The Fall by James Preller Page A

in a stroller, then she bit the cop who arrested her. Dude’s got to get tetanus shots! So I’m thinking she deserves whatever she gets.”
    â€œYeah, but…”
    (This wasn’t going as well as I’d hoped.)
    I tried again. “The trolls write such awful things. Look at the kids in our own school. Some of them say horrible things about people.”
    Morgan swiveled her head to look at me in a searching sort of way. “What are you talking about? This doesn’t have anything to do with our school.”
    â€œNothing, I don’t know,” I said.
    â€œIf I were some big celebrity, and people were talking about me, I’d want to know about it,” Morgan said. “Burying your head in the sand isn’t going to help.”
    â€œI don’t agree. When you read those idiots, you disrespect yourself,” I said, my voice rising.
    She stared at me. “Wait a minute, Sam. Are you talking about me?”
    She stood, hands on her hips.
    â€œNo,” I said. “No, no. I mean just anybody.”
    â€œI think it’s funny,” she said. “Nobody takes any of that stuff seriously.”
    I didn’t say anything, just sat there and felt depressed. We were quiet for a minute. Morgan standing, scrolling through her phone, tapping away; me resisting the urge to throw it against a brick wall.
    Finally, Morgan wondered, “Hey, Sam. Do you think my hair’s too thin?”

 
    SOMETHING
    It wasn’t a date, but I guess it was something .
    Our secret something.
    We decided to see a movie together. We were a boy and a girl, yes, but it wasn’t that .
    I’m not even sure how it came about. Oh yeah. One afternoon by the log (we had discovered the most perfect place to sit in the woods behind the elementary school and christened it cleverly “the log”), Morgan was really perky and she started talking about this thing she really wanted us to do. And I mean: really-really.
    â€œI want to go to the movies with you and sneak in tons of food,” she said. “It’ll be hilarious. Huge foot-long sandwiches, bags of candy, chips, drinks. A total feast.”
    â€œHow are we going to smuggle all that in?” I asked. “Excuse me, young man. Is that a foot-long sandwich in your pants, or are you just happy to see me?”
    ( Ha, she laughed. “Good one!”)
    â€œWe should do it,” Morgan urged.
    â€œWe should,” I fired back before thinking.
    â€œAll right, let’s,” she decided.
    Um …
    â€œThis Saturday,” she said. “We’ll go to the earliest show.”
    And I was like, “Sure!” before my brain caught up to my mouth and screamed: WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?
    Too late.
    This wasn’t a date. To be clear.
    But still! It was something . The idea of it felt different.
    The movie couldn’t have been more random. Morgan couldn’t care less what we saw. This was her deal. She opted for a scary movie— The Haunting or The Conjuring or The Corn or whatever it was called, Paranormal 16 !—at a theater on Elm Avenue, a long bike ride away. It was the easiest theater we could get to by ourselves, without involving parents and a million questions neither of us wanted to answer.
    But also this: I felt it was going to be our time. No one to see us, no one to judge. We’d do it on our own. Forget the wicked old world for a few hours.
    I worried.
    â€œDon’t worry,” she said, reading my mind. “No one goes to movies at 10:30 in the morning.”
    And she was right, and she was wrong .
    No one was there.
    But I should have worried. Looking back, this was our happiest, purest few hours together—and the beginning of the end. Within two days, she would hate me.
    (I’m not ready to tell that part yet.)
    First we pedaled to Marco’s Deli. Again, totally Morgan’s idea. She was the mastermind—and loaded with cash. “My