Suicide Notes from Beautiful Girls

It? “Who did she need protection from?”

Tig shrugs and his lips spread into a slow smile. “Based on what happened, I’d say herself.”

He pulls himself up off the bed then, tall and sinewy. He opens the drawer of the nightstand, takes out a pill bottle. He walks toward me, falling, catching himself, falling again. He grabs my wrist. His hand is strong and too hot. He forces something into mine, then lets me go.

“What’s this?” Sitting on my palm is a small white pill.

“A goodie bag,” he says. “Because it’s time for you to leave my party.”

He stands there, hands on narrow hips. And I realize there is nothing left I can do. He’s not going to tell me anything else.

My body still buzzing, I walk back out into the main room. Someone is watching me – a girl with short dark hair. For a second I think she looks familiar. She reaches up and waves.

“Go on then,” Tig says. He is standing behind me. “I’m not going to ask you so nicely next time.”

I drop the pill onto the concrete floor as I walk and crush it under the sole of my boots. I feel angry, sharpedged, sick scared. I don’t know what to make of what has just happened. I don’t know what to think or what to believe.

I stop in the doorway and look back at the party one last time. The music is different now. People are dancing with their arms in the air. A girl in a long gold dress is crouched down on the floor where I left the pill, snorting up the dust.

I start down the stairs, taking them two at a time. The crowd climbing up grows thicker the closer I get to the bottom, my eyes are starting to cloud, the faces blending together. Up above, someone cranks the music.

I came here looking for answers, but now I am filled with questions. There’s one thing I do know though: If Delia thought she needed protection, it means this wasn’t a surprise.

It means whatever happened, she saw it coming.

CHAPTER 11

5 YEARS, 3 MONTHS, 8 DAYS EARLIER

Later, Delia would explain to June that that finding a best friend is like finding a true love: When you meet yours, you just know. But the third week of sixth grade when the cool new girl, Delia, invited June for a sleepover, June was a nervous, happy kind of shocked. And she wondered if maybe Delia had made a mistake, thought June was someone else when she invited her. Or maybe it was because Delia hadn’t had a chance to make cooler friends yet.

June was painfully, desperately lonely. She spent her weekends by herself, reading and cleaning up after her mother. June liked this new girl with her big turquoise earrings and enormous smile. She liked how this girl didn’t seem to give a shit about absolutely anything. So even though June had never had a one-on-one sleepover before and the idea made her very nervous, she said yes.

The night of the sleepover Delia’s stepfather was working late, so her mother let them order pizza and cans of Coke and eat in Delia’s room. “My stepfather’s diabetic,” Delia said, slurping on the soda. “So the only soda we ever have is diet, which is poison. My own mother is trying to poison me.” Delia didn’t sit while they ate; instead she walked around the room pointing things out like a museum tour guide – here was a tiny painting of a winter scene that Delia had found at a thrift store, here was the prescription pill bottle nicked from her mom (Delia kept breath mints in there now), there was a cherry stem that she’d knotted using only her tongue (it was the only time she’d ever successfully done it, so she’d saved the evidence). June had never seen a room like this, one filled with so much interesting stuff. It was like she expected to have friends over to show things to.

Shortly after ten, Delia’s stepfather came home and started yelling at her mother behind their closed bedroom door, yelling in a unhinged, out-of-control sort of way. That’s when Delia said it was time to sneak out.

She climbed out her window and then dropped down into the grass. June was scared, but she followed. They walked up and down the block a couple of times. They left dandelions in people’s mailboxes. They peeked into the window of Delia’s cute high-school-aged neighbor. They saw him changing out of his clothes, and he got all the way down to his boxers before he shut the curtains. “Damn it!” Delia said. And then she grinned. “I have an idea.” And then – and even at the time, June couldn’t really believe it was happening – Delia reached around back and unhooked her bra through her shirt, then pulled her arms into her shirt, wriggled around, and suddenly her bra was off and in her hand right there on the street. June stared at it in the light streaming from the windows of the houses. It was black, with an underwire. A real bra, because Delia had real actual boobs. She convinced June to do the same, and taught her how to get it off without taking her shirt off. June was embarrassed that hers was barely a bra at all, more like a shiny little undershirt. But Delia didn’t seem to notice or care. “Now what?” June said. She felt breathless and giggly.

