Magdalena

Part 1: Riptide

This was it.

I pull my phone from my pocket and check the time. Where the digital clock should be illuminated, there are three missed calls and two text message notifications instead.

Mom (12:35 a.m.): magdalena drew where r u?? u promised me u would stay home 2nite

Mom (1:12 a.m.): either get ur ass home or answer ur phone!!! R u ok??pls call me asap!!!

I turn the phone off and back on again. This time, the digital clock is big and shining bright enough to burn my corneas. It reads 2:36 a.m.

My bare feet, standing on the rickety pier outside the old steel mill, are glowing purple. I don't think I can feel them anymore. The pier extends out from a tiny beach at the end of the factory's yard, and is mostly blocked off by chains and warning signs. Looking down at the rushing waves beneath the pier, I remind myself of a time when my mother hired 16-year-old Missy to babysit my brother and I so she could go out dancing. I was nine and listening in from the kitchen as Missy popped her gum and spoke into the phone, "You know, they say drowning and freezing to death are the nicest ways to die. Euphoric even. I wonder how they would know that?"

So here is where I've brought myself on this night of sub-zero temperatures, to Silver City's 'Suicide Pier'. I couldn't choose between drowning and freezing to death, so, eventually, I landed on both.

Slowly, I slink down onto my butt and swing my feet back and forth above the crashing waves. My phone sits on the wood beside me and I glance down at it as it begins to vibrate, the word "Mom" flashing on the screen. With every vibration, it's moving further toward the edge of the wood, and I watch in apathy as it eventually throws itself overboard.

In an instant, I decide to do the same myself.

Sucking in a quick breath, I push my body off the pier and slam into the water. The surface collapses like shattering glass and I'm immediately paralyzed in the cold. Briefly, I wonder if the sight of water was just an illusion and I'd actually just tossed myself into a field deep with thistles, because it feels less like liquid and more like needles against my skin.

I'm thrashing. The waves throw my body mercilessly against the rocks under the pier and I can't suck in a single breath without inhaling a gallon of saltwater, but I keep gasping again and again. My hands grapple for the wooden pillar, desperate for something stable, but I can't stay near it long enough to get a grip. In an instant, my body is lifted a few feet and then smashed down again, and the rough gravel of a rock rips my cheek open.

I make a noise of agony but it comes out small and strangled beneath the roar of the waves. It's pathetic. I've been dragged much too far from land for anyone to hear me, anyway.

It's the most inappropriate thought at the moment, but again I remind myself of Missy's words on that one September night. "They say drowning and freezing to death are the nicest ways to die. Euphoric even," She had said. In my mind, I'm cursing Missy Samuels with every last ounce of fight in me. 'Euphoric' my ass.

There's the shattering of glass somewhere that's loud enough for me to hear, even twenty-five feet out by ears going in and out of water. I strain my neck to see above the pier and notice a few heads and flailing arms.

I'm bobbing ruthlessly between clean air and cold saltwater and my lungs feel like they've caught fire. I cough the fluid up until my throat runs raw, and continue even after that. Someone's laughing, and I can't tell if it's in real life or if it's just a product of my suicide, like the black dots coming in and out of vision. I know the black dots are a product of my suicide, and I welcome them. I welcome anything that can take me from this water.