Before She Fell

Aah! So this got longer than I originally thought it would be. If you know me personally, you’d know that I’ve been obsessing over the ending of Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver. I have so many questions regarding the characters, especially Kent! I asked Lauren Oliver about this and she said she kept the ending the way for the readers to interpret it themselves. My first thought was, “OH YEAH FANFIC!” 

So this is a fanfic from Kent’s POV on the last day Sam dies. I tried. 

-

I had a puppy back in second grade. A Golden retriever. I named him Samson. Well, Sam named him Samson. I wanted to name him Skywalker, but Sam was persistent and insisted that I named the dog after him. I remember the two of us arguing that Samantha was a girl’s name and that my dog was male. Sam suggested we call him Sam The Second which I thought was too long. I threw Skywalker around hoping Sam would realize that it was actually a cool name and finally agree. In the end, I shouted at her and told her that it was my dog and why should she get to name him?! She stormed off the house after that. We didn’t speak for a day and my puppy remained nameless. It felt wrong to call him Skywalker. I called him ‘boy.’ My mom, who was always so fond of Sam for reasons unknown because she wasn’t technically the nicest little girl, sensed that there was something wrong with the two of us. Normally, either I would be over at her house or she over at ours. So she called Sam’s mom.

The next day, while I was playing with ‘boy’ in our front yard, I saw her mom almost half-dragging Sam towards our house. She waved at me when she saw me. Sam’s mom, that is. I wanted to run up to my room but I remember feeling happy to finally see Sam, even if it had only been 24 hours. ‘Boy’ ran up to her and ran around her in circles. She laughed and twirled with him. I felt jealous so I called him back to me. It made Sam frown.

Her mom nudged her towards me and whispered something I could not hear.

“I’m sorry I tried to name your dog Sam even if it was a girl’s name, or naming him Sam The Second because that was long. You can call him Cloudwalker.”

As if I needed her permission to name my own dog.

“Or maybe if you still want Sam, you can call him Samson.” Her mother raised an eyebrow at her. “Samson is a boy’s name.”

I thought it was a brilliant name. My dog answered to it immediately.

Samson had been with me for only 2 weeks when it happened. The three of us, Sam, Samson and me, were playing fetch in our front yard when Sam accidentally threw the ball towards the street. Naturally, Samson ran after it. We didn’t see the car coming. I saw it too late. Samson was already in the middle of the street.

I ran after him but Sam stopped me. She pulled me towards her and turned my face to hers.

The last sound I heard was a faint wail of a dog. My dog.

I got mad at Sam. Why did she stop me? I could have saved Samson!

“The car was so near! And I didn’t want you to see his insides splatter on the street!” That was why she turned my face to hers. “I saw it once on TV. It was gross.”

Now, the girl who stopped me from saving my dog, stopped me from seeing what could have been a disturbing scene for second grader, the same one, she ran across the street in the middle of traffic.

I saw her talking to Juliet from a distance but we were still so far to hear what they were talking about. What were they doing on the side of a highway? Ally, Elody and I run towards them but it proved to be a hard task. The land beneath kept sucking us down. The rain almost caused zero visibility. But I had to reach her. What did she mean she didn’t have much time? It made me nervous. Was she going to do something .. was she going to kill herself? What did she mean when she said she had to help someone? Could it possibly be Juliet?

I hear the two girls with me shouting Sam’s name but she doesn’t turn around. She has her back on us and she’s still talking to Juliet.

And then the most surprising thing happens. Juliet suddenly sprints towards the highway, towards the incoming traffic.

Sam follows her.

I feel my throat hurt and I realize that I had been shouting too.

“SAM!”

I have a gut feeling about what is it she needed to do.

“SAM!”

The three of us finally reach the spot where Juliet and Sam was standing on just 30 seconds ago. I didn’t miss a beat and run after Sam.

“SAM!”

But I’m too late. The sound of tires braking against the wet pavement is deafening. Broken glass is flying everywhere. The screams of Ally and Elody behind me suddenly stop. The whole world stops. And I just stand there. Juliet is standing a few meters in front of me. In the middle of us is Sam, lying on the ground.

