Before I Fall Page 0,147

but whatever. She’s supposed to say, “and no lies,” but I guess one works as well as the other.

“Forever,” Ally finishes, “and till death do us part.”

The last part falls on me to say, “And even then.”

“And even then,” the three of them echo.

“All right, enough mushy crap.” Lindsay breaks away. “I, for one, came to get drunk.”

“I thought you didn’t get drunk,” Ally says.

“Figure of speech.”

Ally and Lindsay start going back and forth, Ally dancing away with the vodka bottle (“If you don’t get drunk, I don’t see the point of drinking and wasting it”) as Elody wanders back over to Muffin. At least the attention is off me.

“See you later,” I say loudly to all of them in general, and Elody glances over her shoulder at me, but she may be looking at someone else. Lindsay flaps a hand in my direction, and Ally doesn’t hear me at all. It reminds me of leaving my house for the last time this morning, how in the end it’s impossible to understand the finality of certain things, certain words, certain moments. As I turn away my vision gets blurry, and I’m surprised to find that I’m crying. The tears come without any warning. I blink repeatedly until the world sharpens again, rubbing the wetness off my cheeks. I check my cell phone. Eleven forty-five.

Downstairs I stand just inside the door, waiting for Juliet, which is a bit like trying to stay on your feet in the middle of a riptide. People swarm around me, but hardly anybody looks my way. Maybe they’re getting a weird vibe off me, too, or they can tell I’m focused elsewhere. Or maybe—and this makes me sad as soon as I think it—they can sense, somehow, that I’m already gone. I push the thought away.

Finally I see her slip through the front door, white sweater tied loosely around her, head stooped. Instantly I jump forward and put a hand on her arm. She starts, staring at me, and though she must have imagined coming face-to-face with me tonight, the fact that I’ve found her, and not the other way around, throws her off guard.

“Hey,” I say. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

She opens her mouth, shuts it, then opens it again. “Actually, I, um, kind of have somewhere to be.”

“No, you don’t.” In one movement I draw her away from the crowded entrance and toward a little recessed area in the hall. It’s a little easier to hear each other here, though it’s so squished we have to stand nearly pressed chest-to-chest. “Weren’t you looking for me, anyway? Weren’t you looking for us?”

“How did you—?” She breaks off, sucks in a breath, and shakes her head. “I’m not here for you.”

“I know.” I stare at her, willing her to look at me, but she doesn’t. I want to tell her that I get it, that I understand, but she’s examining the tiling on the floors. “I know it’s bigger than that.”

“You don’t know anything,” she says dully.

“I know what you have planned for tonight,” I say, very quietly.

Then she looks up. For a second our eyes meet, and I see fear flashing there, and something else—hope, maybe?—but she quickly drops her eyes again.

“You can’t know,” she says simply. “Nobody knows.”

“I know that you have something to tell me,” I say. “I know that you have something you wanted to say to all of us—to me, to Lindsay, to Elody, and Ally, too.”

Again she looks up, but this time she holds my gaze, eyes wide, and we stare at each other. Now I know what the look on her face is, behind the fear: wonder.

“You’re a bitch,” she whispers, so quietly I’m not sure I even hear the words or am just remembering them, imagining them in her voice. She says it like she is reciting the lines to an old play, some long-neglected script she can’t manage to forget.

I nod. “I know,” I say. “I know I am. I know I have been—we all have been. And I’m sorry.”

She takes a quick step back, but there’s nowhere to go, so she ends up bumping up against the wall. She flattens herself, hands braced against the plaster, breathing hard, like I’m some kind of a wild animal that might attack her at any second. She’s shaking her head quickly from side to side. I don’t even think she knows she’s doing it.

“Juliet.” I reach out, but she shrinks an extra half inch into the