Before I Fall: Chapter 1  Summary & Analysis

Sam’s best friend Lindsay calls to her from the driveway—it is six fifty-five in the morning, and Lindsay is at Sam’s to pick her up for school. Sam struggles to put her coat on, pack her backpack, and get out the door, but Izzy, her eight-year-old sister, stops her as she is almost out of the house. Sam, frustrated that Izzy always manages to interrupt when she is busy or late, snaps at Izzy to ask her what she wants. Izzy tells Sam that she forgot her gloves (which Izzy pronounces gloveths due to the lisp which has made her the butt of many of her classmates’ jokes) and then hands Sam her favorite cashmere pair—Sam yells at Izzy not to touch her stuff and shuts the door on her.

Outside, Lindsay is leaning out the window of her “tank” of a car—a silver Range Rover. Lindsay is the only one of Sam’s friends other than Ally whose car actually belongs to her. Sam sometimes borrows her mother’s reasonable, mid-size sedan, and poor Elody is stuck driving her father’s ancient jalopy. Sam hops into the passenger seat—Lindsay is smoking a cigarette, and gestures with it to the coffee and bagels she got for Sam. The two girls are wearing the same outfit—the two of them, plus Ally and Elody, are deliberately dressing the same today, in black skirts and red fur-trimmed tank tops, for their school’s Cupid Day celebration.

Although today Sam and her friends are deliberately dressed the same, everyone in her high school pretty much looks the same. Students dress themselves in brand-name clothing and an unofficial uniform of jeans, sneakers, t-shirts, and fleece jackets is almost required. In her small Connecticut town, “being like the people around you is the whole point,” Sam says. She doesn’t mind the hegemony of her hometown, and though she and Lindsay occasionally dream aloud together of running away to New York City, Sam finds Ridgeview reassuring.

Lindsay is an erratic driver, and as she goes straight through stop sign after stop sign, she muses aloud about how her on-again off-again boyfriend Patrick (with whom she’s broken up and gotten back together thirteen times since the start of the school year) had better send her some Cupid Day roses. Sam commiserates, telling Lindsay that she herself had to sit next to her boyfriend Rob while he filled out the form for her own rose. Sam explains that she and Rob have been dating since October, but she has been in love with him since the sixth grade—back when he was “too cool” to even talk to Sam. Rob was Sam’s first-ever crush, and though she’d kissed a boy named Kent McFuller on the playground in third grade, she’d never had feelings for anyone until she noticed Rob.

Lindsay tells Sam that she is shooting for twenty-five roses this year—last year, she got twenty-two. Sam tells Lindsay that she’d be satisfied with receiving fifteen roses. Sam explains that the roses delivered on Cupid Day, or Valograms, cost two dollars each, and often come with a little note attached to them. The Valograms are delivered by Cupids—freshman and sophomore girls trying to “get in good” with upperclassmen and make themselves noticed. The roses are a big deal, and serve as markers of popularity. If a student gets less than five roses it’s “humiliating,” meaning they are “either ugly or unknown.” Sam has, in years past, seen her classmates scavenging on the ground and in the trash for dropped roses, hoping to add them to their bouquets and create the illusion of popularity.

Lindsay switches the subject, asking Sam if she’s ready for “opening night.” Sam shrugs, deflecting, but privately notes that tonight is the night she is planning on losing her virginity, at long last, to Rob Cokran. Though the two of them have gotten close to doing the deed a few times, the moment has never felt right—this weekend, though, Rob’s parents are out of town, and the two of them will have total privacy at his house. As Lindsay teases Sam about finally “growing up,” Sam begins to blush—she remembers how, when she was younger, kids used to sing a song that went “What’s red and white and weird all over? Sam Kingston!” due to her serious and uncontrollable blushing.

Lindsay condescendingly assures Sam that everything will go fine between her and Rob, and Sam privately thinks about how a major reason behind her desire to lose her virginity is so that Lindsay and Elody will stop teasing her. Sam is grateful that their friend Ally is still a virgin, so Sam will escape being the last virgin in their friend group. As the two girls drive through the streets on their way to pick up Elody, Sam wonders if having sex will change her—if things will look different to her tomorrow, or if she will look different to those around her.

