CANDOUR ON SUICIDE.
AUTHOR: illogicalsqueeks.
DICLAIMER: story is mine.
GENRE: black humour.
WORDS: 879.
TEASER: Carrot was either counting the gleaming ceiling tiles or had kicked the bucket with vim and vigour.
OTHER: it’s not emo.
Everything, for the next month, came back to Avery Blackwood’s death. It was the talk of the entire school. Groups of girls who barely knew her would squeeze out a tear or two-and Sara just didn’t know why they would go to all of that effort. It was almost as if it were fashionable to mourn Avery Blackwood now, it was the vogue thing to do, it was in style, it was the latest trend that would soon collapse on its weak foundation like all did and like a disappointed flambé it would turn into nothing but a sad and whimpering mess that had little use to anyone, a faded memory. Avery wouldn’t last long in their minds, Sara knew that.
The only other experience of death she’d had had been with a pet, which all die. Fish died almost instantly, Sara wasn’t even sure why you’d bother with them, you might as well buy a dead one. Not even a small blip of sadness had pinged on her emotional radar as she’d stumbled into the kitchen one morning-bedheaded and sleepy-and noted that little Carrot was either counting the gleaming ceiling tiles or had kicked the bucket with vim and vigour, only a few months old.
“I don’t get it,” she said to her mother at dinner that evening, each one sat at one end of a table larger than two people needed, “Nobody liked her when she was alive.”
“That’s a terrible thing to say, Sara,” her mother scolded, wearily: if anyone knew about Sara Atkins’ bluntness, her frank yet thick-headed way of picking at things in her mind, it was her. Ever since she had learned to talk that girl had done nothing but make inappropriately rude comments or burst into other people’s business.
“It’s true, though,” Sara said, something that she ended up saying quite often, sticking the metal fork into a roast potato and then letting go of it, leaving it sticking up like a flagpole. “She was bullied, everyone was horrible to her, it’s probably their faults she’s dead.”
“Sara!”
“She committed suicide, you know.” Mrs. Atkins sighed at her daughter’s persistent candour, scraping at the plate with her fork like a little child for a moment, before standing up. She knew that Sara had finished eating: that was what she meant when she stuck her cutlery into the remains of her food. Sometimes, she suspected that her daughter avoided clearing the plate just so that she had something to spear with her fork. Picking up her daughter’s plate, she walked away into the conjoined kitchen, no other sounds ambient apart from the rush of the tap being turned on, the ticking of a loud clock and some traffic outside.
Everyone knew that Avery Blackwood had committed suicide, and if nobody had been told, Sara wasn’t convinced that they would even have noticed. Avery had been a ghostlike creature, that perky three-syllable name far from her real personality, her face always pallid and her head always down. Sara wasn’t surprised at all that she’d committed suicide; if there had been a most likely to commit suicide vote, she would have put down Avery Blackwood as the winner before votes had even started. She was gloomy and lacklustre, and hadn’t had any friends. Sometimes, Sara wondered if she was gloomy because she didn’t have any friends, or didn’t have any friends because she was gloomy.
Probably both.
It had been her birthday when she’d committed suicide. How sad was that? An hour later, Sara was upstairs in her bedroom, painting her toenails, and she was still thinking about it. In a way, she could see why people might have become so fixated on the topic of death at school-it had a way of worming into your every thought, of grinding the possibility of everything else from your mind. Still, Sara reasoned, they’d probably save space on her gravestone; they’d only have to write the date once, just show the years had changed. What would be the point in writing it out twice, after all?
When her mother came up to tell her to turn the light off and go to sleep, Sara had finished her toenails and some homework (though she bluffed most of it; bullshitting became an art when you were taking modern political history), and she nodded vaguely while her mother hovered in the door. There was a short silence in which Sara felt pressed to speak; instead of asking What? like she usually did, she looked up at her mother before deciding to go back to their previous topic of conversation: Avery Blackwood’s death, because everything came back to Avery Blackwood’s death right now.
“They’ll be talking about her all day at school tomorrow, just like today, and yesterday.” Sara stood up and stretched; she was wearing Hello Kitty pyjamas, they had only cost six-pounds-ninety-nine, now that was what she called a bargain for a fully-functional outfit for the night, although she could see now that the bottoms of the trousers were fraying despite the fact they were relatively new. But that was bloody Primark for you.
“Don’t you feel bad for her?” her mother asked. Sara thought for a moment.
“I suppose,” she said.