Before I Fall (6 page)

Obviously standing in Kent’s house isn’t the same thing, since I pretty much know everybody except for some of the juniors and a couple of girls who I
think
might be sophomores. But still, it’s enough to make me freak out a little.

I’m about to head over to Emma Howser—she’s super cheesy and normally I wouldn’t be caught dead talking to her, but I’m getting desperate—when I feel thick arms around me and smell lemon balm. Rob.

He puts a wet mouth against my ear. “Sexy Sammy. Where’ve you been all my life?”

I turn around. His face is bright red. “You’re drunk,” I say, and it comes out more accusatory than I meant it to.

“Sober enough,” he says, trying and failing to raise one eyebrow. “And you’re late.” His grin is lazy. Only one half of it curves upward. “We did a keg stand.”

“It’s ten o’clock,” I point out. “We’re not late. I called you, anyway.”

He pats his fleece and his pockets. “Must’ve put my phone down somewhere.”

I roll my eyes. “You’re a delinquent.”

“I like it when you use those big words.” The other half of his smile is creeping upward slowly and I know he’s going to kiss me. I turn partly away, searching the room for my friends, but they’re still MIA.

In the corner I spot Kent, wearing a tie and a collared shirt about three sizes too big for him, which is half tucked into a pair of ratty khakis. At least he’s not wearing his bowler hat. He’s talking to Phoebe Rifer and they’re laughing about something. It annoys me that he hasn’t noticed me yet. I’m kind of hoping he’ll look up and come barreling over to me like he usually does, but he just bends closer toward Phoebe like he’s trying to hear her better.

Rob pulls me into him. “We’ll only stay for an hour, okay? Then we’ll leave.” His breath smells like beer and a little like cigarettes when he kisses me. I close my eyes and think about how in sixth grade I saw him kissing Gabby Haynes and was so jealous I couldn’t eat for two days. I wonder if I look like I’m enjoying it. Gabby did, in sixth grade.

It relaxes me to think about things like that: how funny life is.

I haven’t even taken off my jacket, but Rob unzips it and moves his hands along my waist and then under my tank top. His palms are sweaty and big.

I pull away long enough to say, “Not right
here
, in the middle of everyone.”

“Nobody’s watching,” he says, and clamps down on me again.
This is a lie. He knows everyone watches us. He can see it. He doesn’t even close his eyes.

His hands inch over my stomach and his fingers are pulling at the underwire of my bra. He’s not very good with bras. He’s not that good with breasts in general, actually. I mean, it’s not like I really know what it’s supposed to feel like, but every time he touches my boobs he kind of just massages them hard in a circle. My gyno does the same thing when I go in for an exam, so one of them has to be doing it wrong. And to be honest, I don’t think it’s my gyno.

If you want to know my biggest secret, here it is: I know you’re supposed to wait to have sex with someone you love and all that, and I
do
love Rob—I mean, I’ve kind of been in love with him forever, so how could I not?—but that’s not why I decided to have sex with him tonight.

I decided to have sex with him because I want to get it over with, and because sex has always scared me and I don’t want to be scared of it anymore.

“I can’t wait to wake up next to you,” Rob says, his mouth against my ear.

It’s a sweet thing to say, but I can’t concentrate while his hands are on me. And it occurs to me all of a sudden that I’d never thought about the waking-up part. I have no idea what you’re supposed to talk about the day after you’ve had sex, and I imagine us lying side by side, not touching, silent, while the sun rises. Rob doesn’t have any blinds in his room—he
ripped them down once when he was drunk—and during the day it’s like a spotlight has been turned on his bed, a spotlight or an eye.

“Get a room!”

I pull away from Rob as Ally appears next to me, making a face. “You two are perverts,” she says.

“This is a room.” Rob lifts both arms and gestures around him. He sloshes a little bit of beer onto my shirt, and I make a noise, annoyed.

“Sorry, babe.” He shrugs. Now there’s only a half inch of beer in his cup and he stares at it, frowning. “Gonna go for a topper. You guys want?”

“We brought our own.” Ally pats the vodka in her purse.

“Smart thinking.” Rob brings a finger up to tap the side of his head but nearly takes an eye out instead. He’s drunker than I thought. Ally covers her mouth and giggles.

“My boyfriend’s an idiot,” I say as soon as he lurches away.

“A
cute
idiot,” Ally corrects me.

“That’s like saying ‘a cute mutant.’ Doesn’t exist.”

“Sure it does.” Ally’s looking around the room, pouting her lips to make them look more kissable.

