In early April Bryce walked into his first period classroom and found that several girls were crying, sobbing into their hands. Their friends tried to console them, tears wetting their own eyes. Others seemed to be just giving the girls their space, glancing over and talking quietly to their own friends. Bryce wondered what was going on.
He set down his backpack slowly, confused. He watched as if by simply staring, someone would notice his confusion and provide an answer. No one did.
At the warning bell, when the classroom was mostly full, the teacher announced that they were having an assembly first thing. And indeed, as soon as the bell to signal the start of the day chimed, they filed to the gym. The usual roar from the students’ chatter seemed subdued, despite the echoing surfaces of the gym.
Bryce took a seat in the bleachers of the junior section.
“Do you know what the assembly’s for?” he asked the guy sitting next to him.
“No idea.”
Bryce glanced around his assembled class, looking for Lina. He didn’t see her. Maybe she was sick today. At least she wasn’t in this assembly. They were always a waste of time.
Finally the principal stepped to the lone mic in front of them.
“I have sad news this morning,” he started out. “We received word earlier this morning that Lina ______ committed suicide sometime last night.” There were gasps and cries, and murmuring rose up like a startled flock of pigeons. The room was buzzing with shock. Yet inside Bryce, everything was very quiet. His hands gripped the bleachers but he couldn’t feel it with his fingers. “The counselors will be available today, is anyone should need to see them,” the principal continued. “That is all. Classes will resume today on a fifteen minute delayed schedule.”
Bryce walked back to class feeling numb. He was so distracted he hardly knew where his feet were taking him. His peers were subdued as well. But he saw some who walked with unconcerned faces, even some who talked with smiles and laughed.
“How can you laugh?!” he wanted to scream at them. “Someone has died!” The emotion wouldn’t translate to words his tongue could form, however.
Three students drew up next to him.
“Carrie said she threw herself off the cliff in the park. You know the one that hangs over the ocean?”
“How’s Carrie holding up? They were pretty close, right?”
“Last I saw, she was heading to the counselor’s office. She’s been crying all morning.”
“Poor girl.”
The cliff in the park.
Bryce suddenly had a flashback of a lunch he and Lina had there.
“I love the shape of that cliff,” she had said, pointing to the concave shape. “Like a springboard.”
Bryce had snorted. “A springboard for birds, maybe.”
But Lina was no bird. She had no wings or feathers. No special power to protect her. If she really had jumped from there, she would have fallen like a rock and been dashed upon the stones that made of the cliff’s crumbling base.
She wouldn’t. How could Lina be so stupid? Why would she do something so stupid?
Why? Why? Why?
The words ran around in Bryce’s head. The question that most people thought of first in suicide cases was only now occurring to him. And in the middle of third period, it suddenly seemed preposterous. Lina wasn’t dead. She’d never do a thing like throw herself off a cliff. What kind of person did they think she was? Bryce even chuckled a bit to himself. But the taste was bitter.
Lina wasn’t dead.
After school, when it was just Bryce by himself walking alone, he pulled out his phone. He stared at it for a while before opening his contacts and pulling up Lina’s number. Again he hesitated but then pressed “call.”
The phone rang once. Twice. Four times.
“Pick up, Lina,” Bryce muttered. “Pick up, damn it!”
Then voicemail. Her voice. She wasn’t there but leave a message—she’ll get back to you. A beep.
“There’s been some sort of mistake,” Bryce said. “Everyone thinks you’re dead.” He tried to laugh at the joke but he felt like he was choking. “But you’re not dead. You can’t be.” Even as he said it, Bryce knew the truth. Lina was dead. She’d never get this message. She’d never call him back.
The realization was throttling him. Sorrow forced itself out of his eyes in hot tears. His phone slipped from his fingers and clattered on the ground. Even as the sorrow was filling him to the brim, another emotion was emerging. It swirled in his sorrow, tainting it in its own color, like cream added to coffee.
Guilt.
Somehow, somehow this was all his fault.
