Suicide Notes from Beautiful Girls

by Lynn Weingarten

  Ryan comes over to the bed. He leans down and kisses me lightly on the lips.

  And I feel a stab of guilt. Because the truth, which I can’t tell him, is that I only want to go to this party because of Jeremiah. And his text from a half hour ago.

  Found something. Need to show u tonight, is what he wrote.

  It’s not like I’m so scared of Jeremiah now. Since this morning, nothing has even changed, really . . . but I have this feeling in my gut that it’s better not to meet him alone. So for now, I’ll trust that.

  “It’ll be good to get my mind off things . . . ,” I tell Ryan.

  When he leaves his room and goes to the bathroom to put the tiny touch of gel into his hair that he thinks I don’t know he uses, I take out my phone and write back.

  Hanny is having a party, meet there at 9?

  Jeremiah is part of that big group of guys too. A second later he writes back: See u then.

  I look up at Ryan, back in the room now. “So we’re going, then?” he says. It scares me how easy it is to break a promise.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Sounds fun.”

  Hanny’s parties are not fun. I know I’m only seeing the very surface when I look at these people. Everyone has their shit, but when I walk into Max Hannigan’s big living room full of people laughing in unison, their big white smiles glowing under Max’s parents’ customizable mood lighting, it’s easy to imagine that no one here has ever been lonely or sad or scared for a single second of their entire lives.

  I feel myself starting to sweat under Delia’s sweater. Ryan leans in and whispers into my ear. “We can blow this pop-stand whenever. You know that, right?”

  And I turn to him and nod.

  He takes my hand and leads me forward into the crowd. “Fisker,” a guy calls out. Fisker is what some of Ryan’s friends call him. Up ahead is a guy they call Rolly. Rolly gives Ryan a bro hug.

  “Hi, June, nice to see you as always,” Rolly says. Rolly talks to me like you’d talk to someone’s mom.

  “Hi.” I can’t do the small talk thing, not even at the best of times and certainly not now. “I’m going to find the bathroom,” I tell Ryan. “Don’t wait for me, I’ll find you after.” And we lock eyes, only for a second, before I slip away.

  I spot him almost immediately—Jeremiah, standing near the door, hands in his pockets, scanning the room. When our eyes lock, my stomach twists and I don’t even know why.

  Jeremiah motions for me to follow him outside. I look for Ryan. He’s in the kitchen where someone is handing him a beer. I head toward Jeremiah, feeling a couple girls watching me. They turn to whisper as I pass. I think I hear “Delia,” I think I hear “suicide.”

  Outside now, the sounds from the party are muffled through the big thick windows. The night is barely getting started. Two girls I recognize from school run across the lawn, tumbling over each other. The air is fresh and cold, a few tiny snowflakes drift down.

  Jeremiah pulls something out of his pocket and holds it up: a phone.

  The wallpaper is a photo of a hand—chipped lemon-yellow polish on a stuck up middle finger, three thin strips of leather wrapped around the wrist. This is Delia’s hand. And this is Delia’s phone. In front of the hand is a number pad, ENTER PASSCODE written at the top.

  I’m staring at his face, suspicion coiled in a tight ball in my belly.

  “Where did you get that?”

  “I went back to her house this afternoon,” he says. “And this was right there in the woods like someone had thrown it. There must be something in here that’ll help us. We’d know who she was talking to, who she was texting. But I can’t get it open.”

  I take the phone. I’ve held it a million times before—reading texts out loud, writing back as her, or sometimes just listening to her stepfather yelling when she couldn’t deal.

  “I brought it to one of those shady phone repair places in the city,” Jeremiah continues. “The guy said he could wipe it clean if I wanted to use it, but that was it. He couldn’t unlock it.” He’s looking at me now, curious and intense. “Anyway, so I was wondering. Do you know the passcode? I know best friends tell each other that sort of thing sometimes. . . .”

  White flakes fall faster, like we’re shooting up through space now.

  “No,” I say. “I’m sorry.” I keep my gaze steady. “Like I said, we hadn’t been best friends in a long time.”

