. It’s a desperate house, somehow.
I turn into the driveway. I have no business being here, I know that, but I can’t help it. It’s like something’s tugging me inside. The rain is coming down hard, and I grab an old sweatshirt from the backseat—Izzy’s, probably—and use it to shield my head as I sprint from the car to the front porch, my breath clouding in front of me. Before I can think too much about what I’m doing, I ring the doorbell.
It takes a long time for someone to answer the door, and I do a little jog, my breath steaming out in front of me, trying to stay warm. Finally there’s a shuffling sound from inside, and then a scraping of hinges. The door swings open, and a woman stands there, blinking at me confusedly: Juliet’s mother. She is wearing a bathrobe, which she holds closed with one hand. She is as thin as Juliet and has the same clear blue eyes and pale skin as both of her daughters. Looking at her, I am reminded of a wisp of smoke curling up into the dark.
“Can I help you?” Her voice is very soft.
I’m kind of thrown. For some reason I expected Marian would be the one to come to the door. “My name is Sam—Samantha Kingston. I’m looking for Juliet.” Because it worked the first time I add, “She’s my lab partner.”
From inside, a man—Juliet’s father, I guess—shouts, “Who is it?” The voice is barking and loud, and so different from Mrs. Sykes’s voice I unconsciously shuffle backward.
Mrs. Sykes jumps a little, and turns her head quickly, inadvertently swinging the door open an extra couple of inches. The hallway behind her is dark. Swampy blue and green shadows dance up one wall, images projected from a television in a room I can’t see. “It’s no one,” she says quickly, her voice directed into the darkness behind her. “It’s for Juliet.”
“Juliet? Someone’s here for Juliet?” He sounds exactly like a dog. Bark, bark, bark, bark. I fight a wild, nervous urge to laugh.
“I’ll take care of it.” Mrs. Sykes turns back to me. Again, the door swings closed with her movement, as though she is leaning on it for support. Her smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “Juliet’s not home right now. Is there something I can help you with?”
“I, um, missed school today. We had this big assignment….” I trail off helplessly, starting to regret having come. Despite my North Face, I’m shivering like a maniac. I must look like a maniac too, hopping from foot to foot, holding a sweatshirt over my head for an umbrella.
Mrs. Sykes seems to notice, finally, that I’m standing in the rain. “Why don’t you come in,” she says, and steps backward into the hall. I follow her inside.
An open door to the left leads directly off the hall: that’s where the television is. I can just make out an armchair and the silhouette of someone sitting there, the edge of an enormous jaw touched with blue from the screen. I remember what Lindsay said then, about Juliet’s dad being an alcoholic. I vaguely remember hearing that same rumor, and something else too—that there’d been an accident, something about semi-paralysis or pills or something. I wish I’d paid more attention.
Mrs. Sykes catches me looking and walks quickly over to the door, pulling it shut. It is now so dark I can barely see, and I realize I’m still cold. If the heat is on in the house, I can’t feel it. From the TV room I hear the sounds of a horror-film scream, and the steady syncopated rhythm of machine gun fire.
Now I’m definitely regretting coming. For a second I have this wild fantasy that Juliet comes from a whole family of crazy serial killers, and that at any second Mrs. Sykes is going to go Silence of the Lambs on me. The whole family’s wacked, that’s what Lindsay had said. The darkness is pressing all around me, stifling, and I almost cry out with gratitude when Mrs. Sykes switches on a light and the hall appears lit up and normal, and not full of dead human trophies or something. There’s a dried flower arrangement on a side table decorated with lace, next to a framed family photo. I wish I could look at it more closely.
“Was it important, this assignment?” Mrs. Sykes asks, almost in a whisper. She shoots a nervous glance in the direction of the TV room, and I wonder if she thinks she’s being too loud.
“I just…I kind of promised Juliet I would pick up some stuff for our makeup presentation on Monday.” I try to lower my voice, but she still winces. “I thought Juliet said she would be home tonight.”
“Juliet went out,” she says, and then, as if she’s unused to saying the words and is testing them on her tongue, repeats, “She went out. But maybe she left it for you?”
“I could look for it,” I say. I want to see her room, I realize: that’s why I’m here. I need to see it. “She probably just dumped it on her bed or something.” I try to sound casual, like Juliet and I are on really good terms with each other—like it’s not weird for me to waltz into her house at ten thirty on a Friday night and try to weasel my way into her bedroom.
Mrs. Sykes hesitates. “Maybe I can call her cell phone,” she says, and then adds apologetically, “Juliet hates to have anyone in her room.”
“You don’t have to call her,” I say quickly. Juliet will probably tell her mom to sic the cops on me. “It’s not that important. I’ll pick it up tomorrow.”
“No, no. I’ll call her. It will just take a second.” Juliet’s mom is already disappearing into the kitchen. It’s amazing how quickly and soundlessly she moves, like an animal slipping in and out of the shadows.
I consider jetting out while she’s in the kitchen. I think about going home, crawling into bed, watching old movies on my computer. Maybe I’ll make a pot of coffee and sit up all night long. If I never go to sleep, maybe today will have to turn into tomorrow. I wonder idly how long I can go without sleep before I flip my shit and start running down the street in my underwear, hallucinating purple spiders.
But instead I just stand there, waiting. There’s nothing else to do, so I take a few steps forward and bend down to look at the photograph on the table. For a second I’m confused: it’s a picture of an unfamiliar woman, probably twenty-five or thirty, with her arms wrapped around a good-looking guy in a flannel shirt. The colors are all saturated and Technicolor-bright, and the couple looks perfect, sparkling, all white teeth and dazzling smiles and beautiful brown hair. Then I see the words printed in the lower bottom corner of the picture—ShadowCast Images, Inc.—and realize that this isn’t even a real family photo. It’s one of the generic pictures that gets sold along with the picture frame, a shiny, happy advertisement for all the shiny, happy moments you can capture forever inside the 5" × 7" sterling silver frame with butterfly detail. No one has bothered to replace it.
Or maybe the Sykes family doesn’t have too many shiny, happy moments to remember.
I pull away quickly, wishing I hadn’t looked. Even though it’s just a picture of two models, I feel, weirdly, like I’ve seen something way too personal, like I’ve accidentally caught a glimpse of someone’s inner thigh or nose hairs or something.
Mrs. Sykes still isn’t back so I wander out of the hall into the living room on the right. It is mostly dark, and it’s all plaids and lace and dried flowers. It looks as though it hasn’t been redecorated since the fifties.
There’s a single, dull light shining near the window, casting a circular reflection on the black pane of glass, a version of the room appearing in miniature there.
And a face.
A screaming face pressed up against the window.
