The Fall

by James Preller

  “I hated you,” she said quietly. “I’m still angry. At you, at those cowards on the internet, at my parents, at the world, at Morgan…” She reached for the cardboard coffee cup. “That day you came over, I was like, ‘Oh, poor you.’ Give me a break. You think you’re the only one?”

  “No, I don’t—” I shook my head helplessly.

  “I did crappy things too,” Sophie said. “I wasn’t there for Morgan, not like I should have been. I feel guilty too. So you don’t win first prize, okay? You have to get in line.”

  “I never meant to—” I sputtered.

  “Who do I have to apologize to? You?” she said. “My parents? There’s only one person who matters, and she’s not here.”

  A woman looked over at us, obviously trying to eavesdrop, probably looking for new characters for her crummy, unfinished novel. She looked away when I gave her the devil’s eyeball.

  “She told me about you,” Sophie said, lowering her voice. “Do you even know that? I knew about you long before that day at my locker.”

  “Wait, what? You knew me?”

  “We were sisters,” Sophie said, as if the bond of blood explained everything. “Maybe not the closest sisters in the world, but there were times, late at night, when we talked.”

  I sat back, trying to absorb this new information. Morgan and Sophie talking together, sharing secrets. “What did she say about me?”

  “She liked you,” Sophie replied. “She said you were a good egg.”

  “A good egg?”

  (What the hell? An egg?)

  Sophie shrugged. “Those were her words. She said you were one of the only people on the planet who treated her normal.”

  “I wasn’t always nice. I did some bad things.”

  “No, you weren’t perfect. Sometimes you were a creep, like a lot of guys,” she said, but without malice. Sophie’s eyes flickered with kindness, and she leaned forward. “And sometimes you weren’t, okay? Morgan tried to kill herself before, more than a year ago, back over spring break. She took pills, drank. I found her asleep on the bathroom floor, called nine-one-one. They pumped her stomach at Roosevelt Hospital. I guess she never told you about that?”

  I was stunned, nearly speechless. “I didn’t even know her back then.”

  Sophie raised an eyebrow, gave a faint smile. “See what I’m saying. This is bigger than you. Nobody knew. My parents were ashamed, especially my father. He really freaked. They decided to keep it a secret. Morgan went back to school one week later, and we all acted like nothing happened. It worked for a while.”

  We sipped the dregs of our drinks in silence. Mine had gone cold. I checked the time on my cell. “Look, we should—I’ve got a math test third period.”

  Sophie didn’t move. She wasn’t finished with me yet. “You asked me to forgive you. I don’t even know what that looks like, okay? I mean, it’s not all right, what you did. But you weren’t half as bad as some of the others. And I will not forget. Forgive and forget? I don’t think so. Forgive and remember, that’s your best hope.” She paused, scratched a fingernail at the side of her coffee cup.

  I waited. It was a trick I had learned from Mr. Laneway. He would sit like a turtle, careful not to fill space with empty words. He always allowed room for me to speak. Gave me time to find my thoughts and put them into words.

  She now tore at the top edge of the coffee cup. “I am not strong enough to forgive you or anybody. Not yet. But I hope to be someday. For myself, not for you. I don’t want my sister’s death to define who I am.”

  “Mr. Laneway, this counselor at school—” I began.

  “Yeah, I know him,” Sophie said.

  “He says forgiveness is the gift you give to yourself.”

  Sophie chuckled, rolled her eyes. “Words,” she muttered. “I really don’t think Morgan did it because of you. Her issues ran deeper than Sam Proctor.”

  A thought struck me. “I wondered about the book The Bell Jar. I got it in the mail like two weeks after—I never understood how that was possible.”

  The right corner of Sophie’s mouth lifted. She really did have the same cockeyed smile. “Maybe you’re not so dumb after all. I was the one who mailed it,” she admitted. “In her note, Morgan asked me to.”

  IN THE STAIRWELL

  A week later, I was late for class. I was charging up the back staircase three steps at a time and nearly ran over Athena Luikin.

