Before I Fall

suddenly feel very exposed. I have a flashback then of standing in front of her when I was five or six and having to strip naked while she checked me all over for deer ticks. I shove down farther into the covers, balling up my fists until my nails dig into my palms.

Then the craziest thing in the world happens. My mom steps straight over the flaking red line and strides over to the bed, like it’s no big deal. I’m so surprised I don’t even protest as she bends over me and plants a kiss on my forehead.

“I’m so sorry, Sam.” She smoothes my forehead with her thumb. “Of course you can stay home.”

I expected more of an argument and I’m left speechless.

“Do you want me to stay home with you?” she asks.

“No.” I try to give her a smile. “I’ll be fine. Really.”

“I want to stay home with Sam!” Izzy has come to the door again, this time halfway dressed for school. She’s in a yellow-and-pink phase—not a flattering combination, but it’s kind of hard to explain color palettes to an eight- year-old—and has pulled on a mustard yellow dress over a pair of pink tights. She’s also wearing big, scrunchie yellow socks. She looks like some kind of tropical flower. A part of me is tempted to freak out at my mom for letting Izzy wear whatever she wants. The other kids must make fun of her.

Then again, I guess Izzy doesn’t care. That’s another thing that strikes me as funny: that my eight-year-old sister is braver than I am. She’s probably braver than most of the people at Thomas Jefferson. I wonder if that will ever change, if it will get beaten out of her.

Izzy’s eyes are enormous and she clasps her hands together like she’s praying. “Please?”

My mom sighs, exasperated. “Absolutely not, Izzy. There’s nothing wrong with you.”

“I’m feeling sick,” Izzy says. This is made slightly unbelievable by the fact that she’s hopping and pirouetting from foot to foot as she says it, but Izzy’s never been a great liar.

“Did you eat your breakfast yet?” My mom crosses her arms and makes her “strict parent” face.

Izzy bobs her head. “I think I have food poisoning.” She doubles over, grabs her stomach, then immediately straightens up and begins hopping again. I can’t help it; a little giggle escapes.

“Come on, Mom,” I say. “Let her stay home.”

“Sam, please don’t encourage her.” My mom turns to me, shaking her head, but I can tell she’s wavering.

“She’s in third grade,” I say. “It’s not like they actually learn anything.”

“Yes we do!” Izzy crows, then claps her hand over her mouth when I give her a look. My little sister: apparently not a champion negotiator, either. She shakes her head and quickly stutters. “I mean, we don’t do that much.”

My mom lowers her voice. “You know she’ll be bugging you all day, right? Wouldn’t you rather be alone?”

I know she’s expecting me to say yes. For years that’s been the buzzword of the house: Sam just wants to be left alone. Want some dinner? I’ll bring it up to my room. Where you headed? Just want to be alone. Can I come in? Just leave me alone. Stay out of my room. Don’t talk to me when I’m on the phone. Don’t talk to me when I’m listening to music. Alone, alone, alone.

Things change after you die, though—I guess because dying is about the loneliest thing you can do.

“I don’t mind,” I say, and I mean it. My mom throws up her hands and says, “Whatever,” but even before it’s out of her mouth, Izzy’s charging through my room and has belly flopped on top of me, throwing her arms around my neck and screeching, “Can we watch TV? Can we make mac and cheese?” She smells like coconut as usual, and I remember when she was so small we could fit her in the sink to give her a bath, and she would sit there laughing and smiling and splashing like the best place in the world to be was in a 12' ? 18' square of porcelain, like the sink was the biggest ocean in the world.

My mom gives me a look that says, You asked for it.

I smile over Izzy’s shoulder and shrug.

And it’s as easy as that.

INTO THE WOODS

It’s weird how much people change. For example, when I was a kid I loved all of these things—like horses and the Fat Feast and Goose Point—and over time all of them just fell away, one after another, replaced by friends and IMing and cell phones and boys and clothes. It’s kind of sad, if you think about it. Like there’s no continuity in people at all. Like something ruptures when you hit twelve, or thirteen, or whatever the age is when you’re no longer a kid but a “young adult,” and after that you’re a totally different person. Maybe even a less happy person. Maybe even a worse one.

Here’s how I first discovered Goose Point: one time before Izzy was born my parents refused to buy me this little purple bike with a pink flowered basket on it and a bell. I don’t remember why—maybe I already had a bike— but I flipped out and decided to run away. Here are the basic two rules of running away successfully:

Go somewhere you know.

Go somewhere nobody else knows.

I didn’t know these two rules then, obviously, and I think my goal was the opposite: to go somewhere I didn’t know and then be discovered by my parents, who would feel so bad they’d agree to buy me whatever I wanted, including the bike (and maybe a pony).

It was May, and warm. Every day the light lasted longer and longer. One afternoon I packed my favorite duffel bag and snuck out the back door. (I remember thinking I was smart for avoiding the front yard, where my father was doing yard work.) I also remember exactly what I packed: a flashlight; a sweatshirt; a bathing suit; an entire package of Oreos; a copy of my favorite book, Matilda; and an enormous fake pearl-and-gold necklace my mom had given me to wear on Halloween that year. I didn’t know where I was going, so I just went straight, over the deck and down the stairs and across the backyard, into the woods that separated our property from our neighbor’s. I followed the woods for a while, feeling really sorry for myself and half hoping that some hugely rich person would spot me and take pity on me and adopt me and buy me a whole garage full of purple bicycles.

But then after a while, I got kind of into it, the way kids do. The sun was hazy and gold. All the leaves looked like they were haloed in light, and there were tiny birds darting everywhere, and layers and layers of velvet-green moss under my feet. All of the houses dropped away. I was deep in the woods, and imagined I was the only person who’d ever come this far. I imagined I would live there forever, sleeping on a bed of moss, wearing flowers in my hair and living in harmony with the bears and foxes and unicorns. I came to a stream and had to cross it. I climbed an enormous, high hill, as big as a mountain.

At the top of the hill was the biggest rock I’d ever seen. It curved upward and out from the hillside like the potbellied hull of a ship, but it had a top as flat as a table. I don’t remember much about that first trip other than eating Oreos, one after another, and feeling like I owned that whole portion of the woods. I also remember that when I came home, my stomach cramping from all the cookies, I was disappointed my parents hadn’t been more worried about me. I was positive I’d stayed away for hours and hours and hours, but the clock showed I’d been gone less than forty minutes. I decided then that the rock was special: that time didn’t move there.

I went there a lot that summer, whenever I needed to escape, and the summer after that. One time I was lying stretched out on top of the rock, staring at the sky all pink and purple like the stretch taffy at carnivals, and I saw hundreds of geese migrating, a perfect V. A single feather floated down through the air and landed directly next to my hand. I christened the place Goose Point, and for years kept the feather in a small, decorative box wedged into one of the stone ridges running along its underbelly. Then one day the box was gone. I figured it had been blown away during a storm, and searched through the leaves and undergrowth for hours and, when I couldn’t find it, cried.

Even after I quit horseback riding, I climbed up to Goose Point sometimes, though I went less and less. I went there one time in sixth grade after all the boys in gym class rated my butt as “too square.” I went there when I wasn’t invited to Lexa Hill’s sleepover birthday party, even though we’d been partners in science class and spent four months giggling over how cute Jon Lippincott was. Each time I came back home, less time had passed than I expected. Each time, I still told myself, though I knew it was stupid, that Goose Point was special.