The Edge of Falling Read online

  That was before so many things, though. Before everything, really. Now I don’t even know if he’s ever going to talk to me again.

  I decide to head outside. I shout good-bye to my mom, but the insulation in our house is so impossibly good that she doesn’t hear me.

  The heat when I get outside is suffocating. It hits you like a fan straight to the face. I turn down Sixty-Fifth, toward Madison. Abigail’s building is one over from mine, closer to Park, so this is generally my route of choice. I have this game I’ve played since I was first allowed to wander New York alone—which, incidentally, was young. Probably too young, but that’s one of those strange things about growing up here: Your parents tend to forget it’s a city and not just your hometown. I tried to enforce some rules with Hayley, but Hayley wasn’t one of those kids you had to really fence in. She was smart. She knew the entire alphabet before she was two years old, and she had memorized the Manhattan grid by three years later. She was the kind of kid who had the potential to grow up too fast, because despite her soft brown hair and nose freckles, when she opened her mouth, she could hold her own. People would talk to her like an adult. They treated her like one.

  Anyway, the game goes like this: Every time I get to an intersection, I cross whatever street has a walk sign. I only generally play when I have a few free hours, because there are times I end up very far from where I started. I’ve lived here my whole life, but even I am surprised by where the game sometimes takes me. That’s the thing about New York:

  You can own it, it can belong to you, and you’ll still never completely know it.

  I’ve never met a single other person who likes to play besides Trevor, and that could have just been because once upon a time he liked doing things I liked doing.

  The light changes at Sixty-Fifth and Fifth and I head downtown, then cross over to Central Park. If you asked me point-blank whether I like living on the Upper East Side, I’d probably tell you no, but the truth is I really enjoy being this close to the park. I love the anonymity of the park, the fact that, even after spending my entire life on this block of Manhattan, I can still get lost in there. Maybe it’s why I play this walking game in the first place: to keep some of that spontaneity new New Yorkers are always going on about. People who come to New York from somewhere else love to say things like “in the time it takes you to cross the street, anything could happen.” The thing people forget, though, is that that’s true about every town. Not just New York.

  The light changes at Forty-Seventh Street and I head farther west, over to Sixth Avenue. I catch a light breeze that fails to pull my top off my back. It’s stuck straight on now, and I can feel the beads of sweat gathering at the back of my neck, threatening to drop. You wait all winter for summer in New York, and then it comes and that’s miserable too. In the city, anyway. At the beach the summer is exactly as it should be.

  My brain goes on autopilot when I play, and without even realizing it I’m down in the Twenties and crossing over to the Hudson River. There is a nice breeze off the water, I’ll admit it, and I close my eyes, briefly, and take it in.

  School starts tomorrow. School with the return of Abigail and Constance and not Claire. I wish she still went there. Last year was miserable without her.

  I quit playing the game as soon as I hit the Hudson—it’s too hot not to stay on the water—and decide that I’ll drop in on Claire after all. I was probably always planning on it, but that’s the thing about the walking game: You can’t really plan on anything.

  Claire lives on the top floor of 166 Duane Street, one of Tribeca’s chicest buildings, and the doorman lets me up immediately. His name is Jeff Bridges, like the movie star, and he kind of looks like him too. Speaking of movie stars, Claire’s building is crawling with them. SPK used to have a place here, before she split from her husband. I’d see her on the elevator with her kids. She’s smaller in real life. Most movie stars are, I’ve noticed.

  I take the elevator to the penthouse and twist my ponytail up into a bun as the doors open. No matter how air conditioned their place is, it’s always just a little bit too warm in there in the summer and just a little bit too cold in the winter. It’s the floor-to-ceiling windows that line the place. They mirror whatever weather is outside.

  I figure Claire is probably upstairs on the deck sunbathing, but I call out for her anyway. You never know.

  I’m surprised when she answers me. “Kitchen!” she yells.

