Before I Fall

by Lauren Oliver

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

Popularity’s a weird thing. You can’t really define it, and it’s not cool to talk about it, but you know it when you see it. Like a lazy eye, or porn.

I was so happy I was dizzy.

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.

“Do you think we’ll remember any of this?” I’m not sure where the words come from. My whole head feels light and fuzzy, ready to float away. “Do you think we’ll remember any of it two years from now?”

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.

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.

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

I see her mouth moving, but what she says takes a second to understand, like I’m hearing it from underwater.

At a certain point your brain stops trying to rationalize things. At a certain point it gives up, shuts off, shuts down.

Maybe when you die time folds in on you, and you bounce around inside this little bubble forever. Like the after-death equivalent of the movie Groundhog Day. It’s not what I imagined death would be like—not what I imagined would come afterward—but then again it’s not like there’s anyone around to tell you about it.

Be honest: are you surprised that I didn’t realize sooner? Are you surprised that it took me so long to even think the word— death? Dying? Dead? Do you think I was being stupid? Naive? Try not to judge. Remember that we’re the same, you and me. I thought I would live forever too.

When you’re young you just want to be older, and then later you wish you could go back to being a kid.

I like to think how funny life is: how so much changes. How people change.

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

You can see them every day—you can think you know them—and then you find out you hardly know them at all.

it feels like I’ve been caught up in some enormous web and every way I turn I see that I’m stuck to someone else, all of us wriggling around in the same net.

I’ve never really thought about it before, but it’s a miracle how many kinds of light there are in the world, how many skies: the pale brightness of spring, when it feels like the whole world is blushing; the lush, bright boldness of a July noon; purple storm skies and a green queasiness just before lightning strikes and crazy multicolored sunsets that look like someone’s acid trip.

I think about what I’ll do to survive all of the millions and millions of days that will be exactly like this one, two face-to-face mirrors multiplying a reflection into infinity.

That’s when it really hits me: none of it matters anymore. Nothing matters anymore.

Number one rule of best friends: there are certain things that you never, ever say.

Here’s one of the things I learned that morning: if you cross a line and nothing happens, the line loses meaning. It’s like that old riddle about a tree falling in a forest, and whether it makes a sound if there’s no one around to hear it. You keep drawing a line farther and farther away, crossing it every time. That’s how people end up stepping off the edge of the earth. You’d be surprised at how easy it is to bust out of orbit, to spin out to a place where no one can touch you. To lose yourself—to get lost. Or maybe you wouldn’t be surprised. Maybe some of you already know. To those people I can only say: I’m sorry.

I’m dead, but I can’t stop living.

This is pretty much the answer to every problem you encounter in suburbia: plant a tree, and hope you don’t see anyone’s privates.

That’s a funny thing: you think, when awful things happen, everything else just stops, like you would forget to pee and eat and get thirsty, but it’s not really true. It’s like you and your body are two separate things, like your body is betraying you, chugging on, idiotic and animal, craving water and sandwiches and bathroom breaks while your world falls apart.

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

My point is: maybe you can afford to wait. Maybe for you there’s a tomorrow. Maybe for you there’s one thousand tomorrows, or three thousand, or ten, so much time you can bathe in it, roll around in it, let it slide like coins through your fingers. So much time you can waste it. But for some of us there’s only today. And the truth is, you never really know.

Things change after you die, though—I guess because dying is about the loneliest thing you can do.

Like there’s no continuity in people at all. Like something ruptures when you hit twelve, or thirteen, or whatever the age is when you’re no longer a kid but a “young adult,” and after that you’re a totally different person. Maybe even a less happy person. Maybe even a worse one.

And I guess that’s when it starts to hit me: the whole point is, you do what you can.

by Thomas Wolfe, “You can’t go home again”—isn’t necessarily that places change, but that people do. So nothing ever looks the same.

Two conflicting desires go through me at the same time, each as sharp as a razorblade: I want to see you grow up and Don’t ever change.

