The Drowners -1-

“Hi. Um… So I guess if you’re listening to this, it means I really did it. Not that I didn’t think I’d do it – it’s just that I thought maybe someone would stop me before I could. But you’re listening, so that means I’m dead.

“Uh, I’m not really sure what to say. I didn’t really think I’d get this far… um. My name is Brody Peters, and I gave up. But, uh, I didn’t want to give up without saying goodbye, so… bye, I guess.

“Someone please tell my parents that I love them, and tell that to my friends, too – the real ones, not the ones that are going to pretend that they liked me when I’m gone. Also, if it’s not them who are listening, tell them all that this isn’t their fault. None of it is. I just wanted to die. I promise that’s all, and there’s nothing anyone could have done.

“I’m sorry. I love you all. Please forget about me…”

Brody Peters was the first member of The Drowners club. I may have invented it, but he was the original Drowner, leading the way for others that were sinking just like he had been. I wasn’t like Brody; I didn’t wish to die – at least not yet – but I did group myself with The Drowners.

Ever since I was a young girl, I’ve felt like I was drowning. I’ve felt like a little kid who walked too far into the ocean, only to be pulled away by the tide. Not knowing what was happening. Not knowing how to stop it. Not knowing how to get my head back to the surface.

I was constantly looking up through the foggy waves, the sunlight shining through the whitecaps but never fully reaching me, never enfolding me in its warmth. The waves churned me around, passing me back and forth like a game of catch, lungs aching, head muddled, limbs limp. I was left alone to sink, but I guess I didn’t mind.

I was drowning, but I wasn’t dead.

Not like Brody Peters.

I had liked Brody. We hadn’t been super close but I saw him every day in third period English class and fourth period math. We often walked to each class together, telling jokes and laughing about the awkward couple that always made out in the hallways. He was easy to be friends with because he was so laid back.

His mask was stronger than concrete. His emotions locked down like money in a safe. He had fooled everyone with his calm and lazy demeanor, but occasionally the mask would slip and I could see it all in his eyes. I knew.

And that was the worst part – knowing that he was going to do it. It came as a shock to everyone else, but I had been seeing it in his eyes for months. The depression, the loneliness – it was there, like a mirroring of my own. I had tried to help – tried to convince him to talk to his parents – but he wouldn’t listen. He denied his sadness every time. He denied it so much that I began to believe him. The mask was stronger than ever.

And then one day he was gone. Limp in the ocean, eyes unable to see the light shining through, being tossed around but not able to fight. He was gone.

And I’d been the one to find him hanging on a rope in his closet.

<>

“Ember.”

He sighed my name; exhaled it like a breath of smoggy air. My psychologist, Doctor Marvin, sat with his legs crossed and his hands pressed together in front of his face. Pinky against pinky, thumb against thumb – he always sat like this when he wasn’t sure what to make of my words.

The man was bald, so I didn’t blame him for being daft. Who had time to be smart when you were too busy scheduling hair appointments that you didn’t need? (That’s what Dr. Marvin had been doing as I walked into his cozy, prison-like office).

“I mean, I just don’t understand why Ryan Potchini can bring a bag of weed to school and only get suspended for a week, but I bring a measly little lighter to school and everyone goes ape shit crazy,” I repeat.

He sighs my name again. “Ember, you didn’t only bring a lighter to school. You lit one of the library books on fire during your free period. Plus, remember, Ryan also got arrested for bringing the weed to school – something that could have happened to you.” His bushy eyebrows rise and fall when he speaks. I suddenly wonder why he had so much hair above his eyes, but none on his head.

Maybe that’s what the hair appointment is for.

“Ember,” Dr. Marvin says, “you’re lucky they only suspended you.”

“Yeah,” I say, still looking at his eyebrows, “maybe – but two weeks? What the hell?”

I ask him silently not to sigh again, but he doesn’t listen. The carbon dioxide slowly escapes his lungs and lazily tumbles into the atmosphere.

“Just a question,” he says, pointing lazily in a non-descript direction. It had taken me a mere minute of our first session to determine that he did everything in a lazy way. Now we were rounding the end of our fifteenth scheduling, and the slow actions were almost comforting. “Ember, did you hear me?”

I’d been zoning out again. Apparently I do that a lot.

“That’s a pretty shitty question,” I point out. “Am I listening? Not really; you’re kind of boring.”

He sighs. “That wasn’t the question. Let me rephrase that. I’m going to ask you a question, and this is it: why did you do it?”

The chair I’m sitting on feels too hard under me, as if I’ve been sitting for days and it’s making my bones ache – even though I’ve only been in the session for a half hour.

