I Was Here (13 page)

26

It doesn’t take All_BS long to reply to my message, though he doesn’t respond in the
way I expected him to: by sending me the same files I believe he sent Meg. Instead,
what I get is a message quoting Martin Luther King Jr.
“Faith is taking the first step even when you can’t see the whole staircase.”
To it he adds:
You’ve already taken the first step in deciding
. After that comes a link leading to a sort of directory with all these options: pills,
poisoning, gunshot, asphyxiation, strangulation, drowning, carbon monoxide, jumping,
hanging. When you click on each one, there is a detailed—and I mean
detailed
—list of pros and cons, as well as statistics listing success rates of each method.
This is similar to the document I first found encrypted in Meg’s trash, but not the
same.

Over the next week, more messages come:

“If you realize that all things change, there is nothing you will try to hold on to.
If you are not afraid of dying, there is nothing you cannot achieve.”—Lao-Tzu.

Do you know what that means? Letting go of the fear? Dying is not about ending something;
it’s about beginning something. I keep thinking of the moniker you use: Repeat. It’s
not accidental, I assume. But you realize, repeating is precisely what you’re doing.
The same thing. It’s only when you’re willing to do something bold, different, that
your life will truly change.

He’s proud of me. I can tell. Which makes me proud of myself. I know it shouldn’t.
But it still does.

I keep waiting for him to ask for specifics. I’ve spent hours looking at the suicide
shopping list, so, without intending to, I sort of planned how I might do it—or rather,
I planned myself doing it as Meg did. Getting the fake business license. Ordering
the poison. Having it delivered to one of those mailbox places. Writing a will. Packing
up my room. Going to the bank to get a fifty-dollar bill for the maid’s tip. Composing
an email. Setting it for delivery. Checking into a motel.

The information on the sites All_BS referred me to is so thorough that I know how
it would feel to take the poison. The burning sensation in my throat, then my stomach;
the tingling in my feet that would tell me it was starting to work; then the cramps,
followed by coldness as the cyanosis kicked in.

I’ve imagined it so many times now, first with Meg, then with me, and it’s like how
it always used to be, when I couldn’t tell one of us from the other—when I didn’t
want to.

So I want him to ask me if I’ve thought of a method because if he did, I’d be able
to tell him, and I think he’d be pleased.

But he doesn’t ask.

So I just keep planning.

x x x

One afternoon I’m getting ready to shower after work. I’m rooting through the medicine
cabinet for a new razor when I see one of those massive bottles of Tylenol that Tricia
buys from the warehouse store. I know from my research that Tylenol is a terrible,
horribly painful, but inexpensive way to do it. I turn off the shower. I go into my
room. I pour the white tablets onto my bedspread. How many would I take? How many
could I swallow at once? How would I keep from throwing them up?

Staring at the pills, it seems so easy. Like something I could do. Right now. Swallow
pills. Jump off a freeway overpass. Find someone’s loaded gun.
You don’t want to die,
I have to remind myself.
But if you did,
a little voice answers,
imagine how simple it would be. . . .

The doorbell rings and I’m startled and red-faced with instant shame. I hastily put
the pills back in the bottle and shove it into the medicine cabinet. The doorbell
rings again.

It’s Scottie, holding Samson on a leash and kicking at some dried leaves that have
bunched up under the mat. He looks at me in my rumpled, sour-smelling T-shirt.

“Were you sleeping?” he asks.

“No.” I haven’t been sleeping much lately, which makes me look as if I’ve always just
been woken up. I’m still a little shaken by the Tylenol, so when Scottie asks me if
I want to go for a walk with him and Samson, I almost leap out the door.

We set off into the dusky late afternoon. I’m hyper now, a one-woman small-talk machine.
I ask Scottie about school, only to have him remind me it’s summer break. I ask him
what he’s doing this summer, and he reminds me that he’s at the Y camp. I should know
this because it’s what he does every summer, as did Meg when she was younger. I used
to beg Tricia to sign me up too, but she said she refused to spend money on camp when
she was free during the day, so summers meant me counting the hours until the Garcias
got home.

Scottie keeps walking and I keep asking inane questions and when I run out of those,
I’m about ask if he’s got any good knock-knock jokes. He and Meg used to make up the
most absurd nonsensical ones—
Knock, knock. Who’s there? Lie. Lie who? Lions lie
—and they’d laugh and laugh until someone cried or farted. When I’d shake my head
and call them gross, they’d say I lacked their stupid-humor gene, which I knew was
them being silly but made me feel bad somehow.

So I don’t ask for jokes, and then I run out of small talk. By this point, we’ve looped
through town and Samson has taken two shits, which Scottie has stoically scooped into
plastic bags. “Are you looking?” he asks.

“Am I looking?” I repeat.

“For the person. From the note. Who helped her.”

I don’t know why I’m so surprised that he knows this. He’s the one who knew it all
along.

My expression must give something away, because he nods slightly, like he understands.
“Good,” he says.

