Freefall (18 page)

If we’d been talking to anyone else in the gym, her comment would have segued into the part of the Kendall & Seth Show where I gave my “Kendall is sexy” speech and Kendall pretended to be embarrassed. There was no way I was going to say any of that to Rosetta, though. And it wasn’t what Kendall wanted me to do either, right?

Bracing myself for Kendall’s elbow from hell, I decided to wing it. “Well, me loving the dance might be an exaggeration,” I said, looking only at Rosetta. “But since I get to cross something off my ‘challenges’ list and haven’t broken out in hives yet, I’d say things are going fine.”

The elbow didn’t come. And even better than that, Rosetta seemed like she might be getting it now. “That’s really great,” she said, smiling. “You aren’t allergic after all.”

Carr seemed to have had more than enough of this interruption. “I’m glad you’re enjoying yourselves.” He aimed his politician smile at us all and put his hand on Rosetta’s shoulder. “We were waiting for a good song to come on so we could dance. So I guess we’ll see you—”

“Hang on,” Kendall said, flashing that freaky beauty-pageant smile again. Then she stepped forward to link her arm in his. “We should mix it up a little here, Carr. Seth and Rosetta. You and me.”

Carr shook his head. “I don’t think—”

“Come on!” Kendall said, in a voice like Carr was a
puppy and she was offering up treats. “Just for one quick song. It’ll be fun!”

And before he got a chance to argue again, she pulled him away, leaving me standing there alone with Rosetta.

9:38
P.M.

This was my moment—the only one I was likely to get tonight—and I had to make it count. There would be roughly three minutes before the song ended. Three minutes before Carr came back for Rosetta. Three minutes before Kendall came for me. Which meant I had
three measly minutes
to do or say something that would make Rosetta realize I was the guy for her.

Since I was always so great under pressure, I jumped into my big moment by stating the obvious: “You look amazing.”

Like she hadn’t been hearing that all night from Carr. Like anyone with working eyes and vocal cords would have been able to
keep
from saying it to her.

But she didn’t seem to mind hearing it again. “Thanks. You too.”

So far, so good. We’d used up about ten seconds. Time to move on to the me-being-really-smooth part. “I’m here as a favor to Kendall. But the main reason I agreed to come is because I wanted to surprise
you
.”

She smiled at me in that way she has that gets me all wound up, but somehow calms me at the same time. “I’m so
glad you did. I know you said you weren’t coming, but I’ve still spent the whole night wishing you’d change your mind. And here you are!”

I don’t know how she did it, how she could say cool stuff so easily like that. Even if she didn’t speak again before our three minutes were up, those words had already made all the Kendall and Pete crap worth it. Because that—
that
right there—was the best thing a girl had ever said to me.

I was basking and trying to work out something noncorny to say back to her when Xander came over all breathless. “Seth, I just got a text from that booking agent dude your mom set me up with. And get ready for this! Will said he’ll put us down for an opening slot in two weeks if we want it. We’ll go over the details at rehearsal tomorrow so I can give him an answer, but I wanted to let you know about it right away. Now I’m going to go find Taku. And Brody. Well,
maybe
Brody.”

Then he ran off again, leaving me with a tight knot in my gut to go along with all the rest of my tension. Could his timing have been
any
suckier?

“I might need to quit that band,” I said to Rosetta.

I’d tried to make it sound like a joke, but I was dead serious.

She touched my arm gently. She got it. Of course she did. She was probably the only one who could. “Maybe it will be fine if you make up an elaborate lie like I did tonight,” she said, wrinkling her nose.

“What did you lie about?”

“Remember how I asked Carr
not
to hire a car because I
was going to meet him here?”

I nodded.

She pushed her hair back. “Right. So I’m coming out my front door to walk here, and there’s Carr in my driveway jumping out of some stretch Mercedes. And he says, ‘Surprise! I know you didn’t want a Rolls-Royce, so I got this instead!’”

I looked out at Carr and Kendall on the dance floor. The moves he was busting were stiff and dorky as hell. Kendall looked amused. “That guy just won’t give up.”

