Before I Fall

SEVEN

The last time I have the dream it goes like this: I am falling, tumbling through the air, but this time the darkness is alive around me, full of beating things, and I realize that I’m not surrounded by dark but have only had my eyes closed all this time. I open them, feeling silly, and at the same time a hundred thousand butterflies take off around me, so many of them in so many brilliant colors they are like a solid rainbow, temporarily obscuring the sun. But as they wing higher and higher they reveal a landscape below us, all green and gold and sun-drenched fields and pink-tinged clouds drifting underneath me, and the air around me is clear and blue and sweet smelling, and I’m laughing, laughing, laughing as I spin through the air because, of course, I haven’t been falling all this time.
I’ve been flying.
And when I wake up it’s wonderful, like I’ve been carried quietly onto a calm, peaceful shore, and the dream, and its meaning, has broken over me like a wave and is ebbing away now, leaving me with a single, solid certainty. I know now.
It was never about saving my life.
Not, at least, in the way that I thought.
AND ON THE SEVENTH DAY

I remember I once saw this old movie with Lindsay; in it the main character was talking about how sad it is that the last time you have sex you don’t know it’s the last time. Since I’ve never even had a first time, I’m not exactly an expert, but I’m guessing it’s like that for most things in life—the last kiss, the last laugh, the last cup of coffee, the last sunset, the last time you jump through a sprinkler or eat an ice-cream cone, or stick your tongue out to catch a snowflake. You just don’t know.
But I think that’s a good thing, really, because if you did know it would be almost impossible to let go. When you do know, it’s like being asked to step off the edge of a cliff: all you want to do is get down on your hands and knees and kiss the solid ground, smell it, hold on to it.
I guess that’s what saying good-bye is always like—like jumping off an edge. The worst part is making the choice to do it. Once you’re in the air, there’s nothing you can do but let go.


Here is the last thing I ever say to my parents: See you later. I say, I love you, too, but that’s earlier. The last thing I say is, See you later.
Or actually, to be completely accurate, the last thing I say to my father is, See you later. To my mother I say, Positive, because she’s standing in the kitchen doorway holding the newspaper, her hair messy, her bathrobe hanging wrong, and she says, Are you sure you don’t want breakfast? Like she always does.
I look back when I’m at the front door. Behind her my father is at the stove, humming to himself and burning eggs for my mother’s breakfast. He’s wearing the striped pajama pants Izzy and I got him for his last birthday, and his hair is sticking out at crazy angles like he’s just put a finger in an electrical socket. My mom puts a hand on his back while she squeezes past him, then settles at the kitchen table, shaking out the newspaper. He scoops the eggs onto a plate and sets it in front of her, saying, “Voilà, madame. Extra crispy,” and she shakes her head and says something I can’t hear, but she’s smiling, and he leans down and kisses her once on the forehead.
It’s a nice thing to see. I’m glad I was looking.


Izzy follows me to the door with my gloves, grinning at me and showing off the gap between her two front teeth. A feeling of vertigo overwhelms me when I look at her, a nauseous feeling lashing in my stomach, but I take a deep breath and think of counting steps, think of running leaps, and my dream of flying.
One, two, three, jump.
“You forgot your gloves.” Lisping, smiling, wisps of golden hair.
“What would I do without you?” I crouch down and squeeze her in a hug, as I do seeing our whole life together: her tiny infant toes and scalp that smelled like baby powder; the first time she tottered over to me; the first time she rode a bike and fell and scraped her knee, and when I saw all that blood on her, I almost died from fright, and I carried her all the way home. And I see beyond it, strangely, glimpses of her in the other direction: Izzy grown tall and gorgeous with one hand resting on a steering wheel, laughing; Izzy wearing a long green dress and picking her way in heels toward a waiting limousine on her way to prom; Izzy loaded down with books as the snow swirls around her, ducking into a dorm, her hair a golden flame against the white.
She squeals and squirms away. “I can’t breathe! You’re crushing me.”
“Sorry, Fizzer.” I reach back and unhook my grandma’s bird necklace. Izzy’s eyes go huge and round.
“Turn around,” I say, and for once she’s totally quiet and does what I say with no complaints, standing perfectly still while I lift her hair and fix the charm around her neck. She turns back to me, her face very serious, waiting for my opinion.
I give the necklace a tug. It falls halfway down her chest, sitting just to the right of her heart. “It looks good on you, Fizz.”
“Are you giving it to me—for real real? Or just for today?” Her voice is a hush, like we’re discussing state secrets.
“It looks better on you, anyway.” I put a finger on her nose, and she twirls away with her hands in the air like a ballerina.
“Thanks, Sammy!” Except, of course, it comes out Thammy.
“Be good, Izzy.” I stand up, throat tight, an aching in my whole body. I have to fight the urge to get down on my knees and squeeze her again.
She puts her hands on her hips like our mom does, mock-offended, sticking her nose in the air. “I’m always good. I’m the best.”
“The best of the best.”
She’s already turned around, running and sliding in her slippered feet back toward the kitchen, yelling, “Look what Sammy gave me!” with one hand cupped around the charm. Tears are blurring my vision so I can’t see her clearly, just the pink of her pajamas and the golden ring of her hair.
Outside the cold burns my lungs and makes the pain in my throat worse. I take a deep breath, sucking in the smells of wood fires and gasoline. The sun is beautiful, long and low on the horizon like it’s stretching itself, like it’s shaking off a nap, and I know underneath this weak winter light is the promise of days that last until eight P.M. and pool parties and the smell of chlorine and burgers on the grill; and underneath that is the promise of trees lit up in red and orange like flames and spiced cider, and frost that melts away by noon—layers upon layers of life, always something more, new, deeper. It makes me feel like crying, but Lindsay’s already parked in front of the house, waving her arms and yelling, “What are you doing?” so instead I just keep walking, one foot in front of the other, one, two, three, and I think about letting go—of the trees and the grass and sky and the red-streaked clouds on the horizon—letting it all drop away from me like a veil. Maybe there will be something spectacular underneath.
A MIRACLE OF CHANCE AND COINCIDENCE, PART I

