Choking Game (4 page)

~Why haven't YOU tried the choking game?~

"No one invited me to play with them."

~So you didn't do it not because you were smart but because you didn't get invited? Would you have done it if someone asked you to?~

"I don't know. Maybe."

~What is it about danger that's so appealing to you?~

"The high. The exhilaration. When you're in real danger, not something perceived, adrenaline shoots through your veins and you come alive. It's so different from what you're used to day after day in a typical middle class, suburban neighborhood. I think some kids are just bored. You know, like they've done this and that, and now they're looking to try something else. All you have to do is start a rumor about some new thing that's gonna make you feel awesome. You know, invincible, out of this world. Yeah, out of this world is right. Everybody wants to leave this place at some point or another. We just don't do it every time we feel like it."

~What is it about this world? Why do you think kids like you do crazy stuff just to escape it for a little while?~

"It's many things. First, it's the bubble. We live in a bubble. Look outside and what do you see? Each house resembles the next. The streets are alike, we all go to the same school, our parents want the same things, and we're expected to do just as they say. It's pathetic if you think about it. Every other kid in our school is in some kind of an honors class. Hell, I'm in two honors classes, and I don't believe for a minute I belong there. I'm not any smarter than anyone else, so sooner or later, we all end up in some kind of an honors class. It's a joke. I swear if I see one more post by some duped parent bragging about how his kid is better than everyone else, I'm gonna puke.

"Some not-so-successful parents pressure their kids into becoming something they failed to become when they were teenagers themselves. And the successful parents pressure their kids to be even more successful than they are. You see this every day. I've even seen kids bringing in psychiatric evaluation notes claiming they had some sort of an exotic syndrome so that they could take untimed tests. That gives them a huge advantage, and they'll laugh in your face while they admit their cheating parents paid the doctor to write that nonsense and that there's actually nothing wrong with them. How do you compete with that? My parents would never lie for me even if it meant me failing an entire grade! They want me to live in this bubble, but they won't bring in enough oxygen to prevent me from suffocating to death."

~Would you feel any better if your parents were willing to cheat for you?~

"No. I have no respect for cheaters. I just want Mom and Dad to be ready to cheat for me, not actually do it."

~I think what you're asking is more that they'd find a better way to show you they love you because they're not very good at showing you that.~

"I guess."

~So what are the other things you don't like about the world you live in?~

"The pressure. It's everywhere. This may sound weird, but there's so much going on today that we have to block it out most of the time. Everyone's anxious and impatient. You can't turn on a TV without feeling like the world's coming to an end. Everybody's arguing with everybody else. Kids are caught in the middle. It's like a pressure cooker. Do you know what I mean?"

~Tell me. What is it like to be cooked in a pressure cooker?~

"You get up, and the first thing that's expected of you is to excel at school. Everybody's competing for grades, honors, sports scores, and, of course, the most important, popularity. School is like a shark infested ocean where you swim as fast as you can and try not to get bitten. The best case is when you're accepted as you are, but that's very rare. Stanley got lucky. If you're not that lucky, you can be accepted as someone else—someone you pretend to be—and hope no one will blow your cover. One possibility is no one will notice you. I like that one. The worst case is people will pick on you, mostly because they need to pick on someone. You can't be the popular one without having someone else way below you in the pecking order. There will always be some smaller fish for the sharks to feed on.

"Kids group themselves into all these lame categories based on the kind of clothing you wear, the stuff you own, the neighborhood you live in, the sport you play, the way you look, or whatever stupid group someone comes up with. They think they're awesome and cool, but they're not. I just want to pick some of these kids' heads and pop them. People will do anything to be accepted. Even if it means you have to make others believe you're cool, like you're a daredevil, completely oblivious to danger. A lot of kids think living dangerously is attractive because they're too scared to do it themselves. So, if someone does something dangerous, he's instantly popular."

~Is that part of the pressure cooker?~

"Yeah. Someone always comes up with something stupid to do, and there are always kids that follow. Sooner or later, you feel like you have to do it too. That's the pressure—you want to blend in. And then you come home and the first thing you're asked is
What did you do at school? Did you get any grades?
Not
Are you glad it's over for the day?
The worst thing is, it's never over. After you do the homework stuff and mute the TV, you have to see what's happening on Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, and who knows where else. You can't miss a day for someone might notice you're missing and post something crazy that's not even remotely true. You have to be liked, and you have to have followers. No matter what, you have to matter. At least virtually."