“I
know
,” Rosetta said. “I was panicking because there was no way I could ride with him. But I didn’t know how to avoid it since, I mean, the car was
right there
. I ended up telling him I’ve taken a pledge for the environment and I can’t ride in any vehicle that burns fossil fuels for the rest of the year. He fell for it and then decided to be nice and walk here with me.”

A pledge for the environment. It was a good cover story, really. The bizarre sort of thing Rosetta might do even if she wasn’t trying to hide her phobia. Still, it bothered me that she’d gone there. Now she had this excuse ready, so wouldn’t she have even less reason to try to get over it?

“Maybe I should come up with some fake pledge to tell the guys,” I said. “Like, ‘Sorry, I can’t do the show. I’ve made a pledge on behalf of starving musicians everywhere to never accept money for playing music.’”

“Xander
would just tell the place not to pay you to get around that. Maybe you should say you’ve developed a new type of allergy.”

I rubbed my chin, pretending like I thought she was being serious and I was considering it. “Maybe I
should
.”

Right then the music changed to a boy band song. Our three minutes of alone time were up. But Kendall and Carr weren’t racing right back to us. I had no problem taking advantage of that.

“Do you feel like dancing?” I asked Rosetta.

She was looking toward Kendall and Carr too. “You know, I’m kind of thirsty.”

I caught Kendall’s eye, pointed in the direction of the far-off beverage table, and made a motion like I was drinking from a cup so she’d know where we were heading. She waved.

Another surprise. When Kendall wanted to be, she was pretty damn cool.

9:47
P.M.

Rosetta and I were next to each other at a table far from all the dance action, sipping watery punch from plastic cups. “I have to tell you,” she said, “for the first few seconds after you came over with Kendall, I was wishing you weren’t here tonight.”

There aren’t a lot of ways to take that, but I figured she was making some kind of joke. I mean, she
had
to be, right?

“Fine.
This will be the last time I ever risk an allergic reaction to surprise
you
.”

“Oh, you know what I mean,” she said, laughing. “I thought maybe you were
with
Kendall. Like her boyfriend. But then I realized that you’re definitely not her boyfriend.” She bit her lip. “I mean, you’re not, right?”

I shook my head, probably much harder than necessary to get my point across. “Not even close. We’ve known each other since we were kids, but we’re more nonenemies than friends, even.”

She smiled. “Good to know.”

And that’s when I knew. It was time. Time for me to tell Rosetta how crazy I was about her. Time to just
say
it.

I set my cup down.

She set hers down too.

I looked into her eyes.

She looked into mine.

This was big. A big, huge moment. Or, it had the potential to be if I didn’t screw it up.

Time for me to lay it all out and stop waiting around for whatever I’d been waiting for all this time.

I reached over. Took her hand. Gave a light squeeze.

Okay. Now.

She squeezed back and held on tight.

Now.

And then she pushed back her chair and stood.

Panic.

This was my moment. I couldn’t just let it pass. “Rosetta—”

“Come on,” she said, pulling me to my feet. “Let’s get out of here.”

9:50
P.M.

Rosetta was barefoot. She was holding the straps of her high-heeled shoes in her left hand and my hand in her right. We were running. Not
from
anyone. Not
to
any specific place that I knew of. We just ran.

It had started with fast walking as we’d gone past Mrs. D. and Ms. Naylor at the chaperone table, and we’d switched to a jog as we headed out of the gym. Then, in the hall, Rosetta had pulled off her shoes and the full-on running had begun. Past the lockers. Out the glass double doors. Down the steps. Like we couldn’t get away fast enough.

I didn’t know where we were going. I didn’t
care
where we were going.

It was cold. Not so much that I could see my breath, but there was enough bite in the damp air to burn my lungs a little. Switching from the noisy gym to the silent outdoors was as jarring as it was peaceful. My brain kind of hummed as I took it all in.

The whole thing—the running, the darkness, the air, my lungs, my heart, being with Rosetta—was making me feel . . . well, “alive” sounds dumb, but it’s
the only word I can think of to describe it.

I felt more alive than I had since Isaac died.

