Before I Fall

But Juliet keeps going in that strange, measured tone, as though we have all the time in the world. “Of course it didn’t work. We got upstairs and into the bedroom, but then we started arguing about who should sleep in the little trundle bed and who should get the big one, and my mom heard us. She was horrified that we’d walked all that way. She was screaming and crying that we could have been kidnapped or killed or whatever. I remember being really embarrassed.” Juliet turns her hands upward, stares at her palms. “It was nothing compared to Lindsay’s freak-out, though, when my mom said she had to go home. I’ve never heard anyone scream that loudly.”

She’s silent for so long I think she’s done. Her words keep buzzing in my head, flitting around and arranging themselves like clues in a crossword puzzle. She was always like that, you know, always trying to make the best of things…. She must have been scrubbing for half an hour…. Her fingers were raw and red. I feel like I’m on the verge of understanding something I’m not sure I want to know. The room feels tiny and stifling. There’s a crushing weight on my chest. I’m tempted to make a run for it, push past her into the party and go get a beer and forget about Juliet, forget about everything. But I’m rooted where I am. I can’t move. I keep seeing the endless darkness of my dream rising in front of me. I can’t go back to it.

“It’s funny when you think about it,” Juliet says. “We did everything together, Lindsay and me. We even joined Girl Scouts together. It was her idea. I didn’t want to do all that—cookies and campfires and stuff. We went away on a camping trip at the beginning of fifth grade. We slept in the same tent, of course.”

I watch Juliet’s hands. They’re trembling ever so slightly but so quickly you can barely see it, like the wings of a hummingbird. Out of the corner of her eye Juliet catches me looking, and she brings her hands down to her thighs, gracefully but with finality.

“You remember the name they gave me in fifth grade, right? The name Lindsay gave me? Mellow Yellow?” She shakes her head. “I used to dream that name, I heard it so often. Sometimes I forgot what my real name was.”

She turns to me and her face is radiant, almost glowing, gorgeous. “The funny thing is, it wasn’t even me. Lindsay was the one who wet her sleeping bag. In the morning the whole tent smelled. But when Ms. Bridges came in and asked what had happened Lindsay just pointed her finger at me and screamed, She did it. I’ll never forget her face when she screamed it—She did it! Terrified. Like I was a wild dog and I was going to bite her.”

I press back against the door, grateful for something to lean on. It makes perfect sense, of course. It all makes perfect sense now: Lindsay’s anger, the way she always held up her fingers in the shape of a cross to ward Juliet Sykes off. She doesn’t hate her. She’s afraid of her. Juliet Sykes, the keeper of Lindsay’s oldest, maybe her worst, secret.

And it all seems absurd now, the chance and randomness of it. One person shoots up and the other spirals downward—random and meaningless. As simple as being in the right place, or the wrong place, or however you want to look at it. As simple as getting a craving for Diet Pepsi one day at a pool party, and getting swept away; as simple as not saying no.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” I ask, even though I already know the answer. My voice comes out hoarse from the effort of swallowing back tears.

Juliet shrugs. “She was my best friend, you know? She was always so sad back then.” Juliet makes a noise that could be a laugh or a whimper. “Besides,” she says more quietly, “I thought it would pass.”

“Juliet—” I start to say.

She shakes her shoulders like she’s brushing off the weight of everything, the conversation, the past. “It doesn’t matter now,” she says quickly, and just like that she snaps the door open and slips out.

“Juliet!”

There’s a huge clot of people standing by the door, and when I come out I’m pressed backward momentarily as two juniors scuffle for the bathroom, both of them yelling, drunk. “I was here first!” “No, I was!” “You just got here!” A few people give me dirty looks, and then Bridget McGuire charges past all of them, face red and blotchy and tear-streaked. When she sees me she sobs out, “You—” but she doesn’t finish her sentence, just swoops around the juniors and locks herself in the bathroom.

“Jesus Christ, not again,” someone yells.

“I’m going to pee my pants,” one of the juniors moans, crossing her legs and hopping up and down.