There’s no Sam to pull me back, to turn me around to avoid seeing what I had just witnessed. No Sam to hug me and tell me it’s okay, you can get a new dog and you’re going to name him Samson Junior.

There was also no Sam for Sam. No one had pulled her back, no one had stopped her. It should have been me. I could have done the same for her. But I have a feeling that even if I did, she wouldn’t have let me stop her.

“I don’t have much time.”

“I – I have to help someone.”

Her words echo around me. She didn’t have much time. She had to help Juliet. She had to save Juliet. Juliet planned to kill herself. It’s suddenly becoming clear to me now. She knew something was going to happen tonight. Everything she did today revolved around the fact that she knew today was her last day. She chose her last day to be with me, to kiss me, to save Juliet.

The pinch in my heart brings me back to reality.

Juliet is hunched over Sam. She’s still alive. I see her mouth moving. I run towards her and kneel beside her. “Sam!” I can feel the heat of my tears against my face even though the rain dropping is freezing. I kneel beside her at the same time Ally and Elody drops next to me. Her eyes are slightly open. She’s still breathing. Come on, Sam, don’t go. Not now.

“Sam..”

“Sam..”

I see her eyes look right into mine and I swear I can see the sides of her mouth curl upwards a little. If you didn’t look hard enough, you won’t see it. But I did. I wrap my arms around her, crying, pleading her to stay strong, that an ambulance is coming, that she’ll be fine if she holds on for a little longer. I’m rocking her in my arms, as if doing so will keep her alive for a while. I kiss her head and I taste blood. I sob even more. Please, Sam, stay. I will do anything to make you stay. If you want me to leave you forever, I will. Just please. Stay.

I hear the collective sobs of the girls around me. I hear the sound of an ambulance siren from a distance. I hear the curses of one of the truck drivers. I hear the pitter patter of the rain against the pavement. I hear Sam take a deep breath. Followed by nothing. It’s over. She stops breathing against me and her eyes remain half closed. She’s gone.

“She’s gone.” Juliet’s voice cracks as she says what I’m too afraid to say out loud.

Ally and Elody cries even louder. One of them screams Sam’s name. I pull away from Sam and stare at her face. She doesn’t look dead. She looks peaceful, like she’s finally gone to sleep after a long and exhausting day. I place a kiss on her cheek and whisper goodbye before someone pulls me up and drags me away from her. But I keep my eyes on Sam, even as someone drapes a towel around me. I see the paramedics transfer her to a stretcher and bring her inside an ambulance. I watch as they try to revive her. The line stays flat. I almost want to shout “Is that the best you can do?!” but I know that it probably is.

As I sit in the back of an ambulance with the Ally, Elody, Juliet and a few paramedics checking our vital signs, I think about how unfair it all is. Sam, who had her whole life ahead of her, who, less than an hour ago, was just in my car with me, kissing me, who had just saved someone who wanted to kill herself, is dead. Just like that. She didn’t deserve to die. Nobody deserved to die the way she did. I think about how little the two of us were given. Like the heavens had taunted me. Oh, here’s someone you’ve been pining over for years and years. Wait, let us just take her back. I clench my fists and I feel my eyes tearing up. The paramedic tell me to relax.

But I remember how, in her last few seconds, Sam manages to smile, as if saying that it’s okay, as if she’s been waiting for this. As if saying that she’s going to be okay and that we should all be okay with that too. And maybe it’s going to be okay. Someday. Down the road. But for now, I allow myself to feel the pain. And it goddamn hurts like hell.

Lauren Oliver answers my question

Okay, so ever since I finished Before I Fall, the one thing I can't seem to shake out of my head is WHAT HAPPENED TO THE PEOPLE SAM LEFT?! ESPECIALLY KENT?!?!? So, of course, I asked Lauren Oliver immediately, when I found out she had a Tumblr. I didn't think she would answer though.

But this morning, SHE DID!!!!!!

