Page 27 of On the Way to You

There was nothing particularly shitty about that day. It was just another bad day, another day where everything felt pointless. I was a month away from graduating college, with a degree I could take or leave, a degree I got because it’s what was expected of me. I had a lot of people who called me a friend, but not a single one of them knew a thing about me aside from my name and what kind of beer I drank. There was a girl in my bed that morning, and I barely remembered the night with her. Her name was stitched onto the little backpack she had with her and her tits were fake. That’s all I knew about her when she left that morning, telling me to call her, knowing that I wouldn’t.

I remember lying there, not blinking, just staring up at the ceiling. I didn’t want to get out of bed. I didn’t want to go into the kitchen and have to make small talk with my roommate or go to my capstone class at one-thirty or meet the guys from my fraternity out at the bar that night. I didn’t want to move. I didn’t want to live.

That’s how easily the thought hit me.

I was just sifting through everything that sounded awful in my mind and the sheer pointlessness of it all steered me right to that simple truth: I didn’t want to live.

I didn’t think twice about it. I didn’t tick through any of the reasons why I needed to live, why I should want to. I just thought it, and then I walked into the bathroom I shared with my roommate, opened the medicine cabinet, and grabbed the bottle of hydrocodone he was prescribed after his oral surgery earlier that month. He’d only used a few of them, and there were six left in the bottle.

I took them all.

Marni wants me to write about how I felt after I swallowed the pills. She wants me to write about what was running through my mind as my breaths got shallower, as the light slowly faded away, as I closed my eyes for what I thought would be the last time.

But Marni doesn’t get it.

I didn’t feel a single damn thing. I didn’t feel sad, or angry, or scared. I didn’t feel relief, either. I didn’t wonder what people would say or do when they found me. I didn’t think about how it would break my mom’s heart. I should have thought all of those things, but I didn’t.

The last thing I remember thinking was that living was exhausting.

And then I closed my eyes.

My lips quivered as my fingers traced the ink on the page, the cursive lines that made up that last sentence, and then a tear fell from where it had trickled down my cheek and splatted on the page.

I turned to the next one.

When I woke up, for a split second, I thought maybe I was wrong about religion. Everything was white and blinding, but it was because I was in the hospital. I hadn’t taken enough. They pumped my stomach and I woke up. I lived.

So, there it is. I wrote about it. Assignment completed.

Marni said after I finish I should let it digest and write about how I feel tomorrow, after I’ve let it sit for a day.

It’ll probably be another three weeks before I write in this thing again.

The date on the next page was the day after the one I’d just read, but I couldn’t read anymore. My eyes were blurred by tears I held onto as I closed the journal and held it to my chest. I felt so dirty for reading that entry, for being selfish enough to want to keep reading even when I knew it was private, when I knew it was something never meant to be read — least of all by me.

He’d tried to kill himself.

My heart squeezed and I closed my eyes, letting the tears fall halfway down before I swiped at them, and then I tossed the journal back on the bedside table like it was on fire. Flicking off the lamp and the television, I rolled over to face the window, hugging a pillow to my chest.

I couldn’t hold onto a single thought before another one raced into my mind next, quickly replacing the first. Who had found him? Who told his parents? What happened next? Why did he do it? Was he seeing Marni before that day, or was she part of his treatment plan? Was he on medication now? Was heokaynow?

Was he still alive?

Suddenly, the fact that he was with Emily didn’t bother me anymore. Annoyance turned to worry in a flash, and I checked the time on my phone, seeing it was nearly midnight. I didn’t know if he would come back to our room that night. I didn’t have his phone number. I didn’t have any way to reach him, or find him, or make sure he still had a pulse.

I could only wait to see if he showed back up.

I swore I didn’t sleep at all that night, but I must have at some point, because I woke to Kalo licking my face and the smell of sausage McMuffins. With a groan, I rolled until I was facing away from her, pulling the covers over my head.

“Morning, sunshine.”

At the sound of his voice, I sat upright.

Emery was sitting at the edge of his bed, which was still exactly how it had been left after his nap yesterday. He was halfway through his breakfast sandwich and he tossed one at me before I could register it. My hands flew up, catching the greasy paper before it smacked me in the face.

“You’re here,” I said, setting the sandwich on the bedside table with my eyes on him.

His hair was messy, his sexy smirk just barely playing at the edge of his lips. It was infuriating to me in that moment, that he could look that good that early in the morning. Especially because I had a pretty good feeling as towhyhe looked so happy.