Rob is stretched out on a sofa downstairs, but he manages to grab my hand as I go by and tries to pull me down on top of him.
Wherere you goin? he says. His eyes are unfocused and his voice is hoarse.
Come on, Rob. Let me go. I push him off me. This is his fault, too.
We were supposed to His voice trails off and he shakes his head, confused, then narrows his eyes at me. Are you cheating on me?
Dont be stupid. I want to rewind the whole evening, rewind the past few weeks, go back to the moment when Rob leaned over, rested his chin on my shoulder, and told me he wanted to sleep next to me, go back to that quiet moment in that dark room with the TV blue and muted in front of us and the sound of his breathing and my parents sleeping upstairs, go back to the moment I opened my mouth and heard I do too.
You are. Youre cheating. I knew it. He lurches to his feet and looks around wildly. Chris Harmon, one of Robs best friends, is standing in the corner laughing about something, and Rob stumbles over to him.
Are you cheating with my girlfriend, Harmon? Rob roars, and pushes Chris. Chris stumbles and knocks against a bookshelf. A porcelain figurine topples over and shatters and a girl screams.
Are you crazy? Chris jumps back on Rob and suddenly theyre locked together, wrestling, shuffling around the room and knocking into things, grunting and yelling. Somehow Rob gets Chris down on his knees and then theyre both on the floor. Girls are shrieking and jumping out of the way. Someone cries out, Watch the beer! just before Rob and Chris roll up against the entrance of the kitchen, where the keg is sitting.
Lets go, Sam. Lindsay squeezes my shoulders from behind.
I cant just leave him, I say, though a part of me wants to.
Hell be fine. Lookhes laughing.
Shes right. He and Chris are already done fighting and are sprawled on the floor, laughing their heads off.
Robs going to be so pissed, I say, and I know Lindsay knows Im talking about more than just ditching him at the party.
She gives me a quick hug. Remember what I said. She starts to singsong, Just thinkin about tomorrow clears away the cobwebs and the sorrow.
For a moment my stomach clenches, thinking shes making fun of me, but its a coincidence. Lindsay didnt know me when I was little, wouldnt even have spoken to me. She has no way of knowing I used to lock myself in my room with the Annie soundtrack and belt that song at the top of my lungs until my parents threatened to throw me out onto the street.
The melody starts repeating in my head and I know Ill be singing it for days. Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love ya tomorrow. A beautiful word, when you really think about it.
Lame party, huh? Ally says, coming up on the other side of me. Even though I know shes only pissed Matt Wilde didnt show, Im glad she says it.
The sound of the rain is louder than I thought it would be and it startles me. For a moment we stand under the porch eaves, watching our breath condense into clouds, hugging ourselves. Its freezing. Water is falling in steady streams from the eaves. Christopher Tomlin and Adam Wu are throwing empty beer bottles into the woods. Every so often we hear one shatter, and the sound comes back to us like a gunshot.
People are laughing and screaming and running in the rain, which is coming down so hard everything looks as though its melting into everything else. There are no neighbors to call the cops for miles. The grass is churned up, great black pits of mud exposed. Headlights are flashing in the distance, in and out, on and off, as cars sweep down the driveway toward Route 9.
Run for it! Lindsay yells, and I feel Ally tugging on me and then were running, screaming, the rain blinding us and streaming down our jackets, the mud oozing into our shoes; rain so hard its like everything is melting away.
By the time we get to Lindsays car I really dont care about the awful way the night turned out. Were laughing hysterically, soaked and shivering, woken up from the cold and the rain. Lindsays squealing about wet butt marks on her leather seats and mud on the floor, and Elodys begging her to go to Mics for an egg and cheese and complaining that I always get shotgun, and Allys yelling for Lindsay to turn on the heat and threatening to drop dead right there from pneumonia.
I guess thats how we get started talking about it: dying, I mean. I figure Lindsays okay to drive, but I notice shes going faster than usual down that awful, long, penned-in driveway. The trees look like stripped skeletons on either side of us, moaning in the wind.
I have this theory, Im saying as Lindsay skids out onto Route 9 and the tires shriek against the slick black road. The clock on the dashboard is glowing: 12:38. I have this theory that before you die you see your greatest hits, you know? The best things youve ever done.
Duke, baby, Lindsay says, and takes one hand off the wheel to pump her fist in the air.
First time I hooked up with Matt Wilde, Ally says immediately.
Elody groans and leans forward, reaching for the iPod. Music, please, before I kill myself.
Can I get a cigarette? Lindsay asks, and Elody lights one for her off the butt shes holding. Lindsay cracks the windows, and the freezing rain comes in. Ally starts to complain about the cold again.