“Where did you go, anyway?” I’m feeling more annoyed than I should by everything: by the fact that my friends ditched me after thirty whole seconds, by the fact that Rob’s so drunk, by the fact that Kent’s still talking to Phoebe Rifer, even though he’s supposed to be obsessively in love with me. Not that I
want
him to be in love with me, obviously. It’s just a constant that’s always been comforting, in a weird way. I wrestle the bottle out of Ally’s bag and take another sip.

“We made a round. There’s, like, seventeen different rooms up here. You should check it out.” Ally looks at me, notices the face I’m pulling, and holds up her hands. “What? It’s not like we abandoned you in the middle of nowhere.”

She’s right. I don’t know why I’m feeling so pissy. “Where did Lindsay and Elody go?”

“Elody’s suctioned to Muffin’s lap. And Lindsay and Patrick are fighting.”

“Already?”

“Yeah, well, they kissed for the first three minutes. They waited until minute four to start going at it.”

This cracks me up and Ally and I laugh over it. I start to feel better, more comfortable. The vodka fills my head with warmth. More people are arriving all the time and the room seems to be revolving just a little bit. It’s a nice feeling, though, like being on a really slow carousel. Ally and I decide to go on a mission to save Lindsay before her fight with Patrick turns into an all-out brawl.

It seems like the whole school has shown up, but really there are only sixty or seventy kids. This is the most that ever shows up at a party. There’s the top and middle of the senior class, popularity-wise—Kent’s just holding on to the lower rung of the ladder, but he’s hosting so it’s okay—some of the
cooler juniors, and a couple of really cool sophomores. I know I’m supposed to hate them, like we were hated when we were sophomores at all the senior parties, but I can’t bring myself to care. Ally gives a group of them one of her ice stares as we go by, though, and says “Skanks” loudly. One of them, Rachel Kornish, supposedly hooked up with Matt Wilde not long ago.

Obviously no freshmen are allowed in. The social bottom doesn’t show either. It isn’t because people would make fun of them, although they probably would. It’s more than that. They don’t hear about these parties until after they’ve happened. They don’t know the things we know: they don’t know about the secret side entrance to Andrew Roberts’s guesthouse, or the fact that Carly Jablonski stashed a cooler in her garage where you can keep your beers cold, or the fact that Rocky’s doesn’t check IDs very closely, or the fact that Mic’s stays open around the clock and makes the best egg and cheeses in the world, absolutely dripping with oil and ketchup, perfect for when you’re drunk. It’s like high school holds two different worlds, revolving around each other and never touching: the haves and the have-nots. I guess it’s a good thing. High school is supposed to prepare you for the real world, after all.

There are so many tiny hallways and rooms, it feels like a maze. All of them are filled with people and smoke. Only one door is closed. It has a big
KEEP OUT
sign plastered on it over a bunch of weird bumper stickers that say things like
VISUALIZE
WHIRLED PEAS
and
KISS ME. I’M IRISH
.

By the time we get to Lindsay, she and Patrick have made up, big surprise. She’s sitting on his lap and he’s smoking a joint. Elody and Steve Dough are in a corner. He’s leaning against the wall and she’s half dancing and half grinding against him. She has an unlit cigarette dangling from her lips, butt end out, and her hair is a mess. Steve is steadying her, using one arm to keep her on her feet, but he’s having a conversation with Liz Hummer (her real name—and, coincidentally, her car) like Elody isn’t even there, much less rubbing on him.

“Poor Elody,” I say. I don’t know why I suddenly feel bad for her. “She’s too nice.”

“She’s a whore,” Ally says, but not meanly.

“Do you think we’ll remember any of this?” I’m not sure where the words come from. My whole head feels light and fuzzy, ready to float away. “Do you think we’ll remember any of it two years from now?”

“I won’t even remember tomorrow.” Ally laughs, tapping the bottle in my hand. There’s only a quarter of it left. I can’t think when we drank it all.

Lindsay squeals when she sees us and stumbles off Patrick’s lap, throwing an arm around each of us like it’s been years since we were together. She snatches the vodka from me and takes a sip while her arm is still wrapped around my shoulders, her elbow tightening momentarily against my neck.

“Where did you go?” she yells. Her voice is loud, even over the music and the sound of everybody talking and laughing. “I was looking everywhere for you.”

“Bullshit,” I say, and Ally says, “In Patrick’s mouth, maybe.”

