Before I Fall

“Elizabeth,” Izzy says proudly, then sags a little. “But everybody calls me Izzy.”

“When I was little everybody called me Mary.” Marian makes a face. “But now everybody calls me Marian.”

“I don’t mind Izzy that much,” Izzy says, chewing on her lip like she’s just decided it.

Marian looks up at me. “You have a little sister too, huh?”

Suddenly I can’t stand to look at her. I can’t stand to think about what will happen later. I know: the stillness of the house, the gunshot.

And then…what? Will she be the first one down the stairs? Will that final image of her sister be the one that lasts, that wipes out whatever other memories she’s stored up over the years?

I go into a panic, trying to think what kind of memories Izzy has of me—will have of me.

“Come on, Izzy. Let’s let the girls eat.” My voice is trembling, but I don’t think anyone notices. I pat Izzy on the head and she gallops back toward our table.

The girls at the table are getting more confident now. Smiles are sprouting up, and they’re all looking at me in awe, like they can’t believe how nice I’m being, like I’ve given them a present. I hate it. They should hate me. If they knew what kind of person I was, they would hate me, I’m sure of it.

I don’t know why Kent pops into my head right then, but he does. He would hate me too if he knew everything. The realization makes me strangely upset.

“Tell Juliet not to do it,” I blurt out, and then can’t believe I’ve said it.

Marian wrinkles her forehead. “Do what?”

“Science-project thing,” I say quickly, and then add, “she’ll know what I’m talking about.”

“Okay.” Marian’s beaming at me. I start to turn away, but she calls me back. “Sam!”

I turn around, and she claps her hand over her mouth and giggles, like she can’t believe she had the courage to say my name.

“I’ll have to tell her tomorrow,” she says. “Juliet’s going out tonight.” She says it like she’s saying, Juliet’s going to be valedictorian. I can just picture the scene. Mom and dad and sister downstairs, Juliet locked in her bedroom as usual, blasting music, alone. And then—miracle of miracles—she descends, hair swept back, confident, cool, announcing she is headed to a party. They must have been so happy, so proud. Their lonely little girl making good at the end of senior year.

To Kent’s party. To find Lindsay—to find me. To be pushed and tripped and soaked with beer.

The sushi’s not sitting so well with me all of a sudden. If they had any idea…

“I’ll definitely tell her tomorrow, though.” Marian beams at me, a headlight bearing down at me through the dark.

All the way home I’m trying to forget Marian Sykes. When my dad wishes me good night—he’s always ready to pass out after a beer, and tonight he had (gasp!) two—I’m trying to forget Marian Sykes. When Izzy comes in half an hour later, showered and clean-smelling in her ratty Dora pj’s, and plants a sloppy wet kiss on my cheek, I’m trying to forget her; and an hour after that, when my mother stands at my door and says, “I’m proud of you, Sam,” I’m still thinking of her.

My mother goes to bed. Silence fills the house. Somewhere in the deep darkness a clock is ticking, and when I close my eyes I picture Juliet Sykes coming toward me calmly, her shoes tapping against a wood floor, blood flowing from her eyes….

I sit up in bed, heart pounding. Then I get up, find my North Face in the dark.

This morning I swore that there was nothing in the world that could make me go back to Kent’s party, but here I am, tiptoeing down the stairs, edging along in the dark hallways, sneaking my mom’s keys off the shelf in the mudroom. She’s been amazingly human today, but the last thing I need to deal with is some big conversation of the what-makes-me-think-I-can-cut-school-and-then-go-out variety.

I try to tell myself that Juliet Sykes isn’t really my problem, but I keep imagining how horrible it would be if this were her day. If she had to live it over and over again. I think pretty much everybody—even Juliet Sykes—deserves to die on a better day than that.

The hinges on the back and front door squawk so loudly they might as well be alarm clocks (sometimes I think my parents have engineered this deliberately). In the kitchen I carefully spill some olive oil on a paper towel, and I rub this onto the hinges on the back door. Lindsay taught me this trick. She’s always developing new, better ways to sneak out, even though she has no curfew, and it doesn’t matter one way or the other when she leaves and when she comes home. I think she misses that, actually. I think that’s why she’s always meticulous about the details—she likes to pretend that she has to be.

The door with its Italian-seasoned hinges swings open with barely a whisper, and I’m out.

I haven’t really thought through why I’m heading to Kent’s, or what I’m going to do once I’m there, and instead of driving there directly, I find myself turning on random streets and dead-end cul-de-sacs, circling up and down. The houses are mostly set back from the street, and lit windows appear magically in the dark like hanging lanterns. It’s amazing how different everything looks at night—almost unrecognizable, especially in the rain. Houses sit hulking back on their lawns, brooding and alive. It looks so different from the Ridgeview of the day, when everything is clean and polished and trimmed neatly, when everything unfolds in an orderly way, husbands heading to their cars with coffee mugs, wives following soon after, dressed in pilates gear, tiny girls in Baby Gap dresses and car seats and Lexus SUVs and Starbucks cups and normalcy. I wonder which one is the true version.