“And so, I was like, listen, I don’t care that it’s stupid, I don’t care that it’s, like, a holiday invented by Hallmark or whatever….” Lindsay’s rattling on about Patrick, punctuating her story by tapping the steering wheel with the heel of her hand. She’s perfectly in control again, hair swept back in a ponytail just messy enough, lip gloss slicked on, a mist of Burberry Brit Gold clinging to the puffy jacket she’s wearing. It’s strange to see her this way after last night, but at the same time I’m glad. She’s cruel and frightened and proud and insecure, but she’s still Lindsay Edgecombe—the girl who freshman year took a key to Mari Tinsley’s brand-new BMW after Mari called her a froshy prostitute, even though Mari had just been voted prom queen, and nobody, not even people in her own grade, would stand up to her—and she’s still my best friend, and despite everything I still respect her. And I know that however wrong she’s been—about a million things, about other people, about herself—she’ll figure it out. I know from the way she looked last night, with the shadows making a hollow of her face.
Maybe it’s just wishful thinking, but I like to believe, on some level, or in some world, what happened last night matters, that it didn’t totally vanish. Sometimes I’m afraid to go to sleep because of what I’m leaving behind. Thinking about Kent’s words makes shivers dance up and down my spine. This is the first time in my life I’ve ever missed kissing someone; the first time I’ve ever woken up feeling like I’ve lost something important.
“Maybe he’s freaking out because he’s too into you,” Elody pipes up from the backseat. “Don’t you think, Sam?”
“Uh-huh.” I’m savoring my coffee, drinking it slowly. A perfect morning, exactly how I would have chosen it: perfect coffee, perfect bagel, riding around in the car with two of my best friends, not really talking about anything, not really trying to talk about anything, just babbling on about the same stuff we always do, enjoying one another’s voices. The only thing that’s missing is Ally.
I suddenly get the urge to drive around Ridgeview for a little bit longer. Partly I don’t want the ride to end. Partly I just want to look at everything one last time.
“Lindz? Can we stop at Starbucks? I, um, kind of want a latte.” I take a few gulps of my coffee, trying to drain it, to make this more believable.
She raises her eyebrows. “You hate Starbucks.”
“Yeah, well, I got a sudden craving.”
“You said it tastes like dog pee strained through a trash bag.”
Elody gulps her coffee. “Ew—hello? Drinking. Eating.” She waves her bagel dramatically.
Lindsay raises both hands. “That’s a direct quote.”
“If I’m late to poly sci one more time I swear I’ll get detention for life,” Elody says.
“And you’ll miss the chance to suck face with Muffin before first,” Lindsay says, snickering.
“What about you?” Elody pegs her with a piece of bagel, and Lindsay squeals. “It’s a miracle you and Patrick haven’t fused faces yet.”
“Come on, Lindsay. Please?” I bat my eyelashes at her, then twist around to Elody. “Pretty please?”
Lindsay sighs heavily, locking eyes with Elody in the rearview mirror. She flicks on her turn indicator. I clap my hands and Elody groans.
“Sam gets to do what she wants today,” Lindsay says. “After all, it’s her big day.” She emphasizes the word big, then starts cracking up.
Elody picks up on it right away. “I would say it was Rob’s big day, actually.”
“We can only hope.” Lindsay leans over and elbows me.
“Ew,” I say. “Perverts.”
Linday’s on a roll now. “It’s going to be loooong day.”
“A hard one,” Elody adds.
Lindsay sprays some coffee out of her mouth and Elody shrieks. They’re both snorting and laughing like maniacs.
“Very funny,” I say, looking out the window, watching the houses begin to stream together as we come into town. “Very mature.” But I’m smiling, feeling happy and calm, thinking, You have no idea.
There’s a small parking lot behind the Starbucks in town, and we get the last spot, Lindsay slamming into it and nearly taking out the side mirrors of the two cars on either side of us, but still yelling, “Gucci, baby, gucci,” which she claims is Italian for “perfect.”
In my head I’ve been saying good-bye to everything, all these places I’ve seen so often I start to ignore them: the deli on the hill with perfect chicken cutlets and the trinket store where I used to buy thread to make friendship bracelets and the Realtor’s and the dentist’s and the little garden where Steve King put his tongue in my mouth in seventh grade, and I was so surprised I bit down. I can’t stop thinking about how strange life is, about Kent and Juliet and even Alex and Anna and Bridget and Mr. Otto and Ms. Winters—about how complex and connected everything is, all threaded together like some vast, invisible netting—and how sometimes you can think you’re doing the right thing, but it’s actually terrible and vice versa.
We head into Starbucks and I get a latte. Elody gets a brownie, even though she’s just eaten, and Lindsay puts a stuffed bear on her head and then orders a water without blinking while the barista stares at her like she’s crazy, and I can’t help but throw my arms around her, and she says, “Save it for the bedroom, babe,” making the old woman behind us inch away. We come out laughing and I almost drop my coffee—Sarah Grundel’s brown Chevrolet is idling in the parking lot. She’s drumming her hands on the wheel, checking her watch, waiting for a spot to open up. The last spot—the spot we took.
“You’ve got to be freaking kidding me,” I say out loud. She’ll definitely be late now.
Lindsay catches me staring and misunderstands me. “I know. If I had that car I totally wouldn’t rock it past the driveway. I think I’d rather walk.”
“No, I—” I shake my head, realizing I can’t explain. As we pass, Sarah rolls her eyes and sighs, like, Finally. The humor of the situation hits me and I start to laugh.
“How’s the latte?” Lindsay asks as we climb back in the car.
“Like dog pee strained through a trash bag,” I say. We roll out of the spot, giving Sarah a little beep, and she huffs and zooms in as soon as we’re out of the way.
“What’s her drama?” Elody asks.
“PNS,” Lindsay says. “Parking Need Syndrome.”
As we pull out of the parking lot, it occurs to me that maybe it’s not so complicated at all. Most of the time—99 percent of the time—you just don’t know how and why the threads are looped together, and that’s okay. Do a good thing and something bad happens. Do a bad thing and something good happens. Do nothing and everything explodes.
And very, very rarely—by some miracle of chance and coincidence, butterflies beating their wings just so and all the threads hanging together for a minute—you get the chance to do the right thing.
Here’s the last thing that occurs to me as Sarah recedes in the rearview mirror, slamming out of the car, jogging across the parking lot: if you’re one tardy away from missing out on a big competition, you should probably make your coffee at home.


When we get to school I have a few things to take care of in the Rose Room, so I split up with Elody and Lindsay. Then, because I’m already late, I decide to skip the rest of first period. I wander through the halls and the campus, thinking how strange it is that you can live your whole life in one place and never really look at it. Even the yellow walls—what we used to call the vomit hallways—strike me as pretty now, the slender bare trees in the middle of the quad elegant and sparse, just waiting for snow.
For most of my life it’s always seemed like the school day dragged on forever—except during quizzes and tests, when the seconds seemed to trip over themselves trying to run away quickly. Today it’s like that. No matter how badly I want for everything to go slowly, time is pouring away, hemorrhaging. I’ve barely made it into the second question of Mr. Tierney’s quiz before he’s yelling, “Time!” and giving all of us his fiercest scowl, and I have to turn in my quiz only partially completed. I know it doesn’t matter, but I’ve given it my best shot anyway. I want to have one last day when everything is normal. A day like a million other days I’ve had. A day when I turn in my chem quiz and worry about whether Mr. Tierney will ever make good on his threat to call BU. But I don’t regret the quiz for long. I’m past regretting things now.
When it’s time for math I head down early, feeling calm. I slide into my seat a few minutes before the bell and take out my math textbook, centering it perfectly on my desk. I’m the first student to arrive.
Mr. Daimler comes over and leans against my desk, smiling at me. I notice for the first time that one of his incisors is extra pointy, like a vampire’s. “What’s this, Sam?” He gestures at my desk. “Three minutes early and actually prepared for class? Are you turning over a new leaf?”
“Something like that,” I say evenly, folding my hands on top of my textbook.
“So how’s Cupid Day treating you?” He pops a mint in his mouth and leans closer. It grosses me out, like he thinks he can seduce me with fresh breath. “Any big romantic plans tonight? Got someone special to cozy up next to?” He raises his eyebrows at me.
A week ago this would have made me swoon. Now I feel totally cold. I think about how rough his face was on mine, how heavy he felt, but it doesn’t make me angry or afraid. I fixate on his hemp necklace, which is, as always, peeking out from under his shirt collar. For the first time he strikes me as kind of pathetic. Who wears the same thing for eight straight years? That would be like if I insisted on wearing the candy necklaces I loved when I was in fifth grade.
“We’ll see,” I say, smiling. “What about you? Are you going to be all by your lonesome? Table for one?”
He leans forward even more, and I stay perfectly still, willing myself not to pull away.
“Now why would you assume that?” He winks at me, obviously thinking that this is my version of flirting—like I’m going to offer to keep him company or something.
I smile even wider. “Because if you had a real girlfriend,” I say, quietly but clearly, so he can hear every word perfectly, “you wouldn’t be hitting on high school girls.”
Mr. Daimler sucks in a breath and jerks backward so quickly he almost falls off the desk. People are coming into class, now, chattering and comparing roses, ignoring us. We could be talking about a homework assignment, or a quiz grade. He stares at me, his mouth opening and shutting. No words come out.
The bell rings. Mr. Daimler shakes his shoulders and stumbles away from the desk, still staring at me. Then he turns a complete circle as if he’s lost. Finally he clears his throat.
“Okay, everyone.” His voice breaks and he coughs. When he speaks again it’s a bark. “Everyone. Seats. Now.”
I have to bite the edge of my hand to keep from cracking up. Mr. Daimler shoots me a look of total disgust, which makes the urge to laugh even harder to resist. I look away, turning toward the door.
Right at the moment that Kent McFuller walks through it.
We lock eyes, and in that second it’s like the classroom folds in two and all of the distance disappears between us. A zooming, rushing feeling comes over me, like I’m being beamed up into his bright-green eyes. Time collapses, too, and we’re back on my porch in the snow, his warm fingers brushing my neck, the soft pressure of his lips, the whisper of his voice in my ear. Nothing exists but him.
“Mr. McFuller. Care to take a seat?” Mr. Daimler’s voice is cold.
Kent turns away from me and the moment is lost. He mumbles a quick sorry to Mr. Daimler and then heads for his seat. I turn around, following him with my eyes. I love the way he slides into his seat without touching his desk. I love the way, when he pulls out his math textbook, a bunch of crumpled sketches come with it. I love the way he keeps nervously fiddling with his hair, running his hands through it even though it swings back into his eyes immediately.
“Miss Kingston. If I could trouble you for just a second of your precious time and attention.”
When I turn back to the front of the room, Mr. Daimler is glaring at me.
“I guess for a second,” I say loudly, and everybody laughs. Mr. Daimler folds his mouth into a thin white line but doesn’t say anything else.
I flip open my math textbook, but I can’t focus. I drum my fingers on the underside of the desk, feeling antsy and exhilarated now that I’ve seen Kent. I wish I could tell him exactly how I feel. I wish I could explain it somehow, that he could know. I watch the clock anxiously. I can’t wait for the Cupids to come.
Kent McFuller is getting an extra rose today.


