Before I Fall

“I wonder if by tomorrow everything will look different to me; I wonder if I’ll look different to other people. I hope so.”

Sam thinks about how she will change after losing her virginity. She doesn’t end up having sex, but she does die, and that drastically changes the way the world looks to her. The point of note here is that she doesn’t have to mold herself others’ expectations to become who she wants to be.

“The point is, we can do things like that. You know why? Because we’re popular. And we’re popular because we can get away with everything. So it’s circular.”

Sam begins the book unable to see any consequences of her actions. Even though she envisions the face of someone she bullied right before dying, she can’t see how it’s her fault because she gets away with everything.

“I decided to have sex with him because I want to get it over with, and because sex has always scared me and I don’t want to be scared of it anymore.”

Sam thinks this because she doesn’t feel a real connection to Rob. Her lack of love for him does emerge over the course of the story, and this is the seed of it in her mind.

“That’s when it happens. The moment of death is full of heat and sound and pain bigger than anything, a funnel of burning heat splitting me in two, something searing and scorching and tearing, and if screaming were a feeling it would be this.”

Sam’s first experience with death is one of pain. This contrasts with her final experience with it, which is a moment of peace, because by then she’s redeemed herself.

“I think if she starts making fun of me now I really will cry. I could never explain the truth to her: that riding was my favorite thing in the world. I loved to be alone in the woods, especially in the late fall when everything is crisp and golden, the leaves the color of fire, and it smells like things turning into earth. I loved the silence—the only sound the steady drum of the hooves and the horse’s breathing.”

Sam and her friends don’t show their true selves to one another. They act out a role so that the others won’t make fun of them. But finally, at the end of the story, Sam sees her friends as unique and wonderful despite and because of their individual personalities.

“It feels nice to be lying there: nice and normal. I think of all the times we must’ve laid in exactly this spot, waiting for Elody and Ally to finish getting ready, waiting to go out, waiting for something to happen—time ticking and then falling away, lost forever—and I suddenly wish I could remember each one singularly, like somehow if I could remember them all, I could have them back.”

Sam, sitting with Lindsay at Ally’s, discusses time with the reader. This is not the only instance in which she does so. Sam pays more and more attention to the passage of time as she relives Cupid Day because there are moments she wants to extend and some she wants to hurry.

“The way it just emerges there, surrounded on all sides by black, reminds me of the scene in Titanic wen the iceberg rises out of the water and guts the ship open.”

Sam, describing Kent’s house for the first time, dreads it. She sees it as a harbinger of doom because she knows that after the party at his house, she will die.

“The worst is knowing I can’t tell anybody what’s happening—or what’s happened—to me. Not even my mom. I guess it’s been years since I talked to her about important stuff, but I start wishing for the days when I believed she could fix anything. It’s funny, isn’t it? When you’re young and you just want to be older, and then later you wish you could go back to being a kid.”

Sam delves into multiple important topics within this quote. She’s forced to keep her troubles secret, because who would believe her that she died and is reliving Cupid Day? She misses her mother’s attention, comfort, and guidance, and speaks to the relativity of the passage of time many people feel as they grow up. Specifically, Sam reflects on how she wanted to be an adult when she was a child, but now that she’s older, she yearns for her childhood.

“Look. I’m not going to have sex with him just so he’ll say that he loves me, you know?”

Sam starts to refuse to use sex as validation here, and it’s an important moment because she’s starting to see that Rob isn’t right for her. 

“I love Ridgeview for being small and boring, and I love everyone and everything in it. I love my life. I want my life.”

Sam initially hated Ridgeview because it was small and boring, but by Chapter 3, she’s already started to appreciate it. This is a clue that she’s changing because her perspective has started to shift.

“Even before I’m awake, the alarm clock is in my hand, and I break from sleep completely at the same moment I hurl the clock against the wall. It lets out a final wail before shattering.”

Sam explains this to the reader because not only does the action of destroying the alarm clock represent her willingness to get up and go to school, and participate in Cupid Day, but it also assigns personality to the alarm clock. On days she wants to wake up, she describes its sound more favorably. On days she doesn’t want to wake up, the alarm clock wails or blares.

