Darkness

Darkness

She slowly walked home, procrastinating. She didn’t want to answer her parents’ questions about school, and just wanted to be alone. The day was sunny. It was beautiful. But there was darkness everywhere. It was lurking in the sunlight, bidding its time. Most people couldn’t see it until it was too late. Too late, as late as it was for her.
It wasn’t easy, being different. It wasn’t easy, swimming against the current. All the girls in her school were beautiful blondes or redheads, and even the brunettes didn’t look quite brunette. She was the only nerd.
People would tell her that it wasn’t important, that that was not what life was about. The sun hid behind clouds, covering the ground with shadows. Krystal shivered. Easy for them to say. They didn’t have to go through this hell every day. She had seen the pictures in her mother’s year book. She had been one of the most popular girls in her school. She couldn’t possibly understand what her own daughter was going through. How could she?
Not that she was ugly or anything. She was quite beautiful, even by their standards. But she was so different, which made things so difficult. After five months at her new school, she hadn’t found a single friend, and, for a social butterfly like herself, it was constraining. The sun struggled though the clouds. Like her, it didn’t have any place to go.
It was why tonight, a Friday night, instead of calling her parents as she did so often before and to tell them she would be out until very late, she was walking home. Her heart constricted at the thought of spending the rest of the year alone. She looked up as the sun’s rays were blocked by something. The bridge.
Jonathan, her biology lab partner, had been talking about the bridge a lot these days. He was doing his history paper on the bridge, and how, since it was built about a hundred years ago, people had been jumping off it into the dark churning waters below to end their lives.
She stood there, looking down at the water, wondering how people could actually do such a thing. It must be quite horrible to feel that the only way out of a problem was to kill yourself, she mused. Although thoroughly miserable, she had never considered...
No, wait a second. She had to be honest with herself. She had, vaguely, thought about suicide. Her life seemed meaningless, and she was more alone than she had ever been in her life. Would she do it? She thought about it long and hard. She was eighteen, soon to graduate from high school. She was going to one of the best colleges in the country, to study a subject that fascinated her. Did one year of loneliness qualify as a reason to kill herself? No, she admitted. Not at all. She smiled. Life didn’t seem quite so glum. The darkness surrounded her, but she was within the warm cocoon of her future. It couldn’t harm her anymore.

She was about to turn and walk away, having many things to look forward to, when she spotted a lone figure on the side of the bridge, one hand on a beam, leaning forward, peering at the waters below. Her heart clenched. Jonathan. The darkness suddenly thickened. She dropped her heavy school bag and ran through it, up to the bridge’s entrance towards Jonathan.
“Jonathan! No! Wait!” she screamed, over and over.
The bridge had never seemed this long before. After what felt like hours, she reached him and put her hand on his arm.
“Hey Krystal. How’s it going?” His voice was dull, lifeless.
“Great, fine, wonderful, how are you doing?” she asked, panting.
Jonathan smiled tightly. It scared Krystal; the Jonathan she knew always smiled as if he had just won a million dollars
“Fine and dandy, thank you,” he said. “What are you doing here?”
“Same as you,” came the response, swift and to the point.
A shudder passed through Jonathan’s body. He vainly tried to repress it. “Oh, so you’re here to watch the water flow. Great!”
Krystal shook her head. “No, Jonathan. Don’t push me away. I know what you are planning to do. I want to know why.”
“You want to know why? Why? Why should you care? You are just my lab partner! You are too wrapped up in your own superficial problems to realize there are people with real problems sitting right beside you!”
Krystal’s surprise at Jonathan’s fury quickly turned into anger. “And how do you know about my problems? How can you, the great Jonathan, decide that my problems are superficial and not yours?”
“You sit beside me twice a week for a total of three hours, and between dissecting frogs and filling lab reports, all you can talk about is how you used to be oh so popular and how you are so in and your clothes are so hip and the girls at the school are so superficial and that’s why they don’t like you. Well, why don’t you just prove that you aren’t? Because you seem even more superficial than the girls you’re accusing!”
Krystal’s mouth dropped open. She hadn’t realized how bad she had sounded. She did seem as mean-spirited and airheaded as the people she was always complaining about.
“This isn’t about me, Jonathan. Although I do have problems...” She sighed. “I do have issues to resolve. But what about you? I might seem superficial, but... I do care. You are my friend.”
Jonathan looked out at the horizon, passing a hand through his short black hair and making it stand on its ends. “Nothing has ever gone right in my life. The only thing I have is my brain. My dad died when I was five, my mom has terminal cancer, my sister got raped a couple of months ago by a so-called friend and has had a nervous breakdown. She is also pregnant. We are over our heads with debts, we can’t make ends meet anymore, we are about to loose the roof above our heads, and the only thing my mother has to say is don’t loose Faith, God will help us. She doesn’t realize that my sister will most likely commit suicide within the next couple of weeks, and of course she won’t be here to pay the debts. So who has to worry about all that? Who will have to work his butt off to make sure every single one of those useless doctors who have done nothing for my mother get their money so they can go golfing? Yours truly. How is that for problems?”
Krystal had tears running down her face. “Oh, Jonathan. I didn’t know...”