Lindsay and Sam arrive at Elody’s house to pick her up. Despite the cold, Elody is wearing three-inch heels and a thin jacket, and she shimmies her breasts at her friends as she hops into the car. As soon as Elody is inside, Sam feels herself start to relax—it is impossible, she says, to stay stressed whenever the fun, flirty, and carefree Elody is around. Lindsay razzes Elody about her latest “victim,” a boy she’s been hooking up with whom she has nicknamed Muffin. Sam states that Elody is the most “experienced” of any of their friend group—Elody lost her virginity first, and so the other girls regard her as an expert about sex, turning to her for advice and tips. As the girls approach school, Sam closes her eyes and thinks back to her first kiss with Rob, that past fall at homecoming—she grows dizzy and delighted with the memory.

Sam muses on the “weird” nature of popularity, and attempts to analyze it. Popularity can’t be defined, Sam says, and it’s “not cool” to talk about it, but one knows it when one sees it. Popularity isn’t necessarily about looks, Sam says: Lindsay is gorgeous, but the rest of their friend group isn’t all that much better-looking than their less popular peers, and the girls are by no means “shiny perfect.” They actually embarrass themselves often at school, but Sam notes that popularity is circular: they can get away with “everything” because they’re popular, and it’s because they’re popular that they get away with everything.

Sam wonders if there’s even a point in trying to analyze popularity before stating that, regardless of the answer, she is grateful that everything is easy for her—she can do “basically” whatever she wants. If high school were a game of poker, she says, she and her friends “would be holding 80 percent of the cards.” Sam knows, though, what it is like to be on the other side—for the first half of her life, she was “the bottom of the bottom” when it came to social status. Now, though, she has first pick of everything. “Nobody ever said life was fair,” Sam ultimately concludes.

Lindsay pulls into the school parking lot ten minutes before first bell, hoping that she will still be able to secure a choice parking spot. There are only twenty “choice” spots in the lower lot, and the only other option is parking in the upper lot, which is a far walk—nearly a quarter of a mile—from the school’s main entrance. Lindsay sees a spot and erratically steers her car in, cutting off another girl in a brown Chevrolet.

As the girls gather their things and prepare to head into school, Elody passes Sam a condom, and wishes her luck on her “big night.” As Sam accepts the condom, she starts feeling nervous all over again. Elody kisses Sam’s cheek and warns her: “No glove, no love.” Sam starts to blush and quickly gets out of the car. Mr. Shaw, the athletic director, is standing outside the gym when the girls hop out, and he urges them to hurry to class. The girls all giggle—they think Mr. Shaw is a perv and possibly a pedophile. As Sam and her friends glumly head into school, dreading the long Friday which stands between them and the weekend, Sam says: “Kill me now.” Lindsay replies that she’d never let her best friend die a virgin.

During her first two class periods, Sam only gets five roses, but she tries not to stress about it—despite the fact that she sees one of her classmates receive four roses from her boyfriend. It hadn’t even occurred to Sam, she says, to ask Rob to send her more than one. In third period chemistry, Sam and her classmates are greeted by a pop quiz from their stern teacher who is always threatening to phone in his senior students’ poor grades to college admission committees. Sam is disappointed to find that she must sit next to Lauren Lornet—“the only person in the class more clueless” than Sam herself is when it comes to chemistry. Sam arrived late and missed her chance to sit near the class brain, so now she won’t be able to cheat off of him.

Sam does not know the answer to a single question on the quiz, so she tries to peek over Lauren’s shoulder to copy her answers (despite her fear that Lauren doesn’t know much more than she does). When she can’t quite see, she taps Lauren on the shoulder and asks her to borrow a pen. When Lauren leans over to grab a pen out of her bag, Sam copies down her answers. Lauren gives Sam a pen and whispers to her, insisting she keep it. Sam attempts to give it back to her after the quiz, but Lauren seems to really want Sam to have the pen. Sam accepts it, and sees this as an act of charity toward Lauren—Sam’s mom always tells her that she should do one nice thing a day, and Sam decides that this is it.