  She was alone on the landing between two levels, leaning against the railing. “Whoa, sorry,” I said, before I even realized it was her. The fallen queen.

  I took another leap, then paused. I turned back to look at her.

  Athena’s face was splotchy, her eyes swollen. Maybe it was because I stood higher on the stairs, but she looked smaller to me. Just a girl.

  Fragile and alone.

  And in tears.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  She shook her head. No, she wasn’t.

  There was justice in that. And a part of me was glad to see her suffer. Athena Luikin deserved to suffer.

  I returned down the stairs, step by step, slowly, reluctantly, until I stood directly before her. There was something I had to know. “Why?” I asked.

  She looked up at me, frightened. Unsure what I was going to do.

  “Why did you do it?” I asked. “Why did you hate her so much?”

  Athena took a step back, pressed into the corner of the railing. There was nowhere to run. We were alone in an empty stairwell of the school. Just us and, somewhere small and hidden, the truth.

  “I can’t go out there,” she confessed. “I can’t go to another class.”

  She didn’t have to tell me why. “I heard you were moving,” I said.

  Athena sniffled, nodded. “Not soon enough.”

  “I need to understand what happened between you two,” I said.

  Athena looked away, as if scanning the wall for a secret passage through which she could escape. “We used to be friends,” she began. “Isn’t that bizarre? It feels like so long ago. We met in preschool. I invited Morgan to my birthday parties. We had sleepovers on Friday nights. We signed up for dance classes together. A couple of years ago, I liked a boy,” she said, stifling a miserable laugh. “It doesn’t matter who. I was obsessed over him. My first crush, you know? Morgan knew how I felt. I told her everything. But that didn’t stop her. He was mine. Mine. And then one day, I found out she’d been secretly hooking up with him. Kissing him, and letting him…” She trembled, a cold quiver. To my eyes she said, “It was a slutty thing to do.”

  A boy. All this pain and loss over some dumb guy.

  “That was the beginning?” I asked.

  “And the end,” Athena said. “We never spoke again.” A new fierceness entered in her eyes, the old anger coming back. “I hated Morgan for what she did. She was my best friend. I never forgave her. Never.”

  “And now,” I said, “no one forgives you. Funny how that works.”

  I turned my back and walked away.

  At the top landing, I fired one last shot across the bow. “Better wipe your face, Athena. You look like hell.”

  THE NOTE

  One afternoon, I naturally fell in stride with Sophie and walked her home, like any two friends after school.

  “Was there a note?”

  A long silence, because it hurt to speak.

  I had asked a terrible question that led Sophie to an awful place. It didn’t matter how much time passed. No wonder why she preferred to ignore me. It hovered over us like a gray sky full of dark clouds, threatening rain.

  “Yes,” Sophie finally said.

  I wanted answers. “And?”

  “It’s private,” Sophie answered. There was finality in her voice; a door closing. She did not look at me, but instead fixed her eyes on some distant something over the horizon. Two birds, the leafy branches of a tree, and maybe, ever-present in her mind’s eye, the water tower.

  I waited. I had to know.

  Sophie sai
d, “Morgan wrote a lot of things, actually. Some of it was really, really sweet—”

  I could hear the catch in her throat, the hesitation, and her fierce refusal to cry. She wasn’t going to give in to that, not here, not in front of me. I placed my hand on her back, felt her slight shudder at my touch.

  “That note will be ours forever,” Sophie said.

  I walked beside her in silence, because sometimes there really is nothing to say. Just being there has to be enough.

  I didn’t dare ask if Morgan had written anything about me. I guess I’ll never know.

  JEWELRY STORE

  I knew I couldn’t do it alone. What did I know about what girls liked? So out of the blue, I asked Sophie for help.

  She was suspicious when I told her what I wanted to do.

  “And you want my help? I don’t get it,” she said.

  “There’s nothing to get,” I said.

  “It’s a little weird,” she replied.

