Before I Fall Page 0,32

are just like animals.

I pull out my phone to check my text, though I don’t really need to.

Party @ Kent McFreaky’s 2nite. In?

My fingers are numb as I text back, Obv. Then I go into lunch, feeling like the sound of three hundred voices has weight, like it’s a solid wind that will carry me up, up, and away.

BEFORE I WAKE

“So? You nervous?” Lindsay lifts one leg in the air and swivels it back and forth, admiring the shoes she’s just stolen from Ally’s closet.

Music thumps from the living room. Ally and Elody are out there singing their heads off to “Like a Prayer.” Ally’s not even close to on key. Lindsay and I are lying on our backs on Ally’s mongo bed. Everything in Ally’s house is 25 percent bigger than in a normal person’s: the fridge, the leather chairs, the televisions—even the magnums of champagne her dad keeps in the wine cellar (strictly hands-off). Lindsay once said it made her feel like Alice in Wonderland.

I settle my head against an enormous pillow that says THE BITCH IS IN. I’ve had four shots already, thinking it would calm me down, and above me the lights are winking and blurring. We’ve cracked all the windows open, but I’m still feeling feverish.

“Don’t forget to breathe,” Lindsay’s saying. “Don’t freak out if it hurts a little—especially at first. Don’t tense up. You’ll make it worse.”

I’m feeling pretty nauseous and Lindsay’s not making it better. I couldn’t eat all day, so by the time we got to Ally’s house, I was starving and scarfed about twenty-five of the toast-pesto-goat-cheese snacks that Ally whipped up. I’m not sure how well the goat cheese is mixing with the vodka. On top of it, Lindsay made me eat about seven Listerine breath strips because the pesto had garlic in it, and she said Rob would feel like he was losing his virginity to an Italian line cook.

I’m not even that nervous about Rob—I mean, I can’t focus on being nervous about him. The party, the drive, the possibility of what will happen there: that’s what’s really giving me stomach cramps. At least the vodka’s helped me breathe, and I’m not feeling shaky anymore.

Of course, I can’t tell Lindsay any of this, so instead I say, “I’m not going to freak. I mean, everybody does it, right? If Anna Cartullo can do it…”

Lindsay pulls a face. “Ew. Whatever you’re doing, it’s not what Anna Cartullo does. You and Rob are ‘making love.’” She puts quotes in the air with her fingers and giggles, but I can tell she means it.

“You think?”

“Of course.” She tilts her head to look at me. “You don’t?”

I want to ask, How do you know the difference?

In movies you can always tell when people are supposed to be together because music swells up behind them—dumb, but true. Lindsay’s always saying she couldn’t live without Patrick and I’m not sure if that’s how you’re supposed to feel or not.

Sometimes when I’m standing in the middle of a crowded place with Rob, and he puts his arm around my shoulders and pulls me close—like he doesn’t want me to get bumped or spilled on or whatever—I feel a kind of heat in my stomach like I’ve just had a glass of wine, and I’m completely happy, just for that second. I’m pretty sure that’s what love is.

So I say to Lindsay, “Of course I do.”

Lindsay giggles again and nudges me. “So? Did he bite the bullet and just say it?”

“Say what?”

She rolls her eyes. “That he loves you.”

I pause for just a second too long, thinking of his note: Luv ya. The kind of thing you pencil in somebody’s yearbook when you don’t know what else to say.

Lindsay rushes on. “He will. Guys are idiots. Bet you he says it tonight. Just after you…” She trails off and starts humping her hips up and down.

I smack her with a pillow. “You’re a dog, you know that?”

She growls at me and bares her teeth. We laugh and then lie in silence for a minute, listening to Elody’s and Ally’s howls from the other room. They’re on to “Total Eclipse of the Heart” now. It feels nice to be lying there: nice and normal. I think of all the times we must’ve laid in exactly this spot, waiting for Elody and Ally to finish getting ready, waiting to go out, waiting for something to happen—time ticking and then falling away, lost forever—and I suddenly wish I could