Before I Fall

“It’s just a little farther,” I say, even though I have no idea, and I’m starting to wonder whether we turned too early. I have butterflies in my stomach, but I’m not sure whether they’re good or bad.

The woods press closer and closer until they’re nearly brushing up against the car doors. Lindsay starts complaining about the paint job. Just when it seems like we’ll be sucked up into the darkness, all of a sudden the woods stop completely and there’s the biggest, most beautiful lawn you can imagine, with a white house at its center that looks like it’s made out of frosting. It’s got balconies and a long porch that runs along two sides. The shutters are white too, and carved with designs it’s too dark to make out. I don’t remember any of it. Maybe it’s the alcohol, but I think it’s the most beautiful house I’ve ever seen.

We’re all silent for a minute, looking. Half the house is dark, but warm light is shining from the top floor, and where it makes it to the lawn it turns the grass silver.

Lindsay says, “It’s almost as big as your house, Al.” I’m sorry she spoke: it feels like a spell has been broken.

“Almost,” Ally says. She takes the vodka out of her bag and swigs it, coughs, burps, and wipes her mouth.

“Give me a shot of that,” Elody says, reaching for the bottle.

The bottle’s in my hand before I realize it. I take a sip. It burns my throat and tastes awful, like paint or gasoline, but as soon as it’s down I get a rush. We climb out of the car and the light from the house surges and expands, winking at me.

Walking into parties always gives me a crampy feeling at the bottom of my stomach. It’s a good feeling, though: the feeling of knowing anything can happen. Most of the time nothing does, of course. Most of the time one night blends into the next, and weeks blend into weeks, and months into other months. And sooner or later we all die.

But at the beginning of the night anything’s possible.

The front door is locked and we have to go around the side, where a door opens onto a really narrow hallway all paneled in wood and a tiny flight of steep wooden stairs. It smells like something I remember from childhood, but I can’t quite place it. I hear the tinkle of breaking glass and someone yells, “Fire in the hole!” Then Dujeous roars from the speakers: All MCs in the house tonight, if your lyrics sound tight then rock the mic. The stairs are so narrow we have to squeeze up in single file because people are coming down in the opposite direction, empty beer cups in hand. Most of them have to turn so their backs are against the wall. We say hi to a few people and ignore the rest. As usual I can feel all of them looking at us. That’s another nice thing about being popular: you don’t have to pay any attention to the people paying attention to you.

At the top of the stairs a dim hallway is hung all over with multicolored Christmas lights. There are a series of rooms, each leading off the next, and all seem to be filled with draped fabrics and big pillows and couches and all are packed with people. Everything is soft—the colors, the surfaces, the way people look—except the music, which pumps through the walls, making the floor vibrate. People are smoking inside too, so everything’s happening behind a thick blue veil. I’ve only smoked pot once, but this is what I imagine it’s like to be stoned.

Lindsay leans back and says something to me, but it gets lost in the murmur of voices. Then she’s moving away from me, weaving through the crowd. I turn around, but Elody and Ally are gone too, and before I know it my heart is pounding and I get this itchy feeling in my palms.

Recently I’ve been having this nightmare where I’m standing in the middle of an enormous crowd, being pushed from left to right. The faces look familiar, but there’s something horribly wrong with all of them: someone will walk by who looks like Lindsay, but then her mouth is weird and droopy like it’s melting off. And none of them recognize me.

Obviously standing in Kent’s house isn’t the same thing, since I pretty much know everybody except for some of the juniors and a couple of girls who I think might be sophomores. But still, it’s enough to make me freak out a little.

I’m about to head over to Emma Howser—she’s super cheesy and normally I wouldn’t be caught dead talking to her, but I’m getting desperate—when I feel thick arms around me and smell lemon balm. Rob.

He puts a wet mouth against my ear. “Sexy Sammy. Where’ve you been all my life?”

I turn around. His face is bright red. “You’re drunk,” I say, and it comes out more accusatory than I meant it to.

“Sober enough,” he says, trying and failing to raise one eyebrow. “And you’re late.” His grin is lazy. Only one half of it curves upward. “We did a keg stand.”

“It’s ten o’clock,” I point out. “We’re not late. I called you, anyway.”

He pats his fleece and his pockets. “Must’ve put my phone down somewhere.”

I roll my eyes. “You’re a delinquent.”

“I like it when you use those big words.” The other half of his smile is creeping upward slowly and I know he’s going to kiss me. I turn partly away, searching the room for my friends, but they’re still MIA.

In the corner I spot Kent, wearing a tie and a collared shirt about three sizes too big for him, which is half tucked into a pair of ratty khakis. At least he’s not wearing his bowler hat. He’s talking to Phoebe Rifer and they’re laughing about something. It annoys me that he hasn’t noticed me yet. I’m kind of hoping he’ll look up and come barreling over to me like he usually does, but he just bends closer toward Phoebe like he’s trying to hear her better.

Rob pulls me into him. “We’ll only stay for an hour, okay? Then we’ll leave.” His breath smells like beer and a little like cigarettes when he kisses me. I close my eyes and think about how in sixth grade I saw him kissing Gabby Haynes and was so jealous I couldn’t eat for two days. I wonder if I look like I’m enjoying it. Gabby did, in sixth grade.

It relaxes me to think about things like that: how funny life is.

I haven’t even taken off my jacket, but Rob unzips it and moves his hands along my waist and then under my tank top. His palms are sweaty and big.

I pull away long enough to say, “Not right here, in the middle of everyone.”

“Nobody’s watching,” he says, and clamps down on me again. This is a lie. He knows everyone watches us. He can see it. He doesn’t even close his eyes.

His hands inch over my stomach and his fingers are pulling at the underwire of my bra. He’s not very good with bras. He’s not that good with breasts in general, actually. I mean, it’s not like I really know what it’s supposed to feel like, but every time he touches my boobs he kind of just massages them hard in a circle. My gyno does the same thing when I go in for an exam, so one of them has to be doing it wrong. And to be honest, I don’t think it’s my gyno.

If you want to know my biggest secret, here it is: I know you’re supposed to wait to have sex with someone you love and all that, and I do love Rob—I mean, I’ve kind of been in love with him forever, so how could I not?—but that’s not why I decided to have sex with him tonight.

I decided to have sex with him because I want to get it over with, and because sex has always scared me and I don’t want to be scared of it anymore.

“I can’t wait to wake up next to you,” Rob says, his mouth against my ear.

It’s a sweet thing to say, but I can’t concentrate while his hands are on me. And it occurs to me all of a sudden that I’d never thought about the waking-up part. I have no idea what you’re supposed to talk about the day after you’ve had sex, and I imagine us lying side by side, not touching, silent, while the sun rises. Rob doesn’t have any blinds in his room—he ripped them down once when he was drunk—and during the day it’s like a spotlight has been turned on his bed, a spotlight or an eye.

“Get a room!”

I pull away from Rob as Ally appears next to me, making a face. “You two are perverts,” she says.

“This is a room.” Rob lifts both arms and gestures around him. He sloshes a little bit of beer onto my shirt, and I make a noise, annoyed.

“Sorry, babe.” He shrugs. Now there’s only a half inch of beer in his cup and he stares at it, frowning. “Gonna go for a topper. You guys want?”

“We brought our own.” Ally pats the vodka in her purse.

“Smart thinking.” Rob brings a finger up to tap the side of his head but nearly takes an eye out instead. He’s drunker than I thought. Ally covers her mouth and giggles.

“My boyfriend’s an idiot,” I say as soon as he lurches away.