They All Fall Down

  But the pickup keeps coming, and my bike wavers in the middle of the intersection as I make the instant decision to try to beat him to the other side of the street. Heart pumping in my ears, I pound the pedals around, sliding into the northbound lane just as the truck zooms by behind me.

  Was that necessary, asshole? Yes, I was in the wrong by crossing on a red, but really? I whip around to glare at windows tinted so dark it’s impossible to see a face. Still, I stare with righteous indignation, losing my balance and wobbling to one side.

  I manage to get my foot on the ground before I fall, looking again as the truck gets farther away. Just before he turns at the next intersection, the driver’s window rolls down and a hand reaches out to wave at me. He waved?

  What a jerk!

  Shaking, I slip off the bike and walk it onto the sidewalk, still staring down the road, but the truck disappears. Did he just wave at me like this was his idea of a joke?

  I frown, the image of his hand spread out wide still burning in my mind. No, that wasn’t a wave. That was … the number five.

  Delivered by the driver of a dark pickup truck very much like the one that nearly killed me the other night.

  I grip the handlebars to stay steady and catch my breath. I have to stop. My imagination, always a tad hyperactive and now fueled by my wack mom, is in overdrive. I have to stop this.

  There are a thousand dark pickup trucks in Vienna, and all that guy meant was he was sorry. Right? He was probably on the phone or texting and didn’t see me until he passed.

  Let’s not forget I was in the middle of the intersection when I should have been waiting for the light to change.

  No one just tried to kill me, damn it. I just tried to kill myself.

  If there’s any hope for me in this life at all, I have to stop letting every normal day loom like an accident waiting to kill me. And I sure can’t let those old worries get tied to the meaningless Hottie List just because he held out five fingers.

  Molly will help me, I tell myself. She’ll play up the positives of the list, too. New friends, new popularity, a possible new boyfriend!

  I bike hard and fast up the hill to Molly’s house, so angry at myself I barely notice how steep it is. With each strained pedal pump, I intensify the lecture in my head.

  So I had a car accident the other night. So I got a couple of weird texts and accidentally deleted them. And I had a little brush with a gas leak yesterday. And I made a stupid mistake on my bike.

  I will not turn into my mother.

  I’ve got my eye on Molly’s redbrick split-level house at the top of the hill, making it my goal, when I see her running into the driveway, waving frantically at me.

  “Hey!” I call, breathless and laughing at how much effort it takes to make that last hundred feet.

  “Kenzie, hurry!” she yells back. A frightened note in her voice makes my heart catch. Something’s wrong.

  She runs toward me, meeting me before I even reach her yard. Her hands are over her mouth and her eyes are wide with shock and fear. Something is most definitely wrong.

  I slip off the bike seat. “What’s the—”

  “Did you hear about Olivia Thayne?”

  I can only stare at her, my throat closed so tight no words can come out. I shake my head.

  “She hit her head diving into Keystone Quarry at a party last night.” Molly reaches out to me. “She’s dead, Kenzie.”

  CHAPTER VIII

  “Everyone is going to school,” Molly says an hour later while we’re still combing social media and reading texts, trying like crazy to make sense of the shock. “Look.”

  She turns her phone to me so I can see the latest post on the #rememberolivia hashtag that’s been flying through the Twitter stream for the last twenty minutes.

  “Why?” I ask.

  “To talk about it, I guess.” She rolls off the bed and starts digging around her clothes for a jacket, but I don’t move.

  “I don’t want to go to school today, Moll.” I want to digest this some more. And, God, I want to tell her all the weird things that have been happening, so she can totally make me see how dumb it is to even try to connect the accident, the gas leak, or that car that buzzed me on Baldrick. And now Olivia’s death. But for some reason, putting that into words is so incredibly lame I can’t mention it. Why would I even go there?

  “Not in the school,” she says. “Everyone’s in the junior lot. We need to be there. We’re her classmates, Kenzie.” She sighs. “Well, we were.”

  But I was never close to Olivia Thayne, unless I count the fact that she invited me to the party at Keystone Quarry. Where she died.