“Now we mark our territory,” Delia said. She grabbed June’s hand and then snuck around the front of the house, opened up the boy’s family’s red-barn mailbox, and tossed both bras inside.

“There,” Delia said. “And now we have a secret.”

June nodded, like she understood. But she didn’t until Delia went on. “Having secrets together makes you real friends,” she said. “Secrets tie you together.” And June felt suddenly giddy at the idea that Delia would want to be tied to her.

Then they snuck back in through Delia’s porch. And even though it wasn’t cool at all, June told Delia how this was probably the first thing she’d done that she wasn’t supposed to. Maybe ever in her life. Delia just smiled. “Guess you haven’t been hanging out with me enough,” she said. “We’ll have to change that.”

They tiptoed back upstairs, and Delia made a show of locking her bedroom door behind them. Then she leaned over and lowered her voice to a whisper. “My stepfather is an asshole. So I always keep it locked, in case.”

June felt fear prickling her belly. “In case what?”

“In case he tries something.”

“Has he?”

Delia shrugged and shook her head. “But if he ever does . . .” Delia reached into her desk drawer and pulled out a switchblade. She held it up. “I’m ready for him.” June opened her mouth in a little shocked O. Then Delia pressed the silver button on the base and a plastic comb popped out. Before June could feel the full effects of her embarrassment, Delia started laughing. It was round and rolling and joyful, her laugh. It didn’t feel like she was laughing at June was the thing, it felt like she was inviting June to join in on the joke.

“You should have seen your face,” Delia said. She shook her head. “You were so shocked, it was amazing.” She put her arm around June. “My stepfather really is a shit, though. My family in general is complete bullshit, actually. What’s yours like?”

“I only have a mom,” June said. “She’s pretty bullshit too.”

And then for some reason – maybe because June liked the sound of Delia’s laugh, or maybe because she couldn’t even remember a time when she’d been honest, really truly honest with anyone, or maybe just because it was late at night and that’s the hardest time to hold things in – June began to talk. She talked about how her mom was out most nights, even when she wasn’t working; how she came home early in the morning, knocking into things and stinking of alcohol. She talked about her father who she’d only met twice. She talked about the time her mom fell and sprained her wrist after tripping over June’s school bag and blamed June, and June felt really guilty, but also didn’t totally know what to think because of what she smelled on her mom’s breath.

June talked and talked, felt the words pouring from her mouth as though she was a faucet and had forgotten how to turn herself off. And when she was finally done, she was struck with a wave of horrible embarrassment. She had ruined her new friendship when it had barely just begun.

“I’m sorry,” June barely managed to mumble. Her cheeks burned with shame and disgust at herself, at how needy and weak she suddenly felt.

But as she looked up, she saw that Delia was staring at her, her head tipped to the side. She didn’t look bored or freaked out or like she thought June was a weirdo. She smiled in this way that made her seem very wise. “Crazy that we have such messed-up families, and yet somehow we both turned out so awesome, right?”

June felt something lifting inside of her. We. “Right,” she said. She forced a laugh and then she meant it.

They brushed their teeth after that and put on pajamas. Delia got them three glasses of water (“I need two, in case I dream about a fire,” Delia said), and they lay side-by-side in Delia’s enormous queen-size bed. Delia combed June’s hair with the switchblade comb – Delia insisted on doing it, because her own curls were too thick and would break the teeth off, and she hadn’t yet used it on anyone – and June felt almost drugged with happiness and relief. Now that this girl was her friend, everything might just be okay. She wouldn’t be so lonely anymore. She wouldn’t be alone. This girl was going to change everything.