After fourth period life skills, Sam heads to fifth period calculus. Cupids—underclassman girls dressed in playful costumes—come to class to pass out roses. Sam receives three—one from Elody, one from a girl named Tara Flute who is on the fringes of Sam’s friend group, and one from Rob. “Happy cupid day. Luv ya. Happy now?” says Rob’s note. Sam worries that “luv ya” doesn’t mean “I love you”—she and Rob have never said the words out loud, but she is “pretty sure” that he will say it to her tonight. Sam thinks that she’s done receiving Valograms, but a Cupid comes over and gives Sam one more rose—the Cupid who delivers her final rose has pale blond hair and near-translucent skin, and Sam thinks she looks familiar, but cannot remember her name. The girl introduces herself as Marian, and she tells Sam that her roses are beautiful before leaving.

Sam checks the note attached to the rose—there is a cartoon of Cupid shooting a bald eagle out of a tree, where it is poised to fall directly on top of a couple sitting on a bench. Underneath the cartoon the card says “Don’t drink and love.” Sam knows immediately that the rose is from Kent McFuller—a classmate who writes for the school humor paper. Sam looks over at Kent’s desk—Kent smiles and waves at Sam, but she only folds his note and shoves it into the bottom of her backpack.

As Mr. Daimler, the calculus teacher, collects homework, Sam checks him out shamelessly. He is only twenty-five, and Sam thinks he is “gorgeous.” He was once a student at Thomas Jefferson himself—he was prom king. Mr. Daimler comments on Sam’s many roses, and she somewhat flirtatiously retorts that she still hasn’t gotten a rose from him. Her classmates giggle, and Sam watches Mr. Daimler’s ears grow red. She believes that he secretly likes her.

After class, Kent approaches Sam to tell her that his parents are going away for the weekend, and he’s having a party tonight. Sam considers the invitation and reflects on her friendship with Kent—they were best friends when they were children, and were also each other’s first kiss—but since freshman year, Sam thinks Kent has gotten weirder and weirder, and the two are no longer friends. Sam knows that Kent has nursed a crush on her for years, but even so, she dismissively tells him that she doesn’t yet know if she’ll make it to his party—it’ll depend on what everyone else is doing. As Kent walks away, however, Sam receives a text from Lindsay, asking if Sam is “in” for Kent’s party that evening. Sam writes back, “Obv.”

As Sam arrives at the cafeteria for lunch, she sees Rob standing by the register with a plate of fries. She reflects on how, before they started going out, she liked him so much that she sometimes got lightheaded when he simply looked in her direction. Now that they’re together, though, Sam often finds herself thinking that Rob is gross or annoying—these thoughts make her worry that something is wrong with her, because every girl in school would love to go out with Rob. Sam has to remind herself frequently of the reasons she started liking Rob in the first place, but after running through them, she always concludes that she is definitely in love with him.

Sam joins Ally at their favorite table, and they compare rose bouquets—each of them has received nine so far, but both of them admit that one rose each doesn’t  count, since they came from nerdy guys. Sam asks Ally if their group is really going to go to Kent McFuller’s party, but Ally insists it’ll be okay, since she’s heard that there will be a keg there.

Throughout her conversation with Ally, Sam has been watching Rob come closer and closer out of the corner of her eye. Now, he kisses her on the side of the head and greets her, asking if she got his rose. Rob pulls his backpack off and unzips it, revealing half a dozen crumpled roses at the bottom of his backpack. Sam remembers one time when she and Rob were kissing and she opened her eyes only to find that Rob’s eyes were open, too, and he was staring out into space.

Lindsay clears her throat—she is standing by Rob, and she tells him that he is in her seat. Rob gets up and makes a big show of ceding his chair to Lindsay. Rob kisses Sam goodbye and tells her he’ll see her later—he whispers in her ear that she should remember that tonight is all about the two of them. Sam tells Rob that she hasn’t forgotten, hoping that her voice sounds sexy rather than scared—which she is. Rob kisses Sam deeply and then walks away, and Sam thinks to herself how much she hates the way Rob kisses. Elody has assured her, though, that all her reservations about Rob stem from the fact that they haven’t “sealed the deal yet,” and that as soon as they do, Sam will feel better. Sam believes Elody is right—Elody, after all, is the expert.

