Suicide Notes From Beautiful Girls (2 page)

Chapter 3

1 year, 6 months, 4 days earlier

It was a relief to
know she didn’t have to explain. Not about the ache in her chest, the pit in her stomach, where it was coming from, and how much she didn’t want to talk about it—Delia would just get it. She always did.

June imagined what Delia was about to say, maybe something along the lines of, “Parents. Fuck ’em,” or “Only boring people have perfect lives.” Delia could make you feel like the things you didn’t have were things you didn’t want anyway. She changed the whole world like that.

So that’s what June was expecting, standing out there in the summer sun, waiting for Delia to fix this.

Delia tipped her head to the side as if she was considering something. She raked her curls behind her ear, hiked up her low-slung cutoff shorts, then reached out and took June’s hand. She squeezed it tight, but still she didn’t say
anything at all. She just grinned and waggled her eyebrows.

Then she started to run.

And because she was holding June’s hand so tightly, and June’s hand was attached to June’s arm, which was attached to June’s body, June had no choice but to run with her. She stumbled at first, adrenaline coursing through her veins as she plunged toward the ground, then righted herself. Delia was ahead of her, arm stretched back, racing
across the empty field, legs pumping, pulling June right along.

“Wait!” June begged. “Please!” June was in flip-flops. They were flapping against the grass until she accidentally ran right out of one of them. “I lost my shoe!”

But Delia didn’t wait or stop.

“Fuck your shoe!” Delia called out.

So what could she do? June kicked off the other one and pumped her legs. When was the last time she ran as fast as she could?

“But where are we GOING?” June shouted.

“WE’RE JUST RUNNING,” Delia shouted. Trees zipping by them, they were flying through the air.

The pit in June’s stomach dissolved, sweat broke out along her back, her lungs were bursting. But still they ran, giddy and breathless, the pieces of June’s life dropping away bit by bit, until she was nothing but legs in motion, arms, a heart, a hand, held. A body, stumbling, tripping, almost falling. Except she wouldn’t fall, that’s the thing. Delia wouldn’t let her.

Chapter 4

After school I meet Ryan
out front and follow him to his house like it’s any other day. That’s where we always go, even though no one is ever home at my house after school and someone is almost always home at his, and we’re supposed to want to be alone.

Ryan puts his arm around me as we walk inside into the enormous open foyer. Ryan’s family is rich. For some reason I didn’t even understand that when I first started coming over. I knew that his house was nicer than mine, that it felt much better to be in here in this big beautiful space than it ever did to be at home, but that wasn’t saying much. Delia was the one who explained it to me the one time she ever came here. Ryan was out of earshot and she’d leaned over the edge of their giant leather sofa and stared at me in this really intense sort of googly-eyed way that she only did when she was already
drunk. “Shit, J,” she said. She was holding one of their very soft throws, stroking it like a bunny. “Why didn’t you tell me that your
love-ah
was
loa-ded
?” But things were already kind of weird between us at that point, so I didn’t say, “Wait, he
is
?” which is what I was thinking in my head. Instead I shrugged like it was nothing.

Now I’m on the sofa and Ryan has gone into the kitchen area. I can still see him from where I sit.

“Are you sure you don’t want anything?” He opens the freezer. “You might feel a little better if you eat something.”

I shake my head. I’m underwater.

While Ryan puts things in the microwave, I look down at the phone in my lap, at the tiny icon on the screen—the message from Delia, which I still haven’t listened to. Which I can’t even bring myself to mention.

The microwave dings and Ryan takes out his plate, carries it to the couch, and sits down beside me. He pulls his laptop onto his lap and opens up the Kaninhus website, which is Swedish for “bunny house.” Basically there’s a guy in Sweden who has these two rabbits who live in a penned-in area in his backyard, and the guy keeps a webcam on them all day long. Ryan showed me the site when we first started seeing each other. “I really, I mean, I really,
really
like these bunnies,” he said, almost like he was embarrassed about it, which was what made it so charming. He told me his friends would think it was super weird if they knew. (His friends have an extraordinarily low bar for what weird is.)
The bunnies mostly sniff around and wiggle their noses and eat stuff. We talk about them a lot, as though they are real and have hopes and dreams and complicated interior lives.

