Before I Fall

I twist around to look at her. It’s all I can do to keep from climbing into the backseat and jumping on her. I feel an overwhelming urge to touch her, make sure she’s really real and here and alive. In some ways she’s the bravest and most delicate of all of us. I wish I could somehow tell her this.

“What?” Elody scrunches up her nose at me, and I realize I’m staring. “What’s wrong? Do I have toothpaste on my face or something?”

“No,” I say, and again the laughter bubbles out of me, a surge of happiness and relief. I think; I could stay forever in this one moment. “You look beautiful.”

Lindsay giggles, checks Elody out in the rearview. “There are some bagels under your butt, beautiful.”

“Mmm, butt bagels.” Elody reaches into the bag and pulls out a bagel, half squashed, then makes a big deal of taking an enormous bite out of it. “Tastes like Victoria’s Secret.”

“Tastes like thong floss,” I say.

“Tastes like crack,” Lindsay says.

“Tastes like fart,” Elody says, and Lindsay spits coffee on the dashboard, and I start laughing and can’t stop, and all the way to school we’re thinking of flavors for butt bagels, and I’m thinking that this—my life, my friends— might be weird or screwy or imperfect or damaged or whatever, but it’s never seemed better to me.

As we’re pulling into the school’s parking lot, I scream for Lindsay to brake. She slams to a stop and Elody curses as coffee slops all over her.

“What the hell?” Lindsay puts a hand on her chest. “You scared me to death.”

“Oh—um. Sorry. I thought I saw Rob.” Up ahead I’m watching Sarah Grundel’s Chevrolet turn into Senior Alley fifteen seconds ahead of us. The parking space is a small thing, a detail, but today I’m not going to do anything wrong. I don’t want to take any chances. It’s like the game we used to play when we were little, where we had to avoid all the cracks in the sidewalk or else it meant we’d kill off our mothers. Even if you didn’t believe in it, you made sure you were stepping correctly, just in case. “Sorry. My bad.”

Lindsay rolls her eyes and steps on the gas again. “Please tell me you’re not going psycho stalker.”

“Leave her alone.” Elody leans forward and pats my shoulder. “She’s just nervous about tonight.”

I bite my lip to keep from giggling. If Lindsay and Elody had any clue at all about what was actually running through my head, they would probably have me committed. All morning, whenever I close my eyes, I keep imagining the feeling of Kent McFuller’s lips brushing against mine, as light as butterfly wings; of the crown of light surrounding his head and the way his arms felt when he was keeping me on my feet. I lean my head against the window. My smile is reflected back at me, growing wider and wider as Lindsay drives up and down Senior Alley, cursing because Sarah Grundel took the very last parking space.

Instead of following Elody and Lindsay into Main, I break off and head toward Building A, where the nurses’ office is, muttering an excuse about a headache. That’s where the roses are stored on Cupid Day, and I have some adjustments to make. Okay, so maybe lying isn’t 100 percent kosher on the Good Deeds Scale (especially lying to your best friends), but it’s for a very, very good cause.

The nurses’ office is long and narrow. Normally a double row of cots runs its length, but the cots have been cleared out and replaced by huge folding tables. The heavy curtains that usually keep the place movie theater–dark have all been drawn back, and the room is literally sparkling with light. Light bounces off the metal wall fixtures and zigzags crazily over the bright white walls. There are roses everywhere—overflowing their trays, stashed in corners, a few of them even scattered across the ground, petals trampled—and if you didn’t know that there was actually an organizing principle to all of it, and a purpose, you would just think that someone had set off some kind of a rose bomb.

