I was silent. I didn’t want to go to the cop-shop.
“Look, the more you tell us, the more we can work to putting Rucker where he belongs. If he stole some illegal substances from you then just tell us – I mean, we can’t charge you with possession, can we? There’s no evidence…”
Except the words coming out of my mouth.
“…But at least we will then have an indisputable lead on Rucker that will also help us take down the people he’s connected with. And that will be final justice for everyone, won’t it?”
Except me and my empty pencil case.
The driver pulled up alongside the deserted skate bowl that no one uses anymore and clearly out of sight from the public. He switched off the radio receivers and some other electronic devices on the dashboard. Both cops turned off their walkie-talkies.
The passenger looked at the driver. “What are we gonna do?”
The driver tapped the staring wheel. “Fuck. The cells are full at the moment.”
“He’ll be released without even getting that far anyway. At least it’ll be recorded.”
“Shit, it’s just more paperwork. Rucker’s already got a file and the last thing he needs is a sympathy angle because someone else finally gave back what he’s always deserved anyway. Do we really need to give this guy a file?”
“He has done us a favour I guess.”
“If it deters Rucker, then if anything, it’s a favour to the taxpayer.”
The driver put his head in his hand and the passenger looked out the window shaking his head and saying “fuck” several times.
“There was a lot of harm done today.” The driver took his hand away from his head and looked at me through the rear-view mirror. “Do you understand that?”
I looked straight back at him. “I call it justice.”
“That’s not how a Judge would see it, and I think you understand this, very clearly. So I want you to ask yourself: Is what I did today something I am going to let affect the rest of my life, or is it something I am going to leave behind me right here and now? Because that’s something we have to ask ourselves as law enforcement officers – about you.”
I looked out the window. I had never felt so angry at anyone before, even Ed who had treated me with gross disrespect. And I could never imagine being so angry at anyone ever again.
“Listen kid…” it was the driver talking. “We’re gonna let you out here. That guy had what was coming to him and hopefully he’ll start thinking twice about his career as a thief. Just remember that we know who you are and what you’ve done, and despite the fact that that kid deserved what he got, you still need to leave this kind of shit to the law, alright?”
“Sweet as mate.” I got out and closed the door gently but with intent.
The driver leaned out his window as he backed out. “Take it easy.”
Leave it to the law! Who the fuck were they kidding? When there’s no evidence pointing towards the culprit, the victim is screwed.
I walked all the way back to the gardens to pick up my car and received a txt from Lisa half way there asking what I was up to and whether she could come over. I replied that I was out but would be back soonish and decided to stop at McDonalds for something to eat on my way back.
When Lisa realised that I wasn’t going to tell her anything about what had happened, she stopped smiling and went back to explaining what she had found out.
“I went and talked to Andrew Brasch who works with drug addicts and has had a lot of experience counselling those who are dependent.”
This was bound to be interesting.
“He said that he had spoken to a lot of people over the years about why they had intended to commit suicide, and it rarely had anything to do with the drugs that they were using. He said that you make the decision before you start drinking. And then you drink to numb the sensors so that in the final moment you can’t chicken out. ‘Alcohol is never the cause of suicide,’ he said, ‘it’s simply the mode of transport that gets you there without turning back.’ So I went out on a limb, thinking of you as I asked this: ‘Could smoking weed have helped her?’”
I raised my eyebrows.
Lisa looked at me to explain herself. “Y’ know, like calmed her down and stuff.”
I rested my head on my hand as she carried on.
“He said that it was hard to say but highly unlikely, and that it might have helped for a while, but there would have been a point where she simply made the decision while she was straight, because being high completely nullifies all your senses so that you are in this happy – or paranoid, he said – state of catatonia, but either way you just don’t have the senses available to make any ground-breaking decisions.”
She put her notes down and looked at me with big wide eyes and tight lips, as though this had been the most important information she had discovered yet.
I looked back as though she wasn’t telling me anything new and said, “The biggest decision anyone could ever make while being stoned is to get something to eat.” Boy did I know that from experience! I had this amazing bong hit once that whited out my vision completely and I stood in one spot for ages – I have no idea how long – until the world came back to me two colours at a time: first in pink and purple for the sky and earth (don’t ask me why the sky was pink – my brain must have really been confused!), and then other colours came through as the world slowly returned to its original state. At that point all I dared do was take a few steps forward and hope like hell that no one was watching me inch my way across the park. Eventually I sat down around some trees and watched clouds transform themselves into all these amazing shapes across the sky (yes it had returned to its standard blue colour). There was really nothing else to do, nothing else worth thinking about; just the pure joy of not doing anything but accepting what my vision brought to me. I loved it.
“Well yeah,” Lisa continued on. “That’s kinda what he said. But there was this really interesting thing he also said. ‘That girl was not driven to suicide by drugs, not if alcohol and cannabis were the only substances found in her body. Something else must have done it. Something that tore her so far from Jesus.”
