Before I Fall

Anyway, the summer before seventh grade a bunch of us were at Tara Flute’s pool party. Beth Schiff was showing off by doing cannonballs in the deep end, but really she was showing off the fact that between May and July she’d sprouted a pair of C-cup boobs—definitely the biggest of any girl there. I was in the house getting a soda when all of a sudden Lindsay came up to me, eyes shining. She’d never spoken to me before.



“You’ve got to come see this,” she said, grabbing my arm. Her breath smelled like ice cream.



She pulled me into Tara’s room, where all the girls had piled their bags and their changes of clothes. Beth’s bag was pink and had her initials marked in purple embroidery on the side. Lindsay had obviously gone through it, because she immediately crouched down and reached for a clear zipper case, like the kind we had to store pens in when we were in grade school.



“Look!” She held it up, rattling it. Inside were two tampons.



I don’t remember how it started, but suddenly Lindsay and I were running through the house, checking bathroom cabinets and drawers, gathering up all the tampons and pads that Tara’s mother and older sister had in the house. I was so happy I was dizzy. Lindsay Edgecombe and I were talking, and not just talking but laughing, and not just laughing but laughing so hard I had to squeeze my legs together to keep from peeing. Then we ran out onto the deck and started throwing handful after handful of tampons down onto the pool party below. Lindsay was screaming, “Beth! These fell out of your bag!” Some of the tampons swirled down into the water and all the guys were suddenly pushing and shoving to get out of the pool like they were going to be contaminated. Beth stood on the diving board, dripping wet and shaking, while the rest of us nearly died laughing.



It reminded me of the time my parents took me to the Grand Canyon in fourth grade and made me stand on a ledge to get photographed. My legs hadn’t been able to stop shaking and my feet got a tingling feeling in the soles, like they were itching to jump: I couldn’t stop thinking about how easy it would be to fall, how high up we were. After my mom took the picture and let me back away from the ledge, I started laughing and couldn’t stop.



Standing on the deck with Lindsay I got that exact same feeling.



After that Lindsay and I were best friends. Ally came in later, after she and Lindsay were in a field hockey league together the summer before eighth grade. Elody moved to Ridgeview freshman year. At one of the first parties of the year she hooked up with Sean Morton, who Lindsay had had a crush on for six months. Everyone thought Lindsay would kill Elody. But the next Monday at school Elody was at our lunch table, and she and Lindsay were bent over a plate of curly fries, giggling and acting like they’d known each other forever. I’m glad. Even though Elody can sometimes be embarrassing, I think deep down she’s the nicest of any of us.



THE PARTY



After school we go to Ally’s. When we were younger—freshman year and even half of sophomore year—we’d sometimes stay in and put on clay masks and order as much Chinese food as we could eat, taking twenties from the cookie jar on the third shelf next to Ally’s refrigerator, where her dad keeps an emergency thousand dollars at all times. We called them our “egg-roll emergency” nights. Then we’d stretch out on her enormous couch and watch movies until we fell asleep—the TV in Ally’s living room is as big as the screen in a movie theater—our legs tangled together under an enormous fleece blanket. Since junior year, though, I don’t think we’ve stayed in even once, except when Matt Wilde broke up with Ally, and she cried so hard that the next morning her face was puffy, like a mole’s.



Today we raid Ally’s closet so we don’t have to wear the same outfit to Kent’s party. Elody, Ally, and Lindsay are paying special attention to how I look. Elody puts bright red polish on my nails, her hands shaking a little so some of it gets on my cuticles and makes it look like I’m bleeding, but I’m too nervous to care. Rob and I are going to meet up at Kent’s and he’s already sent me a text that says I evn made my bed 4 u. I let Ally pick out my outfit—a metallic gold tank top, too big in the chest, and a pair of Ally’s crazy four-inch heels (she calls them her stripper shoes). Lindsay does my makeup, humming and breathing vodka onto me. We’ve all taken two shots, chasing them with cranberry juice.



Afterward I lock myself in the bathroom, warmth tingling from my fingertips up to my head, and try to memorize exactly how I look there, in that second. But after a while all of my features seem like they’re just hanging there, like something I’m seeing on a stranger.



When I was little I used to do this a lot: lock myself in the bathroom and take showers so hot the mirrors would cloud completely over, then stand there, watching as my face took shape slowly behind the steam, rough outlines at first, then details appearing gradually. Each time I’d think that when my face came back I would see somebody beautiful, like during my shower I would have transformed into someone brighter and better. But I always looked the same.



Standing in Ally’s bathroom, I smile and think, Tomorrow I’ll finally be different.



Lindsay’s kind of music-obsessed, so she makes us a playlist for the ride to Kent’s house, even though he lives only a few miles away. We listen to Dr. Dre and Tupac, and then we blast “Baby Got Back” and all sing along.



