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I inhaled a sharp breath and said six little words that broke my soul in half.
“I’d like to report a suicide.”
* * *
I didn’t waitfor the EMTs to arrive. I couldn’t. I’d grabbed a bottle of vodka from Mom’s secret stash, snatched my purse and cell phone off the counter, and walked barefoot down to the river. It was late, dark enough that I blended with the shadows. Dark enough that the dried blood stains on my uniform were barely noticeable. But I felt them. I smelled them. That cloying metallic twang lingering on me. Infecting me.
I took a big gulp of vodka and gritted my teeth as I swallowed it. It burned my throat but warmed my insides.
Suddenly repulsed at myself, I tore off my blouse and balled it up and pressed it into the ground beside me, shivering as the frigid air brushed my skin.
Why?
The word rattled around my head, taunting me. She knew. When she took that razor to her wrists, she knew I’d find her. One last ‘fuck you’ to the daughter she’d never wanted. The daughter she’d neglected and berated, beaten and bruised.
I was a fucking idiot. I’d left the Ford’s nice, safe house, their hospitality and love, and for what?
“Fuck you, Mom,” I yelled into the inky night, the only answer a nearby bird cawing.
I necked the rest of the vodka, waiting for it to take hold. It probably wasn’t my best idea coming down here, alone, and to get drunk. But I wasn’t exactly thinking straight.
The vodka would make me feel better, it would carry me off to somewhere else. Or it would numb me completely.
I didn’t care.
All I cared about was not remembering. Not seeing all the blood. Not smelling it.
My cell phone bleeped but I could barely make out the small lines of text, my vision swimming. I lay back on the ground, staring up at the sky, the world spinning around me.
She was gone.
I was truly alone.
No father.
No mother.
No family.
If I disappeared right now, if I plunged to my fate in the icy river, there would be no next of kin to identify the body, no loved ones to organize my funeral.
I was all alone in the world.
Me, myself, and I.
Laughter bubbled in my chest, but it wasn’t funny. It was a tragedy.
It was tragic.
Poor little reject girl Peyton Myers. Her dad took off when she was a kid and now her mom offed herself to escape.
I grabbed the vodka bottle and launched it into the river, letting out a guttural scream. The world began to close in around me until I couldn’t breathe.
Stumbling down to the water’s edge, I peered down into the dark abyss.
Do it, a little voice whispered.No one would even miss you.
“Lily would miss me,” I said to the darkness. “Ashleigh and Bryan too.”
