Before I Fall: Chapter 6 Summary & Analysis

In tonight’s dream, Sam can hear music. The music in her dream is coming from the guidance counselor’s office at her high school. She can see the cheesy inspirational posters which hang on the wall in the office and for some reason they cause Sam’s feeling of terror to drain away. She realizes that, in all of her dreams, she hasn’t been falling—she’s been floating.

Sam is thrilled to be awakened by her alarm clock in the morning. She’s grateful for everything around her, and she comes downstairs to greet her family in an uncharacteristically good mood. Sam’s mother asks her if she wants breakfast, like she does every morning, and Sam declines, like she does every morning. Sam realizes how much she loves the small, everyday routine of her life—“the details that are [her] life’s special pattern.” So many things, she thinks, become beautiful when you just slow down and take a look.

Sam hugs her parents and kisses Izzy on the head, showing them all a measure of affection, which she knows has been rare lately. She is “filled with love” all throughout her body, love for all the small, drab details around her—she feels as if she is seeing everything for the first time. As she rushes out of the house and runs down the driveway toward Lindsay’s waiting car, she knows that today, she is going to save two lives—Juliet Sykes’s, and her own.

Sam hops into Lindsay’s Range Rover and greets her best friend happily. Sam thinks that Lindsay looks “clearer” to her than she ever has before—Sam sees Lindsay at last for all that she is, “mean and funny and ferocious and loyal.” When the two of them pick up Elody and Sam sees her coming down the driveway, “radiant and alive,” Sam is again overcome by happiness and bliss. Sam wishes she could express the gratitude and love she feels for her friends, but she doesn’t want to throw them off or weird them out. As they drive to school, Sam reflects on how grateful she is for her life, “screwy [and] imperfect [and] damaged” as it is.

When the girls arrive in the lower lot, Sam screams for Lindsay to brake quickly, allowing the girl from the swim team to get the parking spot. Sam doesn’t want to do anything wrong today—she wants to do good where she can. While Lindsay and Elody head to class, Sam goes off to the room where the roses are stored, planning on making some adjustments. Sam heads straight for the roses in a tray labeled “St-Ta,” looking for Juliet Sykes’s last name. Sam removes Juliet’s “maybe next year, but probably not” rose from the bin and approaches a group of Cupids in the corner of the room, telling them that she needs to purchase a lot more roses.

After replacing Juliet’s one rose with a huge bouquet—and an added note which reads “from your secret admirer”—Sam leaves the rose room elated. She is sure that her benevolent move will make things right, and she imagines how Lindsay will react when she sees that Juliet Sykes has more roses than she does. 

As Sam moves through the halls between classes that morning, she finds herself scanning the crowds for Kent—she has an “incredible urge” to be around him. Before calculus, when Sam knows she’ll see Kent, she ducks into a bathroom to fix her makeup. Inside, she overhears some sophomore girls talking about what a “slut” Anna Cartullo is. Sam tells the girls that they shouldn’t believe everything they hear—she warns them that most rumors start just “because somebody feels like it.” As the girls scurry out the door, Sam finds herself considering the derogatory graffiti all over the bathroom stalls—she checks under the sink for cleaning supplies, and then begins scrubbing the writing off each and every stall. Sam is full of pride and happiness as she revels in the feeling of being alive, and being capable of doing things—of doing good for once.

At lunch, Sam laughs with her friends, but scans the cafeteria repeatedly for signs of Kent or Juliet. Sam zones back into the conversation when Juliet’s name is mentioned—Sam knows that Ally, who has biology with Juliet, must be about to tell their group about how Juliet got a massive bouquet of roses. All of a sudden, though, hands clamp down over Sam’s eyes, and she knows from the smell of lemon balm that they are Rob’s. Rob uncovers Sam’s eyes and asks if she’s avoiding him—she tells him she isn’t, but in her head, she is preparing to break up with him.

Rob asks Sam if she got his rose—she tells him that she cut fifth period. Rob indignantly says that he didn’t get a rose from Sam. She thinks back to how she removed it earlier that morning in the rose room. Rob chastises Sam for making such a big deal out of needing to get roses on Cupid Day but not sending any to him. Rob tells Sam that she has an imperfect history of keeping promises, implying that he is frustrated by the fact they haven’t had sex yet.