“Hi, Adi. Hi, Alva,” he says to the rabbits on the screen. He is using a terrible fake Swedish accent, which is another one of our couple things. “How are you today, bunnies?” One of the bunnies is eating from a little dish. The other is asleep.

I guess he’s trying to distract me, to keep my mind off things, as though somehow that’s possible. Or maybe it’s that he doesn’t know how to talk to me about her, to have this conversation at all. I sure as hell don’t either.

But I’m thinking how it feels wrong to be sitting here staring at these rabbits while Delia is dead.

And I’m thinking how Delia would say,
I’m dead, what the fuck do I care? Watch the fucking bunnies if you want to.
And then she’d curl up the corner of her mouth the way she did when she knew she was being sassy.

“How’s your screenplay going, Adi?” Ryan says.

Normally I’d join in, ask Alva about her slam poetry or something (because we pretend they’re both frustrated writers on a writing retreat in Sweden). Instead, I’m bursting with everything that I’m not saying about Delia.

I can’t hold it in anymore. My mouth opens up and the words tumble out. “I heard it wasn’t an accident.”

Ryan turns slowly, the smile gone from his face. “Wait, like, are you saying she . . . ?”

I nod. “Did it herself.”

“Jesus. How?”

“I don’t know. But . . . there’s something else.” My heart is racing. I need to get this out. “She called me two days ago.” I hate hearing myself say this. I hate so much that it’s true. “But I just let it ring. She left me a voice mail. I didn’t listen to it at the time because I . . .” I stop. I didn’t listen to it because I couldn’t. Because I had worked so hard to try and put her out of my mind.

“What did she say?” he asks.

“I still haven’t played it yet.”

Ryan exhales slowly. “Maybe you don’t need to,” Ryan says. “Maybe it will only make things worse.”

“But how can things be worse than they already are?”

He just shakes his head, looks down, then leans back and holds out his arms in this way that I love, when I’m capable of feeling anything. Which right now I’m not.

I lean against him anyway, and he squeezes me tight. We stay that way until the front door opens a few minutes later and Ryan’s mother and sister Marissa come in. We spring apart. I stand up.

“Junie, sweetheart!” Ryan’s mother smiles. “We missed you over Christmas.” She puts her keys and her fancy purse down on the counter.

His sister waves to me as she walks up the stairs.

“Marissa told me what happened at your school today,”
Ryan’s mom says. She frowns. “Such a terrible shame, a tragic waste. Did either of you know the girl?”

I don’t want Ryan’s mother to make a fuss, the way I know she will if she finds out the full truth. “I kinda used to, a while ago,” I say. “Not anymore.”

“Oh, honey, that’s still awful. I’m so sorry.”

She reaches over and gives me a hug. I know if she holds on too long, I will break apart entirely, because all of a sudden it turns out I am just barely holding myself together. I have to get out of here.

I pull away awkwardly. “I need to use the bathroom.” I can feel Ryan watching me go.

Once I’m safely inside, I turn on the faucet and slide down to the floor, my back against the door.

I cannot wait any longer. I fish my phone out of my pocket and dial voice mail. I hold my breath.

First the automated recording. “Message received Tuesday, December thirty-first, three fifty-nine p.m.” And then Delia. “Hey, J, it’s me, your old pal.” Her voice sounds at once completely familiar and like I’ve never heard it before in my life. “Give me a call, okay?” She pauses. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

That’s it. That’s all there is.

Suddenly, I feel the edge of the door pressing into my back. Someone is trying to come in.

“One second,” I call out. My voice cracks.

I slip my phone back into my pocket, pull myself shakily to my feet. I splash water on my face and pat it dry with one of their soft towels.

I’d assumed there would be something in her voice to make this all make sense, but all that’s here is Delia sounding exactly the way she always did. She doesn’t sound like a girl who is getting ready to die.

Except . . . she was. It was the day before; she must have known. Did she call to tell me? Did she call so I could stop her?

I open the door. Marissa is standing there in the hallway, smiling at her phone. “Sorry,” she says without looking up. “I thought you were with Ry. He’s in his room.”

