The World Without Us Read online

  He was playing our suicide playlist.

  And even then—even with it all spelled out for me so obviously that a six-year-old could have seen it—I still didn’t think he was serious.

  I didn’t get it until he was stopping the car on the bridge, turning off the engine and getting out. And by then, it was too late. I couldn’t admit that I’d never really meant to go through with it, that I’d thought it was all some childish game of make-believe. So there I was, torn between my pride and my fear, taking Jeremy’s hand and leaning out over the wall, high above the dark water.

  I wish more than anything that I could go back and do everything differently.

  Weirdo, Freak, Retard

  After leaving Jeremy at the hospital and having that stupid argument with my dad about Jeremy’s weirdly good mood and his whole idea that he was saved for a reason, I want to sulk in my room for the rest of the night. I get five minutes before Bill is knocking on my door.

  “What?” My tone is snappish and I don’t care.

  “Don’t forget you’re babysitting Suzy,” he says through the door.

  “I know.” Crap. Crap, crap, crap. I had totally forgotten.

  “I can drive you,” Bill says.

  “Okay.” I listen for his footsteps thumping down the stairs. Then I brush my teeth, run my fingers through my hair, grab my iPad in case Suzy actually goes to sleep while I am still there, and head downstairs.

  Bill drives me to Suzy’s house. Nina greets me warmly at the front door—and she acts so normal that I can tell she doesn’t know about Jeremy. There are cookies on the kitchen table, and Suzy is curled up on the couch with her laptop.

  “I’ll be back by ten,” Nina says, zipping her tall leather boots. “I’ve just told Suzy ten more minutes on the computer, so make sure she gets off. She’s been staring at a screen for over an hour already.”

  “Okay. Have fun.” As she walks out the door, I remember that she’s meeting a friend who’s in some kind of crisis, so probably fun was the wrong word. I open my mouth and then close it again as she shuts the door behind her.

  “Mom?” Suzy looks up. “Oh. Mel. What are you doing here?”

  “Babysitting,” I say. “Your mom just left.”

  “Oh. She did?”

  “She said bye to you,” I tell her. “And you said bye back to her.”

  “No I didn’t.”

  “Yeah, you did, actually.”

  Her brow furrows, and a sharp warning note edges into her voice. “Maybe you think you heard that, but you’re wrong. I’d know if I said something.”

  This is typical Suzy. She’s super smart, but her brain is always doing something else, so she’s only ever half present. I know better than to argue with her though. “Whatcha working on?” I ask instead.

  “Oh, it’s just the NASA website. Want to see? You can see the latest pictures the Hubble has taken. See this? That’s the Horsehead Nebula.”

  “Cool.” I sit down beside her and look at the image on her screen. A dark cloud the shape of a horse’s head, set against a reddish glow. Bursts of color, swirls of light in the darkness of space. She zooms in on something. “See that? That’s Sigma Orionis. Cool, huh?”

  All I can think about is Jeremy. Lying there in his hospital bed, telling me how this was all meant to be. How happy he was now that he’d jumped off a bridge.

  “Mel! You’re not paying attention.”

  “Sorry. What?”

  “Nothing,” she says sulkily. “Forget it.”

  My eyes are suddenly stinging with tears that I don’t want Suzy to see. I mumble something about needing to pee, get up and lock myself in the washroom. Then I sit on the edge of the bathtub and let myself cry.

  Jeremy might be happy now, but I can’t imagine ever feeling okay again.

  I’ve washed my face and redone my eyeliner, but when I come out of the bathroom, Suzy looks up from the computer screen and narrows her eyes like she can see right through me. “What took you so long?”

  “Nothing,” I say. “You should get off the computer. Your mom said ten minutes.”

  “In a second,” she says. “I’m almost done.”

  “Not in a minute,” I say irritably. “Now.”

  Suzy slams the laptop closed. “There! Are you happy now?”

  “It’s just that your mom said—”

  “I was right in the middle of something!” Her face flushes pink, and her eyes fill with tears. “Why can’t you just let me be? Now I’ll have to start over!”