“Set the book on fire?” I ask to clarify. He nods. “Um, I thought it’d be funny.” Dr. Marvin makes a sound of inquiry. I hold back a sigh, because he does enough sighing for the two of us. “My name is Ember. Embers come from fire. I lit the book on fire because I wanted to see the embers.”

He makes a noise and writes this down on the yellow notepad he keeps balanced on his crossed legs. Or maybe he writes something else. Maybe he’s writing down how crazy I am. Maybe he’s writing down “I’m pretending to write because I’m bored” a million times like I do when I’m at school.

The world may never know.

When I’d entered the room at the beginning of the session, walking in just in time to hear the end of his hair appointment scheduling, Dr. Marvin sat down and asked me the same question he always does: “How do you feel?” I had answered with the same words I always do: “Fanfreakingtastic.” I don’t ever actually feel fanfreakingtastic, but I guess if I say it enough, it might actually become the truth.

When Dr. Marvin looks back up from the yellow notepad, pulling me away from my previous thoughts, he asks another question. “Did you burn the book out of anger?”

I blink because my brain feels muddled. “What—no, I just told you. I wanted to see the embers-”

“Yes,” he interrupts slowly, clicking his pen shut. “But do you think there might have been another reason, one a little deeper, as to why you destroyed school property?” Dr. Marvin takes what he thinks is a discrete glance at the clock next to him. I look at it too. 3:52. Eight more minutes to an hour long appointment.

Dr. Marvin looks back at me.

I know he’s looking for something deep and understandable, such as “I did it because I’m depressed,” or “I was angry and wanted to hurt myself,” but I can’t give him an answer like that because none of it is true.

Maybe I just wanted to see the fucking book burn.

“I hate literature,” I offer.

He sighs, but writes this down. He takes longer this time, probably writing down my “inner angst and unknown fury.”

I take this time to look around the office that has become so familiar to me in the past couple of months. It’s small, only big enough for three heavily cushioned chairs, a desk, and a bookshelf. At the start of our meetings, I had felt claustrophobic in the room, but now I didn’t mind the snug feeling of it. Plus, there’s a huge, wall to wall window facing out into the parking lot, so when it felt too small, I’d just look out and find my mother’s car.

On the bookshelf to my right is a row of books that are completely identical. On the spine of each book is the title “Depression in Secession.” Shitty title, I know, but the poor man took the time to write a book, so I wasn’t about to tell him that it sucked. Also on the bookshelf are a few picture frames holding photos of who I’m assuming to be Dr. Marvin’s family.

In one of the frames, is a picture of a girl I’ve seen before. We often pass by each other in the hallways at school. I know her name is Hailey, and we have three classes together. I haven’t told Dr. Marvin this. I don’t want to accidentally tell him that his daughter is the school slutbag, so I just pretend I don’t know who she is.

Plus, I set a book on fire – who’s to say he’d believe anything I said anyway.

I look back at Dr. Marvin, who has finished his mysterious Yellow Notepad Writing (YNW, if you will). (I won’t, but you can if you want). I try to avoid eye contact because that’s just weird, so instead I look at the coffee stain on the collar of his shirt.

“So,” he begins after an uncomfortable silence, “we’ve talked about laundry, the benefits of paper vs. plastic, whether or not alcohol tastes like dirty socks, and you setting a book on fire-“

“-all very interesting topics,” I say, cutting him off.

“Yes.” He sighs. “Now, Ember, was there anything else you wanted to talk about in the five minutes we have left?”

I pretend to think about it for a second.

But really I’m not thinking.

I’m never thinking.

I don’t want to go to a counselor to talk about my feelings. I don’t want to go to someone and tell them how I found my friend hanging dead in his closet. I abhor the idea of talking about what was on the suicide tape Brody left. I don’t want to share how lonely I feel all the fucking time. I don’t want to tell Dr. Marvin how the scars of what I’ve seen continue to scrape across my heart and eyes until everything I see is plagued with the stench of death.

I don’t want to look in the mirror at my puffy eyes, red from sleepless nights and anxiety attacks. I hate going to school where I know people will talk about him. I hate going to school where I know people have already forgotten about him. I hate feeling like one day I’ll be gone too.

I hate feeling like I’m already dead.

And I don’t want to say these things. Because that means I have a problem.

So I cover my mouth with a specific filter that keeps all the bad thought in. It’s a very effective filter – a hard one to find. But it works. And it leaves me with my own thoughts, to either filter through or ignore – whichever is easier.

So, instead, I purse my lips in faux thought and look up to my bald doctor and say,

“No. I’m fanfreakingtastic.”

When really I’m screaming on the inside.