The Fall Read Free Page A

of knew?
    2) The cause of death was …
    a) The ground.
    b) How much time have you got?
    c) I don’t know why she did it. I mean, depression, I guess, but I can’t imagine.
    3) I found out about the death when …
    I got a text.
    4) After death, I believe my loved one is …
    a) Wait, “loved one”?
    b) Is this really a question about the afterlife? I guess I don’t really see her on a fluffy cloud surrounded by harpists with wings.
    c) Relieved it’s over.
    5) My first feeling was … because …
    a) Is “shock” a feeling? It felt like a non-feeling to me, no feeling at all. Because: I felt dead too?
    b) You know, there’s something else, now that I think about it. I was excited. I mean, it was big news, this huge thing that happened, so I started texting like crazy and Twitter exploded. As gross as this sounds, there was an initial thrill to it. I can’t tell you how that depresses me to this day.
    6) Now I feel … because …
    a) Like crap because: duh.
    b) Angry because: THIS FORM!
    7) What makes me feel most angry?
    a) How did you know?
    b) The phonies all around me.
    c) That she did this to herself, that it got to this point, that … next.
    8) I worry about … because …
    a) What happens next, “because” duh.
    b) Me, “because” everything completely sucks, like who cares.
    9) The hardest thing about school is … because …
    a) Is this is a trick question? Next!
    b) The fake feeling everywhere, the way her locker is now a shrine.
    c) The walk from science to band, where I used to always see her.
    d) All the things I never said.
    10) My friends are …
    a) Clueless.
    b) Guilty too.
    c) Kind of scary.
    11) The adults in my life tell me …
    a) I’m sorry, I wasn’t listening. What?
    b) That filling out forms is a good “mental exercise.”
    c) It’s best to “move on.”
    12) What helps me most is …
    a) This stupid form. Kidding!
    b) Television = very helpful.
    c) I wish I knew the answer to this one. Truly.
    d) Wait! My journal? Those blank pages? Writing?
    13) What helps me the least is …
    a) Pretending I didn’t care.
    b) All those plastic people pretending they do.

 
    PEOPLE TALKING
    I heard the talkers talking,
    expressing all they knew
    & didn’t know
    Â 
    â€”she was stupid,
    she was sick,
    she was selfish, brave,
    twisted, stoned, splattered;
    she left a note,
    she didn’t leave a note;
    how she jumped off
    the water tower at the edge
    of the woods, and how
    Demarcus joked, “Damn,
    she killed that hang-
    out spot, but seriously!”
    I tried not to speak,
    and surely didn’t laugh,
    just nodded and drifted, drifted, drifted
    away like the flicked ash
    from somebody’s cigarette.

 
    STILL NOTHING
    The color scheme of our school revolves around three basic colors: puke green, urine stain, and variations of beige. Each year, we spent exactly one hundred and eighty days inside that wonderful building. Snow days didn’t count, but half days did, even when Mr. Cranston only showed YouTube videos in social studies (true story!). We waited for time to spill, like liquid from a stabbed water balloon or blood from a cut sleeve.
    Then we were set free.
    In one of our last texts, Morgan wrote that she hated every one of those one hundred and eighty days. She couldn’t face the idea of the same dumb day on repeat.
    So I guess that’s partly why she ended up doing what she did. At least the timing of it.
    But still.
    There had to be more, right?
    And every single day ? That was harsh. There was not even one good day out of one hundred eighty? It was hard to believe, mathematically speaking, considering the odds of it. Every day? Really, Morgan?
    She wasn’t thinking straight.
    (Obviously.)
    I didn’t want to believe her.
    (And it hurt a little too.)
    I happen to know otherwise. There