  Molly pops out of a pullover hoodie and fluffs her hair in the mirror. “Would it be wrong to wear makeup?”

  “Wrong? It would be out of character and … Why?”

  She pivots, narrowing her brown eyes. “Because that’s what cool girls do.” She lets her voice rise on the last word, almost a question, as if she’s not sure at all what cool girls do.

  “I wouldn’t know,” I say dryly.

  “Well, you better find out since you’re one of them now. And if you are, I am, right?”

  “Right.”

  “And by the way …” She returns to the mirror, picking up a brush and running it through her shoulder-length hair. “Josh is there.”

  I wait for my heart to skip or soar or at least do a little tap dance at the thought of seeing Josh. Nothing. “Really?”

  She smiles, catching my eyes in the mirror. “Want to go now?”

  Do I? “Kind of sick to use the tragic death of a classmate to see a guy.”

  “So that’s a yes?”

  “I don’t know. We wouldn’t have gone two days ago, would we?”

  She frowns, not following.

  “The list,” I say. “You think we belong where all the kids are gathering like I have some kind of entrance pass because of the list. We’re still the same band/Latin club/uncool kids we were on Thursday.”

  “I am, you aren’t.” She kneels on the bed and looks hard at me. “Anyway, Olivia was like a, you know, sorority sister to you.”

  I give a dismissive wave, thinking of Nurse Fedder’s comment. Most of us have been lucky. Beware. The warning echoes, but I don’t share it. There is some weird tug at my heart, though. As if I should go to school in a show of solidarity for my dead listmate.

  “Well, think about it, Kenz,” Molly says. “There are, what, four hundred and forty kids in the junior class? The list is less than …” She screws up her face. “A small percent.”

  “Two point three,” I supply.

  “Smartass.”

  “I am. I’m smart and I’m quiet and I’m boring and I’m not hot, so I don’t belong on that freaking list!” My voice gets a little too loud, and she draws back at my outburst.

  “How can you say that? You’re pretty.” She pulls me off her bed and turns me to the mirror. “You have beautiful blue eyes.”

  I squint, not seeing anything beautiful.

  She takes two handfuls of my hair and lifts it like angels’ wings. “You have gorgeous mahogany hair.”

  “Mahogany?” I laugh. “Who says that?”

  “Me. And look at that face.” She takes my chin, angling my head. “Not a zit in sight.”

  “That doesn’t make me pretty.”

  “Kenzie! What is wrong with you? You got voted onto the list, why don’t you just embrace it? The world—and the boys in it—sees you differently than you see yourself. It’s time to break out of that bad habit, and I know just the trick.”

  “What?”

  “A boyfriend. Josh Collier.”

  I can’t help but snort. “He’s just being nice to me, Molly. I’m not girlfriend material. Not for a guy like him.”

  “Then who?”

  I have to get Molly’s opinion, so I risk it. “How about Levi Sterling?”

  She chokes softly. “I assume you’re kidding.”

  Am I? “You know how I told y
ou what happened at my locker? Well, right before I got hurt, he asked me to, um …” I make a show of using her brush and fixing my hair, just to avoid looking at her. “… tutor him.”

  Her jaw slackens, her eyes turning into slits. “You wouldn’t do that, would you?”

  “He needs help in math.”

  “You can’t help a kid who’s going to fail anyway. He’s a serial class-cutter.”

  Was he? “Well, he asked me, and—”

  “Kenzie, that kid is a zero.” Now she raises her voice. “He’s trouble. Nothing but a truant on his way to jail. Where he’s already got a cell with his name on it, I hear.”

  “You hear,” I say. “But do we know? We have no idea what happened in his old school.”

  “Other than that some chick cut his name into her boobs with a razor blade.”

  “Thigh,” I correct her. “And oh my God, does that ever smell of urban folklore.”

  “All those stories can’t be folklore,” she fires back. “He steals, he does drugs, he deals drugs, he rides a motorcycle. I heard he put a kid in the hospital in a fight.”

