I Chose to Die (Siren Suicides, Book 1)

Chapter 5. Lake Union

Over the last six years of contemplating why my mother jumped off the Aurora Bridge and how it must have felt, I buried my pain and kept myself busy by researching every possible detail about suicide jumping. I read that objects tend to fall at the same rate regardless of their weight, as long as there is no major air resistance. The formula is distance equals sixteen times the amount of seconds squared. That means no matter how much you weigh, it would take you about three seconds to fall down 167 feet. On this rainy September morning it feels more like ten to me. Maybe because I'm so close to dying, my sense of timing becomes distorted. Strangely enough, the things that float through my head are facts. I hold on to them for dear life.

My name is Ailen Bright. I was born at 6:30 a.m. on September 7, 1993, two weeks early, weighing only five and a half pounds, sixteen inches long, head first, delivered by my father in our marble bathtub full of water, my mother giving birth naturally, without pain medication or any professional help. Exactly sixteen years later, I'm leaping to death, at about six in the morning, on September 7, 2009, weighing only 107 pounds, five feet six inches tall, feet first, escaping my father into a huge basin of water called Lake Union, to meet my mother's fate, on a whim, having used acid and weed as pain medication after rejecting professional help.

And one more fact. Today is a Monday. Suicide rates are highest on Mondays. I'm about to become another number.

All of these thoughts take less than a fraction of a second while my toes detach from the concrete. Air sucks me into a vortex of mad rush and kicks all thoughts out of my head. A floating sensation gets quickly replaced by sheer terror and an urge to grab on to something, anything, to keep from falling, but my fingers close on nothing. The wind sticks its cold hand into my open mouth and I can't make a sound, let alone breathe. Funny how your life always starts with a scream, but doesn't always end with one. My arms thrash like the wings of an immature bird, legs climb invisible stairs, ears ring loudly. My heart leaps into my throat and threatens to burst me apart. My skin burns from the freezing wet clothes stuck to it as if glued. I see everything and nothing, caught in a blur of sky, water, air, and tears.

Suddenly, I know that I just made the biggest mistake of my life. One minute of fantasy is better than nothing? Whatever gave me this stupid idea? Forget it, I changed my mind. I want to turn back time, I want someone to save me at the last second, like in the movies. But this is real life, and in real life the surface of the lake rushes at me with inhuman speed.

My survival instinct screams at me to do something. I forget why I wanted to jump, desperate to stop it. Six years of wanting to die go down the drain. All this gazing into water, wondering how my mother felt, every single image I conjured about it vanishes. Instead, a few intense questions overwhelm me. What the hell am I doing? How the hell am I going to survive this? If I press my legs together and enter the water straight as a rod, feet first, will I have a better chance?

Even that gets replaced by one internal cry: FUCK THIS SHIT, I DON'T WANNA DIE!

As if to answer my plea, a voice rises from below. It doesn't echo like it did when I heard it from 167 feet away, it rings loud and clear making me want to touch it.

"You could've warned me you're jumping! First, you make me wait, then you let your father interrupt me, and now you're falling right on my head, and I just did my hair. Absolutely no manners. Didn't your mother teach you?" Canosa says, obviously irritated. Her words knock guilt into me and I want to shift my falling trajectory so I don't hit her, but it's too late. As if sensing my intention, she says, "There is no time left to change direction, you know that. Girls, scatter."

I manage to lower my head against the rushing air and look down, unable to blink the tears away. At three seconds of total elapsed time, my falling is about to end. It's as if one moment I fall, and another I don't anymore. All I see is five giggling sirens swimming away in a five-point star formation and dark liquid underneath me, nearly touching my toes.