By the Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead (7 page)

— 13 DAYS —

Trash day. I keep a box of Glad bags behind the bottom drawer of my dresser. I hope Kim doesn’t pull out the drawer. My clothes are sparse. I have underpants, socks, a bra. I’ve never owned much, since we move so often. I don’t care about keeping stuff. I spread what little I have evenly between all four drawers. Behind the fourth drawer are my plastic bags.

Kim didn’t even think about locking them away. Heads up, Kim.

Plastic bags are a suicide completer’s best friend. Especially if you choose to overdose. Drug overdose is an unreliable method, I read, because height and weight, general health, gag reflex—all of these work against you. On Through-the-Light it’s recommended that, in addition to taking as many pills as possible, you slide a plastic bag over your head and secure it with a belt. That way if the drugs don’t do their job—if they take too long or you panic—suffocation will render you unconscious.

Even if I had access to my pills, I couldn’t get enough of them down my damaged throat now.

Into a trash bag goes my slim stack of clothes and toys and the gilded jewelry box that Kim got me for my twelfth birthday. She asked, “Do you want to invite some friends over for cake and ice cream?” I said, “No.” I thought, Please don’t make me. The one time she listened. She said, “Okay, then. It’ll just be the three of us.”

The music box plays “A Time for Us.” Ironic.

Maybe I won’t throw it out yet.

The book is still in the trash can by the desk. How could I be so stupid? What if Kim found it and read the message? She wouldn’t understand, but she’d spend a lifetime trying.

That could be her penance.

No, I’m not that cruel. I rip out the first page and bury it in the Glad bag.

We have chorus rehearsal today for the May Day concert. I won’t be around for it, but I committed to chorus. I’m all about commitment.

JenniferJessica keeps pushing me, nudging me, pressing her shoulder against mine. I want to tell her to cool it. Then the other girl on the left side of me starts doing the same thing.

I move back and the girl behind me pushes me forward. They always come in packs of three.

Mr. Hyatt stops rehearsal. “What’s going on?” he asks.

JenniferJessica says, “Nothing.”

I say nothing, of course.

He purses his lips. The rehearsal resumes and so does the pushing. I want to scream, Stop it! Stop touching me. In this one middle school, people would shove me or push me in the hall. I wanted to chase them down and shove them so hard they fell on their faces. But then I’d get in trouble or they’d retaliate. In class, this one boy sat next to me and poked me in the arm. Just poked me. He’d press his finger into my skin until it made a dent. Why? Boys were always being pushed into me. They stuck notes on my back: KISS ME.

PIGGY BACK.

JenniferJessica pushes me out of line.

Mr. Hyatt motions for the pianist to cut. He says, “Daelyn, would you mind singing alto?”

Am I supposed to answer?

JenniferJessica snorts. Everyone around us snickers and the roar in my ears crescendos.

I shuffle over to the alto section. The joke’s on you, bitches. I sing alto.

“You can stand by me,” a voice says. It’s the girl from econ. She has a face now. A face and a voice. Round face. Soft voice.

“We can share music.”

I feel grateful. STOP. Don’t feel.

He’s not on my bench. I don’t mean “my.” Nothing belongs to me. I close the gate and walk past the tree. He doesn’t leap out to ambush me.

You have no idea how relieved I am.

I sit and set my book bag next to me; pull out
Desire on the Moor
. Exhuming the weight of the day, my bones go Jell-O and my muscles melt. I read,
Maggie Louise took the outstretched hand that the Frenchman, Jean-Jacques, offered her. She was a deft horsewoman, but if a man—this man—wanted to help her dismount, she certainly wouldn’t refuse the offer.

Santana’s plotting a sneak attack, I think. Waiting until I’m engaged in my book, then WHAM.

I’m so wise to sneak attacks. It won’t happen to me again.

I just called him by his name.

Detach.

“Do you wish me to cool your mare down, Miss?” Jean-Jacques crooned in his sexy French accent. He took the reins from her, touching her fingers lightly with his gloved hand. She’d never known a stable boy to wear leather gloves. Soft, creamy kidskin. If the gloves hadn’t given him away, his impeccable manners and grooming would have. “Who are you?” she asked. “Really.”

He’d introduced himself as the trainer at Longshead, but Jean-Jacques was no stable boy.

I suppress a yawn. It hurts to yawn. Especially in the back of my throat where the stitched skin catches. He’s late, if he’s coming. I don’t care if he’s early or late. I don’t want him springing out of nowhere is all. With a rat.

“For me to know. And you—”

“To find out,” Maggie Louise finished.

No one ever found out what was happening inside me. How the pain was eating me away. No one ever came to my rescue, or stood up for me.

I smell licorice. It alerts me.

I’m at the ready as I read fast,
Jean-Jacques bowed. Maggie Louise caught the teasing glint in his eyes. The game was on.

No movement around me. No presence. Phantom scent of licorice. It’s my paranoia. I’ll never lose it.

I wish I was Maggie Louise. Trusting, desirable, loved. Maggie Louise had lovers everywhere because she loved herself. Even if she wasn’t the most admirable person—always cheating on Charles, expecting his forgiveness—Maggie Louise saw what she wanted and took it. She’d never allow people to treat her like dirt. Charles, on the other hand . . .

Who cares about him? He’s weak and powerless in her hands.

I tear out the page.

A footstep sounds behind me and I brace. The jangle of keys. A thud. Turning my torso slightly, I spy the UPS man heading into the building. The truck idles right in front of me.

