Before I Fall(25)

“You really are the worst driver.” Elody giggles.

“Be careful, please,” I mutter. I’m clutching the sides of my seat without meaning to.

“Don’t worry.” Lindsay leans over and pats my knee. “I won’t let my best friend die a virgin.”

I’m desperate to spill everything to Lindsay and Elody at that moment, to ask them what’s happening to me—to us—but I can’t think of any way to say it.

We were in a car accident after a party that hasn’t happened yet.

I thought I died yesterday. I thought I died tonight.

Elody must think I’m quiet because I’m worried about Rob. She loops her arms around the back of my seat and leans forward.

“Don’t worry, Sam. You’ll be fine. It’s just like riding a bike,” Elody says.

I try to force a smile, but I can barely focus. It seems like a long time ago that I went to bed imagining being side-by-side with Rob, imagining the feel of his cool, dry hands. Thinking about him makes me ache, and my throat threatens to close up. I suddenly can’t wait to see him, can’t wait to see his crooked smile and his Yankees hat and even his dirty fleece that always smells a little bit like boy sweat, even after his mom makes him wash it.

“It’s like riding a horse,” Lindsay corrects Elody. “You’ll be a blue-ribbon champion in no time, Sammy.”

“I always forget you used to ride horses.” Elody flips open the lid of her coffee and blows steam off the top.

“When I was, like, seven,” I say, before Lindsay can turn this into a joke. I think if she starts making fun of me now I really will cry. I could never explain the truth to her: that riding was my favorite thing in the world. I loved to be alone in the woods, especially in the late fall when everything is crisp and golden, the leaves the color of fire, and it smells like things turning into earth. I loved the silence—the only sound the steady drum of the hooves and the horse’s breathing.

No phones. No laughter. No voices. No houses.

No cars.

I’ve flipped the visor down to keep the glare out of my eyes, and in the mirror I see Elody smiling at me. Maybe I’ll tell her what’s happening to me, I think, but at the same time I know that I won’t. She would think I was crazy. They all would.

I keep quiet and look out the window. The light is weak and watery-looking, like the sun has just spilled itself over the horizon and is too lazy to clean itself up. The shadows are as sharp and pointed as needles. I watch three black crows take off simultaneously from a telephone wire and wish I could take off too, move up, up, up, and watch the ground drop away from me the way it does when you’re on an airplane, folding and compressing into itself like an origami figure, until everything is flat and brightly colored—until the whole world is like a drawing of itself.

“Theme song, please,” Lindsay says, and I scroll through her iPod until I find the Mary J. Blige, then lean back and try not to think of anything except the music and the beat.

And I keep my eyes open.



By the time we pull into the drive that winds past the upper parking area and down to the faculty lot and Senior Alley, I’m actually feeling better, even though Lindsay’s cursing and Elody’s complaining that one more tardy will get her Friday detention and it’s already two minutes after first bell.

Everything looks so normal. I know that because it’s Friday, Emma McElroy will be coming from Evan Danzig’s house, and sure enough there she is, ducking through a clipped portion of the fence. I know Peter Kourt will be wearing a pair of Nike Air Force 1s he’s had for a million years because he wears them every day, even though there are so many holes in them you can see what color socks he’s wearing (usually black). I watch them go flashing by as he books it down toward the main building.

Seeing all these things makes me feel a thousand times better, and I start thinking maybe all of yesterday—everything that happened—was just some kind of long, strange dream.

Lindsay cruises down to the Senior Alley, even though there’s zero chance of finding a spot. It’s a religion for her. My stomach dips when we pass the third spot from the tennis courts, and there’s Sarah Grundel’s brown Chevrolet with its Thomas Jefferson Swim Team sticker—and another one, smaller, that reads GET WET—staring at me from the bumper. I think: she got the last spot because we’re so late, and I have to squeeze my nails into my palms and repeat to myself that I’ve only been dreaming—that none of this has happened before.

“I can’t believe we have to walk .22 miles,” Elody says, pouting. “I don’t even have a jacket.”