Elody arrives at the table and sets her bouquet down—she has twelve roses. As the girls tease her about having slept with people to get the roses, Ally sees something over Sam’s shoulder and starts singing a Talking Heads song: “Psycho killer, qu’est-ce que c’est.” The girls turn around and see Juliet Sykes—a classmate whom they have all nicknamed Psycho—walking through the cafeteria. Juliet is pale and ethereal, with a long curtain of pale blond hair. The girls all start making screeching and stabbing noises, imitating the movie Psycho, not even caring if Juliet overhears them.

As Juliet exits the cafeteria, Lindsay wonders aloud if Juliet received her Valogram rose from the four of them. Ally says that she did—she herself was sitting right behind Juliet in biology when she got it. Ally was amazed by the fact that Juliet threw the rose in the trash right in front of her at the end of class. Sam reveals that every year, she and her friends have sent Juliet a single rose with the same note attached: “Maybe next year, but probably not.” Sam doesn’t feel bad, though—she insists that Juliet deserves her nickname, because she is a “freak” who never speaks and seems to live in her own world.

Lindsay hates Juliet—the two of them were in elementary school together and have been enemies ever since. It was Lindsay who first started making fun of Juliet in fifth grade by calling her Mellow Yellow after Juliet peed in her sleeping bag on a Girl Scout trip. It occurs to Sam as she watches Juliet walk away from the cafeteria that she doesn’t know why Lindsay hates Juliet so much, and she prepares to ask her, but then realizes that the group has moved on to a new topic.

The girls are now talking about how the girl Lindsay cut off in the parking lot this morning, Sarah, is being barred from swimming in an upcoming meet because she was late to homeroom after Lindsay took her spot and she received a detention. The girls make fun of Sarah for being so obsessed with a sport, and then begin teasing Sam for having been into horseback riding as a little girl.

Ally starts talking about how Lindsay’s taking the parking space has now affected Sarah’s life, and about chaos theory, and how everything in the whole world is connected. The other girls make fun of Ally and ask her if she’s been smoking pot. Soon Ally herself is laughing and joking with them, and all four girls are hysterical.

After lunch, Lindsay and Sam decide to cut class and go to TCBY for frozen yogurt. The two of them do this often—as second-semester seniors, they are, Sam says, hardly even expected to go to class. Though technically a special pass is needed to leave campus during the school day, Lindsay and Sam sneak out through a hole in the fence behind the gym near the tennis courts, near a spot where all the smokers hang out.

The girls walk the half mile to a little strip mall where there’s a gas station, a TCBY, and a questionable Chinese restaurant which once gave Elody food poisoning. As Sam and Lindsay pass the restaurant they spot two of their classmates inside—Alex Liment and Anna Cartullo. Both girls know (as does the whole school) that Alex has been cheating on his ultra-religious girlfriend Bridget McGuire with Anna for months. Anna Cartullo, though only a junior, is rumored to be highly promiscuous, and is one of the few kids in town who doesn’t come from money—the other students make fun of her for being poor and sleeping around.

Lindsay drags Sam inside the restaurant and goes up to Anna and Alex’s table. She is sort of friends with Alex, though Sam hardly ever talks to him. Lindsay asks Alex if he is going to the party tonight—Alex’s face goes red, and Sam knows that he is embarrassed to be caught “blatantly” hanging out with Anna. Lindsay snidely asks Alex if he is going to bring Bridget with him. To change the subject, Sam warns Anna not to eat the food at this restaurant—in response, Anna makes a big show of taking a huge bite of her orange beef. Lindsay drags Sam back out of the restaurant, giggling at the mischief she’s caused.

The girls go to TCBY and order ice cream and, despite the fact that they’re both freezing, eat their treats on the way back to school. Once they get back to campus, they see Anna and Alex arguing near the smokers’ area while Alex smokes a cigarette—Lindsay smokes a quick cigarette, too, but puts it out when she sees Ms. Winters, the vice principal who has a “crazy vendetta” against people who smoke. Sam wonders if the two of them should go back and warn Alex and Anna that Ms. Winters is coming, but Lindsay drags Sam back to class, telling her that Alex and Anna can take care of themselves. Sam agrees, and notes that it’s not like the two of them have ever done anything for her.