9:54
P.M.

The stadium lights at the football field were turned off, but there was still enough light spilling over from the parking lot for Rosetta and me to find our way to the stands. We slowed down. Way down. My pulse was throbbing in my neck, thundering in my ears. At least I could blame this rare exercise for the effect instead of my nervousness alone.

I was still holding Rosetta’s hand. “I’ve never run away from a dance with a barefoot girl before.”

She looked up at me, smiling. “And I’ve never been a barefoot girl who’s run away from a dance before.”

We headed up to the back row with me panting all the way. Rosetta put her shoes down and we settled next to each other on the cold metal bench. Sitting so close—probably closer than we had ever been—I was hyper-aware of every little thing: the warmth of her hand in mine, the pressure of our arms lightly touching, the mere inches that separated our legs, the slight rise and fall of her breasts in that satiny dress, the incredible fresh, flowery scent of her hair.

With my big moment in the gym delayed, I was back to worrying, wishing now that past Seth had already gotten this over with so that present-time Seth could calm down.

We sat there, neither of us saying anything for a few seconds. My breathing was the only sound going on, and it was kind of embarrassing. She was so in shape and I was like a winded old man. I closed my mouth tight and started with slow in-and-out breaths through my nose only. Much better.

Rosetta pushed her hair behind her shoulder. “I just love that feeling when things are about to change. Like when you know that in a few seconds you’re going to do something and become someone different.”

I had no idea what she was talking about. What was she about to do and become? Or was this not really about her but some, like, poetry thing instead? The stuff she thought and said was sometimes so beyond me that I couldn’t keep up.

She shifted ever so slightly on the bench so that her shoulder was against my arm. “A while back, I started really focusing on what it feels like before and after I do new things,” she said. “Last year, my parents and I went to this suspension bridge over a river in Canada where people can pay to bungee jump. My mom chickened out, but once I’d gotten it in my mind that I was going to do it, I had to.”

“Are you serious?” I asked.

It wasn’t like I thought she was afraid of everything in the world. But it did seem backward that someone who couldn’t ride in a car had done something like that. I was pretty sure I couldn’t do it.

“I know. Weird, right?” she said, smiling. “I remember, I had the harness on, the cords were hooked up and ready,
and I was standing there on the platform thinking, ‘These are the last seconds in my life that I’ll ever
not
have jumped off a bridge.’ It was such an intense moment.”

I still didn’t know why she’d started talking about this, but it was kind of feeling like maybe she was just making conversation. Which was okay with me because I was starting to relax for the first time all night.

Well, okay, “relax” is pushing it. Especially since, while talking, she’d lifted our hands from my knee, intertwined her fingers in mine, and then let our hands drop back onto my leg again. Kind of high and inside on my leg, actually.

Jesus.

“You know,” I said. “When people jumped off bridges back in the olden days, those seconds standing on the platform were some of the last that they lived at
all
.”

She scooted a tiny bit closer to me. Which made our hands move a tiny bit higher.

“That’s why bungee jumping is such a rush,” she said, seeming not to notice what she was doing to me here. “Because you know that the jump should kill you. They say the people with the most fear of jumping are the ones who end up loving it the most. So I went for it. I stepped over the edge. And in that split second, I went from being someone who hadn’t jumped off a bridge to someone who had. It was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever done.”

“You’re crazy,” I said, shaking my head. “I had no idea how crazy you are.”

She laughed. “Well, that’s my most extreme example, but there’s
stuff like that happening every day. Like the first time you fly in an airplane, eat cashew cheesecake, play a round of golf, listen to a new song. The first time you have sex. Which, I don’t know what that’s like, personally. But, the thing is, for your whole life, you’re someone who
hasn’t
done a particular thing. And just like that”—she snapped her fingers—“you’re someone who has.”

I was in a strange place with the sex thing. After having been a virgin for sixteen years, I was mostly able to accept that I wasn’t one anymore, but it still didn’t feel real. Not like Rosetta’s hand on my leg.

“So what’s next?” I asked. “Are you and your thrill-seeking parents going to go skydiving or something?”