Before I Fall

Page 21

Elody shoves the indicator with two fingers. It spins once before settling over the word YES.
“Look, Ma.” She holds up her hands. “No hands.”
“It wasn’t a yes or no question, doofus.” Lindsay rolls her eyes and takes a big sip of the Châteauneuf-du-Pape we swiped from the wine cellar.
“This town sucks,” Ally says. “Nothing ever happens.”
Twelve thirty-three. Twelve thirty-four. I’ve never seen seconds and minutes rush by so fast, tumble over one another. Twelve thirty-five. Twelve thirty-six.
“We need music or something,” Lindsay says, jumping up. “We can’t just sit around here like bums.”
“Definitely music,” Elody says. She and Lindsay run into the next room, where the Bose sound dock is.
“No music.” I groan, but it’s too late. Beyoncé is already blasting. The vases begin to rattle on the bookshelves. My head feels like it’s going to explode, and chills are running up and down my body. Twelve thirty-seven. I nestle deeper into the couch, drawing a blanket up over my knees, and cover my ears.
Lindsay and Elody march back into the room. We’re all in old boxer shorts and tank tops. Lindsay’s obviously just raided Ally’s mudroom because she and Elody are now also decked out in ski goggles and fleece hats. Elody’s hobbling along with one foot jammed in a child’s snowshoe.
“Oh my God!” Ally screams. She holds her stomach and doubles over, laughing.
Lindsay gyrates with a ski pole between her legs, rocking back and forth. “Oh, Patrick! Patrick!”
The music is so loud I can barely hear her, even when I take my hands off my ears. Twelve thirty-eight. One minute.
“Come on!” Elody shouts, extending her hand to me. I’m so full of fear I can’t move, can’t even shake my head, and she leans forward and yells, “Live a little!”
So many thoughts and words are tumbling through my head. I want to yell, No, stop or Yes, live, but all I can do is squeeze my eyes shut and picture seconds running like water into an infinite pool, and I imagine all of us hurtling through time and I think, Now, now, it’s going to happen now—
And then everything goes silent.
I’m afraid to open my eyes. A deep emptiness opens up inside me. I feel nothing. This is what it’s like to be dead.
Then a voice: “Too loud. You’ll blow out your eardrums before you’re twenty.”
I snap open my eyes. Mrs. Harris, Ally’s mom, is standing in the doorway in a glistening raincoat, smoothing down her hair. And Lindsay’s standing there in her ski goggles and hat, and Elody’s awkwardly trying to pry her foot out of the snowshoe.
I made it. It worked. Relief and joy flood me with so much force I almost cry out.
But instead, I laugh. I burst out laughing in the silence, and Ally gives me a dirty look, like, Now you decide it’s funny?
“Are you girls drunk?” Ally’s mother stares at each of us in turn and then frowns at the nearly empty bottle of wine on the floor.
“Hardly.” Ally throws herself on the couch. “You killed the buzz.”
Lindsay flips the goggles onto her head. “We were having a dance party, Mrs. Harris,” she says brightly, as if dancing around half naked and decked out in winter sports equipment was a Girl Scouts–mandated activity.
Mrs. Harris sighs. “Not anymore. It’s been a long day. I’m going to bed.”
“Moooom,” Ally whines.
Mrs. Harris shoots her a look. “No more music.”
Elody finally wrenches her foot free and stumbles backward, collapsing against one of the bookshelves. Martha Stewart’s Homekeeping Handbook comes flying out and lands at her feet. “Oops.” She turns bright red and looks at Mrs. Harris like she expects to be spanked any minute.
I can’t help it. I start giggling again.
Mrs. Harris rolls her eyes to the ceiling and shakes her head. “Good night, girls.”
“Nice going.” Ally leans over and pinches my thigh.
“Retard.”
Elody starts giggling and imitates Lindsay’s voice. “We were having a dance party, Mrs. Harris.”
“At least I didn’t fall into a bookshelf.” Lindsay bends over and wiggles her butt at us. “Kiss it.”
“Maybe I will.” Elody dives for her, pretending like she’s going to. Lindsay shrieks and dodges her. Ally hisses, “Shhhh!” right as we hear Mrs. Harris yell, “Girls!” from upstairs. Pretty soon they’re all laughing. It feels great to laugh with them.
I’m back.
An hour later Lindsay, Elody, and I are settled on the L-shaped couch. Elody has the top bit, and Lindsay and I are lying end-to-end. My feet are pressed against Lindsay’s, and she keeps wiggling her toes to annoy me. But nothing can annoy me right now. Ally has dragged in her air mattress and her blankets from upstairs (she insists she can’t sleep without her Society comforter). It’s just like freshman year. We’ve put the television on low because Elody likes the sound, and in the dark room the glow of the screen reminds me of summers spent breaking into the pool club to go night-swimming, of the way the light shines up through all that black water, of stillness and feeling like you’re the only person alive in the whole world.
“You guys?” I whisper. I’m not sure who’s still awake.
“Mmmf,” Lindsay grunts.
I close my eyes, letting the feeling of peace sweep over me, fill me from head to toe. “If you had to relive one day over and over, which one would you pick?”