First thing: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

Second thing: MISS OLIVER DID NOT ANSWER MY QUESTION

But whatever! This is some kind of blessing for me, because now I can formulate my own head canons and not be all like, "but what if the author had meant for something else to happen?" 

So in my head canon, KENT IS ABSOLUTELY DEVASTATED! And he's confused. He thinks that maybe Sam had known she was going to die and, because of this, he would feel special for a second, because she chose him to be one of the people she would spend her last day with. But then he'd be angry. Who wouldn't be?! You finally get your dream girl and then a few hours later, death takes her away?! I would pretty pissed. I feel like he'd be depressed for weeks, even months, because I think that's the kind of person Kent is.

Stopping now because I'm going to cry.

Evernote Dump

Look what I found on my Evernote! I wrote this months ago and I don't know WHY. Okay, maybe I do. It's for something I've been writing but lost the will to continue. Hah. This is one of the first scenes I wrote. It's fairly simple, really, and I remember promising myself that I'm going to polish this but I never got around to it, so it's just been gathering imaginary dust in the bottom of all my notes in Evernote. Then I downloaded the Evernote onto my phone last night and re-discovered this one. I'm going to post this out of all the other scenes because a.) I LIKE IT. There's no other reason. Hah. (This might not make sense though, because it's part of a story with an actual plot. Still.) 

P.S. YES, the theory is from HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER! HAHAHA!

~

"Red, have I ever told you about this theory I've read somewhere?"

"I don't know. You tell me a lot of things." He laughs and faces me. I sit Indian style on the couch, already facing him.

"Someone said that the moment leading up to a kiss is better than the actual kiss itself."

"What?"

He scoots closer to me until his face is only about 10 inches away from mine.

"The moment," he puts a hand behind my head, "leading up to a kiss," he pulls me closer toward him until our foreheads our touching, "is better than the actual kiss itself."

I can't hear anything anymore. My heart's beating so fast. This is the closest we've been since we've met.

"Technically, we're not violating any of our rules here," he whispers, loud enough that I can hear him. I put my hands on both sides of his shoulder for support. I feel faint.

"No, we're not," I manage to breathe out finally. He pulls me closer again, the tips of our noses touching, our lips so close that all I have to do is lean forward a few centimeters and we'll be kissing.

But we agreed we wouldn't. 

He closes his eyes. His breathing is uneven. His face looks conflicted.

"Whose theory was that?" I ask, trying to deviate my attention from his soft-looking lips.

"I can't remember." He whispers again, after a few short seconds. I can feel his breath on my lips and I fight the urge that washes over me again to just lean in and forget whatever it was we had agreed to.

"This sucks." I close my eyes, suddenly feeling like crying. The feeling of him being so close to me and yet not being able to have him is so overwhelming.

He laughs, or I guess he tried to, because all that comes out from his mouth is something that sounded like a gasp. "I know. This isn't better than a kiss. It's worse."

The struggle in his voice is obvious and I thought for a second, he's just going to kiss me. But he doesn't.

I feel his hand move from behind my neck to play with my hair. I feel sleepy whenever someone plays with my hair, but I fight the urge to yawn. I want this moment to go on forever.

"You know what would be the worst thing to say right now?" I open my eyes and I see his green eyes staring  intently right into mine. Those beautiful green eyes. I want to be able to look at them whenever I want to. But I know I can't. So I took a mental picture of them. They look perfect against the dim light of the room. They're darker and mysterious, like they're hiding something. Maybe they are.

"What?" I whisper, but no sound comes out.

"I love you." My breath hitches and I feel a lump in my throat. I close my eyes again. I'm scared he would be able to read my mind just by looking at my eyes. I'm scared he can tell from looking at my eyes that I wish it was true, that maybe we can just throw our stupid made-up rules out the window, that I can just stop being scared of feeling this way about a guy I've known for only 3 weeks.

"I love you too." I don't know where that came from but realization dawns on me. It was my voice. My eyes fly open to see his reaction but his eyes are closed. A part of me is terrified that I've broken the spell between us.