  I’d heard that, too. “You know, when I hurt my hand, he seemed really concerned.”

  Instantly, Molly is in my face. “He’s the one who leaned on the locker and gave you the injury,” she says, eyes wide. “He’s nasty, that boy. He’s trouble.”

  “He’s hot.”

  Her jaw falls so hard I’m surprised I don’t hear it hit the floor. “Yes, if you’re into the ex-con type.”

  “Molly.”

  “Kenzie! You can have your pick of Vienna High boys now that you’re on that list. You can do a heck of a lot better than a thug like that.”

  A thug who wants tutoring? “He might be misunderstood.”

  She grunts with disgust. “You’ll get over this madness the minute you see Josh. C’mon.” She scoops up my jacket. “Let’s get to school and join the vigil.”

  I can’t get my head around her twisted logic. “No, I don’t want to go hang out in the parking lot and grieve over a girl who never said boo to me until last night.”

  “What did she say last night?”

  “She texted me and invited me to the party at Keystone Quarry.”

  Molly gasps, grabbing my phone from where I left it. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me that! Let me see. That could have been the last text she ever sent!”

  I take the phone and unlock the screen for her, shaking my head. “I doubt that.” I scroll through, looking for Olivia’s text.

  “People will want to read that,” Molly says.

  “What people?” I look up. “Like the cops?”

  “No, like her friends. Her last text could be, you know, important.”

  “Oh.” I read the phone again, flipping through my text list, my heart falling as my head gets a little light. Not again. “I can’t find the text,” I say softly. “I’ve been losing a lot of messages lately.”

  “Never mind.” She tugs the phone from my hands and urges me up. “Let’s go. I want to go.”

  “Why is it so important, Molly?”

  She sighs and bends down to meet my gaze. “Kenzie, I’m just this side of a social outcast. I have never run with the in crowd and I—we—have a chance. They’re expecting you at this thing. Let’s go and, what do you Latin kids say? Carpe diem?”

  I just smile. “Yeah, that.” Maybe I should seize the day—and find out exactly what happened to this girl and make sure it was merely a freak accident. “C’mon, Molly, you’re right. Let’s go.”

  The junior lot at Vienna High is a special place on a normal day. The area isn’t designated only for eleventh graders who drive to school: it sits on a slight hill looking down over the buildings, with shady trees and wide spots perfect for those of us who haven’t mastered tight parking slots yet. The seniors have their own lot, closer to school, but the junior lot includes a few picnic tables where kids hang out in the morning or have lunch. The crooked steps that connect the lot to the school are now peppered with cellophane-wrapped bouquets, stuffed animals, and homemade signs, many of which include pictures of Olivia and one that says #1 IN OUR HEARTS.

  Molly gestures to it as we leave her car to start mingling. “You think that’s a reference to the list?”

  “I’d like to forget about the list,” I say. “Let’s just find out what happened to her.”

  A group of girls are standing arm in arm in a huge circle, rocking back and forth and singing some sappy song. One of them catches my eye and gives a halfhearted wave. I think she’s about to call us over, when her gaze shifts to Molly and her hand drops.

  I feel Molly stiffen next to me and I know she saw it, too. “I don’t want to talk to them,” I say quickly, even though I suspect she does. No, I know she does.

  “You should,” she says. “They’re all on the list.”

  She’s right. Amanda Wilson and Kylie Leff are anchoring the sides of the group like the cocaptain cheerleaders they are. Between them, I spy Dena Herbert and, next to her, Chloe Batista. Do I belong in that group?

  Someone thought so. I’m surprised at how torn I feel about going over there.

  Chloe trains her gorgeous blue eyes on me and adds a slow nod of permission.

  Molly nudges me. “You’ve been tapped by the queen bee. Better step into the honeycomb.”

  “Or the hive,” I mumble. “I’m not going over there without you, Moll.”

  But she hesitates, holding back. “Why don’t you go make nice with your listmates, and you can slowly get them used to the idea that you’re a living, breathing BOGO. Buy Kenzie, get Molly for free.”

