Before I Fall

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.

“They’re mine,” he says, and then turns bright red. “I mean, not mine. I didn’t wear them yet or anything. My mom bought them for me—” He catches himself and swallows. “I mean, I bought them for myself, like, Tuesday. Tags still on and everything.”

“Kent?” I interrupt him.

He sucks in a breath. “Yeah?”

“I’m really sorry, but…do you mind being quiet?” I gesture to my head. “My brain is full of fuzz.”

“I’m sorry.” He exhales. “I don’t know what to do. I wish…I wish that there was more.”

“Thanks,” I say. I know he’s making an effort and I manage a weak smile.

He lays the clothes down on the table, along with a big, fluffy white towel. “I didn’t know…I thought if you were still cold you could take a shower.” He blushes at the word shower.

I shake my head. “I really just want to sleep.” I’ve forgotten about sleep, and I feel a huge lift when I say it: all I have to do is sleep.

As soon as I fall asleep this nightmare will be over.

Still, a twittering feeling of anxiety rises up inside me. What if the day doesn’t rewind this time? What if this is it? I think of Elody and feel the hot chocolate coming back up in my throat.

Kent must see the expression on my face because he crouches down so we’re at eye level. “Can I do anything? Can I get you anything?”

I shake my head, trying not to cry again. “I’ll be okay. It’s just…the shock.” I swallow hard. “I just want to…I want to rewind, you know?”

He nods once, and puts his hand over mine. I don’t pull it away. “If I could make it better I would,” he says.

In some ways it’s a stupid, obvious thing to say, but the way he says it, so honest and simple like it’s the truest thing there is, makes tears prick in my eyes. I take the clothes and the towel and go out into the hall to the bathroom we broke into to find Juliet. I go in and shut the door. The window’s still open and flurries of snow whirl in from outside. I shut the window. It makes me feel better already, like I’m already starting the process of erasing everything that’s happened tonight. Elody will be fine.

After all, I was the one who was supposed to be in the front seat.

I hang the hand towel Juliet left by the sink and strip out of my clothes, shaking. The shower is too hard to resist after all, and I turn the water on as high and as hot as it can go and get in. It’s one of those rain-forest showers where the water pours on you straight from above in a long, heavy stream. When it hits the marble tiles under my feet, it lets up big clouds of steam. I stay in the shower so long my skin gets pruny.

I put on Kent’s fleece, which is supersoft and smells like laundry detergent and, for some reason, freshly mowed grass. Then I snap the tags off the boxers and slip my legs into them. They’re too big on me, obviously, but I like how clean and crisp they feel on my skin. The only other boxers I’ve seen are Rob’s, usually crumpled up on his floor or shoved under his bed and stained with things I have no desire to identify. Last, I put on the sweatpants, which pool over my feet. Kent has given me socks, too, the big fluffy kind. I ball up all of my clothes and leave them just outside the bathroom door.

When I go back in the kitchen, Kent’s standing there, exactly as I left him. Something flickers in his eyes when I come in, but I’m not sure what it is.

“Your hair’s wet,” he says softly, but he says it like he’s actually saying something else.

I look down. “I showered, after all.”

Silence stretches between us for a few beats. Then he says, “You’re tired. I’ll drive you home.”

“No.” I say it more forcefully than I meant to, and Kent looks startled.

“No—I mean, I can’t. I don’t want to go home right now.”

“Your parents…” Kent trails off.

“Please.” I don’t know which would be worse: if my parents have already heard and are sitting there, waiting for me, waiting to grill me and ask me questions and talk about hospitals in the morning and therapists to help me deal—or if they haven’t heard yet and I come home to a dark house.

“There’s a guest room here,” Kent says. His hair is finally drying into little wisps and waves.

“No guest rooms.” I shake my head resolutely. “I want to be in a room room. A lived-in room.”