  He nods, and I watch as he slips it back into the right side pocket of his gray and red ski coat.

  He rubs his hands together. “Freaking cold out here.” Jeremiah looks around. “So what about you? Anything? Any news?”

  I shake my head.

  There’s laughing; a guy and a girl are making their way up the driveway.

  “Okay then,” Jeremiah says.

  The girl sticks out her butt and shakes her hips.

  I try to keep my face calm. I can see the top of the phone peeking out of Jeremiah’s pocket.

  The girl tumbles forward with a shriek. The guy wraps his arm around her to keep her from falling.

  “Come inside?” I say.

  Jeremiah shakes his big square Boy Scout head. “I’m not in the mood for a party.”

  I look down at Jeremiah’s pocket again.

  “We should have a toast,” I say. “For Delia.” He hesitates. “A real one, from people who care.” I’m thinking about the memorial by the water. I know he is too.

  “Okay,” he says.

  Back inside, the music is loud. People stand in clumps of twos and threes. It’ll be a couple hours before things get sloppy and ridiculous. I see Ryan in the living room, so I lead Jeremiah to the kitchen. I feel eyes on us.

  I think I hear someone say, “girl who died.” I think I hear someone say, “fire.”

  The kitchen table is covered in party stuff. I grab two red plastic cups from a stack, and a bottle of vodka. I spot a little jar of maraschino cherries stuck in with the tiny plastic mermaids. So I take those, too.

  To our right, three guys are chugging beers. I pour Jeremiah a shot. He reaches for a two-liter Coke and fills up the rest of his cup. His big hand crushes the bottle.

  I fill my own cup with vodka, pouring till I reach the top.

  “Hold up, there, cowgirl,” says a guy next to me. He’s wearing a lime-green polo, collar popped. “Save some for the rest of us. On a mission, huh?” He’s smiling.

  “Something like that,” I say.

  Jeremiah is watching me. I fish a cherry from the jar, then I pass the jar to Jeremiah, who does the same.

  “No mixer?” he says.

  “I like to be efficient,” I say.

  And then I raise my drink. “To Delia.”

  “To Delia,” he says, “who deserves a hell of a lot better than what she got.” We clink our plastic cups. I bring mine to my mouth. The smell is nauseating. The vodka wets my lips. I try not to breathe. I keep my lips clamped together and my mouth empty, and swallow nothing, twice. I fake flinch.

  Then I pop the cherry into my mouth.

  Jeremiah is still watching, and so I let my eyelids droop just a little, let the corners of my mouth turn up, the slow smile of alcohol hitting me quick.

  Jeremiah looks off into the distance. I pour half my vodka into a cup of brown liquid with a bloated pretzel bobbing in it.

  “Do you believe in heaven?” Jeremiah says.

  Behind me someone lets out a laugh.

  “I’m not sure,” I say. Only, what I’m really not sure about is whether I want to tell him the real answer, which is no. I don’t and I can’t. I’m jealous of anyone who does.

  “I do,” Jeremiah says. There is desperation in his voice. Maybe he believes this, or maybe he just wishes he did. “And I think Delia is there.”

  I nod. I take another fake swallow, and then dump more of my vodka into the cup on the
table.

  “I’ve been praying a lot, y’know? For her. I know she wasn’t religious, and that maybe that means if there is a heaven, she won’t be in it . . .”

  A girl in a pink tank top reaches around him and grabs a bag of chips off the table. Her elbow brushes his pocket where the phone is. “Oopsy,” she says. “Skyoooz me.”

  “But I don’t think that’s true. I think, maybe, because of what happened, she’ll get to be there anyway. So I’ve been praying for her, that where she is now is better than where she was before. . . .” His jaw is set and his eyes are dark and shining. He takes another sip of his drink, the cup crunching in his big hand. “And that whoever did this to her gets what they deserve.” There’s something simmering in him, a fierce anger, leaking out into the air between us.

  Another burst of laughter comes from behind me. Jeremiah looks up.