  I shoot her a smile, feeling a rush of affection for her. “I’ll do that,” I promise. We separate and she goes off to talk to some of the band kids while I make my way to the circle.

  “Kenzie!” Dena Herbert, one of the most visible girls in class, who’s a popular jock but also parties hard, gestures to the spot next to her. “Come on.”

  “Hey, Kenzie,” Amanda calls over to me. “Glad you’re here.”

  She is? I refuse to give in to the small thrill that simple acceptance sends through me. We’re here because a teenager is dead, and no one knows as well as I do how horrible that really is. But I can’t help it. Being part of a group, a clique, a circle of friends who are considered popular is … fun. Just plain fun.

  “If I die young?” Kylie, Amanda’s best friend, calls out, making me swing around in shock. What did that mean?

  “Perfect choice,” chimes in Candace Yardley, a gorgeous Asian girl with waist-length hair.

  “Oh my God,” Shannon Dill squeals. “I love Taylor Swift!”

  Amanda gives her a cutting look. “Actually, it’s the Band Perry. Sing, everyone.”

  Shannon rolls her eyes at the correction, but in another few seconds, someone is singing the first line to the sweet pop ballad “If I Die Young.” The choice is inspired, I have to admit, and almost immediately, I find myself swaying with them, singing off key about being buried in satin on a bed of roses.

  The words, most of which I don’t know, sucker-punch my heart anyway, squeezing tears from my eyes and planting a far-too-familiar ache deep in my belly. I look around at the faces—strangers, essentially—and feel the weirdest sense of belonging, a comforting warmth that I let wash over me for the duration of the song. When we’re finished, I impulsively hug Dena, and when I look over her shoulder I see Molly sitting on top of a picnic table with some other kids, watching us.

  I don’t want to belong to any group at the expense of my best friend. Pulling away, I give Dena a quick smile. These aren’t exactly optimum circumstances for expanding my social circle, anyway. After all, there were ten girls on that list and only nine of us are alive.

  The thought kind of buckles my legs, but Dena grabs me and offers support. “I know, man. This sucks.”

  I look at her. “She was number one.”

  Dena pales a little. “Let’s hope the bad luck stops there.”


  Next to her, Chloe leans in. “Don’t scare her, Dena.”

  My heart rolls around, caught in a very tight band around my chest. “What do you mean?”

  Chloe just lifts her eyebrows mysteriously. “We’ll talk,” she says to both of us. “But not here.”

  The group starts to disperse and I use the opportunity to go back to Molly.

  Over the next half hour, we hear ten different versions of the story. The best I can tell, the kids who were at Keystone Quarry weren’t from Vienna High, making me wonder why I got an invitation from Olivia and no one else did. They were partying and someone suggested jumping off the cliff, about twenty-five feet above the water.

  Olivia jumped and never came out.

  And that’s where it gets murky. Rumors and speculation beat anything like the truth, and stories were flying like bullets across the parking lot.

  She was totally shit-faced and fell.

  She jumped on a dare.

  A few of the boys jumped in to find her and her leg was trapped between two boulders.

  The only thing that sounds real is that the paramedics and rescue team brought her body out after someone called about the accident. Whatever happened, it’s awful.

  Molly and I end up with the kids we eat lunch with and a few stragglers I don’t really know. Sophie Hanlon, a supershy but very sweet girl who is Molly’s close friend from elementary school, is there, along with Kara Worthy and Michael Kaminsky, who are both in Latin club with me.

  Across the lot, I see a group of guys and instantly spot Josh Collier, who stands nearly a head above the rest.

  Molly catches me looking and elbows me. “Told you he’d be here.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” I look away, chewing my lip. “What do you think really happened, Moll?” I ask.

  “She got drunk and fell.”

  “I hope so.”

  Molly’s eyes widen. “What the heck does that mean?”

  “What if someone pushed her?”

  “This is Vienna, Pennsylvania, Kenzie. Crime is low.”

  “I hope so,” I say again. “Because what if …” Oh, man. I’m really about to sound like my mother, looking for trouble where there is nothing but an imagination on steroids.