Girl on the Line

by Faith Gardner

  MARISOL CRUZ has received first prize in the statewide Judith Bloomberg personal essay contest, receiving a $5,000 scholarship award for her entry, “My Best Friend’s Suicide Attempt.”

  I’m lying in my bed on my phone reading this early in the morning, scrolling through with bleary just-woke eyes, and the title of her essay is like a kick to the head. I gasp, sitting up. The room suddenly does not have enough air.

  My Best Friend’s Suicide Attempt.

  Stunned, I keep rereading those five words, thinking, Every student in our class got this email. Everyone who knows Marisol knows I’m her best friend. That means everyone now knows I tried to kill myself.

  Marisol never asked my permission. She never even told me she was entering an essay contest, let alone writing about my experience. Now she has shouted my secret to the world, and for what? For $5,000 she didn’t even need. Her parents started her college fund when she was still in the womb. They could probably afford to buy a goddamn building at an Ivy League.

  Marisol is supposed to be my best friend. How could she do this to me?

  I lie back down, staring at the ceiling.

  After an expletive-filled shower rehearsing what I’m going to say to Marisol, I go downstairs. Dad took the girls to some kids event at the Santa Barbara Zoo. Poor Ruby looked like she had been sentenced to death as they left, Dad assuring her, “It’ll be a blast!” So glad I’m old enough no one bothers to invite me to crap like that anymore, and I get the house to myself for the afternoon. Of course, Dad looked nervous about leaving me here alone.

  “You going to be okay?” he asked at least three times before he left.

  At both houses, my parents still keep all the painkillers stowed away somewhere out of reach. Every time I mention moving out of the house they nod and give me a tight-lipped smile.

  I sit on Dad’s living room couch, wrap myself in an afghan, and dial Marisol’s number.

  “Hello?” she asks suspiciously.

  “Hey.”

  “Is this some kind of emergency?” she asks. “First off, we strictly text. Secondly, you never respond lately.”

  “Marisol, I need to talk to you about something,” I say. “Have you seen our monthly class email?”

  “No, why?”

  “Well . . .” I swallow, digging my fingers into my palms, closing my eyes. “You were mentioned in it.”

  “Yeah?”

  “The essay content you won? For your entry, ‘My Best Friend’s Suicide Attempt’?”

  “Oh,” she says.

  The silence is long.

  “I—I didn’t mean for that to go in the newsletter,” she says. “My mom probably sent an email to the school or something. You know what a braggart she is.”

  “You wrote about me?” I ask. “Why didn’t you ask me if I was okay with that? You submitted an essay about my suicide attempt . . . to a bunch of strangers! And now everyone in school will know what I did.”

  “It’s not like the essay had your name in it,” she says, raising her voice. “And no one reads those emails anyway.”

  “So what? I don’t even want one person to see it! And what about the people who read the entries? The judges?”

  “They all live in Sacramento and don’t even know us.”

  “I think you’re missing the point,” I say, my anger swelling, my voice shaking with it. “It’s not your story to tell.”

  “It was my story.” She’s audibly fighting tears. “It was my story about how helpless I felt in being able to comfort you or empathize or see the warning signs. It was about how suicide—even when it’s just an attempt—has a ripple effect and transforms friendships and support networks. About how hard it is to watch someone you know suffer.”

  “So if it was so not a big deal, then why didn’t you mention it?” I ask. “You usually tell me everything.”

  “Because you haven’t exactly been accessible lately,” she says. “You rarely answer my texts. I invite you over all the time and you always have some excuse.”

  My temperature has risen. I can’t sit still anymore. I spring up from the couch and pace the room. “You outed me as a crazy person to our entire school!”

  “Our class,” she corrects me. “And I didn’t ‘out’ you. Was the essay called ‘Journey Smith Tried to Kill Herself’?”

  “Everyone will know it’s me.”

  “You haven’t even read the essay. It’s not about what happened to you. I don’t go into detail. It’s about me.”

  “Yeah, big surprise. It’s about you. It’s all about you.”

  “Listen, do you want to read it?” she asks, sniffling a little. “I think you’ll feel better once you read it. I have no problem sharing it with you.”