Elody puts on Splinter, by Fallacy, to piss Ally off, maybe because shes sick of her whining. Ally calls her a bitch and unbuckles her seat belt, leaning forward and trying to grab the iPod. Lindsay complains that someone is elbowing her in the neck. The cigarette drops from her mouth and lands between her thighs. She starts cursing and trying to brush the embers off the seat cushion, and Elody and Ally are still fighting and Im trying to talk over them, reminding them all of the time we made snow angels in May. The clock ticks forward: 12:39. The tires skid a little on the wet road and the car is full of cigarette smoke, little wisps rising like phantoms in the air.
Then all of a sudden theres a flash of white in front of the car. Lindsay yells somethingwords I cant make out, something like sit or shit or sightand suddenly the car is flipping off the road and into the black mouth of the woods. I hear a horrible, screeching soundmetal on metal, glass shattering, a car folding in twoand smell fire. I have time to wonder whether Lindsay had put out her cigarette
And then
Thats when it happens. The moment of death is full of heat and sound and pain bigger than anything, a funnel of burning heat splitting me in two, something searing and scorching and tearing, and if screaming were a feeling it would be this.
Then nothing.
I know some of you are thinking maybe I deserved it. Maybe I shouldnt have sent that rose to Juliet or dumped my drink on her at the party. Maybe I shouldnt have copied off Lauren Lornets quiz. Maybe I shouldnt have said those things to Kent. There are probably some of you who think I deserved it because I was going to let Rob go all the waybecause I wasnt going to save myself.
But before you start pointing fingers, let me ask you: is what I did really so bad? So bad I deserved to die? So bad I deserved to die like that?
Is what I did really so much worse than what anybody else does?
Is it really so much worse than what you do?
Think about it.
TWO
In my dream I know I am falling though there is no up or down, no walls or sides or ceilings, just the sensation of cold, and darkness everywhere. I am so scared I could scream, but when I open my mouth nothing happens, and I wonder if you fall forever and ever and never touch down, is it really still falling?
I think I will fall forever.
A noise punctuates the silence, a thin bleating growing louder and louder until it is like a scythe of metal slicing the air, slicing into me
Then I wake up.
My alarm has been blaring for twenty minutes. Its six fifty A.M.
I sit up in bed, pushing away the comforter. Im covered with sweat even though my room is cold. My throat is dry and Im desperate for water, like Ive just been running a long way.
For a second when I look around the room everything seems fuzzy and slightly distorted, like Im not really looking at my room but only at a transparency of my room thats been laid down incorrectly so the corners dont match up with the real thing. Then the light shifts and everything looks normal again.
All at once it comes back to me, and blood starts pounding in my head: the party, Juliet Sykes, the argument with Kent
Sammy! My door swings open, banging once against the wall, and Izzy comes galloping across the room, stepping all over my notebooks and discarded jeans and my Victorias Secret Team Pink sweatshirt. Something seems wrong; something skirts the edges of my memory, but then it is gone and Izzy is bouncing on my bed, throwing her arms around me. They are hot. She curls a fist around the necklace I always weara thin gold chain with a tiny bird charm hanging from it, a gift from my grandmotherand tugs gently.
Mommy says you have to get up. Her breath smells like peanut butter, and its not until I push her off me that I realize how badly Im shaking.
Its Saturday, I say. I have no idea how I got home last night. I have no idea what happened to Lindsay or Elody or Ally, and just thinking about it makes me sick.
Izzy starts giggling like a maniac and bounces off the bed, scurrying back toward the door. She disappears down the hallway, and I hear her call out, Mommy, Sammy wont get up! She says my name: Thammy.
Dont make me come up there, Sammy! My moms voice echoes from the kitchen.
I put my feet on the ground. The feel of the cold wood reassures me. When I was younger I would lie on the floor all summer when my dad refused to turn the air-conditioning on; it was the only place that stayed cool. Im tempted to do the same thing now. I feel feverish.
Rob, the rain, the sound of bottles shattering in the woods
My phone chimes, making me jump. I reach over and flip it open. Theres a new text from Lindsay.
Im outside. Where r u?
I snap my phone shut quickly but not before I see the date blinking up at me: Friday, February 12.
Yesterday.
Another chime. Another text.
Dont make me l8 on Cupid Day, beeyatch!!!
I suddenly feel like Im moving underwater, like Im weightless, or watching myself from a distance. I try to stand up, but when I do my stomach bottoms out and I have to rush to the bathroom in the hall, legs shaking, certain Im going to throw up. I lock the door and turn on the water in both the sink and the shower. Then I stand over the toilet.
My stomach clenches on itself, but nothing comes up.
The car, the skidding, the screams
Yesterday.
I hear voices in the hallway, but the waters rushing so hard I cant make them out. Its not until someone starts pounding on the door that I straighten up and yell, What?