The World Without Us

by Robin Stevenson

  “Point of no return, huh?” I’d said, only half listening.

  “Exactly,” Suzy had said.

  I open my eyes and look out the window, watching the streetlights flash by, and I wonder when Jeremy crossed the event horizon. And I wonder how I didn’t see it, and how much of the blame belongs squarely on my own shoulders.

  I know what my dad is trying to say: it isn’t all about me. In the last two years, Jeremy lost his brother and his dad. His mom’s still there, but she’s not the kind of person I could imagine confiding in.

  I’m the only one Jeremy actually talked to. I’m the only one who could have seen this coming.

  The first time I met Jeremy’s mother was accidental; I don’t think Jeremy was in any hurry to introduce us. It was after Halloween, and we’d stopped by his place after school to pick up new batteries and a memory card for his camera. We were doing some photography together for WaitingToDie.com, Vicky and Pam’s death-row website—wandering around town taking semi-random, artsy pictures of chain-link fences and padlocks and anything that might symbolize prison.

  Jeremy’s place was huge and expensive-looking—a ranch-style house with landscaping that fit right in with the nearby country club. “Wow,” I said. “This place is amazing.”

  “Yeah.” Jeremy opened the front door. “We’re going to have to sell it though. Mom doesn’t want to move, but she can’t afford to buy Dad out.”

  “How long ago did they split up?” I stepped inside and looked around. Pale carpets, leather couches, glass coffee table and none of the warmth and clutter of my house. It was oddly generic, like a show home or a tastefully decorated hotel suite. You couldn’t tell anything about the people who lived here.

  “A year ago.” He slipped his shoes off.

  “Have you always lived here?”

  “Since I was four.” He shrugged. “So as long as I remember.”

  I scanned the living room for personal touches and my gaze landed on two framed photographs on the piano: a recent school picture of Jeremy, unsmiling, and beside it a photograph of what had to be Lucas. The younger boy was fair-haired, tanned and freckled, grinning—the opposite of Jeremy but with similar features, like a photographic negative. I imagined Jeremy’s photo changing, being replaced by a new one each year, while Lucas’s stayed the same, frozen in time, the gap between them ever increasing.

  “That’s Lucas?” I asked softly.

  He nodded. “That’s Lucas. Yeah.”

  “Jeremy?” A voice called out, and I heard footsteps coming down the stairs.

  “Mom?”

  A tall woman stepped into the living room. “I came home early. Thought I was getting a migraine, and I didn’t have any of my pills at work.” She was almost as thin as Jeremy but with more muscle. She looked like a runner, I thought. A marathon runner. Sinewy, not an ounce of fat on her. She had the kind of smoothly styled hair that probably took forty minutes every morning, and under it a smooth mannequin face, slender arched eyebrows, neutral-tone lipstick. Vicky’s age, probably—fortyish—but as different from my own mother in appearance as it was possible for two women the same age to be.

  “Uh, we’re just picking something up,” Jeremy said quickly. “Sorry. Mom, this is Melody.”

  I held out my hand. “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Weathers.”

  She shook my hand, eyeing me appraisingly. Her nails were long and expertly manicured. I felt my cheeks getting hot as I wondered what she was thinking about finding her son in the house with a girl. Her voice was tense and cool. “Well,” she said, “I’m going to go lie down. If you could keep the noise down, I’d appreciate it.”

  “We’re going to Melody’s house,” Jeremy said.

  I followed Jeremy to his room and watched him change the batteries and memory card in his camera. I couldn’t stop thinking about Lucas the whole time we were there—it was as if the sadness had saturated the carpets and drapes, soaked into the upholstery, permeated the very foundation of the house. I wondered what they had done about Lucas’s bedroom and what it meant to Jeremy to be leaving this house. If I was him, I’d be glad to leave. It was the kind of house that made you feel hyperconscious of being a visitor.

  “Jeremy?” I said, once we were back outside in the fresh air and sunshine. “Do you ever feel sort of like a guest in there?”

  “In my house?” He looked at me like I was nuts. “No. Why would I?”