  “Oh, how generous,” I say. “Thanks for sharing the story of the biggest shame of my life with me after you’ve already shared it with a bunch of strangers.”

  “I’m emailing it to you right now,” she says, her voice shaking. “I didn’t realize what a big deal this would be. I think you’ll change your mind when you read it.”

  “I don’t want to read it,” I say. “Ever. Good luck with your final.”

  I hang up and burst into tears. Loudly. Like a toddler who’s had a toy snatched away. I’m glad the windows are shut or the neighbors would worry. The tears turn to rage. Rage at myself.

  Because, why? Why am I so upset? Marisol’s probably right, hardly anyone cares about the stupid newsletter, and it didn’t say my name. It could have been another friend of hers. Why isn’t she allowed to write about her life? I told JD and Beatriz that I tried to kill myself. I joked about it with Tim-Tim. Why does this feel like such a violation, then? An inner argument commences.

  Because it’s mine. My story to tell.

  But you’re not even telling it. You basically pretend it never happened.

  That’s my decision to make. Nobody can force me to tell my story if I don’t want to.

  And it’s Marisol’s decision to tell her story. Like it or not, your suicide attempt is part of her story, too.

  Maybe that’s what makes me so upset: I hate that my suicide attempt happened. I hate how it hurt, but I hate most how much it hurt everyone around me. My parents, who still hesitate before leaving me alone in the house and raise their eyebrows when I tell them I’m planning to move out. Marisol, our friendship now irrevocably different. And Ruby, who scorns me like a microbe. Scratch that—if I were a microbe, I’d be much more interesting to her.

  I don’t respond to Marisol’s email that says “the essay” in the title line, instead archiving without clicking, nor do I respond when she texts me later that afternoon saying she’s really sorry. I’m glad she’s leaving the state soon for college. It’s just the amount of space I need from her.

  A couple weeks later, Saturday night, Levi picks up what he calls “a feast” from the grocery store—a bucket of fried chicken, potato salad, rolls. It’s about as gourmet as he gets. On the sixth chair at the dinner table sits an enormous panda bear with a heart that says “I LUV U BEARY MUCH!” Ruby is sitting directly across from it, eating her third dinner roll, watching the bear like a nemesis.

  “Why is ‘love’ misspelled?” Ruby asks.

  “Because it’s cute, Rube,” Mom says.

  Mom has picked all the deliciousness off the fried chicken and is eating the meat underneath. Yet one of a million things that make her the polar opposite of Levi: her aversion to fried food.

  “Being wrong is cute?” Ruby asks. “How dumb.”

  “I like it,” Stevie says, smiling. “It’s romantic.”

  “What’s the occasion?” I ask.

  “Just a little ol’ thing called L-U-V,” Levi says, winking at Mom.

  Ruby makes gagging noises.

  “What has gotten into you?” Mom asks Levi, blushing.

  “I’ve been bitten by the love bug,” he tells her.

  “There actually is a Central American fly called the lovebug,” Ruby says, lighting up momentarily
. “The mating pairs remain fused together for days.”

  “Mom, Ruby’s going to talk about bugs and I’m eating,” Stevie whines.

  “Ruby,” Mom says, raising her voice.

  “Since when do you like stuffed bears anyway?” Ruby asks Mom. “Didn’t you give that crap up when you were five like the rest of us?”

  “You’re such a hot poker,” Levi laughs, grabbing another chicken leg and biting into it with a crunch. “Just you wait a few years. You’ll be bitten by the love bug, too.”

  “Doubtful,” Ruby says. “Microbiology is my one true love. I could never love a human being the way I love single-celled organisms.”

  “Even single-celled organisms need other single-celled organisms,” Levi says.

  “Actually they don’t. They reproduce by binary fission,” Ruby says.

  “No sex talk at the dinner table,” Mom says.

  “Binary fission isn’t sex. It’s asexual reproduction, by definition—”

  “No asexual talk, either,” Mom says loudly.

  We finish dinner, not talking about sex or asex, just chewing and crunching and, in Stevie and Ruby’s case, kicking each other under the table. After dinner, Levi brings a cupcake with pink frosting out of the refrigerator and sets it on my mom’s empty plate.