Nobody answers me, and in a little while I hear Ally start snoring into her pillow. They’re all asleep. I’m not tired yet. I’m still too exhilarated to be here, to be safe, to have broken out of whatever bubble of time and space has been confining me. But I close my eyes anyway and try to imagine what kind of day I would choose. Memories speed by—dozens and dozens of parties, shopping trips with Lindsay, pigging out at sleepovers and crying over The Notebook with Elody, and even before that, family vacations and my eighth birthday party and the first time I ever dove off the high board at the pool and the water fizzed up my nose and left me dizzy—but all of them seem imperfect somehow, spotted and shadowy.
On a perfect day there wouldn’t be any school, that’s for sure. And there would be pancakes for breakfast—my mom’s pancakes. And my dad would make his famous fried eggs, and Izzy would set the table like she sometimes does at holidays, with different mismatched plates and fruit and flowers that she gathers from around the house and dumps in the middle of the table and calls a “thenterpeeth.”
I close my eyes and feel myself letting go, like tipping over the edge of an abyss, darkness rising up to carry me away….
Bringbringbring.
I’m pulled back from the edge of sleep and for one horrible second I think: it’s my alarm, I’m home, it’s happening again. I strike out, a spasm, and Lindsay yelps, “Ow!”
The sound of that one word makes my heart go still and my breathing return to normal.
Bringbringbring. Now that I’m fully alert I realize it’s not my alarm. It’s the telephone, ringing shrilly in various rooms, creating a weird echo effect. I check the clock. One fifty-two.
Elody groans. Ally rolls over and murmurs, “Turn it off.” The telephone stops ringing and then starts again, and all of a sudden Ally sits up, straight as a rod, totally awake.
She says, “Shit. Shit. My mom’s gonna kill me.”
“Make it stop, Al,” Lindsay says, from underneath her pillow.
Ally tries to untangle herself from her sheets, still muttering, “Shit. Where’s the freaking phone?” She trips and ends up stumbling out of bed and hitting the ground with her shoulder. Elody moans again, this time louder.
Lindsay says, “I’m trying to sleep, people.”
“I need the phone,” Ally hisses back.
It’s too late, anyway. I hear footsteps moving upstairs. Mrs. Harris has obviously woken up. A second later the phone stops ringing.
“Thank God.” Lindsay rustles around, burrowing farther under her covers.
“It’s almost two.” Ally stands up—I can see the vague outline of her form hobbling back over to the bed. “Who the hell calls at two in the morning?”
“Maybe it’s Matt Wilde, confessing his love,” Lindsay says.
“Very funny,” Ally says. She settles back in bed and we all get quiet. I can just hear the low murmur of Mrs. Harris’s voice above us, the creaking of her footsteps as she paces. Then I very distinctly hear her say: “Oh, no. Oh my God.”
“Ally—” I start.
But she’s heard it too. She gets up and turns on the light, then switches off the television, which is still on low. The sudden brightness makes me wince. Lindsay curses and pulls the covers over her head.
“Something’s wrong.” Ally hugs herself, blinking rapidly. Elody reaches for her glasses, then props herself up on two elbows. Eventually Lindsay realizes the light’s not going off and she emerges from under her cocoon.
“What’s the problem?” She balls her hands into fists, rubbing her eyes.
No one answers. We all have a growing sense of it now: something is very wrong. Ally’s just standing there in the middle of the room. In her oversized T-shirt and baggy shorts she looks much younger than she is.
At a certain point the voice upstairs stops, and the footsteps move diagonally across the floor, in the direction of the stairs. Ally moves back to the air mattress, folding her legs underneath her and biting her nails.
Mrs. Harris doesn’t seem surprised to find us sitting up, waiting for her. She’s wearing a long silk nightgown and has an eye mask perched on top of her head. I’ve never seen Mrs. Harris looking less than perfect and it makes fear yawn open in my stomach.
“What?” Ally’s voice is semihysterical. “What happened? Is it Dad?”
Mrs. Harris blinks and seems to focus on us like she’s just been called out of a dream. “No, no. It’s not your father.” She takes a breath, then blows it out loudly. “Listen, girls. What I’m about to tell you is very upsetting. I’m only telling you in the first place because you’ll find out soon enough.”
“Just tell us, Mom.”
Mrs. Harris nods slowly. “You all know Juliet Sykes.”
This is a shock: we all look at one another, completely bewildered. Of all the words that Mrs. Harris could have said at this moment, I’m pretty sure “You all know Juliet Sykes” ranks pretty high on our list of the unexpected.
“Yeah. So?” Ally shrugs.
“Well, she—” Mrs. Harris breaks off, smoothing down her nightgown with her hands, and starts again. “That was Mindy Sachs on the phone.”
Lindsay raises her eyebrows, and Ally gives a knowing sigh. We all know Mindy Sachs too. She’s fifty and divorced but still dresses and acts like a sophomore. She’s more gossip-obsessed than anybody at our school. Whenever I see Ms. Sachs I’m reminded of the game we used to play when we were kids, where one person whispers a secret and the next person repeats it and so on and so on, except in Ridgeview Ms. Sachs is the only one doing the whispering. She and Mrs. Harris sit on the school board together, so Mrs. Harris always knows about divorces and who just lost all their money and who’s having an affair.