  I raise my drink one more time. “To justice,” I say. I am swaying a little bit now, bending my knees, letting my weight carry me forward and side to side. And I fake swallow, dribble vodka down my chin.

  But Jeremiah doesn’t toast this time. He is watching someone behind me. The guy in the green polo is across the room now, talking to friends—a tiny blond girl, a tall skinny guy. Polo holds up the vodka bottle. He mimes drinking, then says, voice jovial and drunk-loud, “And then she jumped. And she screwed some fish at the bottom of the reservoir and then drowned. That’s what I heard, anyway. . . .” He is smiling.

  Jeremiah slams down his cup and in one swift motion swoops across the room, grabs Polo by the collar, and pulls him in close. Polo struggles against him, but Jeremiah is too strong.

  People are turning to watch, excited. I slip through the crowd. “Let him go,” I say. “This won’t help anything . . .” But Jeremiah pulls Polo in even closer, holds his collar tighter. Polo’s face is bright red. He’s wheezing now, his shirt choking him. “Let him go,” I say again.

  For a moment Jeremiah just holds him there, their noses touching. “That’s not what happened,” he whispers finally. He drops Polo, who stumbles back, eyes wide. Jeremiah pushes through the crowd and out the front door.

  “Psycho,” Polo says quietly after him.

  I catch up with Jeremiah on the front steps.

  “I don’t . . . ,” he starts to say. “I just . . .” There are big fat tears rolling right down his cheeks now. “This should not have happened like this.”

  My heart squeezes. I don’t like what I’m about to do, but I know I have to. And this is my chance. “You’re right,” I say.

  I lean toward him and put my arm around him as though I’m drunk now, warm and loose, limbs flopping. “It deff-nitly should never have happened.” I am slurring my words, acting as trashed as I’d be if I’d drunk all I pretended to. I let my legs wobble, collapse forward against Jeremiah’s warm bulk. He feels solid and strong, like nothing could ever topple him. He catches me.

  And I slip my hand into his pocket.

  Chapter 17

  I’m upstairs in a bedroom, Max’s parents’, I think—it smells like fabric softener and old man cologne. I shut the door behind me and double-check that it’s locked. Only then do I take out Delia’s phone, her yellow painted finger’s final fuck you on the screen. I key in the code 5-8-0-0-8.

  It was the code she used for everything, because upside down, it spells out BOOBS.

  And just like that, the phone unlocks.

  I scroll through her recent texts. There’s one from her mom on the first. Happy New Year! On our way back. See you soon, sweetie! And my heart catches in my throat, at the hopeful earnestness of this message, the tone of which does not even remotely match their actual relationship. But her mom was always like that, trying to pretend things were different than they were when she was in the mood for it, as though by lying to both of them, she’d make a different reality.

  There’s one from Jeremiah sent the same morning. Things are so boring here with my parents’ friends. Wish you were here even though I know you’d hate it. Hope you’re feeling better. Tried calling you. Will try again!

  The next one is also from him too, received at exactly midnight. Happy New Year!!

  I keep scrolling—there are a few other New Year’s texts from random names I recognize from back when we were friends, random people she saw sometimes. But then I see something else—a message from earlier that same afternoon. December thirty-first at 3:55 p.m.

  hey sexy, ready to start hte new year off with some fireworks. outside your house

  The message is from someone saved to her phone as “FUCKER.”

  Right below is her reply, the last message in the conversation:

  Doors unlocked . . .

  My heart starts pounding because oh my God, this must be the guy Delia was cheating with. But then my heart pounds even harder as I start to realize something. I take out my own phone, go to my missed call log. Delia called me at 3:59, four minutes after she received this text, which means that when Delia called me, FUCKER was inside, which means he was the one yelling in the background.

  This was the person she was with, whose secret she had threatened to tell. And maybe, just maybe, this was the person who stopped her.

  Someone is turning the door handle. “Hey!” a voice calls. “What are you doing? No one’s supposed to be in there.” Hanny.

  “Sorrrrrry!” I call out. I try to keep my voice sloshy, drunk sounding. “Jussa second.”