After class I wait for Kent in the hall, butterflies making a mess of my stomach. When he comes out he’s carefully holding the rose I’ve sent him, like he’s afraid it will break. He glances up, serious and thoughtful, his eyes searching my face.
“You going to tell me what this is about?” He doesn’t smile, but there’s a teasing lilt to his voice and his eyes are bright.
I decide to tease him right back, even though being so close to him is making it hard to think. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He holds the rose out and flips the note open so I can read it, though, of course, I know what it says.
Tonight. Leave your phone on and your car out, and be my hero.
“Mysterious,” I say, holding back a smile. He looks ten times more adorable when he’s worried. “Secret admirer?”
“Not so secret.” His eyes are still roving over my face like there’s the answer to a puzzle written there, and I have to look away to keep from grabbing him and pulling him toward me. He pauses. “I’m having a party tonight, you know.”
“I know.” I rush on. “I mean, I heard.”
“So…?”
I give up on playing with him. “Listen, I may need you to pick me up from somewhere. Twenty minutes, tops. I wouldn’t ask unless it was important.”
He crooks one side of his mouth into a smile. “What’s in it for me?”
I lean forward so my mouth is inches away from the perfect shell of his ear. The smell of him—freshly cut grass and mint—is addictive. “I’ll tell you a secret.”
“Now?”
“Later.” I pull back. Otherwise I won’t be able to stop myself from kissing his neck. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I was never like this with Rob. I can barely keep my hands to myself around Kent. Maybe dying a few times messes with your hormones or something. I kind of like it.
His face gets serious again. “What you wrote here…” He fingers the note, folding it and unfolding it, his eyes dazzling, swirling with gold. “The last bit…the hero thing…how did you—?”
My heart is beating frantically, and for one second I think he knows—I think he remembers. The silence is heavy between us, everything past and remembered and forgotten and wanted swinging there like a pendulum. “How did I what?” I can barely breathe the words.
He sighs and shakes his head, gives me a weak smile. “Nothing. Forget it. It’s stupid.”
“Oh.” I realize I’ve been holding my breath, and I exhale, looking away so he won’t see how disappointed I am. “Thanks for your rose, by the way.”
Of all the roses I’ve gotten it’s the only one I kept. It’s my favorite, I’d said, when Marian Sykes delivered it to me.
She looked up at me, startled, and then looked around, as though I couldn’t possibly be talking to her. When she realized I was, she blushed and smiled.
You have so many, she said shyly.
The problem is I can never keep them alive, I said. I have, like, a black thumb.
You have to cut the stems on an angle, she said eagerly, then blushed again. My sister taught me that. She used to like to garden. She turned away, biting her lip.
You should take them, I said.
She stared at me for a second as though suspecting a joke. Like, to keep? she said, reminding me of Izzy.
I’m telling you, I can’t have any more flower homicides on my conscience, I said. You could take them home. Do you have a vase?
She paused for a fraction of a second more and then broke into a dazzling smile, transforming her whole face. I’ll keep them in my room, she said.
Kent cocks one eyebrow. “How do you know that I’m the one who sent it?”
“Come on.” I roll my eyes. “No one else draws weird cartoons for a living.”
He puts a hand on his chest, acting offended. “Not for a living. For the love of it. Besides, they’re not weird.”
“Whatever. Then thanks for your totally normal note.”
“You’re welcome.” He grins. We’re standing close enough that I can feel the heat coming off him.
“So are you going to be my knight in shining armor or what?”
Kent does a little bow. “You know I can’t resist a damsel in distress.”
“I knew I could count on you.” The hallways are empty now. Everyone is at lunch. For a moment we just stand there smiling at each other. Then something softens in his eyes and my heart soars. Everything in me feels fluttering and free, like I could take off from the ground at any second. Music, I think, he makes me feel like music. Then I think, He’s going to kiss me right here, in the math wing of Thomas Jefferson High School, and I almost pass out.
He doesn’t, though. Instead he reaches out and touches my shoulder once, lightly. When he removes his fingers I can still feel them tingling on my skin. “Until tonight, then.” A flicker of a smile. “Your secret better be good.”
“It’s amazing, I promise.” I wish I could memorize every single thing about him. I want to burn him into my mind. I can’t believe how blind I was for so long. I start to back away before I do something wildly inappropriate, like jump on top of him.
“Sam?” he stops me.
“Yeah.”
His eyes are doing that searching thing again, and now I understand why he told me before that he could see through me. He’s actually been paying attention. I feel like he’s reading my mind right now, which is more than a little embarrassing, since most of my thoughts for the moment involve how perfect his lips are.
He bites his lip and shuffles his feet a little. “Why me? For tonight, I mean. We haven’t really talked in, like, seven years….”
“Maybe I’m making up for lost time.” I keep backing away from him, skipping a little.
“I’m serious,” he says. “Why me?”
I think of Kent holding my hand in the dark, leading me through rooms crisscrossed with moonlight. I think of his voice lulling me to sleep, carrying me off like a tide. I think of time stilling as he cupped my face and brought his lips to mine.
“Trust me,” I say, “it can only be you.”
SECOND CHANCES