  “Sorry,” I say. “I didn’t realize—”

  “You didn’t ask! Why are you being so mean?” Her voice is loud; she’s right on the edge of an angry sobbing meltdown, and I know from experience that once she slips over that edge, it can take hours to get her back.

  “Suzy, I really am sorry. I’ve had a rough day, and I was impatient.” I hesitate, not sure whether asking her what she was working on will help or make things worse. I don’t have the energy to cope with a tantrumming eight-year-old. “Can I help you with whatever it is you were doing?”

  “Not if I’m not allowed on the computer,” she says.

  “How long would it take?”

  “You wouldn’t understand it anyway.” Fierce and certain and self-righteous.

  “I could try.”

  “It’d take too long to explain.” She’s still angry, but she is calming down, the blotchy red fading from her cheeks. “I was looking forward to you coming, but you’re not being very fun.”

  Yeah, because my best friend just tried to kill himself. I take a deep breath and swallow the words and my own anger. Sometimes I have to remind myself that she is just a kid. Eight years old. It’s hard to remember that when she talks like an adult and argues like a lawyer and knows more about science than most high school students. If she was more typical—playing with dolls and plastic ponies and talking about whatever TV shows most third-graders watch—her self-centeredness would seem entirely normal. “Suzy, I’m sorry,” I say. “I always look forward to seeing you too.”

  She sniffs and rubs her eyes with two small fists. Her nails, and a fair bit of fingertip skin, are painted dark blue with sparkles—the same polish she used on my nails the last time she did them. Nail polish is one of the very few girly things she likes.

  “Want to do my nails?” I offer. “See, I’ve chipped most of it off.”

  She nods.

  “And tell me about how school’s going,” I suggest.

  Suzy stands up. “I’ll do your nails,” she says. “But I don’t want to talk about school.”

  We sit on the floor in her room, a towel spread out under us to protect the carpet—Suzy is the clumsiest kid I’ve ever met and has yet to do my nails without dripping polish, dropping the brush or knocking over the bottle—and the whole story of her week spills out, as I figured it would. Apparently, some girls have been teasing her, calling her names—the worst of which is Poo.

  “Poo?” I ask. “That’s a little strange.”

  “Suzy, then Suzy Poozie, then Poozie. Then Fen started calling me Poo, and Emma and Danielle and everyone else joined in.”

  “So call them something back,” I suggest. “Fen Feces. Emma Excrement.”

  She giggles, and the nail-polish brush veers a little wildly across my thumbnail.

  “Danielle Diarrhea.”

  A snort and a full-on laugh. “Connie Constipation,” she says. “Shonna Shithead.”

  “Suzy!” I’m guessing her mom and her teacher are going to love me for this line of defense.

  She stops laughing. “I’d just end up getting in trouble,” she says. “Anyway, they’d just call me other stuff. Like weirdo or freak or retard.”

  “They call you retard?”

  Suzy doesn’t say anything right away. She paints the nail of my index finger, my ring finger, my pinkie. Then she puts the brush back in the bottle, screws it tight and shakes it vigorously. “One girl asked if I have some kind of mental problem,” she says, not
looking at me.

  I remember Jeremy talking about how he was teased at school, how he used to spin in circles and how the teachers thought he was autistic. “Kids are all different,” I tell her. “There’s nothing wrong with you. Anyway, even if you did have some kind of problem, no one should call you names, right?”

  “There’s a boy in my class who has autism,” Suzy says. She holds the nail-polish bottle up to the light and studies it, like she’s trying to see through it or something. “He’s nice and he’s smart.”

  “Right,” I say. “Well, you’re pretty nice and smart yourself.” I wonder if she is noticing how different she is, trying to make sense of it somehow, looking for an explanation.

  “You want me to do your other hand?”

  “If you want to.”

  Suzy unscrews the bottle top and starts painting the nails of my left hand. “We sometimes talk at lunchtime, but I think maybe I shouldn’t hang out with him anymore,” she says. Her cheeks are red and blotchy again. “I don’t want to make him feel bad, but maybe if I didn’t talk to him, the girls wouldn’t be so mean to me?”