  As fast as I can, I save FUCKER’s number into my own phone. And then I scroll down, to J, just to see. I’m still in there—J JUNE JUNIE JUNEBUG.

  Bang bang bang, the door rattles. “Open the door! If you’re having sex on my parents’ bed I will literally kill you.”

  But I’m in a trance now, and I can’t stop myself. Who knows when I will get a chance like this again. I open up her pictures, telling myself I need to do this. Maybe there’s a picture of FUCKER in here or some other kind of clue. And I am looking for that, but also I want a glimpse of her and her life. I’m greedy for bits of her, whatever I can get.

  Only there aren’t many photos in here, and they’re all from months ago—a hand holding an ice-cream cone, the inside of a pocket, a dog, the guy behind the counter at the 7-Eleven who always checks out teen girls’ asses even though he’s probably about fifty. But then . . . I stop breathing. Because there’s a picture of the two of us. She’s holding a chunk of my hair next to her face so it looks like it’s growing out of her head, and I’m doing the same with hers. Our eyes are shining bright and beautiful, mouths stained cherry red. I’ve never seen this picture before. Where was this? When was this?

  Suddenly it all comes rushing back. I remember the feeling of the night, the sense that anything could happen. The moment when the flash went off.

  BANG BANG BANG.

  I slip both phones back into my pocket. I open the door, lean heavily against the door frame. “Sorrrrry, I was trying to fine the bathroom-an . . .” I look up at the angry face of Max Hannigan, head square and hard like a block of wood. And next to him is Ryan.

  “Junie,” he says. “I was looking for you.” He leans in and sniffs me. “You’re trashed . . .” I’ve only ever drunk in front of him once before, and it was over a year ago.

  “Jeremiah . . . ,” I say. “We . . . toasted.”

  By the time I get back downstairs, Jeremiah is so trashed, I could shove my finger up his nose and I doubt he’d notice.Getting the phone back to him is easy. He is not aware of anything—my hand in his pocket, the couch under him, the fact that he is passing out in the middle of a party. I wonder where his friends are, if he actually has any, because why else, when his girlfriend died three days ago, is he here all alone, with only me to think to take his keys away because there’s no way in hell he should be driving. It makes me feel sad for him. But I shake it off. I don’t have any sadness left to spare.

  I ask Ryan t
o get me some water. And then I take out my phone and I call FUCKER. My heart pounds as the phone rings and rings. It goes to the default voice mail greeting, telling me to leave a message. I don’t.

  Not long later the three of us pile into Ryan’s car. He’s agreed to drive Jeremiah home. Jeremiah gets in back, leans against the door. Ryan is staring straight ahead.

  And all I can think about is FUCKER. What he did, who he is, and how the hell I am going to figure it out.

  Chapter 18

  5 years, 1 month, 2 days earlier

  Delia said it was her diary, so when June unrolled the narrow paper scroll she was immediately confused. My To Do List was preprinted in purple at the top. Delia had crossed out “To Do” and written “Did.” Below that was just a list of names, a half dozen or so.

  “I don’t understand,” June said.

  “Well, it’s the only diary I will ever keep. Everything else, you can help me remember.” She grinned. “These are the boys I’ve kissed. I wrote really small because I figure there’s going to be a lot of them, and I’m going to keep this list for my whole life.” She pointed to the first name, Fraser Holmes. “We were in first grade. He tried to stick his finger up my nose after, the little perv.”

  June had never kissed anyone, though recently she’d let a cute boy on the bus have a sip from her water bottle and it felt kind of like something at the time, his mouth where hers had been and all that. But now, here with Delia, who was her brand-new friend and her very own age and had kissed—June counted quickly—five people, she felt the full weight of how silly that was.

  “You’ve done a lot of kissing,” June said. She meant it as a compliment.

  Delia laughed. “Well, I’m not sure the first few count. But yeah . . .”

  June stared at Delia’s lips—shiny with mango gloss. You couldn’t usually just look at a mouth and tell whether they got kissed much. But the thing was, with Delia’s you kind of could.