Kent’s Valogram was only the first of several adjustments I made in the Rose Room this morning, and as soon as I enter the cafeteria I can tell that Rob got his. He breaks away from his friends and lopes up to me before I can even make it over to the lunch line (where I’m planning on ordering a double roast beef sandwich). As always, his stupid Yankees hat is barely balanced on his head, twisted around to the side like he’s in some rap video from 1992.
“Hey, babe.” He goes to put his arm around me, and I step away casually. “Got your rose.”
“Thanks. I got yours too.”
He looks around, sees a single rose looped through the handle of my messenger bag, and frowns. “Is that mine?”
I shake my head, smiling sweetly.
He rubs his forehead. He always does this when he’s thinking, like the act of actually using his mind gives him a headache. “What happened to all your roses?”
“They’re in storage,” I say, which is kind of true.
He shakes his head, letting it go. “So there’s a party tonight….” He trails off, then tips his head and smirks at me. “I thought it would be fun to go for a bit.” He reaches out and clomps a hand on my shoulder, massaging me hard. “Like, you know, foreplay.”
Only Rob would think that pounding foamy beer from a keg and screaming at each other counts as foreplay, but I decide to let it go and play along. “Foreplay?” I say, as innocently as I can.
He obviously thinks I’m being flirtatious. He smiles and tilts his head backward, looking at me through half narrowed eyes. I used to think it was the cutest thing when he did this; now it’s a bit like watching a linebacker try to samba. He might have all the moves down, but it just doesn’t look right.
“You know,” he says quietly, “I really liked what you wrote in your note.”
“Did you?” I make my voice a purr, thinking about what I scrawled out this morning. You don’t have to wait for me anymore.
“So I was thinking I’d get to the party at ten, stay for an hour or two.” He shrugs and adjusts his hat, back to business now that he got the flirting out of the way.
I feel suddenly tired. I’d been planning to mess with Rob a little—to get back at him for not paying attention, for not being there, for not caring about anything except partying and lacrosse and how he looks in his stupid Yankees hat—but I can’t keep up the game anymore. “I don’t really care what you do, Rob.”
He hesitates. This was not the answer he was expecting. “You’re sleeping over tonight, though, right?”
“I don’t think so.”
His hand flies up to his forehead again: more rubbing. “But you said…”
“I said you didn’t have to wait for me anymore. And you don’t.” I suck in a deep breath. One, two, three, jump. “This isn’t working out, Rob. I want to break up.”
He takes a step backward. His face goes completely white, and then he turns bright red from the forehead down, like someone’s filling him with Kool-Aid. “What did you say?”
“I said I’m breaking up with you.” I’ve never done anything like this before, and I’m surprised by how easy I’m finding it. Letting go is easy: it’s all downhill. “I just don’t think it’s working out.”
“But—but—” he sputters at me. The confusion on his face is replaced by rage. “You can’t break up with me.”
I unconsciously shuffle backward, crossing my arms. “Why’s that?”
He looks at me like I’m the dumbest person alive. “You,” he says, almost spitting the word, “cannot break up with me.”
Then I get it. Rob does remember. He remembers that in sixth grade he said I wasn’t cool enough for him—remembers it, and still believes it. Any sympathy I still feel for him vanishes in that moment, and as he’s standing there, bright red with his fists clenched, it amazes me how ugly I find him.
“I can do it,” I say calmly. “I just did.”
“And I waited for you. I waited for you for months.” He turns away and mutters something I don’t hear.
“What?”
He looks back at me, his face twisted with disgust and anger. This cannot be the same person who a week ago nestled against my shoulder and told me I was his personal blanket. It’s like his face has dropped away and there’s a totally different face underneath.
“I said I should have screwed Gabby Haynes when she asked me to over break,” he says coldly.
Something flares in my stomach, leftover pain or pride, but it passes quickly enough and is replaced again by a feeling of calm. I’m already gone from here, already flying over this, and I can suddenly understand exactly what Juliet feels, must have felt for some time. Thinking about her brings my strength back, and I even manage to smile.
“It’s never too late for second chances,” I say sweetly, and then I walk away to have my last lunch with my best friends.
Ten minutes later, when I’m finally sitting down at our usual table—scarfing an enormous roast beef sandwich with mayonnaise and a plate full of fries, hungrier than I’ve been in a long time—and Juliet comes through the cafeteria, I see she has placed a single rose in the empty water bottle that is strapped to the side of her backpack. She’s looking around, too, her face cutting the curtain of her hair in two, checking each and every table she passes, searching, looking for clues. Her eyes are bright and alert. She’s chewing her lip, but she doesn’t look unhappy. She looks alive. My heart skips a beat: this is the important thing.
As she weaves past our table, I see a folded note fluttering just under the petals of her rose, and even though I’m too far away to read it, I can see what’s written there clearly, even when I close my eyes. A single phrase.
It’s never too late.


“So what’s up with you today?” Lindsay asks on the way to The Country’s Best Yogurt. We’ve almost reached the Row, the line of small shops clustered at the crest of the hill like mushrooms. The blanket of dark clouds is being drawn over the horizon inch by inch, bringing the promise of snow.
“What do you mean?” We’re walking arm-in-arm, trying to stay warm. I wanted Ally and Elody to come along, but Elody had a Spanish test, and Ally insisted that if she missed another English class she’d probably get suspended. I didn’t make a big deal out of it.
A day like any other.
“I mean, why are you acting so weird?”
I’m trying to formulate an answer and Lindsay goes on, “Like, zoning out at lunch and stuff.” She bites her lip. “I got this text from Amy Weiss….”
“Yeah?”
“Amy Weiss is obviously crazy, and I would never believe anything she says, especially about you,” Lindsay qualifies quickly.
“Obviously,” I say, amused, pretty sure I know where this is headed.
“But…” Lindsay sucks in a deep breath and says in a rush, “She says she was talking to Steve Waitman, who was talking to Rob, who said that you broke up?” Lindsay shoots a glance at me and forces a laugh. “I told her it was bullshit, obviously.”
I pause, choosing my words carefully. “It’s not bullshit. It’s true.”
Lindsay stops walking and stares. “What?”
“I broke up with him at lunch.”
She shakes her head like she’s trying to dislodge the words from her brain. “And, um, were you planning on sharing this little piece of news at some point? With your best friends? Or were you just counting on it to make the rounds eventually?”
I can tell she’s really hurt. “Listen, Lindsay, I was going to tell you—”
She presses her hands to both ears, still shaking her head. “I don’t understand. What happened? You guys were supposed to—I mean, you told me you wanted to—tonight.”
I sigh. “This is why I didn’t want to tell you, Lindz. I knew you’d make a big deal out of it.”
“That’s because it is a big deal.”
Lindsay’s so outraged she’s not even paying attention as we pass Hunan Kitchen: she’s too busy glaring at me like she expects me to suddenly turn blue or combust, like I can never be trusted again.
It occurs to me she’s really going to feel that way after I do what I’m about to do, but it can’t be helped. I turn to her, putting my arms on her shoulders. “Wait here for a second, okay?”
She blinks at me. “Where are you going?”
“I have to stop in Hunan Kitchen for a second.” I brace myself, waiting for her to freak out. “I kind of have something for Anna Cartullo.”
I’m prepared for her to scream or stalk off or throw gummy bears at me or something, but instead her face goes totally blank like the power switch has been flipped off. I’m kind of worried she may be going into shock, but the opportunity is too good to pass up.
“Two minutes,” I say. “I promise.”
I duck into Hunan Kitchen before Lindsay—and her attitude—can come back online. A bell jingles on the door as I walk in. Alex looks up, worried for a second, and then plasters a smile on his face.
“What’s up, Sam?” he drawls. Idiot.
I ignore him and go straight to Anna. She has her head bent, pushing the food around her plate. It’s a lot safer than eating it, that’s for sure.
“Hey.” I’m nervous for some reason. There’s something unsettling about her quietness, the way she lifts her eyes and stares at me with no expression. It reminds me of Juliet. “I just came by to give you something.”
“Give me something?” She curls her lip back, skeptical, and the resemblance to Juliet is no longer so strong. She must think I’m crazy. As far as she knows we’ve never exchanged a word in our lives, and I can only imagine what she thinks I want to give her.
Alex is looking back and forth from Anna to me, as confused as she is. I’m aware of Lindsay watching me through the grimy window, and the fact that three people are staring at me like I’ve lost it is a little overwhelming. I reach into my bag, hands trembling a little bit.
“Yeah, listen, I know it’s weird. I can’t really explain it, but…” I pull out a big book of M. C. Escher sketches and put it on the table next to the bowl of sesame chicken. Or orange beef. Or cooked cat. Or whatever.
Anna freezes, staring at the book like it’s going to bite her.
“It just seemed like the kind of thing you’d like,” I say quickly, already backing away from the table. Now that the hard part is over I feel a thousand times better. “There’s over two hundred drawings. You could even hang some of them up, if you had a place to put them.”
Something tenses in Anna’s face. She’s still staring at the book on the table, her hands resting on her thighs. I can see how tightly she’s curling her fists.
I’m just about to turn and jet out the door when she glances up. Our eyes meet. She doesn’t say anything, but her mouth relaxes. It’s not quite a smile, but it’s close, and I take it as a thank-you.
I hear Alex say, “What was that about?” and then I’m out the door, the bell sounding a shrill note behind me.
Lindsay’s still standing there exactly as I left her, eyes dull. I know she’s been watching through the window.
“Now I know you’ve gone crazy,” she says.
“I’m telling you, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I feel exhilarated now that it’s over with. “Come on. I’m fiending me some yogurt.”
Lindsay doesn’t budge. “Lost it. Flipped your lid. Gone bat shit. Since when do you bring Anna Cartullo presents?”
“Listen, it’s not like I got her a friendship bracelet or something.”
“Since when do you even talk to Anna Cartullo?”
I sigh. I can tell she’s not going to give up on this. “I talked to her for the first time a couple days ago, all right?” Lindsay’s still staring like the world is melting away before her eyes. I know the feeling. “She’s actually pretty nice. I mean, I think you might like her if—”
Lindsay makes a high-pitched squealing noise and claps her hands over her ears again like the very words are torture. She keeps on shrieking like this while I sigh and check my watch, waiting for her to finish her performance.
Eventually she calms down, her squealing dying away to a gurgling noise in the back of her throat. She squints at me. I can’t help but giggle. She looks like a total freak.
“Are you done?” I ask.
“Are you back?” She peels one hand off her ear tentatively, experimenting.
“Is who back?”
“Samantha Emily Kingston. My best friend. My heterosexual life partner.” She leans forward and raps once on my forehead with her knuckles. “Instead of this weird lobotomized boyfriend-dumping Anna Cartullo–liking pod who’s impersonating her.”
I roll my eyes. “You don’t know everything about me, you know.”
“I apparently don’t know anything about you.” Lindsay crosses her arms. I tug on the sleeve of her jacket, and she trudges forward reluctantly. I can tell she’s actually upset. I put my arms around her and squeeze. She’s so much shorter than I am that I have to take mini-shuffling steps so our paces are matched up, but I let her set the rhythm.
“You know what my favorite flavor of yogurt is,” I say, hoping to appease her.
Lindsay heaves a sigh. “Double chocolate,” she grumbles, but she’s not pushing me off of her, which is a good sign. “With crushed peanut butter cups and Cap’n Crunch cereal.”
“And I know you know what size I’m going to get.”
We’re at the door to The Country’s Best Yogurt now, and I can already smell the deliciously sweet chemical-y aroma wafting out to us. It’s like the smell of the bread baking at Subway. You know it’s not the way nature or God intended it to smell, but something about it is addictive.
Lindsay looks at me from the corner of her eye as I pull my arms off her. Her expression is so mournful it’s funny, and I choke down another laugh.
“Better be careful, Miss Jumbo Queen,” she says, tossing her hair. “All that artificial yumminess is going straight to your hips.”
But her mouth is crooked up into a smile, and I know she’s forgiven me.
FRIENDSHIP, A STORY

