Mom goes to work again on Friday so it’s just Dad and me. I insist that I’m fine and I don’t need looking after or entertaining. In fact, I don’t really get out of bed and it’s not because I still feel pretty shitty. I don’t see the point. If I’m going to be honest I don’t see the point in getting out of bed, getting dressed, leaving my room or leaving this house. I’ve failed. I can’t go back to school. I can’t be happy. I can’t have friends. I just want to curl into a ball but my ribs hurt too much and I have to lie flat on my back.
After lunch I have a brief moment when I feel like a panic attack is imminent. My heart rate is too high. I feel anxious. I feel tense and frightened and wrong. I try to practice my breathing and calming. I want to fold up, close in on myself but I don’t know how. Why is this happening? I was fine and then I wasn’t.
Mom comes in to check on me when she gets home and she’s surprised to find that I’m still in bed. I’m still in pretty rough shape. All I can really do is sit or lie around so why bother getting up just to change location? She looks at me with concern but then ultimately leaves when the doorbell rings. I decide that if Max is here again I will see him no matter what my dad has to say about it. I gingerly get out of bed and shuffle across the room to look out the window.
There’s a police cruiser in front of my house. My anxiety levels go from zero to off the charts in seconds. I’m terrified as if the police are here for me, as if I did something wrong. I let the curtain fall back in place and look wildly around my room as if I could find a way to hide…to convince them I’m not here or something.
“Noah?” Mom calls from some other room, probably the kitchen. “Noah, would you come here please?” Her voice sounds strained. She doesn’t sound like Mom. My heart pounds and my ears ring and I’m dizzy. I have to reach out to grab my desk chair for support.
“Noah?!” Now it’s Dad calling more urgently and I manage to rouse myself to make the walk to the kitchen. When I get there, Mom and Dad are sitting with Office Powell and a female cop stands slightly behind Officer Powell.
I stop in the doorway, afraid to move any further into the room because I see what Officer Powell brought with him. There’s a clear bag on the table and it contains pieces of folded white paper. I know what those pieces of paper are. Of course I do. I concentrate on breathing. I concentrate on not passing out or totally freaking.
“He’s in custody but he’ll be out on bail probably before the weekend…Monday at the latest…until sentencing but there’s a restraining order that says he can’t come within fifty feet of your son,” Office Powell is saying. I somehow make it to a chair before my knees are too weak to hold me any longer.
“Noah, they found who did this,” Mom tells me. “Officer Powell was just explaining how everything happened.” No, no, no, no! This is impossible! If they figured out who did this, and that bag contains what I think it does things are about to get a whole lot worse. I wish he’d killed me. I honest to God wish I was six feet under right now. I can’t take what will happen next.
“Noah, I realize you were shaken and in pain and confused when we talked but why didn’t you tell me you were being threatened and harassed when I asked? We could have acted a lot faster and things would have been a lot easier if you had told me everything,” Office Powell says. He doesn’t sound angry just disappointed. I have the same feeling of having let him down that I have when my parents are disappointed in me.
“Uh, there’s no one…” I stammer. I’m going to deny as long as I can.
“A Miss Darcy Miller informed your principle who called us about these threatening notes you were receiving…” Darcy. I can’t believe she actually told. What was she thinking? She knew I didn’t want this.
Office Powell goes on to explain how my locker was opened and the notes were found. I curse myself yet again for not getting rid of them. Did some small, subconscious part of me WANT them to be found? Everyone that has a locker along that hallway, including Max and Tabitha and Sherrie, was questioned and it was Sherrie that remembered seeing someone slipping a note into my locker a few times.
“Kyle Newton was seen on more than one occasion slipping something into Noah’s locker,” Office Powell explains. “Miss Carlisle stated that he hung out with your group of friends on occasion so she never thought there was anything insidious about his leaving notes.
“He was after school that day for practice which he had slipped out of early. His absence was noted by several teammates as well as the coach. When questioned he initially denied everything but the first noteworthy piece of evidence was the fact that Mr. Newton’s eye color matches what Noah described as the assailant’s eye color.”
Why did I tell them that? Why didn’t I lie and say I couldn’t remember or that he had brown eyes? Surely brown eyes are more common. I’m having a hard time concentrating on what the policeman is saying because I know it’s only a matter of time before it hits the fan.
Kyle denied everything until Officer Powell noticed blood on his jacket. He claimed he had a nosebleed but the jacket was taken for DNA testing and that’s when Kyle realized there was no lying his way out of DNA. He knew it was my blood on his jacket. He confessed to leaving the notes. He confessed to the assault. He was arrested right there at the school.
“Will Noah have to testify?” Dad asks.
“We’re not sure yet. Most likely not. With Mr. Newton’s confession and the nature of the crime it’s pretty cut and dried…mostly just a matter of sentencing. He’s being expelled from Lansing High and he turned eighteen in January so he’ll be sentenced as an adult. I’m just sorry that hate crime laws in Pennsylvania exclude sexual orientation and gender identity. If he was convicted of a hate crime it would carry a longer sentence.”