  “But not creepy, you don’t think?” I asked, suddenly doubtful. That inner voice starting up again: Idiot, idiot, idiot.

  “No, no. Not creepy,” she said. “It’s kind of sweet, actually. Okay, I’ll do it.”

  “I don’t even know where to go,” I admitted.

  “Well, what were you thinking?” Sophie asked.

  I shrugged.

  I wasn’t sure that thinking had much to do with anything. It was more of a feeling thing.

  That afternoon, we met outside Eileen’s Jewelers at a strip mall not far from school. I had $40 in my pocket.

  “Are you ready?” she said.

  There was something formal about the way she asked me. I couldn’t put my finger on it. But there was a new distance between us.

  “Yeah,” I said. “If you are.”

  Sophie pushed open the door. She led me to a glass case in the back. “Here are the bracelets.”

  A saleswoman with pointy glasses and frosted hair smiled at us. “May I help you?”

  I shifted my eyes sideways at Sophie helplessly.

  Sophie said, “Yes, we’d like to look at these bracelets.” She pointed out a few. “This one, this one, and this one, please.”

  The woman took out the tiniest key I had ever seen in my life to open the glass cabinet. She set the bracelets out on a black cloth. Sophie laid them across her wrist so I could see better. I shrugged. “I don’t know,” I murmured.

  “May I ask, are you two celebrating an anniversary?” the saleswoman asked. “You make such a cute couple.”

  “What? No,” I said. “It’s not for her. It’s for…”

  “I’m here as his advisor,” Sophie said, offering a tight smile to the saleswoman. “You know how boys are.”

  “Yeah, I’m pretty clueless,” I said.

  No one disagreed.

  Something in the case caught Sophie’s eye. She bent low and pointed. “May we see this one? The amethyst.”

  The saleswoman brought it out. I immediately knew it was the perfect one.

  That’s when Sophie stepped back. “No, no,” she said, shaking her head. “I can’t do this, Sam. I’m sorry, I can’t.” She turned and walked out of the store without another word.

  “Sorry,” I said to the saleswoman. “I think, let me … I’ll be back. I hope.”

  I followed Sophie out the door.

  She stood on the sidewalk with her back against the brick building. Her head was tilted up, eyes closed, face to the sun.

  “Sophie, I didn’t…,” I began to say.

  She looked at me. “What the hell, Sam? What are you doing in there?”

  I didn’t exactly know. “I think,” I finally said, “I’m trying to find some way to say I’m sorry.”

  Sophie shivered, shook her head, and looked away. “And you think a bracelet is going to get it done?”

  “No,” I said, suddenly angry. I felt the emotion rising up in me, and I didn’t care anymore what she felt or thought. “It was a mistake, okay. I shouldn’t have ever asked you. It was just another stupid, idiotic mistake! It’s how I roll.”

  Sophie laughed. She actually let out a guffaw, right there on the street. “It’s how you roll?” she repeated, smiling despite herself.

  The tension between us was broken. “Yeah, I screw up all the time,” I said. “I never do the right thing. But I’m trying, Sophie, I really am trying.”

  After a few minutes, we stepped back inside. The saleswoman hadn’t moved, perhaps she had watched us through the large front window.

  “Sorry,” I said sheepishly.

  “It’s fine,” she said. “You’d be surprised how often it happens.” With a delicate hand, she slid the silver bracelet with the blue stone forward on the counter. The amethyst.

  Sophie turned over the price tag. $56. “I think she would have liked this one, Sam. Amethyst was her favorite.”

  I felt like such a loser. “Maybe something less expensive? I only have forty bucks.”

  Sophie exchanged looks with the saleswoman. An unspoken language I did not understand.

  “Well, let me see what we can do,” the saleswoman said. “We just concluded a spring sale. I’ll speak to my manager. Maybe we can knock off twenty percent.”

  “Twenty percent?” I said, trying to figure the math in my head.

  “Twenty percent would be great, thank you,” Sophie quickly said. And to me: “I can make up the difference.”

  “Are you sure?”

