Falling into Place(36)

He thought about Liz Emerson, and the party on Saturday night. She had fallen asleep against his shoulder, and he had taken her home.

There was a patch of trees on his left—he called it a forest out of pity—and a large slope on the other side, so he could see for miles. He loved this stretch because it made him feel insignificant and necessary at the same time, like everything had a reason.

Today, when he looked down the hill, he saw a Mercedes at the bottom, smoking. He thought, That looks like Liz Emerson’s car.

He wondered briefly if he ought to call the police or something, but someone must have already, right? He had almost crossed the bridge when he did a double take; his head snapped around, and somehow, through the smoke and the distance, he caught a glimpse of green through the mangled window.

He thought, Liz Emerson was wearing a green sweater today.

Then he thought, Shit.

And then he thought nothing at all.





SNAPSHOT: ROLLING


We are rolling down an impossibly green hill. Our arms are pressed to our chests, our hair caught in our mouths, tangled with our laughter. Gravity is our playmate, momentum is our friend. We are blurs of motion. We are racing, and we are both winning, because we do not race each other.

We race the world, and as fast as it rotates, as fast as it revolves, we are faster.



CHAPTER FORTY


This is What Liz Emerson’s Car Did


It rolled.


Sitting on the brown couch, she had imagined her death like this: She veers off the road and down the hill. Her car slides, spins a few times. She hits her head and is gone. Her body is mostly whole when they find it. They’ll take out her organs, and her dead body will be more useful than her living one ever was.

It did not happen like that.


About a mile before she veered, she had taken off her seatbelt. She had planned to close her eyes, sit back, and let it happen. If she had paid more attention in physics, she would have known that the laws of motion are stronger than any plans she had.

On the way down, she was braced against the steering wheel, her foot jammed on the brake. Maybe if she pressed hard enough, she could stop the world from spinning.

It didn’t work.

Her seat went flying forward, and her leg broke in three different places. The car landed on its roof at the bottom of the hill and slid across the icy grass into the base of the tree. She screamed and tried to find something to grab, and accidentally flung her hand out the broken window, where the car briefly pinned it against the ground and shattered it. The car slammed into the tree, flattening the passenger side, and the force shoved Liz’s head outside.

Then everything stilled, and she laid in the nest of glass and stared at the sky.



CHAPTER FORTY-ONE


Gravity


Liam was aware, for once, that there was a party going on that night. It was at Joshua Willis’s house, and (since Joshua was the head senior stoner) it was going to be near the upper end of the wildness gradient.

The only reason he knew was because he lived a block away. Gossip reached Liam slowly; usually by the time he heard about parties, they were over. But on that night, in the quiet darkness of his bedroom, he was close enough to hear the screams and laughter.

Staring at the invisible ceiling, he wondered what it was like at these parties. He wondered what it was like to get drunk and not care.

That night, not for the first time, he yearned to be a part of it.

Normally, Liam was quite content to be a misfit. He did not particularly care that he sat in the outer ring of the cafeteria during lunch. He was not concerned with what people said about him. A lot of bullying was indirect and a lot of bullies didn’t know they were bullies, and maybe some of them didn’t even mean to be—he could see this quite clearly, and it no longer bothered him. He knew who he was.

There was a certain freedom in being on the outside. He watched instead of being watched. After Liz had shredded his reputation during freshman year, Liam surrendered to things he had earlier resisted for the sake of appearance. He read Thoreau in public, stopped spending money on uncomfortable clothes, took down his posters of bikini-clad models and covered his walls with song lyrics and quotes. He embraced his weirdness, and it was nice.

But sometimes—tonight—he wanted more.

The noise kept him awake until about two in the morning, when someone finally called the police and the party dispersed, and in the silence left behind, Liam heard someone puking.