CHAPTER 12

The pit in my stomach is so enormous, it could swallow up my room, the house, the whole entire world.

I abandoned Delia, and now she is dead.

A gut punch of sadness hits me, so intense I can barely breathe. I open my closet. I reach in toward the back and feel for the picture. I pull it out and sink down onto my bed.

The frame is glittery pink with two enamel teddy bears on top, holding a heart between them. Delia gave it to me the summer after sixth grade. It was a joke but also not a joke. The photo is of the two of us peeking out from under these ridiculous floppy sun hats that Delia had bought for us. There I am – blond hair, forgettable face – and next to me is Delia, her dark curly hair taking up half the picture, olive skin, big strong nose, fierce chin. Her huge mouth opened in the world’s biggest smile. Delia always insisted she was kind of crazy looking. “Not pretty,” she would say. “Sexy.” But she was half wrong, because when she smiled like that, she was the most beautiful person you had ever seen.

When we stopped being friends, I kept telling myself it was only for now, a temporary thing. One day it would all go back to normal. I was always so sure of that.

Finally, finally the tears begin to fall. We will never have the chance to make up. I will never have the chance to apologize. I will never have the chance to tell her anything ever again. She is really truly gone.

I put the frame on my lap and take the phone out of my pocket. I call voicemail so I can hear her voice, hear the last words she’ll ever say to me.

“Hey, J, it’s me, your old pal . . .”

I had so many chances to fix things between us. So many chances that I didn’t take. Whatever was going on in her life, if I had been there, I would have kept her safe.

“Hey, D,” I whisper over her voice. I need to say these words, even though she can’t hear me. “I know we haven’t talked in a while, and that a bunch of crap happened, but I really miss you.” My chest is so tight, my heart might burst.

“There’s something I need to tell you,” she finishes inside the phone.

The tears are still coming, an impossible amount of them. I keep talking. “And I’m so, so sorry about everything that happened, I should have . . .”

And then I stop, because here is the weirdest thing: The message is over, but somehow it isn’t – there are still sounds coming through my phone. There’s a scuffling, and then Delia again. Only this time, she isn’t talking to my voicemail, but to someone in the background. “I’m going to tell,” Delia says. There is a teasing lilt to her voice, but underneath there’s something darker. “I’m going to tell what you did.”

I press my ear to the speaker. There’s another voice, male, shouting. I can’t make out the words, but I can hear the tone: anger. Fierce and frightening. I hold my breath, and my body fills with ice. And then the message clicks off.

Adrenaline courses through my veins. I’m not crying anymore. What I think I just heard . . . this is not possible. I cannot have heard it.

I start the message again, and again there is Delia’s voice. The scuffling. Delia: I’m going to tell. I’m going to tell what you did. And then the voice in the background, that male voice, that anger.

The blood is pounding in my ears. There is no mistake. That person in the background, I know who it is.

It’s Ryan.

My hands are shaking, I can barely breathe. I check the time. It’s after one a.m. Ryan will be sleeping.

The phone rings four times and goes to voicemail. I hang up and call again. It rings and rings.

Finally, he answers.

“Mmm’lo?” I imagine his face pressed against his pillow, one bare leg kicked out from under the comforter, because that’s the way he always sleeps. I imagine him with Delia, yelling the day before she died.

“I need to talk to you.” My voice sounds strange, barely like me at all.

“Are you okay? What time is it?” I imagine him sitting up in bed now, scratching his chest. I imagine his slow, sleepy heart starting to pound. “Did something happen?”

Yes, I think. Something very, very bad. But what I say is, “Can you meet me?” Because I know I need to do this face to face.

He hesitates for only a fraction of a second. I imagine him thinking how late it is, how early he needs to get up for swim practice. “Of course,” he says, like I knew he would. Because a thing I know about Ryan is that he always does what’s expected of him. Then again, maybe I’m wrong about that.

“Should I come over?”

“No,” I say. “I’ll come to you.”

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