My exhausted eyes are blinking heavily, struggling to stay open.
“Ok, fine Mom. We can talk.”
But I don’t want to talk anymore, Mom. I just want to be close to someone. Can we figure out how to be close again? I know that you’re only a few inches away from me. But I still feel so utterly alone.
“Thank you,” she whispers.
“So what made you do it?”
Her phone buzzes and she reaches down to check it.
“Do what, honey?” she asks, keeping her eyes attached to her phone’s screen as she types feverishly to respond to a message. “Sorry, it’s your dad.”
“Try to kill yourself,” I blurt. I resume pulling the stray piece of wood off of the window frame, listening to her struggle to speak.
“What…how…”
I’m such a bitch. Why am I doing this to her?
“I remember, Mom.”
“But...but…you were only four years old, and…”
I just need to know the truth. I deserve the truth from her now. I need it.
“I remember.”
She looks at me the only way she can, with such concentration, such poise. Deep in my stomach, something tightens. She’s going to tell me.
“We don’t talk about that,” she says, pushing any and all emotion out of her voice. She stands up and straightens the hem of her yellow skirt, pulling on it at all sides to fluff it out. When that’s done, she clears her throat and walks over to my other window, letting her body fall against the glass.
“Why not?” I whisper.
“Because it’s nothing worth talking about, Maura. I was young and stupid and I didn’t think through my decisions in life.”
I wait motionless, trying to figure out where to take this conversation next. I really just want to get everything I can out of her right now. Everything I’ve ever wondered about. My mother has always been an enigma.
“So what are you doing with yourself now?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, since you don’t exactly have a family to take care of anymore.”
She shakes her head and narrows her eyes at me, searching for whatever is in inside of me that’s turned into this deeply malicious person.
“You should work again,” I say, cutting her off before she can say anything.
“Oh I don’t know about that. What would I do?”
“I don’t know. Don’t you have anything you really care about? Anything you love?”
She drops her face and watches her toes wiggle around in her shoes for a moment. I know there must be more to my mother. Beneath all of her perfect makeup and perfect clothes and chipper voice.
“I love my family, Maura. And I want to have them back.”
Nope. Nothing.
“That’s not going to happen,” I say, harsher than I expected to.
“It could. You’re coming back home. Your father has asked me to step in and help out with getting your life back in order. We will all be working together.”
Her voice sounds so hopeful. I hate to know that I’m going to rip all of that hope away from her.
“Is that really what you want Mom? To be with Dad? It didn’t work out. It won’t work out. It’s over.”
She steps over to me and reaches out for my hand. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her so close. She gives me a knowing smile, and I can already predict her response before she even gets the words out.
“When I married your father, I married him for life. I was raised to believe in the sanctity of marriage. I won’t give up.”
I refuse to be like my mother. Stuck. I can’t carry on as a shell of a person like she has.
I’m going to do things differently.
I don’t talk for an hour. She gives up on me and excuses herself, reminding me to call them later. They want to take me out to breakfast before we embark on the long flight home to Florida, where I will be forced to spend the remainder of my spring break registering for community college classes. And then they’ll come back to Philadelphia in two months to pack up my life there and bring me back with them. Back to everything I tried so desperately to escape.
I just nod my head as Mom lets my door close behind her. I can’t bring myself to say good-bye to her.
I bawl.
I’m stuck with this lonesome, debilitating excuse for a life again. Back where I was for years and years and years. I once reveled in the solitude, but now…it has driven me to the point of being utterly demented. I have, once and for all, reached my breaking point.
I don’t want it anymore.
I’m so done.
I lie down on my side and do my best to think of my dollhouse—my safe refuge for so many years. The mother and father sit on the couch that I so carefully constructed with scraps of my own imploded family, as Samantha sits on the chair across from them, her permanent smile directed right towards them. They share hot tea and talk about each other’s days; the father congratulates Sam for getting into all of her top college choices and thanks the mother for being such a great inspiration in everyone’s lives. Then they hug.
My face is wet now. Heavy alligator tears that have no plan on ending flood my blanket. I’m going to be crying forever. Because there’s nothing left. I try so hard to look inside of myself and search for some granule of life, of love, of desire…things I know I once had. But there’s no colors inside of my anymore—everything’s black.
I pull the notebook out from my suitcase. There’s only one clean page left.
Perfect.