  “Just, you know, how tidy it is. And quiet.”

  He shrugged. “My mom’s a neat freak. Anyway, you saw my room.”

  Jeremy’s room might have been messy by his mom’s standards, but it didn’t look like any teenager’s room I’d ever seen before. Three or four books piled on his bedside table—all nonfiction, I’d noticed—and a sweatshirt tossed carelessly on the floor. That was about as far as rebellion seemed to go in his house. “Your room’s not messy,” I said. “Not even close.”

  “Yeah. I guess. Mom’s kind of OCD, actually,” Jeremy said. “She couldn’t take it if my room looked like yours. Not that there’s anything wrong with your room. But she needs everything to be put away in its place, you know?”

  “Mmm.” I ran my fingers along a fence as we walked, feeling the rhythmic bump-bump-bump of the wooden boards.

  Jeremy stopped walking and took a picture of the fence. “She’s had some problems,” he said. “Depression, that sort of thing.” He cleared his throat. “I don’t like to add to her stress. That’s all. It’s no big deal to keep things tidy.”

  “I guess she’s had a lot to deal with,” I said. “Lucas dying, and then, you know. What happened with your dad.”

  “Nothing happened.” Jeremy turned and looked at me, his eyes wary and his voice hard. “They split up. That’s all.”

  “Yeah. I know. That’s what I meant.” I felt like I’d offended him somehow. “Did I say something I shouldn’t have?”

  He shook his head. “No. Just don’t mention him around my mother, okay?”

  “Okay.” Not like I was ever around his mother anyway. “Do you see much of him?”

  “No. No, he’s…he moved out of town.”

  I dropped the subject after that.

  Waking

  Vicky wakes me up. Even before I open my eyes, yesterday comes rushing in: the hours at the hospital, Jeremy falling from the bridge. The sun is streaming in my window and I can see the deep etching of crow’s-feet around my mother’s eyes as she bends over me.

  “Jeremy’s mom is on the phone, Mel. I thought you might want to take it.” She holds a phone out toward me and sees my hesitation. “It’s okay. Good news.”

  I clear my throat and take the phone from her. “Mrs. Weathers?”

  “Hi, Melody. I just wanted to let you know Jeremy’s conscious and doing well. They’re saying he’ll be fine.” She sounds like she did the first time I met her—controlled, cool, intimidating. Nothing like the frantic woman I saw at the hospital last night.

  “Is he awake?” I wonder what he has told her.

  “Yes.” She gives a little cough. “He wants to see you.”

  “Oh. He does?”

  “Yes.”

  There is an awkward pause. I want to see Jeremy too. At least, part of me does.

  The rest of me—the larger part—is terrified.

  “Okay,” I say. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  After I hang up the phone, I look at Vicky. “He’s awake. He wants to see me. Can you give me a ride?”

  She nods. “Of course.”

  Jeremy is lying in a narrow hospital bed, pale blue sheets pulled up to his chest. He’s wearing a hospital gown and he has an IV dripping fluid into the back of his hand. He’s even paler than usual, and his eyes are closed, his eyelashes spiky black lines against his cheeks. I sit in a beige plastic chair beside his bed, chip Suzy’s latest polish (dark blue and sparkly) off my fingernails and listen to the voices murmuring in the hall outside his room.

  “You know how I said we used to fight? Me and Luca
s?”

  I look at him, startled. I hadn’t realized he was awake.

  “I liked being an older brother,” Jeremy says. “Maybe more than I liked Lucas, you know? It was part of who I was. And then when he died, I wasn’t that anymore. Not a big brother.”

  I don’t know what to say, so I just stare at him. His eyes are still closed and his face is eggshell white against the pale blue pillowcase. His voice is slurred, and I figure he’s probably doped up on morphine. After a long minute, I clear my throat. “What you said before about reincarnation… do you really believe that? That if you’d died, you guys would be together again somehow?”

  “I did,” he says. A tear leaks out the corner of his eye and trickles down into his dark hair. “I think I really did.”

  Past tense. I wonder if he meant to say it that way.