I let out a squeak of fear before I realize that this, too, is a reflection. There’s a mask mounted on a table just in front of the window, facing outward. I go over to it and lift it carefully from its perch. It’s a woman’s face crafted from newspaper and red stitching, which is crisscrossed over the skin like horrible scars. Words run up the bridge of the nose and across the forehead, certain headlines visible or halfway visible, like BEAUTY REMEDY and TRAGEDY STRIKES, and little scraps of paper are unfurling from various places on her face, like she’s molting. The mouth and the eyes are cut completely away, and when I lift the mask to my face, it fits well. The reflection in the window is awful; I look like something diseased, or a monster from a horror movie. I can’t look away.
“Juliet made that.”
The voice behind me makes me jump. Mrs. Sykes has reappeared and is leaning against the door, frowning at me.
I pop the mask off, return it quickly to its perch. “I’m so sorry. I saw it and…I just wanted to try it on,” I finish lamely.
Mrs. Sykes comes over and rearranges the mask, straightening it, making sure it’s aligned correctly. “When Juliet was younger she was always drawing, always sketching or painting something or sewing her own dresses.” Mrs. Sykes shrugs, flutters a hand. “I don’t think she’s very interested in that stuff now.”
“Did you talk to Juliet?” I ask nervously, waiting for her to kick me out.
Mrs. Sykes blinks at me several times, as though trying to squeeze me into focus. “Juliet…” she repeats, and then shakes her head. “I called her phone a couple of times. She didn’t answer. She doesn’t usually go out on the weekends….” Mrs. Sykes looks at me helplessly.
“I’m sure she’s fine,” I say as cheerfully as I can, feeling like each word is a knife going down into my stomach. “She probably didn’t hear her phone.”
Suddenly the thing I want most of all is to get out of there. I can’t stand to lie to Mrs. Sykes. She looks so sad, standing in her nightgown, ready for bed—as though she’s already asleep, sort of. That’s what the whole house feels like, as though it’s wrapped up in a heavy sleep, the kind that stifles you, won’t let you wake, drags you back into the sheets, drowning, even when you fight it.
I imagine Juliet sneaking up to her room in the dark, and the silence, through the atmosphere of sleep so thick it feels solid, the lullaby of creaking floorboards and quietly hissing radiators, the slow revolutions of people orbiting wordlessly around one another…. And then…
Bang.
Mrs. Sykes walks me back to the front hall. “You can come by tomorrow,” she says. “I’m sure Juliet will have everything ready by then. She’s usually very responsible. A good girl.”
“Sure. Tomorrow.” I don’t even like to say the word, and I wave a quick good-bye before dashing once again through the dark to my car.
It’s even colder than it was earlier. The rain, half ice, pings off the hood of my car as I sit there waiting for the engine to warm up, blowing on my hands and shivering, grateful to be out of there. As soon as I’m out of the house, a weight eases up off my chest, like the atmosphere and pressure inside is different, heavier. My first impression was right: it really is a desperate house. I see Juliet’s mom silhouetted by the window. I wonder if she’s waiting for me to leave or for her daughter to come home.
That’s when I make a decision. I know what I’ll do. I’ll go to Kent’s house and I’ll catch Juliet, and if I have to, I will hit her in the face. I’ll make her see how stupid the whole death idea is. (It’s certainly no picnic for me.) If it comes down to it, I’ll tie her up in the back of my car so she can’t get her hands on the gun.
I realize I’ve never really done something good for someone else, at least not for a while. I volunteer sometimes for Meals on Wheels, but that’s because colleges like that kind of thing; BU especially mentioned charity on the application portion of their website. And obviously I’m nice to my friends, and I give great birthday gifts (I once spent a month and a half collecting cow-shaped saltshakers to give to Ally, because she loves cows and salt). But I don’t usually do good things just for the hell of it. This will be my good thing.
Then I have a glimmer of an idea. I remember when we were studying Dante in English, and Ben Gowan kept asking if the souls in purgatory ever got cast down into hell (Ben Gowan once got suspended for three days for drawing a picture of a bomb blowing up our cafeteria and all of these decapitated heads flying everywhere, so for him the question was normal), and Mrs. Harbor went off on one of her tangents and said that no, that wasn’t possible, but that some modern Christian thinkers believed you could go up from purgatory into heaven once you’d done enough time there. I’ve never really believed in heaven. It always sounded like a crazy idea: everybody happy and reunited, Fred Astaire and Einstein doing a tango on the clouds, that kind of stuff.
But then again, I never really believed I’d have to relive one day forever, either. It’s no crazier than what’s already happened to me. Maybe the whole point is I have to prove that I’m a good person. Maybe I have to prove that I deserve to move on.
Maybe Juliet Sykes is the only thing between me and an eternity of chocolate fountains and perfect love and guys who always call when they say they will and banana sundaes that actually help you burn calories.
Maybe she’s my ticket out.
UNFASHIONABLY LATE

I don’t even bother pulling into Kent’s driveway. I’m not planning on being here long, and I don’t want to get blocked in. Besides, something about tramping through the woods in the rain appeals to me. It’s a trial, another way I can sacrifice myself. And from my very limited memories of Sunday school (my mom gave up the fight after I threw a tremendous tantrum when I was seven and threatened to convert to voodoo, even though I wasn’t sure exactly what that was), I know that that’s how it works: you have to sacrifice something.
I pull over onto the shoulder of Route 9, grabbing Izzy’s sweatshirt again, which is now soaking wet. Still, it’s better than nothing. I drape it over my head and get out of the car, pausing for just a second. The road is empty, stretches of black interspersed with weak pools of yellow light from the streetlamps. I try to locate the exact spot where Lindsay’s car went spiraling off the road that first night, but it all looks the same. It could have been anywhere. I reach back once more for some memory of life beyond the collision, beyond the blackness, but I get nothing.
I grab a flashlight from the trunk and set off through the woods.
It’s a longer walk than I would have thought, and the ground alternates between a thin coat of hard ice and slurpy gloop that sucks at my purple New Balances like quicksand. After a few minutes I can hear the faint throb of music from the party, pulsing through the darkness like it belongs there, like its rhythm is part of the night. It’s another ten minutes before I see the faint twinkle of lights flashing sporadically beyond the trees—thank God, since I was beginning to think I was walking in circles—and another five before the woods thin out and I can see the house, a big pile of ice-cream cake sitting on that lawn, shimmering in and out as the rain bends and splits the lights from the porch. I’m totally freezing, and 100 percent regretting my decision to come on foot. That’s the whole problem with sacrifice. It’s a pain, literally.
As soon as I walk through the door, two girls giggle and a whole group of juniors goes totally gape-jawed. I don’t blame them. I know I must look like shit. Before leaving the house, I didn’t even bother to change out of my lounge pants—a pair of way oversized velour sweats my mom gave me back when they were still in.
I don’t waste any time on the juniors, though. I’m already worried I may have arrived too late.
