S

he died as a result of suicide.

“Are you okay?”

“Hey, you look sick. What’s up?”

“What happened?”

“Did you know her?”

Not well enough.

I’m sitting under the desk. My arms are wrapped tightly around my legs and my face is buried away from pressing hands and bubbling voices. “I’m fine,” I whisper, “just need a little space.” I shrivel back against the backboard. I’m trying to shrink. I wish I were a single
sugar ant, easy to ignore. “I’m fine.”

I’m immeasurably tired. I want to drive out to his house and fall asleep with him, but we’re not together anymore and I couldn’t anyhow; my parents would never allow that. I draw a picture. A picture of a bottle of pills spilling out onto the floor. The label reads: 1-2-3-4, I’ve lost count here on the floor, 5-6-7-8, I’ll take some more to ease the pain. I write a poem and other things alongside it:

Why do we romanticize

Something so ugly and horrifying

As taking your own life,

Yet we cower in fear of dying?

Why does it make me want to hurl

To know that I still breathe, but you do not

To feel my fingers clench and unfurl

While my stomach remains in a knot?

Why does it feel so f***ing wrong

That I cannot trade places with you

And instead be the one who is gone

Not the one still struggling through?

Who am I? Who are you?

What is this life we’re waltzing through?

I sketch a picture of an eye. I cross it out through the pupil. I draw jagged lines leading to it from every direction. I write. Too many thoughts screaming and swirling and thrashing. I think I’m going to be sick. I have a headache now. I ask to go to the bathroom. The teacher is not requiring us to take the test today.

I wonder how she did it. I wonder why. It was partially my fault, I’m sure. I should have been kinder, I could have welcomed her more. She was so nice to me. I walk into the bathroom and enter the second-to-last stall. My favorite – the third stall from the door – is taken. I sit for a long time, thinking. I don’t even have to pee. I get up and wash my hands and go back to class. I don’t know why I’m so tired. Why did she do it? I want to go back and know her better. I want to go back and fix this.

I’m shivering now. As I try to fidget with my drawings and poems, my hands shake so violently I try to hide them in my pockets. Why am I embarrassed to be sad? I rest my arms across the table and lay my head on them. A boy comes over and touches my back, “Are you okay?” I nod yes, and he leaves. “I’m just tired,” I say all day to people who repeat the question. Just tired.

The bell rings. Next class. I have band but I have no desire to play happy songs in the state that I’m in. I’m shaking and so I hide in the back with the percussionists who don’t ask questions. Before our director takes role, I ask to sort music today instead. I lie and say that I’ve forgotten my instrument. I know skipping practice won’t be productive for our marching show, but neither will my becoming an emotional wreck around other students. I copy music at the office copy machine all class period.

Friends help me take my mind off things at lunch. I forgot to eat breakfast today so it feels good to eat, but after a few bites I feel like throwing up. How did she do it? Why? I put my lunch away. I walk to math. My homework isn’t done. I didn’t do it last night after he spent hours explaining everything to me about us not being together anymore. I make it through math, the girl next to me filling my mind with gossip and fun things that the popular kids have been up to. I’m sufficiently distracted.

I walk, in denial, to German. I refuse to think of the empty seat. The first part of class is all right. A friend brings me green tea, just to be kind. Frau Caster makes an announcement about her. My mind tries to fill with other thoughts: She’ll be back tomorrow. She can teach me how to be better at my conversational German. We’ll hang out. I’ll get to know her. 

But she won’t come back. She can’t. I have a headache again so I sit in somber silence. When we head over to the computer lab I feel like I’m going to throw up again. I turn the music up so loud in my headphones that I don’t even hear the bell. I decide to stay after class.

It’s 90 minutes after class ended now. I’m trying to write about my day but my mind is racing. My heart is hurting and the words
aren’t coming out right.

I don’t know what to do or how to think.

I want to go back and change this somehow.

“Did you know her?” they ask.

Not well enough.