Before I Fall Page 0,58

threatened to ground me for life (Ha!), the words kept coming. It felt so good to scream, like when you pick a scab and the blood starts flowing again.

You are not walking out that door unless you go upstairs and put on some more clothing. That’s what my mom said. You’ll catch pneumonia. More important, I don’t want people in school getting the wrong impression about you.

And suddenly it had all snapped inside of me, broken and snapped. “You care now?” She jerked back at the sound of my voice like I’d reached out and slapped her. “You want to help now? You want to protect me now?”

What I really wanted to say was, Where were you four days ago? Where were you when my car was spinning off the edge of a road in the middle of the night? Why weren’t you thinking of me? Why weren’t you there? I hate both of my parents right now: for sitting quietly in our house, while out in the darkness my heart was beating away all of the seconds of my life, ticking them off one by one until my time was up; for letting the thread between us stretch so far and so thin that the moment it was severed for good they didn’t even feel it.

At the same time I know that it’s not really their fault, at least not completely. I did my part too. I did it on a hundred different days and in a thousand different ways, and I know it. But this makes the anger worse, not better.

Your parents are supposed to keep you safe.

“Jesus, what’s your problem?” Lindsay looks at me hard for a second. “You wake up on the wrong side of the bed or something?”

“For a few days now, yeah.”

I’m getting really sick of this low half-light, the sky a pale and sickly blue—not even a real blue—and the sun a wet mess on the horizon. I read once that starving people start fantasizing about food, just lying there dreaming for hours about hot mashed potatoes and creamy blobs of butter and steak running red blood over their plates. Now I get it. I’m starved for different light, a different sun, different sky. I’ve never really thought about it before, but it’s a miracle how many kinds of light there are in the world, how many skies: the pale brightness of spring, when it feels like the whole world is blushing; the lush, bright boldness of a July noon; purple storm skies and a green queasiness just before lightning strikes and crazy multicolored sunsets that look like someone’s acid trip.

I should have enjoyed them more, should have memorized them all. I should have died on a day with a beautiful sunset. I should have died on summer vacation or winter break. I should have died on any other day. Leaning my forehead against the window, I fantasize about sending my fist up through the glass, all the way into the sky, and watching it shatter like a mirror.

I think about what I’ll do to survive all of the millions and millions of days that will be exactly like this one, two face-to-face mirrors multiplying a reflection into infinity. I start formulating a plan: I’ll stop coming to school, and I’ll jack somebody’s car and drive as far as I can in a different direction every day. East, west, north, south. I allow myself to fantasize about going so far and so fast that I lift off like an airplane, zooming straight up and out to a place where time falls away like sand being blown off a surface by the wind.

Remember what I said about hope?

“Happy Cupid Day!” Elody singsongs when she gets into the Tank.

Lindsay stares from Elody back to me. “What is this? Some kind of competition for Least Dressed?”

“If you got it, flaunt it.” Elody eyes my skirt as she leans forward to grab her coffee. “Forget your pants, Sam?”

Lindsay snickers. I say, “Jealous much?” without turning away from the window.

“What’s wrong with her?” Elody leans back.

“Someone forgot to take her happy pills this morning.”

Out of the corner of my eye I see Lindsay look back at Elody and make a face like, Leave it. Like I’m a kid who needs to be handled. I think of those old photos where she’s standing pressed arm-to-arm with Juliet Sykes, and then I think of Juliet’s head blown open and splattered on some basement wall. Again the fury returns, and it’s

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