If I had to pick the top three things I love about each of my friends, here’s what they would be.
ALLY:

Spent all of sophomore year collecting miniature porcelain cows and reading obscure facts about them online after one of them—a real one, I mean—wrapped its tongue around her wrist while she was on vacation in Vermont.
Cooks without recipes, and is totally going to have her own cooking show someday, and has promised we can all come on and be guests.
Sticks her tongue out all the way when she yawns, like a cat.
ELODY:

Has perfect pitch and the clearest, richest voice you can imagine, like maple syrup pouring over warm pancakes, but doesn’t ever show off and only sings on her own when she’s in the shower.
Once went a whole school year wearing at least one green item of clothing every single day.
Snorts when she laughs, which always makes me laugh.
LINDSAY:

Will always dance, even when nobody else is, even when there’s no music—in the cafeteria, in the bathroom, in the mall food court.
Toilet papered Todd Horton’s house every single day for a week after he told everyone that Elody was a bad kisser.
Once broke into a full-on sprint while we were cutting across the park, pumping her arms and legs and zooming across the fields in her jeans and Chinese Laundry boots. I started running too but couldn’t catch up to her before we were both doubled over, huffing out the cold autumn air, my lungs feeling like they were going to explode, and when I laughed and said, “You win,” she gave me the strangest look over her shoulder, not mean, just like she couldn’t believe I was there, then straightened up and said, “I wasn’t racing you.”
I think I understand that now.
I’m thinking about all these things at Ally’s house, feeling like I haven’t said them enough, or at all, feeling like we’ve spent too much time making fun of one another or bullshitting about things that don’t matter or wishing things and people were different—better, more interesting, cuter, older. But it’s hard to find a way to say it now, so instead I just laugh along while Lindsay and Elody shimmy around the kitchen and Ally frantically tries to salvage something edible from two-day-old Italian pesto and some old packaged crackers. And when Lindsay throws her arms around my shoulders and then Ally’s, and then Elody scoots around to Ally’s other side, and Lindsay says, “I love you bitches to death. You know that, right?” and Elody yells, “Group hug!” I just barrel in there and put my arms around them and squeeze until Elody breaks away, laughing, and says, “If I laugh any harder I’m going to throw up.”
THE SECRET

“I just don’t get it.” Lindsay’s pouting in the front seat, halfway down Kent’s driveway, where the line of cars ends. “How do you expect us to get home?”
I sigh and explain it for the thousandth time. “I’ll get us a ride, okay?”
“Why don’t you just come in with us now?” Ally whines from the backseat, also for the thousandth time. “Just leave the damn car.”
“And let you drive home, Ms. Absolut World?” I twist around and stare pointedly at the vodka bottle she’s holding. She takes this as a cue to toss back another gulp.
“I’ll drive us home,” Lindsay insists. “Have you ever seen me drunk?”
“It doesn’t matter.” I roll my eyes. “You can’t even drive sober.”
Elody snorts and Lindsay wags a finger at her. “Watch out or you’ll be walking to school from now on,” she says.
“Come on, we’re missing the party.” Ally finger-combs her hair, ducking so she can check herself out in the rearview mirror.
“Give me fifteen minutes, tops,” I say. “I’ll be back before you even make it to the keg.”
“How will you get back here?” Lindsay’s still eyeing me suspiciously, but she opens the door.
“Don’t worry about it,” I say. “I hooked up a ride earlier.”
“I still don’t see why you can’t just drive us home later.” Lindsay’s grumbling, still unhappy about the arrangements, but she climbs out, and Ally and Elody follow. I don’t bother answering. I’ve already explained, and explained again, that I may be ducking out of the party early. I know all of them assume it’s because Rob will be there and I’m afraid I’ll freak or something, and I don’t correct them.
I’m planning to drop the car in Lindsay’s driveway, but after I pull out onto Route 9, I find that, without meaning to, I steer toward home. I’m feeling calm, blank, like all of the darkness outside has somehow seeped in and turned everything off inside me. It’s not an unpleasant feeling. It’s kind of like being in a pool and kicking up onto your back until you find the perfect balance where you can float without thinking about it.
Most of the lights are off at my house. Izzy’s gone to sleep several hours ago. There’s a faint blue light glowing in the den. My father must be watching TV. Upstairs a bright square of light marks the bathroom. Through the shades I can see a figure moving around, and I imagine my mom dotting Clinique moisturizer on her face, squinting without her contacts, the tattered arm of her bathrobe fluttering, a bird wing. As usual they’ve left the porch light on for me, so that when I come home I won’t have to fumble in my bag for my keys. They’ll be making plans for tomorrow, maybe wondering what to do for breakfast or whether to wake me up before noon, and for a moment grief for everything I am losing—have lost already, lost days ago in a split second of skidding and tearing where my life ripped away from its axis—overwhelms me, and I put my head down on the steering wheel and wait for the feeling to pass. It does. The pain ebbs away. My muscles relax, and once again I’m struck by the rightness of things.
As I’m driving back to Lindsay’s, I think about something I learned years ago in science class, that even when birds have been separated from their flock they will still migrate instinctively. They know where to go without ever having been shown the way. Everyone was talking about how amazing that was, but now it doesn’t seem so strange. That’s how I feel right now: as though I am in the air, all alone, but somehow I know exactly what to do.
A few miles before Lindsay’s driveway, I pull out my phone and punch in Kent’s number. It occurs to me that he may have thought I was kidding earlier today. Maybe he won’t pick up when he doesn’t recognize the phone number, or maybe he’ll be so busy trying to keep people from puking on his parents’ Oriental carpets he won’t hear it. I count the rings, getting more and more nervous. One, two, three.
On the fourth ring there’s the sound of fumbling. Then Kent’s voice, warm and reassuring: “Hunky Heroes, rescuing distressed women, captive princesses, and girls without wheels since 1684. How can I help you?”
“How did you know it was me?” I say.
There’s a surge in the music and the swelling of voices. Then I hear Kent cup his hand over the phone and yell, “Out!” A door shuts and the background noise is suddenly muffled.
“Who else would it be?” he says, his voice sarcastic.
“Everyone else is here.” He readjusts something and his voice becomes louder. He must be pressing right up to the phone. The thought of his lips is distracting. “So what’s up?”
“I hope your car’s not blocked in,” I say. “Because I’m in desperate need of a ride.”


