The World Without Us Page 15

  “I’m not though.” I hate people pushing their beliefs on other people, so I’d be more than happy to let them know they’re not welcome. I head toward the door, Suzy behind me giggling nervously. “Don’t worry,” I tell her. “I won’t be rude. I’ll just tell them not to come back.”

  I open the door—

  —and there is Jeremy.

  “Hey, it’s you!” Suzy says. “What happened to your hair?”

  “I cut it off,” he says. “And so did you, I see. Yours looks better than mine.”

  She touches her bobbed hair. “I’m a flapper now.”

  “I like it. And I’m very sorry I’m late,” he tells her.

  “Really late,” she says. “Like, more than a week late, I think! But that’s okay. Do you still like ice cream?”

  “It’s one of my favorite things,” he says solemnly. He turns to me. “Vicky told me you were here. Sorry I didn’t call first.”

  “No problem,” I say. “Did you want to come in?”

  “Sure.”

  Jeremy sits down at the kitchen table. I help Suzy dish out three bowls of rainbow sherbet, and I sneak glances at Jeremy, trying to figure out if he’s angry with me, wondering if the fact that his scalp is now covered with a short dark fuzz means anything at all. If he starts telling Suzy about Krishna consciousness, I’ll kill him.

  Suzy takes two bowls to the table, slides one over to Jeremy and sits down beside him. “Mel’s babysitting me every day, did she tell you? I don’t go to after-school care anymore.”

  Jeremy nods. “Is that good?”

  “Very good. It’d be better if I didn’t have to go to school at all though.”

  “I don’t go anymore,” he says.

  I shake my head at him. How is that helpful? It’s not like Suzy has a choice.

  “Are you going to go back?” she asks him.

  “Nope.”

  “Never?”

  He shakes his head. “I don’t think so.”

  “What about university?”

  Jeremy scoops a spoonful of neon-orange ice cream into his mouth. “What about it?”

  Suzy looks at him pityingly. “You can’t go to university if you don’t finish high school.”

  “I’m not planning to go to university. Not everyone has to, you know.”

  “I want to,” Suzy says firmly. “I’d go right now if I could. Did you know that MIT is one of the best places in the whole world to study astronomy?”

  “That’s what you want to do?”

  “Maybe. Or fashion design.”

  “Hmm.” He licks the back of his spoon thoughtfully. “Melody told me you didn’t like school.”

  “I don’t like elementary school,” she says.

  “No, neither did I.” He looks at me, like he’s wondering how much he should say. “Kids can be pretty mean. That’s how it was for me anyway.”

  “Did Mel tell you what the kids call me?” Suzy looks at him, and then at me. I shake my head and she turns back to him. “Poo! They call me Poo.”

  He frowns. “Like Winnie the Pooh?”

  “No. Like the other kind. You know.” Suzy stabs at her melting ice cream with her spoon, once, twice, three times. “I hate them.”

  “Maybe they have their own stuff going on,” he says.

  “What do you mean?”

  I watch his face—the blue-purple smudges under his dark eyes, the tracery of veins at his temples, the sharp edge of his Adam’s apple as he swallows—and wonder what he is thinking.

  “Just problems in their own lives,” he says. “At home, maybe.”

  “Like maybe their parents are getting divorced? Or they hit their kids, even?”

  “Maybe.” He shrugs. “Seems like people who are happy mostly treat other people well.”

  Suzy ponders this, slowly stirring her ice cream into a sludgy soup. After a long minute she looks up at him. “There are a lot of kids who are mean to me. A lot.”

  “Maybe there are a lot of people who are unhappy,” he says.

  I’m not sure how this is a helpful thought—it’s hardly cheerful anyway—but Suzy looks interested. “In my school? Or in the world?”

  “Maybe both.”

  “You think they can’t help being mean?”

  “I think sometimes when people are very unhappy, they don’t really think about other people at all. They feel so bad that they forget that other people have feelings too. And they hurt them without really meaning to.” Jeremy turns and looks at me as he answers. “Sometimes they’re so unhappy that they do awful things. Things that hurt other people.”