“When I zip into her boots I realize she’s right. They are super comfortable, even without socks.”

Sam says this about Anna’s boots in a moment of realization: Anna isn’t someone she should treat as an outcast. She just walks around with a different personality. Sam also finds solace in the comfort of these shoes, and ends up wearing them the rest of the day and defending them to Rob.

“I think of all the things I’ve done today that would shock Rob: cutting all my classes, kissing Mr. Daimler, smoking pot with Anna Cartullo, stealing my mom’s credit card. Things that aren’t like me. I’m not even sure what that means; I’m not sure how you know. I mentally try to add up all the things I’ve done in my life, but no clear picture emerges, nothing that will tell me what kind of person I am...”

Sam is suffering an identity crisis, which is common amid a transformation.

“’Yeah, well, maybe I’m changing.’ I don’t mean those words either, until I hear them Then I think that they might be true, and I feel a flicker of hope. Maybe there’s still a chance for me, after all. Maybe I have to change.”

Sam says this to her mom in a powerful moment of self-realization. Once she knows she’s starting to redeem herself, she’s filled with hope.

“Maybe that’s why I decide to take Izzy there, even though it’s absolutely freezing outside. I want to see if it’s still the same at all, or if I am.”

Sam says this to the reader in another moment of self-realization. She knows she’s growing up, and wants to see if her childhood hideout has grown, as well. This is yet another nod to the relative nature of change.

“But there’s something else, some quality I can’t really identify that makes it look like the house is too big for itself, like something inside is straining to get out, like the whole place is about to bust its seams. It’s a desperate house, somehow.”

Sam describes Juliet’s house as an extension of Juliet herself, or at least the way Sam perceives Juliet.

“I’m watching Juliet float, drift, skim into the room. Like she’s already dead and we’re just seeing her flickering back to life in patches, imperfectly.”

Sam pays close attention to Juliet’s arrival in the lunch room, knowing that Juliet is between life and death, just like Sam. It’s a moment when Sam starts to see some similarity between herself and Juliet.

“What’s the point? If I’m dead—if I can’t change anything, if I can’t fix it—what’s the point?”

Sam is on the brink of realizing that “fixing it” doesn’t mean saving her life, but saving herself as a person, as a spirit. When she says this, she’s at the pinnacle of understanding the meaning of selflessness. 

“Everyone’s eyes look bright, like dolls’ eyes, from alcohol and maybe other stuff. It’s kind of creepy, actually.”

Sam thinks this when she arrives at Kent’s party, sober. For the first time, she’s seeing reflections of her former self—since she used to want to get drunk—for what they are, and she finds it off-putting.

“She doesn’t hate her. She’s afraid of her. Juliet Sykes, the keeper of Lindsay’s oldest, maybe her worst, secret.”

Sam says this to the reader when she discovers Lindsay’s source of vulnerability, which prompts Sam’s acceptance and sets Lindsay on the path to redemption.

“I think about letting go—of the trees and the grass and sky and the red-streaked clouds on the horizon—letting it all drop away from me like a veil. Maybe there will be something spectacular underneath.”

Sam no longer fears death at this point. She realizes that she must die, she will die, and that she can make both her life and death meaningful. She’s ready to let go of the tangible and embrace the unknown. 

“Because if you had a real girlfriend…you wouldn’t be hitting on high school girls.”

Sam says this to Mr. Daimler after he flirts with her again. He has no recollection of her trying to seduce him, which makes his attempt in this scene even more disgusting, in general and to Sam. Finally, she has real power—the confidence to call him out.

“He remembers that in sixth grade he said I wasn’t cool enough for him—remembers it, and still believes it. Any sympathy I still feel for him vanishes in that moment, and as he’s standing there, bright red with his fists clenched, it amazes me how ugly I find him.”

Sam tells the reader this about Rob in the scene where they break up. Initially, she started to doubt that he loved her, but because of his behaviors toward her (abandoning her, for example, at Kent’s), that doubt has blossomed to realization.