  When he opens his eyes, he looks right at me for the first time. “Mel.”

  “Yeah.”

  “When I jumped? That exact moment when I jumped, when I started to fall? I realized that I’d just made the biggest fucking mistake of my life.”

  “You did?” I remember the pale oval of his face looking up at me.

  “I didn’t want to die,” he says. “I didn’t want to.” His face twists, and he sounds incredulous, like this makes no sense to him. “I tried to fall straight, you know? Legs together, feet first, all tucked in close. I didn’t want to die.”

  I swallow. “It must have hurt.”

  “Mmm. Yeah. It was like hitting cement.” He laughs. “Not funny. Sorry. I’m kind of stoned.” He lifts one hand slightly, indicating the bag of clear liquid hanging from the IV pole.

  “I thought you’d hate me,” I whisper. “For not jumping.”

  “No. Never.” He shakes his head, winces, presses a hand to his side. “I’d hate myself if you had. God, if you’d died and I hadn’t…I couldn’t take one more thing to feel guilty about.”

  “Jeremy…”

  “I didn’t even lose consciousness when I hit the water.” He looks at me. “I remember thinking I had to try to swim, but everything hurt so bad. I guess I passed out at some point, because I remember being pulled out of the water, sort of, and the next thing is, I’m waking up in this room.”

  “I’m so glad you’re still here,” I say. “I thought for sure…”

  “I’m glad too, I guess.” He licks his lips. “Is there any water?”

  “I can get you some,” I say, glad to have a purpose. “I’ll be right back.”

  When I step back into his room a minute later, plastic cup of ice water in my hand, Jeremy is asleep. I put the cup on the small table beside his bed and watch his chest slowly rising and falling for over an hour before I head down to find Vicky in the hospital coffee shop.

  Apparently the rumor mill is working even on the weekend, because the next day, for the first time in a very long time, my phone is buzzing with texts from Adriana and Devika. OMG heard about J! Call me!

  Not likely.

  “Maybe you should call them,” Vicky says softly. We’re sitting on the couch together drinking tea, reading and passing the Sunday paper’s crossword puzzle back and forth. “Might make tomorrow easier, if you get this out of the way.”

  “Tomorrow?” I put the newspaper down.

  “At school.”

  I hadn’t even thought about it. “I haven’t talked to them in forever.”

  “I know.” She made a face. “It doesn’t mean that they aren’t genuinely concerned about you though.”

  I snort. “They want the inside scoop so they can tell everyone. Gossip is social currency.”

  “You three used to be such good friends. Maybe you should give them another chance, Mel.”

  I don’t bother replying. Another chance to do what? Call me names, spread rumors, make me feel like shit? I don’t think so.

  Monday morning I can feel the stares and sense the whispers as soon as I walk into the school. I don’t know how it happened, but it’s obvious that the story, or some warped version of it, is out there. Adriana and Devika sidle up to me at my locker after homeroom.

  “Hi, Mel,” Adriana says.

  I look at her and Devika and raise my eyebrows. I have less than nothing to say to either of them.

  Adriana hesitates, chewing on her lower lip for a moment. She’s got her braces off, I notice. I remember when she first got them, at the start of grade seven. She cried and cried. “I heard that your boyfriend tried to kill himself,” she whispers.

  “Jeremy isn’t my boyfriend,” I say.

  “Well, your friend, then.” She looks to Devika for help.

  “Is he, you know, going to be okay?” Devika says.

  “How’d you hear about it?” I ask, wondering if they know I was there.

  “My mom knows someone who’s in a running group with his mother,” Adriana says.

  “Right.” And I’m sure Jeremy’s mom really appreciates her running buddies fueling the rumor mill. “Well, yeah, he’s going to be okay.”

  “What did he do?” Devika asks. “Like, did he take an overdose?”

  Adriana’s freckled cheeks are pink, and I wonder if she’s thinking about that awful party and the Tylenol and how she called the ambulance. “None of your business,” I say.

  “Sorry. I just wondered.” Devika tucks her smooth dark hair behind her ears. “I mean, you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

  “I know.” I shut my locker door and fasten the combination lock. “Excuse me.”

