Before I Fall

by Lauren Oliver

It was one of those memories I didn’t even know I remembered, if you know what I mean.

The whole point of growing up is learning to stay on the laughing side.

It’s Connecticut: being like the people around you is the whole point.

It’s a big deal how many roses you get. You can tell who’s popular and who isn’t by the number of roses they’re holding.

Yuck! I don’t miss those weird popularity things of high school.

Rob’s parents are away this weekend, and a couple of weeks ago he asked me if I could spend the whole night at his house. I knew he was really asking if I wanted to have sex.

I’m not going to lie, though. It’s nice that everything’s easy for us. It’s a good feeling knowing you can basically do whatever you want and there won’t be any consequences. When we get out of high school we’ll look back and know we did everything right, that we kissed the cutest boys and went to the best parties, got in just enough trouble, listened to our music too loud, smoked too many cigarettes, and drank too much and laughed too much and listened too little, or not at all. If high school were a game of poker, Lindsay, Ally, Elody, and I would be holding 80 percent of the cards.

She doesn’t look like the average Cupid either. She has hair so pale blond it’s almost white, and I can see individual veins through her skin. She reminds me of someone, but I can’t remember who.

But now that we’re officially a couple, I sometimes have the strangest thoughts when I look at him, like I wonder if all those fries are clogging his arteries or whether he flosses or how long it’s been since he washed the Yankees hat he wears pretty much every day. Sometimes I’m worried there’s something wrong with me. Who wouldn’t want to go out with Rob Cokran?

Everyone jokes that going to Jefferson prepares you for the total college experience: you learn to work, and you learn to drink. Two years ago the New York Times ranked us among the top ten booziest public schools in Connecticut.

After years of trying, I had only just clawed my way up from the social bottom to the social middle. Lindsay’s been popular since first grade, when she moved here. In the class circus that year she was the ringleader; when we did a production of The Wizard of Oz the next year she was Dorothy. And in third grade, when we all performed Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, she got to play Charlie.

Even though Elody can sometimes be embarrassing, I think deep down she’s the nicest of any of us.

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.

He’s not that good with breasts in general, actually. I mean, it’s not like I really know what it’s supposed to feel like, but every time he touches my boobs he kind of just massages them hard in a circle. My gyno does the same thing when I go in for an exam, so one of them has to be doing it wrong. And to be honest, I don’t think it’s my gyno.

I decided to have sex with him because I want to get it over with, and because sex has always scared me and I don’t want to be scared of it anymore.

We’re laughing over the fact that Lindsay’s a bullshitter and Elody’s a drunk and Ally’s OCD and I’m antisocial, and someone cracks a window to let out the smoke, and a fine mist of rain comes in, smelling like grass and fresh things, even though it’s the dead middle of winter.

Kent stares at me hard. Then he leans in even closer. For a second I think he’s going to try to kiss me and my heart stops. But he just puts his mouth up to my ear and says, “I see right through you.”

said about Rob is true, I know it: tonight isn’t the night after all. The combination of disappointment and relief is so overwhelming I have to hold on to the walls as I walk, feeling the stairs spiral up under me like they’re going to slip away any second. Tonight isn’t the night. Tomorrow I’ll wake up and be exactly the same, and the world will look the same, and everything will feel and taste and smell the same. My throat gets tight and my eyes start to burn, and all I can think in that moment is that it’s all Kent’s fault, Kent’s and Juliet Sykes’s.

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

I guess that’s how we get started talking about it: dying, I mean. I figure Lindsay’s okay to drive, but I notice she’s 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.

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?

A good friend keeps your secrets for you. A best friend helps you keep your own secrets.

don’t think I’ve ever felt so alone in my life. I cry until it seems amazing that one person could have so many tears. It seems like they must be coming from the very tips of my toes. Then I sleep without dreaming.

Here’s another thing to remember: hope keeps you alive. Even when you’re dead, it’s the only thing that keeps you alive.

The last thing I need is for him to remind me of the good old days, when I was all knees and nose and glasses, and he was the only boy who would come near me.

instead of answering he just walks straight to me and puts his arms on my shoulders, pushing me backward so I tip over onto Becca’s desk. Then he’s bending over me, kissing me and licking my neck and ear and making little grunting noises that remind me of Pickle when he has to pee. Pressed against him I feel tiny; his arms are strong, groping all over my shoulders and arms. He slides one hand up my shirt and squeezes my boobs one after the other, so hard I almost cry out. His tongue is big and fat. I think, I’m kissing Mr. Daimler, I’m kissing Mr. Daimler, Lindsay will never believe it, but it doesn’t feel anything like I’ve imagined. His five o’clock shadow is rough on my skin, and I have this horrible thought that this is what my mom feels when she kisses my dad.

That’s the thing about best friends. That’s what they do. They keep you from spinning off the edge.

“Is it a hallucination?” he says, setting down his briefcase. “Could it be? Samantha Kingston? Home? On a Friday?” I roll my eyes. “I don’t know. Did you do a lot of acid in the sixties? Could be a flashback.” “I was two years old in 1960. I came too late for the party.”

I’m going to be the kind of person who would be remembered well, not just remembered. I’ve been repeating this over and over, and just the idea of it is giving me strength, something solid I can hold on to, a lifeline.