  “My love,” he says, kissing Mom’s head.

  “What is this?” she asks, laughing.

  Ruby gets up to rinse her dishes. “Vomit.”

  “You didn’t get any cupcakes for us?” Stevie asks, stung.

  But Mom and Levi are embracing and kissing—lost in their own gross old people world.

  “You can’t buy just one cupcake,” Stevie says.

  “Yeah, what kind of monster are you?” Ruby chimes in, coming back for Stevie’s dish.

  In one second, Chewbacca gets up from the floor, stands up on his hind legs, and swipes the cupcake off the table. Ruby tries to shoo him, but it’s too late—all Chewbacca left was a trail of crumbs on the floor.

  “You damn dog!” Levi yells, running after him.

  “Levi!” Mom yells after him. “He didn’t mean to!”

  “Yes he damn did!” Levi yells from the other room. “If you all didn’t feed him from the table all the damn time . . .”

  “Oh, so it’s our fault,” Mom says, rolling her eyes, looking at us.

  “Maybe if you bought more than one damn cupcake, it wouldn’t matter,” Ruby says, not loud enough for him to hear.

  Levi comes back out, his hair askew, leading Chewbacca by his collar.

  “Lock that dog door down,” Levi says. “I had a special something baked in that cupcake. Now I’m gonna have to wait for it to come out his other end.”

  “What?” Mom, Ruby, Stevie, and I reply.

  “It’ll get washed and be good as new,” he says, getting on one knee. “For now, you’ve just got to imagine.” He opens an invisible box. “Amanda, will you marry me?”

  I’m standing here, realizing a diamond ring is in Chewbacca’s stomach. I envision its wayward journey through his gastrointestinal system and out his rear end. I realize, perhaps more importantly, that this means that my mother is going to marry this weird poseur cowboy man from Burbank whose idea of romance is fried chicken in a bucket and a stupid stuffed bear who can’t even spell a four-letter word. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. By the way my throat hurts when I swallow, I can tell I’m veering toward the latter.

  I spring up from the chair and go to my room, quasi-accidentally slamming the door. I lie on my bed and turn my face into my pillow. I imagine screaming that he’s not good enough for her. I imagine slashing the tires on Levi’s truck. I imagine burning his cowboy hat in the fireplace. I know these are mean things. I don’t like being the person who imagines them. I am so filled with fire right now and I can’t do anything except close my eyes and breathe.

  Everything comes back to me, big dumb feelings. My heart aches. I regret the suicide attempt, I fear death and its fiery crashes, I’m angry my parents split and dare to even think of remarrying, I am falling back into the abyss. It’s as if I haven’t grown at all.

  I think of Coco, for some reason, walking around like a zombie in a cheerleader’s body. The people who call the hotline, they have real problems. Here I am, venomous, melodramatic, when I should be grateful and lucky. My mother was unhappy. Levi makes her happy. I should be celebrating.

  This makes me feel worse. I have my whole life ahead of me and I want to shrink backward into childhood, or shrink back even farther, to a time when I was nothing at all.

  Later, out in the kitchen, Mom’s sitting at the table by herself, drinking tea, flipping through junk mail like it’s interesting.

  “Feeling better after storming off earlier?” she asks.

  “Sorry about that,” I say.

  “Have something you want to say to me?”

  Yeah, Mom, I do. I want to say, How can you get married so fast? How can you be so sure that Levi’s the right man for you? He’s nice, but is “nice” enough? He snores so loud I need earplugs and I sleep across the hall. When I asked him where he would visit if he could go anywhere in the world, he said, “Arizona.” Mom, if this is it, if this is true love, I don’t know what to tell my future self anymore.

  Instead I say, “Congratulations. I’m sure you two will be very happy.”

