Before I Fall

afraid of his answer.

He looks at his feet. “Sam, I wanted to say…”

“Don’t.” I hold up a hand. Then it hits me: he knows what happened with Mr. Daimler. He can tell. I know I’m being paranoid, but the certainty is so strong it makes my head spin, and I have to reach out and grab on to the banister. “If this is about what happened in math, I don’t want to hear it.”

He looks up at me again, his mouth set in a line. “What did happen?”

“Nothing.” Once again I feel Mr. Daimler’s weight pressing into me, the heat of his mouth clamped over mine. “It’s none of your business.”

“Daimler’s a dirtbag, you know. You should stay away from him.” He looks at me sideways. “You’re too good for that.”

I think of the note that sailed onto my desk earlier. I knew it was from him. The thought of Kent McFuller feeling sorry for me, looking down on me, makes something break inside.

My words come out in a rush. “I don’t have to explain anything to you. We’re not even friends. We’re—we’re nothing.”

Kent takes a step back, lets out a noise that’s halfway between a snort and a laugh. “You’re really unbelievable, you know that?” He shakes his head, looking disgusted or sad, or maybe both. “Maybe everyone’s right about you. Maybe you are just a shallow—” He stops.

“What? A shallow what?” I feel like slapping him to get him to look at me, but he keeps his eyes turned toward the wall. “A shallow bitch, right? Is that what you think?”

His eyes click back on mine, clear and dull and hard, like rock. Now I wish he hadn’t looked at me at all. “Maybe. Maybe it’s like you said. We’re not friends. We’re not anything.”

“Yeah? Well, at least I don’t walk around pretending to be better than everybody else.” It explodes out of me before I can stop it. “You’re not perfect, you know. I’m sure you’ve done bad things. I’m sure you do bad things.” As soon as I say it, though, I get the feeling it’s not true. I just know it somehow. Kent McFuller doesn’t do bad things. At least, he doesn’t do bad things to other people.

Now Kent does laugh. “I’m the one who pretends to be better than everybody?” He narrows his eyes. “That’s really funny, Sam. Anyone ever tell you how funny you are?”

“I’m not kidding.” I’m balling my fists up against my thighs. I don’t know why I’m so angry at him, but I could shake him, or cry. He knows about Mr. Daimler. He knows all about me, and he hates me for it. “You shouldn’t make people feel bad just because they’re not, like, perfect or whatever.”

His mouth falls open. “I never said—”

“It’s not my fault I can’t be like you, okay? I don’t get up in the morning thinking the world is one big shiny, happy place, okay? That’s just not how I work. I don’t think I can be fixed.” I mean to say, I don’t think “it” can be fixed, but it comes out wrong, and suddenly I’m on the verge of crying. I have to take big gulping breaths to try to keep the tears down. I turn away from Kent so he won’t see.

There’s a moment of silence that seems to last forever. Then Kent rests his hand on my elbow just for a second, his touch like the wings of something brushing me. Just that one little touch gives me the chills.

“I was going to tell you that you look beautiful with your hair down. That’s all I was going to say.” Kent’s voice is steady and low. He moves around me to the head of the stairs, pausing just at the top. When he turns back to me he looks sad, even though he’s smiling the tiniest bit.

“You don’t need to be fixed, Sam.” He says the words, but it’s like I don’t even hear them; it’s like they go through my whole body at the same time, like I’m absorbing them from the air. He must know it’s untrue. I open my mouth to tell him so, but he’s already disappearing down the stairs, melting into the crowd of people flowing into the house. I’m a nonperson, a shadow, a ghost. Even before the accident I’m not sure that I was a whole person—that’s what I’m realizing now. And I’m not sure where the damage begins.

I take a big swig of beer, wishing I could just go blotto. I want the world to drop away. I take another big gulp. The beer is cold, at least, but tastes like moldy water.

“Sam!” Tara’s coming up the stairs, her smile like the beam of a flashlight. “We’ve been looking for you.” When she gets to the top she pants a little, putting her right hand on her stomach and bending over. In her left hand she’s holding a cigarette, half smoked. “Courtney did recon. She found the good stuff.”

“Good stuff?”

“Whiskey, vodka, gin, cassis, the works. Booze. The good stuff.”

She grabs my hand and we go back down the stairs, which are slowly getting clogged with people. Everyone’s moving in the same direction: from the entrance to the beer and then up the stairs. In the kitchen we push through the clot of people gathered by the keg. On the opposite side of the kitchen there’s a door with a handwritten sign on it. I recognize Kent’s handwriting.

It says: PLEASE DO NOT ENTER.

There’s a footnote written in tiny letters along the bottom of the page: SERIOUSLY, GUYS. I’M HOSTING THE PARTY AND IT’S THE ONE THING I ASK. LOOK! THERE’S A KEG BEHIND YOU!

“Maybe we shouldn’t—” I start to say, but Tara has already slipped through the door so I follow her.

It’s dark on the other side of the door, and cold. The only light comes from two enormous bay windows that face out onto the backyard.

I hear giggling from somewhere deeper in the house, then the sound of someone bumping into something. “Careful,” someone hisses, and then I hear Courtney say, “You try to pour in the dark.”

“This way,” Tara whispers. It’s weird how people’s voices get softer in the dark, like they can’t help it.

We’re in the dining room. There’s a chandelier drooping from the ceiling like an exotic flower, and heavy curtains pooling at either side of the windows. Tara and I skirt around the dining room table—my mom would have a coronary from excitement, it must seat at least twelve—and out into a kind of alcove. This is where the bar is. Beyond the alcove is another dark room: from the sofas and bookshelves I can just make out, it looks like a library or a living room. I wonder how many rooms there are. The house seems to extend forever. It’s even darker here, but Courtney and Bethany are rooting around in some cabinets.

“There must be fifty bottles in here,” Courtney says. It’s too dark to read labels, so she opens each bottle and sniffs it, guessing at the contents. “This is rum, I think.”

“Freaky house, huh?” Bethany says.

“I don’t mind it,” I say quickly, not sure why I feel defensive. I bet it’s beautiful during the day: room after room of light. I bet Kent’s house is always quiet, or there’s always classical music playing or something.

Glass shatters next to me and something wet splatters on my leg. I jump as Courtney whispers, “What did you do?”

“It’s not me,” I say as Tara says, “I didn’t mean to.”

“Was that a vase?”

“Ew. Some of it got on my shoe.”

“Let’s just take the bottle and get out of here.”

We slip back into the kitchen just as RJ Ravner yells, “Fire in the hole!” Matt Dorfman takes a cup of beer and starts chugging it. Everyone laughs and Abby McGail claps when he’s drained the cup. Someone turns up the music, and Dujeous comes on and everyone starts singing along. All MCs in the house tonight, if your lyrics sound tight then rock the mic….

I hear high-pitched laughter. Then a voice from the front hallway: “God, I guess we came at the right time.”

My stomach jumps into my throat. Lindsay’s here.

THERE ARE CERTAIN THINGS YOU NEVER SAY

Here’s Lindsay’s big secret: when she came back from visiting her stepbrother at NYU our junior year, she was awful for days—snapping at everybody, making fun of Ally for having weird food issues, making fun of Elody for being such a lush and a pushover, making fun of me for always being the last to do things, from picking up on trends to going to third base (which I didn’t do until late sophomore year). Elody, Ally, and I knew something must have happened in New York, but Lindsay wouldn’t tell us when we asked her, and we didn’t push it. You don’t push things with Lindsay.