My world stops. Mom and Dad haven’t caught up yet. They heard what the officer said but they haven’t registered what it means yet.
“I’m not…”I start but I can’t find my voice. Mom looks at me then looks at the bag of paper.
“May I?” she asks as she reaches for the bag. Officer Powell considers for a moment.
“Some of these are pretty harsh,” he warns. Mom nods and puts her hand in the bag. She pulls out the crumpled first note. She reads it more than once. I can tell because her eyes keep travelling over it. One hand goes to her mouth. She puts the note down and takes another and reads that as my dad takes the first note and reads.
“It’s only words. Words don’t mean anything…”I try to convince them. I don’t think they’re listening. Mom stops reading and pushes the offending evidence away as if she can’t stand to be near it anymore. She looks at me with the strangest expression on her face. She knows. I can see her calculating everything that’s happened, every odd behavior I’ve shown since October when he kissed me for the first time. She knows.
I look to Dad and he’s folding the notes carefully as if that matters. He places them in the bag very deliberately. He’s silent and does not look at me. He hands the bag back to Officer Powell.
“Thank you for all you’ve done. Thank you for letting us know that he’s in custody,” Dad says and then he shakes the officer’s hand and leaves the room. I hear the door to his office close loudly.
“Mom?” I whisper.
“I’m sorry to have disturbed your evening,” Officer Powell tells her as he stands to leave. “I’m sorry for what Noah and your family have been through.”
“Thank you,” Mom says and shakes his hand. The female officer that stood silently the whole time turns to me. She’s really pretty and doesn’t look all that much older than me. She takes out a card and writes a number on it before handing it to me.
“I lead a group…if you need someone to talk to come see us, okay? If you’re not comfortable with that this is my personal cell number on the back. Call me if you need someone, anytime okay?”
I look at the card in my hand and I can’t read the words properly through the tears that are starting to fill my eyes. It says something about an LGBT gro
up and this is Officer Cami Richards. I want to beg Officer Richards to take me with her. I want to disappear. I hold the card in my hand but I can’t speak, can’t even nod. Mom walks both officers to the door then returns to the kitchen.
“Noah?” Mom says gently. I look at her and shake my head.
“This is wrong…all wrong…this is wrong,” I keep repeating myself. I’m shaking my head. “Wrong, wrong, wrong wrong…”
“Noah, why didn’t you say something?” Mom asks and I don’t know exactly what she means. Is she talking about the notes in my locker and that I didn’t tell about them or is she talking about what they said? Dad has already turned his back on me. I can’t stand here and watch Mom do the same.
I get up abruptly knocking over my chair. I’m shaking as I make my way towards the doorway. Mom rights my chair then reaches towards me but at the last minute she stops herself and doesn’t touch me.
“Noah, do you need anything? What do you need?”
“Can I have my drugs now?” I ask hollowly.
“It’s a little early,” Mom worries.
“I just need to lie down. I think…I think I just want to go to bed now. Please.” Mom considers for a moment. She looks down the hallway to Dad’s closed office door. I know she wants to go to him. I know she wants to distance herself from me. Eventually she nods and goes to get the pills. This time I take the Paxil as well as the pain meds.
Mom goes down the hallway with me but slightly apart. She stops outside of Dad’s office with her hand on the knob.
“Noah, are you okay?” she asks. She’s not really looking at me though.
“I’m going to bed. My ribs hurt and my head hurts and I’m…I just want to go to bed,” I say. Mom nods and then enters Dad’s office and I continue on to my room.
The panic that threatened earlier has been replaced by that weird, detached feeling that’s happened on more than one occasion in the last few months. I’m no one. I’m floating. I’m not the person that is locking the door. I’m not the person that tilts the desk chair under the knob as a backup lock in case my parents actually have a master key that I don’t know about.
I’m not the person that has unending streams of saltwater leaking down his face. I don’t remember closing and locking the bathroom door. It couldn’t have been me that did that. Did I pour this handful of aspirin into my hand? It certainly isn’t me that’s putting them all in my mouth at once, drinking straight from the tap to swallow them. I finish off the bottle even though I’m not sure why. They’re only aspirin…my parents won’t let me have anything stronger in my bathroom. Now I’m floating above this boy that sits in the dark in the small space next to the sink hugging his knees to his chest...too far detached to feel the pain in the ribs.
How long do I sit there while the anxiety comes and goes and the pain escalates? It’s physical, it’s not physical. I am pain. The pain is me. It’s not just heartbreak. It’s not just my parents turning their backs on me. It’s not feeling like a failure. It’s all of it and it’s more and it’s all I am and it’s never going to end and I know I can’t lie anymore. I know I can’t push it down anymore. I’m disconnected and I’m not even sure who I am anymore. Can I simply disappear into the dark? I will myself away. It’s harder than I thought. It should be so easy to disappear.
Eventually the blade in my hand slips. It’s hard to grip it with so much blood from running my thumb back and forth, back and forth. Maybe Tabitha had the right idea. Why is that thought familiar? When did I even pick up the blade? How could I run my thumb over it without feeling it?
