If You Died

“I WISH YOU WERE DEAD!”
I didn’t mean it. I only said it out of anger. In that moment I didn’t realize it was the last words I’d ever utter to my first love. Now he was gone. I couldn’t change anything. What was done was done. I would live with guilt and regret for as long as I was on this earth. Everything I saw reminded me of him. Every scent and scenery carried memories that once were ours. The guilt finally caught up to me. I was physically and emotionally tired. I was sick and tired of people pointing fingers at me everywhere I went. In school, at the mall, even in my own home. They called me a monster. I could do nothing about it. I could not deny anything because to some degree everything they said was true. Being called a monster was far better than people ever finding out what really went down that fateful summer night.
I climbed the stairs one steps at time. In this moment I was at peace. I wasn’t afraid. I would leave everything behind. No one would curse me and I could be safe. I finally reached the rooftop. The air sliced through my body. I should have worn a sweater, I thought. It didn’t matter because soon enough I would not know the difference between cold and warmth. I walked to the edge of the rooftop and jumped. My body didn’t immediately fall. It was in slow motion almost like time had slowed. I’d never believed in the saying that your whole life flashes before you when you die. But, in this moment I wanted to. I wanted to relive that summer before I took my last breath and my heart stopped beating. To see his face just one more time.
It was a Saturday afternoon when Mack texted me to meet him at the park around 7 pm. I decided to go before our actual meeting time. What I saw shocked me. It was an innocent act, really. I saw Mack holding hands and laughing with Mandy.
Mandy and I were frenemies. I stopped being her friend when we started high school. She always judged everything I did. Mack of all people should’ve known how much I hated her.
Against my better judgment, I chose to follow them. It was getting dark and I couldn’t quite make them out when they entered the alleyway. Suddenly they stopped and I had to duck quickly behind one of the walls or they would’ve seen me.
“What’s wrong”, Mack whispered.
“Nothing”, Mandy responded. “This just reminds me of a movie I saw. The girl and guy are under the moonlight in a dark alley. Then the guy closes the distance between their lips and they ki…” Of course she didn’t finish talking. While she was talking Mack took that chance to kiss her.
He Kissed her. He Kissed her. HE KISSED HER. HE KISSED HER. HE KISSED HER. HE KISSED HER. I repeated it in my head until it felt like it would explode. I was downright furious that he of all people would do something like this to me. There was an itch that started spreading throughout my whole body. The need to hurt him. Make him know how it felt like to be betrayed by the one person you had trusted in the whole world. Then it hit me. I could make him feel the way I was feeling. Like someone had taken my heart out and stomped on it. I couldn’t feel anything anymore. I just acted.
I came out of my hiding spot and I yelled. “I WISH YOU WERE DEAD!” Then he just fainted. Like my voice alone had killed him. Mandy run away and I stayed holding his lifeless body.
I later learn that my voice did have the power to kill. That is how my miserable life began. Now it ends with my death. As I hit the ground I felt a strange sense of peace. A calm I had not known I would ever get to feel in this lifetime.
I awoke in a white room with people hovering over me. Heaven? Maybe, but I did not deserve to be here. “Am... I... de..a..d?” My voice came out in harsh, shallow whispers that could barely be heard. My throat was burning and felt tingly as though it were being poked.
“No.” Just a one syllable answer is all it took to make me realize I could not end the nightmare that is my cursed life.
“Gr…eat.”