  The Howards’ house is pretty much the opposite of ours. While my mother redecorates every eighteen months on the dot, the aesthetic usually vacillates between Italian villa and Parisian glamour. It’s not exactly minimal, if you know what I mean.

  Claire’s apartment have always been totally modern— sleek, sharp lines. They redecorate, but when they do it’s always subtle, the kind of thing you don’t notice until months later, when you’re admiring a lamp or picture or whatever and you realize it wasn’t always there. The loft has barely any doors, and it’s all white, interspersed very sparingly with color—shots of fuchsia and green and midnight blue. And of course there are massive photographs everywhere. Their entire apartment looks a little bit like an art gallery, right down to the fact that there is barely even anywhere to sit.

  I make my way into the kitchen—a massive stainless steel industrial affair—and find her standing in front of the refrigerator in a see-through gray sundress that is probably actually lingerie.

  “I thought you weren’t coming over,” she says, spinning around and giving me a wide smile.

  I smile back. “No you didn’t.”

  Claire is so beautiful that it could literally take your breath away. I mean that. When she walked in the Karen Millen show last fall, I think more than a few people had to remember to exhale. She’s all legs and arms and hair—the kind that glides down her back. Fake, yes. But still beautiful. When we’re out together, even if it’s just on the street or something, nearly every person we pass turns around and looks at her. They think she’s famous, possibly that she’s even someone else, that they’ve seen her on TV or in movies. She once did a guest stint on The Vampire Diaries, but that’s all she’s done besides modeling so far. She says she’s too all over the place to commit to a career, but I think she secretly wants to be an actress, and I could totally see her in California. Maybe she doesn’t think she could cut it; I’m not sure. It’s hard to think of Claire having any insecurities.

  I shrug. “I felt like walking.”

  “You walked here?” Despite her five-ten frame Claire never wears anything but heels. Walking more than a block without a driver following her is pretty much her definition of hell.

  “You know I do that,” I say, lifting some more strands of damp hair off my neck and securing them back in my bun. “It’s like a hundred degrees out, though,” she says.

  “Not like,” I say. “Actually.”

  She opens the fridge, takes out an Evian water, and slides it across the counter to me. I twist off the top and down half the bottle in one swig.

  “Where are your parents?” I ask, wiping the back of my hand across my mouth.

  “Europe,” she says. “Maybe Italy?” She starts munching on a green apple, then holds it out to me. I shake my head.

  “You weren’t invited?” I ask.

  It’s very unusual for Claire’s parents to travel without her. When she was away June and July, she was with them. They’ve never cared about pulling her out of school. She once went to school in Prague for a whole month. Her father travels all the time for shoots, but if her mom goes, generally Claire does too.

  “Of course I was invited,” she says, setting the apple down. “I just didn’t want to go.” She looks at me, her eyebrows raised.

  “Still?” I ask.

  Claire nods, her eyes wide.

  Claire has been hooking up with the front man of Death for Grass, an up-and-coming indie rock band. She’s been seeing him since the Fourth of July, which in Claire time is like decades, and I figured thi
s week they would be calling it quits. Claire isn’t exactly known for her long-term relationships. She’s got a six-week attention span, even when traveling. You could set your watch to it, and right now, the timer is about to go off.

  “Yep, still,” she says. “He’s incredible. He made me a picnic last night.”

  “Where?” I ask.

  “Prospect Park,” she says, her eyes glazing over.

  “You went to Brooklyn?”

  She snaps back to attention. “I think I’m in love,” she says.

  I feel my stomach clench and release. Claire says this a lot, and most of the time she just forgets after a bit, like the emotion was a symptom of a passing cold or something. But once, one glaring time, it totally shook up her universe. And, by extension, mine. David Crew, sophomore year. They dated from September through February, and when they broke up, it was hellish. She dropped ten pounds in two weeks. Claire doesn’t have ten pounds to lose.

  I take another sip of water. “That sounds serious.” She comes closer, in a rush, and leans over the marble counter toward me. “He’s just remarkable. You know what he said to me? He said he wanted to tell me things he has only ever written down.”

