I can't feel my feet.



Bugs crawl out of my throat and eyes, spilling onto the dingy tile floor. The conversations around me bleed together into one incoherent glob. Pubescent teenagers swirl around me like snowflakes, taking up any breathable space in the industrial school hallways. These cookie-cutter perfections I am supposed to call peers bump and bustle and shriek. We are a massive pinball machine. If you listen hard enough you can hear the ding of the bells and the eerie carnival music that hangs in the background, its shadow lurking on the eggshell-white cinderblock walls. An exclamation of glee explodes from a group of Abercrombie action figures somewhere to my right.


We have a winner.


I feel his eyes on me as I approach my locker. He is behind me, watching my every move. I spin the dial. 15. 34. 05. I see the familiar shock of blonde hair move past in my peripheral vision. The tension in my shoulders does not let up. Today is a Very Important Day. It is The Day, to be exact. I pull out the blood-red binder I use for my first class. The clock in my head tick-ticks to the rhythm of my heartbeat.


9 hours, 12 minutes until The Time.


I pass him as I head to Economics. We don't acknowledge each other because we can still feel the invisible tether that is stapled to the lining of our guts; it links us together by late-night sobfests, bloodied blades, and broken promises. Today the shards of glass in our bellies tingle and jingle under the pressure of events to come. Fireflies blink on and off, their golden yellow light causing the glass to sparkle. The corners press into the lining of my stomach and make my insides bleed. I can feel the crimson filling up inside me, flowing like a river. Soon enough my tummy will reach capacity and I will start to spit up blood…


Voices whisper in my ear as I move through my classes. The smell of Axe and vanilla floods my nostrils and floats up to my brain. These painted faces around me seem like nothing more than Barbie and Ken Limited Editions. Soon enough all of the savings-starved soccer moms will have bought up every last one, leaving me to sit on the shelf in my sealed plastic box. Girls bat their mascara-clumped lashes and boys whisper sexual obscenities to their friends in hush-hush tones, snickering when the teacher shoots them a warning glare.

We don’t sit together at lunch. Not today. Everything has to be perfect, and staying solitary during the day was part of our deal. It is the final chance for one of us to back out, but I wouldn’t dream of it. I’m ready. I eat a meal fit for a queen by myself in the corner of the cafeteria. The fake-cheese pizza tastes like sawdust in my mouth and I can feel the glass puncture every bite as it goes down. I gag on my apple. The bugs in my veins are scritch-scratching at my skin. They are going to destroy me from the inside out if we don’t act quickly.

The final bell chimes. I head towards the bus, hastily swinging my backpack over my shoulder. I feel like I’m carrying an elephant despite the fact that I left everything at school. I won’t be needing my homework tonight. I fall into a seat and imagine myself falling… falling… falling through the polyester and the filthy school bus floor and the pavement stained by the sky’s tears. Down through topsoil, farther and farther into the ground until I’m deep enough under where no one can find me.

He clomps on board. As he walks down the aisle, I break the rules and look into his toffee eyes. They’re crackling with an energy that mine have been lacking for so long that I can’t remember when I last saw it in the mirror. I watch him as he walks to the very back of the bus, shriveling into the corner. I know that under all those sweatshirts and T-shirts that he wears to hide the outward pain, his fireflies are growing more excited as the time grows nearer.


2 hours and 39 minutes until we fly away on a cloud.


I watch out the window as the soggy ground blends together with the gray sky. Evergreen trees bleed into picket-fence houses that shelter Perfect Families and the secrets they try so desperately to keep hidden.


I get off a stop earlier than usual, taking time to breathe in the gloomy weather around me. Everything is going according to plan. I put one sneakered foot in front of the other. I am aware of nothing but the fact that I can’t feel anything (this is not a body this is not a soul this is not heaven and it’s worse than hell). I feel a wetness on my cheeks and I realize that the sky is crying again. I might be crying too, but I’m not sure. I can’t feel my face.


I open the door to my empty house and climb upstairs. Every step is an effort and the elephant has just given birth on my back. No one is home – my parents are lawyers. They think they’re so smart, that they have everything figured out. They have sculpted The Perfect Daughter who will follow in their tight-ass, left-brained footsteps. They are never here. They never realize that their one and only masterpiece is crumbling into bits and pieces.
I stumble into my room. As I take the dark green duffel bag out of my closet, my hands begin to shake. The ever-intrusive colors tumble in my vision and distract me from my mission. I shake them away, going into the bathroom and opening the medicine cabinet. I take out a bottle of my happy pills (1500mg) plus my crazy capsules (420mg) plus two bottles of the loony tablets that were too big , no, made me fat, no, not a good match (9000mg) = 10,920mg of kooky candy to make us float away.


I shove the medication into my bag and feel a surge of emotion swell through my body. I don’t know whether I should cry or laugh or scream – I just know that something is going on inside me.