Ms. Devane, who usually oversees Cupid Day, isn’t around, but there are three Cupids standing over one of the bins, giggling. They jump and scoot backward when I come in. They’ve been reading the notes, obviously. It’s strange to think about—those little scraps of paper, snippets of words, half compliments and backhanded compliments and broken promises and semi-wishes and almost expressions of what you really want to say: they never tell the full story, or even half of it. A room full of words that are nearly the truth but not quite, each note fluttering off the stem of its rose like a broken butterfly wing. None of the girls talks to me as I start walking the aisle, scanning the labels on the trays, looking for the S’s. I doubt that anybody else has ever barged in on the Rose Room, especially not a senior. Finally I find the tray labeled: St– Ta. There are five or six roses for Tamara Stugen and another half dozen for Andrew Svork and three for a Burt Swortney, who has the most unfortunate name I’ve heard of in a long time. And there it is: the single rose for Juliet Sykes with a note looped delicately around its stem. MAYBE NEXT YEAR, BUT PROBABLY NOT. Maybe next time, but probably not.

“Um…can I help you with something?” One of the girls inches forward a couple of feet. She’s twisting her hands together and looks absolutely petrified.

Juliet’s rose is thin and young, delicately tinged with pink. All of its petals are closed. It hasn’t bloomed yet.

“I need roses,” I say. “Lots of them.”

CORRECTIONS AND ADJUSTMENTS

I leave the Rose Room feeling keyed up and energetic, like I’ve just had three mocha lattes from Caffeine Rush in the mall. I replaced Juliet’s single rose with an enormous bouquet—I shelled out forty bucks for two dozen—and a note printed in block letters that says FROM YOUR SECRET ADMIRER. I only wish I could be around when she receives them. I’m positive it’s going to make her day. More than that: I’m positive it’s going to make things right. She’ll have even more roses than Lindsay Edgecombe. I start thinking about Lindsay’s eyes bugging out of her head when she sees that Juliet Sykes has beaten her for the title of Most Valograms this year, and I let out a huge snort of laughter right in the middle of AP American History. Everyone whips around and stares at me, but I don’t care. This must be what it’s like to do drugs: the feeling of coasting over everything, of everything looking new and fresh and lit up from inside. Except without the next-day guilt and the hangover. And possible prison sentence.

When Mr. Tierney distributes his pop quiz, I spend the whole twenty minutes drawing hearts and balloons around the questions, and when he comes around to collect the papers I give him a smile so bright he actually winces, like he’s not used to people looking happy.

Between classes I scour the hallways, looking for Kent. I’m not even sure what I’ll say to him when I see him. I can’t really say anything. He doesn’t know that we’ve spent the past two nights together, that both nights we were so close that if one of us had breathed we would have ended up kissing, that last night I think we might have. But I have this incredible urge just to be around him, to see him doing those familiar, Kent-like things: flipping his hair out of his eyes, smiling his lopsided smile, shuffling his ridiculous checkered sneakers, and tucking his hands into the over-long cuffs of his button-downs. My heart shoots into my throat every time I think I see his loping walk, or catch sight of some floppy brown hair on a boy—but it’s never him, and each time it isn’t, my heart does a reverse trajectory down into the very pit of my stomach.

I’m guaranteed to see him in calc, at least. After life skills, I stop in the bathroom, and spend the three minutes before bell primping in front of the mirror, ignoring the s’mores chattering on either side of me, and trying hard not to focus on the fact that I’ll come face-to-face with Mr. Daimler in less than five minutes. My stomach’s been performing its roller-coaster move so often—a combination of waiting for Juliet to get the roses, hoping to see Kent, and being disappointed—I’m not sure it can withstand forty-five minutes of having to watch Mr. Daimler smirk and wink and grin at the class. I will away the memory of his tongue inside my mouth, wet and sloppy.

“Such a slut.” One of the sophomores is coming out of a bathroom stall, shaking her head.

For one paranoid second I’m sure she’s talking about me—that somehow she has just read my mind—but then her friends explode with laughter, and one of them says, “I know. I hear she had sex with, like, three people on the basketball team,” and I realize they’re talking about Anna Cartullo. The stall door is swinging open and Lindsay’s scrawl is obvious. AC=WT. And underneath it: Go back to the trailer, ho.

“You shouldn’t believe everything you hear,” I blurt out, and all three girls instantly shut their mouths and stare at me.

“It’s true,” I say, feeling bolder now that I have such a captive audience. “You know how most rumors