"That would be the worst response to the worst thing I can say." He smiles and laughs a little. His face is telling a whole different story. I feel relieved, for some reason.

I grip my hands tighter on his shoulder. We're sitting but I feel like if I let go, I'm going to fall.

Finally, after what felt like hours of ragged breathing, he pulls away. I hesitate but he leans forward even more until his head is resting on my shoulder.

"What's our rule again? About no kissing?"

"We cant kiss."

"On the lips?"

"Yes."

"Only?"

I hesitate to answer. We never really covered the limits of the rule. "I don't -" but before I can finish my sentence, he pulls the sleeve of my over sized sweater down, until my right shoulder is bare. I shiver as he starts to plant light feathery kisses all over my shoulder. For a second, I became conscious of the freckles I have there, but he seems like he doesn't care.

I rest my head against his own shoulder. I feel faint and overwhelmed. His lips feel so good against my skin and I wonder how they would feel on my lips.

I remove my hands from his shoulders and wrap them around his waist, under his jacket. The heat emanating from his skin through his shirt feels good against my cold palms. He groans, whether from the action or the shock of my cold palms, I don't know.

He stops kissing my shoulders. He pulls my arms from under his jackets and holds my no-longer cold hands between his own. I watch our fingers as they lace with each other on their own, as if they know they're right where they belong.

"You don't know how bad I want to kiss you right now." His breathing is uneven. I look at him and he's looking at me with a look so intense, they could melt me into a puddle.

I want to tell him that I do. I do know how bad he wants to kiss me because I'm feeling the same way, and it hurts because this might be the last time we'll be seeing each other for a long time, or even forever.

He lets go of my hands. I seem to have lost control of them because they fall limply between us, like they're boneless. He laughs and I giggle. It's a pretty funny sight. "Look at what you do to me," I tell him.

"This is the worst way to say goodbye."

"I know." And I try, one more time. Even though my head's telling me that I shouldn't, and that it's best that we just move on. "Maybe we shouldn't."

He laughs. Not the response I wanted.

"Our three weeks are up."

"I know."

"You keep saying that."

"I don't know what else to say."

"The last three weeks were amazing."

"I don't even know you. At all." I look down, scared that a tear might escape from my eyes. "All I know is that you're smart, funny, you study a lot, you hang around the hospital even after midnight and that I really like you. A lot."

"I really like you too, red." He tilts my chin up with his forefinger and thumb and I am surprised to see the agony in his face. "You're beautiful, in every possible way a person can be beautiful. You deserve so much more than me." He pulls away, and I feel that he's not just pulling away from me, but from my life also.

"Do you know what I've been telling myself during the last three weeks?"

I shake my head.

"That we're just two people who met at the wrong time. The absolute worst time." He stands up and I want to reach out and pull him back.

"Hey, maybe we'll meet again. Someday. Maybe when I've sorted everything out in my life, maybe when you decide that I'm kind of okay." He smiles and I wonder if it's the last time I'll ever see his smile. 

"I'm okay with you now."

"I'll think of you, red." He backs away slowly, keeping his green eyes locked on mine. I can't read them anymore. He's isn't close enough. He finally turns around and walks away. I realize he will never be around anymore to actually be close enough.

I should be okay with that. It's a train wreck waiting to happen.

But I'm not. I'm really not.

~

You now have my permission to laugh.

"I'm done."

While I was studying for Medical Parasitology exam just a while ago, after I tried so hard to absorb all the names of the intestinal and lumen-dwelling parasites and the diseases, I put my book down and said, "I'm done." It wasn't loud enough to be a scream, but loud enough to be heard by my sister who was in the next room. She replied with, "You've been saying that all week!"

I asked myself if I really have been.

Yes, I have.

I'm done with studying, memorizing. I don't want to be studying all my life. I don't want to memorize the life cycle of stupid parasites that cause diarrhea or ulcers. But I realized that all of these, these are exactly what I'm going to have to do if I continue on this career path I chose. Frankly, it's not very appealing right now.