On the way back to Kent’s, we’re mostly quiet. He doesn’t ask me why I was standing in the middle of Lindsay’s driveway, and he doesn’t press the issue of why I’ve chosen him to be my ride. I’m grateful for that, and happy just to sit in silence next to him, watching the rain and the dark brushstrokes of the trees against the sky. As we turn into his driveway, which by this point is almost completely packed with cars, I’m trying to decide exactly what the rain dancing in the headlights looks like. Not glitter, exactly.
Kent puts the car in park but leaves the engine on. “I still haven’t forgotten that you promised me a secret, by the way.” He turns to look at me. “Don’t think you’re getting off so easy.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.” I unbuckle my seat belt and inch closer to him, still watching the rain out of the corner of my eye. Like dust, kind of, but only if dust were made of solid white light.
Kent folds his hands in his lap, staring at me expectantly, his mouth just curved into a smile. “So let’s hear it.”
I reach across Kent and pull the keys out of the ignition, cutting the lights. In the resulting darkness the sound of the rain seems much louder, washing all around us.
“Hey,” Kent says softly, his voice making my heart soar again, making my whole body light. “Now I can’t see you.”
His face and body are all shadow, darkness on darkness. I can just make out the lines of him, and, of course, feel the warmth from his skin. I lean forward, catching my chin on the roughness of his corduroy jacket, finding his ear, accidentally bumping it with my mouth. He inhales sharply and his whole body tenses. My heart is fluid, soaring. There’s no longer any space between heartbeats.
“The secret is,” I say, whispering right into his ear, “that yours was the best kiss I’ve ever had in my life.”
He pulls back a little so that he can look at me, but our lips are still just inches away. I can’t make out his expression in the dark, but I can tell that his eyes are searching my face again.
“But I’ve never kissed you,” he whispers back. Around us the rain sounds like falling glass. “Not since third grade, anyway.”
I smile, but I’m not sure if he can see it. “Better get started, then,” I say, “because I don’t have much time.”
He pauses for only a fraction of a second. Then he leans forward and presses his lips to mine, and the whole world powers off, the moon and the rain and the sky and the streets, and it’s just the two of us in the dark, alive, alive, alive.
I don’t know how long we’re kissing. It seems like hours, but somehow when he pulls away, breathing hard, both hands holding my face, the clock glowing dully on the dashboard has only inched forward a few minutes.
“Wow,” he says. I can feel his chest rising and falling quickly. We’re both out of breath. “What was that for?”
I force myself to pull away, find the handle in the dark and pop the door open. The cold air and the rain whooshes in, helping me think. I suck in a deep breath. “For the ride and everything.”
Even in the dark I can see his eyes sparkling like a cat’s. I can hardly bring myself to look away. “You really saved my life tonight,” I say, my little joke, and then before he can stop me, and even though he calls my name, I jump out of the car and jog along the driveway toward the house, for the very last party of my life.