“Who is this person?”
“As I said, Andrew Brasch.”
“Never heard of him.”
“He’s a friend of Anna MacPherson’s who was Serene’s Elder at church.”
And then it all became clear and I knew exactly where Lisa was heading with this topic.
“I asked Mr. Brasch what it could have been. He didn’t want to divulge details because it was a private matter that Anna Macpherson had shared with him, but there was one thing he did tell me. He looked me in the eye and said, ‘Serene was in Youth Group – who do you know who was in Youth Group as well? Better yet, who do you know who was running Youth Group while she was in it?’ And then he said to me to go home and think that over but it was all very obvious to me who he was talking about.”
She didn’t look at me, but I could see her eyes wandering over her bits of paper, not really reading, just waiting for something to happen, for me to say something.
“Why do you care so much Lisa? Why are you making such a big deal about this? So she was one of the girls in my youth group. She died after I had left – three and a half months after I had left.”
She looked up at me, a frown creasing her forehead. “Why do you not care? You used to care so much. It seemed so important to you that the youth you helped would make the right decisions. It’s like you’ve been completely swamped by your own problems. What happened to you? Where’s the guy who I used to know? Who used to want to understand everything from their perspective, who seemed to be the only one in the church who actually stood in the shoes of the kids so he knew what it was like for them and could help them based on that rather than the church’s own outdated ideas? Where’s that person?”
“Well, where’s the person I used to know? Who wasn’t afraid to talk to me like a normal human being?”
“I
’m here David. Right now.”
“Well can’t we just leave this issue to rest, just for a moment so we can talk about other things?”
“What, so one more suicide goes ignored and no one knows anything better, or how to prevent it in the future?”
“I just don’t get why you’re making such a big deal about this one case?”
“Because the papers didn’t tell the full story – my little bit of reporting has already proven that!”
“Look, you haven’t found out any more than what they already stated – that she was on drugs and that she had stopped attending church. What else is there to find out?”
She stood up, angered at my response. “You took drugs, you stopped attending church, but you didn’t kill yourself.”
Don’t think I didn’t want to though.
I had to correct her on a point that the papers had got wrong, that everyone in the congregation had casually ignored; that few were willing to accept the fact of. “She didn’t stop attending church.”
“You just said she did!”
“No. I said that that’s what the papers had reported.”
“Then that makes even less sense.”
“Suicides never make sense, Lisa.”
“That’s not true! I know why I got that close to the edge, I know the exact reasons – and they make perfect sense to me, but I was saved, David. Jesus came to me – he was there for me and helped me out of it! And I wasn’t even a Christian then, but he came to me nevertheless. Serene was still going to church and was still a Christian. I wanna know why Jesus was there for me, but he wasn’t there for her. Why David? Why!? Explain that to me!”
She was furious and I was helpless to escape the reality of the situation. I couldn’t walk away, I couldn’t just pretend that the truth wasn’t waiting to be told. “Because it has nothing to do with Jesus!”
“Oh! So it’s all the drugs fault then? That’s rich coming from you, the one who defends the joint down to its last toke.”
I stood up. “Fuck you!”
Her hand sprung out and slapped me across the cheek. She took a step back, with both hands clasping at her own cheeks – in fear or shame I couldn’t really tell: the impact had sent my gaze in another direction.
“Oh god I’m so sorry.”
I lowered my head expecting the impulse to clench my fists to take over, but it didn’t. I felt anger, but it wasn’t because she had reacted out of an emotional outburst; I was angry at her for constantly thanking Jesus, like he had come to her all by himself. I took a deep breath and looked her straight in the eyes.
“I brought you to Jesus. It’s because of me that you didn’t kill yourself…” She recoiled suddenly, like the thought had hit her so hard and realisation had finally dawned. “But you never thanked me for that. I showed you the cross that had saved so many lives, I showed you the scripture that gave you new life; I brought you to the church! It’s all because of me! But you never thanked me for that, you never acknowledged my help. I’m the reason, Lisa! It’s all… my fault! Can’t you see that?”
“What? I wasn’t blaming you for anything.”
“But it’s because of me.” It was only then that I realised that tears were streaming down my cheeks. “It’s all my fault.” I shrugged my shoulders and slumped back into the chair. “I’m the reason.”
“What are you talking about?”
I felt my lips tremble as the words rose up from my throat. “They wouldn’t let me see her.”
“Serene Gilligan? You tried to help?”
I felt my eyes staring into the past like it had a grip on me that I couldn’t let go of. “Yeah…”
“Why? I mean, you weren’t a part of the church anymore. Did you know her well?”
“Yeah,” I said.
Lisa sat in silence for a while. She finally said, “what did you do?”
I raised my head to look at the ceiling, wiping the tears from my cheeks. “Nothing. I did nothing. Didn’t even ring her.” I shook my head. “I didn’t even ring to see how she was, didn’t even bother calling just to leave a message.”