Tara is coming down the stairs as I’m pushing my way up, and I grab her, leaning into her ear. “Juliet Sykes!” I have to yell it.
“What?” she yells back, smiling.
“Juliet Sykes! Is she here?”
Tara taps her ear to show she can’t hear me. “You’re looking for Lindsay?”
Courtney is behind Tara and leans forward, flopping her chin on Tara’s shoulder. “We found the secret stash—rum and stuff. Tara broke a vase.” She giggles. “You want some?”
I shake my head. I’ve never been this sober around people this wasted, and I say a brief prayer that I’m not half as annoying as they are when I’m drunk. I continue up the stairs as Tara yells, “Lindsay’s in the back.”
Before I’m totally out of earshot I hear Courtney shriek, “Did you see what she’s wearing?”
I take a deep breath and tell myself it doesn’t matter. What matters is finding Juliet. I can at least do that one thing.
But with every step I’m losing hope. The upstairs hallway is totally packed, and unless she hasn’t come to the party at all—which seems like too much to hope—it seems unlikely that she hasn’t already left.
Still, I push on, finally making it to the very back room. Lindsay catapults on me as soon as I get into the room—she actually leaps over five people—and for a second I’m so grateful to see her, happy and drunk and my best friend, and to get treated to one of her famous super-squish hugs, that I forget why I’m here.
“Bad girl.” She slaps my hand as she pulls away. “You cut school but come out to party? Naughty, naughty.”
“I’m looking for someone,” I say. I scan the room: Juliet’s not here. Not that I expected her to be, I don’t know, sitting on the couch and chatting it up with Jake Somers, but it’s instinct—and wishful thinking—to look.
“Rob’s downstairs.” Lindsay steps back and holds up her hand, framing me in the angle between her thumb and forefinger. “You look like the homeless man who stole Wal-Mart. Are you trying not to get laid or something?”
Irritation flares up again. Lindsay, who always has something to say.
“Have you seen Juliet Sykes?” I ask.
Lindsay stares at me for a split second and then bursts out laughing. “Are you serious?”
A feeling of enormous relief washes over me. Maybe she never showed. Maybe she had car trouble, or lost her nerve, or—
“She called me a bitch.” In that moment Lindsay shatters me. She did come. “Can you believe it?” Lindsay’s still cracking up. She loops one arm around my shoulder and calls out, “Elody! Ally! Sammy’s here! And she’s looking for her best friend, Juliet!”
Elody doesn’t even turn around; she’s too busy with Steve Dough. But Ally swings in my direction, smiles, yells, “Hi, sweetie!” and then holds up the empty bottle of vodka.
“If you see Juliet,” she calls out, “ask her what she did with the rest of my drink!” She and Lindsay think this is hilarious, and Lindsay calls back, “Psychotini!”
I am too late. The realization makes me feel sick, and my anger at Lindsay comes rushing back.
“My best friend?” I repeat. “That’s funny. I thought you were the one who was buddy-buddy with Juliet.”
“What are you talking about?” Lindsay’s face gets serious.
“Childhood friends. Best friends. Rug rats. Sand bunnies.” Lindsay looks like she’s about to say something again, but I cut her off. “I saw the pictures. So what happened? Did she catch you farting or something? See you blow a snot rocket? Discover that the famous Lindsay Edgecombe isn’t perfect after all? What did she do that was so bad?”
Lindsay opens her mouth and then closes it. “She’s a freak,” she whispers fiercely, but I see something in her eyes I’ve never seen before, an expression I can’t quite identify.
“Whatever.” I have to find Juliet Sykes.
I fight my way back downstairs, ignoring the people calling my name, tapping my shoulder, and whispering about the fact that I’ve shown up in public looking like I’m about to go to sleep—which is, of course, exactly what happened. I figure if I’m quick enough I can catch Juliet on the way out. She must have parked somewhere. She’s probably blocked in. It will take an hour to get people to move their cars (if she can even convince anybody to help at all, which is doubtful) and even longer if she decides to hoof it home.
Thankfully I make it downstairs without a run-in with Rob. The last thing I need is to explain myself to him. There’s a group of sophomores standing near the entryway, looking terrified and more or less sober, so I take my shot with them.
“Have you seen Juliet Sykes?”
They stare at me blankly.
I sigh, swallowing my frustration. “Blond hair, blue eyes, tall.” They’re still looking at me vacantly, and I realize I’m not exactly sure how to describe her. Loser, I almost say—I would have said three days ago. But now I can’t get it out. “Pretty,” I say, testing the word. When that doesn’t work I squeeze my fists into my palms. “Probably soaking wet.”
Finally the girls’ faces light up with recognition. “Bathroom,” one of them says, pointing to a little alcove just before the kitchen. There’s a line of people gathered in front of a closed door. One of them is crossing her legs and hopping up and down. One of them keeps rapping on the door. One of them points to her watch and says something I can’t hear, but she looks pissed.
“She’s been in there for, like, twenty minutes,” a sophomore says. My stomach drops to my feet and I almost get sick right there.
Bathrooms have pills. Bathrooms have razors. People lock themselves in bathrooms when they want to do bad things, like have sex or throw up. Or kill themselves.
It’s not supposed to go this way. I’m supposed to save you. I elbow over to the bathroom, shoving through the line of people crowded there.
“Move,” I say to Joanne Polerno, and she drops her hand immediately and steps aside.
I press my ear to the door, listening for sounds of crying or retching or anything. Nothing. My stomach does another dip. Then again, it’s almost impossible to hear, with the music pounding so loudly.
I knock softly and call out, “Juliet? Are you okay?”
“Maybe she’s sleeping,” Chrissy Walker says. I shoot her a look that I hope will communicate how stupidly unhelpful that comment is.
I knock again, mashing my face against the door. It’s hard to tell whether I hear a faint moan from inside—at that second the music shrieks even louder, drowning out everything else. But I can imagine her there, fading, just beyond the door, wrists hacked up and blood everywhere….
“Get Kent,” I say, sucking in a long breath.
“Who?” Joanne says.
“I have to pee,” Rachel says, hopping up and down.
“Kent McFuller. Now. Do it,” I bark at Joanne, and she looks startled but scurries off into the hallway. Every second feels like an eternity. It’s the first time I really understand what Einstein said about relativity, how time bends around and stretches out like a gummy bear.
“What do you care, anyway?” Rachel says, grumbling just loud enough so I can hear.
I don’t answer. The truth is I have no answer, really. I have to save Juliet—I feel that. It’s my good thing. I have to save myself.
I’m suddenly not sure if that makes me better or worse than someone who does nothing, so I push the thought out of my mind.
