Лорен Оливер - Before I Fall

Then she waves.

“Hey, Sam,” she says. She pulls on her skirt again.

“Were you—” I take a deep breath to keep from stuttering like an idiot. “Were you just talking about semifinals? For swim team?”

“Yeah.” Sarah’s face lights up. “Are you going to come?”

Even though I’m freaking out, it still occurs to me that this is a really stupid question. I’ve never gone to a swim meet in my life, and the idea of sitting on a slimy tile floor and watching Sarah Grundel splash around in a bathing suit is about as appealing as the chow mein from Hunan Kitchen. To be honest, the only sporting event I ever go to is homecoming, and after four years I still don’t understand any of the rules. Lindsay usually brings a flask of something for the four of us to share, so that could have something to do with it.

“I thought you weren’t competing.” I try hard to act casual. “I heard some rumor…like maybe you were late and the coach freaked out….”

“You heard a rumor? About me?” Sarah’s eyes go wide and she looks like I just handed her a winning lotto ticket. I guess she’s of the “no press is bad press” philosophy.

“I guess I was wrong.” I think of seeing her car in the third-to-last spot and feel heat flood my face. Of course she wasn’t late today. Of course she’s still competing. She didn’t have to walk from Upper Lot today. She was late yesterday .

My head starts pounding and suddenly I just want to get out of there.

Hillary’s looking at me strangely. “Are you okay? You look really pale.”

“Yeah. Fine. Bad sushi last night.” I put one hand on the lockers to steady myself. Sarah starts babbling about the time she got food poisoning from the mall, but I’m already walking away, feeling like the hallway is rolling and buckling underneath me.

Déjà vu. It’s the only explanation.

If you repeat something enough, you can almost make yourself believe it.

I’m feeling so shaken up I almost forget that Ally’s waiting for me in the bathroom by the science wing. I go into the stall and flip the lid of a toilet down and just sit there, only half listening while she babbles. I remember something Mrs. Harbor once said on one of her crazy tangents in English: that Plato believed that the whole world—everything we can see—was just like shadows on a cave wall. We can’t actually see the real thing, the thing that’s casting the shadow in the first place. I have that feeling now, of being surrounded by shadows, like I’m seeing the impression of the thing before the thing itself.

“Hello? Are you even listening to me?”

Ally rattles the door and I look up, startled. I notice AC=WT scrawled on the inside of the door. Below it a smaller note reads: Go back to the trailer, ho.

“You said pretty soon you’d have to shop for bras in the maternity section,” I say automatically. Of course I wasn’t really listening. Not this time, anyway.

I’m wondering, vaguely, why Lindsay came all the way down here to write on the bathroom wall—why it was important to her, I mean. She’d already written it a dozen times in the stalls across from the cafeteria, and that’s the bathroom everyone uses. I’m not even sure why she dislikes Anna, and it reminds me that I still don’t know when she started hating Juliet Sykes so much either. It’s weird how much you can know about someone without knowing everything. You’d think someday you’d come to the end of it.

I stand up and swing the door open, pointing to the graffiti. “When did Lindsay do this?”

Ally rolls her eyes. “She didn’t. Copycat artist.”

“Really?”

“Uh-huh. There’s one in the girls’ locker room too. Copycat.” She whips her hair into a ponytail and starts pinching her lips to make them swell up. “It’s so lame. We can’t do anything in this school without everyone doing the same thing.”

“Lame.” I run my fingers over the words. They’re thick and black, like worms, drawn in permanent marker. I wonder, briefly, whether Anna uses this bathroom.

“We should sue for copyright infringement. Can you imagine? Twenty bucks for every time somebody bites our style. We’d be rolling in it.” She giggles. “Mint?”

Ally holds out an Altoids tin. Even though she’s still a virgin—and will be, for the foreseeable future (or at least until she goes to college), since she’s completely obsessed with Matt Wilde—she insists on taking birth control pills, which she keeps crumpled up in their foil pack right there alongside her mints. She claims it’s so her dad won’t find them, but everyone knows she likes to flash them during class so that people will think she’s having sex. Not that anybody’s fooled. Thomas Jefferson is small: you know these things.

One time Elody told Ally she had “pregnancy breath” and we all died over it. It was junior year in May and we were all lying out on Ally’s trampoline. It was the Saturday morning after she’d had one of her best parties yet. We were all just a little hungover, our brains fuzzy, stuffed on all the pancakes and bacon we’d put down at the diner, totally happy. I lay there while the trampoline dipped and swayed, closing my eyes against the sun, wishing that the day would never end.

The bell rings and Ally squeals, “Ooh! We’re gonna be late.”

Again that pit opens in my stomach. A part of me is tempted to hide all day in the bathroom, but I can’t.

I know you know what happens next. That I get to chem late. That I take the last seat next to Lauren Lornet. That Mr. Tierney passes out a quiz with three questions on it.

The worst part of it? I’ve seen the quiz before and I still don’t know the answers.

I ask to borrow a pen. Lauren starts whispering to me; she wants to know if it’s working okay. Mr. Tierney’s book comes down with a bang.

Everyone jumps but me.

Class. Bell. Class. Bell.

Crazy. I’m going crazy.

By the time the roses get delivered in math class my hands are shaking. I take a deep breath before I open the little laminated card attached to the rose Rob sent me. I imagine it will say something incredible, something surprising, something that will make everything better.

You’re beautiful, Sam.

I’m so happy to be with you.

Sam, I love you.

I lift the corner of the card gently and peek inside.

Luv y I close the card quickly and put it in my bag.

“Wow. It’s beautiful.”

I look up. The girl dressed like an angel is standing there, staring at the rose she’s just laid on my desk: pink and cream petals swirled together like ice cream. She still has her hand outstretched and tiny blue veins crisscross her skin like a web.

“Take a picture. It’ll last longer,” I snap at her. She blushes as red as the roses she’s holding and stammers out an apology.

I don’t bother reading the note that’s attached to this one, and for the rest of class I keep my eyes glued to the blackboard to avoid any sign from Kent. I’m concentrating so hard on not looking at him I almost miss it when Mr. Daimler winks at me and smiles.

Almost.

After class Kent catches up with me, holding the pink-and-cream rose, which I’d deliberately left on my desk.

“You forgot this,” he says. As always his hair is flopping over one eye. “It’s okay, you can say it: I’m amazing.”

“I didn’t forget it.” I’m struggling not to look at him. “I didn’t want it.”

I sneak a glance at him and see his smile fade for a second. Then it’s back on full-force, like a friggin’ laser beam.

“What do you mean?” He tries to pass it to me. “Didn’t anybody ever tell you that the more roses you get on Cupid Day, the more popular you are?”