Freefall Read Free Page A

fucking stars were brighter.
    There was sound all around me: the conversation of the guys smoking weed by the fence, the whispering of the couple making out on the air mattress, the music coming from inside Pete’s house. But I wasn’t part of any of it. It was all just background, swirling over and around, bouncing off me. Maybe Vicki’s wish would come true and I
would
end up like Isaac. Maybe I didn’t even care.
    The back door slid across its track.
    Open: loud music/laughing/talking.
    Closed: muffled music/laughing/talking.
    The unmistakable sound of flip-flops slapping the bottoms of feet echoed from across the pool and started coming close. Closer. Closest. The shoes stopped and the chair next to me scraped on the concrete. The cushion made a deflating sound.
    I turned my head, expecting to see that dreaded red hair and Kendall raring to go for round two—of arguing, I mean—but the flip-flops wearer on the lounger was this hot girl with long, black hair. We’d never had a real conversation and I didn’t know her name, but I’d seen her around at school some during second semester.
    “I’ve noticed that in movies about parties, everyone always ends up falling, jumping, or pushing each other into the pool,” she said, waving toward the water. “And yet here we are and no one’s in there. Not
one
single person!”
    Lying down felt nicer, but I sat up anyway. This chick was too cute to ignore. “That’s easy enough to fix. You stand by the edge. I’ll give you a shove.”
    She laughed, and if there’s any such thing as a pretty laugh, she had one. Just hearing her was enough to snap me out of my funk for the moment. “Actually,” she said, “I think I’m good for now. Thanks, though.”
    To make her laugh again, I said, “All right. Fine. Be that way.”
    It didn’t work at all; I sounded like a dickhead.
    We sat there for a few painful seconds with neither of us saying anything. I glanced toward the window for Kendall or Daniel while Flip-Flops stared at me.
    “I am
so
glad to be out here and away from everyone right now,” she said. “I hate coming to these parties.”
    “Why’s that?”
    She bit her lip in this sexy, nervous way. “I don’t know. I guess because I don’t really drink or any of that kind of stuff, so being around people who do is just kind of . . . surreal.”
    “Surreal?”
    “Everyone seems fake and weird in there,” she said with a shrug.
    “Oh. Like being surrounded by pod people?”
    I had no idea where I came up with that. I didn’t even know what I was talking about.
    “Kind of the opposite, maybe,” she said. “See,
these
pod people are normal humans until they get loaded and suddenly start thinking whatever they say and do is super-great. But in
Body Snatchers
, they’re emotionless, freaky alien creatures. So it’s a little different.”
    Huh. So pod people were from a movie, then?
    “I know exactly what you mean,” I said.
    It was another lame attempt at humor because, obviously, I was partway loaded—just like probably everyone except her—but I still knew full well that I wasn’t funny or interesting or deep.
    For some reason, though, she missed my meaning.
    “Really?” she asked, smiling. “So you’re saying I’m not the only non–pod person here for once?”
    I didn’t want to have to tell her she’d pegged me all wrong, that she was looking happy and beautiful for nothing, so I nodded. It wasn’t exactly a lie, I figured. Somewhere in that huge house was someone else who was sober. Maybe.
    Another silence.
    Flip-Flops looked toward the door. Was she thinking of going in because I wasn’t talking? Should I say something to make her stay?
    “My car has at least enough gas to get to the ocean,” I blurted out.
    She leaned toward me and I could see right down her strappy top.
Nice.
    “That’s good,” she said. “Are you taking a trip?”
    “Um, well, I wasn’t for sure planning to,” I tried my hardest to sound serious and