Suicide Notes From Beautiful Girls (24 page)

Chapter 57

5 years, 3 months, 15 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 truth is, that isn’t quite how it happened.

It was the third week of sixth grade when Delia, brand-new to the school and angry as fuck, stood up in front of the room and was introduced to the class. Her mother had just married a shitbag and moved them in with him. Delia wasn’t sad to leave her old school behind, because things had gone wrong there in ways she’d rather forget about. But she didn’t want to be at this new school either. In fact, she’d have preferred to not have to exist at all. It was
painful
living like this, burning angry anxious fire inside. It
hurt all the time.

But then, that first day, she spotted June, and the hot fizzy flame subsided. And it turned to a bottomless starving wanting, still painful, but in a different way. What did she want?
She didn’t quite know. Not to fuck this girl exactly, or to be her, really, either. No, more like she wanted to
eat
her. Delia was suddenly
ravenous
for the blond wide-eyed bunny-looking thing three rows back. She wanted to take this girl, gulp her down, even her
bones
, just gulp her down whole.

Of course, that isn’t the kind of thing you could say to someone, a brand-new maybe friend at a brand-new school. So instead, she did what she knew was normal—because she did
know
that, at least most of the time! She invited that girl, whose name was June—it was the perfect name for her!—over for a sleepover.

And June opened up her sweet blue eyes in delighted surprise and said yes.

The night of the sleepover Delia’s stepfather was working late because that shitbag always did, and Delia told her mother they were ordering pizza and eating it up in her room. And her mother didn’t argue because her mother never argued with her anymore, which was upsetting in its own way, because it was like her mother
couldn’t
,
didn’t even have it
in her
, since shitbag arrived in their life
.
But it also meant Delia got to do what she wanted.

Upstairs in her room with June, Delia could barely eat at all, couldn’t even sit still. She was full of manic insane energy, walking around the room, pointing things out like some kind of cracked out tour guide—there was a tiny painting of a winter scene that Delia had stolen from a thrift store, there was
a cherry stem that she’d knotted using only her tongue, there was the pill bottle containing her secret escape plan, assembled bit by bit from the medicine cabinet in her mother’s bathroom when no one was looking. Late at night sometimes, she would empty them into her hand. Once, she held them all in her mouth, even. She lied and told June they were breath mints.

June looked at everything with such sweet awe, radiating pure goodness and light.

Just after eleven, shitbag came home and started yelling at her mother behind their closed bedroom door. Delia felt the hot fizzling inside of her, but she made herself breathe in and out three full times, and then she smiled like everything was fine and told June it was time to sneak out.

She climbed out her window and then dropped down into the grass. June was trying to pretend not to be scared—it was so cute!—but she followed. They walked up and down the block a couple of times. They snuck dandelions in people’s mailboxes, which was June’s sweetly innocent idea of something naughty they could do. They peeked into the window of Delia’s seventeen-year-old neighbor. They watched him changing out of his clothes, but when he got down to his underwear, he shut the curtain. “Damn it!” Delia said. And then she grinned, like this was just fun, like she hadn’t actually offered to suck his dick the day before (he said no, looking pretty freaked out by the offer, actually). But it was okay. Standing there with June, she didn’t give a fuck about that
or him at all, anymore. She wanted to do something to bond the two of them together. What did normal people do? What would be okay to do?

Delia had an idea. She took off her bra. Then she convinced June to do the same, taught her how to get it off without taking her shirt off. June’s bra wasn’t even really a bra, and she seemed embarrassed about it. June’s little tiny raisin boobs were poking through the thin fabric of her T-shirt. Delia had a sudden fierce urge to reach out and pinch them, hard, make June wince and squinch up her sweet little face. Instead she forced herself to look away and said, lightly as though they were just having some silly fun, “Now we mark our territory.” She grabbed June’s hand, and then Delia 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. Having secrets together makes you real friends,” she said. “Secrets tie you together.” Delia was imagining all the future secrets they’d have, each one a thin rope wrapping around the two of them, binding them up.

They went inside after that, and Delia could feel the connection now, could feel those ropes when they got side by side into her bed, when Delia combed June’s hair so gently. She wanted the ropes tighter, more of them. An infinite number.

This girl was going to change everything. And she would never, ever let her go.

Dear Delia,

When you died, part of me died too. Now I’m finishing off the rest, so we can be together.

