Suicide Notes from Beautiful Girls

  It means whatever happened, she saw it coming.

  Chapter 11

  5 years, 3 months, 8 days earlier

  Later, Delia would explain to June that finding a best friend is like finding a true love: when you meet yours, you just know. But the third week of sixth grade when the cool new girl, Delia, invited June for a sleepover, June was a nervous, happy kind of shocked. And she wondered if maybe Delia had made a mistake, thought June was someone else when she invited her. Or maybe it was because Delia hadn’t had a chance to make cooler friends yet.

  June was painfully, desperately lonely. She spent her weekends by herself, reading and cleaning up after her mother. June liked this new girl with her big turquoise earrings and enormous smile. She liked how this girl didn’t seem to give a shit about absolutely anything. So even though June had never had a one-on-one sleepover before and the idea made her very nervous, she said yes.

  The night of the sleepover Delia’s stepfather was working late, so her mother let them order pizza and cans of Coke and eat in Delia’s room. “My stepfather’s diabetic,” Delia said, slurping on the soda. “So the only soda we ever have is diet, which is poison. My own mother is trying to poison me.” Delia didn’t sit while they ate; instead she walked around the room pointing things out like a museum tour guide—there was a tiny painting of a winter scene that Delia had found at a thrift store, there was the prescription pill bottle nicked from her mom (Delia kept breath mints in there now), there was a cherry stem that she’d knotted using only her tongue (it was the only time she’d ever successfully done it, so she’d saved the evidence). June had never seen a room like this, one filled with so much interesting stuff. It was like she expected to have friends over to show things to.

  Shortly after ten Delia’s stepfather came home and started yelling at her mother behind their closed bedroom door, yelling in an unhinged, out-of-control sort of way. That’s when Delia said it was time to sneak out.

  She climbed out her window and then dropped down into the grass. June was scared, but she followed. They walked up and down the block a couple of times. They left dandelions in peoples’ mailboxes. They peeked into the window of Delia’s cute high-school-aged neighbor. They saw him changing out of his clothes, and he got all the way down to his boxers before he shut the curtains. “Damn it!” Delia said. And then she grinned. “I have an idea.” And then—and even at the time, June couldn’t really believe it was happening—Delia reached around back and unhooked her bra through her shirt, then pulled her arms into her shirt, wriggled around, and suddenly her bra was off and in her hand right there on the street. June stared at it in the light streaming from the windows of the houses. It was black, with an underwire. A real bra, because Delia had real actual boobs. She convinced June to do the same, and taught her how to get it off without taking her shirt off. June was embarrassed that hers was barely a bra at all, more like a shiny little undershirt. But Delia didn’t seem to notice or care. “Now what?” June said. She felt breathless and giggly.

  “Now we mark our territory,” Delia said. She grabbed June’s hand and then snuck around the front of the house, opened up the boy’s family’s red-barn mailbox, and tossed both bras inside.

  “There,” Delia said. “And now we have a secret.”

  June nodded, like she understood. But she didn’t until Delia went on. “Having secrets together makes you real friends,” she said. “Secrets tie you together.” And June felt suddenly giddy at the idea that Delia would want to be tied to her.

  Then they snuck back in through Delia’s porch. And even though it wasn’t cool at all, June told Delia this was probably the first thing she’d done that she wasn’t supposed to. Maybe ever in her life. Delia just smiled. “Guess you haven’t been hanging out with me enough,” she said. “We’ll have to change that.”

  They tiptoed back upstairs, and Delia made a show of locking her bedroom door behind them. Then she leaned over and lowered her voice to a whisper. “My stepfather is an asshole. So I always keep it locked, in case.”

  June felt fear prickling her belly. “In case what?”

  “In case he tries something.”

  “Has he?”