Sam recounts the history of her friendship with Lindsay. In seventh grade, “after years of trying,” Sam had clawed her way up to the middle of the social ladder—it was then that Lindsay “picked” her to be her friend. Lindsay had always been popular—she has a magnetism and a magic to her, and Sam notes that Lindsay is “the kind of person who makes you feel drunk just by being around her.”

In seventh grade, at a pool party at Tara Flute’s house, Lindsay pulled Sam upstairs into Tara’s room to show her two tampons she had found in another girls’ bag. Lindsay and Sam concocted a plan, and ran through the house checking all the bathroom cabinets for pads and tampons. Sam knew what they were planning was cruel, but she was so excited that Lindsay wanted to talk to her that she pushed her feelings aside. The two girls collected all they could and then ran out onto the deck and threw feminine products down onto the pool party below, making fun of Beth, the girl who’d originally brought the tampons with her. After that day, Lindsay and Sam were best friends—Ally and Elody joined their group over the next couple years, and soon the four were inseparable. 

After school, the four girls all go to Ally’s house. When they were younger, the girls used to stay in, order Chinese, and watch movies all night, but now there is hardly ever a Friday night where the girls aren’t out at a party. The girls primp and prep themselves for the party in Ally’s room, doing each other’s makeup and taking shots of vodka. Once Sam is ready, she locks herself in the bathroom and looks at herself in the mirror. She is nervous about tonight, but calms herself by thinking that this time tomorrow, she will “finally be different.”

As the girls load themselves into Lindsay’s car and drive to Kent’s house, Sam has a strange feeling—as if she is “floating above everything.” Elody howls along to the radio, already wasted, while Lindsay, who Sam claims is hardly ever affected by alcohol, drives down the twisting roads of their town.

Kent’s house is far back in the woods, and as the girls drive down the long twisting driveway, Ally says aloud that “This is how horror movies start.” The drive, however, is familiar to Sam, who used to come over to Kent’s house all the time when she was little. When the girls finally arrive at the main house, they are all stunned by its opulence and beauty. The girls all take one more shot from a bottle of vodka and then head into the party.

Sam loves walking into parties: she always gets the feeling that anything could happen. Inside the house, the party is in full swing—Sam and her friends say hi to a few people but ignore most of the guests, their popularity affording them the chance to pick and choose whom they’ll pay attention to. Sam quickly gets separated from her friends in the throng of people, and she gets nervous, but soon she feels Rob’s arms around her. She turns around to face him and sees that he is very drunk, though it’s only ten o’clock.

Rob leans into kiss Sam, but she turns away and looks for her friends. Instead she spots Kent McFuller talking to a girl—Sam feels annoyed that he hasn’t noticed her yet. Rob whispers to Sam that the two of them will leave for his house after half an hour, and then kisses her. As he does, he paws at her breasts and snakes his hands up her shirt, while Sam tries to force herself to enjoy the sloppy kiss. She ruminates on the fact that she has decided to have sex with Rob tonight only because she wants to get it over with—she is uncertain about the act itself and she is worried that things will be awkward afterward, but she wants to put the loss of her virginity behind her.

Ally approaches Sam and Rob, telling them to “get a room.” Rob goes off to refill his beer. Ally tells Sam that Elody is hooking up with her newest fling, Muffin, while Lindsay and Patrick are fighting. Sam laughs, noting that Ally always makes her feel better. The two of them head off to “save” Lindsay from Patrick, taking in the party on the way. As they walk through the crowds, Sam reflects on the deep divisions within her high school, and the popularity contest which has created two different worlds: “the haves and the have-nots.”

By the time Ally and Sam get to Lindsay and Patrick, the two of them have made up. Elody is hanging on “Muffin,” seemingly oblivious to the fact that he is hardly even paying attention to her and is talking intensely to another girl. Lindsay jumps up and throws her arms around Elody and Ally, and the girls laugh together and rib one another. Sam closes her eyes and promises herself she will never forget this moment: the wild party, the embrace of her friends, and a fine mist of rain coming through a nearby open window.