There’s a small nightlight next to the sink. It gives just enough light so that I don’t have to turn on the overhead when I need to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. It’s just bright enough to see as I drag the blade across my wrist. It’s not a deep cut but the sting of it shakes me in some way, grounds me.
“Noah,” I whisper. I’m not no one. I’m not floating. I do exist. I’m Noah. Still, this despair is deeper than any feeling I’ve ever had. I drag the blade again and hiss at the sharp pain but I welcome it. I FEEL it. It’s outside of me, not a part of me. This is a pain I can control. I hate myself but this grounds me. I pull the blade across the skin again. I know why Tabitha cut.
I switch hands. My right hand is too bloody from my thumb. I can’t hold the blade properly. The next cut isn’t as perfectly straight, drawn as it is with my left hand. The next cut doesn’t give me the same grounding feeling. It doesn’t make me feel better. It’s just a cut. I feel myself slip further away.
Why am I teasing this blade across my skin? Tabitha was wrong. Cutting wasn’t the answer. She didn’t mean it. She said she wanted to kill herself…that the first cut was just to get used to the pain but if she really meant it she’d have done it. I’m sure of that. The reason I know this becomes clear to me as I turn the blade.
I drag it from wrist to elbow as deep as it will go and I have to stifle the cry that wants to come out of my mouth. I move the blade back to my wrist just to the side of the first cut and drag it again. And again. Repeat. Again. I switch hands. The blade cuts through me like the pain, wrist to elbow again and again and again and again.
I know that it’s extremely difficult to kill yourself by cutting horizontally across your wrists. TV makes it look too easy. In actuality blood clots too quickly. Unless you submerge your wrists in water the blood will clot. I don’t have it in me to run a bath. I don’t want my parents to hear the water…but aspirin thins the blood.
The other problem with horizontal cuts is that there are a lot of tendons and bones and important ligaments in the wrist that make the hands work. Once you cut one deeply enough to be effective that hand won’t work well enough to do the other. Vertical is the right way. I’m sure Tabitha knew that. I’m sure Tabitha didn’t really mean it.
Ribbons of red make up the inside of my forearms. I can still feel the tears, tracking down my face, dripping off my chin, but everything else feels calm. For the first time in a long time…maybe ever…I feel okay because I know I don’t have to do this anymore. It’s such a huge relief! I’m letting go. I’m finally done.
Time stands still. Time speeds forward. Time is fluid like the blood pooling under me. My hands fall to my sides and I can’t muster the energy or desire to move them back into my lap. My legs are splayed out in front of me. I want to curl them into my chest again but I can’t. I don’t know how long I’ve been leaking buckets of red but I’m aware of the pounding of my heart. I’m aware of the change in my breathing. I’m so cold and I start to shiver and I know it won’t be long.
I’m sorry for whoever has to find me but it will be better for them in the long run. I wish I could drive or that I could run or somehow get to the falls. I would step off that ledge. That would do it and then my parents wouldn’t have to deal with it. That’s not an option though. This will just have to do.
I’m not just doing this for me. It’s actually for them. I’m finally setting them free. They won’t have to feel guilty that they turned their backs on me when they found out the truth. They can put me to rest leaving the image of their good son intact. They’ll be free of guilt, free of pain, free of the anguish I’ve caused them my entire life. Max is wrong. It’s not selfish. I wish I could tell him. This is the most selfless thing I’ve ever done. I’m letting them go. I’m giving them back their lives. I think I hear a distant pounding…or is that just my heart? I don’t think it really matters now. I smile as my eyes drift shut.
1 (800) 273-8255
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
Website: www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org
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Acknowledgements
A friend suggested that I mention how I came to write this book. Honestly, what was a nugget of an idea, a novella really, grew and became so much more as I learned who Noah was. I've never written a character that seemed more real to me, who took on a life of his own and moved me to tell a story that I didn't even know existed before I began writing. What started as little more than a writing exercise with just the hint of an idea blossomed as Noah whispered in my ear and I listened. So thank you, Noah, for having so much to say.
I have to thank my husband for putting up with no clean clothes and a wife that would rather stay in and write than go out to dinner or do housework. Mikey Z. is the one who knows the look on my face, that blank one that creeps up when we're out with friends, the look that says I'm thinking about the next chapter or scene or sentence.
A world of thanks to my beta readers; my sister Erin the self proclaimed "non-reader" who took the time to be my first reader...ever, and to Toni Bettencourt and Connie Greenaway who not only read the book but convinced me that it was a story that needed to be told. I would have never delved into self-publishing without their constant encouragement (harassment?) and support.
Thanks to Jeremy Hahn for formatting and creating the cover (that includes a wonderful photo taken by Connie Greenaway) and for putting up with my techno-challenged self and getting this book online to start with.
Thanks to everyone who has read or will read this book. I hope it touched you in some way. I hope it opens some eyes. I hope it helps someone.
Most of all I want to thank my mom and dad for always being there when I needed them and for helping to form the person I am today...the kind of person that cares about the Noahs of the world.
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