Joanne comes back with Kent in tow. He looks worried, his forehead crinkly underneath the shaggy brown hair that’s falling down over his eyes. My stomach does a flip. Yesterday we were in a dark room no more than two inches apart, so close I could feel the amazing heat of his skin.
“Sam,” he says, and leans forward to grab my wrist, staring deep in my eyes. “Are you okay?”
I’m so surprised by the sudden touch I pull away just a fraction, and Kent takes back his hand. I don’t know how to explain the way this makes my insides go hollow.
“I’m fine,” I say, totally aware in that moment of how ridiculous I must look to him: the messed up hair, the sweatpants. He, by comparison, looks actually kind of put together. There’s something scruffy-cute about his checkered sneakers and loose, low-belted khakis, and the sleeves of his oxford are rolled up, showing off a tan he got God-knows-where. Certainly not in Ridgeview in the past six months.
He looks confused. “Joanne said you needed me.”
“I do need you.” It comes out weird and intense-sounding, and I feel a furious fit of blushing coming on. “I mean, I don’t need you. I just need—” I take a deep breath. I think I see a momentary spark in Kent’s eyes and it distracts me. “I’m worried Juliet Sykes is locked in the bathroom.” Just after I say it, I wince. I sound ridiculous. He’ll probably tell me I’m being insane. After all, he doesn’t know what I know.
The spark dies and his face gets serious. He steps beyond me and tries the door, then he pauses for a second, thinking. He doesn’t tell me I’m crazy or paranoid or anything. He simply says, “There’s no key. I could try to pick the lock. We can always break it open if we have to.”
“I’m going to pee upstairs,” Rachel announces, then turns on her heel and wobbles off.
Kent reaches in his back pocket and pulls out a handful of safety pins. “Don’t ask,” he says when I raise my eyebrows. I hold up my hands and don’t push the issue. I’m grateful he’s taking charge without asking questions.
He squats down, bends the safety pin backward, and uses it to jimmy the lock. He’s keeping his ear pressed to the door like he’s listening for a click. Finally my curiosity gets the better of me.
“Do you have an after-school job robbing banks or something?”
He grimaces, tries the door, slips the safety pin back in his pocket, and selects a credit card from his wallet. “Hardly.” He wedges the credit card in the crevice between the frame and the door and wiggles. “My mom used to keep the junk food locked behind our pantry door.”
He straightens up and twists the handle. The door opens an inch, and my heart flies up into my throat. Part of me is hoping that Juliet’s face will appear, furious, or that the door will be slammed closed again from inside. That’s what I would do if someone tried to open the bathroom door when I was inside. That is, if I was still awake—alive—to close it.
But the door just sits there, open that little inch. Kent and I just look at each other at first. I think we’re both scared to open it any farther.
Then Kent nudges the door with his toe, calling “Juliet?” as the door swings open—again, time stretches; it seems to take forever—and in that second, or half second, I somehow have the time to conjure up every horrible possibility, to imagine her body crumpled on the ground.
And then the door finishes swinging, and the bathroom is there: perfectly clean, perfectly normal, and perfectly empty. The lights are on, and there’s a damp hand towel draped over the sink. The only thing slightly out of the ordinary is the window. It’s wide open, and rain has been battering in onto the tiles below.
“She went out the window,” Kent says at the same time I’m thinking it. I can’t quite place his tone. It’s half sad, half admiring.
“Shit.” Of course. After a humiliation like that, she would have looked for the easiest escape possible, the one that would attract the least attention. The window looks out onto a sloping side lawn and, of course, the woods. She must have made a dash for it, planning to loop around back toward the driveway.
I hurtle out of the bathroom. Kent calls, “Wait!” but I’m already down the hall and out the door, pushing onto the porch.
I grab my flashlight and the sweatshirt from behind a planter where I’d left them and head out across the lawn. The rain isn’t so bad just at the moment, more of a freezing mist falling in solid layers from above, but it’s the kind of cold that goes right through you. I keep my flashlight trained on the ground as I sweep around to the side of the house. I’m not exactly a master tracker, but I’ve read enough old mysteries to know that you should always look for footprints. Unfortunately, the mud is so gross and damp that everything looks churned up. Still, at the base of the bathroom I find a deep indent, where she must have landed, and a series of scuffly-looking marks going, as I suspected, straight to the woods.
I wrap my sweatshirt more tightly around me and plunge in after her. I can’t see anything but a few feet of light extending in a bouncing circle in front of me. I’ve never been scared of the dark exactly, but the endless scrapings and groanings of the trees and the constant patter of rain through the branches make it sound like the woods are alive and babbling away, like one of those crazy people you see in New York City who are always pushing grocery carts filled with empty bags.
There’s no point in trying to follow Juliet’s footprints. They’re totally invisible in the soggy paste of decaying leaves, mud, and rotting bark. Instead I strike out in what I hope is the general direction of the road, hoping to catch her on her walk home. I’m pretty sure this is what she intends to do. If you’re so desperate to ditch a party—and the people in it—that you climb out a window, it’s hardly likely that you’ll stroll back minutes later and ask people to move their Hondas.
The rain starts coming down harder, rattling through the icy branches, the sound of bone on bone. My chest aches from the cold, and even though I’m moving as fast as I can, my fingers feel numb and I’m having trouble holding on to the flashlight. I can’t wait to get to my car and turn the heat on full blast. Then I’ll drive the streets looking for her. If worse comes to worse I’ll intercept her at her house. If only I make it out of these freaking woods.
I push myself forward even faster, half jogging now, trying to stay warm. Every few moments I call out “Juliet!” but I don’t expect to get an answer. The patter of the rain is getting heavier and more constant, big fat drops of it splashing on the back of my neck and making me gasp.
“Juliet! Juliet!”
The patter turns into a rush. Daggers of icy water slice into me. I keep up the jog, the flashlight like lead in my hand. I can’t feel my toes anymore; I don’t even know if I’m going in the right direction. I could be running around in circles, for all I know.
“Juliet!”
I start to get scared. I turn a full circle, sweeping my flashlight through the darkness: nothing but dense trees pressing in on either side of me. It didn’t take me this long to walk through the woods on the way to Kent’s, I’m sure of it. My fingers feel like they’re twice the size they should be, and as I’m spinning, the flashlight flies out of my hand. There’s a crash and the sound of splintering. The light sputters and dies, and I’m left totally in darkness.
“Shit. Shit, shit, shit.” Cursing out loud makes me feel better.
I take a few hesitant steps in the direction of the flashlight, keeping my arms out in front of me so I don’t collide with anything. After a few shuffling steps I drop to my knees, instantly destroying my house pants as wetness seeps through the fabric. I rake my hands in the sludge in front of me, trying hard not to think too much about what I’m touching. Rain is driving into my eyes. My fleece is clinging to my skin, and it smells like wet dog. I’m shivering uncontrollably. This is what happens when you try to help people. You get screwed. I feel a lump building in my throat.