  She smiled crookedly, and I glimpsed again the girl who fell from the sky. My friend, Morgan. “I would like to, Sam. If that’s okay?”

  Later, we stood outside, under a maple on the corner. I had a wrapped box in my hand. It was a warm afternoon. The sun beat down on our heads.

  Sophie pushed back a strand of hair. “Thank you,” she said. “That was hard, but it meant a lot, being here.”

  I held up the box. “Well, you were awesome. I couldn’t have done it without you.”

  “What can I say? I’m half princess, I like shopping.” She grinned. “But I’m curious, Sam. What exactly are you going to do with it?”

  I shrugged. “It’s complicated.”

  We stood there for another minute, looking at each other. I didn’t know whether to hug Sophie or shake her hand or what.

  So I hugged her. And for the first time in my life, it wasn’t clumsy or stupid or awkward. It felt right.

  We’d made it through another day, together.

  THE LAST TIME I SAW MORGAN

  I don’t expect anyone to believe this. But I will set it down here, plain and true. As simply as I can say it.

  Telling paper.

  One late afternoon, I walked one last time to the water tower. The light was fading. I entered from the woods. No one was around.

  Up I climbed, up and up to the top.

  I stood, again, exactly where I imagined that she had stood.

  Before she fell.

  I closed my eyes.

  Felt her presence.

  And she was there.

  A vision before me.

  Her face, her body, floating in air.

  “Hey,” I said.

  Hey, she answered.

  “Is that you?”

  None other, my brother, she said.

  (A grin? Really?)

  “Are you real?”

  Real as you, she said.

  “I didn’t expect to see—”

  Shhh, she whispered.

  Her finger pressed against my lips.

  It felt cold.

  I shivered.

  “There’s so much I never said,” I told her.

  It’s all right, she said. I know.

  “I didn’t understand what you were going to—” I said.

  (My eyes grew warm, liquid.)

  Don’t, she said.

  “I’m so, so sorry,” I told her.

  Not your fault, she said. You were kind.

  “No. I wasn’t,” I said.

  You were, she said.

  We laugh
ed.

  (We did.)

  You tried, she said.

  “I failed.”

  You tried, she repeated. You cared.

  “I still care.”

  Yes, you do, she said. I can see that, even from here.

  “You should never have—”

  Shhh, she hushed.

  “But—”

  I got worn out, she said. I made a choice.

  “A bad one,” I said.

  She said she was sorry.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  (No answer.)

  “Are you?” I repeated.

  She smiled, ever so faintly, a whisper of sadness in her eyes.

  “You should have stayed,” I said.

  Her shoulders lifted ever so slightly, fell again. A shrug, resigned.

  I never loved anyone, she said. Ever. Please make that your gift to me.

  “What?”

  Love someone. Live long and love someone with all your heart, she told me.

  “I will, I will,” I promised.

  Thank you, she said.

  “Thank you,” I answered.

  (A pause, a wave, and gone again. Oblivion, painlessness, death.)

  I stared wild-eyed into the trembling sky, at the ground below, at the leaves whispering in the trees. I felt like I was in a mystical place, touched by magic. She was fading from sight. And I knew this twilight was our last.

  “Don’t leave,” I said.

  No reply.

  (Gone, gone, gone.)

  My head dropped, my body shivered in the echo of our brief meeting.

  I thought of Romeo and Juliet. How he raced to meet her in death. “Never was a story of more woe…”

  It was not a move I’d make.

  She was real. It was real. And I would remember, always, the cold touch of her finger on my lips.

  Dusk now, now darkness.

  Night fell fast.

  Then: what’s this?

  A firefly appeared, and another, and another. A sudden miracle of fireflies in the night sky, floating lights flashing bright, and gone, and burning again in the silent dark.

  I had to shake my head and smile.

  Afterward, I gathered up what little was left of the scattered shrine, almost nothing. I left the bracelet for her, for the wind and rain and the eternal night to steal away, and bowed my head, and disappeared.