We’re laughing over the fact that Lindsay’s a bullshitter and Elody’s a drunk and Ally’s OCD and I’m antisocial, and someone cracks a window to let out the smoke, and a fine mist of rain comes in, smelling like grass and fresh things, even though it’s the dead middle of winter. Without anyone noticing I reach my hand back and rest it on the sill, enjoying the freezing air and the sensation of a hundred pinpricks of rain. I close my eyes and promise myself I’ll never forget this moment: the sound of my friends’ laughter and the heat from so many bodies and the smell of rain.

When I open my eyes I get the shock of my life. Juliet Sykes is standing in the doorway, staring at me.

She’s staring at us, actually: Lindsay, Ally, and Elody, who has just left Steve and come over to stand with us, and me. Juliet’s hair is pulled back in a ponytail, and I think it’s the first time I’ve ever really seen her face.

It’s shocking that she’s there, but it’s even more shocking that she’s pretty. She has blue eyes set wide apart and high cheekbones, like a model’s. Her skin is perfectly clear and white. I can’t stop staring at her.

People are elbowing and pushing her because she’s blocking the doorway, but she just stands there, staring.

Ally catches on first and her mouth drops open. “What the…?”

Elody and Lindsay turn to see what we’re both staring at. Lindsay goes pale at first—she actually looks afraid, which is beyond strange, but I don’t have time to wonder about it because just as quickly her face goes purple, and she looks ready to rip someone’s head off. That’s a more natural look for her. Elody begins giggling hysterically until she doubles over and has to cover her mouth with both hands.

“I can’t believe it,” she says. “I can’t believe it.” She tries to start singing “
Psycho killer, qu’est-ce que c’est
,” but we’re all still in shock and don’t join in.

You know how in movies someone says or does something inappropriate and the record scratches and there’s dead silence all of a sudden? Well, that isn’t exactly what happens, but it’s close. The music doesn’t stop, but as everyone in the room starts to pick up on the fact that Juliet Sykes—bedwetter, freak, and all-around psycho—is standing in the middle of a party giving four of the most popular girls at Thomas Jefferson the stink eye, conversation drops off and a low sound of whispering fills the room, getting louder and more insistent until it’s a constant hum, until it sounds like wind or the ocean.

Juliet Sykes finally steps away from the door and into the room. She walks slowly and confidently toward us—I’ve never seen her look so calm—stopping three feet in front of Lindsay.

“You’re a bitch,” she says. Her voice is steady and too loud, like she’s deliberately addressing everyone in the room. I’d always imagined her voice would be high-pitched or breathy, but it’s as full and deep as a boy’s.

It takes Lindsay a half second to find her voice. “Excuse me?” she croaks out. Juliet hasn’t made eye contact with Lindsay since the fifth grade, much less spoken to her. Much less
insulted
her.

“You heard me. A bitch. A mean girl. A bad person.” Juliet turns to Ally next. “You’re a bitch too.” To Elody, “You’re a bitch.” She turns her eyes to me and for a second I see something flashing there—something familiar—but just as quickly it’s gone.

“You’re a bitch.”

We’re all so shocked we don’t know how to respond. Elody giggles again nervously, hiccups, and goes silent. Lindsay’s mouth is opening and shutting like a fish’s, but nothing’s coming out. Ally’s balling up her fists like she’s thinking of clocking Juliet in the face.

And even though I’m infuriated and embarrassed, the only thing I can think when I look at Juliet is:
I never knew you were so pretty.

Lindsay pulls herself together. She leans forward so her face is only inches from Juliet’s. I’ve never seen her so angry. I think her eyes are going to pop out of her head. Her mouth is twisted into a snarl, like a dog’s. For a second she looks really and truly ugly.

“I’d rather be a bitch than a psycho,” she hisses, grabbing Juliet by the shirt. Spit is coming out of her mouth—that’s how angry she is. She shoves Juliet backward, and Juliet stumbles into Matt Dorfman. He pushes Juliet again and she careens into Emma McElroy. Lindsay starts screaming, “Psycho, Psycho,” and making the high-pitched knifing noises from the movie, and suddenly everyone’s screaming out, “Psycho!” and making the motion of an invisible knife and screeching and pushing Juliet back and forth. Ally’s the first to overturn a beer on her head, but everyone catches on to that too; Lindsay splashes her with vodka, and when Juliet stumbles my way, half drenched, arms outstretched, trying to get her balance, I grab a half-finished beer from the windowsill and dump it on her. I don’t even realize I’m screaming along with everybody else until my throat is sore.