Letters From The Dead

Chapter 1

And I pressed the green button just as my phone started ringing as soon as the door shut behind me, my teacher still yelling at me. There was a silence, but I waited with baited breath.

Please let me not have missed her, I prayed silently, walking purposefully through the hall and down the stairs.

“Deidre?” I asked after I was out of the math department, avoiding the security guy by swiftly turning a corner and hiding in the doorway of an empty classroom.

“Bye, Halley,” my best friend’s voice sounded soft and I gawked.

“What?” I asked, my voice already getting hysterical, “Deidre!”

“Bye,” she repeated faintly before the line went dead.

“Deidre!” I yelled at my phone even though I knew she’d already hung up. I ran my hands through my hair. I had no idea what to do.

Call someone. Call anyone.

“Miss?” the security guy had found me.

“Don’t touch me,” I warned and he immediately went on the defensive.

“Miss, I’m going to have to ask you to come up to the office with me,” he said sternly and I flinched when his hand came to grasp my upper arm firmly but gently.

“I can’t!” I half-screeched, my voice higher than usual, tears already welling up in my eyes.

“Why not?” He asked rhetorically. Even if I’d told him the truth, it wouldn’t have changed anything.

And last year, I’d promised Deidre that if she decided to end it all, I wouldn’t tell anyone. I’d let her do it, because she only ever would if it got so bad she couldn’t stand it anymore.

They would find her body in her room this evening. Maybe the bathroom. I could picture her in the bathroom clearly, the bottle of pills in her hand, the serene look on her pale features. I could imagine her popping open the orange cap and dumping the little yellow sleeping pills into her hand. I knew she would count them. And then she’d throw her head back, swallowing each pill all at once, in one gulp, washing out the bitter taste with a cup of water from the sink.

They wouldn’t take long to react. Those pills were incredibly strong, and to have even a couple more than the dosage was dangerous. To have them all would no doubt be fatal.

And so I didn’t say anything to the security guard, letting him lead me to the office where I would be talked to with the principal of the school for breaking conduct and walking out on a midterm exam. I would probably get a couple detentions.

And my best friend would probably be dead by the time the talk was over.

*

I didn’t tell my parents. I sat the entire car ride home listening to my mother lecture me on being disrespectful to a teacher and leaving class and how I better be thankful that I was getting a second shot at the midterm this Saturday morning. She didn’t even know that there was anything wrong with Deidre. I’d never told her. She wouldn’t have understood.

My mom is the sort of person who likes to ignore some of the problems we have in life. Not big ones like economical or job-ical or whatever, but modern-day problems that weren’t really noticed as much way back when. She doesn’t really believe in self-harm or suicidal thoughts, depression or anxiety, any other mental illness. She thinks that if the person in question tries hard enough, they’ll get over it. In a way, it’s a bit refreshing—I’d always harbored a hope that Deidre would be able to just heal from her inner demons, but the rational part of me knew it was impossible from the moment I met her.

My dad, well, he and I don’t really ever see eye to eye. There are small little moments of peace where we can talk and banter and generally enjoy the other’s company, but it’s mostly just screaming matches that end with me crying because of how pissed off I am. But at the same time, if I were to tell a parent, it would be him. He’d picked up on some of Deidre’s problems right away, and when I asked him how he knew, he’d vaguely told me that he’d had some of the same when he was younger.

But nevertheless, neither of them were none the wiser. I shut myself up in my room after dinner, the door not locked, but it always stuck so when it was closed tight, people typically knew not to come in. I sat there, ignoring my homework and clutching my phone, waiting for it to vibrate. Waiting for the text that would never come.

It wasn’t difficult pretending nothing was wrong. I’d gotten so used to it already that it just sort of continued on. Sure, I had to try a little harder—when my father asked if Deidre was coming over on the weekend, I nearly grimaced before composing myself and making up some elaborate excuse of her being busy with homework—but it was scarily easy.

I was a bit worried at how far gone I already was where I could sit there and pretend like my best friend wasn’t dead. Because I knew she’d go through with it. I knew exactly how long it would take for the pills to take effect, and I knew that by the time we ate dinner that evening, she would be collapsed on the floor of her bathroom, empty pill bottle laying next to her fingers, face relaxed in death.

I slept that night, with no one to call me at two in the morning, whispering about the things that only one pair of eyes could see, but it wasn’t restful. I tossed and turned and clutched my phone tight for hours until the house slowly grew quiet around me. I tried sleeping on the couch in the sitting room, hoping to trick myself into falling asleep.

The sun was already breaking the horizon and coloring the sky a deep purple when I finally drifted off to sleep on the edge of my bed, curled up, the phone pressed close to my face. I jolted awake an hour later with my dad telling me to get up. Trudging to the bathroom, I looked at my appearance. My eyes were wide, my cheeks a little flushed, and there was an imprint of my phone on one side of my face that didn’t come off when I rubbed a bit.

I did my makeup up and fixed my hair until it was perfect. Later, when people asked why I was suddenly taking care of my appearance in not so many words, I told them it was for a special occasion.

No one suspected that it was because my best friend was dead.