In order to keep from a total meltdown, I think about what Lindsay would say if she were stuck with me in the middle of the night in the middle of woods that extend who knows how many miles in the middle of a monsoon, if she saw me tearing at the ground like a deranged mole, completely covered in mud.
“Samantha Kingston,” she would say, smiling, “I always knew deep down you were a very dirty girl.”
The thought only cheers me up for a second. Lindsay’s not here with me. Lindsay’s probably making out with Patrick in a toasty warm and very dry room right now, or passing a joint back and forth and wondering out loud to Ally why I’ve been acting so freak-tastic. I’m completely lost, completely miserable, and completely alone. The ache in my throat intensifies until I feel like there’s an animal trying to claw its way out of my throat.
And I’m suddenly angry at Juliet—so angry I could punch her. I don’t see how she can be so selfish. No matter what—no matter how bad things are—she has a choice. Not all of us are so lucky.
That’s when I hear the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard in the entirety of my seventeen years of life (plus five days of life-after-death).
I hear honking.
The sound is far away, and it fades almost as soon as it begins—a low wail through the night as someone speeding by leans on the horn. I’m closer to the road than I thought.
I scramble to my feet and go as quickly as I can toward the source of the sound, keeping my arms outstretched like a mummy, slapping away branches and the slick touch of the evergreens. My heart is pounding with excitement, and I strain for a noise—any other noise—to guide me. After a minute or so I hear another honk, this one closer. I could sob with relief. Another minute and I hear the thudding bass of a stereo system, tuning in and then out again as a car speeds away. Another minute and I can see, faintly through the trees, the glimmer of the light from the streetlamps. I’ve found the road.
As the lights get closer and the trees thin, I can see a little better, and I start booking it. I’m so busy fantasizing about piles and piles of blankets—I’ll take every single one I can find in the house—and hot chocolate and warm slippers and showers that I don’t see Juliet Sykes until the last minute, when I nearly trip over her.
She’s huddled seven or eight feet from the road, her arms wrapped around her knees. Water has turned her white top totally transparent, and I can see her bra—striped—and all the bones of her spine. I’m so surprised to come across her like that, I forget, momentarily, that she’s the whole reason I’m out here in the first place.
“What are you doing?” I say, loudly over the rain.
She looks up at me. The streetlamps light up her face. Her eyes are dull. “What are you doing?” she parrots back at me.
“I’m, um, looking for you actually.” Her face doesn’t register any emotion—no surprise, no shock, no anger, nothing. It throws me. “Aren’t you cold?”
She shakes her head, just barely, and keeps staring at me with those dull, tired eyes. This isn’t nearly how I pictured it would be. I thought she would be happy that I’ve come to look for her—grateful, even. Or maybe she would be mad. In any case, I thought she would be something.
“Listen, Juliet—” I can hardly talk, my teeth are chattering so badly. “It’s, like, almost one o’clock in the morning, and it’s freezing out here. Do you maybe want to come over to my house for a bit? And talk? I know what happened in there”—I nod back in the direction of Kent’s house—“and I feel really bad about it.” I just want her to get in the damn car, but it’s true; I do feel bad.
Juliet stares at me for a long, hard second, the rain blurring the few feet between us. She starts to stand, and I feel sure that’s done it, but instead she turns away and takes several steps toward the road.
“Sorry,” she says. Her voice isn’t apologetic, though. It’s flat.
I reach out and grab her wrist. It feels impossibly tiny in my hand, like this one time I found a baby bird near Goose Point, and I picked it up and it died there, taking its final, gasping, fluttering breaths in my palm. Juliet doesn’t pull away, but she stares at my hand like it’s a snake about to bite her.
“Listen,” I try again. “Listen. I know this is going to sound crazy, but…” The wind rushes through the trees and releases a new volley of rain. “I have a feeling that we have something in common, you and me. If we could just go somewhere and talk about it…”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Juliet says. She stares out at the road, and I think I see a small, sad smile playing on her lips. Then it’s gone.
I’ve been outside too long. My mind is grinding to a halt. Nothing’s making sense anymore. Weird images keep flashing through my head, a bizarre fantasy reel of warm things. A pool filled with steaming hot chocolate. A stack of blankets piled all the way to the roof of my house. And part of me just thinks, Screw it. Let her do what she’s going to do. Tomorrow there will be a big rewind anyway.
But there’s a bigger part of me—my inner bull, my mom used to call it—that says she owes me this. I’m covered in mud; I’m absolutely freezing; and half the population of Thomas Jefferson thinks I’m a pajama-wearing freak.
“How about we go to your house?” I figure she’ll have to go back there eventually. She gives me a strange look, and for a second I feel like she’s staring straight through me.
“Why are you doing this?” she says.
I have to yell even louder than before. Cars are starting to pull out of Kent’s driveway, zooming by us on the wet road. “I—I want to help you.”
She shakes her head, an infinitesimal gesture. “You hate me.”
She’s edging closer and closer to the road, and it’s making me extremely nervous. A car roars by us, bass pumping. It glitters when it passes under the streetlamp, and I can just make out the silhouette of someone laughing. Somewhere to my right I think I hear my name, but it’s hard to tell over the pounding rain.
“I don’t hate you. I don’t know you. But I’d like to change that. Start over.” I’m almost screaming now. I’m not sure if she can still hear me.
She says something I don’t hear. Another car goes flashing by, a silver bullet.
“What?”
Juliet turns her head a fraction of an inch and says, louder, “You’re right. You don’t know me.”
Another car. Laughter rings out as it passes. Someone throws a beer bottle into the woods and it shatters. Then I’m sure I hear someone calling my name, though I can’t tell exactly which direction it comes from. The wind shrieks, and I suddenly realize that Juliet’s only a half inch from the road, teetering on the thin line where the pavement begins, like she’s balancing on a tightrope.
“Maybe you should come away from the road,” I say, but all the time in the back of my head, there’s an idea growing and swelling, a horrible, sickening realization, massing up and taking shape like clouds on the horizon. Someone calls my name again. And then, still in the distance, I hear the throaty wail of “Splinter” by Fallacy pumping from someone’s car.
“Sam! Sam!” I recognize it as Kent’s voice now.
Last night for the last time…you said you would be mine again…
Juliet turns to face me then. She’s smiling, but it’s the saddest smile I’ve ever seen.
“Maybe next time,” she says. “But probably not.”
