“When I looked over at Jonah, I noticed that he was crying. And not just a little. There were tears pouring down his face. He stood up and told me he couldn’t be there anymore. And I put my arm around him and walked with him until we had left everything behind. The park. And the lagoon. And the old man with the bread. I tried talking about it at first. ‘Where did he even get all the bread?’ I asked. But he was silent. So I asked him what was wrong, and he couldn’t explain it to me. It was only after we’d been walking a while that he looked me in the eye. And he said, ‘I just know how that guy feels.’
“But he wouldn’t say anything else about it. When we got back to campus he seemed okay again. He calmed down and he apologized for his breakdown in the park. He even laughed about it a little. I told him I thought maybe he should see somebody at Health Services, a counselor, and he assured me he would. He told me I was a good friendand that he was lucky he knew me. And then we played video games for a couple of hours and went to bed like it was any other day.
“I felt better the next day, like maybe I had gotten through to him. But, after that, he wasn’t around the room very much. Then he disappeared for a couple of days, and I never saw him again.”
I wiped my runny nose on my sleeve. I had started crying at some point, but I wasn’t sure when.
“What happened after that?” I asked.
“My parents flew out and came to campus the next day. They moved me to a hotel by the airport. I made them stay around for a week, but nothing really happened. A vigil outside. A moment of silence in the cafeteria. A discussion about suicide prevention education. Then we went home.”
“What about the funeral?”
“There was no funeral.”
His voice was softer now.
“It was just a private thing for the family. I called his mom the day after it happened, and asked if I could come. She said no.”
“Did she say why?”
“She said it would be too much. Too painful to see her son’s friends, other people his age. She apologized, but shecouldn’t do it. There was a charity set up somewhere. I could donate to that if I wanted.”
“So you never saw his body?”
“No.”
“What about when it actually happened?”
“By the time I heard, they had already taken him away.”
I nodded, even though I knew he couldn’t hear that through the phone.
“Before my parents got there I was in our dorm room by myself. And I found this folder he had kept. Inside it was a list of things he was going to do when he got better. It was from a self-help book or something. Some of them were simple like ‘get a part-time job.’ Others were a little more Jonah: ‘learn to be a projectionist at a revival movie house.’ But the one that stuck out to me was ‘study away in Sicily.’ It’s not that big a deal, I guess. A lot of college kids study abroad. But there was something about picturing him in another country that just brought it all home. If things had gone a different way, I could imagine him there so easily.”
“Why didn’t anyone else know about his depression? Why wasn’t someone else there to stop him?”
Daniel sighed.
“He didn’t have any other good friends, Tess,” he said.“Everybody liked him, but not many people knew him. I think we were it. You and me. We were all he had.”
“That can’t be true,” I said.
“Can you see why I didn’t want it to end?” said Daniel.
I sat up suddenly. The phone was wet and hot against my ear.
“I can’t do this,” I said.
Daniel’s voice sounded desperate when he spoke.
“Tess,” he said.
“No,” I said. “I mean.This. The distance. The phone. I can’t do this kind of thing anymore. I don’t think it’s good for me.”
He was silent for a moment.
“So, what are you saying exactly?” he said.