At the corner of his street, Scottie lets Samson off his leash. “Get him,” he says.
I think he’s talking to the dog, but I realize he’s talking to me.

When I get home, I take the Tylenol out of the medicine cabinet, dump the pills down
the toilet, and bury the bottle in the garbage. A few days later, when Tricia gets
her period and goes crazy trying to find the bottle, I play dumb.

27

The next time I go to the library, the front door is locked. Which is weird. I know
the opening hours by heart. Closed Sunday and Mondays. Open Tuesdays from one to six.
I check my phone. Tuesday, three thirty. I give the doors a shake and then, frustrated,
a kick.

I come back the next day, when the library should be open all day, but it’s the same
thing. Mrs. Banks is inside, though. I knock on the door.

“What’s going on?” I ask her when she unlocks it.

“There was a small electrical fire over the weekend,” she tells me. “We have to rewire,
and there’s no electricity in the building until then. We’ve been warning them about
the wiring for years.” She shakes her head and sighs. “Budget cuts.”

“What am I supposed to do?” I cry. The library has become my lifeline, my conduit
to All_BS. It’s already been four days since we last communicated, and I’m strung
out.

Mrs. Banks smiles. “Don’t worry. I’ve thought of that.” She goes back inside and returns
with a shopping bag full of books. “You can keep them until we reopen. Shouldn’t be
longer than a week or two. These are off the grid, so to speak,” she says with a wink.
“So we’re on the honor system. But I trust you.”

x x x

The next time I have Internet access is Friday at Mrs. Chandler’s. But she’s there,
so there’s no sneaking the signal. I’m desperate to hear from All_BS, desperate enough
to explain to Mrs. Chandler about the library fire and ask if I can stay after work
to check my email using her Wi-Fi connection. Mrs. Chandler looks at me a long time.
“You don’t have Internet at your house?” she asks. I shake my head, embarrassed. “Of
course,” she says. “Use it any time.”

I’m itchy and anxious when I log on. What if All_BS has lost interest? But then I
see the number of unread messages from him. The silence has worked in my favor. Used
to hearing from me almost every day, except Sundays and Mondays, All_BS is clearly
worried that I haven’t responded to his messages in nearly a week. The tone of his
messages is one of increasing concern. I can’t quite tell if he’s worried that I offed
myself without telling him—or that I changed my mind.

Tricia always says that guys want you more when they think they can’t have you.

I reassure him that it’s just Internet access issues. And then I think of Mrs. Chandler’s
concerned face, and I get an idea.

I don’t think I’ll have regular access to Internet again for a while,
I write, playing up the library’s electrical problems.
And I don’t know how I’ll do this without your help. I already chose my route, but
if I don’t catch the bus soon, I might miss it. Is there any other way we can communicate?
Like on the phone?

It feels like it takes an hour for his response to arrive, though it only takes five
minutes.

That’s not wise,
he writes back.

I force myself to wait ten minutes before replying.
I don’t see any other way,
I write. And then I type my cell phone number.
Call if you can
.

x x x

I hear nothing. And without Internet, we can’t have our email communication either.
I am disgusted to admit it to myself, but I miss the back and forth. Which really
means I miss him.

Work is tedious. No matter how much I scrub and polish, the houses still seem dingy
to me. One morning I arrive at the Purdues’ and see Mr. Purdue’s car in the driveway,
and I want to run away, but where is there to go? I steel myself and open the door
with the key Mrs. Purdue hides for me under the fake rock.

I’m in the kitchen, digging out the cleaning supplies from under the sink, when Mr.
Purdue breezes in. “I took a sick day,” he informs me, answering a question I didn’t
ask.

“Hope you feel better.”

“Oh, I’m fine. It’s more of a mental health day.”

I don’t answer as I head to the bathroom. I shut the door, even though that means
the fumes will be stronger. I am leaning over the tub with a can of Clorox when I
hear the door open behind me. The Purdues have two bathrooms; there is no need for
him to use this one. I wait for him to turn around, but he doesn’t. He comes closer.
He’s barefoot and I can hear the sound of his toes cracking against the tile floor.

I stand up and turn around, the Clorox can still in my hand, my finger still on the
nozzle. He takes a step toward me. The distance between us is already unnecessarily
close, and then he takes another step.

I hold the can to his face and squeeze out a tiny warning shot. “Just give me a reason,”
I say. “Just one.” I mean to be tough, but to my ears it sounds almost pleading.

He backs out of the bathroom, arms up in surrender. By the time I hear the tires squeal
out of the driveway, my rage has passed. But unlike the last time he messed with me,
I am not at all triumphant or Buffy-like. I already warned him once, but he just paid
me ten more bucks and came back for more.

x x x

It’s a bleak night. Tricia is out with Raymond, and the neighbors next door are having
a party. I still smell of bleach, even after my shower, and it’s like it’s not the
bleach but Mr. Purdue’s lechery that won’t wash off.