  “I’m not sure that’s an improvement from his initial opener,” I say. “When he was quoting Coldplay lyrics to you?” She raises her eyebrows at me and then nods in understanding. Claire and I have this thing we do when she’s on first dates. She leaves her phone on, and I listen on the other end. It’s supposed to be so that if he’s boring, or she’s having a terrible time, I can come down and interrupt it. I’ve only ever done it once, though. A guy suggested they karaoke, and if there is one thing Claire really, really hates, it’s singing onstage. I crashed and told him her cat was in the hospital. Claire doesn’t have a cat, but it got her out of there.

  Most of the time, if he doesn’t sound like a serial killer, I let her suffer her way through.

  “What does that even mean, though?” I say, squinting at her.

  She rolls her eyes. “Like he wants to tell me things he’s only put in songs or in poems but he’s never spoken out loud.”

  “Okay . . .”

  “Stop being so cynical.”

  “I’m just surprised,” I say. “You’re talking a little out of character.” Claire usually sees dating as a pastime, not something to get invested in. Love to her is like a holiday— fun while it lasts. It took her like a year to understand why I’d make Trevor my boyfriend. She loves love, but commitment? Not really. Like I said, she can barely commit to spending the entire evening with one dude.

  Claire tucks some hair behind her ear. “I don’t know, I really don’t. It’s like everything I believed about relationships before this was completely false. Like I was just operating from this place that didn’t know yet. Do you know what I mean?”

  “Yes,” I say, keeping my eyes down. I bite my lip, but the words come out anyway: “That’s how I felt with Trevor.”

  Claire’s voice gets quiet. “Right. Have you heard from him yet?”

  I shake my head.

  “I’m sure you will. I think he just thought you needed some space.” She plays with a hangnail, her eyes fixed on her fingertips.

  She keeps saying that: “He thought you needed space.” But he could have asked me. He could have done anything except just leave. I don’t know how to say that to Claire, though. Because she doesn’t have all the information. There are some things you cannot share with friends. Even best ones. Some secrets that are kinder just to keep.

  “Should we go up to the roof?”

  Claire squeals. “Really?” She pulls down the strap of her sundress to show me her bare shoulder. “Do you see this?”

  “See what?” I ask, leaning forward.

  “Exactly,” she says, shaking her head. “No tan line. Travesty.”

  “We can rectify,” I say. “Do you have a sun hat?”

  I’ve forgotten mine, and I’m sure I’ve already gotten singed on the way down. No matter what I do, how much sunscreen I wear, my skin always opts to burn, not tan. “Sure,” she says.

  I follow her out of the kitchen and into her room, where she has full-length mirrors on one side and windows on the other. It’s impossible to avoid seeing yourself in here, and when I look, I see that I’m right: My cheeks are the color of tomatoes. She tosses me a floppy straw hat with a huge brim and puts on a bathing suit top. “Want one?” she asks, holding up a blue polka-dot piece of nylon.

  “No, thanks. I think I’ve gotten enough color today.”

  She purses her lips in the mirror, like she’s blowing it a kiss, and then we’re walking back out through the living room and over to the kitchen. There is a spiral staircase that leads directly from the apartment to the Howards’ own private roof deck.

  “Oh, I forgot to tell you,” she says, pausing on the railing. “I got some inside info.”

  “Yeah?”

  She looks down at me and smiles. “Kristen is coming back to the city.”

  It takes me a moment to register what she’s said, but when I do, it doesn’t matter that the apartment is ten degrees too warm. Inside, I feel frozen.

  “Where did you hear that?” I ask, trying to keep my voice level.

  Claire shrugs and continues to climb. “Can’t remember. Around? Pretty cool, right? Guess she’s doing better.”

  I swallow. Hard. “Yeah, guess so.”

  Claire stops again and peers at me. “How come you don’t seem happy? That means she’s okay, you know. You did a good thing.” She jabs me in the ribs, but I barely feel it. All I can feel is that cold seeping out into my veins, like my heart has sprung a leak.

