We All Fall Down

  She leans in again, and her little arm touch feels the slightest bit forced. God, maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s all in my head, and she’s completely concerned.

  “I didn’t mean anything by that, Paige. Your conclusion was incredibly well researched.”

  “Oh, I know. But it did need a little punch.” I’m saying it now like it’s my idea, and it’s not. This is one more lie to add to all the others. I smile again, and I feel like I’m wearing someone else’s skin. But this is who I want to be, right? Fearless and competent. More like Melanie. I can get there if I keep trying.

  “Okay, just remember, I’m here for you. If it’s too much or whatever.”

  “Sure.” My voice is a small, choked thing. “Want to go first thing in the morning? Before it’s too hot?”

  The door to the lab swings open before she can answer. Three of our classmates push in. Jenna is in front, looking flushed with excitement. Elise and Keaton—I can feel Melanie’s eyes on me and remember she thinks I have a thing for him—are behind.

  “You have to come quick!” Jenna says.

  Melanie frowns. “What is it?”

  “Someone died on the bridge!” Jenna punctuates her statement with a grin.

  “Shut up, Jenna!” Elise sighs theatrically. “No one’s dead.”

  “Well, he could be.” Keaton shrugs. “They’ve got a squad there working on him.”

  Squad working on him. Theo. Theo is on the bridge.

  “What are you even talking about?” Melanie asks.

  “I don’t know… One of the guys working on the walking bridge. He fell or something.”

  I stand up, and my stomach falls away.

  “They say the bridge is totally cursed.”

  Melanie takes my wrist. “Paige, are you okay?”

  No. Not even close. Everyone is watching me. Everyone is waiting for me to say something. My ribs crank tighter with each breath.

  “I’m so sorry.” I yank my phone out of my pocket and stare at the blank screen. “I have to take this.”

  I press the phone to my ear and mimic the start of a fake conversation with a mother who didn’t call. It takes all the strength I have to keep myself at a brisk walk past the lab and the campus buildings. At the end of the grass, I drop the act and pocket my phone.

  But the bridge is empty.

  Well, not empty.

  I can see people strolling back and forth. A pair of bikes, riding single file, zip past the walker. I see Denny too, at the far end of the bridge. He’s sitting near the railing on the opposite side of the bridge. Smoking and checking out a tool with red handles.

  What I don’t see is Theo. The conversation about an ambulance and an injury feel surreal. If something happened, why would Denny still be here? Did I mishear that whole conversation? Did they mean the State Street bridge?

  I don’t know. The only thing I’m sure of is that Theo’s absence has me terrified.

  Theo

  The text comes through just like the last six.

  Get your ass back in bed. Stop texting.

  I throw my phone and smear my hands over my sweaty face.

  “Sure, Denny. Can’t sleep at night, but why not at two in the afternoon when it’s eight hundred degrees in this shithole?”

  I drop my fists to the mostly deflated air mattress and crawl out. It’s a little early for my evening meds, but I swallow the two pills dry anyway. A fast-acting, short-duration stimulant and that antianxiety pill that’s supposed to help with the auditory hallucinations so I can sleep. Of course, I’m not going to sleep anytime soon, and unless I’m planning on having Paige and Gabriel pop the pills too, I think the so-called hallucinations are here to stay.

  Whatever. If the pills take off any kind of edge, I’m not keen on trying life without them.

  Standing up doesn’t help. I feel like shit that’s been hammered flat and laid out in the sun to dry. My head is killing me. They might have been right about that concussion. The squad wanted to take me in for observation, but Denny and I both refused. I still remember my mom bellowing about the sixteen-hundred-dollar bill that came in the last time I took a little ride in an ambulance for eight stitches in my hairline.

  I don’t need six hours in a hospital hooked up to machines. I need to get out of this sweatbox. And I need a shower and some fresh clothes because I smell like I’ve been wrestling a dead yak.

  I tug a pair of dirty jeans off the floor, but my shirts are rank. There’s a basket in the hall, everything a wadded, wrinkled mess, but God love Denny because it smells like soap so he must have thrown some of my stuff in with his wash.

  I move through the shower fast, and there isn’t much improvement in the mirror when I’m done. There’s a long bruise on my cheekbone, plum purple and trailing up toward my eye. Must have hit the railing on my way down.

  Maybe Gabriel was right about the locks being bad news. They broke the cutters I was using. That seemingly indestructible blade was chewed up and twisted. Denny found that out while the paramedics were asking me to count to ten and spell my name.

  Denny was pissed, but I’m grateful. I don’t want any more locks cut today. Every time I think about the scrape of my blade down the arms of those locks—and the screams and voices that came after—it’s worse than fingernails on a chalkboard. It was more electric shock than noise, and I can still feel it, buzzing and sparking deep in the marrow of my bones.

  Downstairs, it’s all of four degrees cooler, and I’m already starting to sweat. I close my eyes and brace my hand on the wall by the couch, and my mind stretches long fingers back to those awful moments before I fell.

  All those voices. What the hell are they trying to tell me?

  I hold my phone and consider a call to Dr. Atwood. Fat lot of good it would do me, though. My brain is a twenty-four-seven shit show, but I don’t think any of this can be filed under a diagnosis.

