Лорен Оливер - Before I Fall

“What happened?” I whisper, dazed. “Is Elody…? Is Juliet…?”

“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.”

“She—Juliet came so fast.” I close my eyes, envisioning the white blur, and when I open them, Kent looks like his insides are getting torn out. “Is she…I mean, is Juliet…?”

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.

“What are you telling me?” I ball my fists up so tightly I can feel my nails dig into my skin. “Are you saying she’s—that she’s—” I break off, still unable to say it. Saying it will make it real.

Kent looks like each word is something sharp he has to bring up from his stomach. “It was—it would have been instant. Painless.”

“Painless?” I repeat, my voice shaking. “Painless? You don’t know that. You can’t know that.” There’s a fist in my throat. “Is that what they said? They said it was painless ? Like it was peaceful? Like it was okay ?”

Kent reaches for my hand across the table. “Sam…”

“No.” I scrape my chair back from the table and stand up. My whole body is vibrating with rage. “No. Don’t tell me it’s going to be okay. Don’t tell me it didn’t hurt her. You don’t know—you have no idea—none of you have any idea how much it hurts. It hurts—” I’m not even sure whether I’m talking about Elody or myself. Kent stands up and wraps his arms around me. I find myself with my head buried in his shoulder, sobbing. He keeps me pressed tightly to him, and he’s making little noises into my hair, and before I totally let go of everything and succumb to the blackness washing through me, I have the strangest, dumbest thought—that my head fits perfectly in Kent’s shoulder.

Then the thought of Elody and Juliet becomes too much, and a heavy veil drops down over my mind, and I cry. It’s the second night in a row I’ve totally lost it in front of Kent, though, of course, he couldn’t know that. I should be grateful he doesn’t remember that only last night we sat together in a dark room with our knees almost touching, but instead it makes me feel even more alone. I’m lost in a fog, in a mist, and at some point when I start to come back to myself I realize that Kent is literally holding me up. My feet are barely skimming the ground.

His mouth is buried in my hair and I feel his breath close to my ear. A zip of electricity goes through me, which makes me feel awful and more confused than ever. I pull away, putting a little bit of space between us. He keeps his arms on either side of mine, though, bracing me, and I’m glad. He’s solid and warm.

“You’re still freezing,” he says. He puts the back of his hand against my cheek for one millisecond, but when he pulls away I can feel the outline of his hand, like it’s scalded me. “Your clothes are soaking.”

“Underwear,” I blurt out.

He wrinkles his forehead. “What?”

“My…um, underwear. I mean, my pants and fleece and underwear…it’s all full of snow. Well, mostly melted water now. It’s really cold.” I’m too exhausted to care about being embarrassed. Kent just bites his lip and nods.

“Stay here,” he says. “And drink up.” He nods to the hot chocolate.

He guides me back into the chair and disappears. I’m still shivering, but at least I can hold the mug without slopping it all over the table. I don’t think about anything but the motion of the mug to my lips and the taste of the cocoa, the ticking of a cat-tailed clock, and the drifting white outside the windows. In a few seconds Kent’s back with an enormous fleece, faded sweatpants, and folded striped boxers.