  Part

  Three

  Present

  I never feel like I play the role of “normal human” better than at my hotline shifts, and I adore my co-operators at the crisis center. Beatriz is empathy personified and thinks deeply before offering responses to people. Between calls, I’ve gotten to learn about how she rescues animals from kill shelters and helps find them homes. She lives in a house on the Mesa with four dogs, six cats, and three chickens. And for a living, she works for a program for homeless youth. I’m kind of in awe of her. She’s basically Jesus. And Lydia is a hilarious cynic who it turns out has spent decades protesting wars and writing books on pacifism and even has her own Wikipedia entry. She’s had chronic back pain her whole adult life, since a gnarly car accident (which we bonded over), which is why sometimes, on nights like tonight, she skips shifts.

  JD, though, has fast become my favorite. I am capable of getting along with most people, but when you meet someone who is one of your people, with whom you have friend chemistry, it’s a step above. That’s how it was with Jonah, Marisol, even Etta. JD treats me like a younger sibling, giving me advice I never asked for, and lets me in on all the inside info. Like tonight, for example. After Beatriz goes for a short walk to take a break after a call with Davis that lasted several lifetimes, JD whispers, “Hey.”

  JD is dressed damn sharp right now in a black dress shirt and purple tie because they just came back from giving some speech to junior high kids because that’s how JD rolls. They publish articles online, give speeches, accept awards, get their masters, work full-time as a personal trainer, have three girlfriends (they’re poly), and volunteer here. JD makes me feel like a total slacker in the best way.

  “Hey hey,” I say back.

  “I have . . . the most amazing gift to share with you,” they say.

  Rolling up on a chair, JD pulls up a website on their iPad and shows it to me.

  NOBODY Keeps a Carpet Clean as DAVIS DUNCAN!

  An almost elderly man, bald on top, ponytail on the bottom, with one gold earring, grins a yellow grin and gives two thumbs up to the camera. It has his contact info on there, a coupon for 10 percent off our first shampoo.

  “Oh my God,” I say, closing my astronomy notes on multiverses to come look at the screen. “Is that . . . is it . . . ?”

  “I know the hotline is anonymous, and we’re not supposed to do this,” JD says, laughing. “But come on, haven’t you wondered who he is?”

  “How’d you find him?” I ask.

  “He told me his last name a couple times. You know, when reading me his spam email.”

  “Oh, Davis,” I say, taking in
his on-screen magnificence. “Your hair . . .”

  “Your lack of hair.”

  “But then too much hair.”

  “Both too much and not enough hair,” JD says.

  We crack up.

  Too much and not enough, I think as JD rolls their chair back to their desk. That could basically describe my life.

  I should be studying for finals in this downtime in my shift. I have my philosophy flash cards in front of me with every -ism known to humankind scrawled in permanent marker. But instead I keep going back to my phone to scroll through social media, where the end of senior year is in full swing. We’re deep enough into May now, with June within squinting distance, that all my “friends” are shopping for prom dresses, or getting college acceptances; I tell myself I don’t care, that was my old life, it might as well be a million miles away, but then why do I keep coming back to peek into it? Mom texts a picture of some long gowns with bell sleeves to Stevie, Ruby, and me, saying, Bridesmaids. You like???

  I’m trying to figure out a nice way ask my mom if she’s kidding when Ruby texts back, I would rather be eaten alive by rabid wolves at the same time that Stevie texts back sure!

  Mom sends three more pics, all of them atrocious, and I just can’t right now.

  Sometimes I feel like my entire life is being a guest at other people’s celebrations.

  I turn back to my flash cards. I flip them over again and again. Last year, less than twelve months ago, I was sure I was going to go to prom with Jonah, and I knew exactly what I was going to wear: a bright purple lace dress I found at a thrift store. It still hangs in my closet in a bag. I was going to wear it with my combat boots. We were never even going to go to actual prom. We were going to spend the night on the beach, just the two of us.

  The phone finally rings.

  “I just swallowed a bottle of hand lotion,” a tween-sounding girl with a shaky voice tells me. “I—I don’t know why I did it, I don’t know what’s wrong with me . . .”

  “I’m so glad you called,” I say, flipping to a page near the back of the binder that says TOXIC SUBSTANCES. My heartbeat flutters from the lovely adrenaline boost of being useful in an emergency. All of a sudden, prom dresses and bridesmaid dresses vanish like ghosts. “Okay, have you reached out to poison control?”