  I need to talk to Gabriel and find out about those experts. There has to be a way to stop whatever spirit or power is behind this. An exorcism or whatever. We have to stop it before something worse happens. Denny firing me for turning into a lunatic, or hell, Paige sleepwalking right into the river. God knows what could happen, but I doubt anything good.

  Outside, the sun is blinding, so I stay inside the door to text Gabriel.

  What’s up today? You at the library?

  Yeah, and I found something interesting online. Did you cut off any more locks?

  Yeah.

  Did anything happen?

  I smirk. You could say that. I’ll come over.

  It’ll have to be later. I’m shelving.

  I open the door and jump. Paige is here—on the broken air conditioner in pale shorts and a gauzy white tank. She’s chewing whatever’s left of her thumbnail.

  “Hey,” she says.

  I roll my shoulders. “Hey. Did you knock?”

  “No. I wasn’t sure…” She stops and sighs. “I heard there was an accident on the bridge.”

  “Oh. Yeah. Sorry, I’m fine. Did you talk to Denny?”

  She shakes her head. “Just a lucky guess. I figured he wouldn’t still be there…”

  “If I was in real trouble.”

  Paige gets up slowly, and I can feel the bruise on my face burning when she crosses the porch. She frowns a little, and then she reaches like she’s going to touch me. I hold my breath, and some part of me can already feel it—her fingers cool and soft and small against my cheekbone. She changes her mind and drops her hand.

  “I’m all right,” I say automatically, nudging the coffee can that serves as Denny’s ashtray.

  Paige doesn’t respond, and I’m not sure what else to say. I don’t want to tell her what happened, even though I probably should. I don’t want to ask her why she’s here, because I don’t want her to think about it. I want her to stay.

>   “Tell me what happened,” she says.

  “You won’t like it.”

  “Do I ever?”

  I laugh. “Fair point. I cut off some of the locks on the bridge, and it didn’t go well. The paranormal activity went into overdrive. And by overdrive, I mean the voices knocked me out cold.”

  “Was it more voices from the party?”

  “No. This was weird. I heard voices again, but not us, and not from that night. It was other people, conversations I’d never heard. Like every bad night any couple on those locks had. And I had to hear them all.”

  She’s thinking about that. I can see it in the crease between her brows.

  “You sure it was the couples from the locks?”

  “No idea.” I sigh. “It’s my best guess, though. The whole situation doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Maybe it does,” she says, sounding distracted. Then her eyes are clear, and she’s studying me. “Do you usually hear me, Theo?”

  I drop my gaze to her shoes, pretty beige slip-ons that make me think of dancer’s shoes. Paige is like those shoes: sensible and beautiful. And I put her in a plastic chair with broken teeth and blood dripping off her chin. That’s what I’m like. “Yes. You and me and Chase. Always from that night.”

  “I don’t hear us talking, but I see things,” she says. “The earring and the purse—they were both at the party. But maybe that’s not a supernatural haunting, Theo. Maybe it’s just our memories, or maybe it’s baggage from that party. Maybe we are haunted, but not in the way you think.”

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  She looks at the door. “Can we sit inside?”

  “It’s miserably hot in there.”

  “But no one’s home, right?”

  “No, why?”

  “Because I think we need to talk about that night, Theo. It might help.”

  She’s right and I know it, but my stomach swings low and hangs there. I don’t know if I want to play true confessions in that hot, dark coffin of a living room. I don’t know if I want to revisit everything that led us to that nightmare. But then somehow, I’m unlocking the door and holding it open.

  Paige

  I’ve only been here twice. Denny’s house is small and dark. They usually have an air conditioner humming in the living room window. Theo explains that it’s broken. I already know because I was sitting on it on the porch. I tell him it’s okay anyway.

  My shoulders tense at the cluttered coffee table. He’s automatically moving, clearing me a space. I don’t sit down, but he heads to the kitchen for a rag. Wipes down my place because he knows me. And because I matter to him.

  That last part is easy to forget when he knocks out your teeth, but it’s impossible to miss when he’s standing in front of me, doing what I need without asking. He turns on an ancient oscillating fan and sits down.

  I finally sit too, while the fan whirs slowly back and forth. The air moving over us is still warm, but better.

  “You drank that night,” I say, to start. “More than usual. You’d been cutting way back.”

  He smiles at his lap. “Someone told me I probably didn’t need another substance to depend on.”

  “Someone thought you weren’t listening.”

  “I was,” he says. I hear him swallow hard. “Paige, you know why I was drinking.”

  He’s right, and we don’t need to play these games. I sigh. “When did it start?”

  “My feelings for you? Probably the day I locked my keys in the car in the rain.”

  I shake my head, because I remember it. I also can’t fathom what it has to do with anything. “That was February.”

  “I hid the way I felt at first. It sucked.”

  “So did locking the keys in the car.”

  “Yeah, it did.” His voice goes low, and his fingers fiddle at the edge of his pockets. But he holds my eyes, so I know this matters. “I was such an annoying shit that night. Laughing about locking them in there. I rode that shopping cart over to the car, while you were trying to figure out a plan. I even threatened to smash it into the window.”

