Before I Fall
Page 41“I don’t hate you. I don’t know you. But I’d like to change that. Start over.” I’m almost screaming now. I’m not sure if she can still hear me.
She says something I don’t hear. Another car goes flashing by, a silver bullet.
“What?”
Juliet turns her head a fraction of an inch and says, louder, “You’re right. You don’t know me.”
Another car. Laughter rings out as it passes. Someone throws a beer bottle into the woods and it shatters. Then I’m sure I hear someone calling my name, though I can’t tell exactly which direction it comes from. The wind shrieks, and I suddenly realize that Juliet’s only a half inch from the road, teetering on the thin line where the pavement begins, like she’s balancing on a tightrope.
“Maybe you should come away from the road,” I say, but all the time in the back of my head, there’s an idea growing and swelling, a horrible, sickening realization, massing up and taking shape like clouds on the horizon. Someone calls my name again. And then, still in the distance, I hear the throaty wail of “Splinter” by Fallacy pumping from someone’s car.
“Sam! Sam!” I recognize it as Kent’s voice now.
Last night for the last time…you said you would be mine again…
Juliet turns to face me then. She’s smiling, but it’s the saddest smile I’ve ever seen.
“Maybe next time,” she says. “But probably not.”
“Juliet,” I try to say, but the name catches in my throat. I feel like fear has turned me to stone. I want to say something, to move, to reach out and grab her, but time goes so quickly, and then the realization bursts and explodes as the music from the speakers gets louder and a silver Range Rover rockets out of the darkness. Like a bird or an angel—like she’s throwing herself off a cliff—Juliet lifts her arms and hurtles onto the road, and there’s a scream piercing the air and a sickening crunch, and it’s not until Juliet’s body flies sideways off the hood of Lindsay’s car and lands crumpled facedown in the road, and the Range Rover sails into the woods and crashes, splintering, crumpling against a tree, and long ribbons of smoke and flame begin licking the air, that I realize I’m the one screaming.
BEFORE I WAKE
Kent catches up to me then. “Sam,” he says breathlessly, eyes searching my face. “Are you okay?”
He turns to the road. Black pillars of smoke are rising out of the woods. From where we’re standing we can just see the battered metal bumper, rising like a finger over the dip of the earth.
“Wait here,” he says. It’s a miracle, but he sounds calm. He runs into the road, whipping his phone out, and I hear him yelling directions to someone on the other end. There’s been an accident. Fire. Route nine, just past Devon Drive. He kneels by Juliet’s body. At least one person hurt.
Other cars are squealing to a halt now. People climb out of their cars uncertainly, everyone suddenly sober, everyone speaking in whispers, staring at the tiny crumpled body in the road, at the smoke and fire licking up from the woods. Emma McElroy pulls over and gets out with her hands cupped over her mouth, eyes bugging out of her head, leaving the door to her Mini hanging open and the radio blasting. Jay-Z’s “99 Problems” booms through the night, and the normalcy of it is the most horrible thing of all. Someone shrieks, “For God’s sake, Emma, shut that off.” Emma scrambles back to her car, and then there’s silence except for the pounding of the rain, and the sounds of someone sobbing loudly.
I feel like I’m in a dream. I keep trying to move, but I can’t. I don’t even feel the rain anymore. I don’t feel my body.
There’s only one thought revolving around and around and around in my head: the flash of white just before we pin-wheeled into the yawning mouth of the woods, Lindsay yelling something I couldn’t quite make out.
Not sit or shit or sight.
Sykes.
Then a long, piercing wail comes from the other side of the woods, and Lindsay stumbles up to the road, her mouth open and tears streaming down her face. Kent is there, supporting Ally, who’s limping and coughing but looks okay.
Lindsay’s screaming, “Help! Help! Elody’s still in there! Somebody help her! Please!” She’s so hysterical her words swell together, transforming into an animal howl. She sinks down on the pavement and sobs, her head in her hands. Then another wailing joins in: sirens in the distance.
Nobody moves. Everything starts happening in short, choppy bursts—at least, that’s what it seems like to me—like I’m watching a movie while a strobe light goes on and off. More and more students massing in the rain, standing as still and silent as statues. The police sirens turning, lighting the scene up red, then white, then red, then white. Figures in uniform—an ambulance—a stretcher—two stretchers. Juliet’s body laid out neatly, tiny and fragile, just like the bird all those years ago. Lindsay throwing up as the second stretcher bears a body up from the totaled car, and Kent rubbing her back. Ally sobbing with her mouth open, which is weird, because I don’t hear a sound. At some point I lift my eyes to the sky and see that the rain has transformed into snow—fat, white flakes swirling out of the darkness as if by magic. I have no idea how long I’ve been standing there. I’m surprised to see that when I look back at the road there’s hardly anyone left there at all, just a few stragglers and a solitary police car and Kent, jumping up and down to keep warm, talking to an officer. The ambulances are gone. Lindsay’s gone. Ally’s gone.
