The Suicide Letters

The Eighth Letter

"please

please

don't

leave

me"

i whisper to him

and somehow

this time

he hears me.

and his head snaps up to me

and my tear stained face

and my beating heart

and he sidesteps death like it's the easiest thing in the world and reaches down and pulls me up and into his chest. 

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"Don't you leave me," my voice is shaking and my hands are shaking and everything is shaking all my internal organs and my brain and the bones in my little toe they're all quivering and shaking and scared.

His head snaps over to mine at the sound of my voice. Somehow he didn't register the sound of the door.

He looks miserable. Bags under his eyes, tears staining his face. How can this be the same boy I saw only an hour ago in the schoolyard?

"Levi, give me the gun," I reach out my shaking hand to him and his gaze lowers from my face to my hand.

His eyes travel the length of my arm and back up to my eyes.

"Okay." And he sets the cold gun in my hands and I wrap my fingers tightly around the barrel.

I set it down on the floor, carefully and then stand back up. I know I look like a wreck, but so does he.

"What happened?" I ask in a whisper and he doesn't say anything.

He just lifts up his shirt until I can see the bloodied marks on his torso, where someone has hurt him. Where someone has hurt this broken boy and I feel like throwing something in anger. 

Something in me makes me come forward, and I press one hand against his side, skimming the scars from where someone has hurt him before.

"Who did this to you?" I ask, my voice hushed by the pain in his eyes.

I retract my hand and he shoves his shirt down before crossing his arms. A fire has come into his eyes. "My step-dad,' his teeth are clenched and so are his words.

My eyes widen at his words, "Why?"

He slides down the wall until he's sitting on the floor, and I sit next to him as he begins talking.

"He has anger problems, and he beats me and my mom. She won't leave him even though I've asked her so many times. She says she loves him." He scoffs and curls his hands in.

"I was waiting until I'm eighteen and can leave. And then one day, I was planning on coming back and killing him. But then..." He stops talking.

I slide my hand over and grip his. "Were you going to use that gun?"

He nods and swallows thickly. "Until I got your message. And then I just... couldn't."

I start crying again. What must it be like to want to die? "Please don't kill yourself, Levi."

He sighs and runs a hand through his hair. "I'm not."

I blink enough times to clear the tears, "You're not?"