“Juliet,” I try to say, but the name catches in my throat. I feel like fear has turned me to stone. I want to say something, to move, to reach out and grab her, but time goes so quickly, and then the realization bursts and explodes as the music from the speakers gets louder and a silver Range Rover rockets out of the darkness. Like a bird or an angel—like she’s throwing herself off a cliff—Juliet lifts her arms and hurtles onto the road, and there’s a scream piercing the air and a sickening crunch, and it’s not until Juliet’s body flies sideways off the hood of Lindsay’s car and lands crumpled facedown in the road, and the Range Rover sails into the woods and crashes, splintering, crumpling against a tree, and long ribbons of smoke and flame begin licking the air, that I realize I’m the one screaming.
BEFORE I WAKE

Kent catches up to me then. “Sam,” he says breathlessly, eyes searching my face. “Are you okay?”
“Lindsay,” I whisper. It’s the only thing that I can think to say. “Lindsay and Elody and Ally are in that car.”
He turns to the road. Black pillars of smoke are rising out of the woods. From where we’re standing we can just see the battered metal bumper, rising like a finger over the dip of the earth.
“Wait here,” he says. It’s a miracle, but he sounds calm. He runs into the road, whipping his phone out, and I hear him yelling directions to someone on the other end. There’s been an accident. Fire. Route nine, just past Devon Drive. He kneels by Juliet’s body. At least one person hurt.
Other cars are squealing to a halt now. People climb out of their cars uncertainly, everyone suddenly sober, everyone speaking in whispers, staring at the tiny crumpled body in the road, at the smoke and fire licking up from the woods. Emma McElroy pulls over and gets out with her hands cupped over her mouth, eyes bugging out of her head, leaving the door to her Mini hanging open and the radio blasting. Jay-Z’s “99 Problems” booms through the night, and the normalcy of it is the most horrible thing of all. Someone shrieks, “For God’s sake, Emma, shut that off.” Emma scrambles back to her car, and then there’s silence except for the pounding of the rain, and the sounds of someone sobbing loudly.
I feel like I’m in a dream. I keep trying to move, but I can’t. I don’t even feel the rain anymore. I don’t feel my body.
There’s only one thought revolving around and around and around in my head: the flash of white just before we pin-wheeled into the yawning mouth of the woods, Lindsay yelling something I couldn’t quite make out.
Not sit or shit or sight.
Sykes.
Then a long, piercing wail comes from the other side of the woods, and Lindsay stumbles up to the road, her mouth open and tears streaming down her face. Kent is there, supporting Ally, who’s limping and coughing but looks okay.
Lindsay’s screaming, “Help! Help! Elody’s still in there! Somebody help her! Please!” She’s so hysterical her words swell together, transforming into an animal howl. She sinks down on the pavement and sobs, her head in her hands. Then another wailing joins in: sirens in the distance.
Nobody moves. Everything starts happening in short, choppy bursts—at least, that’s what it seems like to me—like I’m watching a movie while a strobe light goes on and off. More and more students massing in the rain, standing as still and silent as statues. The police sirens turning, lighting the scene up red, then white, then red, then white. Figures in uniform—an ambulance—a stretcher—two stretchers. Juliet’s body laid out neatly, tiny and fragile, just like the bird all those years ago. Lindsay throwing up as the second stretcher bears a body up from the totaled car, and Kent rubbing her back. Ally sobbing with her mouth open, which is weird, because I don’t hear a sound. At some point I lift my eyes to the sky and see that the rain has transformed into snow—fat, white flakes swirling out of the darkness as if by magic. I have no idea how long I’ve been standing there. I’m surprised to see that when I look back at the road there’s hardly anyone left there at all, just a few stragglers and a solitary police car and Kent, jumping up and down to keep warm, talking to an officer. The ambulances are gone. Lindsay’s gone. Ally’s gone.
Then Kent’s standing in front of me though I didn’t see him move. How did you do that? I try to say, but nothing comes out.
“Sam.” Kent’s speaking to me, and I get the feeling he’s said my name more than once. I feel a squeezing sensation and it takes me a second to realize he has his hands on my arms. It takes me a second to realize I still have arms, and in that moment it’s like I slam back into my body, and the force of everything I’ve seen hits me and my legs buckle and I slump forward. Kent catches me, holds me up.
“What happened?” I whisper, dazed. “Is Elody…? Is Juliet…?”
“Shhh.” His lips are close to my ear. “You’re freezing.”
“I have to go find Lindsay.”
“You’ve been out here for over an hour. Your hands are like ice.” He shrugs out of the heavy sweater he’s wearing and drapes it over me. There are white snowflakes caught in his lashes. He places his hands gently under my elbows and steers me back toward the driveway. “Come on. Let’s get you warm.”
I don’t have the strength to argue. I let him lead me to the house. His hands never leave me, and even though he’s barely grazing my back, I feel like without him I would fall.


It seems like we’re back at Kent’s house without even moving. Then we’re in the kitchen, and he’s pulling out a chair and putting me in it. His lips are moving and his tone is comforting, but I can’t understand what he’s saying. Then there’s a thick blanket over my shoulders and a shooting pain in my fingers and toes as the feeling comes back to them, as though someone’s sticking hot, sharp needles in me. Still, I can’t stop shivering. My teeth are clacking together with a noise like dice rattling in a cup.
The kegs are still in the corner, and there are half-empty cups everywhere, and cigarette butts swimming in them, but the music’s off and the house feels totally different without any people in it. My mind is focusing on a bunch of tiny details, ricocheting from one to the other like a Ping-Pong ball: the embroidered sign above the sink that says MARTHA STEWART DOES NOT LIVE HERE; the snapshots posted on the refrigerator, of Kent and his family on the beach somewhere, of relatives I don’t know, of old postcards from Paris, Morocco, San Francisco; rows of mugs displayed behind the glass cabinets, with slogans on them like CAFFEINE OR BUST and IT’S TEA TIME.
“One marshmallow or two?” Kent is saying.
“What?” My voice comes out croaky and weird. All my other senses come online in a rush: I hear the hissing of milk heating in a pot; Kent’s face comes into focus, sweet and concerned, bits of snow melting out of his shaggy brown hair. The blanket around my shoulders smells like lavender.
“I’ll just put in a couple,” Kent says, turning back to the stove. In a minute there’s an oversized mug (This one says HOME IS WHERE THE CHOCOLATE IS) steaming in front of me, filled with foamy hot chocolate—the real kind, not the kind you get from a package—and big, bobbing marshmallows. I don’t know whether I’ve asked for this out loud or whether he’s just read my mind.
Kent sits across from me at the table and watches me take a sip. It’s delicious, just sweet enough and full of cinnamon and something else I can’t identify, and I put the mug down with slightly steadier hands.
“Where’s Lindsay?” I say as the scene comes back to me: Lindsay on her knees in front of everyone, throwing up. She must have been out of her mind—Lindsay would never do something like that in public. “Is she okay?”
Kent nods, his eyes fixed on my face. “Lindsay’s fine. She had to go to the hospital to be checked out for shock and stuff. But she’s going to be okay.”
