The Suicide Project

Chapter 1: My Bullies

  My eyes open involuntarily. Yep, another school morning. I look out of the tiny window I have and see that it is a cloudy morning with a chance of rain. 

Great.

 I feel terrible this morning. I sit up on my bed before I look in the cracked mirror against the wall to see a girl with droopy,tried eyes, a huge load of bed head, and a figure so skinny that my ribs are popping out. I hate the way I look. People have spread rumors that I have anorexia. That I do drugs. That I'm on crack. It's terrible. 

I push myself up from my bed. I don't have a bed really, just some sacks filled with my clothes that I sleep on. So technically, my closet is my bed. Sometimes that comes in handy, sometimes it doesn't. Especially when I take everything out to go do the laundry at Randy's house. 3/4 of it is filled with underwear and socks. I don't have many clothes, and the ones I do have I've had for the last four to five years. Luckily, since I don't eat much and to my dismay I have a naturally stickly figure, I've never really outgrown them.   

I slip a sweater over my thin vest that I slept in, and keep my leggings on. I push my feet in my boots that Anne gave me for my sixteenth birthday. It's been a year since I've had these, and luckily they're still in good shape. Anne has offered to buy me clothes before, but I say no because I don't want to be a burden to them. After all, no one seems to want to even look at a child like me. 

After running a comb through my long, dark hair, I run downstairs. Well, our house is only a one story but has an attic trapdoor, and I live in the attic, so to me it feels like a two story house. Living actually inside the house is a misery, because it's so dirty. I stumble into the kitchen, where my parents are lying on the table, passed out. I see empty glasses beside them, so I know that they have been drinking.   

As usual. 

I sigh to myself as I take some bacon and start to fry it. My parents seem to wake up at the smell of frying meat and bread and they sit up hungrily. I put the platter of bacon and bread on the table. They immediately start to grab at it. By the time I have cooked some watery porridge, the bacon is done. 

"Where's my bacon?" I ask. 

"We ate it, you ungrateful child," growls my mother. Her eyes are red and bloodshot, so I know she's still hungover. I tear the pieces of bread out of their hands, still greasy from the bacon, and they try to punch me in their drunken state, but I dodge it and run back to the stove. I take a chipped bowl and reach in the pot of porridge, filling the bowl to the top. I stand by the stove in silence, chewing the crust of the bread and using some to soak up the porridge. I refill my bowl and eat the second piece of bread while my parents slump to their bedroom.  

 My parents are the people who are part of the root of my misery. I can't say they haven't tried to take care of me. When I was five, my grandmother ordered them to get detoxified so they could be proper parents to me. It didn't work. Because they didn't want to do it. Yet I see the lingering guilt hidden deep in their eyes. The guilt of not taking care of their daughter when she needed it, and wasting away by drinking. 

 I gulp down the crust of bread and grab the backpack that Randy bought me for my twelfth birthday. Even after four years, I'm still using it. It's full of holes, and pretty dirty, but it still can be used. It's like having a hand‐me‐down from an older sibling after they dunked it in mud, caught in in barbed wire and tossed it on the dirty floor everyday. But in a lifelike mine, this bag is a luxury. It's hard to tell what the original color used to be though. Blue? Navy? Either way, it is a dark color.   

  I slam the door to my house and make my way down the street, fearing of what torrents I have to face at school. Natasha will do something. She bullies me everyday with her horrible clique of girls. You'd think that in a house like mine, dealing with self‐centered mean girls would be the least of my problems? 

Well, it's not. 

The taste of bile forms in my mouth, but I swallow it down as I hurry through the dark streets. On a morning like this, the sensible thing to do would be to get a ride in a car or take the bus. But since we don't own a car, the best thing we can do is walk. I don't even have a bike. Taking the bus would be an option, but there's two problems. The first is that I would use up about 10 dollars every week by doing so. The second is that my school is too close to my house for me to take the bus.So the last resort is walking.

I finally reach the school, and my stomach growls in protest along with the nervous butterflies I get everyday. Breakfast this morning wasn't enough. I feel especially needy in that moment, but ignore my growling stomach as I walk towards the door to the school. Compared to me, the kids here are bright and colorful, with well fitting clothes and flashy design son their bags and purses. But I seem to fit in with the clouds in the sky — gray and unnoticed. Sometimes it is useful,other times it's horrible. I pass by Natasha, who is talking with her BFF May, hoping not to get noticed.   

 My hopes are dashed immediately because she spots me and smirks. I hear her call my name and I groan mentally to myself. This day could not get worse, and it just started. 

"Hey! Pig shit!" calls Natasha. "It's rude to ignore someone, you know!" The kids around us start laughing. I continue walking, but Natasha and May block my path. Oh no. I feel my nervousness rising. 

"Ew, look at what she's wearing!" cackles May. 

"I know, and her shoes too!" adds Natasha. 

"These shoes are perfectly fine," I say quietly. "They're special. To me." This is actually a very rare and brave thing to do.Standing up to Natasha for me is like a death sentence. That's why it's brave but foolish  

 "Special?" Natasha starts laughing in response to me. "Cow dung would be special to you!" She's getting annoyed. She kicks me and I fall down. "Is that special to you, dipshit? What about this!?" She kicks me in the stomach this time, and I gasp, falling on my knees. I feel them scrape against the ground. 

"Stop it, please," I cry silently, but it gets worse. Why am I such a wimp? 

"You filthy being, you whore, you sick excuse for a human!" Natasha keeps pelting me with insults, a kick accompanying each one. "You dirty thing! Sick and poor and stupid! Dipshit, smart‐ass, dope! You coward, you don't deserve to be on this planet!" The kids are getting slightly concerned. So is May. Natasha has never been as angry as this. I am getting scared too.

"Stop it! Please!" I manage to gasp out. I feel the metallic taste of blood in my mouth, and I'm too weak to hold myself up. 

"Please stop!" 

"Coward!" Natasha kicks me and I throw up on her shoes. The kids gasp. This has never happened before."Nat, maybe you should‐" 

"NO!" Natasha interrupts May, who at once steps back. Natasha is full on angry. "I'm sick of this little whore. Just‐" 

She looks me straight in the eye. "GO DIE." She walks away from me, leaving me on the ground. The kids murmur to each other,while I curl up, sobbing quietly. I feel like I'm going to die. That should make her happy anyways.   

Someone must have called for help, because I see my English teacher, Mr. Lambert, come hurrying over. I can barely see him, my vision is going blurry. A combination of weakness and nausea. I'm a disgusting and pathetic creature 

"Alex, who did this?" he asks, trying to help me up.

Fear comes over me. He can't know about Natasha, otherwise she might actually come after me and murder me. No one can tell. If they do, then it's MY funeral. I fall to my knees and throw up once more. I hear the kids around me groan in disgust but I'm far from caring. I'm disgusting. I'm weak. I'm pathetic. I'm worthless. Why do I even bother caring?  

The world is now more blurry and this time it's spinning. Why is it spinning? What's wrong me with me? I feel my heart beat faster. I just want to die. Right now. I just want to be free. I just want this pain to end so nobody can bother or deceive me ever again.   

 "I‐I can't tell you," I finally whisper, then faint in his arms.