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“Yeah, wow.”
“How do you know?”
I tell her briefly about Kelsea’s journal.
“That poor girl,” Rhiannon says. “What are you going to do?”
“I have no idea.”
“Don’t you have to tell someone?”
“There was no training for this, Rhiannon. I really don’t know.”
All I know is that I need her. But I’m afraid to say it. Because saying it might scare her away.
“Where are you?” she asks.
I tell her the town.
“That’s not far. I can be there in a little while. Are you alone?”
“Yeah. Her father doesn’t get home until around seven.”
“Give me the address.”
I do.
“I’ll be right there,” she says.
I don’t even need to ask. It means more that she knows.
I wonder what would happen if I straightened up Kelsea’s room. I wonder what would happen if she woke up tomorrow morning and found everything in its right place. Would it give her some unexpected calm? Would it make her understand that her life does not have to be chaos? Or would she just take one look and destroy it again? Because that’s what her chemistry, her biology would tell her to do.
The doorbell rings. I have spent the past ten minutes staring at the ink stains on the walls, hoping they will rearrange themselves into an answer, and knowing they never will.
The black cloud is so thick at this point that not even Rhiannon’s presence can send it away. I am happy to see her in the doorway, but that happiness feels more like resigned gratitude than pleasure.
She blinks, takes me in. I have forgotten that she is not used to this, that she is not expecting a new person every day. It’s one thing to acknowledge it theoretically, and quite another thing to have a thin, shaky girl standing on the other side of the precipice.
“Thank you for coming,” I say.
It’s a little after five, so we don’t have much time before Kelsea’s father comes home.
We head to Kelsea’s room. Rhiannon sees the journal sitting on Kelsea’s bed and picks it up. I watch and wait until she’s done reading.
“This is serious,” she says. “I’ve had … thoughts. But nothing like this.”
She sits down on the bed. I sit down next to her.
“You have to stop her,” she says.
“But how can I? And is that really my right? Shouldn’t she decide that for herself?”
“So, what? You just let her die? Because you didn’t want to get involved?”
I take her hand.
“We don’t know for sure that the deadline’s real. This could just be her way of getting rid of the thoughts. Putting them on paper so she doesn’t do them.”
