I flipped around to face him, and he moved the stubborn hair from my face. “Did you see?”
Ethan nodded. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore, alright?” It was my turn to nod, and Ethan turned his eyes away and looked to the ceiling, his brain working overtime.
Ethan’s seen enough death. He should be numb to it all, but it still seemed to rupture him every time. Ethan turned back to face me, lips pressed together, world shaken up. “I need tonight,” he whispered.
I’d never seen him like this, and I’d wondered if he was close to the person who took their own life. “What do you need from me?”
“I need nothing from you, Jett. I just need you.”
“Okay.”
We laid there in silence as he dug his face into the groove of my neck, every part of him on the edge of breaking but refusing to. I should have told him it was better just to let go—to cry because your heart can only be forgiving for so long.
Though this was Ethan we were talking about.
Ethan had a soul of stone and the heart of a grim reaper.
His fingers laced in mine as he pinned my back to his chest, squeezing his broken away.
Dr. Conway entered my second class of the day. Tyler sat beside me with her brow in the air as whispers bounced through the small classroom.
“Today is going to be a little different,” Ms. Chandler announced, sending a nod in confirmation to Dr. Conway. “Everyone here is familiar with Dr. Conway, and today she’s going to talk about bullying and suicide help and prevention.”
Tyler turned to face me and whispered, “Every time someone commits suicide, they have to make it a big deal as if it were a contagious disease.”
I shook my head and gave her thekeep-your-thoughts-to-yourselfeyes.
Dr. Conway cleared her throat, and Tyler and I snapped our heads forward.
“It’s the people you would never expect, Tyler. Something that shouldn’t be taken lightly,” Dr. Conway stated before returning her attention to the rest of the class. Tyler’s blonde hair fell around her shoulders as her eyes found the surface of her desk.
Dr. Conway went on to talk about what had happened the night before. Not in detail, of course, but how Haden was a confident young man with many friends. He had never been bullied, but the one to bully others. Internal struggle was invisible, and sometimes the easiest way to counteract the silent pain was to try and beat it into someone else. You would’ve never known what he had planned to do, and those are the types of people who are the most danger to themselves because there is no cry for help. But she still listed signs to look out for and how to go about reporting suspicious behavior.
Then there were people like Livy.
“Who’s Livy?” Tyler asked in a hushed tone.
I pointed back to Dr. Conway, advising her to listen as I remembered the night Alicia told me the tale of Livy and Tommy last year.
Livy had walked through the doors of Dolor broken and confused, much like myself. Then found herself again through Thomas, like the way I did through Ollie.
Livy had been in love.
Livy had been happy.
Livy had planned on making it out of Dolor alive.
Except she didn’t.
Livy and Tommy fell victim to the curse of Dolor.
“Livy took her life after months and months of being strong against people like Haden. Ironic how both were struggling with demons of their own, and if we only opened our eyes and hearts to one another, if only we listened, they would both still be here,” Dr. Conway explained.
What Dr. Conway failed to mention was Livy had been gang-raped, which would be enough for some. She still held on until she became pregnant, then later lost her only source of continuance when Tommy had been taken to jail after he killed one of the rapists. Losing Tommy was her breaking point. Livy had been later found in her dorm room, hanging from the ceiling.
After she had stepped off the chair, I wondered what had gone through her head—If she’d regretted it. If flashes of the rapist and people who taunted her had entered her wounded mind. If she’d thought about Tommy, and what her decision would do to him.
Over a year had passed since Tommy’s vengeance and Livy’s death, but students still talked about them in whispers as if they were a myth or a spell you could cast onto another.