“You made it!” Lindsay squeals when I find her in the back room. As always the music and heat and smoke is impassable, a wall of people, perfume, and sound. “I totally thought you would flake.”
“I knew you’d show,” Ally says, reaching out and squeezing one of my hands. She drops her voice, which at this volume means she screams a little quieter. “Did you see Rob?”
“I think he’s avoiding me,” I say, which is true. Thank God.
Lindsay twists around, calling for Elody—“Look who decided to grace us with her presence!” she screams, and Elody scans our faces before registering that I haven’t been at the party the whole time—and then turns to me, slipping her arm around my shoulders. “Now it’s officially a party. Al, give Sam a shot.”
“No, thanks.” I wave away the bottle she offers me. I flip open my cell phone. Eleven thirty. “Actually, um, I think I’m going to go downstairs for a bit. Maybe outside. It’s really hot up here.”
Lindsay and Ally exchange a glance.
“You just came from outside,” Lindsay says. “You just got here. Like five seconds ago.”
“I was looking around for you guys for a while.” I know I sound lame, but I also know that I can’t explain.
Lindsay crosses her arms. “Uh-uh, no way. Something’s going on with you, and you’re going to tell us what it is.”
“You’ve been acting weird all day.” Ally bobbles her head.
“Did Lindsay tell you to say that?” I ask.
“Who’s been acting weird?” Elody’s just made her way over to us.
“Me, apparently,” I say.
“Oh, yeah.” Elody nods. “Definitely.”
“Lindsay didn’t tell me to say anything.” Ally puffs up her chest, getting offended. “It’s obvious.”
“We’re your best friends,” Lindsay says. “We know you.”
I press my fingers against my temples, trying to block out the throbbing sounds of the music, and close my eyes. When I open them again, Elody, Ally, and Lindsay are all staring at me suspiciously.
“I’m fine, okay?” I’m desperate to prevent a long conversation—or worse, a fight. “Trust me. It’s just been a weird week.” Understatement of the year.
“We’re worried about you, Sam,” Lindsay says. “You’re not acting like yourself.”
“Maybe that’s a good thing,” I say, and when they stare at me blankly, I sigh, leaning forward to wrestle them all into a group hug.
Elody squeals and giggles, “PDA much?” and Lindsay and Ally seem to relax too.
“I promise nothing’s the matter,” I say, which isn’t exactly true, but I figure it’s the best thing to say. “Best friends forever, right?”
“And no secrets.” Lindsay stares pointedly at me.
“And no bullshit,” Elody trumpets, which isn’t part of our little routine, but whatever. She’s supposed to say, “and no lies,” but I guess one works as well as the other.
“Forever,” Ally finishes, “and till death do us part.”
The last part falls on me to say, “And even then.”
“And even then,” the three of them echo.
“All right, enough mushy crap.” Lindsay breaks away. “I, for one, came to get drunk.”
“I thought you didn’t get drunk,” Ally says.
“Figure of speech.”
Ally and Lindsay start going back and forth, Ally dancing away with the vodka bottle (“If you don’t get drunk, I don’t see the point of drinking and wasting it”) as Elody wanders back over to Muffin. At least the attention is off me.
“See you later,” I say loudly to all of them in general, and Elody glances over her shoulder at me, but she may be looking at someone else. Lindsay flaps a hand in my direction, and Ally doesn’t hear me at all. It reminds me of leaving my house for the last time this morning, how in the end it’s impossible to understand the finality of certain things, certain words, certain moments. As I turn away my vision gets blurry, and I’m surprised to find that I’m crying. The tears come without any warning. I blink repeatedly until the world sharpens again, rubbing the wetness off my cheeks. I check my cell phone. Eleven forty-five.
Downstairs I stand just inside the door, waiting for Juliet, which is a bit like trying to stay on your feet in the middle of a riptide. People swarm around me, but hardly anybody looks my way. Maybe they’re getting a weird vibe off me, too, or they can tell I’m focused elsewhere. Or maybe—and this makes me sad as soon as I think it—they can sense, somehow, that I’m already gone. I push the thought away.
Finally I see her slip through the front door, white sweater tied loosely around her, head stooped. Instantly I jump forward and put a hand on her arm. She starts, staring at me, and though she must have imagined coming face-to-face with me tonight, the fact that I’ve found her, and not the other way around, throws her off guard.
“Hey,” I say. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
She opens her mouth, shuts it, then opens it again. “Actually, I, um, kind of have somewhere to be.”
“No, you don’t.” In one movement I draw her away from the crowded entrance and toward a little recessed area in the hall. It’s a little easier to hear each other here, though it’s so squished we have to stand nearly pressed chest-to-chest. “Weren’t you looking for me, anyway? Weren’t you looking for us?”
“How did you—?” She breaks off, sucks in a breath, and shakes her head. “I’m not here for you.”
“I know.” I stare at her, willing her to look at me, but she doesn’t. I want to tell her that I get it, that I understand, but she’s examining the tiling on the floors. “I know it’s bigger than that.”
“You don’t know anything,” she says dully.
“I know what you have planned for tonight,” I say, very quietly.
Then she looks up. For a second our eyes meet, and I see fear flashing there, and something else—hope, maybe?—but she quickly drops her eyes again.
“You can’t know,” she says simply. “Nobody knows.”
“I know that you have something to tell me,” I say. “I know that you have something you wanted to say to all of us—to me, to Lindsay, to Elody, and Ally, too.”
Again she looks up, but this time she holds my gaze, eyes wide, and we stare at each other. Now I know what the look on her face is, behind the fear: wonder.
“You’re a bitch,” she whispers, so quietly I’m not sure I even hear the words or am just remembering them, imagining them in her voice. She says it like she is reciting the lines to an old play, some long-neglected script she can’t manage to forget.
I nod. “I know,” I say. “I know I am. I know I have been—we all have been. And I’m sorry.”
She takes a quick step back, but there’s nowhere to go, so she ends up bumping up against the wall. She flattens herself, hands braced against the plaster, breathing hard, like I’m some kind of a wild animal that might attack her at any second. She’s shaking her head quickly from side to side. I don’t even think she knows she’s doing it.
“Juliet.” I reach out, but she shrinks an extra half inch into the wall, and I drop my hand. “I’m serious. I’m trying to tell you how sorry I am.”
“I have to go.”
She seems to break away from the wall with effort, like she’s not sure she’ll be able to stand without it. She tries to squeeze past me, but I shuffle around so we’re face-to-face again.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“You said that.” Now she’s getting angry. I’m glad. I think it’s a good sign.
“No, I mean…” I take a deep breath, willing her to understand. This is how it’s supposed to be. “I have to come with you.”
“Please,” she says. “Just leave me alone.”
“That’s what I’m telling you. I can’t.” As we’re standing there I realize we’re almost exactly the same height. We must look like the dark and light sides of an Oreo cookie, and I think how just as easily it could have been the other way around. She could be blocking my path; I could be trying to slip around her into the dark.
“You don’t—” she starts, but I don’t ever hear what she’s about to say. At that second someone yells, “Sam!” from the stairs, and as I turn around to look up at Kent, Juliet darts past me.
“Juliet!” I whip around but not quickly enough. She’s swallowed by the crowd, the gap that allowed her to break for the door closing just as quickly as it opened, a shifting Tetris pattern of bodies, and now I’m running up against backs and hands and enormous leather bags.
“Sam!”
Not now, Kent. I’m fighting my way toward the door, every few steps being carried backward as people drive relentlessly toward the kitchen, holding up cups that need to be refilled. When I’m almost at the door, the crowd thins and I surge forward. But then I feel a warm hand on my back, and Kent’s spinning me around to face him, and despite the fact that I need to catch Juliet and the fact that we’re standing in the middle of a billion people, I think about how good it would feel to dance with him. Really dance, not just grind up on each other like people do at homecoming—dance the way people used to, with my hands on his shoulders and his arms around my waist.
“I’ve been looking for you.” He’s out of breath and his hair is messier than usual. “Why did you run away from me before?”
He looks so confused and concerned I feel my heart somersault in my chest.
“I don’t really have time to talk about this right now,” I say as gently as possible. “I’ll catch up with you later, okay?” It’s the easiest way. It’s the only way.
“No.” He sounds so emphatic I’m momentarily thrown off guard.
“Excuse me?”
“I said, no.” He stands in front of me, blocking my path to the door. “I want to talk to you. I want to talk now.”
“I can’t—” I start to say, but he cuts me off.
“You can’t run away again.” He reaches out and places his hands gently on my shoulders, but his touch makes a current of warmth and energy zip through me. “Do you understand? You can’t keep doing this.”
The way he’s looking at me makes me feel weak. The tears threaten to come again. “I never meant to hurt you,” I croak out.
He releases my shoulders, pushing his hands through his hair. He looks like he wants to scream. “You act like I’m invisible for years, then you send me this adorable little note, then I pick you up, and you kiss me—”
“I think you kissed me, actually.”
He doesn’t miss a beat. “—And you completely blow me away and rip my world up and everything else, and then you go back to ignoring me.”
“I blew you away?” I squeak out before I can stop myself.
He stares at me steadily. “You blew everything away.”
“Listen, Kent.” I look down at my palms, which are actually itching to reach out and touch him, to smooth his hair back and tuck it behind his ear. “I meant everything that happened in the car. I meant to kiss you, I mean.”
“I thought I kissed you.” Kent’s voice is even and I can’t tell if he’s joking or not.
“Yeah, well, I meant to kiss you back.” I try to swallow the lump in my throat. “That’s all I can tell you right now. I meant it. More than I’ve ever meant anything else in my life.”
I’m glad I’m staring down at my shoes because at that second the tears push out of my eyes and start running down my cheeks. I quickly wipe them away with the back of my hand, pretending to be rubbing my eyes.
“What about that other thing you said in the car?” Kent doesn’t sound angry, at least, though I’m too scared to look at him. His voice is softer now. “You said you didn’t have much time. What did you mean?”
Now that the tears have found a way out, there’s no stopping them, and I keep my head bowed. One of them splatters on my shoe, leaving a mark in the shape of a star. “There are things going on right now….”
He puts two fingers under my chin and tilts my face up toward his. And then I really do stumble. My legs just give out underneath me, and he scoops one arm behind my back to keep me upright.
“What’s happening, Sam?” He brushes a tear away from the corner of my eye with his thumb, his eyes searching my face, doing the thing where I feel like he’s turning me inside out and looking straight into my heart. “Are you in trouble?”
I shake my head, unable to speak, and he rushes on, “You can tell me. Whatever it is, you can trust me.”
For a moment I’m tempted to let myself stay this way, pressed against him; to kiss him over and over until it feels like I’m breathing through him. But then I think of Juliet in the woods. I see two blinding beams of light cutting through the darkness, and the low sound of roaring, like a faraway ocean, an engine jumping to life. The roaring and the lights fill my head, pushing everything else out—the fear, the regret, the sadness—and I can focus again.
“I’m not in trouble. It’s not about me. I—I have to help someone.” I break away from Kent gently, detaching his arm from my waist. “I can’t really explain. You have to trust me.”
I lean forward and give him a final kiss—just a peck, really, our lips hardly brushing together, but enough for me to feel that sense of soaring again, strength and power flowing through me. When I pull away I’m expecting more argument, but instead he just stares at me for a beat longer and then whirls around and disappears toward the stairs. My stomach plummets and for one split second I ache for him so badly—I miss him—I feel like my whole chest has caved in. Then I think of the dark, and the lights, and the roaring, and Juliet, and before I can think of anything else, I fight the final few steps to the door and step out into the cold, where the rain is still coming down like shards of moonlight, or like steel.
A MIRACLE OF CHANCE AND COINCIDENCE, PART II

