Before I Fall Page 0,104

warm things. A pool filled with steaming hot chocolate. A stack of blankets piled all the way to the roof of my house. And part of me just thinks, Screw it. Let her do what she’s going to do. Tomorrow there will be a big rewind anyway.

But there’s a bigger part of me—my inner bull, my mom used to call it—that says she owes me this. I’m covered in mud; I’m absolutely freezing; and half the population of Thomas Jefferson thinks I’m a pajama-wearing freak.

“How about we go to your house?” I figure she’ll have to go back there eventually. She gives me a strange look, and for a second I feel like she’s staring straight through me.

“Why are you doing this?” she says.

I have to yell even louder than before. Cars are starting to pull out of Kent’s driveway, zooming by us on the wet road. “I—I want to help you.”

She shakes her head, an infinitesimal gesture. “You hate me.”

She’s edging closer and closer to the road, and it’s making me extremely nervous. A car roars by us, bass pumping. It glitters when it passes under the streetlamp, and I can just make out the silhouette of someone laughing. Somewhere to my right I think I hear my name, but it’s hard to tell over the pounding rain.

“I don’t hate you. I don’t know you. But I’d like to change that. Start over.” I’m almost screaming now. I’m not sure if she can still hear me.

She says something I don’t hear. Another car goes flashing by, a silver bullet.

“What?”

Juliet turns her head a fraction of an inch and says, louder, “You’re right. You don’t know me.”

Another car. Laughter rings out as it passes. Someone throws a beer bottle into the woods and it shatters. Then I’m sure I hear someone calling my name, though I can’t tell exactly which direction it comes from. The wind shrieks, and I suddenly realize that Juliet’s only a half inch from the road, teetering on the thin line where the pavement begins, like she’s balancing on a tightrope.

“Maybe you should come away from the road,” I say, but all the time in the back of my head, there’s an idea growing and swelling, a horrible, sickening realization, massing up and taking shape like clouds on the horizon. Someone calls my name again. And then, still in the distance, I hear the throaty wail of “Splinter” by Fallacy pumping from someone’s car.

“Sam! Sam!” I recognize it as Kent’s voice now.

Last night for the last time…you said you would be mine again…

Juliet turns to face me then. She’s smiling, but it’s the saddest smile I’ve ever seen.

“Maybe next time,” she says. “But probably not.”

“Juliet,” I try to say, but the name catches in my throat. I feel like fear has turned me to stone. I want to say something, to move, to reach out and grab her, but time goes so quickly, and then the realization bursts and explodes as the music from the speakers gets louder and a silver Range Rover rockets out of the darkness. Like a bird or an angel—like she’s throwing herself off a cliff—Juliet lifts her arms and hurtles onto the road, and there’s a scream piercing the air and a sickening crunch, and it’s not until Juliet’s body flies sideways off the hood of Lindsay’s car and lands crumpled facedown in the road, and the Range Rover sails into the woods and crashes, splintering, crumpling against a tree, and long ribbons of smoke and flame begin licking the air, that I realize I’m the one screaming.

BEFORE I WAKE

Kent catches up to me then. “Sam,” he says breathlessly, eyes searching my face. “Are you okay?”

“Lindsay,” I whisper. It’s the only thing that I can think to say. “Lindsay and Elody and Ally are in that car.”

He turns to the road. Black pillars of smoke are rising out of the woods. From where we’re standing we can just see the battered metal bumper, rising like a finger over the dip of the earth.

“Wait here,” he says. It’s a miracle, but he sounds calm. He runs into the road, whipping his phone out, and I hear him yelling directions to someone on the other end. There’s been an accident. Fire. Route nine, just past Devon Drive. He kneels by Juliet’s body. At least one person hurt.

Other cars are squealing to a halt now. People climb out of their cars uncertainly, everyone suddenly sober, everyone speaking in whispers, staring at the tiny crumpled