You once told me you wished we could leave this world behind and go into space where nothing bad had ever happened. I think eternity will be something like that: just you and me, floating in infinite blackness, tied only to each other.

I never used to believe in heaven, but now I know I was wrong—heaven is the feeling of home. Home was always with you.

I’m coming.

Yours always,

June

A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS

Infinite thank-yous
to my amazing agent, Jenny Bent, for being an incredible editor, brainstormer, adviser, and advocate. And also hilarious. Working with you is an absolute joy every step of the way. I am so happy that I get to.

I am very grateful to the extraordinary people at Simon Pulse, including Mara Anastas, Mary Marotta, Lauren Forte, Sara Berko, Carolyn Swerdloff, Teresa Ronquillo, Jodie Hockensmith, Michelle Leo, Christina Pecorale, Rio Cortez, and the entire Simon Pulse sales team. An enormous thank-you to Regina Flath for designing the gorgeous US cover. And special thanks to Michael Strother for the brainstorming help, including figuring out things like the temperature at which titanium melts, and the best drug to sneak into someone’s drink.

Thank you to the lovely Victoria Lowes and Gemma Cooper at The Bent Agency.

My gratitude, and Swedish Fish, to the fabulous Nicola Barr at Greene and Heaton.

I feel so very lucky to get to work with all the outstanding people at Egmont UK’s Electric Monkey imprint. Very big thank-yous to Alice Hill, Charlie Webber, Denise Woolery, Laura Grundy, Laura Neate, Lucy Pearse, Sarah Hughes, and Sian Robertson. Much appreciation to Andrea Kearney for the beautiful UK cover and interiors. And extra, extra thanks to my fantastic UK editor, Stella Paskins.

Thank you so hugely much, Robin Wasserman, for reading the manuscript and for the amazingly smart, astute, and helpful notes, not to mention very appreciated encouragement. Thank you, Brendan Duffy, for the brainstorming, terrific suggestions, and for asking just the right questions. Thank you, Micol Ostow, for the excellent notes on the final manuscript, and for being so very supportive throughout.

Big thanks to Siobhan Vivian for, among other things, that very pivotal phone conversation. To Paul Griffin for all the help when I first started working on this, and to Aaron Lewis for the help with that bit at the end. Thank you to Martin Arrascue for saying yes every time I said “Wait, but can I read you just one more thing out loud?!” Thank you to Mary Crosbie for reading things, brainstorming, and sending me all those cat pictures.

Massive thanks to Melanie Altarescu for very many things, but specifically in regard to this book, for dropping everything to read it in a mad dash right at the end. (And I’m sorry for the nightmares!!!)

Thank you to the entire staff at the Cocoa Bar, and to my delightful Cocoa Bar writing buddies.

And thank you to my wonderful parents, Cheryl Weingarten and Donald Weingarten!

Thank you to my Internet pals, some of whom I’ve never even met in real life, but all of whom I adore. Giant thanks to all the bloggers who’ve written such thoughtful reviews. Thank you so much to anyone who has taken the time to read this book.

And finally, my endless appreciation to my editor, Liesa Abrams Mignogna. Thank you for being brilliant; for being tons of fun to work with; for your incredibly insightful notes, thoughts, and suggestions always delivered with so much kindness; and for your deft guidance on issues huge and tiny. For always just getting it.

Lynn Weingarten is a writer and editor. Her previous books include:
Wherever Nina Lies
,
The Secret Sisterhood of Heartbreakers
, and
The Book of Love
. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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This Simon Pulse hardcover edition July 2015

Text copyright © 2015 by Lynn Weingarten

Cover photograph © 2015 by Peter Hatter/Trevillion Images

Author photograph copyright © 2015 by Aaron Lewis

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Weingarten, Lynn.

Suicide notes from beautiful girls / by Lynn Weingarten. — Simon Pulse hardcover edition.

p. cm.

Summary: They say Delia burned herself to death in her stepfather’s shed, but June does not believe it was suicide because she and Delia used to be closer than anything, but one night a year ago, everything changed when they and June’s boyfriend, Ryan, let their good time get out of hand, and now, a year later, June owes it to Delia to know if her best friend committed suicide or was murdered.

[1. Best friends—Fiction. 2. Friendship—Fiction. 3. Suicide—Fiction. 4. Death—Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.W43638Su 2015

[Fic]—dc23

2014039698

ISBN 978-1-4814-1853-9 (hc)

ISBN 978-1-4814-1859-1 (eBook)