At that moment, Juliet walks into the cafeteria. Sam watches her intensely, and Rob walks away. Juliet does not have a single rose with her, and Sam is deeply disappointed. Ally finishes telling the group all about the huge bouquet Juliet got, and Sam asks what she did with them. Her friends ask her why she cares. She denies caring to save face, but as her friends speculate that Juliet probably sent the roses to herself, Sam berates them for constantly making fun of her. The girls point out that just yesterday, Sam herself was ruthlessly teasing Juliet, suggesting she had rabies—Sam has no way, though, of explaining to her friends that “yesterday” was a whole world ago. Sam wonders how it is possible that she could change so much and still not change anything at all, and she is overwhelmed by a feeling of hopelessness.

As her friends raise their roses like glasses of champagne to cruelly “toast” Juliet, Sam leaves the cafeteria, looking for Juliet in the parking lot behind it. Sam is relieved, though, to find that Juliet has seemingly disappeared—Sam isn’t quite sure what she would have said to her if she’d caught up with her. Sam looks forward to that evening, when she will finally “get free” of this whole thing. She looks forward to all the things she’ll do once she’s out of the loop—hang out with Izzy, spend real quality time with her friends rather than just gossiping, and kiss Kent McFuller.

At that moment, amazingly, Kent comes right up behind Sam. He tells her that it’s too bad she wasn’t in calculus earlier—she missed some roses. He pulls his special rose for her out of his bag and hands it to her—she tells him it’s beautiful. Sam wonders what Kent would do if she grabbed him and kissed him right now. She thinks about what Ally was saying days ago about chaos theory, and about all the random steps, missteps, and coincidences which have brought her face-to-face with Kent right now.

Sam tells Kent she’s heard he’s having a party tonight, and that it’s the “place to be”—but she tells him that even if it weren’t, she’d come anyway. Kent begins rattling on about the party, but Sam interrupts him, saying she has something to tell him. Kent leans in close to Sam, and she becomes dizzy with desire. As Sam is about to say something to Kent, she hears Lindsay calling her, wanting to know if the two of them are going to cut class and head to TCBY. Sam is actually grateful for the interruption, unsure of what she was about to say or do, and Kent ducks away. Lindsay asks why Sam was talking to Kent, but Sam doesn’t answer—and she certainly doesn’t tell Lindsay that she is feeling “light and invincible, the best kind of tipsy.”

At Ally’s house, Sam obsessively checks and re-checks her makeup. Her friends tell her she’s “Freaking out,” and offer her shots of vodka. Sam declines, though—this is “the first day of [her] new beginning.” She tells herself that, from now on, she is going to do things right—she is going to be the kind of person who is remembered well.

As the girls drive to the party, Sam goes over what she is going to say to Kent in her head again and again—she’s planning on asking him to hang out. At the party, Sam, dead sober, is shocked by how “ridiculously packed together” everyone is, and how uncomfortable the party seems. The girls push their way upstairs, and as Sam passes her classmates, she is unsettled by the fact that, despite having been in class with these kids forever, they now look different and unfamiliar. She feels “like a curtain has dropped away” and she can now see people for who they really are.

Sam sees Kent in the corner of a room upstairs, talking to another girl. Sam turns around to find Lindsay, but can’t—she knows that Lindsay will have gone off to find Patrick. Sam knows that this means that Rob will be coming up to her soon, and sure enough, there he is. He tells Sam that he wasn’t sure she would come, since she was acting “crazy” all day. Rob asks Sam if she is going to apologize—he tells her that they can figure out a way for her to make things up to him. Sam is angry with Rob, and the “years and years of fantasy” she indulged about him fall away in that instant.

Sam tells Rob she’d like to make things up to him. She tells him they need some one-on-one time, and then instructs him to go wait for her completely naked inside the nearby bedroom with stickers all over the door—Kent’s room. Rob stumbles quickly toward the room, and Sam calls that she’ll be there in just five minutes.

Ally comes up to Sam, who has by now lost sight of Kent. Sam asks Ally if she’s seen Kent anywhere, but Ally hasn’t, and besides, Sam decides that Ally is too drunk already to be useful. Sam and Ally circulate through the party—they spot Amy Weiss, the biggest gossip in school, making out with a guy, and Sam drags Ally toward her. Sam tells Amy that if she wants a better spot with more privacy, there’s an available room—it’s the one with stickers all over the door. Having set Rob up for humiliation, Sam continues to make her way through the party.

