Red is my favourite colour

I didn’t want to see her die that night.  Or any night.  I didn’t want to be there, but she asked me to.  I know I could have just ignored her and told myself it was just a cry for help, that she just wants attention… but I had to be there.  I knew I had to be there and I knew it would have happened anyway and it would have been wrong for me not to have been there.  I knew it was going to happen anyway; whether it was like this or whether she decided to choose a much less… “graceful” death.  She was always sort of clumsy and sometimes she was just out of this world, but if there was one thing she did with the utmost grace, it was die.

January first, of the year two-thousand and twelve.  Two Thirty, a.m., I receive a text: “Meet me at the pier by my dad’s boat.”  I’m not sure what exactly woke me up at two thirty in the morning, since the simple vibration from a text doesn’t normally bother me when I’m asleep, but I knew it had to be for some reason.  The little display for the sender reads “Sami.”  What the hell is she doing up this late?  Without thinking twice, I flip open my phone to reply, sitting up in my bed.

“Be right there.” Send.

I put on my shoes and throw on my heavy winter jacket over my pajamas and tiptoe downstairs.  I can hear my dad snoring all the way from my parent’s room and the only thing that serves me for light is the little bit of moonlight that the mostly shut blinds let in.  I craftily avoid the squeaky floorboards and make my dash for the car keys, stopping myself just before my hand jingles them on the hook.  A car would certainly be warmer and quicker… but if I was going to do this so my parents wouldn’t notice, I was going to have to walk.  So I turned toward the door, unlocked the deadbolt (the only lock we had on the front door) and pulled it open only far enough for me to get out, closing it just as quietly and just as slowly as I had opened it behind me.  

The walk to the dock was short with an ice cold breeze that blew in my face once I crested the hill my street was on, making the walk miserable, but also making me glad that I had brought my jacket.  It hadn’t dawned on me to bring another jacket for Sami who was probably freezing her ass off down by the water until I saw her silhouette in the reflection of the pale moonlight in the ocean.  The dock was mostly empty, save for a few dinghies that were literally almost always docked, and a few familiar fishing boats; Sami’s dad’s included.  I didn’t bother trying to muffle my steps down the long wooden pier, I figured she knew I was coming anyway.  Every plank nailed to the pier creaked with each of my steps in a way that reminded me just how old these boards were.

She never turned around to see who was coming down the pier.  I guess when you’re out at two in the morning in a sleepy town off the coast of California, you really don’t expect anyone to show up except the one person you texted to show up.  I sat beside her and let my legs hang off the pier the same way she did.  It wasn’t until I sat down that I realized the two boats we were situated between shielded us from much of the wind that was blowing.  It was actually a lot nicer than I was expecting, but it was still cold.

For the first few, long minutes, neither of us said anything.  She just sat there, breathing, looking out to the ocean, and I sat there watching her looking out at the ocean, and watching the way her breath froze and danced in the air the moment it escaped her nose.  It was quiet and peaceful down there.  Lots of time to think, I suppose.

“You know,” she finally said.  Her lips kept moving after she spoke like she was still speaking, but no words came out.  It almost looked like she was practicing them.  She dropped her head from her ocean-gazing to her lap.  I could still see her lips moving.

“Yeah?”  I said, trying to beckon her to continue.

“It seems so… endless.”

“The ocean?” I said.

“Well… In a sense, yes.  The ocean is a good metaphor for it, I think.”

“For what?”

“For life.  For what comes after everything that comes in life.”

“I don’t understand.”  She always thought a lot about everything.  Sometimes in ways I could follow, but mostly in ways I couldn’t.

“It’s just like life,” she began, “where you think everything is good.  Smooth sailing.  Sometimes it is.  But you’re just hanging out on this little speck that becomes you and you’re always being rocked by these little waves.  It never stops.  You wish you could control it, but in the end, it’s beyond anything you could ever do.  Sometimes those little waves turn into big ones and, a lot of the time, you never see it about to happen.  Then… a lot of the time, those big waves turn into a crashing, unforgiving storm.  A lot of people drown in that storm, but they forget that there’s an end.  Just like a story.  Which is just like life.”

She still wasn’t making much sense to me, but I just nodded and said mhmm because I didn’t want her to have to explain again.  She scooted closer to me on the pier so she could rest her head on my shoulder and then there was silence again.  It had to be around six by the time either of us moved again; the sun was rising, doing what it could to warm the air and the ocean.  People began coming down to the dock and fishermen were heading out onto the open ocean.

When she left, she simply stood, handed me an envelope sealed with wax and turned to make the journey home.  All that the envelope said was “Wait.”  So I waited for her to disappear over the hills before I made my own way home.

The moment I walked through my front door, I broke the seal on the envelope and folded out the paper with her chicken-scratched letters sprawled all across the page.

A,

I don’t know exactly how evident this has been as I have been doing my best to cover it up in front of people, especially those I know, love and care for, but my parents obviously see something.  Which must mean I’m doing something wrong around them.  I really wish I could tell you in person, but I just don’t have the heart.  They’re taking me to a shrink today.  Some dumbass in Sacramento.  I’ll text you when I’m out and they have a verdict, but knowing my parents, I may be there for a while.  So, it’d be awesome if you could turn in my homework for me.  (See attached documents).

She literally attached two weeks worth of homework, folded it all and packed it all into this one tiny envelope. I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or sigh, but that was just some of her weird, twisted humor so I decided to laugh on this one.

Anyway, I can’t imagine I’ll be out too long.  Mr. Mathers already knows I’ll be out, I took a letter to him and my other teachers a few weeks ago.

Thanks,

S.

Sometimes I just didn’t know about her.

The next time I saw her on the pier, I had decided to go on my own; something in the back of my head was just telling me I needed to go.  I wasn’t expecting to see her there, and it was the first time that I watched her attempt suicide.  My phone read one o’clock, a.m. when I had reached the pier, and I had gone not expecting anyone else to be around.  She wasn’t hard to spot once I was out on the pier.  I began the short, creaky walk down the old wooden planks when I saw her scoot closer and closer to the edge.  I was only halfway to the end when she plunged into the water.