  Delia shrugged and shook her head. “But if he ever does . . .” Delia reached into her desk drawer and pulled out a switchblade. She held it up. “I’m ready for him.” June opened her mouth in a little shocked O. Then Delia pressed the silver button on the base and a plastic comb popped out. Before June could feel the full effects of her embarrassment, Delia started laughing. It was round and rolling and joyful, her laugh. It didn’t feel like she was laughing at June was the thing, it felt like she was inviting June to join in on the joke.

  “You should have seen your face,” Delia said. She shook her head. “You were so shocked, it was amazing.” She put her arm around June. “My stepfather really is a shit, though. My family in general is complete bullshit, actually. What’s yours like?”

  “I only have a mom,” June said. “She’s pretty bullshit too.”

  And then for some reason—maybe because June liked the sound of Delia’s laugh, or maybe because she couldn’t even remember a time when she’d been honest, really truly honest with anyone, or maybe just because it was late at night and that’s the hardest time to hold things in—June began to talk. She talked about how her mom was out most nights, even when she wasn’t working; how she came home early in the morning, knocking into things and stinking of alcohol. She talked about her father, who she’d only met twice. She talked about the time her mom fell and sprained her wrist after tripping over June’s school bag and blamed June, and June felt really guilty, but also didn’t totally know what to think because of what she smelled on her mom’s breath.

  June talked and talked, felt the words pouring from her mouth as though she was a faucet and had forgotten how to turn herself off. And when she was finally done, she was struck with a wave of horrible embarrassment. She had ruined her new friendship when it had barely just begun.

  “I’m sorry,” June barely managed to mumble. Her cheeks burned with shame and disgust at herself, at how needy and weak she suddenly felt.

  But as she looked up, she saw that Delia was staring at her, her head tipped to the side. She didn’t look bored or freaked out or like she thought June was a weirdo. She just smiled in this way that made her seem very wise. “Crazy that we have such messed-up families, and yet somehow we both turned out so awesome, right?”

  June felt something lifting inside of her. We. “Right,” she said. She forced a laugh and then she meant it.

  They brushed their teeth after that and put on pajamas. Delia got them three glasses of water (“I need two, in case I dream about a fire,” Delia said), and they lay side-by-side in Delia’s enormous queen-size bed. Delia combed June’s hair with the switchblade comb—Delia insisted on doing it, because her own curls were too thick and would break the teeth off, and she hadn’t yet used it on anyone—and June felt almost drugged with happiness and relief. Now that this girl was her friend, everything might just be okay. She wouldn’t be so lonely anymore. She wouldn’t be alone. This girl was going to change everything.

  Chapter 12

  The pit in my stomach is enormous; it could swallow up my room, the house, the whole entire world.

  I abandoned Delia, and now she is dead.

  A gut punch of sadness hits me, so intense I can barely breathe. I open my closet. I reach in toward the back and feel for the picture. I pull it out and sink down onto my bed.

  The frame is glittery pink with two enamel teddy bears on top, holding a heart between them. Delia gave it to me the summer after sixth grade. It was a joke but also not a joke. The photo is of the two of us peeking out from under these ridiculous floppy sun hats that Delia had bought for us. There I am—blond hair, forgettable face—and next to me is Delia, her dark curly hair taking up half the picture, olive skin, big strong nose, fierce
chin. Her huge mouth opened in the world’s biggest smile. Delia always insisted she was kind of crazy-looking. “Not pretty,” she would say. “Sexy.” But she was half wrong, because when she smiled like that, she was the most beautiful person you had ever seen.

  When we stopped being friends, I kept telling myself it was only for now, a temporary thing. One day it would all go back to normal. I was always so sure of that.

  Finally, finally the tears begin to fall. We will never have the chance to make up. I will never have the chance to apologize. I will never have the chance to tell her anything ever again. She is really truly gone.

  I put the frame on my lap and take the phone out of my pocket. I call voice mail so I can hear her voice, hear the last words she’ll ever say to me.

  “Hey, J, it’s me, your old pal . . .”

