Before I Fall Page 0,101
I say, totally aware in that moment of how ridiculous I must look to him: the messed up hair, the sweatpants. He, by comparison, looks actually kind of put together. There’s something scruffy-cute about his checkered sneakers and loose, low-belted khakis, and the sleeves of his oxford are rolled up, showing off a tan he got God-knows-where. Certainly not in Ridgeview in the past six months.
He looks confused. “Joanne said you needed me.”
“I do need you.” It comes out weird and intense-sounding, and I feel a furious fit of blushing coming on. “I mean, I don’t need you. I just need—” I take a deep breath. I think I see a momentary spark in Kent’s eyes and it distracts me. “I’m worried Juliet Sykes is locked in the bathroom.” Just after I say it, I wince. I sound ridiculous. He’ll probably tell me I’m being insane. After all, he doesn’t know what I know.
The spark dies and his face gets serious. He steps beyond me and tries the door, then he pauses for a second, thinking. He doesn’t tell me I’m crazy or paranoid or anything. He simply says, “There’s no key. I could try to pick the lock. We can always break it open if we have to.”
“I’m going to pee upstairs,” Rachel announces, then turns on her heel and wobbles off.
Kent reaches in his back pocket and pulls out a handful of safety pins. “Don’t ask,” he says when I raise my eyebrows. I hold up my hands and don’t push the issue. I’m grateful he’s taking charge without asking questions.
He squats down, bends the safety pin backward, and uses it to jimmy the lock. He’s keeping his ear pressed to the door like he’s listening for a click. Finally my curiosity gets the better of me.
“Do you have an after-school job robbing banks or something?”
He grimaces, tries the door, slips the safety pin back in his pocket, and selects a credit card from his wallet. “Hardly.” He wedges the credit card in the crevice between the frame and the door and wiggles. “My mom used to keep the junk food locked behind our pantry door.”
He straightens up and twists the handle. The door opens an inch, and my heart flies up into my throat. Part of me is hoping that Juliet’s face will appear, furious, or that the door will be slammed closed again from inside. That’s what I would do if someone tried to open the bathroom door when I was inside. That is, if I was still awake—alive—to close it.
But the door just sits there, open that little inch. Kent and I just look at each other at first. I think we’re both scared to open it any farther.
Then Kent nudges the door with his toe, calling “Juliet?” as the door swings open—again, time stretches; it seems to take forever—and in that second, or half second, I somehow have the time to conjure up every horrible possibility, to imagine her body crumpled on the ground.
And then the door finishes swinging, and the bathroom is there: perfectly clean, perfectly normal, and perfectly empty. The lights are on, and there’s a damp hand towel draped over the sink. The only thing slightly out of the ordinary is the window. It’s wide open, and rain has been battering in onto the tiles below.
“She went out the window,” Kent says at the same time I’m thinking it. I can’t quite place his tone. It’s half sad, half admiring.
“Shit.” Of course. After a humiliation like that, she would have looked for the easiest escape possible, the one that would attract the least attention. The window looks out onto a sloping side lawn and, of course, the woods. She must have made a dash for it, planning to loop around back toward the driveway.
I hurtle out of the bathroom. Kent calls, “Wait!” but I’m already down the hall and out the door, pushing onto the porch.
I grab my flashlight and the sweatshirt from behind a planter where I’d left them and head out across the lawn. The rain isn’t so bad just at the moment, more of a freezing mist falling in solid layers from above, but it’s the kind of cold that goes right through you. I keep my flashlight trained on the ground as I sweep around to the side of the house. I’m not exactly a master tracker, but I’ve read enough old mysteries to know that you should always look for footprints. Unfortunately, the mud is so