There are hardly any cars on the road. I keep crawling along at fifteen miles per hour. I’m looking for something, but I don’t know what. I pass Elody’s street and keep going. Each streetlamp casts a neat funnel of light downward, illuminating the inside of the car briefly, before I’m left again in darkness.

My headlights sweep over a crooked green street sign fifty feet ahead: Serenity Place. I suddenly remember sitting in Ally’s kitchen freshman year while her mom chattered on the phone endlessly, pacing back and forth on the deck in bare feet and yoga pants. “She’s getting her daily dose of gossip,” Ally had said, rolling her eyes. “Mindy Sachs is better than Us Weekly.” And Lindsay had put in how ironic it was that Mrs. Sachs lived on Serenity Place—like she doesn’t bring the noise with her—and it was the first time I really understood the meaning of the word ironic.

I yank my wheel at the last second and brake, rolling down Serenity Place. It’s not a long street—there are no more than two dozen houses on it—and like many streets in Ridgeview, ends in a cul-de-sac. My heart leaps when I see a silver Saab parked neatly in one of the driveways. The license plate reads: MOM OF4. That’s Mrs. Sachs’s car. I must be close.

The next house down is number fifty-nine. It is marked with a tin mailbox in the shape of a rooster, which stretches up from a flowerbed that is at this point in the year no more than a long patch of black dirt. SYKES is printed along the rooster’s wing, in letters so small you have to be looking before you can see them.

I can’t really explain it, but I feel like I would have known the house anyway. There’s nothing wrong with it—it’s no different from any other house, not the biggest, not the smallest, decently taken care of, white paint, dark shutters, a single light burning downstairs. But there’s something else, some quality I can’t really identify that makes it look like the house is too big for itself, like something inside is straining to get out, like the whole place is about to bust its seams. It’s a desperate house, somehow.

I turn into the driveway. I have no business being here, I know that, but I can’t help it. It’s like something’s tugging me inside. The rain is coming down hard, and I grab an old sweatshirt from the backseat—Izzy’s, probably—and use it to shield my head as I sprint from the car to the front porch, my breath clouding in front of me. Before I can think too much about what I’m doing, I ring the doorbell.

It takes a long time for someone to answer the door, and I do a little jog, my breath steaming out in front of me, trying to stay warm. Finally there’s a shuffling sound from inside, and then a scraping of hinges. The door swings open, and a woman stands there, blinking at me confusedly: Juliet’s mother. She is wearing a bathrobe, which she holds closed with one hand. She is as thin as Juliet and has the same clear blue eyes and pale skin as both of her daughters. Looking at her, I am reminded of a wisp of smoke curling up into the dark.

“Can I help you?” Her voice is very soft.

I’m kind of thrown. For some reason I expected Marian would be the one to come to the door. “My name is Sam—Samantha Kingston. I’m looking for Juliet.” Because it worked the first time I add, “She’s my lab partner.”

From inside, a man—Juliet’s father, I guess—shouts, “Who is it?” The voice is barking and loud, and so different from Mrs. Sykes’s voice I unconsciously shuffle backward.

Mrs. Sykes jumps a little, and turns her head quickly, inadvertently swinging the door open an extra couple of inches. The hallway behind her is dark. Swampy blue and green shadows dance up one wall, images projected from a television in a room I can’t see. “It’s no one,” she says quickly, her voice directed into the darkness behind her. “It’s for Juliet.”

“Juliet? Someone’s here for Juliet?” He sounds exactly like a dog. Bark, bark, bark, bark. I fight a wild, nervous urge to laugh.

“I’ll take care of it.” Mrs. Sykes turns back to me. Again, the door swings closed with her movement, as though she is leaning on it for support. Her smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “Juliet’s not home right now. Is there something I can help you with?”

“I, um, missed school today. We had this big assignment….” I trail off helplessly, starting to regret having come. Despite my North Face, I’m shivering like a maniac. I must look like a maniac too, hopping from foot to foot, holding a sweatshirt over my head for an umbrella.

Mrs. Sykes seems to notice, finally, that I’m standing in the rain. “Why don’t you come in,” she says, and steps backward into the hall. I follow her inside.

An open door to the left leads directly off the hall: that’s where the television is. I can just make out an armchair and the silhouette of someone sitting there, the edge of an enormous jaw touched with blue from the screen. I remember what Lindsay said then, about Juliet’s dad being an alcoholic. I vaguely remember hearing that same rumor, and something else too—that there’d been an accident, something about semi-paralysis or pills or something. I wish I’d paid more attention.

Mrs. Sykes catches me looking and walks quickly over to the door, pulling it shut. It is now so dark I can barely see, and I realize I’m still cold. If the heat is on in the house, I can’t feel it. From the TV room I hear the sounds of a horror-film scream, and the steady syncopated rhythm of machine gun fire.