~So the pressure cooker adds a little virtual reality to your actual life.~

"Yeah. On one hand, it's an escape. You don't have to look anyone in the eye; you can talk without actually speaking to someone in front of you; you can write and double check your words before you post them. You can't do any of that face to face. On the other hand, your virtual world is anything but escape. The world you create on your social sites can be even more intimidating than the real one. You can defend yourself from a rumor when you're there in front of the people whispering behind your back. But how do you defend yourself on a site where someone posts something that's mean or not true? By the time you respond there are hundreds of comments that just make the rumor that much more real. You can't defend yourself there. You just have to hope each time you log on to these sites that you will find nothing important, nothing that'll hurt you, nothing that'll turn you into someone you're not."

~Why did you even start going on Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram...~

"Everyone's on it. You can't be the only one who is not. I didn't have a choice. I wanted to be like everyone else."

~What color is your
teenage world?
~

"Light green like key lime pie. Everything's young and growing. The more filling you eat, the more sour it tastes until the crust is all that's left. Brown, dry crust both sweet and tasteless at the same time. It's hard to figure out if you like it or not.

~I think the color of your world is weird.~

"Me too."

~What if you found people who were just like you? What if you didn't need to have a whole other life on your social sites? Would you talk to them and try to make some real friends?~

"I don't know. I'm not sure. I mean, what do you say? How do you ask someone to be your friend?"

~It's a lot easier to send a friend request, isn't it? It probably doesn't hurt all that much when that
friend
doesn't accept your
friendship
. I mean, it's not real, so who cares, right? You can send out a bunch of new friend requests. Someone will accept you eventually.~

"Maybe. There's a lot less pressure that way."

~I still don't get it. You're describing a busy, wired kind of life. Why did you say some kids play dangerous games out of boredom?~

"I don't think everyone's bored. I know I am, and so are a lot of people in my school. But it's not boredom because we have nothing to do. It's the opposite—it's because our lives are so wired. We tune out most of what's going on. It comes to a point when you're pulled in so many directions, you have no other option but to tune out. You can still do everything without giving it much thought. Everything's kind of a blur again. I don't know how else to explain it. It's like we're saying,
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We function like robots. We don't think about it; we just do what everyone expects us to do. On one hand, we're living the lives our parents planned for us. On the other hand, we're doing everything we can to escape by clinging to the Internet, TV and video games, hoping to find stories we could recreate for real in our own pathetic, predefined, monotonous lives.

"For too many of us, what we do day in and day out is not really a part of our being. We're still looking for the meaning of why we're here, and what is it that'll make us happy. We want to be able to tell our own stories. You know, do something we actually have fun doing and see something crazy happen. We all want stories to tell. You know what I mean? It's something that just makes you feel alive, like you know who you are and what your purpose is."

~Wow! That's deep. You really think about stuff like that?~

"Sometimes. But that's exactly why I tune out everything else because it makes no sense anyway. This life, this world, me in it. Why? Why do I need to be here? What difference does it make if I exist or not? I don't have any stories. All I do every day is try not to be noticed at school, not to be the loser. If that's all there is, I might as well be dead. I can't get hurt if I'm dead."

~Please don't say that. It hurts me to hear you speak like that. I already told you how much I care about you. You're not invisible, and you're not unimportant. You do matter. Your existence matters to me.~

"You're only saying it because if I die, you'll have to go too."

~That's not true. I always cared about you. What's wrong with wanting to stay and see what happens tomorrow? Don't you want to know what happens tomorrow?~

"No. It's gonna be the same old crap."

~No wonder you're depressed. Do you hear yourself? You're stuck in some past moment of your life, and you closed yourself in it as if the world around never changed. I’ve got news for you, my friend. NOTHING, absolutely nothing is ever the same. The world around you is in constant motion. It's like you can never cross the same river twice. Once you cross, the water that washed your feet is gone. The next time you cross, your feet will splash in different water altogether.

~That's life. You cannot re-live the same moment. You, your life and everything in it changes the moment you live it. Your biggest mistake is that you chose to remain stuck in some moment or a feeling of your past experience and pretend nothing's ever changed. Why don't you just get out of the pressure cooker? You don't need to die to get out. It's your world, too. Can't you figure out a way to make it better for yourself? You have music, so why can't you go back and play? There's a lot that's good about being a teenager. You're not alone. Isn't there another Stanley somewhere waiting to find a new friend?~

"I think most of us are scared to open the lid. My mom once cooked something in a pressure cooker and opened the lid too quickly. It exploded like a bomb."

