Light Heart (ON HOLD)

-4

When Katie died I felt empty. I wouldn't speak or anything, it was as if part of me had just died.

"It's a great shame, Katie was a lovely girl." My mum said to me.

I knew she was more than just a lovely girl, she was such a help to anyone, she didn't dislike anyone even when people were mean to her she'd forget about it and would be willing to be there for that person if anything bad happened to them. I loved her, she wasn't like a sister she was my sister.

This is what drove me to suicide, yes her death was a massive contribution to my sadness, but what happened next was what topped it off.

I was walking down the corridor's at school, getting the usual "Hey, emo! Slit your wrists recently?" and I'd give back the entire "No, but I'll slit your neck if you want."

It wasn't my fault for having black hair.

Anyway then I heard a new insult, an insult that made me stop in my tracks.

"Hey, emo! Your friends dead, you're next!"

I dropped the book I had just checked out of the library and the noise it made as it hit the ground made a few eyes turn.

"Excuse me?" I said, I was already crying when I turned around to see who said it. Then I saw her, Melissa, we had never gotten on. She was jealous because when we were 6 Katie stopped being her best friend and became mine, she had never let it go. Whenever she had the chance she'd try humiliate me, try to make me cry and she never succeeded until now.

"I'm glad she died, I mean it must be a relief for her, getting away from you." Melissa mocked and began to step forward, she was quite intimidating. Her greasy blonde hair was slopped across her shoulder and her fat lips turned into a smile when she noticed my tears.

"Say that again." I said under my breath.

"How about you run off home and get your knife and kill yourself because the only person who ever liked you, whoever accepted you was Katie, but now she's gone and I'm glad for it, because now you might go with her."

I jumped on her screaming.

I googled the quote that Mr Collins gave me 'A light heart lives long ' and found out that it basically means that happy people live longer. It means that you can't take everything in life too seriously, you can't carry every burden and make it your problem because it isn't and if you do these things you will be miserable and have a "heavy heart" whereas if you enjoy life and realise things happen for many reasons and although they may not seem fair, as long as you accept these things and don't carry these things around with you forever you will have a "light heart" and if you have a light heart you will supposedly have better health and live longer.

I grabbed Mellissa's hair and yanked her on the floor. I stood up and kicked her in the face, she grabbed my leg and pulled me to the floor. I slammed my head on the ground and my head began to pound, but I got up again and regained my balance to see her fist coming towards me.

When I was 10 I was in a car crash, we were coming home from a wedding reception and my mum and dad were both drunk but we only lived around the block from the hotel so my dad said it would be fine for my mum to drive as she wasn't as drunk as him. We all got in and buckled our seatbelts, my mum put the key in the ignition and started the engine. We had to drive around the car park in the dark and my mum was being quite a careful driver considering her drunkenness. We reached the exit of the car  park and my mum began to drive out and somehow she didn't see the headlights just seconds away from the car and another car came plummeting into the passenger side, right into my dad. My dad died in the crash and I could never seem to forgive my mum, I still loved her but I was heavy  hearted about it and never let go, I never accepted the fact that my dad was dead and that even though my mother contributed largely to it, it wasn't her fault. I know that if my mother could have changed how they night turned out, she would have.

Mellissa's fist was hard as it collided with my face. I felt dizzy and weak and what I did next was purely on impulse. I had a penknife in my pocket. I punched her in the stomach and noticed the crowd that was gathering around. Mellissa was winded and she recoiled for a few seconds enough time for me to get the penknife and stab her with it. I stabbed her in the arm and she screamed. I saw blood slowly begin to trickle from her arm and I saw the hurt in her face, I looked around and saw the shock in everyone's faces round me. I was breathing heavily and I began to cry. I couldn't believe what I had done. I looked at Mellissa who was balling her eyes out. What had I done?

"Mellissa, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry!" I began to apologise. I didn't know what to do.

"Get-away-from-me!" She screamed in one breath.

"WHAT IS ALL THIS NOISE?!" I heard a familiar voice. It was Mr Collins. The only teacher who believed in me. Who trusted me.

Once again I acted on impulse and picked up my penknife that had dropped onto the floor. I heard a chorus of scared gasps and I couldn't believe that these people were scared of me. I ran. I pushed through the crowd, in the opposite direction of Mr Collins' voice.

"Mellissa!" I heard Mr Collins say as I ran around a corner.

"It was that emo girl! Natasha!" I heard a boy shout to him.

"Natasha Rivera...?" There was a tone of disappointment in Mr Collins' voice, a tone that I usually heard from my mother and almost everyone else, but not Mr Collins. Never Mr Collins.

I was crying my eyes out as I dashed out of a fire exit that was close by. I wanted to go back and help Mellissa but if I did and got caught I'd live a life behind bars, and I'd rather not live at all than live like that. The fire exit took me to the bottom of the school's sports field, I didn't think I'd need the penknife any more so I threw it as far as possible into a direction that I wasn't running in. I sprinted over the grass, going so fast my feet barely touched the ground. I came to the end of the school grounds and heard sirens, whether police or ambulance I didn't know, it could have been both. I looked back to the fire exit where I came from and saw it just beginning to open. I ran straight across the road not even looking for traffic and ran off into the direction of my house.

All I could hear was Mellissa's sobs, Mr Collins' voice, the sirens and my heart pounding. I ran up the hill that my house was on and stormed straight through my front door. I didn't know what to do, I walked through my hallway each step making my head hurt even more. I didn't even realise how much I was sobbing. I walked straight into my kitchen and onto the clean marble tiles on the ground.  I went straight to the counter at opened the cutlery draw.  I had made up my mind and I pulled out the sharpest knife I could see.

As soon as the cold metal of the knife entered my stomach, I knew it was the end. All my senses tingled and then came an unbearable pain and then numbness. I watched the blood trickle slowly from me and what came next made me regret it all even more. My mother walked through the kitchen door and saw me, she saw me digging a knife into myself, she saw the blood flow and my tears fall, she saw all life leave my eyes and she caught me as I fell to the floor. Senseless.

I was dead.

I saw my mum cry, I couldn't hear her though, my eyes were set wide open and there was nothing I could do to console her. I couldn't put my arm around her shoulder and tell her everything would be ok. I couldn't do anything and it was all my fault.

And as crazy as this sounds, that was only the beginning of my life.