A few moments later, there is a scream, and Sam fears with a dread that Juliet has already arrived—instead, the scream is followed by laughter, and Ally calls Sam over to her—Rob is in the hallway in nothing but underwear and sneakers. Sam is too amused to feel bad for Rob. She laughs with Ally, who then tells her that Kent is behind them. Sam attempts to drag Ally with her towards him, but Ally scoots off to find Lindsay. When Sam turns around to head for Kent, he has disappeared into a room, and Bridget McGuire and Alex Liment are behind Sam instead. Bridget approaches Sam and asks if she knows what the assignment was from Alex’s English class—Alex had to miss class to make a doctor’s appointment.

Sam, wanting to fix things for poor Bridget, asks if anyone smells Chinese food. Alex acts like Sam is crazy, but he is also visibly uncomfortable. Sam asks Alex outright what is wrong with him. When he squirms, she clarifies that she means what sent him to the doctor. Alex says it was just a general checkup—Sam looks pointedly at Alex’s crotch and tells him she hopes they were thorough. She then goes on to say she’s been looking for a new doctor, and it’s hard to find a good one—especially one that doubles as a restaurant with a cheap lunch special. Sam tells Bridget that she’s sorry, but her boyfriend is a “slimeball,” and walks away, leaving the two of them to figure things out.

Sam moves through the party, wondering if she is doing things right—and if she is still going to be able to save Juliet, who should have been her main focus that day despite all the other good she’s doing. She worries that talking to Kent will be hopeless—she doesn’t have words to describe how wrong she’s been about everyone and how she’s been changing.

Sam feels a hush fall around her, and sure enough, when she looks down the hall, Juliet Sykes is there. As Juliet passes Sam, Sam grabs her arm and drags her back down the hall, pulling her into the nearest bathroom. Sam asks Juliet what she’s doing—Juliet simply says that “it’s a party” and she’s allowed to be here, just like everyone else. Juliet confesses that she came to tell Sam, Lindsay, Elody, and Ally something. Sam and Juliet say that they’re all “bitches” at the exact same time. Juliet, shocked, stares at Sam.

Sam tells Juliet that she is sorry for having made fun of her for so many years, and she tries to explain how the girls never even really thought about doing it, or about how it would affect Juliet—“It’s just the kind of thing that happens.” She tells Juliet again that she and her friends just didn’t think. Juliet calmly begins recounting all the horrible ways Sam and her friends have teased her over the years—stealing her gym clothes, taking pictures of her while she was showering and posting them online for everyone to see, hacking her email account and publishing embarrassing exchanges with someone she’d met in a chat room, starting rumors about Juliet selling her virginity for a pack of cigarettes. Sam tries to protest that the other girls did those things, not her, but she soon realizes that it doesn’t matter, anyway—it was all of them, every student in the school, who was responsible for Juliet’s pain.

Sam is on the verge of tears, both sad for Juliet and frustrated that she herself can’t make her see that Sam is trying to make things right. Sam assures Juliet that things will soon get better. She reminds her of the roses she got today, hoping to cheer her up, but Juliet’s eyes fill with hatred. She asks Sam if the bouquet was yet another joke. Sam promises Juliet she wasn’t trying to mess with her, but Juliet believes Sam sent the roses to remind her that she was “nobody.” Sam, now crying, insists that she was just trying to make Juliet feel better. Juliet derisively replies that no one can make her better.

This reminds Sam of what she said to Kent a couple days ago about how she herself couldn’t be fixed, but now she knows she was wrong. Sam is trying to think of a way to communicate this all to Juliet, but Juliet calmly pushes her way past Sam. She hesitates at the door, though, and begins telling Sam about how she and Lindsay were once best friends. Juliet explains that right before Lindsay’s parents got divorced, their fighting was so awful that Lindsay would have nightmares and even wet the bed. Juliet recalls finding an embarrassed Lindsay sitting in the tub one morning, scrubbing a soiled pillow with bleach. Sam, with a flash, remembers Lindsay throwing up in the Mexican restaurant.

Juliet goes on to tell Sam that it was Lindsay who wet the sleeping bag on the Girl Scout trip, but blamed everything on Juliet, despite the fact that they were best friends. Sam realizes that Lindsay has always been afraid of Juliet and has teased her so ruthlessly in order to discredit her—Juliet is the keeper of her worst secret. Sam considers “the chance and randomness” of how one person shoots up while another spirals downward.

Sam asks Juliet why she never said anything, and Juliet says that she thought the harassment would pass, but that it doesn’t matter now. She pushes her way out of the bathroom at last, and Sam follows her, desperately trying to keep up as she is stopped by an angry Alex Liment and then an elated Kent McFuller, who is thrilled to see that Sam has come. All day, Sam has just wanted to see Kent—now that she has found him, there is no time. Sam tells Kent that she’s sorry, but she can’t talk to him right now, and she runs for the front door.

