Asking Mary Why

The News

She looked at the ground.

"From 60 stories up, everything looks so small. The cars look like ants, the people are non-existent. That's how I felt, but not for long," she said. A single tear rolled down her face. "Thanks for nothing," she said, took a step forward and jumped.

"Good morning class, welcome to English," said Mrs. Laurel.
Everybody had their eyes on the empty seat, wondering where Mary was. Lola, Mary's only friend held her hand up.

"Do you happen to know where Mary is? She hasn't texted me since..." she paused. She was hiding something, none of my business though.

"Since before winter break began," she finished.

A tear made its way down the teacher's face, taking some of her mascara with it.

"Mary... Mary is not here today."

"Well no crap, where is she?" asked Todd, a kid at the back off the class.

"Don't talk about her that way Todd, please. Mary, is dead." she spat out.

"That, that isn't possible. I mean, she was just fine at the start of break, right guys? Right? Like, she wasn't, she wouldn't, she..... She couldn't," said Lola to the class. She looked horrified.

"Come with me," said Ms. Laurel. She dragged Lola out of the classroom. Little conversations began to pop up, no doubt about Mary. As always, people will be blamed, rumors will spread and over emotional girls will cry their eyes out; claiming they were her closest friends. The same girls who called her a slut just days before, the actual cause of the suicide.

"Why do you think she did it, you know, took her own life?" Molly asked me.

"I don't know, she seemed kind of off though, the past few day leading up to break. I think she was planning it," I replied.

"Well duh, you can't accidentally kill yourself. Maybe you should think about it though, you and Mary could live in hell together," she said. I knew that was coming, Molly is a grade A bitch, and everybody knows it. Though i'm not the least popular, Molly hates me the most.

"See you there," I replied and winked. Molly needs to learn to shut up.

So, maybe i'm not the most popular with Molly, but I have a fair amount of friends. Mary wasn't exactly one of them though, I mean, we were friendly enough to each other but we never really talked.

I remember she sat next to me at lunch one day, it wasn't terribly long ago either. She looked at me and said "I saw you looked kind of lonely and i'm lonely too, may I sit here?"

She wasn't wrong, my friends were all gone that day, school skip day they called it. I saw no reason she couldn't sit there so i replied with, "well, school skip day isn't really my thing, so sure."

We talked about how less than ten people had showed up that day, and who had showed.

"Huh, only the nerds showed up, what a surprise," she said.

"I know right, they gotta maintain their perfect attendance. Say, why did you show up today?" I asked.

"My parents would kill me if they found out I skipped school. Funny though, none of teachers seem to care. In fact, they look disgusted if more than three people show up to their class on a day like this. Just because they didn't do well in school doesn't mean i'm not going to. Why did you show up today?"

"Well, I guess the same reason, my parents would murder me too. The idea of skipping seems so wrong, I personally couldn't follow through with it. Plus my mom was home today and I don't have a car." I replied.