Her Suicide Note

Chapter One

Bianca
It's creepy. The picture. Out of all the photos Lisa had taken of herself, they choose her seventh grade picture.
I remember that picture day perfectly. Her mom was away on a business trip so her aunt took care of her for the week. Aunt Nina is the type of person that spoils other people's kids because she doesn't have any of her own. She had gotten Krispy Kreme donuts for breakfast that morning. Lisa had eaten three, she told me on the way to school. We always rode to school together in my mom's beat up truck.
Even the tiniest grain of sugar makes Lisa high. Her mom must've left that part out of the instructions. Wouldn't surprise me, her mom is always forgetting things.
She made the whole backseat vibrate. I was left with that weird numbing feeling you get when you bounce for too long a time.
We were dressed in our best, matching outfits of a black long sleeve, red plaid skirt, and black knee-high boots with matching tights. We always loved dressing up like twins yet we looked nothing alike. She was a blonde with chocolate brown eyes. I was a dark brunette with blue eyes that she said reminded her of the Caribbean ocean.
Our heights were polar opposites as well. She possessed long, elegant legs like her dad while I've been vertically challenged since I was born. I remember her always resting her arm on the top of my head.
But back to her seventh grade picture. Her skin radiated a healthy peaches and cream complexion from hours out in the sun playing soccer. Her hair was shiny and stylishly curled, beautiful even under the harsh fluorescent lights of the school hallway. She would've made the perfect model if her eyes weren't wild and darting, and her smile was less clownish and maniatic.
I didn't worry about her picture because it was at the end of the day, her sugar high would wear off by then. My picture, however, was during first period. Will the flash make my skin even paler? I knew I should've started soccer with Lisa, but spending the summer with Hulu and all of those romance books seemed more appealing.
I didn't see her picture until I got the yearbook. She refused to show me the results when our packets were passed around class and I didn't pressure her about it because I wouldn't want the same to be done to me.
The vibrating of my phone in my back pocket brings me back to the present. Turning away from the school's trophy case with her memorial picture nestled in between two football championships, I check my screen.
Hope you don't have plans tonight. The neighbors are having a party -Mom.
I stifle a sigh as I reply with an Ok and hide my phone again from any potential prying eyes of the teachers. It's been a week since Lisa killed herself and a week since I've had any after school plans. It just feels too weird to be doing anything without her. Mom knows this, of course, but refuses to acknowledge the fact that her daughter might be depressed.
"Hey, Bianca."
I look up, pushing my curly hair back from my face as I look at the girl talking to me. Jessica Sapling. A girl who I've never known when Lisa was alive. Now that she's gone, she makes an effort to talk to me whenever she sees me in the halls or the rare chance I'm in the cafeteria. The food Lisa always complained about is even more horrible now that she can't complain anymore.
"Hey, Jessica," I reply. I've always felt awkward talking to her because I know she's doing it out of sympathy.
"I think you should come sit with me and my friends at lunch today."
It's the same offer she's been making time and again. It's nice of her and all, but it feels like a betrayal to Lisa.
"No thanks," I say though by the way her shoulders are already slumped, I know she knew my answer.
When she looks over my shoulder, I know she's looking at Lisa and I fight the urge to step into her line of vision.
"Okay," Jessica says, her eyes back on me. "See you in World History then."
I nod as she walks off. I share a one-sided, long-suffering look with Lisa before heading down the opposite hall. It's funny how death can change a large amount of people. Before, we were regular kids who weren't popular and blended in with the crowd. Now, whenever I come into view, conversations quiet down and it's like people can't make room for me faster.
I remember glancing at a boy at his locker a few days ago and he shoved his bag of chips into my arms. I looked up at him questioningly.
"It's the least any of us could do," he had said.
I stop cold in my tracks when I hear familiar laughter from down the hall. Taking a deep breath, I try to fast walk past Him, but I can't help but stop to look. He has to be the only person at Blue Ridge who has acted as if nothing had happened. As if He isn't the reason Lisa's gone.
I remember late nights at Lisa's. Her going on for hours about how He was the guy of her dreams, how she was going to marry Him someday. When He walks by her picture in the trophy case, does He feel anything? Does he even walk by the trophy case at all?
When He turns towards me, He raises His eyebrows in amusement. "You lost, Caribbean?"
Before Lisa introduced us, she told me she had talked to him for an hour straight about how blue my eyes were. "I'm calling you Caribbean from now on," He had stated when we finally met before school. "I think it fits."
Swallowing down the dryness in my throat, I make my feet shuffle forward.
"You're wrong for that and you know it," a friend of His tells Him.
When the bell rings, people that aren't there before, swarm the halls like angry bees attacking someone who's disturbed their hive. Even though people scramble to make it to class on time, they still make a street for me and shoot the same pitying looks I've grown accustomed to my way. I try not to roll my eyes as I make it to Biology.