  Is he talking about himself? And me?

  Suzy isn’t buying it. “They don’t call me Poo by accident,” she says.

  He turns back to her. “No. But maybe they aren’t really thinking about how it makes you feel.”

  “I’ve told them I don’t like it,” she says.

  “That’s good,” I say. “It’s good that you stand up for yourself.”

  “But it doesn’t make them stop.”

  Jeremy nods. “When I was your age, the kids called me Spaz. And Retard.”

  “That’s awful.” Suzy dips her spoon in her ice-cream soup and licks it clean again. “Not as bad as Poo though.”

  “It gets better,” he tells her.

  “When?”

  “Um, high school? I guess that seems like a long way off.”

  “It is a long way off.”

  “Maybe you’ll make a friend soon,” I say. “Even if some kids are still mean, it’ll be better if you have someone you can count on.”

  “Like you and Jeremy,” she says.

  Jeremy looks at me and our eyes meet. His are shining with tears.

  “Yeah,” I say, and my voice cracks a little. “Like me and Jeremy.”

  He stands. “I should go.”

  “I’ll walk you out,” I say.

  Jeremy gives Suzy a quick hug goodbye, which to my surprise she doesn’t seem to mind, and I follow him to the front door. “Jeremy? Are you okay?”

  He nods. “Yeah. I meant what I said. I’m really sorry, Mel.”

  I follow him out the door and onto the porch, so that Suzy won’t hear us.

  “For what?”

  “All of it. Being so wrapped up in myself, I guess. Not really seeing you. Putting you through that, you know? Seeing me jump.” He shakes his head. “Selfish, right?”

  “I’m sorry too,” I say. I can feel my throat getting tight, feel tears threatening. “I should’ve stopped you. I didn’t think you’d do it.” I remember my dad saying ask him, but I’m scared of what he might say.

  He answers the question anyway. “I don’t think I knew I was going to do it until we got there. Until we were actually standing on the bridge, looking down.”

  I’m right back there, seeing the blackness below, feeling his hand slip free of mine. “Why did you do it?” I whisper.

  He looks me right in the eyes. “Honestly? I don’t know.”

  “You jumped off a bridge.” My voice cracks and trembles on the edge of a sob. “How can you not know why?”

  “I’ve been seeing this counselor. And I keep coming up with explanations, you know? But I feel like I’m just making up stories for him to write in his notes. About Lucas, about my mother, about my dad.” He hesitates. “He never even came to see me. At the hospital, you know? Mom talked to him, but he didn’t come.”

  “Asshole,” I say. “That’s awful.”

  “I mean, I’ve talked to the counselor about all this. I get that there’s reasons that I could be depressed or whatever.” His eyes search mine, like he’s trying to figure out if I understand. “But trying to link it to that night? That’s where it feels like I’m making stuff up. Because none of it really explains why I did it.”

  “So what does explain it? What does your counselor say?” I know I’m pushing him for an answer he maybe doesn’t have, but I can’t stop. I need to know the reason why. “I mean, what was going through your
mind that night?”

  “When we were on that bridge, looking down? Nothing.” He shrugs. “Letting go seemed easier than holding on.”

  When I get home, Vicky and Bill are sitting together watching a movie in the living room, a bowl of popcorn balanced on the arm of the couch. Bill hits the Pause button on the remote when he sees me come in. “Hey.”

  “Popcorn for dinner?” I say.

  “Nothing better. Join us? We just started the movie; it’s supposed to be good.”

  I nod, and they slide apart to make room for me between them. I sit down, feeling both their concern and their effort to not show it.

  “Everything okay?” Bill asks.

  “Yeah.” I look at him and then at Vicky. “Actually, yeah. Like, not perfect, but okay enough.”

  They both wait, Bill’s thumb hovering over the Play button.

  “Jeremy came over to Suzy’s,” I say.

  “You guys are talking again?” Vicky asks.

