[HEATHERS] lifeboat. [VERONICA+H.M]

LIFEBOAT.

TW;
depression;
suicide attempt
mention; self harm.

          "I've thought about killing myself." The sudden confession rung out like a bell.

Heather Mcnamara stopped. It had come out too loud. Too bluntly.

"...Go on Heather," Ms. Fleming said, carefully edging forward. "It's just me and your fellow classmates who love you."

Ha. That's one way to word it. 27 pairs of dark eyes are on her as she sits at the small wooden desk. A thousand more watch from their homes. A whizzing of a TV camera and hushed whispers.

"Heather." It's hissed. The blonde's eyes shot up. Heather Duke is staring her down, like a warning signal. "Get back in line." She snapped.

She doesn't. "My sorta boyfriend was gay for his linebacker," she began. Ram and Kurt. It hadn't been expected. Jesus Christ it hadn't been expected.
•
She hadn't gotten a call at 1 in the morning a week earlier.

It's Duke. She sounds tired.

"Jeez, sorry Heather."

"For what?" Mcnamara paused.

She's quiet. The taller of the pair scoffs. "Ram...? Your weekly hookup? He's dead. Double suicide with Kurt this morning in the forest outside of school."

Heather's ears are buzzing. "You aren't funny."

"Funnier than you." She could sense the other smile faintly. "But I'm not joking. It's crazy. Turn on the news."

The phone falls and Heather is standing in her living room, staring at the screen in the darkness.

The remote nearly falls out of her scarred hand. They're displaying a picture of the note on screen. Scribbles of a love confessed to a unforgiving and judgmental world.

"oh."
•
"And my best friend seemed to have it together and now she's gone." It's barely more than a whisper and a producer clears his throat.

She had cried. She wouldn't tell Veronica or Duke that, but she had. After the funeral.

She had mixed feelings about Heather Chandler. A girl she had known since 2nd grade. A girl who she'd had countless sleepovers with. Someone she'd laughed with. Someone who became a junior and told freshmen to kill them selves.

Someone who McNamara had called in the middle of the night in the middle of a mental breakdown who had hung up on her and told her to 'suck it up'.
•

"And my stomach keeps feeling worse and worse and I sit on the bus shaking with my ears ringing because I'm thinking 'damnit I'm on the bus again because all my rides to school are dead."

It came out bitter. Her knuckles are white as she clenches the edge of the desk.

"It's like you're in a overcrowded lifeboat and there's a storm approaching." She tried to explain.

"You can't go anywhere. You're cold and sick and everyone is just yelling at you in panic."

Duke rolls her eyes. Her friend since middle school rolls her eyes.

"And it's so low in the water you know you're going to drown unless someone is thrown overboard to lighten the weight. Of course you're being pointed out because you aren't useful to the situation, to anyone else's lives, you're dead weight—"