I honestly don’t remember the night too well.  It was all sort of, like, a blur.  Spur of the moment.  Most of my videos were like that.  Plus it was rather late at night  I was just laying on my bed.  I’d just gotten rid of my facade and was comfortable showing my face on camera to the small community of people I shared the videos with.  Really, it was just because Naomi found the video about her creepy.  Why I cared so much is beyond me.   Maybe it’s because I don’t like people thinking I’m the weird guy.  Because if people start to, people start to abandon me and I go back to my old self; lonely, bored, and contemplating suicide.

        “Jesus Christ, you’re a living buzzkill,” she said.  She is Amanda.  Best friend since we were five.  I never told anyone about her.  You’ll see why.

        “You know, it doesn’t help when you say it,” I replied, not fully committed.

        “It’s been well over a week after the whole Naomi fiasco, though.  Why the hell do you still care about her?  And why have you been talking to me about this?”

        “Your guess is as good as mine!” I screamed.  Well, it was more like a really raspy whisper, but y’all get the point.

“Look, do you want my help, or do you want to spend the rest of the year moping like the anorexic, depressive sack of shit you—”

        “Fine!  Just… what do you wanna do?”

        “We gotta talk about this whole… suicide thing.  You’ve been threatening to do it for weeks but were too much of a pussy to actually do it,” Amanda gets up from the desk next to my bed.  I was too lazy to care where she was going.

        I’ve never been suicidal before… Okay, maybe once.  Fifth grade.  Hormones were kicking in for me.  I was going through puberty faster than everyone else.  Went to counseling for a few weeks, didn’t really need it.  It’s safe to say fifth grade was my worst year at Junes Landing Middle School.

        Amanda returned, camera in hand.  “Why are people suicidal?”

        “Huh?” I responded automatically.

        “You heard me:  Why are people suicidal?”

        “I dunno,” I sighed.  “There are too many reasons.  Factors, really.”

        Amanda rolled her eyes.  “Okay, then… why do people self-harm?”

        I learned this from my mom earlier in the year when one of her co-worker’s daughter started to cut herself.  “To take the pain away.  Just for a little bit.  If something else hurts, then they forget they’re suicidal or something.  For a while at least.  I think.”

        “Don’t you think it’s a little strange?” she asked.

        “Strange?  What do you mean?”

        “Like, how do people go through with it?  I mean, do they even bother to think about the people they’re hurting or going to be hurting eventually?”

        I can’t lie; it seemed logical.  Still does to a certain extent.

        “It’s sorta… despicable,” she said with a very weird emphasis on despicable.

        I snorted.  “Okay, ‘despicable’ may not be the right word.”

        “Then it’s—”

        “Selfish,” I suggested.

        Amanda stopped to think, almost to approve my answer.  “Yeah… I guess selfish works.”

        “I mean, we can still use ‘despicable’ to give it that dramatic effect,” I added.

`        Amanda smiled.  “We still need something else,” and like that, she was gone again to grab something.

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

        I sat up on my bed and grabbed the camera she left behind.  She was onto something.  Little did she know how much trouble it’d cause.

        “Yo, asshole!” she called, “Get down here to the studio!  I got some props!”

        Props?  For a video about suicide?  As long as my wrist was going to stay in one piece, I went along with it.

        I get down to my studio—my basement—and see two things that obviously don’t mix:  a kitchen knife and a  chess board.

        “I couldn’t find a briefcase,” Amanda sheepishly admitted, “but, I mean, it opens and closes like one.  Plus, the knife will fit inside.”

        “For dramatic effect, huh?” I said, mostly to myself.

        “Yup-yup.  Look at you, being smart.”

        I smirked in disapproval.  This was going to be a controversial video, but I wanted to start a conversation.  I ended starting the wrong one.  Past me wouldn’t realize that until he wrote this.

        “So, what do I do with this?” I asked, “Do I just showcase it as, like, Exhibit A?”