Dear Samantha,
It’s official. Nobody cares about me. I’m completely alone in this world. That miniscule shred of a loving relationship that I thought I still had with my parents is no more. They’re done with me. I can feel it. And, truthfully, I think I’m done with them as well. And Owen…he’s gone forever. I tried to talk to him one last time and…Jesus; just thinking about what a manic lunatic I was makes me sick. I don’t blame him for abandoning me. I deserve to be alone. No one should have to go through the same things that I do.
And since I’m being brutally honest, I’ll tell you that everyday for as long as I can remember, I’ve thought to myself, ‘What would happen if I wasn’t here tomorrow? Would anyone even miss me?’ And I realized that nobody would. Except for my parents, but they have to out of obligation. Owen wouldn’t. My sorority sisters wouldn’t. So what’s the point of hanging on? Who are we as human beings if we don’t have significant relationships? Isn’t that the whole damn point?
But let me just spit it out. I need to make it real.
My fate has become clear to me.
And I thought you should be the one to know.
I don’t really know how to explain it. I guess I’ve known for my entire life that I wasn’t going to last. I just don’t think I’m cut out to be alive. Maybe I sound pathetic. I don’t care anymore. I keep waiting for that one moment of truth to come and set me free. That person that’s going to come and change my life and make all of the bad stuff go away. But it’s not going to happen that way. No one is going to save me.
I was never meant to get to that point in my life that every other carefree teenager fantasizes about—the part that they have planned out before they even really took the time to think about it. The future is a definite thing for them, while I can’t see mine. No matter how hard I tried to come up with a major or a plan for a summer internship or what colors I want to have at my wedding, all I saw was emptiness. I couldn’t see anything. That’s how I learned that I’m just not meant to be here. The future isn’t for me.
No one will ever get the chance to really know me. But no one really bothered when I was alive and well, did they?
Everyone leaves.
It’s my turn now.
00:00:01.002
How long have I been falling?
Hours?
Minutes?
Seconds?
It feels like a lifetime.
00:00:00.000
It�
�s finally over.
I hit the water and my body shatters like fine china smacking down on a tile floor. The sound is deafening, and instantly everything around me is silent. I can see my arms flailing, doing what I don’t know. But I can’t hear the monstrous waves surrounding me. I can’t hear the many boats that were trolling the water before I stepped off the ledge.
Nothing.
I’m just sinking. I kick my legs but it does nothing to keep me afloat.
I let them fall limp and let the silent world overtake me.
Now a vacuum is sucking me in and compressing all of the life and energy out of my body. I gasp for air, trying to keep my organs inside, but I think I failed. I’m literally a shell now. Everything turns to black. Then to a grayish-brown. Then there’s just nothingness.
So this is what dying feels like.
I fight to keep my eyes open. I want to experience it all before everything slips away. But I can’t. My lifeless body needs to sleep. I let my eyes fall closed and into a deep dream, filled with faceless people full of love, and happiness, and peace.
Then light. So much light—almost like I’m witnessing the sun rise right in front of my own eyes. I reach out to touch it, and my heart fills with excitement.
This must be heaven.
I’m finally free.
I try to walk, and my legs move at lightening speed. I’m not in the water anymore. I’m in the sky, gliding over endless fields of flowers and warmth.
Freedom.
I’m desperate to move on to the next step. To start this new adventure. I know deep in my heart that I will feel nothing but endless peace from this moment forward. I pump my legs so that I can move even faster. But they freeze, and all of the muscles in my body melt away.
It’s not time.
It has to be.
It’s not time.
But I jumped. I did it. I finally got what I wanted.
It’s not time.
I’m finally free. It has to be time.
It’s not time.
Everything’s dark again, and I fall into a dreamless sleep.
****
Pain.
Discomfort.
I feel it all again.
“Mr. Yermakova, get over here! She’s waking up!”
No…
“She is? Oh thank God!”
I feel his heavy, booted feet as they trudge across the metal underneath me.
I feel.
Please no…
“Dad?” I choke out.
“Oh Jesus Maura, what the hell have you done?” he cries, pulling my limp body into his arms. I screech out in pain as his arms squeeze my ribs. Lightening bolts of crippling tenderness are ricocheting off of my organs.
No. No no no no no.
This isn’t supposed to be happening.
“We’re on our way to the hospital now. Just sit tight.”
