Falling into Place(43)

Then he laughed to himself, because everyone knew that Liz Emerson could punch harder than he could.

He was about to turn away when suddenly the clouds moved apart and a sliver of sky peeked through. When he looked again at Liz, her head was thrown back and she was staring at that slice of blue with her eyes wide.

Then the clouds shifted and the blue was gone, and for a second, Liz’s face was so vulnerable and indignant that Liam almost expected her to fight her way up and push the clouds apart with her fingers.

The gritting of tires against asphalt made Liam straighten and glance away, and when he looked back, Liz was getting into a car.

As she drove off, he forgave her because he realized that Liz Emerson yearned for beautiful things too.





SNAPSHOT: ABOVE


It is her sixth birthday, and her father has made all of her wishes come true.

Her nose is pressed against the small, round airplane window. Outside, the clouds are mountains upon waves, curving in great spirals that make her dizzy when she tries to follow them. Everywhere, everywhere is the sun and the sky, and the entire world is below her.

When she comes home that night, Monica will ask her how the airplane ride was, and she’ll talk for hours about all that she saw. Then she’ll come to me and describe it all again, but she’ll be far away. I was very familiar with the way Liz’s eyes lit up when she spoke of flying, but I will not see the gleam.

She takes my hands and I hold hers tightly, because I already know what she’ll realize very soon: she is human and bound by the same laws of nature—gravity, in particular—as everyone else.

Try as she might, she will never grow wings.



CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE


Three Days Before Liz Emerson Crashed Her Car


Liz had not wanted company that day. She was nursing a massive, massive hangover, and her mouth still tasted like puke. She hadn’t finished her physics project—she was trying, but she was still so vastly confused about Liam that she couldn’t concentrate. The fact that Jake was here pissed her off, because they both knew that the only reason he was here was because her TV was bigger than his and she had surround sound, so the noise of his machine gun on Call of Duty was “f*cking awesome.” Liz was sitting on the couch with her physics binder spilling across the cushions and writing GRAVITY IS GRAVITY IS ALWAYS GRAVITY over and over again, and Jake was telling her to put it in terms of derivatives in between curses at the screen—and all of a sudden she was just very tired of him, so she put down her pencil and finally accused him of cheating on her.

She had known about it since almost the beginning. Hell, the first time he kissed her, he was still dating Hannah Carstens.

Three weeks after they had started dating, she, Julia, and Kennie were walking across the parking lot to Kennie’s brother’s car. They came around the corner of the school and fell silent, because right in front of them, Jake Derrick was making out with a girl who was decidedly not Liz Emerson.

Julia and Kennie both spun around to look at Liz, and Liz had honestly been too stunned to be hurt. She had stared for a moment, and then she turned on her heel and walked away, with Julia and Kennie close behind.

That night, she texted Jake.

Hey. It’s not working. We’re done, okay? Bye.

Over the weekend, he texted her sixty-seven times, going back and forth between what the f*ck did I do? and Liz, I’m so sorry, please give me a second chance, I won’t do it again. I’m so sorry, babe and why the hell won’t you just text me back?s

She didn’t respond.

They stayed broken up for exactly one week. The next Friday, Liz was walking through the hall with Kennie when Jake caught her wrist, spun her around, and kissed her.

“Liz,” he whispered against her lips. His fingers were tangled in her hair and on her waist, his forehead brushing hers. He was everywhere. “Liz, I’m sorry, okay? I am. Listen to me—god, Liz. Just don’t tell me it’s over.”

With the entire hallway watching and Kennie going “Awwww!” behind her, Liz couldn’t.

She knew that Jake didn’t mean anything he said. He didn’t even know what he was supposedly sorry for. She knew that he was still hoping that she hadn’t found out about him and whichever girl it had been that time—Sarah Hannigan?

Still, she convinced herself that he wouldn’t do it again.

She was wrong, of course.

Jake cheated on her again, and again, and again. He did it so often that he convinced himself that Liz was too stupid and too in love with him to notice—besides, the others were just flings, just for fun. Liz was the one who mattered to him. Or at least, he wanted it to look that way.