As Sam heads into the woods, the rain is heavy and she feels hopeless, but the thought of the vulnerable Juliet pushes her onward. Sam feels Lindsay’s car keys in her pocket—she is the designated driver—and she feels relieved that, at least tonight, they won’t be the ones who hit Juliet if something bad happens. As Sam stalks through the woods, she realizes that the “whole big, sprawling mess of [her] life” has been brought to a point, a final second—Juliet’s last act of revenge against Sam and her friends. Sam tells herself that things simply cannot happen this way and she continues on.

Sam reaches the main road and scans the woods for Juliet. She finds herself in the road, and a car comes toward her—the car swerves and Sam falls onto the pavement, cutting up her palms. When she stands, she sees Juliet fifty feet ahead of her, emerging from the woods. Sam goes toward her slowly, watching as Juliet lifts her arms as if she is preparing to dive into a pool. Sam screams Juliet’s name, but Juliet does not respond. A truck is approaching, and Sam runs to Juliet and pushes her into the woods before she can throw herself out in front of it.

Juliet asks Sam what she’s doing, and Sam asks Juliet what she’s doing—Sam thought the whole point, she says, was to wait for Lindsay’s car as “revenge.” Juliet laughs humorlessly and tells Sam that, “for once,” things aren’t all about her. She asks Sam to leave her alone. Sam asks Juliet why she came to the party in the first place—what the point of it all was. Juliet insists there was no point, just things she wanted to say. She’s not afraid of anything anymore, she tells Sam.

Sam knows, though, that Juliet came to the party to use the girls’ reaction to her tirade as a “final push” toward suicide. Sam pleads with Juliet to come away from the road, telling her that “this isn’t the way.” Sam begs Juliet to think of her family, and her sister, but Juliet is not listening to her. As the roar of an engine approaches, Juliet tells Sam that she’s “too late,” and wrenches herself away from Sam and into the road—she is launched into the air when the car hits her, and Sam screams.

An hour and a half later, Sam and Lindsay, having already dropped off Elody and Ally, are sitting in Lindsay’s driveway. Sam remembers being questioned by the police, who asked if Juliet said anything to her about what she was feeling—Sam replied only that Juliet wasn’t feeling “much of anything.” Now, when Lindsay asks her the same question, Sam replies that it’s not the “kind of thing” you can explain. Sam feels empty.

As Lindsay gets out of the car, Sam stops her, asking if she remembers the time when Sam walked in on her purging at the Mexican restaurant. Sam asks Lindsay if that was really the only time—Lindsay replies that it was, but Sam knows that Lindsay is lying. Sam realizes at last that Lindsay is not fearless—she is always, always terrified, just like the rest of her classmates. Sam confesses that Juliet told her the truth about the Girl Scout trip. She begs Lindsay to tell her why she spread such hurtful lies about Juliet. Lindsay answers that she “always thought [the teasing] wouldn’t last” and that Juliet would eventually have enough and stick up for herself.

Lindsay leaves the car and nods at the car idling behind them—it is Kent’s car. He has been parked behind them the whole time, waiting to take Sam home after she drops Lindsay’s car off. As Lindsay prepares to head up toward her house, she apologizes to Sam. Rather than offering Lindsay absolution, Sam simply tells Lindsay that everyone would still love her, even if they knew the truth.

Kent opens the passenger-side door of his car for Sam and she slides in. On the drive back to Sam’s house, neither of them says anything—there is a lot Sam wants to say, but she can’t bring herself to speak. When they reach Sam’s driveway, she thanks Kent for driving her home, and then blurts out that everything tonight was awful except for these few minutes in the car with Kent.

Kent reaches out and cups Sam’s face in his hands but then pulls them away, apologizing. Sam feels her body “humming.” Kent says he’s got the timing all wrong—he doesn’t want to kiss Sam after everything that happened tonight, and when she’s still together with Rob. Sam tells Kent that she broke up with Rob, and Kent says that that’s at least one good thing, because he needs to kiss her. As he presses his lips to Sam’s, she feels as if it is her first kiss—her first real kiss.

The two break away and confess how much they like each other. After a moment, though, Kent realizes how tired Sam is, and helps her out of the car and toward the house. Sam asks Kent if he’s ever afraid to go to sleep—Kent confesses that sometimes he is afraid of what he’s leaving behind. The two of them kiss once more, on the steps of Sam’s porch, and she feels time and space “recede and blast away,” leaving only the two of them together in the darkness.