When Sam opens her eyes, she is greeted with a massive shock: Juliet Sykes is standing in the doorway, staring at Sam and her friends. Sam is shocked more by the fact of how beautiful Juliet looks than the fact that she has shown up, at last, to a high-school party. As Ally, Elody, and Lindsay notice that Juliet is there, Sam observes that Lindsay “goes pale” and actually looks frightened for a moment before her expression grows angry.

Soon, everyone in the room is aware of Juliet’s presence, and they stare at her as she walks “slowly and confidently” toward Sam and her friends. Juliet stops just in front of Lindsay, looks her in the eye, and calls her a bitch. Juliet then turns on Ally, Elody, and even Sam, calling them all bitches. Lindsay leans in toward Juliet and tells her that she’d rather be a bitch than a psycho before shoving Juliet backward. Lindsay starts screaming “psycho” over and over again, and as the crowd joins in, Ally dumps a beer on Juliet’s head. Soon everyone is throwing drinks at her, and as she stumbles toward the door, Sam notices that Juliet is looking at her almost pityingly. Sam, caught off-guard, lunges at Juliet and shoves her hard, pushing her back toward the door.

At that moment, Kent enters the room. He locks eyes with Sam, who immediately feels hot and uncomfortable. Sam feels like she is about to be sick, and tries to push her way out of the room to get some air. Kent confronts her, asking her what she did to Juliet, and though Sam tries to push past him, he blocks her. Sam screams at Kent and tells him to stop “obsessing over [her],” stating that he is such a loser that she shouldn’t even know his name. Kent barely reacts—he just leans in close to Sam and tells her that he sees right through her. Sam tells Kent that he doesn’t know her at all; he replies, “Thank God,” before telling Sam that her boyfriend is downstairs puking in the kitchen sink.

As Sam heads downstairs to find Rob, she has a sinking realization that tonight is not “the night” after all. She feels both disappointed and relived, but as she considers waking up tomorrow morning and feeling exactly the same, she begins to cry. She thinks that the whole night is Kent’s fault, and Juliet Sykes’s. 

The party begins to wind down after about half an hour. Sam leaves with Elody, Ally, and Lindsay; on the way out, they see couples drunkenly making out in corners and pass by an open bathroom door in which Bridget McGuire is crying at the edge of the tub—Lindsay tells Sam that Bridget dumped Alex Liment after Ms. Winters caught him and Anna Cartullo together, smoking near the tennis courts.

As the girls leave the party, Rob stops them, and asks Sam where she’s going. Sam tells Rob to let her go and pushes him away from her. Rob, drunk and confused, asks Sam if she’s cheating on him.  Though Sam tells Rob not to act “stupid,” he becomes enraged, and seemingly at random picks the nearest guy to him and asks if he is sleeping with Sam. As Rob and the random guy get into a fight, Lindsay pulls Sam out the door and towards the car, reassuring her that everything will be better tomorrow.

Outside, it is raining, and the girls run toward the car, trying not to get wet. They are all soaked by the time they reach the Range Rover, laughing hysterically, and Sam has practically forgotten about how bad the night was. As Lindsay begins driving, Sam notices that she is going faster than usual, but doesn’t think anything of it. Sam drunkenly begins sharing her theory about the slideshow of “greatest hits” she believes ones sees before they die, though her friends mostly ignore her and turn on some music. Lindsay lights a cigarette but drops it onto her seat, and takes her eyes off the road for a second as she tries to put it out. Sam notices out of the corner of her eye that it is 12:39 a.m.

Suddenly, there is a flash of white in front of the car, and Lindsay shouts something Sam can’t make out—something like “sit” or “shit” or “sight.” Suddenly, their car is flipping off the road into the woods, and Sam hears a horrible screeching noise and smells fire. The moment of death, she says, “is full of heat and sound and pain bigger than anything,” but after a second or two she feels nothing.

She realizes that some people might think she deserved to die—that after she sent the mean Valogram to Juliet, dumped her drink on her at the party, cheated off Lauren Lornet, and said awful things to Kent, many people will think she got exactly what she deserved. But, Sam begs her readers, before pointing fingers, they should ask themselves if what she did is “really so bad,” and if it’s actually any worse than “what anybody else does.” She urges her readers to “think about it.”