It’s the weirdest thing, though: as we’re driving there along all those familiar streets—streets I’ve known my whole life, streets so familiar I might as well have imagined them myself—I get this feeling like I’m floating above everything, hovering above all of the houses and the roads and the yards and the trees, going up, up, up, above Rocky’s and the Rite Aid and the gas station and Thomas Jefferson and the football field and the metal bleachers where we sit and scream our heads off every homecoming. Like everything is tiny and insignificant. Like I’m already only remembering it.



Elody’s howling at the top of her lungs. She has the lowest tolerance out of all of us. Ally’s got the rest of the vodka tucked into her bag but nothing to chase it with. Lindsay’s driving because she can drink all night and hardly feel it.



The rain starts when we’re almost there, but it’s so light it’s almost like it’s just hanging in the air, like a big curtain of white vapor. I don’t remember the last time I was at Kent’s house—his ninth birthday party, maybe?—and I’ve forgotten how far it’s set back in the woods. The driveway seems to snake on forever. All we see is the dull light from the headlights bouncing off a twisting, gravelly path and revealing dead tree branches crowding closely overhead, and tiny pellets of rain like diamonds.



“This is how horror movies start,” Ally says, adjusting her tank top. We’ve all borrowed new tops from her, but she’s insisted on keeping on the fur-trimmed one, even though she was the one who was initially against it. “Are you sure he’s number forty-two?”



“It’s just a little farther,” I say, even though I have no idea, and I’m starting to wonder whether we turned too early. I have butterflies in my stomach, but I’m not sure whether they’re good or bad.



The woods press closer and closer until they’re nearly brushing up against the car doors. Lindsay starts complaining about the paint job. Just when it seems like we’ll be sucked up into the darkness, all of a sudden the woods stop completely and there’s the biggest, most beautiful lawn you can imagine, with a white house at its center that looks like it’s made out of frosting. It’s got balconies and a long porch that runs along two sides. The shutters are white too, and carved with designs it’s too dark to make out. I don’t remember any of it. Maybe it’s the alcohol, but I think it’s the most beautiful house I’ve ever seen.



We’re all silent for a minute, looking. Half the house is dark, but warm light is shining from the top floor, and where it makes it to the lawn it turns the grass silver.



Lindsay says, “It’s almost as big as your house, Al.” I’m sorry she spoke: it feels like a spell has been broken.



“Almost,” Ally says. She takes the vodka out of her bag and swigs it, coughs, burps, and wipes her mouth.



“Give me a shot of that,” Elody says, reaching for the bottle.



The bottle’s in my hand before I realize it. I take a sip. It burns my throat and tastes awful, like paint or gasoline, but as soon as it’s down I get a rush. We climb out of the car and the light from the house surges and expands, winking at me.



Walking into parties always gives me a crampy feeling at the bottom of my stomach. It’s a good feeling, though: the feeling of knowing anything can happen. Most of the time nothing does, of course. Most of the time one night blends into the next, and weeks blend into weeks, and months into other months. And sooner or later we all die.



But at the beginning of the night anything’s possible.



The front door is locked and we have to go around the side, where a door opens onto a really narrow hallway all paneled in wood and a tiny flight of steep wooden stairs. It smells like something I remember from childhood, but I can’t quite place it. I hear the tinkle of breaking glass and someone yells, “Fire in the hole!” Then Dujeous roars from the speakers: All MCs in the house tonight, if your lyrics sound tight then rock the mic. The stairs are so narrow we have to squeeze up in single file because people are coming down in the opposite direction, empty beer cups in hand. Most of them have to turn so their backs are against the wall. We say hi to a few people and ignore the rest. As usual I can feel all of them looking at us. That’s another nice thing about being popular: you don’t have to pay any attention to the people paying attention to you.



At the top of the stairs a dim hallway is hung all over with multicolored Christmas lights. There are a series of rooms, each leading off the next, and all seem to be filled with draped fabrics and big pillows and couches and all are packed with people. Everything is soft—the colors, the surfaces, the way people look—except the music, which pumps through the walls, making the floor vibrate. People are smoking inside too, so everything’s happening behind a thick blue veil. I’ve only smoked pot once, but this is what I imagine it’s like to be stoned.



Lindsay leans back and says something to me, but it gets lost in the murmur of voices. Then she’s moving away from me, weaving through the crowd. I turn around, but Elody and Ally are gone too, and before I know it my heart is pounding and I get this itchy feeling in my palms.



Recently I’ve been having this nightmare where I’m standing in the middle of an enormous crowd, being pushed from left to right. The faces look familiar, but there’s something horribly wrong with all of them: someone will walk by who looks like Lindsay, but then her mouth is weird and droopy like it’s melting off. And none of them recognize me.



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.