By the Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead (11 page)

I stop keying. Only one other person is logged on.

I’m about to log off when J_Doe111191 writes:
me 2.

I’ve kept the empty book covers to populate my bookshelf and divert suspicion. When I disassemble the bookcase to carry the cinder blocks to the bathroom, I’ll toss the last of the trash into a Glad bag with the final remnants of my room. No muss. No fuss.

I decide to leave the bathroom door wide open when I do it. So I can breathe. Which makes no sense at all. I guess I have a phobia about being closed in.

I can’t sleep. In the dark, I open the laptop and it flashes awake. Black and white. I fingerprint access.

There’s a pop-up message:
I wish you’d IM me. I need your advice. Santana.

About what?

How’d he pop up like that? I wasn’t even on IM. I stare at the screen for a while, baffled. He must be an evil genius or something. It is his machine, so maybe he can link to it anytime.

If I IM him back, he’ll know I’m using his machine. He’ll think I’m open to communicating. I don’t want to lead him on.

I log on to Through-the-Light. There’s a message with a red flag:
Updates have been made to WTG.

So? I’ve already chosen drowning. Maybe it knows I haven’t considered every option. How could it know?

There’s another question too.

What awaits you?

Meaning?

I try to skip it, but the question keeps repeating.

What awaits you?

What awaits you?

Okay. Here’s what I picture: This plume of warm air sweeps me up and drops me at the gate. Not a pearly gate, or an ornamental gate. A metaphoric gate. My spirit, or soul, or consciousness enters a spectral arena and I see the light. It’s an orb in the distance, like a shiny dime.

I walk along a cobbled path. There are others, but we don’t speak. They have their own paths to take. Everyone is silent, respectful. Which is nice. For once. At last, up here, I can close my eyes and not see all the scenes playing out, not feel the crushing weight of life. No one has eyes. There’s sight within me. I have, like, insight or farsight.

That’s too much to key in. I type, “Eternal peace. Serenity.”

The answer is acceptable.

Two J_Doe’s are on the DOD list. A light travel day, I guess. I link to WTG.

Starvation/Dehydration

Effectiveness: 5, if not force-fed.

Time: Approximately 40 days.

Availability: 1.

Pain: 3–5.

Notes: Theoretically easier after the first two days. A living will or durable power of attorney may prevent relatives from intervening once you’re unconscious. An appetite suppressant such as amphetamines or ecstasy is recommended. Fatal dehydration can be extremely painful.

I don’t have forty days. Anyway, the irony of me starving to death . . .

Freezing to Death

Time: 15 minutes in very cold water to several hours in a freezer.

I hate being cold.

I scroll to the newest entries at the bottom.

Jumping in Front of a Train

Note: Terrifying. Best to lay your neck on the track, since a break in your spine may only cripple you for life.

Not an option.

Getting Someone to Murder You

I don’t know anyone who’d do that for me.

Getting Eaten Alive

By what? I skip to the notes:
Ants or carnivores such as large cats . . .

I shudder. You’d have to live in a jungle.

Kim sticks her head in the door. “You already up?”

I power down. It’s morning.

She comes in and sits on my mattress. “Your throat must be feeling better. You’re not wearing your brace.”

The brace is to support my throat until it heals. But there is no healing me.

I close the lid of the laptop.

“So, did Santana give you that laptop?”

I could nod, but I choose not to engage.

“I’m glad you have a friend.” Kim touches my hand, then actually takes it in hers. “Do we need to have
the talk
?” Her eyebrows arch.

All my muscles contract.

Kim laughs at the expression on my face, I guess. She goes, “I don’t even want to know what you’re looking up on the Internet.” There’s a long pause, and I think my mother is the most clueless person in the world. “But if you have questions about intercourse, or birth control, you know you can ask me, right?”

Oh, sure. Because we always talk about deep down stuff.

I’m going to die a virgin. I like the thought of it. So pure.

Mom says, “I still worry about you, Daelyn. Honey.” She rubs my limp hand. I feel blistering under the skin. “I wish we could talk about whatever it was that made you do what you did.”

You would never understand, Kim. You think I’m normal; you wish I was.

“Then again, maybe it’s best to put it behind us.” She pats my hand. The blisters pop. “Just know how much we love you and how glad we are that you’re here.” She rests her head on mine.

It takes all my power not to disintegrate under the crush of her need.

After a minute she lifts her head.

Huge relief.

“Your dad and I were thinking about driving up to Calgary this summer to see Aunt Beth and the gang.”

I have two cousins. They’re mean to me too.

“How does that sound?”

Go ahead, Kim, I think. Work up the itinerary if it’ll make you happy. You’re going to have to go without your nymphomaniac daughter.

She squeezes my shoulders and says, “We love you so much.”

I know. I know they do, in their own helpless way.

At times like this, I’m thankful I don’t feel love.

— 7 DAYS —

She’s barely singing. Her voice is so low it’s a whisper. During a break where the second sopranos have to rehearse a tricky section, she says, “I hope I’m not throwing you off.”

I almost, almost look at her.

“I know I’m terrible. I’m only taking chorus because the other elective at this time is field hockey. Gaaaaaag.” She bites on the tip of her fleshy tongue. “By the way, I’m Emily.”

I hadn’t noticed until now how fat she is. I mean, I noticed she was fat. Fat kids always notice other fat kids so they can compare themselves and think, I’m not that fat.

She’s fat.

“Just elbow me if I should stop singing.”