I suppose that’s the secret, if you’re ever wishing for things to go back to the way they were. You just have to look up.

It amazes me how easy it is for things to change, how easy it is to start off down the same road you always take and wind up somewhere new. Just one false step, one pause, one detour, and you end up with new friends or a bad reputation or a boyfriend or a breakup. It’s never occurred to me before; I’ve never been able to see it. And it makes me feel, weirdly, like maybe all of these different possibilities exist at the same time, like each moment we live has a thousand other moments layered underneath it that look different.

And then, just at that moment, when I’m no longer sure if I’m dreaming or awake or walking some valley in between where everything you wish for comes true, I feel the flutter of his lips on mine, but it’s too late, I’m slipping, I’m gone, he’s gone, and the moment curls away and back on itself like a flower folding up for the night.

The details that are my life’s special pattern, like how in handwoven rugs what really makes them unique are the tiny flaws in the stitching, little gaps and jumps and stutters that can never be reproduced. So many things become beautiful when you really look.

I’m thinking that this—my life, my friends—might be weird or screwy or imperfect or damaged or whatever, but it’s never seemed better to me.

This must be what it’s like to do drugs: the feeling of coasting over everything, of everything looking new and fresh and lit up from inside. Except without the next-day guilt and the hangover. And possible prison sentence.

I’m buzzing from his smile and being so close to him. I feel light and invincible, the best kind of tipsy.

I remember a story I once heard about drowning: that when you fall into cold water it’s not that you drown right away but that the cold disorients you and makes you think that down is up and up is down, so you may be swimming, swimming, swimming for your life in the wrong direction, all the way toward the bottom until you sink. That’s how I feel, as though everything has been turned around.

At the same time the more I think about it—the rain beating furiously—the angrier I get. This is my life: the whole big, sprawling mess of my life in all its possibilities—first kisses and last kisses and college and apartments and marriage and fights and apologies and happiness—brought to a point, a second, an edge of a second, razored off in that final moment by Juliet’s last act: her revenge against us, against me. The farther I get from the party, the more I think, No. It can’t happen this way. No matter what we did, it can’t happen this way.

the same time, the way that she spoke in that low, flat voice comes back to me, and I know that wherever she was in that bathroom, it wasn’t with me. She was lost somewhere, trapped in a fog, maybe of memories, maybe of all the things that could have happened differently.

Maybe before you die it’s your ghosts that you see.

I remember I once saw this old movie with Lindsay; in it the main character was talking about how sad it is that the last time you have sex you don’t know it’s the last time. Since I’ve never even had a first time, I’m not exactly an expert, but I’m guessing it’s like that for most things in life—the last kiss, the last laugh, the last cup of coffee, the last sunset, the last time you jump through a sprinkler or eat an ice-cream cone, or stick your tongue out to catch a snowflake. You just don’t know. But I think that’s a good thing, really, because if you did know it would be almost impossible to let go. When you do know, it’s like being asked to step off the edge of a cliff: all you want to do is get down on your hands and knees and kiss the solid ground, smell it, hold on to it.

I guess that’s what saying good-bye is always like—like jumping off an edge. The worst part is making the choice to do it. Once you’re in the air, there’s nothing you can do but let go.

I can’t stop thinking about how strange life is, about Kent and Juliet and even Alex and Anna and Bridget and Mr. Otto and Ms. Winters—about how complex and connected everything is, all threaded together like some vast, invisible netting—and how sometimes you can think you’re doing the right thing, but it’s actually terrible and vice versa.

Most of the time—99 percent of the time—you just don’t know how and why the threads are looped together, and that’s okay. Do a good thing and something bad happens. Do a bad thing and something good happens. Do nothing and everything explodes. And very, very rarely—by some miracle of chance and coincidence, butterflies beating their wings just so and all the threads hanging together for a minute—you get the chance to do the right thing.