Just Jump

Chapter One

The cafeteria was overflowing with conversations. Every topic on every subject seemed to be flying through the air. Sports, clothes, dating; all the usual petty issues that filled the lives of high schoolers. But the conversations did nothing but give the atmosphere a stuffy feeling, as if every word was a bubble on a piece of bubble wrap protecting a package.

I sighed. I knew what the reason for the stuffiness, as did everyone else in the cafeteria. Pop just one bubble, and that would result in the revelation of the true package. The deaths.

There had been fourteen of them, now. It had been thirteen yesterday. But Craig Holland had made fourteen in the early dusk of the morning.

It had been the same as it always was. A good teenager, one straight on course for college. No difficulties with depression, minimal family issues, and a solid group of friends. And then he jumped. He threw himself straight over the railing of Newbury Bridge, just like all the others.

Last I checked on the news, they hadn’t found his body. I don’t know why they even bothered searching anymore. They never found anyone’s body. Not the first jumper, Natalie Jacobs. Not the fifth jumper, Damien Smith.

And not the seventh jumper, Justin Collier’s body.

I closed my eyes as I thought of him. To most of the town, he now had a new name: “The Seventh”. But he would never be known to me by that name. To me, he would always be “JC”. He would always be my crazy brother, the one who insisted on being called by his initials instead of by his name.

“You’re thinking about him, again.”

I opened my eyes and looked across the table I was sitting at to find the owner of these words. Jordan stared back at me from across the scuffed surface of the table, his eyes filled with sympathy. I smiled slightly at him, both to tell him I was alright, and in reaction to his expression; he always looked like a Husky puppy when he was worried about me, the way his blue eyes widened with concern and his eyebrows furrowed.

“I’m fine, Jordan,” I said. We both knew this was a lie; it may have been two years since my brother’s passing, but his loss was still like a knife gutting my heart.

Jordan merely nodded, knowing better than to call me out on my lie. He then sighed and rubbed his temples. “I can’t believe there was another jumper.”

I gestured around the cafeteria. “I can’t believe no one will talk about it! I mean, ignoring it isn’t going to help at all.”

“I don’t know if anything will help, Allie. This is just getting weird.”

“This got weird at the fourth jumper,” I corrected. “Now it’s just totally bizarre. Fourteen suicides in two and a half years?” I shook my head. “That just doesn’t happen. Not in a town with barely a thousand people.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I think we’ve all figured that out. But it is happening.”

“And why all at the bridge?” I knew it was pointless asking him these questions; we’d pondered them countless times before, to no avail. But it still felt good to speak my thoughts. “Why is everyone attracted to jump at Newbury Bridge?”

Jordan shrugged his broad shoulders helplessly. “I wish I knew, Al.”

I looked down at the cafeteria tray in front of me, and nudged at the chicken sandwich on it. I wasn’t hungry. It wasn’t as if this was unusual, though. I hadn’t been truly hungry in two years, not since my brother was alive.

“Eat,” Jordan commanded me.

“I’m not hungry.”

“You still need to eat.”