One Leaf Writings

So there's this site, oneleaf.tumblr.com or something like that, it has a daily "leaf" to write. It's basically a prompt blog. Write a "leaf" based on the prompt - and you get to decide what a leaf is. So I may start regularly participating in that.

Today's Write One Leaf about Suicide Girls


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Suicide Girls.

That's what they called us after the fact. That's what all the headlines said. "Suicide Girls Story Unfolds" "Suicide Girls Shocker" "Lone Suicide Girls Survivor Interviewed" - they went on and on. That wasn't what we intended it to be, it just got out of hand.

They said we made a pact, and in that they were right. But it wasn't a suicide pact. It was actually a pact to start enjoying life. To be as involved as possible, to stop hiding, to survive. We'd grown up together, Tiffany, Rachel, and I. All on the same block, three houses in a row. We were such good friends that our parents just built a fence around our three yards, instead of separating them, when we were kids. We shared bikes, barbies, and secrets. We ran a lemonade stand together, we each had three Christmases, everything we did was in threes - the three of us. So when we decided that we were going to be the popular girls, it was no problem. We just signed up for everything we could - and did it together. When I didn't make it onto the cheer squad, I still tagged along and practiced with them. When Tiffany didn't get a part in Romeo and Juliet, she helped us with our lines. We were still all together.

Then, Tiffany's parents got divorced. She cried a lot. She stayed inside a lot. She started reading and writing some pretty dark things. She talked about being scared, and being alone. As always, Rachel and I weren't far behind. We stayed with her, found enjoyment in old movies and facials and scrabble to keep ourselves busy. When Rachel's little brother was hit by a car and severely retarded from the damage, she also became more reclusive. She quit cheer, quit drama club, quit photo club. Everything had to be focused on Jaymie and when she wasn't helping out at home she was at my house or at Tiffany's. Tiffany dropped out of our activities at that point, too. Over time I was the only one who would to anything other than go to school and stay in one of our three rooms.

I kept thinking it would get better, but it only got worse. They fell deeper and deeper into the depressed mire they were in, and before I knew it, we were all talking about suicide. At first I only played along with them, pretending to feel what they felt. When my dad lost his job and we had to move away it became real. We lived with my grandmother, six people in a cramped three-bedroom. Life suddenly became a horrible whirlwind and I was all caught up in it. Mom and dad were fighting, grandma had health problems, my sister suddenly hated me.

Just being around Tiffany and Rachel made it worse though. Everything about life sucked when I was with them. Everything hurt, everything was a big deal and another reason to just end everything and be done.

We didn't make a pact to kill ourselves. We were all sitting in Rachel's room one night after she'd gotten in a fight with her parents about her brother, and it was just decided. We all wrote notes to our families, little memoirs about our lives, hoping we'd at least be remembered at the end. I remember thinking "this is madness, it's gone too far." But by that time it was too late. They'd already set their minds to it, and they were going to go through with it.

I excused myself for a minute, said something about not wanting their last memory of me to be how I died. I went to the bathroom and pulled a blade from one of the fresh razors in the cabinet. But for some reason, I didn't go any farther. I just stared at it for a minute, and then I pulled my phone out of my pocket and called emergency. I stared at myself in the bathroom mirror, talking to a calm woman on the phone about how my friends had just agreed to kill themselves, and I'd left the room. She kept me on the line until the police and fire department got there. I caught a glimpse of the bodies in the bedroom on the way out. Tiffany and Rachel's parents were in the front yard, crying. Mine were there, too, but I think I must have been in shock.

It's been six months since that day, and I still can't forget it. I don't think I'll ever understand how it got so far out of hand. But at least I don't have to see any more newspaper headlines about the "Suicide Girls"