  I don’t know what to tell her. I want her to be brave and stand up to the girls and be loyal to her friend, but maybe that is too much to ask of an eight-year-old. “What do you think?” I say at last. “How would you feel if you did that?”

  “Bad.”

  “It’s a tough situation,” I say, watching the tiny brush stroking my nails with its sparkly dark blue. “It’ll get better, Suzy. As you get older. You’ll find people who are more like you, and other kids will stop being so mean.”

  “When? I mean, how much older?”

  I shrug, thinking of last year and all the stuff I went through with Devika and Adriana. “I don’t know,” I say. “High school will probably be better. I mean, some kids will still be jerks, but it’s not so bad if you at least have one good friend. Someone who gets you.”

  She stops painting my nails, brush hovering, dripping, in midair, and looks up at me. “Like Jeremy?”

  I have to turn away from her small face, her wide, hopeful eyes. “Yeah. Like Jeremy,” I say.

  The Point of It All

  The next day, I smile at Adriana when I pass her in the cafeteria. I don’t really mean to—it just happens, as much from nervousness as anything, but the smile she flashes back is wide and grateful and, well, genuine. I’ve tried not to think about that party and what I did, but now I’m questioning everything. Had she tried to save my life? Was taking those pills really a suicide attempt? It seemed like everyone else had seen it as one, even though I was pretty sure I never intended to die. Although, look at Jeremy—jumping and then realizing, too late, that he wanted to live. No one could say he hadn’t attempted suicide, but maybe the only difference was that it’s a lot easier to stop after five Tylenol than when you’re falling from a bridge.

  I’ll talk to her, I decide. Apologize, or accept her apology, or whatever. I don’t think we’ll be friends again, not like we used to be, but it’d be a relief not to feel like we’re enemies. I grab a salad and an iced tea and carry my tray toward her table. She’s sitting with Devika and some other girls I don’t know. Devika looks up, her perfect dark eyebrows raised in surprise, and I lose my nerve. I drop my eyes and walk past.

  I am such a coward.

  Jeremy texts me every few minutes all afternoon.

  Come see me.

  Dying of boredom.

  Ribs hurt. Ouch.

  Guess what? Still bored.

  Can you come after school?

  Hey had the weirdest dream. Tell you later.

  The thing is, I don’t know if I want to hear about his dreams anymore. I feel like his dreams were part of the problem; his dreams made him believe his brother was out there somewhere, waiting for him. And Jeremy may be able to say he’s dying of boredom, like that’s a normal thing to say, but just seeing the word dying makes me flinch. And I can’t help wondering what he thinks of me now. Does he know I was never really serious about jumping? Or does he think I changed my mind, or lost my nerve?

  And what about that kiss? Was that only because he wanted to do it before he died? Does it still mean anything now that he wants to live?

  Couldn’t text in math, I reply between classes. Can’t come tonight—too much homework.

  His reply is instant. How about tomorrow?

  I don’t know why I want to avoid him. Yes I do: just thinking about him makes me feel guilty and messed up. OK tomorrow is good. Right after school.

  Can't wait to see you. Can’t wait to see you ☺

  I stare at the screen of my phone. Jeremy has just used a happy-face emoticon. It’s like his whole personality has changed.

  “Not going to see Jeremy tonight?” Bill asks as we are all sitting down for dinner.

  I shake my head. “Tons of homework. I told him I’d come tomorrow.”

  “I see.” He pours himself a glass of ice water from the pitcher and takes a sip.

  “How is he?” Vicky asks.

  “Bored,” I say. “Sore.”

  “His poor mother,” Vicky says. “I can’t imagine what she must be going through. Do you know her well, Mel?”

  I shake my head. “Not at all. I mean, I’ve met her a couple of times but just briefly.”

  “I was wondering if I should call her,” Vicky muses. “I don’t want to intrude though.”

  “She’s kind of formal,” I say. “Not a relaxed kind of person. Their house is, like, perfect, you know?”

