Before I Fall

flurries of snow whirl in from outside. I shut the window. It makes me feel better already, like I’m already starting the process of erasing everything that’s happened tonight. Elody will be fine.

After all, I was the one who was supposed to be in the front seat.

I hang the hand towel Juliet left by the sink and strip out of my clothes, shaking. The shower is too hard to resist after all, and I turn the water on as high and as hot as it can go and get in. It’s one of those rain-forest showers where the water pours on you straight from above in a long, heavy stream. When it hits the marble tiles under my feet, it lets up big clouds of steam. I stay in the shower so long my skin gets pruny.

I put on Kent’s fleece, which is supersoft and smells like laundry detergent and, for some reason, freshly mowed grass. Then I snap the tags off the boxers and slip my legs into them. They’re too big on me, obviously, but I like how clean and crisp they feel on my skin. The only other boxers I’ve seen are Rob’s, usually crumpled up on his floor or shoved under his bed and stained with things I have no desire to identify. Last, I put on the sweatpants, which pool over my feet. Kent has given me socks, too, the big fluffy kind. I ball up all of my clothes and leave them just outside the bathroom door.

When I go back in the kitchen, Kent’s standing there, exactly as I left him. Something flickers in his eyes when I come in, but I’m not sure what it is.

“Your hair’s wet,” he says softly, but he says it like he’s actually saying something else.

I look down. “I showered, after all.”

Silence stretches between us for a few beats. Then he says, “You’re tired. I’ll drive you home.”

“No.” I say it more forcefully than I meant to, and Kent looks startled.

“No—I mean, I can’t. I don’t want to go home right now.”

“Your parents…” Kent trails off.

“Please.” I don’t know which would be worse: if my parents have already heard and are sitting there, waiting for me, waiting to grill me and ask me questions and talk about hospitals in the morning and therapists to help me deal—or if they haven’t heard yet and I come home to a dark house.

“There’s a guest room here,” Kent says. His hair is finally drying into little wisps and waves.

“No guest rooms.” I shake my head resolutely. “I want to be in a room room. A lived-in room.”

Kent stares at me for a second and then says, “Come with me.” He reaches for my hand as he passes and I let him take it. We go up the stairs and down the hall and to the bedroom with all the bumper stickers on it. I should have known it was his. He fiddles with the door—“It sticks,” he explains—and finally pops it open. I inhale sharply. The smell is just the same as it was last night when I was here with Rob, but everything is different—the darkness looks softer, somehow.

“Give me a second.” Kent squeezes my hand and pulls away. I hear the rustling of the curtains and I gasp: suddenly three enormous windows, stretching from floor to ceiling and taking up one entire wall, are revealed. He hasn’t turned on a light, but he may as well have. The moon is huge and luminous and bounces through all the dazzling white snow, growing brighter. The whole room is bathed in a beautiful, silver light.

“It’s amazing,” I say. I breathe out; I didn’t even realize I was holding my breath.

Kent smiles quickly. His face is silhouetted in moonlight. “It’s great at night. Not so great at sunrise, though.” He starts to draw the curtains closed.

“Leave them open,” I cry out, and then add, “please.” I suddenly feel shy.

Kent’s room is enormous, and smells like that same incredible mixture of Downy laundry detergent and grass shavings. It’s the freshest smell in the world, the smell of open windows and crisp sheets. Last night I couldn’t make out anything but the bed. Now I see the room is lined completely with bookshelves. There’s a desk in the corner, stacked with a computer and more books. There are pictures framed on the walls, blurred figures moving, but I can’t make out the details. A monster beanbag chair squats in one corner and Kent catches me staring at it.

“I’ve had it since seventh grade,” he says. He sounds embarrassed.

“I used to have one like that,” I say. I don’t add why I chucked it: because Lindsay said it looked like a lumpy boob. I can’t think about Lindsay now, or Ally. I definitely can’t think about Elody.

Kent draws the blankets down on his bed and then stands back, turning away so I have some privacy. I climb into the bed and lie down, my limbs heavy and achingly stiff, feeling a little self-conscious, but so numb with exhaustion I don’t care. There’s a curved wooden headboard and a matching footboard, and as soon as I’m stretched out, I’m reminded of being in a sleigh. I tilt my head so I can see the snow drifting down, and then close my eyes, imagining that I’m flying through a forest on my way to somewhere good: a trim little white house in the distance, candles burning in its windows.

“Good night,” Kent whispers. He’s so quiet I’d forgotten he was standing there.

I snap my eyes open and sit up on one elbow. “Kent?”

“Yeah?”

“Can you maybe stay with me a bit?”

He nods, and rolls the desk chair over to the side of the bed without speaking. He tucks his knees up to his chin and looks at me. The moonlight coming in through the windows turns his hair a soft silver.

“Kent?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you think it’s weird that I’m here with you?” I close my eyes when I say it so I don’t have to look at his face.

“I’m the editor in chief of the Tribulation,” he says. “And I once went three hundred and sixty-five days wearing Crocs. I don’t think anything’s weird.”

“I forgot about the Crocs phase,” I say. I’m finally warm under the covers, and I feel sleep creeping up on me, like I’m standing on a hot beach with a gentle tide pulling at my toes. “Kent?”

“Yeah?”

“Why are you being so nice to me?”

There’s quiet for so long I begin to think he won’t answer. I imagine I can hear the snow drifting to earth, covering over the day, erasing it clean. I’m too frightened to open my eyes, terrified that I’ll break the spell, terrified he’ll look angry or hurt.

“Remember the time in second grade right after my grandfather died?” he says finally, speaking in a low, quiet voice. “I burst into tears in the lunchroom and Phil Howell called me a faggot. That only made me cry harder, even though I didn’t know what a faggot was.” He laughs softly.

I keep my eyes squeezed shut, coasting on his voice. Last year Phil Howell was found half naked with Sean Trebor in the back of his dad’s BMW. It’s funny how things turn out.

“Anyway, when I told him to leave me alone he smacked my tray, and food went flying everywhere. I’ll never forget: we were having mashed potatoes and turkey burgers. And you went up and scooped the potatoes off the floor with your hands and shoved them straight into Phil’s face. And then you picked up the turkey burger and crumbled it down Phil’s T-shirt. You said, You’re worse than the hot lunch.” He laughs again. “That was a big insult in second grade. And Sean was so surprised, and he looked so ridiculous standing there with mashed potato and chives smeared all over him, that I just started laughing and laughing, and it was the first time I’d laughed since I’d heard the news about—about my grandfather.” He pauses. “Do you remember what I said to you that day?”

The memory is there, a balloon swelling from somewhere so far inside me I thought it was lost, the whole scene clear and perfect now.

“You’re my hero,” we both say at the same time. I don’t hear Kent move, but all of a sudden his voice is closer, and he’s found my hands in the dark, and he’s cupping them in his.

“I vowed after that day that I would be your hero too, no matter how long it took,” he whispers.

We stay like that for what feels like hours, and all the time sleep is dragging at me, pulling me away from him, but my heart is fluttering like a moth, beating back the dreams and the darkness and the fog crowding my brain. Once I sleep, I lose him. I lose this moment forever.

“Kent?” I say, and my voice seems to have to rise from inside the fog, taking forever to get from my brain to my mouth.

“Yeah?”

“Promise you’ll stay here with me?” I say.