I don’t want to go to the hospital. I want to go back. Please just send me back.
I open my mouth to speak, but I can’t. My dad’s tear-stained face hovers over mine, gasping for air and whispering ‘thank you, thank you’ to no one in particular.
“We watched her hit the water. Her legs straightened out right before, almost like she knew that she didn’t want to die,” says a random voice from behind. I smell rotting fish all around me, and if I believed that I still had a functioning stomach, I would throw up.
“I don’t understand…” my father says, finally breaking his stare with me.
“It’s the only way to survive the fall. Feet first. She didn’t want to die.”
Yes, yes I did. And I almost succeeded. Thanks a lot, asshole.
“You wanted to survive, Maura. It wasn’t time,” Dad whispers through my wet hair and into my ear. I turn away from him and stare up into the sky. I feel the tears forming in my eyes. I was up there. I was so close to having everything I wanted.
It’s not time.
I’m sobbing now. Over the fact that I’m here again. Over the fact that my father is cradling my freezing body in his arms, whispering to me that everything is going to be okay.
It’s going to be okay.
But it’s not. This isn’t what I wanted.
I already made my mind up. It was a done deal.
I can’t do this again.
I turn away from him and watch as a blueish-white figure floats through the air, riding the damp wind.
A bird.
Everyone is trying to talk to me now, but I can’t keep my eyes off of it. Swooping down and scraping the surface of the water and soaring back up with a fish hanging from its mouth. Its wings flap effortlessly, moving as fast as I once did. I was as free as he is just moments ago.
I’m still crying. I want to wipe my tears away, but I can’t move my limbs. I feel my father’s hands come up to my face and wipe them away for me.
“Is the pain really bad Maura?”
What’s the correct answer to this? Which pain is he talking about? The physical pain of my body, or the painful realization that I have to live my life all over again?
The bird circles over our boat now, and I swear that he tilts his head down at looks right at me.
He sees me.
“Yeah, it’s bad,” I whisper. His hand squeezes mine. “But it’s really beautiful, too.”
It’s not time.
Acknowledgements
The creation of this book wouldn’t have been possible without the love and support of my amazing husband, Ryan. Thank you for being there and thank you for never thinking I was crazy for going for this dream. You are the bestest friend I’ve ever had and I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with you.
Thank you to my parents, who always were and will always be two of my biggest fans. Thank you for always pushing me to follow my dreams, and thanks for always being there as my friends.
To Dr. Sipe, the single most inspiring teacher I ever had the chance to work with throughout my many years in school. Your brilliant lessons helped me fall in love with young adult literature even more than I already was, and I discovered so many different and innovative ways for thinking about text that I never knew before meeting you. I always knew that I wanted to thank you personally when I finally published my first book, and my sadness about the fact that I can’t is almost overwhelming. Please know that your teachings and your spirit will always be with me, providing constant inspiration.
To Lisa, a girl I never knew, but a girl that changed my life. Your story is one that never had the chance to be told, and I hope that by creating Maura in your memory, it finally will.
And lastly, to those of you who find yourselves relating to Maura and her struggles—please don’t remain silent. Reach out and tell someone—ANYONE that you trust. You must learn to forgive yourself for things that may have been your fault and things that were never your fault, and learn that your life is a valuable one that is worth fighting for. Find professional help—every college campus has counselors available for students, and most should be free of charge. Depression isn’t something you should have to deal with alone. Visit my website for a list of resources to help you along the way out of the darkness.
About the author
Tonya Fitzharris is a writer, reader, blogger, mediocre cook, photographer, runner, Florida native, and cat lover. She used to be a Middle School English Teacher, but now she’s trying out the whole novel writing thing. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and her Belgian cat named Waffles.
Visit her website to learn more!
www.tonyafitzharris.com
Table of Contents
6 Seconds of Life
Copyright
Dedication
00:00:00.000
00:00:06.000
00:00:05.864
00:00:05.421
00:00:05.102
00:00:04.829
0:00:04.638
0:00:04.319
00:00.04.000
00:00:04.263
00:00:03.958
00:00:
03.729
00:00:03.511
00:00:03.206
00:00:03.007
00:00:02.883
00:00:02.664
00:00:02.313
00:00:02.004
00:00:01.748
00:00:01.423
00:00:01.117
00:00:01.002
00:00:00.000
Acknowledgements
About the author
6 Seconds of Life Page 22