        “Then what’s Exhibit B?”

        I shrugged.  “I just figured I was Exhibit C.  You know, anorexic?”

        Amanda rolled her eyes again.  Lyrical references to Get Scared weren’t really her thing.  I did them to watch her get mad.

        I set up my small table, placed my chair down, set my “briefcase” beside the table, and signaled Amanda to start before she shook her head.

        “It’s not gonna work,” she said.

        “What do you mean?”

        “Were you expecting to just say, ‘Suicide is selfish,’ and call it a day?”

        She had a point.  I never wrote scripts for my videos, so I really had nowhere to go off from to get my message across.

        “I’m just saying,” she continued, “maybe you could try to come up with a prompt.”

        A prompt.  I wasn’t the best at writing with prompts.  Maybe speaking in front of a camera may be different.

◄◄◄

        Lunch, third period.  It was on Tuesday.  I remember it was a Tuesday because I bit the back of my tongue while chewing my pizza and almost started crying.  I bit down really hard.  You probably would’ve cried, too.

        I was doing the snack sale with the student council treasurer, Madison.  I never liked student council—this year in particular—because of how dysfunctional it ended up becoming—plus one of the moderator’s aunts has been diagnosed with cancer and resulted in her having a rather short fuse that year which also brought frequent mood swings—and because it was generally unenjoyable.  Most people, myself included, never seemed to do anything to help, and those who did do so did very minimally.  If anything, I did it so it’d look good on my high school and college resume.  I considered quitting on multiple occasions, but then I realized that wouldn’t look too good, and just kept my mouth shut.

        I was zoning out, probably thinking about how to pretend to pack lunches in front of my mom and not end up eating it, when Madison turned to me.  I don’t remember the entire conversation, but it went something like this:

        “Can I tell you something, Enzo?” she asked.

        “Sure,” I said, a little too eager.

         “You’ve kinda been a dick recently”

        “What?!” I.  Was.  Blindsided.  I almost cried.  Almost.  Maybe I bit my tongue at that moment.  Madison was one of those friends I really valued, so it honestly sucked to hear her say that.

        “Yeah,” she replied, trying to be smooth and casual and optimistic about it.  It came out dry and sarcastic.  From my unnecessary studying of zodiac signs and astrology, this was a typical response for a Scorpio.  Trust me; I compare a lot of one’s behaviors to zodiac signs.  Doesn’t always end well.

        “But… how?” I asked.

        “Look, I’ve just been going through a lot.  And like, the jokes you make about hating yourself, wanting to die… it’s not helping.  Especially hat joke at gym class.”

        Context: The gym teacher, Mr. Pehdoe, made some one-liner about Madison.  I heckled something that was admittingly uncalled for and rude.

        “Well, I’m sorry,” I automatically replied.  That word is going to pop up a lot more, just you wait.

        “It’s okay,” she sighed, “I mean, it’s just… look—” she pulled up her sweatpants on her right knee to reveal just a little skin above the knee, and I saw them, “—here’s proof,  I’ve been doing it recently, but Delilah talked me out of it, and has been helping me ever since.”

        She showed me them.  The… the… Jesus Christ, she’s gonna kill me if I mention them.

        “Look, I’ve been getting better.  Just... don’t tell anyone, okay?”

        I nodded.  I didn’t want to nod.  It was just an automatic gesture.  I ended up breaking that promise, too.  Then I turned it into a story.

►►►

I told Amanda about the story I was going to use.  The one about Madison.  We both knew it was going to be a big risk.  What if she found the video?  What if she killed herself because of it?  What if she frames us for the suicide?  What if the video falls into the wrong hands, into the hands of someone who’s mentally damaged?  Could I be the cause of a suicide epidemic?

I shook it off.  The doubts, not the video.  I probably should’ve.  I signaled Amanda to hit record, and I began speaking.  That was only the beginning.