It was almost the end of summer, and a great day for boating. The sun smiled on the trees around the old rope swing, granting perfect shade for little kids’ playful antics. Every so often, a gust of wind blew through the trees. Somewhere in the distance, a powerboat sped by, its engine buzzing loudly. Waves crashed against the steep riverbank, and sails flogged around in the breeze.
The boy sighed, taking in his familiar surroundings. He'd lived here since he was little, and he'd been coming to this rope swing for as long as he could remember. It held memories from long ago, when he was tiny and innocent and knew nothing of the horrors people could inflict on one another.
But now, several difficult years later, he’d suffered through hell since middle school and he couldn’t see a future ahead for him. Sure, his teachers all enthusiastically talked about how bright he was, and he had a successful career planned out ahead of him, but he considered that a career and not a life. He didn’t see anything ahead for him except long hours working and longer hours trying to fit in with the rest of the world. He had never fit in, and he knew he would never fit in anywhere. All he’d ever known of how others treated him was the cold indifference with which they ignored his plight, and the vicious bullying that would never end.
He climbed the ladder up the steep bank to the base of the tree, one hand seeking out handholds on the wooden rungs, the other clutching a brown paper bag. The bag was wet in some spots, but he carried it like his very soul was contained in the fragile paper. He sat on a protruding root below the weathered and frayed rope and let his gaze wander out across the lovely view. The water, the same blue-brown color as his eyes, sparkled with the sun’s reflecting rays. But the beauty of it all didn't change his mind.
It wasn't just that he'd never fit in; as if that wasn’t enough of a struggle, they bullied him for it. He was always the loner, the outcast; most people he met thought he was weird and annoying. And that's always how it would start. It began with the popular girl who criticized everything he did and the rambunctious boys who went out of their way to push him around and beat him up, and then, following their examples, everyone else would either ignore him or join in on bullying him. Even those who watched without doing a thing were, in a sense, bullies, for their inaction and apathy allowed the more direct and obvious bullies greater freedom to say things like “See? Nobody likes you.”
Even when he tried to start anew somewhere else, someone would know how they’d treated him in the past, and they'd quote past bullies as if it was okay because it wasn't their words. And it wasn’t okay. He hated it.
If you hear the same things, day in and day out... you begin to believe it. And that's how it started. Eventually, his outlook on life transformed from cheerful optimism to gloomy pessimism. He hated the world around him for its indifference just as much as it hated him for his inability to fit in. And he began to hate himself, too.
When he was younger, he used to be so carefree and innocent. But now, thanks to the bullies, he was older and more mature. He could do whatever he wanted with his life. So today, he knew what he wanted to do. He removed the paper bag to reveal his choice. The metal was cool against his fingers, and he slowly readied it for its one purpose.
He stared down at the water below him, and brought the gun up to his head.

***

She gunned the engine and blasted ahead of her fellow camp counselor, the wind whipping her dark blond hair into a tangled mess. Eyes locked on her destination, she frowned, seeing the lone figure sitting on the tree root.
“What’s he doing?” she muttered to herself, motoring closer. The little she could see from this far away sparked her curiosity -- a shock of ash brown hair obscuring his face, sunlight glinting off metal -- was that a gun? Now able to discern what was happening, she gasped and reached for her radio.
“There’s a guy on the rope swing trying to kill himself. I’m going to talk him down. Don’t let the kids anywhere near,” she relayed to her coworker. She was by no means close enough to physically intervene, but she knew all too well the power of words. She ran a finger over the scar on her neck, concealed by makeup.
“Hey!” She shouted at the young man. At the sound of her words, he flinched and dropped the gun. He swore under his breath as it bounced off the ladder and into the water, and climbed down to get it. While he felt around in the murky waters for his weapon, she anchored her boat as close to shore as she could and swam over.
As her feet touched bottom and she waded the last few feet to him, he found the gun again and shook the water out of it. But this time, he held it carefully, his finger not on the trigger. Both of them now stood waist-deep in the water.
She looked him in the eye and said, “You shouldn’t kill yourself.”
He stood there silently with shaking hands. So she continued on, “You probably think at this point that nobody cares, that the whole world is against you. But whatever the events that led up to this may have been, they are temporary, their effect will diminish with time. Just please believe me.”
“What do you know of this?” He finally asked. “Do you know what it’s like, day in and day out, for as long as you can remember, to never fit in? To be the outcast, the one everyone hates and avoids?” He couldn’t imagine that a girl like her, with the confidence she exuded, could have ever known that feeling.
“Actually,” she answered, her voice breaking, “I do.” She dipped two fingers in the water and rubbed them across her neck, washing away the makeup that she painstakingly applied every day to reveal the scar from long ago.
“In the moment that the noose tightened around my neck, I realized I didn’t want to die.” He hung on to her every word like a lifeline. “That the problems that a moment ago seemed so permanent, were all fixable.”
They stood there in silence for a moment, until the girl whispered, “Do you believe me?”
As softly as the leaves of the tree rustled with the breeze, he murmured, “I believe you.”