I thunder down the stairs, duffel bag in hand. I run across the lawn so swiftly that it feels like I’m flying. I let myself into his house. His father is long-gone, and his mother is a functioning alcoholic. She works mismatched shifts as a nurse, making a hefty salary, but drinks every problem and heartbreak away. Then she takes it out on her son, hitting him, shouting at him, and even touching him to make her pain go away.


He calls me at 2 AM, his husky voice shushed so she doesn’t hear. We sit and cry together - him for the parent that never leaves him alone, and me for the ones who are never there.


I stomp upstairs to his room, where I know he will be waiting. When I open the door, I let out a gasp. In nothing but a stained T-shirt and sweatpants, I can see just how frail he’s become. I haven’t seen him eat more than a bite in weeks, but I didn’t know it had gotten this bad. Food marches into my mouth before my hands can put it down. It plumps me up and stuffs me full until I puke it all away.


He’s sitting with his knees hugged to his chest, leaning against the bed. I look at his forearm, dripping fresh with scarlet teardrops. I take the razorblade from his hands and kiss his cheek. He’s cold as ice.


“Campbell,” I murmur, hush-hush so I don’t wake the monster under the bed. “Not like this, okay?”

He bites his lip and nods. “Do you have the stuff?”

I shake the duffel bag, and the crazy candies click-clack inside their hazardous, child-proof cages. Campbell gets down onto his stomach and reaches under the bed with the arm that isn’t bleeding. He pulls out two big water bottles, enough to wash down everything we take. I unzip the bag and open the bottles one by one, dumping the contents out on the navy blue carpet. Big pills, little pills, different colors and different sizes. One makes you happy, others make the whisper-whisper voices and the bugs on the ceiling disappear.

They never disappear. So I guess I have to.

I take a smooth-as-silk capsule from the pile and admire its cerulean blue color. These are the most aesthetically pleasing of the bunch. Campbell takes a big, chalky white pill – one that I was too afraid to swallow – and holds it between his thumb and forefinger, inspecting it closely. We unscrew the caps on our water and look at each other. I squeeze his hand.

“One,” I say, beginning the countdown to the end of forever.
“Two,” he continues as he flips his curly blonde hair out of his eyes.
“Three.”

We toss the meds into our mouth and gulp it down with a sip of water. It’s as if someone set off a starter shot. I pop pills into my mouth, two, three, four at a time, swallowing mouthful after mouthful of room temperature sky-tears. When we are halfway through our pile, I start to feel a buzzing in my brain. The glass pokes holes in my bloated belly with every breath I take. The fireflies flicker onoffonoff and the insects in my bloodstream are tearing through my veins. I’m feeling so sleepy….

I glance at Campbell. He opens his mouth as if to speak, but his face droops.

“What?” I mumble, trying to grab his hand. Someone has replaced my arm with a lead rod.

“I don’t…” he inhales sharply. His breathing is shallow. “I’m not ready.”

It sounds like we’re underwater. My head is swimming, my vision’s blurry, and I can’t move my legs.

“Cam,” I say. I’m very aware of my tongue. The words stumble and trip over this obscene, foreign object that takes up so much room in my mouth. “You said… you told me you wanted to go.”

“Who says it won’t get better?” he asks. He tries to sound indignant, but he’s fading fast. I’m just about to speak when his body begins to convulse, inhumane noises escaping his throat. I scream and try to crawl over to him, try to hold him, keep him still. I feel an earthquake jolting through my bones. The bugs are finally loose in my skin. They are laying eggs and spinning webs and tearing through my body. The glass is ripping apart my stomach and I double over, howling in agony. My foot knocks over an uncapped bottle of water, which spills all over the remaining pills.

It feels like someone just stabbed me in the stomach. I scream.

This is not fair this is not floating this is not what I wanted.

Campbell starts to convulse again. I throw myself on top of him, landing at an abstract angle.

I don’t want it to happen like this I don’t want it to happen at all someone help me

…me

…us

The voices are screaming in my ears. My heart in pounding so loudly that it almost drowns them out. Campbell retches and I puke onto the floor. Everything reaches a crescendo and then everything goes–

???

There’s not a peaceful way to end things – not if you do it yourself. The spiders and faeries inside your skin will make sure that you feel everything. You can’t float away. There are no clouds or dead grandmas waiting for you. There is no golden light.

Campbell’s mom found us as she stumbled up the stairs after her shift, her head still shrieking from last night’s hangover. I was unconscious with the heartbeat of a tortoise. Campbell was dead. It wasn’t even the overdose that killed him. He choked on his own vomit.

They pumped my stomach with charcoal and paraded me into the industrial cinderblock confines of the state’s finest. They marched the appropriate dose of pretty purple pills down my blackened throat and spoon-fed me positive thoughts and coping skills until my cheeks were rosy and my eyes were bright. Sometimes, late at night, I can hear Campbell’s voice whispering in my ear, louder and more anguished than any other creepy-crawlie that lurks in my eardrums. I feel a cold breath on the back of my neck as his ghost moans through tears:

“I wasn’t ready.”