  I follow her all the way up the stairs. Claire’s rooftop is impressive. I’m reminded every time I’m up here. You can see over the whole Hudson, and they have lounge chairs and outdoor furniture set up, a big barbecue in the corner. A bar and a bunch of potted trees—something that sort of looks like a palm but isn’t.

  We set up our towels on two matching recliners, and Claire grabs Evian waters from the outdoor refrigerator. The sun is beating down hard, but I can’t feel it. Even as my back begins to sweat, the beads gathering on my collarbone, any hairline, the bridge of my nose, I still feel cold.

  You did a good thing.

  If I could go back to that night in May, I’d do things very differently. I’d never end up on that rooftop with Kristen. I’d never save her. I wouldn’t have to.

  But even stories with the biggest impact, perhaps particularly these, don’t have the power to be re-written. If if if if…would everything be different? It doesn’t matter now, though. What’s done is done.

  Let’s keep going.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I first met Kristen Jenkins in the third grade. She had just moved from Minnesota, and she was this tiny girl with strawberry-blond hair and the thinnest arms I had ever seen. She was quiet and shy, and I remember thinking she was too fragile to withstand Manhattan. I may not like it here all the time, but at least I was born here. I know how to deal with this city.

  She generally kept to herself, and she continued to when we got to Kensington. I didn’t really know her. Not well, anyway. I knew the standard things, the things that everyone knew: only child, lives on Lexington Avenue, father is a lawyer. But I didn’t know her. Not until May, anyway. That was the night I learned that the things we often don’t ask about—ignore, walk by—those can be the most deadly of all.

  After the May incident, as people started referring to it, she left town. Immediately, actually. It was the end-of-theyear party, but we still had a few finals to take the next week. She didn’t show. Abigail said that they mailed her the exams. There was talk of her returning to Minnesota, but one girl, I think it was Constance Dunlop, said she saw the forwarding address. It was some hospital in Maine.

  I try not to think about that now. There is no way to change what happened. It just did. And she didn’t end up dead, anyway.

  I’m just going to go ahead and tel
l you up front the truth about May. No one knows this. Not Claire and not Trevor. Not Peter, not my parents. Not even Abigail Adams herself. Only Kristen and I.

  Look, technically I did save her. But she wouldn’t have needed to be saved if I hadn’t been up there in the first place. If I hadn’t been standing over that ledge. I’m sorry, you probably don’t want to hear that, but things haven’t been so easy since January. I thought maybe I could make them easier. Maybe I could just not be around anymore. How could I tell people that, though? How could I tell people that the reason I was up on that roof was that I no longer wanted to be alive? And I can’t tell them now, either. Claire would freak out and my mom would probably put me in a mental hospital. They don’t need to be burdened with this. They’ve been burdened enough already. I told you this story wasn’t about a hero. Do you see what I mean now?

  Claire is in her closet trying to figure out what to wear to meet Band Guy, the new love of her life, when I decide to go home.

  “If I don’t see you before tomorrow, have a great first day!” she calls from the floor, two opposing wedges in her right and left hands.

  “You too,” I say. I don’t think I’ve ever told Claire just how much I miss her at school. I know she’d feel bad about it if she knew how miserable I actually am there without her. I know Kensington. I’ve lived at Sixty-Fifth and Madison my whole life. But it doesn’t mean I fit in there. That’s the thing about the places we come from—they probably say the least about who we really are than anything.

  I decide to take the subway uptown. I need some time to think, and I can never think as well in cabs as I can on the subway. For one, I get carsick, and for another, I always feel self-conscious in cabs. I feel like I should talk to the driver or something. That’s what one-on-one interaction forces. I prefer being underground. It’s comforting, in an odd way. Too many people crammed into this moving metal space. You feel really small down there, insignificant. You’d think that would be a bad thing, but it’s not. It’s one of the best feelings in the world.