The Beautiful Blip

Jack was the first to go. And if we’re staying on the simpler side, Amy was next, then Stephen, Zeke, Seth, Sonny, and Justine. But Jack was the first of our year. The first one to die.

High school is a funny time. You roam around on the cusp of peanut butter and jelly and pungent jungle juice. Not old enough to vote but old enough to decide what you want to do with the rest of your life. Everything is possible when you’re seventeen. The world isn’t just your oyster, it’s your entire ocean. We live in a protective shell that cradles us, shields us from the big bad universe.

It started as a small crack the night Jack died. He’d taken one too many acid tabs and jumped off a six story building. Perhaps he thought he’d fly, but blunt force trauma wasn’t even the most gruesome. That one was Amy in the middle of senior year when she crashed her car and flew through the windshield. Jack was the first, but Amy’s was the bloodiest. The one that caused the biggest ruckus in the halls the very next day. We cried for ages. Our tears hissed and steamed against those hot and suffocating hallways.

Graduation was the last night the rest of us were together. The last night everyone was in the same place because less than a year later, we’d be one short. That one was the most hopeful. We all believed they’d find him the night Stephen went missing. Posters and advertisements blasted all over social media showcasing this missing person we all believed would come home. Stephen’s was hopeful until it wasn’t. Until they found his body floating in a river.

The crack in my shell deepened with every false lead and false promise. Thoughts of what I’d done wrong when we spoke a week before.

I want to apologize in advance if the series of events has begun to turn too bleak. But there isn’t anything too optimistic about death. Especially the fact that Stephen’ contributed to Zeke’s. Guilt is a pebble in the bottom of your shoe. A thorn that digs deeper and deeper through the layers of skin. Zeke’s was the most surprising. His mother found him hanging from a rope in his room. Surprising because he'd seemed so happy the days prior. It hit us in a flash, the way a short circuited outlet shocks your finger, and still burns.

By the time it was Seth’s turn, the idea of losing someone became synonymous with our graduating class. Seth’s had been most shocking. Was his overdose intentional? Some of us would never know. It's gotten to the point where we tried to figure out who was next. Because there was definitely going to be a next.

But the next one wasn’t who I’d thought it would be. As close to home as these deaths had been, Sonny’s reached outside my front door. His was most confusing. It stunned me the most. I never knew he was sick and that shows how weak our bond grew over the years. Though we hadn’t spoken leading up to it, the moment the news broke I was transported back to the times when I was his and he was mine and we thought we’d be best friends forever.

Justine was the last to go. Last so far. There really isn’t any telling whether or not she would be the last one. When they first told me the only thought I had was whether or not it was quick. Was it the type of car accident that kills on impact? A part of me hopes it was.

There are moments in my life with distinct befores and afters. My life before suicide hotline sent cops to my house in the middle of the night. My life before 9/11. My life before Jack leaped off that roof. In this continuous circle of existence do all of these deaths count as a coming of age? Were they the triggers that broke my shell of naivete or had that just been a long time coming? Had I somehow stopped believing in unicorns and magic and life’s beauty because some of the ones around me are no longer around? It’s as if they were never here. That’s what’s so funny about the entire thing. It’d only made me realize the fragility of everything. How we’re not invincible after all, whether we’re seventeen or seventy. Though sometimes I grasp at straws to make sense of all this, I know that I’m still here and that in itself is wonderful. Their deaths have only solidified the fact that there is an eternity behind us and an eternity ahead, and we’re only here as a beautiful blip in between.