The Moment Before

Chapter Eighteen

EIGHTEEN

It started at a lacrosse party. One of those crazy early summer shindigs where someone’s parents are out of town and a flurry of tweets and texts commences. But, of course, Connor doesn’t say commences when he sets the scene on how he and Sabine came to be BFFs. He doesn’t say commences, or even, shindigs, but he does say crazy. I nod, because I remember that long-ago weekend. It was the start of the Johnsaffair summer, and Sabine was way too young to be going to those sorts of parties. And Connor was even younger. Martha was there, too. And Nick. And in case you’re wondering where I was? In bed asleep, completely unaware that my sister was climbing out her window, and that she had been, night after night. Which was probably the main reason that, after she found out about Johnsaffair, Mom decided that Dad got to be the parent in charge that summer. Way out on the coast, where wild parties were sparse, and cell phone coverage even sparser.

            “We were new to it, so the two of us ended up on the back deck, sort of watching all the kids get high and drunk. Back then, I didn’t even know how to blaze without coughing like a girl,” Connor says. And looks at me to see if I’m offended about the like a girl part.

            He tells me all about the party. Tells me who said what, and who drank what, and who smoked what, and how Sabine looked so pretty in the moonlight, and how he felt like a bodyguard assigned to protect a movie star or a princess. Sooner or later the cops showed up, and Connor grabbed Sabine by the hand. They bolted, sneaking over a backyard fence, then, he led her to a nearby water tower where they climbed up a side ladder and hid out until things calmed down. Turns out, Nick and Martha and a few other kids got busted, and their parents had to fetch them from the Reception Center—which is Portland’s euphemism for small-time juvie hall. And here is when Connor goes all starry-eyed and choked up. The glaze covering his eyes is shinier than my voodoo doll doughnut.

            “I knew she would never be my girlfriend,” he says. “She was sooooo … too much. Way out of my league. But when she whispered in my ear that I saved her life, and that she would never forget that, it was like some rock star up on stage picking you out of the crowd.”

            I’m down to the pretzel stick in the voodoo doll’s heart. I can taste the frosting on my lips, and it’s mixed with the taste of Connor. My stomach turns, half in jealousy and half in sorrow hearing this story. This typical story of Sabine and her effect on people. On boys. I say, “That seems like so long ago, that summer.”

            “She was just getting going with the whole cheerleading thing then,” he says. “And she was up against girls who’d been doing it since third grade. You know how competitive she was, right? She had this whole fantasy about becoming Captain by junior year. Crazy, but she pulled it off.”

            I remember Connor helping her train. Running together and stuff. Suddenly, I have to know. “So you and Sabine, you never …”

            He shakes his head. Connor’s squatting and drawing little squiggles in the mud with a stick. “I never made a move. I knew better.”

            “But you would have, right?”

            “Brady, stop. You know how it works. She aimed high. Had to be with the BMOC. That’s part of who she was. And what did her in, I guess.”

            Big Man On Campus. Nick. She started dating him the following year. His messages on her phone, so cruel and cutting. I wondered what else Connor knew. “So, what did he do to her? Besides the harassing stuff on the phone?”