“Juliet! Juliet!” I know she’s gotten a fair start and won’t be able to hear me, but it makes me feel better to call her name, makes the darkness all around me not feel so close and heavy.
Of course I’ve forgotten the flashlight. I begin my combo shuffle-run down the icy driveway, wishing I’d decided to wear sneakers instead of my favorite olive leather wedge-heeled Dolce Vita boots. At the same time, these are shoes to die for—to die in.
The lights of the house have winked out behind me, swallowed by the curves of the road and the tall spikes of the trees, when I think I hear someone calling my name. For a second I’m sure I’ve imagined it, or it’s only the sound of the wind through the branches. I pause, hesitating, and then I hear it again. “Sam!” It sounds like Kent.
“Sam! Where are you?”
It is Kent.
This throws me. I was pretty sure when he stalked away from me at the party that that would be the end of it. I never expected he would actually follow me. I consider turning around and going back to him. But there’s no time. Besides, I’ve said everything I can. For a moment, standing there in the freezing cold with the air burning my lungs and the rain pouring into my collar and down my back, I close my eyes and remember being with him in the warm, dry car surrounded on all sides by pouring rain. I remember the kiss and a feeling of lifting, as though we were going to be swept away at any moment by a wave. When I hear him call my name again it sounds closer, and I imagine him cupping my face and whispering to me. Sam.
Someone screams. I snap my eyes open, my heart surging in my chest, thinking of Juliet. But then I hear a few voices calling to one another—distant, still, a confusion of sounds—and I could swear that among them I hear Lindsay’s voice. But that’s ridiculous. I’m imagining things, and I’m wasting time.
I keep going toward the road. As I get closer I hear the roar of vehicles, the hiss of wheels against asphalt, both sounding like waves on a beach.
When I find Juliet she’s standing, drenched, her clothes clinging to her body, her arms floating loosely at her sides like the rain and the cold doesn’t bother her at all.
“Juliet!”
She hears me then. She swivels her head sharply, like she’s being called back to earth from somewhere else. I start jogging toward her, hearing the low rumbling of an approaching truck—going way too fast—behind me. She takes a quick step backward as I pick up speed, pinwheeling my arms to keep from toppling over on the ice, her face coming alive when she sees me, full of anger and fear and that other thing. Wonder.
The engine is louder now, a steady growl, and the driver leans on his horn. The noise is huge: rolling, blasting around us, filling the air with sound. Still Juliet hasn’t moved. She’s just standing there, staring at me, shaking her head a little bit, like we’re long-lost friends in a random airport somewhere in Europe and have just bumped into each other. It’s so weird to see you here…. Isn’t it funny how life works? Small world.
I close the last few feet between us as the truck surges past, still blasting its horn. I grab onto her shoulders, and she takes a few stumbling steps backward into the woods, my momentum nearly carrying her off her feet. The sound of the horn ebbs away from us, taillights disappearing into the dark.
“Thank God,” I say, breathing hard. My arms are shaking.
“What are you doing?” She seems to snap into herself, trying to wrench away from me. “Are you following me?”
“I thought you were going to…” I nod toward the road, and I suddenly have the urge to hug her. She’s alive and solid and real under my hands. “I thought I wouldn’t get to you in time.”
She stops struggling and looks at me for a long second. There are no cars on the road, and in the pause I hear it sharply, definitively: “Samantha Emily Kingston!” It comes from the woods to my left, and there’s only one person in the world who calls me by my full name. Lindsay Edgecombe.
Just then, like a chorus of birds rising up from the ground at the same time, come the other voices, crowding one another: “Sam! Sam! Sam!” Kent, Ally, and Elody, all of them coming through the woods toward us.
“What’s going on?” Juliet looks really afraid now. I’m so confused I loosen my grip on her shoulders and she twists away. “Why did you follow me? Why can’t you leave me alone?”
“Juliet.” I hold up my hands, a gesture of peace. “I just want to talk to you.”
“I have nothing to say.” She turns away from me and stalks back up toward the road.
I follow her, feeling suddenly calm. The world around me sharpens and comes into clearer focus, and every time I hear my name bouncing through the woods it sounds closer and closer, and I think, I’m sorry. But this is right. This is how it has to happen.
How it was supposed to happen all along.
“You don’t have to do this, Juliet,” I say to her quietly. “You know it’s not the right way.”
“You don’t know what I have to do,” she whispers back fiercely. “You don’t know. You could never understand.” She’s staring at the road. Her shoulder blades are jutting out underneath her soaked T-shirt, and again I have the fantasy of a pair of wings unfurling behind her, lifting her away, carrying her out of danger.
“Sam! Sam! Sam!” The voices are close now, and diagonal beams of light zigzag through the woods. I hear footsteps, too, and branches snapping underfoot. The road has been unusually clear of traffic, but now from both directions I make out the low growl of big engines. I close my eyes and think of flying.
“I want to help you,” I say to Juliet, though I know that I can’t make her understand, not like this.
“Don’t you get it?” She turns to me, and to my surprise I see she’s crying. “I can’t be fixed, do you understand?”
I think of standing on the stairs with Kent and saying exactly the same thing. I think of his beautiful light green eyes, and the way he said, You don’t need to be fixed and the warmth of his hands and the softness of his lips. I think of Juliet’s mask and how maybe we all feel patched and stitched together and not quite right.
I am not afraid.
Dimly, I have the sense of roaring in my ears and voices so close and faces, white and frightened, emerging from the darkness, but I can’t stop staring at Juliet as she’s crying, still so beautiful.
“It’s too late,” she says.
And I say, “It’s never too late.”
In that split second she’s launched herself into the road, but she looks back, startled, recognition lighting up her eyes. Then I’m hurtling out behind her. I slam into her back, and she goes shooting forward, rolling toward the opposite shoulder, just as two vans converge, about to pass each other. There’s a furious high whine and someone—more than one person?—screams my name and a feeling of heat all through my body and the sensation of being lifted, thrown, by a huge hand, a giant’s hand; the earth revolves, turns upside down and sideways, and then a fog of darkness eats up the edges of the earth, turning everything to dream.
Floating images, moving in and out: bright green eyes and a field of sun-warmed grass, a mouth saying, Sam, Sam, Sam, making it sound like a song. Three faces blooming together like flowers on a single stem, names ebbing away from me, a single word: love. Red and white flashes, tree branches lit up like the vaulted ceiling of a church.
And a face above mine, white and beautiful, eyes as large as the moon. You saved me. A hand on my cheek, cool and dry. Why did you save me? Words welling up on a tide: No. The opposite. Eyes the color of a dawn sky, a crown of blond hair, so bright and white and blinding I could swear it was a halo.