Cole, a frail, blonde-haired, young man, poised himself on top of a concrete dam. He listened to the falling water crash thirty feet below. His desolate hazel eyes glanced at what waited for him, jagged rocks. The bright sunlight blinded him. He stepped closer to the edge.
He hated being on Earth. His parents were dead, and Hope, his best friend, was millions of miles away. His uncle and his lunatic girlfriend were unbearable. Cole attempted to talk to them which led him here. He wanted to go back to the Mars prep school. He knew he could redo his last year since he was younger when he started. Dr. Bettencourt would allow him to return. But his uncle told him to go to a normal school. Normal? There was nothing normal about him.
Yet he had already gone to school with Hope. He studied, trained, and passed the tests.
For what?
Nothing.
His Mars or Bust bracelet fell past his now emaciated wrists, again. He constantly had to pull it back up to keep it from falling off. This time he let it fall to the ground for good. A strong gust nudged him from behind and carried a scent from the surrounding evergreen trees. He swore the swirling winds whispered to him, "Do it! Do it!"
Hope used to be his serenity. But he could no longer watch her videos because gazing into her blue eyes, sparked the memories of his parents and everything he had lost. It was a vicious cycle, spiraling downward. He needed a release; a break from feeling anything ever again. He had done far too much of that since ...
He tossed his viewer over. It smashed on the spiked boulders below and washed away down the rushing rapids. He glanced at his Betrothed / Mars or Bust bracelet. He could not see any reason to fight, none of his old dreams mattered.
The pastor at the memorial said it would take time. The psychologist told him the same. He tried that, but each day passed slowly, painfully, like being stabbed with a white-hot branding iron, melting his skin then repeating every second of every day. Weeks turned into months, yet even now, everything was still gone.
The only thing holding him back was Hope. He thought about his mom and that time when she waved at him from the house. She beamed and said, "Top three. We believe in you." Then, he peeked up at the half moon in the clear sky, which reminded him about lifting the metal debris off his parent's lifeless bodies. He had to cease his endless misery. He reached the edge with his shoe hanging over, bent his knees, and leapt.