  “Well, she’s lost a lot, hasn’t she? Her younger son dying and her husband leaving.” Vicky piles salad onto her plate and drowns it in blue-cheese dressing. “So maybe having the house perfect helps her feel in control.”

  “Please,” I say. “You haven’t even met the woman, so don’t start psychoanalyzing her.”

  “I’m not. Well, I didn’t mean to. I just meant don’t judge.”

  “I wasn’t judging,” I say. “If anyone was judging, you were. All I said was that her house is perfect.”

  Bill lets out an exaggerated sigh. “You two. Enough.”

  I look down at my plate.

  “Would it bother you if I called her?” Vicky asks. “Because if you would rather I didn’t…”

  “Do what you want,” I say.

  And then the phone rings. I jump up to answer it. Vicky and Bill don’t answer the phone if they’re busy—and busy includes not just stuff like eating dinner, but things like reading a book or watering the plants—but I can’t let it ring. I always think it might be important, even though half the time it’s only someone trying to sell carpet-cleaning services or vacation scams.

  “Hello?”

  “Is that Melanie?”

  “Um, Melody. Yes.”

  “It’s Mrs. Weathers.”

  Weird timing. “Um, hi. Is Jeremy okay?”

  “He’s doing well. The doctor says he should be able to come home by the end of the week.”

  “That’s great!”

  “Yes.” She doesn’t sound convinced. “I’ve spoken to the school and they’re pulling together some homework for him. I was wondering if you’d be able to bring it when you visit tomorrow.”

  “Sure. Do I just get it from the office?”

  “Yes. That would be a big help.” She hesitates. “He says he doesn’t want to go back to school. Do you know if… was there anything happening at school that I should know about?”

  “You mean like bullying or something? I don’t think so.”

  “Well. Maybe you can talk to him.”

  “Sure.” He’d better come back. School would really suck without Jeremy there.

  “Thank you, Melody. I know you are very important to him.”

  It has the ring of a question. Like, are you his girlfriend? I wish I knew the answer.

  The next day after school, I show up at the hospital with an armload of books and papers from Jeremy’s teachers.

  “Ah, let me guess. My mom called you.”


  “Yeah. This is from Mr. Daniels, and this is—”

  He cuts me off. “Just put them over there,” he says, sitting up and nodding toward the table in the corner. “I told her I’m not going back, but she doesn’t want to hear it.”

  I dump the books and take a seat in the chair beside his bed. He’s wearing regular clothes, no longer hooked up to all the tubes. “You look good. Better.”

  “I feel pretty good, as long as I don’t move. Or cough or anything.” He smiles at me. “I guess the ribs take a while to heal. You can’t put a cast on them, you know?”

  “Yeah.” I pull my feet up onto the chair and wrap my arms around my knees. “Are you serious? About not going back to school, I mean?”

  He nods. “One hundred percent.”

  “Like, actually quit? Drop out?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why? I mean, what are you going to do? You can’t go to college if you don’t graduate.”

  “I know. I just don’t see the point of it all.”

  I stare at him. “Um, getting a degree? A decent job? Maybe even, I don’t know, doing something useful.”

  “That’s just it,” he says eagerly. “I want to do something useful. I survived that fall, Mel. There has to be a reason for that. Something I’m meant to do.”

  I don’t know what to say.

  Jeremy gestures at the stack of books I delivered. “All that just seems so irrelevant now.”

  “Yeah? Your teachers won’t think so.”

  “Exactly. They think all that stuff matters. That’s why I can’t go back, Mel. I can’t sit in class and write exams and pretend that I care about a letter on a piece of paper.” His eyes search mine, dark and intense, like he’s trying to see right inside my head. “You understand, don’t you?”

  “Yeah. I guess so.” It’s not entirely untrue. I mean, of course I think lots of stuff about school is kind of pointless. Of course I know that I’m jumping through all kinds of hoops and that it isn’t all exactly meaningful. But Jeremy and I have talked about that kind of thing since we met, and neither of us has ever considered quitting. “Will your mom let you quit?”