Before I Fall

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.