I walk down to the end of the hallway. He’s waiting for me on his bed, his blue plaid comforter bunched up behind him.

“Did you listen?” he asks.

I nod. “She said there was something she needed to tell me. But that was it. She always did like to keep people in suspense. Guess I will be forever now.” I try to choke out a laugh. Delia would have liked that joke. But the laugh gets mangled on its way out and comes out like a cough and a sob. I won’t let the tears come. I can’t.

“I don’t understand,” I whisper.

Ryan shakes his head, he clenches his jaw. “It’s beyond understanding.” And he looks like he is going to cry too.

“Junie?” Ryan’s voice jolts me out of my trance. It’s later. We haven’t been sleeping, just lying in bed, holding on to each other. The sun has gone down and the room is dark.

Now he holds something out in front of him. “Your present.”

It’s a tiny snow globe, a perfect winter ski scene behind glass. When I look closer, I realize the person on the slope is a rabbit.

“It’s Alva,” he says. “Or Adi.” He smiles. “When they went on vacation.”

I try to smile back, but my mouth won’t work right. “Thank you,” I say. “It’s perfect.” And I think about the rabbit wallet I have for him back home, how I ordered it custom from an Etsy shop and was so excited when it came. How I spent a long time wondering whether buying him a present referring to our private joke was somehow too
much
, too
serious.
And I thought for a long time about whether to get one rabbit or two.

I remember the girl who only had that to worry about. It all seems like a million years ago now.

We make our way back downstairs. The kitchen is warm and bright and smells like sweet cooking onions. There’s music coming out of the sleek speaker on the counter behind the sink—happy instrumental stuff with lots of percussion. Marissa sits at the kitchen table with her laptop open. Ryan and Marissa’s older brother, Mac, is there now too, standing at the kitchen island. There’s a tangle of peppers and onions sizzling in front of him in a pan.

Mac is nineteen and is different than the rest of his family. They all fit so easily into this world of happy family dinners, easy smiles. Even Ryan does, though on some level I think he probably wishes he didn’t. It’s a really good world to visit, but I’ve always only felt like a visitor. Sometimes it seems like maybe Mac kinda feels that way too. He graduated high school last year, and then went to Europe with his band. He came back a couple months ago and is starting a company with his friends, something to do with technology and filmmaking that’s supposed to be a secret. He lives in an apartment in downtown Philly with a few other guys, but he comes here sometimes for dinners and things. I always get the sense that he has some kind of secret life, maybe part of the world I used to belong to before I met Ryan when my whole life was wrapped up with Delia.

“Mom’s at some exercise thing and Dad’s working late,” Mac says. “Here’s food if you guys want it.” He hands us each a plate piled with grilled shrimp and peppers and onions. He puts a platter of tortillas in the center of the coffee table and surrounds them with sour cream and homemade guacamole. Mac is a good cook, but the idea of eating seems absurd to me.

But not as absurd as the idea that Delia could be dead, which makes no sense at all.

I sit with my plate in my lap, barely moving.

Delia devoured life in greedy, gulping bites. She never had it easy—there was hard stuff with her family, and hard stuff maybe wired into her brain. But no matter how bad things got,
she would never have chosen to leave the world when there was still the chance that things could change, and things could
always
change. There’s
always
hope. And the Delia I knew knew that.

So what the hell happened?

No one talks much at dinner. Ryan takes the onions off my plate and gives me the guacamole off his. I eat one bite. When the three of them are done eating, Ryan takes our dishes to the kitchen to load the dishwasher, and Marissa goes upstairs to her room. Then it’s just me and Mac. He comes over to the couch where I sit, and leans in, voice low. “They’re having something for her tonight,” he says. “Her friends from Bryson, I mean.”

I stare at Mac. I wonder if he is purposely not saying this in front of Ryan. I wonder, maybe, if somehow Ryan told him what happened all that time ago.

“Where?” I ask.

Mac shakes his head. “Sorry, I wish I could tell you. I only heard that they were meeting at her favorite place. And I don’t know what that is.”

But I just nod and almost smile, because the thing is, I do.