  Devika shrugs and steps aside, but Adriana hesitates for a second. “Mel. Um. I just wondered, you know, if you were okay.”

  I scowl at her. “I’m not planning to kill myself, if that’s the kind of gossip you’re hoping for. No, wait, it doesn’t matter what I’m planning, does it? You can spread that rumor anyway. Get the whole Death Wish thing going again.”

  “I didn’t…That wasn’t…”

  “Whatever,” I say, pushing past her.

  Ten minutes into math class, I get called down to the office. My mouth is dry and my heart flutters wildly as I hurry down the hallway. I’m not sure what I’m afraid of, but there’s this awful nameless dread in my belly.

  “Oh, Melody,” the receptionist says. “Mrs. Paulsen wants to see you in counseling services.”

  I’ve never met Mrs. Paulsen before. Never been to counseling services, which turns out to be just one small office beside the medical room. Posters line the wall outside. I can’t tear my eyes away from the hideous before and after photos of crystal meth users.

  “Melody? Come on in, please. Sit down.” Mrs. Paulsen is an older woman with short, curly gray hair and a white cardigan; her taste in artwork seems to be of the inspirational kitten variety. Hang in there! Things are looking up!

  I take a seat in a pale blue chair and wait to see where this is going.

  “You’re probably wondering why you’re here,” she says.

  “I’m assuming it’s about Jeremy.”

  “Yes. A couple of people mentioned that he was a good friend of yours.”

  “Is.”

  “Pardon?” She looks confused.

  “Is a good friend of mine. Present tense. He’s not dead.”

  Mrs. Paulsen nods. “A very lucky young man, from what I understand.”

  “Which is what?” I ask, feeling mean but nonetheless taking pleasure in being difficult.

  “I spoke with his mother,” she says. “She said that you were with him when he jumped from the bridge.”

  My heart thuds out of rhythm, an almost painful jarring kick in the chest. I have to remind myself that she wasn’t there. She doesn’t know. “Yes.”

  “She said you tried to stop him.”

  My eyes are suddenly swimming. “Not hard enough,” I say. It might be the first truthful thing I’ve said about this.

  “Mrs. Weathers was worried about you,” she says. “It’s very common for people to blame themselves when things like this happen.”

&nbs
p; “Yeah, I guess.”

  “Do you want to tell me about it?” She crosses her legs and leans toward me.

  “Not really.”

  “Sometimes it helps to talk.”

  I don’t say anything. I imagine my skin hardening into a shell around me, impermeable, impenetrable.

  “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable,” she says. Her glasses are so clear they look like they don’t even have lenses in them. “I just wanted to make sure you knew that you can come and talk to me anytime, if you need support. And Jeremy, of course, when he returns to school.”

  “Right. Okay.”

  She leans back and sighs. “I have a book you might like to borrow.” She turns, reaches behind her and slides a book off the shelf.

  I take it from her. Surviving the Suicide of a Loved One. On the front cover, a rose with a falling petal. “Jeremy’s not dead,” I tell her for the second time.

  “I know,” she says. “But you should read the chapter on survivor guilt anyway. I don’t want you to blame yourself for what he did.”

  No one does: Mrs. Weathers, Vicky and Bill, the hospital social worker, now Mrs. Paulsen. I’m pretty sure they’d all feel a whole lot different if they knew exactly what had happened.

  It wasn’t any single event that led us to the Skyway Bridge. When I look back, when I try to sift through everything that happened, the memories pile up in a crazy, unstoppable cascade, each one leading to another, bringing us closer and closer to the moment we stood together at the very edge. To the moment Jeremy jumped, and I didn’t.

  If it wasn’t for me, Jeremy would never have been on that bridge. It’s not just that I was the first to suggest jumping off the bridge—though that would have been bad enough—or even that I added my own songs to his suicide playlist. What bothers me is that at Halloween I already knew that something was really wrong. And after Halloween, things went steadily downhill. Looking back, I can see screaming red flags scattered throughout the landscape of our conversations, but I’d ignored every warning sign.