“She—Juliet came so fast.” I close my eyes, envisioning the white blur, and when I open them, Kent looks like his insides are getting torn out. “Is she…I mean, is Juliet…?”
He shakes his head once. “There was nothing they could do,” he says, so quietly if I didn’t know what he was going to say I would never have heard him.
“I saw her…” I start to speak and find I can’t. “I could have grabbed her. She was so close.”
“It was an accident.” Kent looks down. I’m not sure whether he really believes it.
No, it wasn’t, I want to say. I think of her strange half smile as she said, Maybe next time, but probably not, and close my eyes, willing the memory away.
“What about Ally? Is she okay?”
“Ally’s fine. Not even a scratch.” Kent’s voice gets stronger, but there’s a pleading sound to it, and I understand he’s trying to get me to stop talking—he doesn’t want me to ask what I’m about to ask.
“Elody?” My voice comes out in a whisper.
Kent looks away. A muscle works in his jaw.
“She was sitting in the front seat,” he says finally, as though each and every word hurts, and I think of Elody leaning forward and whining, Why does Sam always get shotgun? “The passenger side took most of the impact.”
I wonder if that’s how they would have explained it to my parents at the hospital—collision, passenger side, impact. “Is she…?” I can’t say the word.
He looks at me like he’s about to cry. He looks older than I’ve ever seen him, his eyes dark and full and sad. “I’m so sorry, Sam,” he says quietly.
“What are you telling me?” I ball my fists up so tightly I can feel my nails dig into my skin. “Are you saying she’s—that she’s—” I break off, still unable to say it. Saying it will make it real.
Kent looks like each word is something sharp he has to bring up from his stomach. “It was—it would have been instant. Painless.”
“Painless?” I repeat, my voice shaking. “Painless? You don’t know that. You can’t know that.” There’s a fist in my throat. “Is that what they said? They said it was painless? Like it was peaceful? Like it was okay?”
Kent reaches for my hand across the table. “Sam…”
“No.” I scrape my chair back from the table and stand up. My whole body is vibrating with rage. “No. Don’t tell me it’s going to be okay. Don’t tell me it didn’t hurt her. You don’t know—you have no idea—none of you have any idea how much it hurts. It hurts—”
I’m not even sure whether I’m talking about Elody or myself. Kent stands up and wraps his arms around me. I find myself with my head buried in his shoulder, sobbing. He keeps me pressed tightly to him, and he’s making little noises into my hair, and before I totally let go of everything and succumb to the blackness washing through me, I have the strangest, dumbest thought—that my head fits perfectly in Kent’s shoulder.
Then the thought of Elody and Juliet becomes too much, and a heavy veil drops down over my mind, and I cry. It’s the second night in a row I’ve totally lost it in front of Kent, though, of course, he couldn’t know that. I should be grateful he doesn’t remember that only last night we sat together in a dark room with our knees almost touching, but instead it makes me feel even more alone. I’m lost in a fog, in a mist, and at some point when I start to come back to myself I realize that Kent is literally holding me up. My feet are barely skimming the ground.
His mouth is buried in my hair and I feel his breath close to my ear. A zip of electricity goes through me, which makes me feel awful and more confused than ever. I pull away, putting a little bit of space between us. He keeps his arms on either side of mine, though, bracing me, and I’m glad. He’s solid and warm.
“You’re still freezing,” he says. He puts the back of his hand against my cheek for one millisecond, but when he pulls away I can feel the outline of his hand, like it’s scalded me. “Your clothes are soaking.”
“Underwear,” I blurt out.
He wrinkles his forehead. “What?”
“My…um, underwear. I mean, my pants and fleece and underwear…it’s all full of snow. Well, mostly melted water now. It’s really cold.” I’m too exhausted to care about being embarrassed. Kent just bites his lip and nods.
“Stay here,” he says. “And drink up.” He nods to the hot chocolate.
He guides me back into the chair and disappears. I’m still shivering, but at least I can hold the mug without slopping it all over the table. I don’t think about anything but the motion of the mug to my lips and the taste of the cocoa, the ticking of a cat-tailed clock, and the drifting white outside the windows. In a few seconds Kent’s back with an enormous fleece, faded sweatpants, and folded striped boxers.
“They’re mine,” he says, and then turns bright red. “I mean, not mine. I didn’t wear them yet or anything. My mom bought them for me—” He catches himself and swallows. “I mean, I bought them for myself, like, Tuesday. Tags still on and everything.”
“Kent?” I interrupt him.
He sucks in a breath. “Yeah?”
“I’m really sorry, but…do you mind being quiet?” I gesture to my head. “My brain is full of fuzz.”
“I’m sorry.” He exhales. “I don’t know what to do. I wish…I wish that there was more.”
“Thanks,” I say. I know he’s making an effort and I manage a weak smile.
He lays the clothes down on the table, along with a big, fluffy white towel. “I didn’t know…I thought if you were still cold you could take a shower.” He blushes at the word shower.
I shake my head. “I really just want to sleep.” I’ve forgotten about sleep, and I feel a huge lift when I say it: all I have to do is sleep.
As soon as I fall asleep this nightmare will be over.
Still, a twittering feeling of anxiety rises up inside me. What if the day doesn’t rewind this time? What if this is it? I think of Elody and feel the hot chocolate coming back up in my throat.
Kent must see the expression on my face because he crouches down so we’re at eye level. “Can I do anything? Can I get you anything?”
I shake my head, trying not to cry again. “I’ll be okay. It’s just…the shock.” I swallow hard. “I just want to…I want to rewind, you know?”
He nods once, and puts his hand over mine. I don’t pull it away. “If I could make it better I would,” he says.
In some ways it’s a stupid, obvious thing to say, but the way he says it, so honest and simple like it’s the truest thing there is, makes tears prick in my eyes. I take the clothes and the towel and go out into the hall to the bathroom we broke into to find Juliet. I go in and shut the door. The window’s still open and flurries of snow whirl in from outside. I shut the window. It makes me feel better already, like I’m already starting the process of erasing everything that’s happened tonight. Elody will be fine.
After all, I was the one who was supposed to be in the front seat.
I hang the hand towel Juliet left by the sink and strip out of my clothes, shaking. The shower is too hard to resist after all, and I turn the water on as high and as hot as it can go and get in. It’s one of those rain-forest showers where the water pours on you straight from above in a long, heavy stream. When it hits the marble tiles under my feet, it lets up big clouds of steam. I stay in the shower so long my skin gets pruny.
I put on Kent’s fleece, which is supersoft and smells like laundry detergent and, for some reason, freshly mowed grass. Then I snap the tags off the boxers and slip my legs into them. They’re too big on me, obviously, but I like how clean and crisp they feel on my skin. The only other boxers I’ve seen are Rob’s, usually crumpled up on his floor or shoved under his bed and stained with things I have no desire to identify. Last, I put on the sweatpants, which pool over my feet. Kent has given me socks, too, the big fluffy kind. I ball up all of my clothes and leave them just outside the bathroom door.
