Michael Ford: Suicide Notes

“I did it because…” I hesitated, blinking and sniffing a little, like I might start to cry at any second. “I did it because… because I couldn’t stand to live in the same world as Paris Hilton.”

I waited for him to yell at me, but he just sat in his chair, scribbling on the pad. After a minute he looked up at me. “Somehow, I doubt Ms. Hilton is responsible for your troubles. As annoying as she may be, she has not, as far as I know, been responsible for any deaths. So why don’t you just tell me the real reason?”

“There is no reason,” I said. I was getting angry because he wasn’t listening to me. “I just did it. I’m a teenager. We get bored and do stupid stuff. Now I’m over it and I want to go home.”

He looked at his watch and said we were done for the day. I just wanted to get out of there, so when he told me they were taking me off one of my drugs and that I might feel a little out of it tonight I just nodded and walked out without looking at him.

Sure enough, when Goody gave me my afternoon paper cup of happy tablets, one of the blue ones was gone. For a couple of hours I was okay. Then I started feeling a little tired, and now I feel like someone kicked me in the head a few thousand times.

It’s a really crappy feeling to realize that your entire outlook on your life can be controlled by some little pill that looks like a Pez, and that some weird combination of drugs can make your brain think it’s on a holiday somewhere really sweet when actually you’re standing naked in the middle of the school cafeteria while everyone takes pictures of you. Metaphorically. Or whatever.

I woke up in the middle of the night feeling like crap. I’d been having one of those bad dreams that seem to go on and on but where nothing really happens. In mine I was running through this big house being chased by something. I kept going up staircases and down hallways, looking for a way out. The whole time, whatever was chasing me was close enough that I could hear it breathing, but far enough away that I couldn’t see what it was.

The house seemed to be nothing but hallways and stairs. No rooms. There was nowhere to hide. All I could do was keep running. Finally, I ran up a narrow staircase and came to a door. The Chasing Thing was right behind me, scratching at the stairs as it climbed. Its breathing got louder and louder, and all I wanted to do was get away from it before I saw its face. But the doorknob kept turning in my hand, going around and around and around.

Then something clicked in the lock, and I pulled the door open. I ran inside, but there was no room there. There was just blackness. And then I fell. It was like the floor just melted, and I was falling so fast that I couldn’t even scream. Everything was black and cold, and the wind was shrieking in my head.

Then I woke up and I was staring at the Devil’s face grinning down at me from the ceiling.

I tried to go back to sleep, but my mind was racing racing racing. Only I wasn’t really thinking about anything specific. It was just this stream of words and half thoughts, like there were a thousand different channels in my brain and someone was flipping through them one after the next. I kept thinking about nothing until I was sure that if I stayed in my room for another minute I really would go crazy. So I got up and went into the common room. One of the night nurses, whose name I think is Nurse Moon (okay, maybe it’s not, but I don’t know her real name) was sitting at the desk that’s against the wall that faces the hallway. She was doing a crossword puzzle.

“Do you need something?” she asked me. She sounded irritated, like I’d interrupted her attempt to figure out 32 Down.

I shook my head. “I just want to sit,” I told her.

She nodded at the couch. I hadn’t noticed when I came in, but Sadie was already curled up on it, watching something on television. The light flickered on her face, but no sound was coming out of the TV. She’s such a freak.

When Sadie saw me, she patted the couch beside her. “Sit,” she said.

I sat down next to her, not because she told me to, but because I didn’t want to go back to my room. She was watching some black-and-white movie where a woman and a man were standing in an old-fashioned living room. The woman seemed upset, and the man was trying not to look at her.

“What do you mean you’re leaving, Reginald?” Sadie said in a sad little voice.

I looked at her, wondering what she was talking about. She stared straight ahead.

“I told you, Daphne, I’m going to Peru to search for the lost city of Quezelacutan,” she said, her voice suddenly low and angry.

I turned back to the screen, and realized that she was making up dialogue for the movie. As the woman threw herself at the man and grabbed his arm Sadie said, “Take me with you!” She made sobbing sounds. I couldn’t help but laugh a little.

“Shh,” said Sadie. “This is a drama. You can’t laugh.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“You be Reginald,” said Sadie.

“That’s okay,” I said. “This is your show.”

“Don’t be a jerk,” said Sadie. “Just do it.”

I didn’t feel like arguing, so I played along. In the film, the man was trying to pry the woman off him. “I can’t take you to Peru, Daphne,” I said quickly, trying to think. “There’s no room on the boat.”

“But I’m small,” Sadie said. “And I don’t eat much. Look how skinny I am.”

“No, Daphne,” I answered. “Peru is no place for a woman, even a skinny one. You’ll get malaria and die.”

“But I speak Peruvian!” Sadie exclaimed. “I learned it at Miss Piffingham’s School for Girls.”

Reginald conveniently looked excited. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?” I said.

“There’s a lot about me you don’t know, Reginald,” said Sadie as the woman in the movie let go of the man and put her hands on her hips.

The movie went to a commercial. Sadie looked at me and grinned. I shook my head. “You’re really nuts,” I said.

“It’s fun, isn’t it?” Sadie said. “I do it all the time. Usually my stories are better than the real ones. At least I think so. I never actually listen to the real ones. But I’m pretty sure mine are better.” She looked back at the TV. “Couldn’t sleep, huh?”

I nodded. “It feels like there are twenty-three people living in my head,” I told her.

“Only twenty-three?” Sadie said. “Lucky you.” She looked over at Nurse Moon, then leaned toward me. “They took you off the Wonder Drug,” she whispered.

“The what?”

“The Wonder Drug. It’s what they put you on when you come in, so that you don’t freak out or try to hurt yourself. Once they’re pretty sure you won’t, they take you off it. You must have been a good boy. I was on it for a whole week.”

“I wish I was still on it,” I said. “This sucks.”

“This is the part where they try to make you remember,” said Sadie. She looked at my wrists. “Is it working?”

Without realizing it, I’d pushed one sleeve of my pajamas up and was rubbing the gauze that circled my wrist. I stopped, and let the sleeve fall back where it was.

“It will go away,” Sadie told me, turning back to the television. “The stuff in your head. Little by little.”

I didn’t respond. I just sat and watched the television. “Do you remember?” I asked after a while.

Sadie nodded. “I wanted to float away,” she said, her voice sounding all dreamy. “I was sure I could breathe underwater if I tried hard enough. Like a mermaid.”

“But did you really want to die?” I asked.

She laughed. “Maybe. Maybe not. It didn’t matter. And then he jumped in and saved me, anyway.” She looked at me with her blue eyes. “Who saved you?”