I'm just done with everything. I just want to read, but I can't even do that, because I have to study, so I can pass, and not get kicked out of university. Have.  I can't wait until that time when I can do actually something I don't have to do, but want to do. Like reading, or travelling, or getting out of this country. I don't want to be tied down to something, not to a career, not to a place, not to a person. I want to do what I want, not what people want me, or expect me to do. 

It's stupid how I'm just realizing this now. Maybe if our country had adapted that K-12 system of education years and years and years ago, I wouldn't be having this problem, because I would only be a high school senior right now. Instead, I'm an 18 year old college junior.

one-sided

prompt: the movie 'flipped' and some guy

If this was a year ago, you would have sat next to me during Trig. You would have asked me what time it is already, and complained how time seems to slow down to a crawl during this class. You would have already started a one-sided conversation with me about the last book you read which is supposed to be 'so awesome.' You would have already asked me about the book I'm reading, and if maybe you could borrow it after pretty please, I'll return it plastic covered. I would have told you no, buy your own copy. You would have started on another topic, like how books are so expensive, it's insane. I would have agreed. You would have asked me if I was doing anything on Friday night, and I, as usual, would have told you I would be reading. You would have said Cool, me too. And then before you can start on another topic, I would have shushed you, told you to listen to the lesson because we have a major quiz tomorrow. And then you would be quiet. 

But this is a year after. And I glance at you from afar in Calculus, because you're all the way down the end of the room, as far away as possible, maybe striking up a conversation with whoever is sitting next to you that day, because that's just how you are. You're friendly and nice and I'm sorry I didn't see that before.

Before I Fall

What if you only had one day to live? What would you do? Who would you kiss? And how far would you go to save your own life?
Samantha Kingston has it all: looks, popularity, the perfect boyfriend. Friday, February 12, should be just another day in her charmed life. Instead, it turns out to be her last.
The catch: Samantha still wakes up the next morning. Living the last day of her life seven times during one miraculous week, she will untangle the mystery surrounding her death--and discover the true value of everything she is in danger of losing.

 I cried in the end. WHY? Because Sam's really dead. I thought for sure she was just in a coma somewhere and she's going to wake up and everything will be okay. BUT IT'S NOT. She's really dead. And I cried because the situation was just so hopeless and unbearable. Sure, during the 7 days of her after-death, she realized her mistakes and went to correct them, realized she'd been blind and that she actually likes another guy, realized that people have baggage and secrets that they carry with them that sometimes gets too heavy to hold, but goddamn it, she's still dead. 

No matter what she does, she dies at the end of the day. I think that's what made me break down. Maybe because I'm scared of death, or the idea of dying. Terrified.

And I thought about the people she left. Especially Kent. Kent, who's been pining over her for years while she ignores him, who finally got his dream girl ON THE DAY SHE'S SUPPOSED TO DIE. That must hurt like a I want to know what happens to Lindsay, or to Juliet after Sam saves her, or to Izzy. 

The ending was so sudden for me. I thought I had a few more pages left but they were just ACKNOWLEDGMENTS!! 

Yeah, I rated it 4 stars because I loved it and when you love stuff, you give them at least 4 stars. 1 star because after I was done with it, the urge to hurl it on the wall was so strong, and that must mean something, like it was amazing and I didn't want it to end.

"I don't know."

Today, I realized that some of my friends are afraid to say "I don't know," as if saying so makes them stupid. Instead, when you ask them something, they answer back with a question, which then someone answers with something else, and then you're just left staring at them thinking "what just happened?" Sometimes, I just want to shake them and shout at them "IT'S OKAY IF YOU DON'T KNOW EVERYTHING!!!!" No one has to pretend like they do, because that should be exhausting. It seems to me like they want to impress people, which stupid, because I think that the people worth impressing don't need your impressing. If that makes any sense.

I, for one, am not afraid to say "I don't know," that when people ask me something and I do actually know but don't want to be bothered, I reply with it. Sorry. But seriously, it does not make you stupid. It just makes you someone who doesn't know one thing. 

I'm just tired of people who care more about what people think of them than caring about what they really are.