Before I Fall

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.