I can’t face looking at Final Solution notes, so I try to force myself to do something
different. I leaf through a couple of library books, but the words swim on the page.
I open Meg’s computer for a game of solitaire, but I wind up in her email program
again. For the hundredth time I stare at the missing hole of mail, as if the deleted
messages might magically materialize and answer all my questions. I back up and read
the notes she wrote to Ben. I read what he wrote back

You have to leave me alone
. How that had pissed me off. Only it’s hard to summon the anger now. Because hadn’t
I told her the same thing, just without words?

Was she mad at me? For being too close? For pulling away? For not coming to Oregon
over Christmas break? I pull up the email she wrote me after I broke our weeks of
silence by telling her about Mr. Purdue’s first ass grab.
Ha! That skeevy old bastard. How I wish I could’ve seen that!
I know you’ll always be strong; you’ll always be my Buffy,
she wrote.

I take out my phone. Ben’s texts are still in the log, ending abruptly after I told
him to stay away. My finger lingers over the call button. I imagine talking to him,
telling him about Mr. Purdue today, telling him
everything
that’s been going on the past few weeks.

It’s only when I hear the first ring that I realize I’ve actually hit call. When I
hear the second ring, I remember how often his phone rang when we were sitting there
watching TV together that day. I picture my call being the one that interrupts his
time with some girl now—and with a sudden and abrupt disgust, I see that I’ve let
myself become
that
girl. Before the third ring, I’ve hung up.

Also in my text log is a message from Alice with Tree’s number.
Call her,
Alice exhorted. I haven’t, because the whole point of finding the mystery friend
was to find All_BS. But right now Tree’s caustic bitterness seems to fit the mood.

The world’s grumpiest peace-and-love hippie answers. “What?”

“Is this Tree?” I ask, even though I can tell it is.

“Who wants to know?”

“It’s Cody.” I pause. “Meg’s friend.”

There’s silence on the line, not a friendly one. She’s not going to speak. So I continue.

“So, um, I saw Alice a few weeks ago.”

“Congratulations.”

Good old Tree. At least she’s consistent.

“She mentioned that Meg might’ve confided in you about going on antidepressants or
something,” I say.

“Confided in me?” There’s something between a laugh and a bark. “Why would she do
that? We didn’t exactly do each other’s nails.”

It’s such a bizarre image that I almost smile. “It didn’t seem likely, but Alice mentioned
you having said something. She couldn’t remember what.”

“She never confided in me. But someone should’ve force-fed her a whole bottle of antidepressants.
She so obviously needed them.”

The almost-smile dies. “What are you talking about?”

“I’ve never met anyone who spent so much time in bed. Except for my mom when she’s
having a depressive episode.”

“Your mom?”

“She’s bipolar. I don’t know if Meg was. I never saw her manic, but I saw her depressed.
Trust me, I know what
that
looks like.”

I’m about to tell Tree about the mono, how tired Meg had sometimes gotten since then,
how if she slept enough for five people, it was because she expended the energy of
ten people.
She needs a little time to rejuvenate,
Sue would sometimes say, closing the door, sending me away.

Then Tree says, “Plus, healthy people don’t talk that way about suicide.”

The hair on the back of my neck rises.
“What?”

“We had a feminist lit class together, and one night me and her and a few other girls
were in a café, studying at a table, and Meg starts quizzing everyone about how they’d
off themselves. We were reading Virginia Woolf, and at first I thought it was because
of that. Everyone had their half-baked answers. Guns or pills or jumping off a bridge,
but not Meg. She was very specific: ‘I’d take poison and I’d do it in a hotel room
and I’d leave the maid a big tip.’”

Neither of us says anything. Because of course, that’s exactly what Meg did do.

“At which point I told her that she should stop moping and get to the campus health
center for some Prozac already.”

A friend told me to go to the campus health center to get some meds
.

“It
was
you,” I whisper into the phone.

I can hear her surprise crackle through the phone. “Me?”

“She said a friend talked her into going to the campus health center, and I’ve talked
to dozens of people, and no one ever mentioned a thing, no one thought to suggest
it. Except you.”

“We weren’t friends.”

“Well,
we
were. We were best friends and not only did I not suggest this, I didn’t think to.”

“Then we both failed her,” Tree says. And there’s such anger in her voice. And it’s
then I get it. The animosity. It’s Meg. It’s the tentacles of her suicide, reaching
out, burning people who barely knew her.

“Sorry,” Tree mutters under her breath.

“She listened to you. She went to the campus health center and got some meds.”

“So what happened?” Tree asks. “Didn’t they work?”

“It’s my understanding that you have to take them for them to work.”

“She didn’t take them?”

“Someone talked her out of it.”

“Why would they do that? Those drugs saved my mom’s life.”

I think of all the stuff on the boards, about the drugs numbing your soul. But that
wasn’t it. It was because someone convinced Meg that her life wasn’t worth saving.
That death was a better option. It was because, at the very end, when it should’ve
been me whispering in her ear, telling her how amazing she was, how amazing her life
was and would be again, it was All_BS doing the whispering.

Tree is right about failing Meg. But it wasn’t her that did. It was me. I failed her
in life. But I won’t fail her in death.