When I go back in the kitchen, Kent’s standing there, exactly as I left him. Something flickers in his eyes when I come in, but I’m not sure what it is.
“Your hair’s wet,” he says softly, but he says it like he’s actually saying something else.
I look down. “I showered, after all.”
Silence stretches between us for a few beats. Then he says, “You’re tired. I’ll drive you home.”
“No.” I say it more forcefully than I meant to, and Kent looks startled.
“No—I mean, I can’t. I don’t want to go home right now.”
“Your parents…” Kent trails off.
“Please.” I don’t know which would be worse: if my parents have already heard and are sitting there, waiting for me, waiting to grill me and ask me questions and talk about hospitals in the morning and therapists to help me deal—or if they haven’t heard yet and I come home to a dark house.
“There’s a guest room here,” Kent says. His hair is finally drying into little wisps and waves.
“No guest rooms.” I shake my head resolutely. “I want to be in a room room. A lived-in room.”
Kent stares at me for a second and then says, “Come with me.” He reaches for my hand as he passes and I let him take it. We go up the stairs and down the hall and to the bedroom with all the bumper stickers on it. I should have known it was his. He fiddles with the door—“It sticks,” he explains—and finally pops it open. I inhale sharply. The smell is just the same as it was last night when I was here with Rob, but everything is different—the darkness looks softer, somehow.
“Give me a second.” Kent squeezes my hand and pulls away. I hear the rustling of the curtains and I gasp: suddenly three enormous windows, stretching from floor to ceiling and taking up one entire wall, are revealed. He hasn’t turned on a light, but he may as well have. The moon is huge and luminous and bounces through all the dazzling white snow, growing brighter. The whole room is bathed in a beautiful, silver light.
“It’s amazing,” I say. I breathe out; I didn’t even realize I was holding my breath.
Kent smiles quickly. His face is silhouetted in moonlight. “It’s great at night. Not so great at sunrise, though.” He starts to draw the curtains closed.
“Leave them open,” I cry out, and then add, “please.” I suddenly feel shy.
Kent’s room is enormous, and smells like that same incredible mixture of Downy laundry detergent and grass shavings. It’s the freshest smell in the world, the smell of open windows and crisp sheets. Last night I couldn’t make out anything but the bed. Now I see the room is lined completely with bookshelves. There’s a desk in the corner, stacked with a computer and more books. There are pictures framed on the walls, blurred figures moving, but I can’t make out the details. A monster beanbag chair squats in one corner and Kent catches me staring at it.
“I’ve had it since seventh grade,” he says. He sounds embarrassed.
“I used to have one like that,” I say. I don’t add why I chucked it: because Lindsay said it looked like a lumpy boob. I can’t think about Lindsay now, or Ally. I definitely can’t think about Elody.
Kent draws the blankets down on his bed and then stands back, turning away so I have some privacy. I climb into the bed and lie down, my limbs heavy and achingly stiff, feeling a little self-conscious, but so numb with exhaustion I don’t care. There’s a curved wooden headboard and a matching footboard, and as soon as I’m stretched out, I’m reminded of being in a sleigh. I tilt my head so I can see the snow drifting down, and then close my eyes, imagining that I’m flying through a forest on my way to somewhere good: a trim little white house in the distance, candles burning in its windows.
“Good night,” Kent whispers. He’s so quiet I’d forgotten he was standing there.
I snap my eyes open and sit up on one elbow. “Kent?”
“Yeah?”
“Can you maybe stay with me a bit?”
He nods, and rolls the desk chair over to the side of the bed without speaking. He tucks his knees up to his chin and looks at me. The moonlight coming in through the windows turns his hair a soft silver.
“Kent?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you think it’s weird that I’m here with you?” I close my eyes when I say it so I don’t have to look at his face.
“I’m the editor in chief of the Tribulation,” he says. “And I once went three hundred and sixty-five days wearing Crocs. I don’t think anything’s weird.”
“I forgot about the Crocs phase,” I say. I’m finally warm under the covers, and I feel sleep creeping up on me, like I’m standing on a hot beach with a gentle tide pulling at my toes. “Kent?”
“Yeah?”
“Why are you being so nice to me?”
There’s quiet for so long I begin to think he won’t answer. I imagine I can hear the snow drifting to earth, covering over the day, erasing it clean. I’m too frightened to open my eyes, terrified that I’ll break the spell, terrified he’ll look angry or hurt.
“Remember the time in second grade right after my grandfather died?” he says finally, speaking in a low, quiet voice. “I burst into tears in the lunchroom and Phil Howell called me a faggot. That only made me cry harder, even though I didn’t know what a faggot was.” He laughs softly.
I keep my eyes squeezed shut, coasting on his voice. Last year Phil Howell was found half naked with Sean Trebor in the back of his dad’s BMW. It’s funny how things turn out.
“Anyway, when I told him to leave me alone he smacked my tray, and food went flying everywhere. I’ll never forget: we were having mashed potatoes and turkey burgers. And you went up and scooped the potatoes off the floor with your hands and shoved them straight into Phil’s face. And then you picked up the turkey burger and crumbled it down Phil’s T-shirt. You said, You’re worse than the hot lunch.” He laughs again. “That was a big insult in second grade. And Sean was so surprised, and he looked so ridiculous standing there with mashed potato and chives smeared all over him, that I just started laughing and laughing, and it was the first time I’d laughed since I’d heard the news about—about my grandfather.” He pauses. “Do you remember what I said to you that day?”
The memory is there, a balloon swelling from somewhere so far inside me I thought it was lost, the whole scene clear and perfect now.
“You’re my hero,” we both say at the same time. I don’t hear Kent move, but all of a sudden his voice is closer, and he’s found my hands in the dark, and he’s cupping them in his.
“I vowed after that day that I would be your hero too, no matter how long it took,” he whispers.
We stay like that for what feels like hours, and all the time sleep is dragging at me, pulling me away from him, but my heart is fluttering like a moth, beating back the dreams and the darkness and the fog crowding my brain. Once I sleep, I lose him. I lose this moment forever.
“Kent?” I say, and my voice seems to have to rise from inside the fog, taking forever to get from my brain to my mouth.
“Yeah?”
“Promise you’ll stay here with me?” I say.
“I promise,” he whispers.
And then, just at that moment, when I’m no longer sure if I’m dreaming or awake or walking some valley in between where everything you wish for comes true, I feel the flutter of his lips on mine, but it’s too late, I’m slipping, I’m gone, he’s gone, and the moment curls away and back on itself like a flower folding up for the night.