When I don’t answer, don’t move, don’t acknowledge her existence, she goes, “You’re Daelyn, right? Is it easier if I stand here to talk to you so you don’t have to move your head?”

She’s stepped over in front of me. Her white blouse isn’t tucked in, the way we’re supposed to wear it. Because her belly will show.

I keep my eyes on the floor. On her feet. Her thick ankles.

“If you don’t mind my asking—”

“Everyone, from the coda,” Mr. Hyatt says.

“Oops.” She sidesteps back into place. She whispers, “What’s a coda?” And giggles.

In another life, we might be friends.

Two fat girls? That would never happen.

The drizzle is gray and greasy. By the time I reach the bench, it’s nuclear winter. A blur of black crosses my field of vision and I feel myself being yanked to my feet. “Come on!” he cries.

He practically drags me across the soggy lawn to his house. He steers me up the steps to the porch. “Did I forecast a rainy spring, or what?” he yells.

You watch the Weather Channel. Big woot.

The rain pours off the pitched roof.

He blows out his lungs. “Whew. You’re soaked.” He shakes out his hair. His spikes are slimy now, and dark roots are showing. “Come inside and dry off.” He opens the door and holds it for me.

He waits.

He lets go. “Or don’t.”

I head back down the steps.

“Daelyn.” He tugs my arm. “Don’t be stupid.”

I wrench away. I may be fat and ugly, but I’m not stupid. If anyone had ever gotten past my looks, they might’ve noticed I have a brain.

He splashes down the stairs and cuts me off. “You don’t have to come in. Just wait for your mom on the porch.”

A clap of thunder makes us both jump. Thunder scares me. He edges around and sort of nudges me up the stairs. I stumble on the tread and he reaches out.

That earns him a smack with my book bag.

“Ow.” He clutches his arm. “What do you have in there? Books?” A grin snakes across his face. “I like my women feisty.”

He adds, “I like my arm broken.”

I move to go, but he windmills his hands to block my escape. Except I’m not going anywhere. Yet.

Over my shoulder, I eye the porch layout. His hammock. A beat-up armchair and ottoman. I take a wide berth around him to the furniture, plop on the ottoman. It’s rock hard.

He sticks his arm over the railing and holds out his hand, palm up. “Wet,” he declares. “But fast moving. It should clear in exactly seven minutes.”

If I only had a watch, I’d clock him.

“Do you mind if I sit?” He indicates the chair behind me.

I scoot back so he doesn’t touch me.

He hurls himself over the arm of the chair. “Someone actually dumped this in our yard. Can you believe it? A classic Broyhill, 1958.”

The chair, I guess he means. I smell his wet clothes and licorice breath.

“Ariel wouldn’t let me keep it in my room. She’s into sterilizing again. I told her, ‘Woman, flea bites don’t cause cancer.’”

I force myself to gaze out into the gray, to blur my senses. He can’t really have cancer.

“She doesn’t hear me. Like you. She’s oblivious to my words and the sound of my voice.”

I hear you. I just don’t believe a word you say.

If I squint, I can see to the curb by the bench. I think I need glasses. It’s been harder and harder to read. See, Kim and Chip? I’m saving you the expense of optometry.

“Hey, you’re not wearing your neck doohickey.”

The brace is in my bag, and my neck is killing me. I don’t want to, but I take out the brace and strap it on. He reaches out to help, but I get up and go to stand at the railing. The rain’s subsiding.

“D,” he says in a sigh. “You’re impenetrable.”

You don’t even know.

“What are we at? Five, six minutes?” He launches up and grabs my wrist to, like, check my watch. Idiot, I don’t have a watch. I yank my arm, but he holds tight, then flips my hand over.

The skin fries where he’s holding me. His fingers loosen a little. He’s looking at them—the scars.

“I thought so,” he says.

Could I have my hand back now, please?

“When did you do this?” He runs his thumb over the ridge of healed flesh. It sears.

I take back my arm.

“Were you scared?”

Why does he want to know that? Yeah, I was scared. After I did it, and lived.

Where is Kim? Doesn’t she know I’d be on the bench, following orders?

“Man, death scares me. Did you cut both wrists at once?”

No, stupid. You have to switch hands. One at a time. Then the razor gets slippery with blood.

“Did you really
want
to die?” His voice is low, almost a whisper.

Her car splashes to the curb, saving me this lame game of twenty questions.

I log on. A lot of activity on the board.

School. Work. Broken relationships. Broken people.

It’s depressing, reading about people taking drugs. Overdosing. This one person wrote about her two brothers dying a week apart, and now her lover has brain cancer. She’s completing with sleeping pills and alcohol.

I think, These people. They’re weak and tragic. They ask for it.

I summon Google. I key in the search line: “Hotchiss lymphona.”

Google asks: Did you mean
Hodgkin’s lymphoma
?

Whatever. I touch the link:
Lymphoma Information Network

Hodgkin’s lymphoma or Hodgkin’s disease is a malignant (cancerous) growth of cells in the lymph system. The symptoms may include painless swelling of the lymph nodes in the neck or underarm area, fever that does not go away, night sweats, and weight loss without dieting. The disease is more common in boys than girls. About 10% to 15% of all cases of Hodgkin’s are diagnosed in children 16 and under. Advances in treatment have significantly reduced the number of patients who succumb to Hodgkin’s, but survival rates for relapsed patients with primary refracting Hodgkin’s are poor. Unfortunately, 1,320 people are expected to pass away from the disease this year.”

I read the number. 1,320. 1,320.

Why couldn’t I have a fatal disease? It’d be so much easier.