In the hallway, there were still a few people changing classes. All of them jumped. But only one of them stopped. And he stood there, facing me, cramming my note in his back pocket.
I screamed that word over and over again. Tears, finally spilling over, ran down my face. “Why? Why, Zach?”
I heard about that. Hannah flipping out for no apparent reason, embarrassing herself in front of so many people.
But they were wrong. There was a reason.
So now, let’s get personal. In the spirit of opening up-of full disclosure-let me offer you this: My parents love me. I know they do. But things have not been easy recently. Not for about a year. Not since you-know-what opened outside of town.
I remember that. Hannah’s parents were on the news every night, warning that if the huge shopping center went up, it would put the downtown stores out of business. They said no one would shop there anymore.
When that happened, my parents became distant. There was suddenly a lot for them to think about. A lot of pressure to make ends meet. I mean, they talked to me, but not like before.
When I cut my hair, my mom didn’t even notice.
And as far as I knew-thank you, Zach-no one at school noticed, either.
I noticed.
In the back of our class, Mrs. Bradley also had a paper bag. It hung with the rest of ours on the spinning bookrack. We could use it-and she encouraged it-for notes about her teaching. Critical or otherwise. She also wanted us to recommend topics for future discussions.
So I did just that. I wrote a note to Mrs. Bradley that read: “Suicide. It’s something I’ve been thinking about. Not too seriously, but I have been thinking about it.”
That’s the note. Word for word. And I know it’s word for word because I wrote it dozens of times before delivering it. I’d write it, throw it away, write it, crumple it up, throw it away.
But why was I writing it to begin with? I asked myself that question every time I printed the words onto a new sheet of paper. Why was I writing this note? It was a lie. I hadn’t been thinking about it. Not really. Not in detail. The thought would come into my head and I’d push it away.
But I pushed it away a lot.
And it was a subject we never discussed in class. But I was sure more people than just me had thought about it, right? So why not discuss it as a group?
Or deep down, maybe there was more. Maybe I wanted someone to figure out who wrote the note and secretly come to my rescue.
Maybe. I don’t know. But I was careful never to give myself away.
The haircut. Averting your eyes in the halls. You were careful, but still, there were signs. Little signs. But they were there.
And then, just like that, you snapped back.
Except I did give myself away to you, Zach. You knew I wrote that note in Mrs. Bradley’s bag. You had to. She took it out of her bag and read it the day after I caught you. The day after I had that meltdown in the hall.
A few days before she took the pills, Hannah was herself again. She said hello to everyone in the halls. She looked us in the eyes. It seemed so drastic because it had been months since she had acted like that. Like the real Hannah.
But you did nothing, Zach. Even after Mrs. Bradley brought it up, you did nothing to reach out.
It seemed so drastic, because it was.
So what did I want from the class? Mainly, I wanted to hear what everyone had to say. Their thoughts. Their feelings.
And boy, did they tell me.
One person said it was going to be hard to help without knowing why the person wanted to kill himself.
And yes, I refrained from saying, “Or herself. It could be a girl.”
Then others started chiming in.
“If they’re lonely, we could invite them to sit with us at lunch.”
“If it’s grades, we can tutor them.”
“If it’s their home life, maybe we can…I don’t know…get them counseling or something.”
But everything they said-everything!-came tinged with annoyance.
Then one of the girls, her name doesn’t matter here, said what everyone else was thinking. “It’s like whoever wrote this note just wants attention. If they were serious, they would have told us who they were.”
God. There was no way for Hannah to open up in that class.
I couldn’t believe it.
In the past, Mrs. Bradley had notes dropped in her bag suggesting group discussions on abortion, family violence, cheating-on boyfriends, girlfriends, on tests. No one insisted on knowing who wrote those topics. But for some reason, they refused to have a discussion on suicide without specifics.
For ten minutes or so, Mrs. Bradley rattled off statistics-local statistics-that surprised us all. Because we’re juveniles, she said, as long as the suicide didn’t occur in a public place with witnesses, they probably wouldn’t report it in the news. And no parent wants people to know that their child, the child they raised, took his, or her, own life. So people are oftentimes led to believe it was an accident. The downside being that no one knows what’s really going on with the people in their community.
That said, a thorough discussion did not begin in our class.
Were they just being nosy, or did they really think that knowing specifics was the best way to help? I’m not sure. A little of both, maybe.
In first period, Mr. Porter’s class, I watched her a lot. If the topic of suicide came up, maybe our eyes would have met and I would have seen it.
And truthfully, I don’t know what they could have said to sway me either way. Because maybe I was being selfish. Maybe I was just looking for attention. Maybe I just wanted to hear people discuss me and my problems.
Based on what she told me at the party, she would have wanted me to see it. She would have looked directly at me, praying for me to see it.
Or maybe I wanted someone to point a finger at me and say, “Hannah. Are you thinking about killing yourself? Please don’t do that, Hannah. Please?”
But deep down, the truth was that the only person saying that was me. Deep down, those were my words.
At the end of class, Mrs. Bradley passed out a flyer called The Warning Signs of a Suicidal Individual. Guess what was right up there in the top five?
“A sudden change in appearance.”
I tugged on the ends of my newly cropped hair.
Huh. Who knew I was so predictable?
Rubbing my chin against my shoulder, I see Tony out of the corner of my eye, still sitting in his booth. His hamburger’s all gone, as are most of his fries. He sits there completely unaware of what I’m going through.
I open the Walkman, pop out tape number four, and flip it over.
CASSETTE 4: SIDE B
Would you want the ability to hear other people’s thoughts?
Of course you would. Everyone answers yes to that question, until they think it all the way through.
For example, what if other people could hear your thoughts? What if they could hear your thoughts…right now?
They’d hear confusion. Frustration. Even some anger. They’d hear the words of a dead girl running through my head. A girl who, for some reason, blames me for her suicide.