  “Yes, and then we went in and bought a wire hanger, and how is that the moment when things changed for us?”

  “It’s not the moment they changed for us. It’s the moment they changed for me.” He swallows. “You knew to buy the hanger, and when that didn’t work, you knew to ask security, because they might be able to help, and they did. That little bar tool they had popped the lock right open. And you were so quiet and calm, even in the freezing-ass rain, and that’s the first time I realized.”

  “Realized what?”

  “How amazing you are,” he says.

  His voice is reverent, and I know this is no throwaway compliment. This isn’t a crush for him, and I knew that. I knew. But it is different to hear it.

  “I thought it was just me being me,” he says. “It’s not like I never noticed you, and for a while, I know you noticed me.” The fan clicks and hums its way back to the left side of the room. My hair sways, and my heart pounds.

  Theo scoots the tiniest bit closer to me. “I don’t even know if this makes sense. Do you even understand what I’m saying?”

  I do, but I can’t force a single word past my lips. I feel untethered.

  “I thought it was one of those things,” he says. “Hormones and me being me, but this isn’t some hot girl I met at the pool, this is you. You aren’t other girls. That night, I wanted to tell you. Hell, I almost kissed you at one point on the bridge, which is crazy—even for me.”

  He shakes his head. “You were there for Chase. You grew up and wanted something better, and you should. But it was Chase, and he was being such an ass to you at that party, and somehow all that shit ran together. Add in the world’s greatest fuckup and…” His voice catches, and it splits me open.

  “I threw a punch,” he says. “I hit you. Hurt you.”

  He’s close to crying. I can hear it. “I hoped… I thought that maybe the voices on the bridge were trying to teach me a lesson. Make me better. But I can’t dig out whatever broken thing is lodged in my head and turn into a role model. Eighteen years of being me has taught me that much. But you could, Paige. Maybe that’s what this is about. Reminding us that you’re not too screwed up to get past all this.”

  “Don’t say that,” I say. “I’m not better than you.”

  “Really? When’s the last time you were suspended? Or arrested? This isn’t self-pity, Paige. It’s truth.”

  I suck one gulping breath after another, but the air feels thin. He’s wrong, and he’s right. My crazy has always been easier to hide.

  We’re both tainted water, but Theo’s bubbles up on the surface like an oil spill. Mine is invisible. Arsenic hiding in plain sight.

  I’ll never get fired. I’ll never get in a fistfight. When you stand me next to Theo, I’m the picture of mental health and stability. I’m not better than him, but I know I look like I am.

  Theo’s hands shake on his lap. The fan moves his hair, and he watches me like I am all he’s ever wanted in this world. I feel so strong and loved that it’s hard to think about what the world might think. It’s even harder to imagine why I’d care.

  He closes his eyes, his voice barely more than breath. “Say something?”

  I’m breathing hard, and I can’t look at him. I drop my eyes to his hands. His palms are turned up on the awful couch, fingers curved a little. He holds his hands out to me so I inch my fingers forward. I graze my index finger along the side of his thumb. The tiniest brush, but it’s electric.

  I don’t know who’s trembling more when I slide my palm over his. His fingers curl into my wrist. The sigh he lets out hooks behind my ribs. And pulls hard.

  I lean in until our foreheads touch. He’s breathing fast, and my pulse is flying. It’s all we can do to hold ourselves there. To not
close that final gap.

  “God, I wanted that lock to be telling me something,” he says.

  I shiver, feeling each word against my lips.

  “Maybe it is,” I say, moving my hands to his face, thumbs feathering against his lower lip. “I thought it was stupid, but maybe…”

  “Paige?”

  My name is a strangled question. He’s pleading for a confession I waited years to give him. And now it’s time.

  I shift until our mouths are close, and then I find my voice. “I put that lock on the bridge.”

  Theo

  She put our lock on the bridge. Touching that lock kept the ghosts away—it kept me sane. That’s her lock, and I’ve never been one for patience or for knowing the right thing to say at the right time. So I kiss her.

  I never really thought about kissing her, but I should have, because we kiss just like we do everything else. There’s no fumbling nonsense. Her hands are on my face, and I’m stroking her neck, and it is easy and right. We fit together like we’re meant to be.

  She pushes closer and I help her, pulling her knees over mine and bumping the coffee table with my elbow. It doesn’t matter. Her body is warm and her hands are cool, and she tastes like every good thing I’ve ever known. Because she is every good thing.

  And I’m not.

  I wrench myself from her mouth, wincing at the reluctant sound she makes. Hating myself for tangling her up with me again. This is exactly what I swore not to do. All of it.

  “No.” I have to pant it out, because I can barely talk. Her hands are on my shoulders, and she smells so good this close. It’s like tearing apart magnets. I groan and force myself back another inch.

  Across from me she is red-cheeked and breathing hard. Her eyes glitter with sudden tears. “What’s wrong?”

  “We can’t do this. This is crazy.”

  Her face falls. “Kissing me is crazy?”

  Leave it to me to screw even this up. I take her hands in both of mine, and she lets me. “No, not like that. After what I did, this feels—”