Read Online Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver - Free Book Online Page B

is stifling, spinning faster than before. I have to get out for some air.
    I try to push my way out of the room, but Kent gets in my face and blocks my way.
    “What the hell was that about?” he demands.
    “Can you let me by, please?” I’m not in the mood to deal with anyone, and I’m especially not in the mood to deal with Kent and his stupid button-down shirt.
    “What did she ever do to you?”
    I cross my arms. “I get it. You’re friends with Psycho. Is that it?”
    He narrows his eyes. “Pretty clever nickname. Did you think of that all by yourself, or did your friends have to help you?”
    “Get out of my way.” I manage to squeeze past him, but he grabs my arm.
    “Why?” he says. We’re standing so close together I can smell that he’s just eaten peppermints and see the heart-shaped mole under his left eye, even though everything else is blurry. He’s looking at me like he’s desperate to understand something, and it’s worse, much worse than anything else so far—than Juliet or his anger or the feeling I’m going to be sick any second.
    I try to shake his hand off my arm. “You can’t just grab people, you know. You can’t just grab me . I have a boyfriend.”
    “Keep your voice down. I’m just trying to—”
    “Look.” I succeed in shaking him off. I know I’m talking too loud and too fast. I know I sound hysterical, but I can’t help it. “I don’t know what your problem is, okay? I’m not going to go out with you. I would never go out with you in a million years. So you can stop obsessing over me. I mean, I shouldn’t even know your name.” The words fly out and it’s as though they strangle me on the way up: suddenly I can’t breathe.
    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.”
    “You don’t know me.” I jerk backward, shaking. “You don’t know one thing about me.”
    He holds his hands up in surrender and backs off. “You’re right. I don’t.” He starts to turn away and mutters something else.
    “What did you say?” My heart is pounding in my chest so hard I think it will explode.
    He turns to look at me. “I said, ‘ Thank God .’”
    I spin around, wishing I hadn’t borrowed a pair of Ally’s heels. The room spins with me and I have to steady myself against the banister.
    “Your boyfriend’s downstairs, puking in the kitchen sink,” Kent calls after me.
    I give him the finger over my shoulder without turning around to see if he’s watching me, but I get the feeling he’s not.
    Even before I go downstairs to see whether what Kent 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.
     
    Half an hour later the party starts to wind down. Inside, someone has ripped the Christmas lights off the wall and they’re trailing along the floor like a snake, lighting up the dust mites in the corners.
    I’m feeling better now, more like myself. “There’s always tomorrow,” Lindsay said to me, when I told her about Rob, and I run the phrase over and over in my head like a mantra: There’s always tomorrow. There’s always tomorrow.
    I spend twenty minutes in the bathroom, first washing my face and then reapplying makeup, even though my hands are unsteady and my face keeps doubling in the mirror. Everytime I put on makeup it reminds me of my mother—I used to watch her bend over her