Before I Fall Page 0,81
for, but all of a sudden there’s Lindsay across the room and I realize I’ve made it all the way to the back of the house, the cigarette room. Lindsay and I look at each other for a second and I’m hoping she’ll smile at me, but she just looks away. Ally’s standing next to her. She bends forward and whispers something to Lindsay, then makes her way over to me.
“Hey, Sam.”
“Did you have to ask permission to talk to me?” These words don’t come out so clearly.
“Don’t be a bitch.” Ally rolls her eyes. “Lindsay’s really upset about what you said.”
“Is Elody mad?” Elody’s in the corner with Steve Dough, swaying against him while he talks to Liz Hummer like she’s not even there. I want to go over and hug her.
Ally hesitates, looks at me from under the fringe of her bangs. “She’s not mad. You know Elody.”
I can tell Ally’s lying, but I’m too drunk to pursue it.
“You didn’t call me today.” I hate that I’ve said it. It makes me feel like an outsider again, like someone trying to break into the group. It’s only been a day, but I miss them: my only real friends.
Ally takes a sip of the vodka she’s holding, then winces. “Lindsay was freaking out. I told you, she was really upset.”
“It’s true though, isn’t it? What I said.”
“It doesn’t matter if it’s true.” Ally shakes her head at me. “She’s Lindsay. She’s ours. We’re each other’s, you know?”
I’ve never really thought of Ally as smart, but this is probably the smartest thing I’ve heard in a long time.
“You should say you’re sorry,” Ally says.
“But I’m not sorry.” I’m definitely slurring now. My tongue is thick and weighty in my mouth. I can’t make it do what I want it to. I want to tell Ally everything—about Mr. Daimler and Anna Cartullo and Ms. Winters and the Pugs—but I can’t even think of the words.
“Just say it, Sam.” Ally’s eyes have started to roam around the party. Then suddenly she takes a quick step backward. Her mouth goes slack and she brings a hand to her mouth.
“Oh my God,” she says, staring over my shoulder. Her mouth’s curving up into a smile. “I don’t believe it.”
It feels like time freezes as I turn around. I read once that at the edge of a black hole, time stops completely, so if you ever sailed into it, you’d just be stuck there at the lip forever, forever being torn apart, forever dying. That’s what it feels like in that second. The crush of people circled around me, an endless lip, more and more people.
And there she is standing in the doorway. Juliet Sykes. Juliet Sykes—who yesterday blew her brains out with her parents’ handgun.
Her hair is tied up in a ponytail and I can’t help it; I picture it knotted and clotted with blood, a big gaping hole directly underneath her little flip of hair. I’m terrified of her: a ghost in the door, the kind of stuff you have nightmares about when you’re a kid, the kind of thing they make horror movies about.
A phrase comes back from a news show I had to watch about the convicts on death row for my ethics and issues elective: dead man walking. I thought it was awful when I first heard it, but now I really understand it. Juliet Sykes is a dead man walking. I guess I am too, in a way.
“No,” I say, without meaning to say it out loud. I take a step backward, and Harlowe Rosen squeals and says, “That’s my foot.”
“I don’t believe it,” Ally says again, but it sounds far away. She’s already turning away from me, calling out to Lindsay over the music. “Lindsay, did you see who it is?”
Juliet sways in the doorway. She looks calm, but her hands are balled into fists.
I throw myself forward, but everyone chooses that moment to press even closer around me. I can’t watch it again. I don’t want to see what happens next. I’m not very steady on my feet, and I keep getting knocked back and forth, rocketing between people like a pinball, trying desperately to get out of the room. I know I’m stepping on people and throwing elbows in their backs, but I don’t care. I need out.
Finally I break through the knot of people. Juliet is blocking the doorway. She’s not even looking at me. She’s standing as still as a statue, her eyes locked