the boy on the cliff ☯

after

They say that in moments like this, time seems to pass in slow motion. But it isn't. It's going too fast, slipping through my fingers like sand.
And I can't make it stop. I can't make it better.
My fingers fumble over the keypad on my phone. I've never had to diall 911 before. It feels wrong. I should never have to call this number.
Holding my phone to my ear, my fingers clench around it so tightly that my arm shakes.
I can feel the blood beating in my ears, in my skull. My head spins. This isn't really happening. These things don't happen in real life.
I don't know what to do. I need someone, anyone, to help. But barely anyone comes here, ever. I'm alone.
The phone rings over and over again, and it sounds eerily loud and piercing as it invades my eardrums. When it stops I almost jump. I hear a scuffle on the other end of the line, and a slow, calm voice. How can she be so calm? I want to scream at her. Instead, I mumble out an address, my voice wobbling. It doesn't sound like my own.
I can still hear her talking, but I'm not listening to any of it.
I hear the line go dead.
My phone clatters to the ground, and I don't pick it up again.

I pull Chanyeol's hoodie tightly around me, burying my face in it. It still smells like him, like Sprite and his deodorant. It's all I really have left of him. I feel tears prick my eyes, and blink them back furiously.
Chanyeol. Dead.
The words feel wrong together. They feel like a punch in the stomach. A week after it happened, everything's changed.
I still love him. I'll never stop loving him.
They've barricaded off the cliff path now, but I wouldn't go back even if I could. I can't stand the sight of it.
I've cried until I can't even cry anymore. I just feel numb. Empty. Bottomless-pit kind-of-empty.
So I try not to think about him. That doesn't work at all. It's useless.
I curl into a ball, squeezing my eyes shut, willing myself to sleep. It doesn't hurt so much then. When I'm asleep, it feels like he isn't so far away.
I can't get him out of my head, so I stop trying.
It was in the local paper. Front page. I'd gotten halfway through the article before I couldn't take it anymore. I scrunched it up in my fist and stamped it into the ground, screwing my eyes shut to stem the tears. They said it was a suicide. It can't have been. He wouldn't do that. He wouldn't. He wouldn't. Would he?
I wasn't invited to the funeral. I probably wouldn't have gone anyway, yet it still hurt.
But, none of his family know I exist. I hadn't really thought of how much of his life he'd kept secret from them until now.
I give up on trying to sleep. It isn't going to happen, not now. I sit up, leaning on my hands, and blink.
My bag lies on the floor beside the door. Inside it, among my own things, is the contents of his school locker. Unnoticed, I managed to get it when they emptied it out yesterday.
I haven't looked yet.
When I stand up, I feel my head spin, my heart throbbing loudly, desperately. I don't remember when I last took my meds, but it can't have been too long ago. Can it? I don't know. The rational part of my brain urges me too take them now, but I'm so, so tired. I don't want to do anything at all, anymore.
I grab the bag, my heart beating ever faster, and this time I know it's because of something else.
I sit back down on my bed, and, fingers trembling, reach inside.
The first thing my fingers come into contact with is a book. I pull it out, and bite my lip.
I recognise it immediately.
His notebook.
I hold it carefully in my hands, like its the most precious thing in the world. To me, right now, maybe it is.
I turn the first page. Clenching my teeth, I fight myself not to start crying again.
The writing is scrawled and messy and uneven, some words far too close together and some way too far apart. It's poems, mostly. Diary entries, here and there. A few pages of song lyrics. Sad songs, beautiful songs.
Love songs.
I can't help it. I'm crying again before I'm even half way through the book, my tears dripping onto the pages, causing spots of the paper to ripple and the ink to bleed.
The last page is written in black pen, not pencil, as if the writer was scared of the message fading away.

Baekhyun,

I know you're going to read this eventually. I'll get careless, leave it lying around somewhere. Or maybe, years into the future, I'll be showing this to you myself. Maybe we'll be married by then. I hope so. I want to spend my life with you, Baek. I want to so badly. I don't think I could ever stop loving you. I want to spend forever with you.
Baek, you're all I think about. All I care about. You make me crazy.
But we can be crazy together, right?
So, however and whenever you are reading these words, I want you to know this and never forget it:

iloveyouiloveyouiloveyouiloveyou.

Yours forever,

the boy on the cliff.