Then Kent’s standing in front of me though I didn’t see him move. How did you do that? I try to say, but nothing comes out.
“Sam.” Kent’s speaking to me, and I get the feeling he’s said my name more than once. I feel a squeezing sensation and it takes me a second to realize he has his hands on my arms. It takes me a second to realize I still have arms, and in that moment it’s like I slam back into my body, and the force of everything I’ve seen hits me and my legs buckle and I slump forward. Kent catches me, holds me up.
“Shhh.” His lips are close to my ear. “You’re freezing.”
“I have to go find Lindsay.”
“You’ve been out here for over an hour. Your hands are like ice.” He shrugs out of the heavy sweater he’s wearing and drapes it over me. There are white snowflakes caught in his lashes. He places his hands gently under my elbows and steers me back toward the driveway. “Come on. Let’s get you warm.”
I don’t have the strength to argue. I let him lead me to the house. His hands never leave me, and even though he’s barely grazing my back, I feel like without him I would fall.
It seems like we’re back at Kent’s house without even moving. Then we’re in the kitchen, and he’s pulling out a chair and putting me in it. His lips are moving and his tone is comforting, but I can’t understand what he’s saying. Then there’s a thick blanket over my shoulders and a shooting pain in my fingers and toes as the feeling comes back to them, as though someone’s sticking hot, sharp needles in me. Still, I can’t stop shivering. My teeth are clacking together with a noise like dice rattling in a cup.
The kegs are still in the corner, and there are half-empty cups everywhere, and cigarette butts swimming in them, but the music’s off and the house feels totally different without any people in it. My mind is focusing on a bunch of tiny details, ricocheting from one to the other like a Ping-Pong ball: the embroidered sign above the sink that says MARTHA STEWART DOES NOT LIVE HERE; the snapshots posted on the refrigerator, of Kent and his family on the beach somewhere, of relatives I don’t know, of old postcards from Paris, Morocco, San Francisco; rows of mugs displayed behind the glass cabinets, with slogans on them like CAFFEINE OR BUST and IT’S TEA TIME.
“One marshmallow or two?” Kent is saying.
“What?” My voice comes out croaky and weird. All my other senses come online in a rush: I hear the hissing of milk heating in a pot; Kent’s face comes into focus, sweet and concerned, bits of snow melting out of his shaggy brown hair. The blanket around my shoulders smells like lavender.
“I’ll just put in a couple,” Kent says, turning back to the stove. In a minute there’s an oversized mug (This one says HOME IS WHERE THE CHOCOLATE IS) steaming in front of me, filled with foamy hot chocolate—the real kind, not the kind you get from a package—and big, bobbing marshmallows. I don’t know whether I’ve asked for this out loud or whether he’s just read my mind.
Kent sits across from me at the table and watches me take a sip. It’s delicious, just sweet enough and full of cinnamon and something else I can’t identify, and I put the mug down with slightly steadier hands.
“Where’s Lindsay?” I say as the scene comes back to me: Lindsay on her knees in front of everyone, throwing up. She must have been out of her mind—Lindsay would never do something like that in public. “Is she okay?”
Kent nods, his eyes fixed on my face. “Lindsay’s fine. She had to go to the hospital to be checked out for shock and stuff. But she’s going to be okay.”
He shakes his head once. “There was nothing they could do,” he says, so quietly if I didn’t know what he was going to say I would never have heard him.
“I saw her…” I start to speak and find I can’t. “I could have grabbed her. She was so close.”
“It was an accident.” Kent looks down. I’m not sure whether he really believes it.
No, it wasn’t, I want to say. I think of her strange half smile as she said, Maybe next time, but probably not, and close my eyes, willing the memory away.
“What about Ally? Is she okay?”
“Ally’s fine. Not even a scratch.” Kent’s voice gets stronger, but there’s a pleading sound to it, and I understand he’s trying to get me to stop talking—he doesn’t want me to ask what I’m about to ask.
“Elody?” My voice comes out in a whisper.
Kent looks away. A muscle works in his jaw.
“She was sitting in the front seat,” he says finally, as though each and every word hurts, and I think of Elody leaning forward and whining, Why does Sam always get shotgun? “The passenger side took most of the impact.”
I wonder if that’s how they would have explained it to my parents at the hospital—collision, passenger side, impact. “Is she…?” I can’t say the word.
He looks at me like he’s about to cry. He looks older than I’ve ever seen him, his eyes dark and full and sad. “I’m so sorry, Sam,” he says quietly.