  I had so many chances to fix things between us. So many chances that I didn’t take. Whatever was going on in her life, if I had been there, I would have kept her safe.

  “Hey, D,” I whisper over her voice. I need to say these words, even though she can’t hear me. “I know we haven’t talked in a while, and that a bunch of crap happened, but I really miss you.” My chest is so tight, my heart might burst.

  “There’s something I need to tell you,” she finishes inside the phone.

  The tears are still coming, an impossible amount of them. I keep talking. “And I’m so, so sorry about everything that happened, I should have . . .”

  And then I stop, because here is the weirdest thing: The message is over, but somehow it isn’t—there are still sounds coming through my phone. There’s a scuffling, and then Delia again. Only, this time, she isn’t talking to my voice mail, but to someone in the background. “I’m going to tell,” Delia says. There is a teasing lilt to her voice, but underneath there’s something darker. “I’m going to tell what you did.”

  I press my ear to the speaker. There’s another voice, male, shouting. I can’t make out the words, but I can hear the tone: anger. Fierce and frightening. I hold my breath, and my body fills with ice. And then the message clicks off.

  Adrenaline courses through my veins. I’m not crying anymore. What I think I just heard . . . this is not possible. I cannot have heard it.

  I start the message again, and again there is Delia’s voice. The scuffling. Delia: I’m going to tell. I’m going to tell what you did. And then the voice in the background, that male voice, that anger.

  The blood is pounding in my ears. There is no mistake. That person in the background, I know who it is.

  It’s Ryan.

  My hands are shaking. I can barely breathe. I check the time. It’s after one a.m. Ryan will be sleeping.

  The phone rings four times and goes to voice mail. I hang up and call again. It rings and rings.

  Finally, he answers.

  “Mmm’lo?” I imagine his face pressed against his pillow, one bare leg kicked out from under the comforter, because that’s the way he always sleeps. I imagine him with Delia, yelling the day before she died.

  “I need to talk to you.” My voice sounds strange, barely like me at all.

  “Are you okay? What time is it?” I imagine him sitting up in bed now, scratching his chest. I imagine his slow, sleepy heart starting to pound. “Did something happen?”

  Yes, I think. Something very, very bad. But what I say is, “Can you meet me?” Because I know I need to do this face-to-face.

  He hesitates for only a fraction of a second. I imagine him thinking how late it is, how early he needs to get up for swim practice. “Of course,” he says, like I knew he would. Because a thing I know about Ryan is that he always does what’s expected of him. Then again, maybe I’m wrong about that.

  “Should I come over?”

  “No,” I say. “I’ll come to you.”

  Chapter 13

  Fifteen minutes later I’m pulling up to his house, my entire body buzzing. All the windows are dark, but the big bright front door light is switched on, and there’s Ryan, standing out on the walkway, rubbing his hands together.

  I step onto the grass, ice crystals crunch beneath my feet. I can just barely make out his face. “Baby,” he says, all warm breath in the cold air. Baby is not even something he calls me. “Are you okay? What’s going on? Tell me.”

  He starts to pull me toward him and for a second I almost let him. I am ashamed at how desperately I want to be held, to feel a body against mine, letting me know that everything, or even anything, is okay.

  I step back and hold my hands up.

  “You were with Delia,” I say. This is the first time I’ve actually said her name to him in a year.

  “What do you mean?” He is whispering. “Did you have a bad dream or something?”

  I shake my head. “You were with her in real life on New Year’s Eve.” I can barely even get the words out.

  “You’re scaring me, Junie. Because I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. . . .”

  I take out my phone, dial voice mail, and hold it out on speaker. “Listen.”

  Message received . . . There’s Delia. Hey, J, it’s me, your old pal . . . I watch the numbers on the timer tick by. At nine seconds, she stops talking to me. I can feel Ryan staring at me. I don’t look up. “What’s this . . . ?” Ryan starts.

  I say, “It’s coming.”