I lowered my gaze to the floor, like I had done for so much of this year, avoiding anyone who might catch the look of guilt in these eyes. “…and she couldn’t bring herself to disobey her parents anymore. ”
I had expected Lisa to say something but she was silent.
“I figured it would be best to not get between her and her parents. At least, any more than I already was.”
I could still remember Serene tacking the poster up on my ceiling as I lay on my bed, her head hanging backwards, black hair falling down into soft strands I could reach up to and run my fingers through. “I need something to look at when I’m not looking at you, okay?”
“Sure” I said. I smiled as I lay there looking up at her slender body, jeans hugging her thighs as they arched over me, feet planted either side of my waist.
It was an Ecclesiastic Seal poster. I didn’t really like the band but I just wanted Serene to be happy. She had been confused for so long that her being happy was all that mattered to me. And I felt like I would do anything to help her.
“We had been dating for about two months, off and on. Secretly – her mother would have flipped if she had known that her daughter was dating me.” I looked down at my hands as they rubbed together. “She certainly flipped when she did find out.”
The thought of my fingers caressing her bare neck caught my attention, fingers sliding down and holding onto thin shoulders, how she had pulled my body closer to hers and then reached in to kiss me with a big smile on her face, like she was finally breaking free from the iron grip that her family had had her in ever since she was a child. All I could think of was how Serene was the last person that I had held so close to me, been in such close contact with and known… intimately.
“She felt so tied to her parents that she couldn’t bring herself to disobey them. I was the boy who burned the cross defiling the church and everything that it stood for. They didn’t want this bad influence anywhere near their daughter.”
“Were you a bad influence?”
“That’s the million dollar question isn’t it?”
“I don’t know. Is it?”
I looked out the window avoiding her eyes. “Do you remember when you asked me what made Jesus so wonderful, what made believing in God so much better than not believing?”
“Vaguely.” She squirmed back into her chair. “It was a long time ago.”
“Serene had lived a sheltered life in a way that I hadn’t, but we both had grown up taking for granted a love that would be with us for the rest of our lives. Or at least I thought would be. When she discovered that I wasn’t your average everyday ‘law-abiding, clean as a whistle’ Christian, she suddenly knew who to go to to help her break out.”
“Sure, but something must have set it off. That’s what I was trying to find out, but kinda got nowhere. I still don’t know why she did it.”
I rubbed my eyes. “She just wanted to experience what other people were experiencing. Her parents knew that she was smoking pot and they knew that she was still seeing me after I had been kicked out of church. They warned her and pressured her and tried to convince her that she was going to hell because of what she was doing. I felt so sorry for her. But all I wanted was for her to feel happy when she was with me. Her parents didn’t understand that.”
“They blamed her death on drugs.”
“She never did hard stuff. Just some weed… and a little too much drinking.”
I picked at my fingers as I remembered the great ‘tougher cannabis laws’ petitions after her death when traces of THC were found in her system – it was also pointed out that she had been drinking quite heavily before she committed suicide, but that little fact seemed to just conveniently fade away as the cannabis lynch-mob started sinking their teeth into the press. Meanwhile mother was probably going through her worst alcohol-dependence bout yet, not helped by Dad running away with someone e
lse… if that wasn’t the cause of it.
“Serene was so calm and happy when she was stoned. It was only when she was coming down from that high and her frustrations returned that she began to drink and become more confused than ever, even angry. Serene had lost all her sense of self-assurance, all her faith in herself that had gone along with her faith in a guiding light; all the things that had attracted me to her beautiful presence in the first place. For her Jesus had disappeared and darkness had crowned itself the new king.”
Lisa looked down at her fingers.
“There are plenty of other bad seeds in this town, scores of black sheep who are harder and more dangerous than anything I’ve ever come close to. But she reached out to me because as dirty as I looked to her parents, she knew that I would never hurt her. She needed a way to rebel against her parents without stepping over the edge. A casual acquaintance with drugs got her foot out the door; her own will went out and found me.”
“So she was already on drugs before you came along?”
“Yeah, she liked getting stoned. But she didn’t dare go further. She just wanted to be out of the reach of her parents.”
I thought about the days she stayed the night, how I held her in my arms, and I kissed her as she came down from her highs. “All she ever really spoke to me about was the need to be free and that she never felt free when she was constantly being told what she could and couldn’t do.”
“Are you saying it was her parent’s fault for putting too much pressure on her?”
“Maybe. They were strict, but not unsympathetic. They cared for her. They just couldn’t accept me as a part of her life. Not the first time parents have come between… y’ know… two people. She was the last person I knew from church that I had any contact with.” It still annoyed me that Lisa had deserted me just like everyone else. “I never understood why you couldn’t accept what I had done.”
“The cross?”
“Yeah.”
“Because you stood on other people’s beliefs and you defiled a symbol of people’s hopes and dreams.”
I Am The Local Atheist Page 28