“How about having a father who sexually abuses you?” interrupted another voice.
The darkness hugged them. Jonathan and Krystal turned around. Mary, one of the school’s most popular girls, was also standing on the ledge of the bridge, tears streaming down her face.
“I thought I was the only one,” she whispered, looking thoughtfully as Jonathan.
“Your father does what?” he asked, incredulous.
She shook her head, silent sobs racking through her body. “I don’t even want to mention it. Just turn on the TV. It sounds the same in every case.”
“How long?” whispered Krystal.
“Seven years. A couple of minutes ago” sobbed Mary.
Krystal and Jonathan both went to her. Krystal hugged her. Jonathan squeezed her shoulder.
“My mother... She knows” Mary whispered brokenly a few moments later.
Krystal shuddered. “Mary. I never knew.”
“How could you? It’s the first time I am saying it out loud.”
They stood there, silent, crying, each tear liberating them from a reality to hard to endure alone in silence.
“What are we going to do?” Mary asked in a hoarse voice. “I don’t want to die, but I don’t want to live in hell anymore.”
“I don’t want to live in hell either.”
“I want to help you out of hell” Krystal said.
“Can you help me, too?” said a fourth voice.
The darkness was all around them, pressing closer. They turned around. Mark was standing there, tears streaming down his face.
“How can we help you?” Krystal gently asked the high school’s best athlete.
“I have been diagnosed with leukemia. If treatments don’t work, I will be dead within the next five months. I just learned the news today.”
Wordlessly, the trio invited him within their circle. Darkness surrounded them, waiting for a crack in their midst to surge through and swallow them. They stood there for a long time, hurting but aching for release.
“Let’s go to my place,” Krystal said, after pagers and cell phones had rung, unanswered. “Let’s help each other. We have to make it. We will make it!”
Mary shook her head. “How? There is no proof.”
“Didn’t you say your father just raped you?”
Mary winced, but nodded.
“My mom is a social worker. She told me we can get proof up to a couple of hours after the rape. We can ask her to take you to a hospital. I’ll come with you. She will help you, too.”
As if wounded, the darkness let go of them. It lingered, waiting for another chance to press closer. Mary hesitated, then nodded.
“And... I am eighteen. I’m legal. Penniless, but legal.”
“Yes.”
Krystal faced Mark. “My cousin had leukemia. He’s still alive and doing very well. We know some pretty good doctors who are in research. We can get in touch with them. And if there isn’t any cure, you can make the most of it. You can raise money for research, become a famous spokesperson, and leave a legacy. Isn’t that the next best thing to living?”
Hissing, the darkness took a step back. Mark opened and closed his mouth. “I guess.”
Krystal turned to Jonathan. “As for you, my father is a banker. Before taking drastic action, why don’t we talk to him and see what we can do for you?”
Jonathan slowly nodded as the darkness faded away, leaving in its stead pure, clean, sweet smelling air.
“Come on, guys. Let’s get going. We will be spending a lot of time together in the future, so let’s stick together.”
They walked off, off the bridge and the darkness surrounding it. They stepped into the light of the streetlamps. Hope swirled around them like a gentle summer breeze, warm and comforting. The fight had just begun.