Before I Fall

on two elbows. Eventually Lindsay realizes the light’s not going off and she emerges from under her cocoon.

“What’s the problem?” She balls her hands into fists, rubbing her eyes.

No one answers. We all have a growing sense of it now: something is very wrong. Ally’s just standing there in the middle of the room. In her oversized T-shirt and baggy shorts she looks much younger than she is.

At a certain point the voice upstairs stops, and the footsteps move diagonally across the floor, in the direction of the stairs. Ally moves back to the air mattress, folding her legs underneath her and biting her nails.

Mrs. Harris doesn’t seem surprised to find us sitting up, waiting for her. She’s wearing a long silk nightgown and has an eye mask perched on top of her head. I’ve never seen Mrs. Harris looking less than perfect and it makes fear yawn open in my stomach.

“What?” Ally’s voice is semihysterical. “What happened? Is it Dad?”

Mrs. Harris blinks and seems to focus on us like she’s just been called out of a dream. “No, no. It’s not your father.” She takes a breath, then blows it out loudly. “Listen, girls. What I’m about to tell you is very upsetting. I’m only telling you in the first place because you’ll find out soon enough.”

“Just tell us, Mom.”

Mrs. Harris nods slowly. “You all know Juliet Sykes.”

This is a shock: we all look at one another, completely bewildered. Of all the words that Mrs. Harris could have said at this moment, I’m pretty sure “You all know Juliet Sykes” ranks pretty high on our list of the unexpected.

“Yeah. So?” Ally shrugs.

“Well, she—” Mrs. Harris breaks off, smoothing down her nightgown with her hands, and starts again. “That was Mindy Sachs on the phone.”

Lindsay raises her eyebrows, and Ally gives a knowing sigh. We all know Mindy Sachs too. She’s fifty and divorced but still dresses and acts like a sophomore. She’s more gossip-obsessed than anybody at our school. Whenever I see Ms. Sachs I’m reminded of the game we used to play when we were kids, where one person whispers a secret and the next person repeats it and so on and so on, except in Ridgeview Ms. Sachs is the only one doing the whispering. She and Mrs. Harris sit on the school board together, so Mrs. Harris always knows about divorces and who just lost all their money and who’s having an affair.

“Mindy lives just next to the Sykes’,” Mrs. Harris continues. “Apparently their street has been swarming with ambulances for the past half hour.”

“I don’t get it,” Ally says, and maybe it’s the hour or the stress of the past few days, but I’m not getting it either.

Mrs. Harris has her arms folded across her chest and she hugs herself a little, like she’s cold. “Juliet Sykes is dead. She killed herself tonight.”

Silence. Total silence. Ally stops chewing on her nails, and Lindsay sits as still as I’ve ever seen her. I really think for several seconds my heart stops beating. I feel a strange tunneling sensation, like I’ve been parachuted out of my body and am now just looking at it from far away, like for a few moments we’re all just pictures of ourselves.

I’m suddenly reminded of a story my parents once told me: back when Thomas Jefferson was called Suicide High, some guy hanged himself inside his own closet, right there among the mothball-smelling sweaters and old sneakers and everything. He was a loser and played in the band and had bad skin and next to no friends. So nobody thought anything of it when he died. I mean, people were sad and everything, but they got it.

But the next year—the next year to the day—one of the most popular guys in school killed himself in the exact same way. Everything was the same: method, time, place. Except this guy was captain of the swim team and the soccer team, and apparently when the police went into the closet, there were so many old athletic trophies on the shelves it looked like he’d been entombed in a gold vault. He left only a one-line note: We are all Hangmen.

“How?” Elody asks, barely a whisper.

Mrs. Harris shakes her head, and for a second I think she might cry. “Mindy heard the gunshot. She thought it was a firecracker. She thought it was a prank.”

“She shot herself?” Ally says it quietly, almost reverentially, and I know we’re all thinking the same thing: that’s the worst way of any.

“How are they…” Elody adjusts her glasses and licks her lips. “Do they know why?”

“There was no note,” Mrs. Harris says, and I swear I can hear something go around the room: a tiny exhalation. A breath of relief. “I just thought you should know.” She goes to Ally and bends over, kissing her forehead. Ally pulls away, maybe in surprise. I’ve never seen Mrs. Harris kiss Ally before. I’ve never seen Mrs. Harris look so much like a mother before.

After Mrs. Harris leaves we all sit there while the silence stretches out and expands in huge rings around us. I feel like we’re all waiting for something, but I’m not sure what. Finally Elody speaks.

“Do you think…” Elody swallows, looking back and forth from one to the other of us. “Do you think it’s because of our rose?”

“Don’t be stupid,” Lindsay snaps. I can tell she’s upset, though. Her face is pale, and she twists and untwists the edge of her blanket. “It’s not like it was the first time.”

“That makes it even worse,” Ally says.

“At least we knew who she was.” Lindsay catches me staring at her hands, and she places them firmly in her lap. “Most people just acted like she was invisible.”

Ally bites her lip.

“Still, on her last day…” Elody trails off.

“She’s better off this way,” Lindsay says. This is low, even for her, and we all stare.

“What?” She lifts her chin and stares back at us defiantly. “You know you’re all thinking it. She was miserable. She escaped. Done.”

“But—I mean, things could have gotten better,” I say.

“They wouldn’t have,” Lindsay says.

Ally shakes her head and draws her knees to her chest. “God, Lindsay.”

I’m in shock. The weirdest part of it all is the gun. It seems so harsh, so loud, so physical a way to do it. Blood and brains and searing heat. If she had to do it—to die—she should have drowned, should have just walked into the water until it folded over her head. Or she should have jumped. I picture Juliet floating this way and that, like she’s being supported by currents of air. I can imagine her spreading her arms and leaping off a bridge or a canyon somewhere, but in my head she starts soaring upward on the wind as soon as her feet leave the ground.

Not a gun. Guns are for cop dramas and 7-Eleven holdups and crack addicts and gang fights. Not for Juliet Sykes.

“Maybe we should have been nicer to her,” Elody says. She looks down like she’s embarrassed to say it.

“Please.” Lindsay’s voice is loud and hard in comparison. “You can’t be mean to someone forever and then feel bad when she dies.”

Elody lifts her head and stares at Lindsay. “But I do feel bad.” Her voice is getting stronger.

“Then you’re a hypocrite,” Lindsay says. “And that’s worse than anything.”

She gets up and shuts off the light. I hear her climb back on the couch and rustle around in the blankets, settling in.

“If you’ll excuse me,” she says, “I have sleep to catch up on.”

There’s total silence for a while. I’m not sure if Ally’s lying down or not, but as my eyes adjust to the darkness I see that she isn’t: she’s still sitting there with her knees drawn up to her chest, staring straight ahead.

After a minute she says, “I’m going to sleep upstairs.” She gathers up her sheets and blankets, making extra noise, probably to get back at Lindsay.

A moment later Elody says, “I’m going with her. The couch is too lumpy.” She’s obviously upset too. We’ve