  At second forty-two, the voices start again. Delia: I’m going to tell . . . Then the shouting. Only when the message finally finishes and I shut off my phone do I look up.

  “I don’t understand what that is,” Ryan says quietly.

  “That was a voice mail she left me the day before she died,” I say. “And that’s you in the background.” My voice is cold. Hard. He’s never heard me sound like this before.

  I wonder how he is going to begin to explain this. I’m scared to hear what he will say next. I’m scared not to hear it too.

  But he stands there, completely silent. Finally, he lets out a long, heavy sigh that puffs white in the air. “Please tell me you’re not serious,” he says. He’s using that gentle, concerned tone again.

  “I’m very serious,” I say.

  “The random yelling in the background that you can barely make out? That’s supposed to be me?” He doesn’t sound angry, just hurt and so honestly confused that I’m starting to feel confused too.

  Back at home I was so certain. And that certainty filled my belly with fire. But out here in the cold night . . .

  “It’s not me,” Ryan says. “Have you slept at all since yesterday morning? Have you been eating? I get being really insanely upset. Believe me, I do . . .” He pauses and looks up, like he’s waiting for me to think about what he’s saying.

  And the truth is, I haven’t slept much. I’ve hardly eaten anything. But how can I eat when Delia is dead? How can I sleep when whoever did this to her is out there?

  “We were still in Vermont then,” Ryan says. “I wasn’t even back from vacation yet.” He almost sounds sorry to say this, sorry to have to make me face how completely wrong I am suddenly realizing I am.

  Because with all that adrenaline coursing through my veins, I forgot all about the vacation he just got back from. And the time line of everything—the entire rest of the world, really, and how it works and what makes sense. I hold the phone to my ear again, play the message again. And this time the shouts sound like . . . nothing. No one I know. That person could be anyone.

  “Oh God,” I say. My voice is so quiet, I can barely hear myself. I feel so ridiculously ashamed now, for rushing over here in the middle of the night. For getting Ryan up out of his cozy bed and his family’s nice house, for accusing him of who even knows what. I’m ashamed for dragging him further into this darkness. “I’m so sorry.”

  “This is a big, enormous, crazy, shocking thing that happened,” Ryan says. “You have nothing to apologize for.
But admitting that she . . . that what really happened happened doesn’t make this somehow your fault.” He holds my shoulders. “This isn’t your fault or anyone else’s. She was a very messed-up girl who made a terrible mistake and killed herself, and if she fought with some guy before she did it, that doesn’t change anything. So please, you have to promise me you’ll stop this, before you drive yourself crazy.”

  I stare at him, at his beautiful face out here in the dark.

  I want to say yes, and I understand why he would think that. But Ryan didn’t know her like I did. I can only begin to imagine how all this must look to him. He is so calm and reasonable, and that is what I like—maybe, I realize now, even love—about him. He doesn’t have access to a certain part of the world that maybe I do, to a certain kind of darkness that I have been trying so hard to shed.

  “Promise me?” he says.

  I force the tears back into my face, where they sit, burning. I desperately do not, do not want to cry in front of him. Around him I am someone else—myself, only better, but in a different way than with Delia. The version of me he sees is always strong, always unafraid, at least on the outside. Except for that one weird thing in the beginning, our relationship has not been about drama. There is coiled-up fear inside me, though. I’m always worried this will end. But I keep that buried deep, so the surface is left bright and clean and pure. It’s not like this is news to me, but standing out there under the black sky, I fully get how much I need this not to change. I loved Delia, love her still. But I can’t drag Ryan into this any further than I already have. He doesn’t belong in this. I won’t bring him here.

  “Okay,” I say. “I’ll stop.” And now, in this moment, I’m glad for the dark so he can’t see that I’m lying.

  He hugs me again, and asks me if I want to come in. “I’ll sneak you into my room,” he says. “You can stay the whole night.”

  But I tell him no, I tell him thank you and that I hope he has a good swim practice tomorrow morning and that I’ll see him tomorrow evening.