~What are you scared of?~

"Being alone. If I'm the only one who escapes the pressure cooker, then I'll be all alone. No one will care."

~And so you do what everyone else does until you have enough.~

"Exactly."

~And now you think you’ve had enough.~

"Exactly."

SIX

Teenage Revenge
@TeenageRevenge
I'd give anything to know if people who died can still hear and see us

~You wish. This is about Stanley again, isn't it?~

"Of course. Who else?"

~Dude, do you see what I see? The last tweet got over ninety retweets. Now we have over fifteen hundred followers! This is crazy. The more depressing your tweets, the more followers you get! What is this world coming to? Ugh. I'm not sure I should hashtag this one.~

"Why not? Are you worried we'll get a bunch of desperate suicidal weirdos retweeting us?"

Teenage Revenge
@TeenageRevenge
I'd give anything to know if people who died can still hear and see us #ghosts #LifeAfterDeath #TeenSuicide #GhostBusters #RT #follow

~I tweeted it. I hope it wasn't a mistake. Tell me, if you knew Stanley could hear you from wherever he is, what would you say to him?~

"That I miss him more than anything in this world. That I hate it he missed the past fourteen months. That I wish I told him how much his friendship meant to me. That I was going to I tell him he was the best guy that ever lived. That... Ahhh..."

~Looks like you still haven't cried enough. You see? You have so many tears left in you for Stanley, and you wanted to check out without giving them all to him? Let's pretend he can hear you now. Or better yet, let's believe he does. Tell him.~

"Tell him what?"

~Everything you wish you told him when he was alive.~

"That's stupid."

~No, it's not. How can it be stupid if you believe he can hear you?~

"I never said I believed it."

~I do. And since I'm as much a part of your being as your stubborn mind is, part of you has to believe it, too. Just try it. Talk to him. It'll be good for you, promise.~

"I have to lock my door."

~Why?~

"I don't want anyone else in my room."

~I think you believe he can hear you.~

"Just because I want to lock my door doesn't mean I believe I'm talking to a ghost."

~If you say so.~

"Ugh... Hi, Stanley! I'm not sure you can hear me, but if you can, that'd be great. There's so much I wanted to tell you but didn't know how. Even before, you know, before you died. Every day there was something I wanted to tell you, and as soon as I inhaled to get enough air so that I'd blurt it out in one sentence, I'd change my mind. Something always stopped me from opening up. I don't know what. Maybe I thought it wasn't the best time, or that I could tell you everything the next time I saw you, or that I should think of a better way to say it, or that you were too busy to listen. I'd always make up a reason to keep quiet and just be glad you were around. Until one day I got to school as usual. That day was really special. Remember I told you about my music and how I was mad my dad didn't take me to the audition? I told you I abandoned my music. I did, until one night I saw this YouTube video. It was about this girl who cut her wrists and died. Her brother wrote a poem about her and then made it into a song. He played that song at his sister's funeral and then put it on YouTube. It went viral because it was the most beautiful song I had ever heard. It made me cry. It wasn't the music video as much as the lyrics. What this brother said in his song to his dead sister was that his only wish was that he had a chance to tell her how much he loved her because he never did.

"After I watched the video I realized how much your friendship meant to me. I wanted to make sure I told you. I had no idea why that thought came into my head and would not let me think of anything else. It was like an alien took over my brain and implanted this thought that crowded out everything else. Telling you about how much I cared about you was the only thing I could think of that evening. I pulled the guitar out of my closet and started to string a few cords. The music came back to me like it never left. Before I realized it, I nailed the music. Words just started to flow to the rhythm, and I sat down, took out a piece of paper and wrote the lyrics. I admit I'm much better writing music than cheesy lyrics that rhyme, but this is what I wrote for your song:

"I wonder how, I wonder why,
I see your smile high up in the sky.
I shiver from cold, cut by the ice,
It never gets old to say you are nice.

"So here I go, I say you are nice, great, the best friend ever.
Please remember the next time I'm quiet 'cause I think I'm not clever
To tell you how much you mean to someone like me.
You're like a lifeline; my sight when I cannot see.
You're always there and I swear as long as I live,
I'll be your friend and everything else that I can give.

