Fall For Anything (22 page)

I get out of bed as quietly as possible and then I open my window, fighting with it, because my hands are still dead. When it’s open, I crawl out onto the roof, which slopes down, and make my way carefully to the very edge of it.

It’s not a long drop, but it feels farther standing up, so I do.

I jump. I land hard on my knee, like the first time. I inhale sharply.

I’m bleeding, sticky red all down my leg.

But I’m alive.

Branford is so still this late at night. A dead town after nine o’clock. No cars headed anywhere, roads all silent. It’s too far to walk.

But he walked.

I’ll walk.

At Tarver’s, the clouds cover the stars and the moon. I stand there, staring at the silhouette of the last place my father was alive, waiting for the clouds to part.

I wait. I wait. I wait.

Until I can see.

It happens slowly, the building revealing itself to me in the moonlight. I think I have been doing it all wrong, this whole time. I think to find some kind of understanding, you have to be as close to the truth as you can get to it. I walk up to the building and force the front door open. It takes all my strength and as soon as I step over the threshold I’m in the dark.

The door swings shut behind me.

My cell phone rings in my pocket. Milo. It’s always Milo. I stand there and let it play out, let it stop, and then I text him.

FIND ME

I fumble through the darkness, holding my hands out. I know where the red door is. I know. I find it, my palm running over the wood. I try to feel out his initials. These ones are real.

These ones are true.

I pull the door open and move forward and—I’m already sick with it. My feet don’t want to walk me farther than this spot, up the seven flights of stairs, until I get to the roof. This path my father carved out to his death. I press my hand against my mouth.

Seven floors. Seven floors up. I take the first step and my heart stops. I take my foot off and it starts again. I think that can’t be good. I think something stupid: how could anyone climb seven flights of stairs with a dead heart. I put my foot on the first step and then the second. The third. The fourth step. Maybe ten steps and I’ll start ticking again. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten.

I listen for sounds of myself.

I’m still here.

But it goes slow, every step. My feet are too heavy and lifting them is almost impossible. I’m sweating by the time I get to the seventh floor, by the time I see the door that opens up onto the roof. That’s when I hear the car.

Milo.

It took that long for me to get up here.

I stand in front of the door. I wonder if this is how Dad felt, nervous, excited. That he would finally leave everything behind. How long did he want to leave everything behind and who was he thinking of when he did this? His suicide is a question wrapped in a question in a question. But the answers must be here.

I step out onto the roof.

The air is bitter out here. I cross the roof, my heart beating hard in my chest. Would my father have walked faster, if we had gotten there in time? Would he have walked from me?

I walk to the very edge of the roof and climb up onto the ledge.

I’m just one step away when Milo comes out. I don’t turn around. I just listen to his footsteps getting closer. I close my eyes and steel myself against a strange wave of vertigo. Legs shaking. I’m shaking.

It’s a very long way down.

“I’m not going to jump,” I say when his footsteps stop.

“You can’t do this forever,” Milo says.

But he’s wrong. I could do this forever.

I know I could.

I can see the spot from here.

Where I found him.

“Tell me why he did it and I’ll never come up here again.”

“Eddie, I don’t know,” he says. “He didn’t want to be here anymore.”

“I don’t know if I can live with that.”

“I think you have to…”

“And if I don’t?”

“Eddie, he’s dead. Whether you do, or you don’t.”

I rub my hands together. I can’t feel them at all.

I hold them out.

“They’re still cold,” I tell him.

He moves close to me and he takes my hands in his.

I step down.

He wraps his arms all around me.

“They won’t always be,” he says. “I promise.”

We stay there until the stars disappear, one by one, and the sky slowly lightens. It’s a new day and I know all I have to do is meet it with this thought in my head: there’s an answer, a why, why he killed himself. And I can convince myself it’s waiting for me, so far beyond what’s in front of me now …

But I also know Milo is right—whether I do or I don’t, my father is dead.

I hope he’s found peace, wherever he is.

I hope I do too, wherever I end up.

Also by Courtney Summers

Some Girls Are

Cracked Up to Be

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

FALL FOR ANYTHING. Copyright © 2010 by Courtney Summers. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.stmartins.com

ISBN 978-0-312-65673-7

First Edition: January 2011

eISBN 978-1-4299-9112-4

First St. Martin’s Griffin eBook Edition: December 2010