My vision blurs. Where was I? On the bench, with the book. In the body of someone I’ll never be. I rip out this page and the next.

I’m only on page 59 and there are thirteen days left. Thirteen days to finish this book and the next,
Desire in the Mine
. I rip out a fistful of pages.

For a while I sit and stare into space. At the truck, a passing car. A slight longing seeps in and I can’t will it away.

I wish I could drive. I’ll never reach my sixteenth birthday.

Where would I go, anyway? To the mall with all my friends?

When Kim pulls up, I stand.
Desire on the Moor
flutters to the ground. I think to leave it, but I don’t want
him
finding the book. Leaving me a message.

“Where’s Santana?” Kim asks.

Like I know or care.

* * *

A total of thirteen people are on the DOD list tonight. I shouldn’t think of them as people. What are they now? Spirits? Energy? They’re happy; that’s all I know. They’re free.

It’s Chip’s turn to invade my privacy. At least he knocks first, which gives me time to power down. “What are you doing?” he asks.

I just look at him. He wanders over to my desk. Instinctively my hand raises to cover the monitor.

“What were you working on?” He hitches his chin at my PC. “Just now.”

I should’ve thought to open textbooks on my desk or something. Think, think. I retrieve my book bag and take out a spiral. I find a pen.

I print, “I’m writing a story. For English.”

Chip reads my note. “I saw you Google, then nothing.”

I take back the spiral. I’m not sure what to say. Chip touches my shoulder and I flinch. When did I start to cringe at his touch? He goes, “Can I read your story when it’s done?”

I print, “It’s boring.”

Chip chuckles. “I doubt that.” He stays too long, checking his watch. “Well, I’ll leave you to it.”

After he’s gone, I log back on. For Chip’s sake, I Google “Shakespeare.” I choose “Collected works.” In another window I’m back at Through-the-Light.

I touch
WTG
.

Explosives

Effectiveness: 4–5 if detonator works properly.

Time: 10 milliseconds (approximately).

Availability: 1.

Pain: 4–5, but quick.

Notes: Difficult to acquire effective explosives and a detonator. Do NOT use gunpowder or other “slow” or homemade explosives. Use dynamite or “plastique.” Strap it to your forehead with the detonator. Taping a grenade to your head will work as well.

Oh, right. Where would I get a grenade? Kim, next time you pass through airport security, could you see if anyone’s confiscated a wad of plastique and a detonator?

I link back to DOD. Three more. It’s comforting, somehow, to know I’m not alone.

Too bad I’ll never see my name on this list. Unless you can access Through-the-Light from the afterworld. Not on a computer, of course. I wonder, though, if you’re all-knowing, all-seeing. If you choose to, can you monitor activities here on Earth?

Not that I’d want to. But if your reasons for leaving are to spite someone, or to hurt someone, it might be useful.

Mine aren’t. I just want the pain to end.

There are people who are leaving to get back at others, though. J_Doe111192 wrote on the Final Forum:
My bf broke up with me 8 months ago today. Every day it hurts more and more. People tell me time will ease the pain, but it’s not. I found out he’s engaged and his fiancé is pregnant. He got me pregnant and made me get an abortion. I’m only 17. He killed our baby and he killed me. I want him to feel dead inside the way he makes me feel every day of my life.

How does she know he’ll even care?

The Final Forum is teeming with people who hate specific individuals. J_Doe122388 wrote how his three older brothers beat on him:
They’d call me worthless pig shit and kick and punch me. Two held my arms while the other burned me with a lighter. Our dad hit us too but it hurt worse when my brothers took it out on me.

I’m glad I don’t have siblings.

J_Doe060391:
In 7th grade I had this bff who I trust with my life. I told her everything all my secrets what happened to me when I was little. See my mom had a drug problem and sometimes she let men take pictures of me. I showed one to my bff and the next day it was on MySpace and everyone’s calling me a whore. She said she couldn’t be friends with a child porn star. IT WASN’T MY FAULT. Why’d she do that? Why’d she tell?

Because no one can be trusted.

In one day I count fifteen stories where people are cyberbullied. Like, they’d get texts or IMs harassing them, then telling them they should die. I guess they figured they might as well do it.

I’ve been there. People trick you by saying, “Let’s IM,” and you’re so desperate to believe they’re serious, you give out your screen name. Words pop up on your screen. “Oinker.” “Jiggle jugs.” Messages like, “Derek is hot for you. He wants to take you out on a date.” You think, Really? Until the next IM: “At the all-u-can-eat buffet.”

Why are people so cruel? What did I ever do to them?

I can’t even count the number of stories in the Final Forum about gay people coming out. This one J_Doe wrote that his mother said,
I wish you’d never been born. You’ve ruined this family.

That’ll make you want to die.

Some kid’s father told him, “I’d rather kill you than have you be gay.”

He’s saving his father the trouble.

Kim’s never said anything like that to me—I’d rather kill you than have you be fat. But she never just accepted me for the way I was. She was always, “Let’s try this new diet. We’ll do it together. I could always lose ten pounds.” She was thinking, And you could lose a hundred. Of course, I’d cheat. Or cry at the table. Then Chip would sneak me snacks at night. I don’t blame him for sabotaging my diets; he had to be on them too. Hurting Kim or Chip is not my intent. I have no intent. I have no reason to live, that’s all. When I’m gone, I don’t
want
to be remembered.