"Something about you makes me stronger,
I should not wait any longer,
I can face cold, shielded from ice,
It never gets old to say you are nice.

"So here I go, I say you are kind, funny, the best friend ever.
Please remember I mean every word and I will never
Forget how much you mean to someone like me.
You are my lifeline, my sight for I cannot see.
I will always be there for you, I swear.
I will always follow you no matter where."

~Did you say you wrote it the night Stanley died?~

"Yeah, except I didn't know he died. The words just popped in my head. Back then I thought the lyrics were kind of cheesy, but now I don't know what to think. I mean where did the sudden urge to write him a song come from? Where did the words come from? They're not your normal song lyrics."

~No, they're not.~

"I had everything planned perfectly. I recorded my song on my phone, and I was going to play it for Stanley at the gym before the bell rang. We always had time to chat when we got off the school bus. That's why I was playing with my phone. I was trying to get my song uploaded on YouTube. And then the principal and the rest of the school officials came in and made the announcement. My heart stopped, and my hands turned so cold I couldn't even hold my phone. You couldn't imagine the confusion that settled in my head. It's still something I cannot explain. I went over every possible reason I wrote that song. I watched the YouTube video that brother made for his sister at least a hundred times, and I cried myself to sleep every night ever since. I was so desperate, I spent two months tracking that brother down until I was able to connect with him on Tumblr. We've been in touch. He understands what happened to me, sort of."

~What you said in that song, the last verse, did you mean it?~

"That I'd always follow him no matter where?"

~Yes.~

"It's complicated. I never imagined Stanley dead when I wrote the song. What I wrote was about me always standing by him, having his back, that kind of stuff. I wasn't going to become a stalker. Now, though, I don't know why I wrote what I wrote. Frankly, I feel like a part of my decision to end this life is because Stanley's not here anymore. But I'm not sure I expect to find him in some afterlife or wherever. I don't even know if I believe in life after death. No one knows if it exists, and I'm not trying to die just to figure it out. I simply want to check out because I see no sense in staying. I have no purpose, and I'm tired of hiding so that no one can point me out and hurt me or force me to be someone I'm not."

~You'd make my head ache if I had one. Have you ever sat yourself down and looked in the mirror? And I don't mean this figuratively. I mean it literally! What do you see when you look yourself in the eye? Do you like yourself or not? Do you like the way you look? Do you like the way you smile? Do you like the way you frown? Do you like anything at all you see in the mirror? Give me
something
. I'm looking for straws, my friend. We've been talking your head off, and I still haven't heard a single compelling reason for you to take your life.~

"Why do you need a reason? There are hundreds of little things that pile up and up and up. It's okay if you have another pile of good little things that keep the balance. My reason is I don't have that good pile. I wake up every day looking for something worth keeping in the good pile, but nothing comes my way. I go to bed, and the good pile is still missing. There's your reason."

~Maybe you're not looking hard enough. You said so yourself in your song—Stanley was your lifeline, your sight for you could not see. I don't think those lyrics just popped in your head out of nowhere. I think if you looked in the mirror you'd realize that you really are blind, and blind people often cannot see the good pile even if they stumbled right into it.

~You want something good to come your way. I've got news for you, my friend.
Things don't just come your way.
You need to get out and march forward and do your share of the good hoping some of it comes back to you. That's how it works. You only attract what you give. If you hide, become invisible, stop communicating, then the good pile won't accumulate along your pathway. It can't. It doesn't have anything to bounce back from. You're not only invisible to the people around you, you're invisible to the good luck or the good pile that comes with putting yourself out there.

~I was wondering, what color is the
missing
? The kind of missing someone so much, you'd rather be dead than to miss them anymore.~

"It's black and white. Two sharp colors in perfect contrast. You know there must be thousands of colors and shades in between, but you cannot see any of them. It's worse than being color blind because black and white vision has shades that create dimensions. In your world of
missing
, all you have are two sharp black and white colors, without a single shade. You're stuck in two dimensions. You're left wondering what the world would be like if you could see at least one more color."

~Is that what you see now? Black and white?~

"I'm not color blind, if that's what you're asking. But yes, I pretty much see very little color around me these days."

~I thought so. Honestly, I am so sorry about Stanley. I didn't know how close you were to playing your song for him. That really sucks.~

"I'm done talking about it."

~Fair enough. How did the kids at school take his death? Do you want to tell me about that?~

"Not really."

~I think you should.~