  “We weren’t ever not talking, exactly,” I say. “But yeah.”

  She squeezes my knee.

  “Play the movie,” I say, and I let myself relax into the space between them.

  That night, in my room, I pull out the book Jeremy loaned me earlier this fall: The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays. I never did read it, but now I lie on my couch, open the book and immediately recognize the first words: There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.

  Jeremy quoted this to me the very first time we met, and I said, mockingly, that Shakespeare said it first. I find myself flipping through the pages, not reading methodically but getting pulled in here and there, clinging to the words as if they might somehow explain Jeremy to me. I know it’s stupid; I know the answers aren’t going to be in here.

  Here’s The Myth of Sisyphus, Cliff ’s Notes version: The gods cursed Sisyphus to push this huge boulder up a mountain, and then, when he’d finally get it to the top, it’d roll back down and he’d have to start all over again. Such is life, I guess—not the most cheerful worldview. And then my eyes fall on a sentence harshly underlined in black ink, the pen pressed so hard it’s dented the pages: Forever I shall be a stranger to myself.

  And maybe that’s all the answer I’m going to get. Maybe Jeremy can’t tell me why because he doesn’t know. He never knew. All our conversations about suicide—about Camus, the bridge, the playlist and the last meal—I’d thought maybe they had put the idea in his head. But if the idea wasn’t already there, we wouldn’t have had those conversations in the first place. Maybe in the end, the plan didn’t matter as much as the impulse. That moment on the bridge, when he jumped and I didn’t.

  I chose to live. He chose to let go.

  Maybe why didn’t matter. Maybe it wasn’t even the right question.

  I pick up my phone and call Jeremy. It’s kind of late, but he picks up on the first ring. “Mel?”

  “Jeremy? You’re not going to do it again, are you?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Forever I shall be a stranger to myself. “Really really don’t think so?”

  He actually laughs. “Really really really.”

  “Good.”

  “Is that why you called?”

  “Sort of. I was reading that book you loaned me. Camus.”

  “Oh yeah. Poor old Sisyphus.”

  “It’s depressing.”

  “Did you read it all?”

  “Just skimmed,” I say. “It’s kind of dense.”

  “You should read the last bit,” Jeremy tells me.

  “Does it get less depressing?”

  “In a way. He says you have to imagine Sisyphus happy. Accepting it all.”

  “Yeah?” I flip through the pages. “I’ll try to read it,” I say, although I already know I probably won’t. I prefer novels, and I have stacks of good ones—birthday presents, last year’s Christmas presents—that I haven’t got around to reading yet. “Listen, do you want to get together? Maybe tomorrow night? Or…”

  There’s a pause. Too long a pause. “Um, I’d like to see you, but I can’t tomorrow.”

  I wait.

  “I’m going up to Gainesville for a few days.”

  “The Hare Krishnas?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay,” I say. “Give me a call when you get back. You know, if you want.”

  “Sure.” I can hear the relief in his voice. I guess he was afraid I’d freak out again. “I’ll call you. I’ll probably stay up there over the weekend, but maybe Monday or Tuesday we could do something. Go to the beach. Take Suzy, maybe, if you want.”

  “She’d like that.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Thanks for visiting her,” I say.

  “Yeah, well, about time, right?”

  “Right.”

  He laughs. “I’ll talk to you soon, then?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I’ll be here.”

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to my fabulous editor, Sarah Harvey, for her always astute guidance; to my coffee-shop writing buddies, Kari Jones and Alex Van Tol, for their inspiration and insights; and to my wonderful family for endless love and support.

  ROBIN STEVENSON is the author of seventeen novels for teens and children. Her young adult novels include Hummingbird Heart, Escape Velocity, Inferno, Out of Order and Governor General’s Award finalist A Thousand Shades of Blue. Robin was born in England, grew up mostly in Ontario and now lives on the west coast of Canada, with her partner and son. She enjoys visiting schools and offers creative-writing classes for people of all ages. Robin loves hearing from readers and can be reached through her website at www.robinstevenson.com.