The Virgin Suicides (Harry Styles)

One

28th April, 1999
Michigan, 25 years ago

Beatrice

I didn't remember what happened after I had slit my wrists. I didn't feel pain, I didn't care if I died. I didn't care to be living anymore. I didn't want to live. I felt like I didn't have a purpose to be in this disgusting world.

I didn't remember them pulling me out of the tub, filled with water and my blood. I felt free. I didn't want them to bring me back, but doctor says I was still alive.

As I lay in the hospital bed, that I've been in several times, I wonder what it would've been like if I was a miscarriage. I think it would be better for mother and father, they don't deserve to go through this. No one does.

"What are you doing here, honey? You're not even old enough to know how bad life gets."

"Obviously, doctor, you've never been a 13-year-old girl."

As you know 13-year-old girls shouldn't be in the hospital, I didn't want to be here, I didn't even want to make it out of that tub.

But I did, and that didn't stop me from achieving the goal I had made to reach.

***
Narrator

Everyone dates the demise of our neighborhood from the suicide of the Ladferd girls.

Even then, as teenagers, we tried putting the puzzle pieces together.

We still can't.

Whenever we run into each other at parties or lunch we find ourselves going over the evidence one more time. But it still didn't make any since, as much as we tried to put the pieces together there was always a gapping whole that we were missing something.

All to those, five beautiful creatures, who we still can't get out of our heads, as much as we try we can't forget them.

Beatrice, was the youngest, she was, 13.

Lola was 14.

Freya was 15.

Ellery was 16.

And Delaney was 17.

We never knew how Mrs. Ladferd and Mr. Ladferd, our math teacher, could make such beautiful people.

Beatrice

"Ahem! I'm going to show you some images... and you tell me what they remind you of."

The doctor told me it would be best if I saw a therapist for the next couple of months. Of course, I declined the 'offer' but mother insisted that it would help me. Make me normal.

I nodded. He took out a stack of cards, the backs of them being the only thing that I could see, which was a light blue with white lines scribbled onto it.

He held up the first card, "Okay?"

"A banana."

Next one.

"A swamp."

Next.

"An Afro."

I sighed as he wrote in his notepad. Therapist didn't help, they only wrote down what they thought you were feeling instead of truly getting to know you and find out for themselves instead of constantly asking 'how are you feeling?' 'You okay?'

***

Mrs. Ladferd

"I don't think Beatrice truly meant to end her life. Her act was s cry for help. I know you're very strict, but I think that Beatrice would benefit by having a social outlet, outside of the codification of school, where she could interact with males her own age."